by Dean Murray
Chapter 20
The other exercises basically consisted of variations on what I'd already done. Once every couple of hours I was supposed to practice summoning my default emotion of happiness. Sometimes I was supposed to just overwrite whatever emotions I happened to be feeling, and other times I was supposed to imagine situations that would conjure other, negative or neutral emotions and then overwrite them with my default emotion.
Kat seemed to be prepared to keep time sped up so that I could get a few additional rounds of practice in before we arrived at the lake, but I figured there wasn't much point in making her burn memories if I was really as far ahead as she'd indicated. Besides, I really wanted to know what was going on with Ari and Jace. Apparently I was going to get plenty of practice defaulting away from intense feelings of jealousy.
As it turned out, Kat shared my assessment of the pointlessness of bending time just so I could do something that I didn't need privacy to practice. She agreed to let the time effect lapse after only a minimal amount of arguing, and then we headed back out into the main part of the RV.
When I saw Ari laughing and putting her hand on Jace's arm I didn't feel the flash of jealousy that I'd expected. Instead, I experienced a surge of anger that was nothing compared to the time that Jace had been forced to stop me from running into the school and bashing Sandra's head into a wall, but which still set off all kinds of alarms inside of my head.
Kat had said that I should avoid summoning rage for now, but she hadn't said anything about trying to overwrite it if it showed up on its own, so I turned away from Ari and took a couple of deep breaths as I closed my eyes and put myself back in that instant when Jace had seemed to have eyes for only me.
It was harder this time. The anger lingered, unwilling to be displaced, and flared back up every time I heard Ari laugh, but I refused to give up. I slowly blocked out every other sensory feed until all I had left was the memory I wanted to be experiencing and the sound of my own heartbeat.
When I opened my eyes a few seconds later I'd surrounded myself in a cocoon of happiness so thick that even Ari couldn't cut through it, at least not without being a ton more forward than was possible with someone who was driving a forty-two-foot RV towing an SUV and two jet skis.
Kat leaned forward and whispered in my ear. "That was amazing. I wasn't around the last time you were starting to master your ability, but I'm starting to wonder if there was more to your abilities all along than just curiosity and only needing two hours of sleep each night."
I gave her a non-committal smile and decided that I was going to practice defaulting back to happiness every forty-five minutes rather than waiting for two hours between sessions like I'd originally intended.
By the time we arrived at the lake it was almost dark, but it wasn't like we had to pitch a tent or anything. Setting up camp was as easy as pulling to a stop and then watching as Jace engaged the emergency brake and pushed the auto level button.
"And that's that. Come on, Selene, let's go gather some firewood."
"I'll come!"
Ari piping up was hardly unexpected, but that didn't mean her interruption was welcome. Luckily Kat was on the case.
"Come on, Ari. You can help me start cooking dinner—you've monopolized Jace enough already."
I followed Jace out of the RV and into the twilight-shrouded woods. Part of me wondered if he was going to speed us up to forty times normal speed and slip in another training session, but apparently he didn't have anything more planned than just gathering firewood.
"So are we actually cooking over the fire?"
"Nope, not if Kat has any say. It's her turn to cook and she abhors roughing it. If she had her way we'd spend the entire weekend either inside the RV or on the water."
"Maybe we'll get lucky and she'll manage to keep Ari in there all night."
Jace gave me a knowing look. "I'm sorry, Selene. I didn't expect this to be so hard for you."
"Really? What part of having my little sister compete for your affections while I'm stuck with Kat trying to master my power did you think would be easy for me?"
Jace was suddenly there in front of me, just inches away, his armload of firewood a jumbled mess on the ground.
"As hard as I try, I can't always keep my memories of the old you from influencing my perception of you, Selene. Once upon a time, this kind of thing would have done nothing more than amuse you. Once upon a time, I was the insecure one."
That made me laugh in spite of myself. "You're the hottest guy in the entire world, Jace. How could I have ever made you feel insecure?"
"Because seeing you for the first time changed me in fundamental ways that I never could have believed possible. From that instant forward, there was only ever one girl for me. You knew that as well as I did, and it meant that you never cared who I had to flirt with because you knew it was nothing more than flirting, that I would have given it up in an instant to be able to hold you in my arms."
"Well, I'm not that girl, Jace. This girl is insecure as hell and completely unsure how to proceed without scaring you off."
"You could never scare me off, Selene. Not in a hundred years, and that means much more coming from someone like us than it would coming from any of the other boys you've been interested in over the years."
My face heated up and I was suddenly glad that it was so dark.
"There haven't ever been any other guys, Jace. I told you I've never kissed anyone before, but it's more than that. It was like part of me knew that you were out there and I wasn't willing to settle for anyone else. I—"
The kiss was unexpected. We'd been standing there, only fractions of an inch away from each other, but I still hadn't been able to believe that he was actually going to do it. In between one word and the next, he placed one hand behind my neck and pulled me towards him with a restrained violence that made my stomach jump and my heart skip.
Despite the violence of our approach, our lips met like leaves falling on a pond. Jace gave me a second to decide whether or not this was what I wanted, but I knew from the second he touched me that I'd never wanted anything more in my entire life.
I reached up and cradled Jace's head between my hands as I stepped into him, hungry for more even as my legs started to shake.
My reaction must have been exactly the response that Jace was looking for, because his other hand was suddenly at the small of my back, pulling me up against his body as his lips became firmer and more demanding. Every nerve ending in my body seemed awake for the first time in my life, but the places where he was touching me felt like they were alive with fire.
My lips tingled with a burning heat, and my hands felt like they were holding tame lightning between them, but it was his hand on the small of my back that was sending tiny tremors of anticipation shooting through me. Raising my hands up to touch the side of his face had lifted my shirt up enough that his hand on the small of my back was touching my bare skin, only inches above the top of my low-rise jeans, and the feel of his hand on my flesh was so sensual that I gave up trying to think.
His lips were the perfect combination of tension and softness as he took charge of the kiss, and my body shot to an even higher level of sensitivity as my last vestiges of restraint evaporated. I could feel the hard planes of his body pressed up against me, his rock-hard pecs pushing against my chest, the bulge of his biceps against my back, and his hip against mine.
The shaking was getting worse. I moaned in unhappiness when he pulled his lips back away from mine, but then he pressed them against the side of my neck, and my legs gave out completely. I tried to fight it, tried to lock my knees, but my lower extremities had turned into boneless, tingling mush.
There was no way that Jace could have known that I was about to collapse, but he did. He let go of the back of my neck and picked me up by my hips, pressing me against his washboard abs as he slammed me into a nearby tree.
It was like his mouth had found a switch that sent jolts of pleasure shooting out through
my entire body. I wanted nothing more than for him to never stop, but some part of me knew it was too much, that if I didn't stop him now I would never be able to deny him anything he wanted.
The feel of his mouth moving down from my neck to my collarbone combined with his hands circumscribing the bare skin of my waist and even the rough texture of the bark pushing against my back launched me into what felt like another plane altogether.
It took everything I had to force his head back up to my lips, but that wasn't because he was fighting me, it was because I was having to fight the part of myself that remembered this, that had been waiting for this kiss since even before I'd been born.
Jace pulled back for the briefest of moments to breathe and then darted back in for one last kiss before pulling me away from the tree and setting me back down on my feet.
"Don't ever forget, Selene. You've ruined me for any other girl. I'll always be yours regardless of whether or not you want me."
