At least people were getting out of the area. And the shield was still holding.
For now.
Scarlett gasped and clenched her hands in the dirt. The earth underneath her was on fire. Dirt. On fire. If someone had told her this morning that dirt could get so hot it caught on fire, she would have laughed in their faces. Dirt on fire? Couldn’t happen.
Nevertheless. The dirt was on fire.
Yet she didn’t feel as overwhelmed by the energy inside her as she had a second ago. She still felt like a bomb ready to go off. But she wasn’t in the process of actually going off anymore. Huge difference.
She pushed herself off her side and sat up.
What wasn’t white heat was a solid, shimmering blue. Pax’s shield. But where was Pax?
She twisted around. He was behind her, looking down at her. A slightly metallic, white statue, frowning thoughtfully at her. A statue that didn’t seem to notice he was butt-ass naked.
Or that he was pretty well hung.
She suppressed a giggle and forced herself to look at his face. That look. It was so Pax. He was trying to figure out how to explain something to her that was going to be totally over her head no matter what he said. And she was going to smile and nod and pretend to understand, and then he was going to sigh and explain it again, this time in words she could understand.
“You almost destroyed the city, Scarlett,” he said.
Her skin went kind of crispy-feeling. “What?”
“I don’t know what’s happened to you and I don’t know why, but the energy in you is bursting out in flames and you have to get a hold of it before you completely destroy everything. The astral being who came along with Terry tried to help you convert and freaked out about the negative energy attacking you. It and she fought inside you and all the energy is turning into fire.”
She looked at him. She didn’t get it. Every single fucking word he’d used, she understood. Every one of them. But it just wasn’t possible.
He sighed.
“Terry said it’s because you’re good at absorbing pain and turning it into other forms of energy. There was some kind of indirect link. He thinks you did the same with the negative energy that tried to take you over.”
Pain. That she understood. She’d been taking pain and turning it into stories for years. And ever since she could remember, she’d been taking pain and turning it into empathy. Why not turn it into fire?
“I turned pain into fire?” she said. Pax nodded. “Okay. I get that. But the whole city?”
“We have superpowers now,” Pax said.
She thought of him punching a hole in his mom’s chest. Not very nice ones.
“Astral material… can pull energy out of other sources.”
Scarlett closed her eyes. It didn’t help. It wasn’t hard to understand what Pax was saying. It was too easy. She wanted to puke. But she’d tried that already. Hadn’t helped.
So instead she decided to do what she did best. Take someone else’s pain and make it into something else. Only not fire this time. She sat cross-legged on the burning ground and balanced her elbows on her knees. She didn’t want to see his face while she did this. Because it was going to hurt. “This whole situation is a mistake, Pax.”
“Yes,” he said. “I should have just let myself die.”
She felt the pain pour off him. She let it flood into her. Dark and cold and horrible and horrifying. Familiar. She could feel the darkness meshed into her being now feeding off of it, growing stronger.
“But you stopped it. How did you stop it?” she asked softly.
Sometimes you have to remind people of the good stuff, when all they could see was the bad. She was blinking fast, trying to keep tears made of fire from rolling down her cheeks. She’d fucked things up so badly. She couldn’t let him blame himself. Couldn’t.
“Terry diverted some of your energy to me,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” she said. What a shitty thing for Terry to do, to dump this on Pax.
“He had to. I used it to reinforce the shield. And pulling energy off you dampened the feedback loop between you and negative energy, once Terry got Lana to stop fighting.”
Scarlett squinted at the shield. It didn’t look like it was swarming with fire or negative energy. It was blue and swirling and no one could see through it. Pax stood in the shield with her. Naked. Shaking with fear and terror. Unsure of himself. Unsure of what to do.
Scarlett looked down at her body and realized she, too, was naked. She knew what to do.
“Pax,” she whispered. “Come here.”
Pax came to her.
This is fucked up. I am fucked up, Pax thought, but he couldn’t stop. No! I can’t—
But the thing was, he could.
And part of him didn’t give a shit anymore about what Scarlett, or anybody else, wanted. He was on fire. Not the same kind of fire burning up Scarlett. But the kind of fire that compelled him to shove Scarlett onto her back and push himself on top of her. She lay between his legs, and he grabbed her tits (Tits? Did I say—) and squeezed them so hard it was as if he wanted them to pop. Well, he wanted nothing of the sort, but something, some-thing inside, a part of him that was either new or that he never knew existed, that part was burning with a desire that wiped out everything else but—
Want. Need.
As hard as Pax tried to resist, this darker part of him was strong—too strong. With all his might, Pax tried to push back from Scarlett’s body, but—
Fire. Need. Want.
The black ash on Scarlett’s skin—that was her skin—cracked and fire spurted out. Pax pulled the layer of ash off her tits and threw it aside.
This is sick. Stop it. You have to stop this, he cried out to himself to no avail. Want. Need. Mine.
The sickest part was that a little piece of Pax wanted the dark energy in him to win. His eyes widened with the horror of knowing this. But it was true. He’d been trapped in that fucking hospital bed for literally most of his life. He’d just stopped Scarlett from destroying the city. He needed this. He deserved this.
She’d asked him to, hadn’t she? He couldn’t remember.
He watched himself kissing her. He was practically chewing on her face. He didn’t know what he was doing. God. When he’d imagined himself having sex with a woman, this wasn’t how it went down. He was going at it like a fucking seventeen-year-old football player in an after-school special.
One last time, Pax tried to fight the urge taking over his body. He managed to stroke Scarlett’s cheek, a cheek that fluttered into ash at even his gentle touch. But the energy took complete control of him, and Pax grabbed her chin, hard, and he couldn’t stop it, couldn’t hold it back any longer.
He thrust one knee between Scarlett’s legs, then another, and spread her legs apart. He grabbed her thigh and pulled it even farther out of his way.
He thrusted himself into her.
It felt like he was plugging himself into a live outlet. The energy that had been flooding into him was nothing compared to what he was feeling now.
He had to get rid of it. Now.
Pax’s hands squeezed her breasts so hard she would have been screaming if she’d still been human. Scarlett made a mental note to tell him later: you gotta be gentle with boobs. Her skin peeled off and stuck to his hand. Gross. He pulled his hand away and shook the layer of black ash into the burning dirt.
Great. This is a total comedy of errors. He is never going to touch me again.
She’d wanted to make love to Pax for, oh God, forever. It was finally happening, and she couldn’t help making a total fool of herself. He pushed his legs between hers and jerked her thigh out of the way. His touch was cold. Metal cold. Robot cold.
Shit. Something was wrong. This was not gentle, sweet
Pax, the boy she’d loved forever and a day. Confused, she searched his face for answers even as he continued to ravish her.
His face was all twisted up and flashing between fear—no, terror—and anger, too, as if touching her was hurting him. Waves of hurt and rage and pain were pouring off him.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, reaching out to wrap him in her arms. “I’m so sorry.”
She’d wanted this so much. But she hadn’t really thought it was possible—and she hadn’t really thought about what would happen if he didn’t want it, too. And it was obvious he didn’t. Something was forcing him.
She’d had sex with him a thousand times in her head. And it was always good. And he was always so grateful, in her imagination.
But this?
It was breaking her heart.
He didn’t want her. It was just the energy, making him have sex with her.
He snarled in her ear, thrusting his hard-on between her thighs. It broke through the layer of ash there—and into the white heat of her crotch. Did she even have a vagina anymore?
Shit. Of all the things you ought to know before you have sex for the first time…
Was it going to hurt?
“Slow down,” she tried to say. “Gentle, Pax, listen to me. I want this, too. I do! But take it easy, make it—”
Pax bit down on her earlobe and ripped at it until the outer layer of ash came off in his mouth. Scarlett shuddered and stretched her neck toward the boy or the energy or whatever it was that was taking her. All rational thought left her as feelings coursed through her body, and she thrust her crotch toward his. She had no idea what was really going on, but fuck, it felt good. His body felt like ice against hers. Ice. Water. Coolness. The heat inside her melted it as soon as it touched her, but he just kept pumping more into her. She arched her back and purred.
It wasn’t the way it was supposed to be, was it? Weren’t there supposed to be candles and soft music, a bed or at least a couch or a sweet field of flowers? Pax looked more tortured than blissful. When he stroked her cheek, his hand vibrated as if all he really wanted was to finally touch her. His eyes were wide with lust but also with confusion as his hand grabbed her chin and he continued to pound her, hard.
She had to stop this.
But she couldn’t.
Pax collapsed on her, shuddering. Had he just come? His cooling energy was still pouring into her. She needed it. If she was going to get hold of herself enough to not destroy the fucking city, then she needed this.
“Scarlett,” Pax whispered. “Oh God. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Along with the cool energy she would sell her soul to keep getting, smaller waves of darker energy were pulsing out of him. They were being absorbed into her skin as fast as he could make them. Was he sorry about that? That was nothing. She could soak up that shit all day.
“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s just not the way I… what I expected—”
“It’s not okay. It was wrong.”
She blinked. A hicuppy kind of sob came out of her mouth. Tears starting pouring out of her eyes. “No, no, no,” she said. Then realized what that would sound like. Look like. “I mean, yes, yes, yes—yes to everything. I’m saying yes! I asked you to, remember? Please believe me—” She searched for something to break through to him. “Pax,” she whispered. “I’m on fire. You’re putting me out.”
Great. World’s cheesiest line ever. Straight out of the box of romance novels that crouched under her grandma’s bed.
He was grabbing her again. And she was grabbing him back. Tongues in each other’s mouths. He put his hands in her flaming hair, and it wound up his arms. She could feel through her hair. She stroked his skin with it. She threw him over and rubbed her body against him, dragging her breasts across his metallic skin, grinding her hips against him.
Just because it was cheesy didn’t mean it wasn’t true.
She was fire. And he was the only one who could put her out.
Chapter 7
It had taken an hour, and Terry’s help, for Pax and Scarlett to learn to change their appearances. Once Scarlett’s flames were under control, Terry guided her and Pax through the aether back to the hospital. Pax slipped into the room where his mother lay, unconscious and recovering. He took the apartment keys from her pocket and got the address from her driver’s license. Terry opened the aether for them once again and took them there.
Pax didn’t know what to expect. The last apartment he’d lived in with his mom was a walk-up in the Bronx that smelled like cabbage. It had been small and cozy, Pax thought, though he wasn’t sure. It had been so long since he’d lived anywhere but the hospital.
The new place wasn’t small. It was big. And dark. Pax’s metal hands hit the wall with a THUD and fumbled for the light switch. It was an old-fashioned toggle, unlike the push switches at the hospital. It made him feel like he was in a foreign country. He flicked it up, and the lights came on.
When in doubt, go with beige seemed to be his mom’s philosophy.
Dining area: beige tile, cheap Ikea table stacked with bills and junk mail. One of the chairs featured a pile of identical tan trench coats. Living room: beige carpet topped with a brown area rug under most of the furniture. Tan couch, big flat-screen TV, glass-topped coffee table stacked with more junk mail. Tiny beige-and-steel kitchen to the right, tiny beige hallway to the left. Three doors: tiny beige bathroom stocked with beige makeup, tiny closet filled with cardboard boxes, tiny bedroom with a small bed covered in a tan patchwork quilt. And that was it. Everything smelled off. Then he realized he was missing the smell of the hospital’s pine cleaner. Fuck, man. He hated that pine cleaner.
The only decoration was a picture on a table in the corner between the couch and the chair. The three of them. Mom, Dad, him. The ocean was behind them, and their hair was all messed up from the wind. They wore matching blue windbreakers and their cheeks were red. The sky behind them was dark from an incoming storm. The sun was on their faces.
Dad was smiling so big most of his teeth were showing. He had on sunglasses which were just a little bit askew. Mom was laughing. Pax was a toddler. He was grabbing for the camera. His cheeks were fat.
He didn’t remember it.
Can you both hear me?
“Yes,” said Pax. Scarlett just nodded.
You need to take human form, said Terry. Both of you. Listen.
It wasn’t words he poured into their heads. Instead, it was images, ideas, and concepts, all thrown in so fast and so furious that no single one could be separated from the others. And all of it was instruction on how, from the atomic level, astral flesh could take human shape.
At the end of it, Terry’s voice came again. I must go. I must find Akllana’chikni’pai.
And with that, he left them alone.
The silence that followed was awkward, not the least because they were both seventeen and naked.
Pax stared at Scarlett, taking in her hunched shoulders, small breasts and rounded stomach, and the hair beneath it. He felt himself growing and immediately started blushing. Scarlett giggled and looked away, blushing herself.
“I can’t believe this,” said Pax. “I mean, we’ve been naked for hours. Why is it funny now?”
“It was different,” said Scarlett. “I was made of fire, and you were all hard.” She glanced down and giggled again. “Guess part of you still is.”
“Very, funny,” said Pax, “Now what do we do? I mean, we’re supposed to help Terry and Lana judge this world. They’re going to decide if humans should be allowed to evolve to the astral plane, and now he’s gone and he can’t find Lana and we’re stuck here all alone! What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know!” the words practically burst out of Scarlett. “I wasn’t going to be astral! You were going to be astral! You were going
to be astral, and I was going to go home and eat my mother’s crappy meatloaf for dinner! Then you were going to be healthy and better and we were going to actually go to school together and I was going to be a writer and you were going to do…. whatever the fuck it is you were going to do!” Scarlett’s hand went up to her head and pounded against her temple. “And now I’m dead and my body’s made of astral stuff and I’m standing here naked with a boy with a hard on!” She looked at his penis. “Can’t you do anything about that?”
“I don’t know!” Pax looked down at his erection. “I’ve never had one before.”
“What?” Scarlett’s eyes went wide.
“The damage to my heart. It made everything… weaker. I couldn’t even—”
“Wow,” said Scarlett. “That’s… wow.”
“So today was the first time and—” He turned away, blushing furiously. “And it wasn’t how I wanted it to be. At all. It was… stupid.”
“It didn’t feel stupid,” said Scarlett. “I mean, it was a bit rough and you’ve really got to learn how to handle a girl’s boobs better, but it wasn’t stupid. In fact, it was the best orgasm I’ve ever had.”
Pax’s eyes went wide. “Really?”
“Yeah.” Scarlett blushed again and then muttered, “Maybe because it’s the first one I had with someone else.”
Now it was Pax’s turn to be shocked. “Really?”
“Look at me,” said Scarlett. “I’m not even pretty, No one ever wanted to fuck me except you, and you were putting out my fire so that hardly counts.”
“That… wasn’t why—”
“Then what was?”
“I don’t know! I just… I wanted you. I don’t know why I wanted you. It wasn’t like I was trying to be a fire hose or something!”
I Am Titanium (Pax Black Book 1) Page 8
