He began unbuttoning his shirt and narrowed his eyes on his target of the moment. It was funny, but somehow he kept forgetting she was injured … half-damaged. Somehow, when he looked at her, he never noticed the fading bruises and the butchered hair, never even saw the stitching that was probably already superfluous. He always seemed to see just the soft pretty contours of her face, the teasing turn of her lips, or the mink-colored depths of her eyes. She had these little lashes surrounding them, the curve of them only adding to the adorableness of her. She was cute. Apparently, he liked cute. He didn’t use to. Not before Ram. He’d liked them tall and leggy and so gorgeous that other men would cry with envy … but quietly, so as not to piss him off. Once upon a time, he’d reeked of badass. He’d been an elite SEAL team member. He’d thought nothing could touch him.
He cleared his throat, kicking back the emotions and self-recrimination that still welled up when he thought about the past and what he had once been. He liked himself better now. He had redefined himself side by side with Ram, who had taught him how to be a far better man. A far better being.
And apparently better beings liked cute.
A lot. And much to Ram’s dismay. Vincent’s sometimes better half had been blindsided by this attraction, and everything about it had gone against his sense of loyalty and purpose, something Vincent had agreed with at the time. Loyalty was everything, after all. But that loyalty was Ram’s, not necessarily his. Perhaps that was splitting hairs, but in the end, his only connection to Menes was through Ram’s knowledge of him, and anyone’s perspective was skewed to some degree when it came to something or someone they felt passionately about. Of course, he had all the faith in the world in Ram. It wasn’t as though he could deceive him outright. But there were a lot of variables to be considered here, first and foremost that both Menes and Docia had been gifted with free will. Menes could decide to put off leaving the Ether as long as he wanted to … two years, twenty … two hundred. Nothing said he was definitively going to show up anytime soon except Ram’s belief in him and Menes’s steady track record thus far.
Oh. And Cleo. Cleo the prophetess who had sent him and Ram to Saugerties N.Y. because she had seen visions of Menes’s and Hatshepsut’s return.
Anyway, Docia had as much say in whom she liked or disliked as her Bodywalker did. Free will. The same free will Odjit had been trying to exploit, unfortunately. But, he told himself, this was hardly the same thing. This was just … this was just here and now. Not some anticipated future that they were all just guessing at.
Vincent shrugged out of his shirt, snapping the tails free of his pants and drawing her attention with the sound. He pretended not to notice, leaned over the sink a little, and splashed water over his neck and chest. To remove the remaining chocolate, he thought firmly, definitely not to use the water to accentuate the naked musculature of said chest.
Nope. Not one bit.
He felt awkward inside for a moment. He hadn’t gone after a woman without his internal wingman in such a long time. For some reason, he found himself afraid of fucking it up. Maybe it was better to just leave it be. He should. Ram was going to pitch a fit when he came back and realized Vincent had been toying with his precious untouchable queen.
But she wasn’t the precious untouchable queen. Not right then. No more than he was Ram right then … for the most part. Rounded vowels or otherwise, he knew what Ram felt like, and if he really was there, he’d be kicking up a superior fuss. Wouldn’t he?
Docia looked up when Vincent made some kind of noise— and instantly regretted doing so. Or not. Or … yes. Well … the man was built like a freaking god, and he’d gone and taken off his shirt. She understood why: he was covered in milk and spit. Her fault, as usual. She decided to let herself stare at his shining pectorals and remarkably delineated abs for a moment in the hope that she wouldn’t fall back into the growing feeling that all of this was her fault. From the bridge incident until now, she’d been stepping in shit again and again, and she had been dragging him into it as well. Sure, Ram seemed content to follow her into doom time and again, but she got the feeling that Vincent was not so eager. She wondered if the only reason he was still there was that he knew Ram would be back very soon and there would be no escaping his wrath if he let her escape his protection.
She moved toward the fireplace and the mattress that lay in front of it. It wasn’t cheap, that was for sure. It was just what she thought a genie might conjure up. Thick, soft, covered in a royal-purple velvet fabric with blankets and pillows just as full and fluffy and just as bold in color. There were even little golden tassels hanging off the corners of each pillow.
It looked so luscious and she was so tired that she just wanted to crawl inside and sleep her life away. But there were two problems. Apparently it was not her life alone any longer, and it was sobering to realize that everything she did no longer affected her alone.
And along that train of thought was the second problem. She was about to get in bed with Mr. I’m Sexy and I Know It, where she’d have to make certain she refrained from gratuitous snuggling against him. There was the distinct danger of her doing just that, because, honestly … the more time she spent with him, the more times he came to her rescue, the more he insisted on touching her with those strong, confident hands … the more she felt herself being drawn to any and all of the sensations he inspired.
The best thing for her to do, she told herself sternly, was get in bed, roll over, and go to sleep. That’s it. End of story. There. That ought to do it. She had a plan and she was sticking to it. She crawled into the bed, moving to the side closest to the fire because she still felt as though she were shivering and cold at her core. She might end up feeling too warm in the long run, but she would worry about that when the time came.
The time came about two seconds later when he slid into bed next to her. Okay, really? Was the guy a walking furnace or something? Had he even gotten cold out there in the forest when she’d been freezing her tatas off?
“Warm enough?” he asked, wrapping an arm around her torso and drawing her back snugly into the cup of his body. She wondered when it was going to stop surprising her that Vincent wasn’t the type to ask permission to do certain things. She also wondered why it didn’t piss her off. She ought to be hitting him over the head with her purse, screeching, “Masher! Masher!” like the little old ladies in Bugs Bunny cartoons. Only she didn’t have a purse and she kind of enjoyed being mashed at the moment. Not that she’d cop to it under interrogation.
Besides, hadn’t the Ram half of his equation decided she was off-limits? No touchy, no feely.
“How is it,” he said suddenly, his voice very low and his breath incredibly hot against the back of her neck, “that you’ve just been through hell and you can still manage to smell so good?”
She could literally feel him inhale, a deep, long breath as he pushed his face a little closer to her skin. The arm around her tightened, his hand so far in a neutral position fitted against her ribs beneath her left breast, but there was something very not neutral to the entire situation. She could feel a powerful, dominant male overshadowing the whole setup.
She squeaked, wriggled out of his hold, and stumbled out of bed … nearly burning herself in the fireplace. He sat up immediately.
“What’s wrong with you?” he demanded.
“With me? You turn into a freaking octopus and all with the sexy ‘Mmm, you smell good’ business, and I’m the one who’s wrong? Let’s give it an hour and you can ask Ram that question, okay?”
His entire face darkened with a stormy irritation. Well, fine. She didn’t care if she pissed him off.
“First of all, keep your voice down,” he warned her, glancing up at the loft to make his point. Oh. Right. Wake genie up equals very bad things. “Secondly, what is your problem with me?” He stood up, whipping the blanket down onto the bed as though he might be wishing it were her instead … in a not good way. He stalked in her direction and she immediately began to bac
k away, holding out her hands to ward him off, as if that were going to do any good. The man was a storm of muscle and testosterone and a buttload of attitude.
“You’re supposed to be protecting me, not man-handling me!” she whispered fiercely.
“Oh, but you’ll let Ram manhandle you until the cows come home,” he growled as he closed in on her.
“Do you even hear what you’re saying? You’re the same person, you space cadet!”
The phrase gave them both pause. Yeah, she had to admit, that was a fairly decrepit choice, even for her.
“Not according to you,” he said through his teeth, just as she backed herself into an inescapable corner of the living room. His hands slammed against the wood walls on either side of her shoulders, and then there was the rapid follow-up of his strong body leaning along hers, blocking her from moving. “According to you, there’s all kinds of different.”
“Would you just let it go? In a few more hours none of this is going to matter. A few more days and neither of us will be who we are right now. So what does anything I say or do matter?”
She had grown increasingly agitated with every word, with every statement. She wanted to blame it on him and the way he was harassing her, the infuriating way he was pressing at her, but even she knew it went beyond that.
Vincent settled back a little … calmed, it seemed, as he cocked his head and studied her briefly. Then his right hand came away from the wall and he took her chin, tipping it up until she was looking straight into the golden eyes she would have preferred to avoid.
“Docia, are you afraid of disappearing?” he asked her quietly.
There was no need to define what he was talking about. She knew what he meant, just as he knew what she meant by her remarks. She nodded into the touch of his fingers, loosening their grip on her a little.
“Don’t you disappear when Ram is there?”
It wasn’t an unfair question. Nor was it based on inaccurate observations, he thought with a frown. But she had it wrong. Just as his frantic behavior to delineate himself outside of Ram was wrong.
“No,” he said softly, touching her forehead and the contours along the side of her face. “It’s as true a symbiosis as you can ever imagine,” he promised her. “Ram would falter without me, just as I’m faltering and fucking up without him. Selena knew that. That’s why she did this to us.” And by “us” he clearly meant Ram and himself. “Ram knows things, amazing things, and thinks in ways far beyond what I knew on my own. And Ram doesn’t know half the modern fighting techniques that I do, nor does he have a head for computers and electronics. But together we know it all. And together we make up for each other’s weaknesses in other ways. For instance, when I was just Vincent, it was all about winning, no matter who got trampled in the process.” He sighed. “I don’t want to trample you, Docia.”
“Y-you confuse me,” she stammered, the warm nut brown of her eyes tugging at him in peculiar ways, making him feel guilty when he didn’t want to … when he rightly deserved to.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Ram, too,” she added, making sure he felt the equality of it in her eyes. He could hear it in her voice. She wasn’t trying to coddle him. She was telling the truth. “This whole thing has been confusing. But, I think more than anything, the way I felt as though I should instantly trust you … even when I had nothing to go on except the assurances of a man who’d just kidnapped me …” The way she looked up at him, the closeness of her, he couldn’t help noticing the gorgeous fringe of her dark lashes around those sweet, vulnerable eyes of hers. Thank God he and Ram had found her first. Selena and her sect would have turned her inside out.
And he’d almost allowed her to fall into their hands.
“Because you should trust us, Docia. If not me alone, then certainly Ram. He … we … I would never let anything hurt you,” he promised her.
She giggled suddenly, and it made him smile a little in bemusement, even though he didn’t understand what was so funny.
“I’ve never heard anyone use so many different personal pronouns to refer to themselves before.”
His smile grew. “I know it must seem confusing. But I’m so used to it, to shifting all over the map like that, that I rarely notice it. But usually it’s just I. Me. Myself. We phase back and forth in dominance, who has more control at any given moment changes like … the perfect balance between the clutch and the gas when driving a stick. Sometimes more of one, sometimes more of the other. But I can tell you this …” He reached with his thumb and drew it over the corner of her mouth. “We … both Ram and Vincent … are utterly fascinated by you. By the way you’ve made us both feel. I guess I don’t have Ram’s phenomenal self-control when it comes to you.”
Odds were he was going to get smacked or he was going to freak her out all over again, but Vincent just could not resist any longer. He lowered his mouth to hers, touching their lips together in what had to be the barest of kisses.
Docia’s breath started to come quicker the minute she saw the change of intent come over him, the minute she appreciated the desire in his eyes. But somehow this honest, more bare-souled version of Vincent’s advances had far less frightening aspects to it than the groping aggressive Vincent had.
Oh great. Now she was splitting Vincent in two on top of him already being, essentially, part of a duo.
But in the end, it was a single pair of lips coming into contact with her own and a single, focused intent. And unlike the obnoxious kiss in the Templar church that had done little more than irritate her, this had the opposite effect. There it was again, that peculiar and wonderful sensation of having heat blown through her body, like a glassblower shaping molten substance into something wondrously beautiful. And instead of feeling it along the outer edges of her skin, she felt it all along under the surface, sliding between skin and muscle, slithering snugly and wildly inside every corner she had. Her blood began to sparkle in its veins as he pressed a little harder, danced with her lips a little deeper. She lifted her hands but was afraid to touch all that large, wonderful maleness right within her reach, afraid because she couldn’t fathom right then being able to manage any more than what she was already feeling.
Her breath hitched in her throat and she pulled her head back, although not because she really wanted him to stop. It was more like a flight response in reaction to the fear of not knowing what to do next, of not knowing if she could handle this. But she was relieved when he chased her back down almost instantly, his hand lifting to cup the back of her head so she wouldn’t be able to move away again. Yet he was not bruising or brutish, was not trying to dominate the hell out of her. It was more like a discourse, a sweet conversation using the lips and tongue that conversation depended on so very much, where her input and arguments held just as much weight as his. There was respect every inch of the way. She sensed this just as deeply as she felt that energizing heat and arousal stirring throughout her body. And just as she was beginning to wonder if it was the same for him …
“My God,” he murmured into her mouth. “I’ve never felt anything like this. It’s like calling power from deep within myself, this feeling.” He kissed her harder, deeper, her head turning and tipping to absorb the impact of it. Now she did touch him, her fingers reaching to curl into his shirt to provide some sort of anchor for herself … only he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and she was left with nothing but smooth, hot skin over tense, curving muscle and the lightest crisp of hair. It had been so fair, so close to the tone of his skin, that she had not even noticed it on his chest. It gleamed like gold on his forearms, but here she had barely noticed it.
Of course, that could have been because she was far too busy palpitating over his physique overall.…
He broke away from her lips only a second to catch his breath. Or to let her catch hers. She couldn’t quite tell. He tipped her head back so he could find her eyes under the hooded sweep of her heavy lids and lashes.
“And it stops here, if you say the word,
Docia.”
Word? What word? she wondered numbly. There were words? How could there be words on the very same lips that were full of the fire of kissing him?
All she could do was shake her head.
No. She refused. Refused to stop. To be afraid. To hesitate. Not one second longer. Who knew when the next bridge would come along? What if everything ended right then? Would she want the words no, stop, or I’m afraid to be the last ones she spoke?
“No. Don’t stop. I’m not afraid,” she said breathlessly.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Jackson didn’t let himself feel exhausted, although that was very much the feeling snarling at his heels. He hadn’t slept since the night before his conversation with Docia, the silly, relaxed one he’d had with her just like dozens of silly relaxed conversations he’d had with her every single morning on her way to work. Only after that one had ended, he’d come in to work and been told she was dead.
He hadn’t slept since. Not even after knowing she was safe, alive, and in the hospital bed next to him. At most he’d drifted off, but at just about the point of actual sleep, he’d hear the sound of her screaming for him. The sound of her terror. The sound of her last moments on earth.
He got up from his desk and moved to the coffeepot, angry with the damn thing for not providing the level of juice he needed to keep going in a fewer number of cups, because at this point his effectiveness was hindered more by his overworked bladder than his weariness.
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