“Blade thinks whatever he wants, right or wrong. Don’t let him creep you out.”
“No. Not him. The needle.” He pushed his back against the wall. “I don’t like them.”
She gently lifted the hem of his shirt and winced at the sight of the gaping wound. “What do you have to be creeped out about? You have like a million tattoos. Those are done with needles.” She poised the pointed tip over his skin. “At least this won’t hurt, and it won’t get infected…I don’t think. I mean, if you can’t die, you probably can’t get sick either.”
Jayden rested the back of his head against the wall and stared up at the ceiling. “That would be at least one perk.”
“Just hold still.”
Jayden pressed his eyes shut as she pushed the needle into his skin. No, it didn’t hurt, but the fact he was being sewn up with an old needle and some fishing line still made his skin crawl. If he were still alive, he’d need a tetanus shot and a full course of antibiotics for sure.
When she finished, she cut the line with a par of dull scissors. “There. All done.”
He stared down at the mended wound. “Not bad.” And since the fishing line was clear, it almost unnoticeable. “Thanks.”
Hawa’s gaze didn’t drift from his chest, and the intensity of her stare made Jayden shift his weight. She leaned in close to him and slipped her fingers under his shirt.
Jayden’s breath hitched. “What are you doing?” His body temperature spiked—or at least it seemed that way. Another phantom reaction. Her fingertips dragged gently up his stomach until she reached the stitches put there by the hospital morgue after he was torn apart by Sarian.
She froze. Her lips parted. Jayden listened to her breathing, steady and rhythmic in the quiet room. She bit her lip—something he’d never noticed her do before. Suddenly he was noticing a lot of things about her he never had.
Like her right iris had a fleck of gold in it that wasn’t in the left one. Or the small scar on her chin. Or the fact that although she was normally a sarcastic pain the ass, there was another side to her. A side she hid. He just couldn’t figure out why.
Hawa pushed to her knees. He instinctively lifted his hands as if surrendering. When she rested one leg to the other side of his body, straddling his waist, he parted his lips. “W—” He went silent at the sight of her searching gaze. He lifted his arms, allowing her to slip his shirt up over his head and toss it to the floor. A wave of humiliation rushed over him. She stilled and examined the crisscrossed stitches over his chest, and the once kick-ass tattoo job, now mangled and haphazardly pieced back together.
She traced her fingers along the mauled ink.
“I don’t know if the scars will ever go away,” he said softly.
She paused and rested her warm palm over his chest. “We all have scars. Some are just more visible than others.” She swallowed, and her chest visibly fluttered.
With a whole hell of a lot of caution, he rested his hands gently over her hips. His fingers grazed the strip of midriff showing from under her t-shirt. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t pull away.
“Hawa…” Her name came out in a rough whisper.
Her lips curled into a sexy smile. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say my name before.” Her cheeks flushed. “At least not like that.”
He blinked, unsure how to react. “I…” She leaned forward, pressing her chest against his. “What are you doing?”
She pressed her index finger over her lips, and then traced her hands down his arms.
His breath picked up. There was no denying he was turned on. It had been longer than he cared to admit since he had some action. But there was also no denying he wished it was Zanya pressed against his body instead of her.
He rested his hands on her shoulders, holding her inches away. “I can’t do this.” He looked away. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” She ran her fingers through his hair. His eyes fluttered shut. The gentleness in her touch overwhelmed him. It was a shock anything about her could be gentle. “Neither of us should be sorry. We haven’t done anything wrong. And now we can help each other.”
Jayden drew his eyebrows together and opened his eyes. “What do you mean?”
“We’re both hurting. You for Zanya. Me…” She dropped her head. “For a lifetime of shitty decisions.”
Without realizing it, his hands had drifted around her back and his fingers were curled around her waist.
She glanced down at the zipper of his jeans. “Do you think everything still works?” She cocked an eyebrow.
Jayden’s eyes widened. “I…” He hadn’t thought about it until now. No blood flow meant bad things for his love life.
“We can find out.” She rolled her hips.
A low moan rose through his chest. He swallowed against a dry throat. “I sure as hell hope it does.”
Hawa brushed her lips over is. Her hot breath crashed against his mouth. He returned her kiss, barely, still not sure if this was what he wanted. Would doing this mean he was betraying Zanya? It seemed that way. He’d lived so long totally dedicated to her. But the reality was, she had moved on, and he would eventually have to accept that.
Maybe the sprinter was right. Maybe they could help each other.
He savored the weight of her body on top of his as she wound her legs tighter around him. He ran his hands down her thighs, curling his fingers around solid muscle. “Wait.” He blinked open his eyes. “I don’t have any protection.”
She slid her hand in the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out a square foil wrapper with a circular ring on the inside of the packaging. “Just in case.”
***
Jayden awoke in a dark space. He was fully dressed, which was not the case when he went to sleep. And there was nothing around him. Absolutely nothing. He turned one way, and then the other. “Um…hello?”
Of course. He had to be dreaming. He walked into the darkness in search of whatever his twisted subconscious came up with. As he walked, the space just kept going, with nothing but silence to greet him. He stopped. “Hello?” His voice echoed into the emptiness. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted louder. “Hello?”
“You don’t have to scream.”
Jayden spun and spotted Modem standing a few yards away. The spunky girl with neon sweatbands on either wrist and multi-colored necklaces grinned. How weird he was dreaming about her. Creepy, actually. “Um…hey.” He nodded. “What’s up?”
Modern scoffed and rolled her eyes. “You really are as dense as you look, aren’t you?”
Jayden blinked. “What?”
“What?” she mimicked.
“Hey. Knock it off.”
“Hey. Knock it off.” She rested her hands on her hips.
He exhaled and walked in the opposite direction. “I don’t need this right now. I have enough shit to deal with without having an annoying kid in my dreams.”
“Dreams?” Quick footsteps grew louder until she reached his side and fell into pace. She shoved her hands into her pockets and stared up at him. “You think you’re dreaming?”
“What else could this be?” He turned left, then right. “Hey, do you know how to get out of here?”
“Um, yeah. But I doubt you want to do that.”
He paused. “Yeah, actually. I do.”
She rocked forward on her toes and back onto her heels. “I really don’t think you want to. Better off staying here, with me.”
He slouched his shoulders. “Just about anything is better than staying here with you.”
She stopped rocking and frowned. “Fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. Jerk.” She walked off, her tiny frame devoured by the darkness.
“I have no idea why Hawa likes that girl,” he mumbled.
The roar of rushing water caught Jayden’s attention, and he spun to see a tidal wave charging him. He shouted and threw up his hands as a shield, but it was no use. The wall of water plowed into him like a wrecking ball and slammed him aga
inst the floor. It rushed up his nose and into his throat. He kicked and reached for the surface, but the water was moving too fast. Just when he couldn’t hold his breath any longer, the wave receded and settled into a puddle beneath him. He coughed and sputtered liquid from his lungs.
Bright light assaulted his eyes. He squinted into the distance—nothing but desert and abandoned Mayan temples in every direction.
Contessa’s silky voice carried over the barren land. Jayden jumped to his feet and peered to the far temple where she stood, book propped in her hands, her eyes inked into black wells of onyx.
She whispered in a foreign language. Her words were harsh and grew in intensity between each breath. His stomach cramped. The air seemed to thicken. Contessa’s red waves of hair floated off her shoulders, splaying around her as if gravity did not exist.
Bits of soil fell over his shoulders. He raised his face to the sky, where roots from an enormous tree writhed and whipped wildly above him. He’d seen the tree before, but this time it seemed…angry. The sight nearly knocked him on his ass. He stumbled back and dragged his steps over the dry ground, stirring clouds of dust.
A soft laugh tinkled through the air.
Jayden froze, unable to shake the prickling sensation crawling over his skin.
That Modem kid was right. This couldn’t be a dream. No dream was this realistic.
A hand grabbed his foot, and Jayden leaped back.
Hands. Thousands of hands with broken fingernails and bloody knuckles reached from beneath the earth and clawed to the surface. Raw skin peeled away, exposing tendon and bone. Jayden leaped onto the bottom step of a nearby temple and watched as the ground of this godforsaken land writhed with reaching hands, like maggots in a bloated corpse.
Jayden’s eyes shot open and he sat up in bed. Hawa blinked, her bare shoulders exposed from under the blanket covering them both. “You okay?” Her voice was sleep-laden and soft.
“Um…” He was back in the hotel room with Hawa. Back under the covers, lying beside her where he had drifted off to sleep in the middle of the day, just a few hours ago. “I think so. I had a really weird dream.” He ran his fingers through his hair, leaving wild strands to hang down around his face.
Hawa rolled over and tucked the blankets under her arms, covering her chest. “Contessa?”
He stared down at her. “How did you know?”
“An obvious guess.” Her black hair feathered over the pillow. A strip of bright sunlight pushing through the curtains streaked over her face. She smiled.
Damn. She really was beautiful when she smiled.
“She was doing something with the book.”
Hawa pushed up onto her elbow. “What?”
Jayden examined her for a moment. Her skin carried a soft glow, and the dark circles under her eyes were nearly gone. The rest had been good for her, and weighing her mind down with worries about Contessa would only lay on another layer of stress. “You know what, I’ll tell you about it later.” He pulled Hawa closer to him and groaned. “Can we just sleep for the rest of the day?” Her cheek nestled in the curve of his shoulder. It was a welcomed change to have someone lying beside him. She shivered, and Jay frowned. “I’m sorry.” He tucked the blanket around her so she wasn’t touching his bare chest. “I don’t mean to make you cold. Can’t really help it.”
She curled into a ball. “That’s okay. I’m used to being cold. Spent enough time here cold at night.”
“I thought you had electricity.”
She curled into a tighter ball. “Heat runs off of gas, and that’s not so easy to borrow.”
“Steal, you mean.”
She shrugged with a soft smile.
He chuckled and threw the covers off him, careful not to tear them off her too. “I’m going to—” Telling her his vision now included Modem would probably just freak her out. “I’ll be back.”
She sat up, clutching the blanket to her body. “You going to try to take off again?”
He shook his head. “I’ll stick around.” He stood and slipped on his pants. “For a while at least.”
She snorted and threw his shirt at him. “Like every man in the world—quick to get dressed.”
He laughed. “It’s not like that.”
He had to talk to the kid. Something told him she knew way more than she pretended. And now that she was stalking around in his visions, it was up to him to find out why.
Chapter Nine
Jayden had searched the hotel from top to bottom, in every room, on every staircase. No annoying little girl. He even stopped by the room full of computer parts where she spent most of her time. Nothing.
He stood in the center of the lobby, arms crossed, leaning against the dry stone fountain. “Hey.” Hawa walked toward him with a mop and broom in one hand, and a half-filled bucket of water in the other. “We need to do chores.”
“Oh.” He stood up straight. “Really?” He eyed a puddle on the floor nearby collecting drops from a leak in the roof. “This place needs serious work, and then maybe a deep cleaning.”
She set down the supplies. “Yes, I see that. But I can’t turn back time and keep this place from falling apart, so cleaning is the best we can do.” She handed him the mop. “I’ll sweep, you follow with the mop.”
Jayden stood in silence, watching Hawa gather dust and dirt into a pile while the walls around her were bowed, the floors were splintered, and the ceiling was probably a few years away from caving in.
“You’re kidding, right?”
She responded by pushing a pile of dirt into a dustpan and emptying it into a plastic bag. “Are you going to help or just stand there?” She hadn’t made eye contact with him since she came downstairs, and her posture was stiff. “We have to get this done before we can have anything to eat. Those are the rules.” When he didn’t reply, she stopped sweeping and finally looked at him. “What?”
He leaned on the mop. “So…is this going to be weird now?” When she didn’t respond, he frowned. “Hawa.”
She pursed her lips. “It won’t get weird if you don’t make it weird. So just…don’t, okay?” She returned to sweeping. “We both needed something. We gave it to each other. That’s it.”
Just a few hours ago, she’d been someone completely different. Her eyes warm, her lips soft against his. Her touch was gentle, and he could have sworn she felt something. That she wanted to be with him. It was the first time in months he’d had a connection with anyone…or so he’d thought.
He dipped the mop in a bucket of water and slopped it over the floor, following where she had swept. And that was it. Sweep and mop. Sweep and mop. More awkward silence.
About a half hour later, Jayden dropped the mop in the bucket and sloshed it around, watching Hawa collect the last of the dirt pile. I never knew you had a domestic streak in you, he said with his mind.
“I don’t.” She glanced back at him. “Now shut up before—”
“Hey!” A girl’s voice called from above them.
Jayden stopped and peered up to the second floor. Modem stood with her hands on her hips, staring down at him. “You gonna make me wait all day?”
Hawa turned toward him. “What is she talking about?”
Jayden shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Why does she want to talk to you?”
He rested the mop against the wall and walked toward the staircase. “Don’t know,” he lied. “I’ll go see.” He scaled the stairs to where Modem waited, her four-foot-two frame standing way taller in attitude than someone her age should be allowed.
“Like I said. Dense.” Modem turned and waved Jayden forward. “Come on. We need to talk.”
Jayden followed her into an empty room, where she shut and locked the door before climbing out the only window, onto a fire escape. She bent over, peering back into the room at him. “You coming or what?” A warm breeze swept into the room, blowing strands of her curly black hair around her face.
He glanced over his shoulder. Hawa could be o
n her way up. Better to talk to the brat without her around, which meant getting out of the hotel. Even if he wasn’t totally fond of heights.
He threw one leg out the window, and then the other. The rusted steel of the fire escape groaned under his weight. Modem was already halfway down the ladder leading to a narrow street. He grabbed hold of the railing and peered over the edge. “Is this really necessary?”
Modem stopped and looked up. You want Brisa to follow us? Because she will if she knows we went out the main entrance.
Jayden’s lips parted. Hot shit. She did it too—the whole mind-talking thing.
Who was this girl?
“Okay, then,” he mumbled before following her down. The sounds of the city filled his ears—honking horns, the rush of cars zooming by, and the low, steady murmur of people talking on their cellphones as they walked down the sidewalks.
“Where are we going?” He strode beside Modem, and she kicked a pebble along the way, watching it bounce until it came to a stop. “Hey. Why didn’t you tell me you were like us?”
Modem shrugged. “’Cause.” She stole a glance at him, and then rolled her eyes. “Brisa would have freaked out if she found out, okay?”
“She doesn’t know?”
“Nope. And I’m not going to tell her, either. Not yet, anyway.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s overprotective and crazy.”
Jayden grinned. The girl was growing on him. “What were you doing in my dream last night?”
“In your dreams?” She kicked the pebble again. This time it flew into the bushes. “You some kinda perv or something?”
His eyes widened. “What? No, I didn’t—”
She laughed. “I’m just messing with you.” She turned a corner, leading him down a thin walkway to what looked like a park set in the center of the city. Towering trees gave shade to kids on swings and a few women sitting at a picnic table.
Modem twirled a few strands of hair around her finger. “What are you doing here, really?”
Anarchy (The Stone Legacy Series Book 4) Page 5
