Gerik swung his body towards me, his face red and his nostrils flaring. His eyes were pure white. There had been no slow bleed of colors; it had been instant, just like his anger.
“I would never hurt you,” he said, glaring at me. “I was trying to show you what is between us, what more could be between us if you would just let go.”
Was there something substantial I needed to let go of? Or was this metaphorical? Gerik never made any sense when he started talking about us.
“Why won’t you just trust me?” he spat out. “And stop blocking me!”
Blocking him?
“Oh, I don’t know,” I murmured, “Maybe because trusting you would require you not lying to me about things like SLEEPING WITH ONYX!”
He had obviously prepared himself for this very discussion. The mention of her name and the fact that I had started yelling didn’t seem to faze him at all. I tried to reign in my steadily rising anger, hating that I felt anything at all about Gerik and his girlfriend when I didn’t want to.
If I agreed to “let go” as he put it, would he keep her as his mistress?
“What about her?” he asked me, a picture of calm.
I huffed. “You tell me? Why did you lie to me about her? If you want to be with her then just be with her! Why bother with me at all? I’m not like you, I don’t have magic, and the gods know how hard I’ve been fighting this thing between us! You say we are special, Gerik, but what is so special about us? Our deranged little love triangle?”
“You don’t understand!” he roared, reaching for me. “It’s so hard having you here and not being able to be with you – really, truly, with you!” Grabbing my shoulders, he roughly pulled me toward him until we were nose to nose.
“You’re everything, Trinity, EVERYTHING!” He shook me violently, making my teeth rattle. “I need her to… or…I don’t know...she’s –”
Wearing a tank top today had been an epic mistake. His hands were on me and heat was pouring through me from his touch. I fell limply forward pressing my face against his and moaned. Gerik grabbed my hips and in one swift move brought me forward, over him. I wrapped my legs around his waist as he stood.
“I’m taking you back to my place,” he said. “We’re going to finish this. Right now.”
I mumbled something in response; I was too busy pulling up the bottom of his t-shirt in order to caress bare skin to worry about talking.
“Damn,” he growled as I went for his neck. “Don’t stop.”
Stop? I wouldn’t dream of it. Gerik was all I wanted. He was my everything. My life before him was nothing; a faint memory at best. He was my present and my future. He was my forever.
“Move,” Gerik ground out harshly. He’d stopped walking and I wiggled against him, whimpering. Why in all the gods was he stopping?
“Looks like Trinity is going to be missing practice today,” a familiar voice said, laughing.
Practice? Something niggled in the back of my mind.
Gerik growled loudly, the sound reverberated through his entire body, vibrating against mine. Grabbing his chin, I thrust my tongue into his mouth. He responded immediately.
“How ‘bout I get that door for you Gerik? You look a little busy.” Several people laughed, causing cold slivers of embarrassment to worm their way into my overheated body.
Suddenly, I knew something wasn’t right.
Then I was falling from Gerik’s arms and onto his bed. Contact was broken. Oh gods dammit. I was furious and more than ready to kill the Viking on top of me.
I punched Gerik in the stomach, hurting myself and not moving him an inch from his predatory position above me. Sore now, I cradled my hand against me.
“You’re promises are nothing but crap!” I shouted.
I felt sickened, suffocated and…furious by my circumstances. This wasn’t right. I was sure of it now. This wasn’t love; it wasn’t even a prelude to love. This was twisted and hurtful, full of lies and bereft of reality.
Gray eyes bled to blue. “Trinity, please…”
“No.” My voice stayed firm despite the budding emotions rising inside of me at the sound of panic in his voice.
“No,” I repeated, more for myself than him. I was so gods damn weak in his presence. “This isn’t right; this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. This is magic, or whatever, but it’s not real. This isn’t how people end up together.”
“Not real, yeah?” his voice raised. “What keeps those monsters out of camp then? What killed that thing attacking Xan?” He thumped his chest with his fist. “I was born with magic inside of me. Are you saying I’m not real?”
“But I won’t ever know just how real any of it is, will I?” I shrieked. “You won’t explain any of it to me! You won’t explain what’s wrong with us! Do you really expect me to just blindly trust you?”
His eyes dropped and I knew then that he would never tell me what was going on between us. He would protect the secrets of his people even at the cost of my sanity. We could marry and have children who would be privy to information that I never would be. I would never truly know Gerik.
“We’re done here.” I pushed at his chest. “Get off me.”
“We’ll never be done.” The words were a whisper across my senses. I hadn’t actually heard them, I’d felt them. Could still feel them
We locked eyes.
Words can be interpreted many ways depending on how they are spoken. Gerik’s last statement to me could have been a beautiful promise, but instead he’d blackened those words by using them to threaten me. Several tense heartbeats passed before he let me up.
“You’re mine, Trinity,” he called out as I shut his bedroom door behind me. “You already know that though, yeah?”
Hands shaking, I walked out of his trailer and came face to face with Stevo, Hockey, Shandor, Marko and…Xan.
“Trinity!” Stevo jumped up from the picnic tabled and rushed up to me, his face wrought with worry. “Are you okay?”
“She’s fine,” Shandor drawled. “Just a little overexerted is all.” He laughed. “Right, fată?”
Horrified that they'd witnessed what had just happened, I ran from them. I ran straight across the living lot and directly to my trailer. Locking both doors behind me, I crawled into bed.
You’re mine, repeated over and over again in my mind.
Possessive much? Well, I didn’t accept.
I belonged to no one.
******
The next afternoon I went to practice full of trepidation and wasn’t surprised when Xan wasn’t there. He had told me that if I wasn’t serious about practice not to ever come near him again. Watching me crawl all over Gerik like a cat in heat while I was supposed to be practicing was probably enough reason for him to believe I wasn’t taking it seriously. I came across him leaving Drina’s trailer with a leather satchel of foul smelling herbs.
“Have fun?” He gave me a bitter smile.
I closed my eyes, embarrassed. Why Xan had to keep finding me in compromising situations, I didn’t know.
“I’m really sorry about missing practice.”
“I told you if you weren’t serious, not to waste my time, fată.”
“No!” I grabbed his arm when he started to walk away from me. “I am serious! Please, you don’t understand!” It looked as if he didn’t want to understand from the way he was frowning at the grip I had on his arm. I quickly released him. “There is so much more going on with me and Gerik than you think,” I told him.
He made a disgusted face. “And this concerns me how?”
“It doesn’t, but I need someone to talk to and I don’t have anyone else.” My hope was that Xan shared the same bias about magic that I did.
He laughed. “So I’m last on the list, huh, fată?”
“No!” I blew out a breath. “This thing with me and Gerik…it’s not normal. It has to be magic. But because of who I am, I’m not privy to it. I just get to feel all the horrible after effects without understanding what’s happ
ening to me.”
I watched Xan study me, wishing I had some sort of clue as to what was going on inside of his head. “Xan!” I stomped my foot. “He has some kind of control over me!” He just continued to stare at me, rolling his bottom lip between his teeth.
An idea struck me. The last time Xan had kissed me it had been awful for me. There had been an unseen force that had been trying to push him away, making me feel… wrong. If I could just show him…
“Xan!” I shouted needlessly. He was half a foot away, staring straight at me. Standing up on my tiptoes, I wrapped my arms around his neck and crushed my mouth to his.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Xan reached for me, with a look on his face that had my stomach fluttering. I watched his fingers intertwine with mine. Painstakingly slow, he began to rub the palm of my hand with the pad of his thumb. I snatched my hand back.
“No,” I told him, shaking my head.
He gave me a crooked smile, his eyebrows rising. “No? So you don’t want to understand magic then? Fine, let’s just get started on practice.”
I sighed. “No. I mean yes. Yes to the magic but no to the hand flirting. Practice later.”
Xan’s eyes sparkled dangerously. “If you want to understand magic you need to understand connection. Everyone is connected to each other through magic, through nature, through sex –”
“Okay, Don Juan, just forget I asked.” I uncrossed my legs and readied myself to stand.
“It was just a joke, Trin. Relax.” He leaned back on his elbows.
“Smoke?” Xan pulled a cigarette from behind his ear and I nodded. Why not? It’s not like there was anything better to do these days than get lung cancer. It actually seemed like one of the more pleasant ways to go.
He sat up and pulled a lighter out from one of his many pants pockets and lit it for me. Digging around in another pocket he emerged with a pack of cigarettes and shook one loose for himself.
“Drink?” He asked, pulling a flask out of yet another pocket.
I started laughing.
He frowned. “What?”
“You just remind me of the guy in prison who can get whatever you need or something.”
“Oh yeah, been to prison fată?”
I blushed. “Yeah, I was a bad, bad girl.”
He snorted. “Who can’t shoot a gun.”
I scrunched up my nose at him and made a face. He responded by snapping his teeth at me, a gesture that had my heart racing.
“So you think I got it all in my pants, huh Trin?” He grinned.
Blushing again, I looked away.
Instead of teasing me more, he lowered his voice. “Explain this all to me one more time. I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around it. You say Gerik has some sort of power over you?”
I swallowed hard. “I can’t control myself around him. He calls all the shots, it doesn’t matter if I don’t want anything to do with him, the second he touches me I turn into....” I lowered my eyes, embarrassed.
“A sex crazed porn star,” I whispered.
Xan rolled his eyes. “You don’t need to understand magic to understand what’s happening. It’s real simply fată. Gerik is one powerful Roma and he’s been given every natural blessing there is. He’s using magic to get what he wants and what he wants right now is you.” The bitterness in Xan’s voice wasn’t hard to miss.
“There has to be more to it than that,” I told him. “I get the feeling he knows what I’m thinking sometimes. And the way he smells, why doesn’t anyone else smell it? And why does it hurt when I kiss you?”
“Alright, say there is something magical going on between the two of you that Gerik has nothing to do with.” Xan looked skeptical. “That leaves natural magic. Something no one can fight against.”
I threw up my hands in exasperation. “I wouldn’t know, would I?”
“What if I were to tell you that natural magic is just as paramount to life on this world as the sun is? That magic has its dirty little hands in everything and everyone. That it’s in the air you breathe, the food you eat and without it you wouldn’t have ever even been born. None of us would have existed, humans and animals alike. What if I told you all of that, Trin… what would you do? Succumb to Gerik’s love?”
My mouth did a dying fish thing.
“I… is uh, is everything you said true?”
“Before I say anything, I want you to know that I’m breaking a whole lot of rules by discussing this with you. Jericho would kick me outta here without a second thought if he knew.”
“Then why are you doing it?”
He shrugged, then gave me a lazy smile. “I want something.”
Of course he did. This was Xan after all. The guy should just start handing out his price list.
I sighed, “What do you want?”
“A kiss.”
My stomach leapt into my throat. The kiss outside of Drina’s to prove to him that something was off about me had gone very wrong, which of course had been the point except it had been even worse than the first time. Not only flat out repulsed, my entire body had ached with the need to get away from him. Tears had even formed. Yet I persevered, for about one whole minute, until I felt like my body was going to explode from fighting with itself.
“What? Why a kiss? You saw what kissing you did to me.”
He lifted a shoulder and muttered, “Maybe I can make it better than the first two?”
I wasn’t inclined to believe that was going to happen.
“Forget it.” I stood up to go.
I made it only ten or twelve steps when I was suddenly grabbed, swung around and slammed against a pair of warm and wet Roma lips.
I cringed away from him. “Please don’t, it feels terrible Xan.”
“Prove to me that breaking this law, one of the most important one my people have, will amount to something,” he whispered, running the tip of his tongue along the seam of my lips.
His dark eyes sparkled dangerously. “Show me it will be worth it, fată.”
His fingers crept under my top and began to dance along my spine. I shivered underneath his touch. Nothing he was doing was causing me any sort of discomfort; in fact, it was the opposite I was feeling.
When he cupped my bottom, squeezed hard and pulled me flush against him, my eyes shut involuntarily as an onslaught of brand new feelings poured through me.
Gods, what was happening to me?
Anticipation. Anxiety. Excitement. Complete and utter terror. So many unfamiliar emotions hit me all at once.
He growled against my ear. “Open your eyes fată. Look at me when I touch you.”
My eyes fluttered open to meet his. His eyes gave away everything he was thinking. Deep and dark need that felt dangerous, but right. It wasn’t hard to see how Xan became addictive to the opposite sex.
“I want you, Trin,” he whispered. His body moved tempestuously against mine.
The butterflies in my stomach amped up the Scottish jig they were already doing. Without thinking I grabbed unto his biceps and dug my fingernails into the roughened and scarred browned skin wrapped beautifully around solid muscle. He groaned against my mouth.
Oh gods. My body turned butter soft, my brain melted into girly mush.
Not yet sure exactly what I felt for Xan didn’t matter, his words had yielded me. Pulling my lips apart with his teeth, he found his entrance.
A mere heartbeat later, a blast of frigid cold air tore through me at the same time the resistance to Xan kicked in. Startled, I pulled away. I looked up at Xan confused, but he was peering over top of me. I followed his gaze toward the creek where Gerik stood.
My heart dropped.
“He’s going to kill me,” I whispered, inching around Xan to take cover behind him.
He turned toward me, his face grim. “No fată he won’t, take a good look at him.”
Shielding my eyes to block out the sun, I peered across the front lot. Gerik, legs spread apart, arms crossed, wore a very satisfied smile on h
is face.
He knew. He’d always known I could never be with anyone but him.
“He knows I can’t kiss you,” I whispered. “That’s why he smiling.”
Xan made a dismissive noise in the back of his throat. Then, in a move that could only be considered either stupid or bold, Xan flipped Gerik off and stared defiantly back at him.
******
I stretched out on the grass that night, staring up at a star filled sky. My heart was aching for the simplicity of my life before magic.
I wiped away an errant tear.
If magic can’t save us, if it can’t fix the world and strips people of their free will, then what’s the point in any of it? I didn’t even want to acknowledge its existence let alone be a pawn in one of its games.
Xan had said there were two kinds of magic. The four elements represented light magic, consisting of earth, air, water and fire. Dark magic, the fifth element, is spirit. Spirit is the opposite of light magic. If life was light, than death was dark. Spirit could only occur if light magic is corrupted, in turn disrupting the balance of nature.”
“What constitutes as disruption?” I’d asked. “Who gets to decide? Is there some magical judge and jury?”
Xan had shrugged.
“It’s nature, fată. She gives the gifts and she doles out the consequences too. She’s everywhere, got a hand in everything, there isn’t anything that happens that she didn’t make happen herself or doesn’t know about.”
If that were really true that would mean none of us had any real power here, magically capable or not. We were human, specks of dusts really. Ultimately expendable. It didn’t make sense that such a great force of power like nature would have allowed such an incredible devastation to befall our race if we really mattered to her.
“Is that what this is about?” I’d asked as a horrifying thought crossed my mind. “Is nature trying to rid the world of us for something someone’s done wrong?”
Xan’s face took on a surprisingly serious look. “I have no idea Trin. It’s one damn scary thought though.”
Then he had shrugged again, and his humor returned. “Or maybe it has nothing to do with magic at all. Maybe this is some weird experimental disease gone awry that the government accidentally released.”
The Holy Trinity Trilogy Page 9