“I’m so surprised,” he said in a soft, matter-of-fact manner, “to find you so harshly judgmental without even giving opportunity for explanations.”
“I think the topic at hand is pretty self-evident!”
“How strange,” he said with a soft, honest sense of musing as he reached out and caressed her temple lightly before running two fingers along the length of her hair, “that you profess such unequivocal knowledge about a person belonging to a species that, for you, had not existed before today. I had thought you much more thoughtful than that.”
“Do not turn this around on me,” she bit out, floored by his audacity.
“But it is about you. All of this is about you. You who are so fair-minded and so tolerant of so many people caught in so many difficult circumstances, and yet when you feel that a man might have potentially betrayed you, you do not even wish to slow down and think you might be misinterpreting. Tell me, hummingbird, why do you fly so swiftly? What makes you think you can’t sit still for a moment lest a predator snatches you up and hurts you?”
“Stop touching me, Jackson!” She reach to make me feel …inihIed to shove him off of her but the moment she did so she felt the overwhelming strength of him through her palm and fingers. He would not move, she realized, until he wanted to be moved. She was weak and insignificant to him. Not just woman to man, but immortal to mortal.
“But I like to touch you. I like to look at you. And I very much like the way you smell, Marissa.” The timbre of his voice dropped even lower on that last statement, making her breath catch as her lower legs went traitorously weak under her.
“Get off of me,” she demanded through her clenched teeth.
“Ask me what my motives are, Marissa.”
“Intimidation? Bullying? Selfishness? Why ask? I already know.”
“Ask me,” he said, his head lowering so he was breathing the request across her lips. Her entire body clenched, going weak as if she were a hormonal teenager about to be kissed for the first time. Damn him! Damn her. God, all she wanted to do was go back home, go to bed, and wake up knowing all of this had just been a ridiculous nightmare.
“Back. Off.” She gritted both words out, using all of her strength of will to keep from lashing out and physically punching him in the eye. She wasn’t by nature a violent person, and as mad as she was, the impulse still shocked her. When he didn’t move, keeping himself that barest breath of distance away from her mouth, she was shocked to find her entire body reacting on a visceral, physical level, her chest rising and falling hard with each rapid breath, her mouth craving, as though wishing for him to close the distance between them. How could her body react one way when her mind and emotions were so powerfully motivated in the opposite direction? It was confusing and embarrassing because she felt as though he knew very, very well the effect he was having on her. “I won’t ask because I don’t want to know,” she said, her eyes burning, the sting in her nose warning her that if she didn’t regain control she was going to cry out of frustration.
“When I entered the Ether,” Jackson said, “Menes was there waiting for me. A human can only enter the Ether when on the cusp of death … and only very specific kinds of impending deaths. Far enough to take life, but not so far it can’t be reclaimed once the powerful strength and healing abilities of the Bodywalker has joined with its human host. When I came into the Ether, Menes, like all of the lawful Politic, asked permission to join with me. They make it as clear as possible, pull no punches, make you see the good and the bad of what you are about to become. Menes was especially careful, knowing that he is pharaoh over a warring race. It cannot be just anyone, you see, to Blend with a being of such heavy duty and responsibility … not to mention having a target painted on your back.
“But he asked, Marissa, and I said yes. And now I am asking. I’m telling you everything you need to know, I am seeking out in you everything I need to seek. Menes wasn’t a part of me five minutes before he knew what I had been hiding from myself for so long now. He knew you were special. He knew I wanted you. And he knew that, had we not been restricted by ethics and protocol, I would have done anything to make you mine.”
“You … b-but …” she stammered.
“Her name is Hatshepsut. In her original life she was one of the most powerful queens of Egypt. She is going to need a very precious host, a woman of strength and beauty. A around him and huggeds danger woman of fire and passion. A woman of heart and wisdom. She is going to need you, Marissa, just like I need you.”
He closed that last aching distance between their lips, catching her breath in his mouth before kissing her with a soft ferocity, the connection so gentle and yet the emotion behind it so fierce. She had never been kissed while inundated with so many thoughts and emotions warring through her. It made her feel like she was completely out of control. There was something thrilling and terrifying about that. Her first instinct should have been to flee, to run away far and fast and never, ever look back. But what she did in actuality was reach out for him, her palms flattening on his chest just before curling into it, pulling the soft cotton of the shirt he wore into the tightness of her fists. She was wedged between his muscled body and the wall, but she could swear he was the harder and more immovable of the two. The perception was due to the fact that she knew just how powerful he was, knew the strength he was capable of. And yet he touched her so gently, just the tips of his fingers drifting over the rise of her cheek before filtering into her hair. He still held her wrist in his opposite hand, holding her even though her hand was already against him. It was as though he were anticipating—
She gasped in shock as his words finally sank in, a stunning wash of cold dashing all the immediate heat he had inspired. She tried to jerk back and away, but there was simply nowhere for her to go. So instead she tore her mouth free of his and, panting hard for breath, turned her face down and used the press of her forehead against his chest to hide herself from him.
“No,” she gasped on ragged breath. “No! You don’t mean … but … you can’t mean that! You barely know me! I don’t … and don’t I have to—?”
She was speaking incoherently because she wasn’t thinking straight. How could she when he was pressed so close to her, overwhelming everything that she was, filling every breath with that so very male scent of him. His taste was on her lips, the burn of five o’clock shadow along the edges of them.
“How do you know what I mean and what I don’t mean if we are such strangers?” he asked her, somehow confusing her with the logic. “Why do I feel like I am coming home when I kiss you if I barely know you?” He took a breath and she knew, she just knew he was drawing in her scent. His eyes were half-closed with the obvious pleasure of it. “We have just spent these past minutes talking of the enduring souls of my people and you, a nascent original who has only known one life, presumes to know everything there is to know about the soul and what it would be like if two souls of perfect complement came together? No. No, that’s foolishness,” he chided softly. “Even more foolish than a man who longs for a woman for over a year and yet stays seated at his desk, allowing her to walk by again and again, thinking he could be content with just the vision of her and the soft trailing eddies of her scent.
“I almost died three weeks ago and the moment I realized it, the moment it sank in, the first thing I thought was that I would have died without ever touching you the way you should be touched.”
And that was when the ghosting touch of his hands came to an end. He pressed the weight of his body into her, and his hand slid down her chest until he had filled his palm with her breast, pressing her own flesh into herself, making her feel the intensity of his words and the desire riding hard behind them.
“I feel the soft shape of you like this and I can’t decide whether to take you softly on my bed or take you hard, right here where we stand. And it doesn’t matter because I know you’ll be magnificent either way. It’s going to come down to the impression I most want to leave on you,
Marissa. It’s going to come down to the understanding that I finally have you here. So,” he said, his lips and breath hot against her hair as he continued to allow her to hide from him, “before you tell me we are strangers … before you tell me I haven’t thought this through, I want you to think. Think about everything you’ve thought and felt since I announced my intentions to make you mine.”
She looked up then, her whole body shaking from the impact of his words, his touch and his heat. She wanted to be outraged, but somewhere along the line it had abandoned her. Now all that was left was an overwhelming rush of curiosity, of possibilities … of things she never would have thought herself capable of thinking.
“You just … you never said anything … you were so …”
“So were you. And tell me now that you never thought the same thing. Tell me you never looked my way and wondered …”
“I wasn’t allowed—”
“No,” he said roughly, his grip on her breast tightening enough to get her attention and make her catch her breath. “We are done with bullshit and the shells of lies we armored ourselves with. Think, Marissa. Think … I was dead. If not for Menes, I was dead and gone from this world and from you. You were there at that moment. Do you remember? You think it was a dream, but you were there, holding me, screaming for me. I looked back from the Ether and could hear you.” He leaned close to her ear and whispered fiercely against it, “I knew then that I had died without ever knowing what it meant to live. Knowing I’d had sex, but never made exquisite love, that I’d known lust, but never true passion. I knew longing, frustration, and craving much too well and satisfaction not at all. I came back for those reasons, but mostly, Marissa, I came back for you.”
Tears burned at her eyes, clawed up her throat and suddenly, like a veil lifting away from her mind, she did remember. She remembered having a horrible nightmare about three weeks earlier, waking from the cold death of sleep with a gasp, feeling tears dried on her cheeks and rawness in her throat as if she had truly screamed, as if she had truly lost him. She had flown from bed, scrambled through her things, rummaging through clothes she couldn’t remember taking off while in pajamas she couldn’t remember putting on. She had found her cell and the work directory, searching frantically for his number and was about to hit SEND … until she realized what she was about to do and stopped, her breaths hard and ragged. She had realized how inappropriate it would be. Had realized she could never call him just to see if he was all right. Not then. Not ever. She had collapsed onto her knees then and wept. She told herself later that she had cried because she’d been rattled by fear, but in the face of his honesty with her, she didn’t have it in her to lie to herself again. Now, knowing it had been real, that he’d almost slipped away from her forever …
“You see?” he breathed, when he saw the comprehension in her eyes, the dawning of the terrifying realization of what might have been if not for fat around him and huggeds dangere and the very unlikely choice of an Egyptian king thought long dead. “That was the exact feeling,” he said, letting go of her and drifting fingers up over her breast, chest, and throat until he was touching the corner of her awakened eyes. “And to know that much grief without ever knowing that much passion of life is the stuff of too many human tragedies. Don’t let this be another of those tragedies. We’ve been given a second chance, you and I. We can’t waste it. If we do then we deserve every single moment of the pain we should suffer for it.”
His kiss, as light as it was, was so incredibly poignant that she felt her throat closing up. When, she wondered, had anyone ever kissed her like this? As though she were a unique and precious thing, not to be toyed with lightly, but not to be shelved and untouched either. The answer was never. Even when she had fancied herself in love, even in what she had once considered her most loving relationship to date … as exciting or as hungry or as hormonal as anything might have been, none of it was in the same class of the way Jackson was making her feel. Every argument, every sound reason, every piece of shielding and armor she had ever erected to protect herself tried to crowd the understanding out. You hardly know him. How can you even trust him? He’s not even human!
She gasped when that last thought sent leaps of forbidden excitement along her every major artery. Menes had saved Jackson’s life. Had Blended with him and given him these incredible powers as well as making him nigh indestructible, but … what else had the Blending enhanced on him?
She flushed crimson, or so it felt, and she tried to turn her head. “Not this time,” he scolded her softly. “Face it or embrace it, but whatever you’re feeling in this moment, do not run away from it.”
“I’m not running,” she said softly, sounding no more convincing to herself than she must have sounded to him. “I’m just very overwhelmed, Jackson. The past forty-eight hours …”
With what sounded like a very reluctant sigh, Jackson eased back from her, giving her room to breathe and, coincidentally, room to catch a chill. The man was like a living furnace, giving off an almost volcanic heat. Or maybe that was just her perception because …
Marissa shook the thought away. There were more important things to worry about … and to say.
“How do I know you’re not just saying all of this because …” She didn’t know how to say it without sounding cold and accusatory, and some part of her acknowledged he’d never done anything to earn the blight on his character.
“Because you think I’m just looking for a vessel for my queen?” Even with him saying it for her it sounded awful, but it needed to be said. It needed to be addressed. “I came back here with many things on my agenda, Marissa, and I would be lying to you if I said that finding an original for my beloved wasn’t the most crucial of all to me.” He took yet another step away, and she had to tamp down the craziest urge to follow after him. My god, if nothing else the man is utterly magnetic, she thought fiercely. “And I do want you for Hatshepsut. But I want you for me as well,” he said, the abiding craving in his tone running deep with truth. “You are thinking in a single and linear fashion when you consider my faithfulness to Hatshepsut. But, as you know, there is no singularity in any src="kindle:embed:000n when relationship I form. It is, if you will excuse the crude sketch of it, a ménage a quatre, Marissa,” he said. “Multiple individuals coming together to enjoy the pleasure of one another. All have given permission and all understand there is no place for jealousies or peevishness. My queen would want me to find a woman not only for her to live with, but one I could live with as well. If I like her, that is good. If I admire her, all the better. If I lust for her, well, it will only add to the lust I already have for my queen, and I assure you that is quite significant.”
With a flash of blinding realization she thought of all the possible combinations that existed when potentially four people were in bed together. The minute it raced through her mind she knew she was blushing straight to the roots of her hair.
“Ahh,” he said on a soft exhalation of breath, his body reclaiming half the distance he had been putting between them. “Does the idea excite you, hummingbird? Does it make you curious? I can’t see you being anything less than eaten up with curiosity. I’m beginning to see it is an essential part of who you are. After all, the job you do is all about seeing into other peoples’ lives. You get to hear all their desires, all those secret things they would never tell anyone else. All the while, there you sit, living an experience like a voyeur where it is safe and secure. But safety is highly overrated, Marissa,” he said, the richness of his tone flowing over her like a suggestive caress. “It is so much more exciting to live it firsthand. As long as you are with someone who will keep you safe.”
That made her laugh, a nervous sound to stave off the tightening of her throat and queen. She is
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jackson was watching her face very closely at that point, waiting like a cat in front of a mouse hole, waiting for it to dawn on her what he was truly asking her to do.
And there it was. The wi
dening of clear blue eyes and the sharp intake of breath.
“You mean you want me to die?” she asked him incredulously. “That is what you mean, right? In order for this queen or whatever to come and share space with me, I have to die first! You are out of your mind if you think any sane person is going to volunteer for something like that! And what in hell do you need me for? I’m sure there are dozens of gutsy, curvy little redheads running around dying all over the world! No!” She held up a hand and cut him off when he opened his mouth to speak. “Absolutely no! No talking. No touching.” She pushed his hand away sharply. “No anything! I’m not letting you run roughshod over me and my life just because you need a vessel for some dead Egyptian queen. Sorry, mister, but you have got the wrong woman.”
She shut him down completely by dodging out of his reach and marching off in fairly high temper. He ought to have been concerned for her, he supposed, but the truth was he was just too tickled to death by her. Everything she did gave him pleasure in one form or another. Be it intellectual, emotional, or physical, she lit him up on every single bumper.
But she did have a point. Jackson had become aware, at last, of Menes’s plans for her almost at the same time she had. But it would be wrong to say they were all Menes’s plans or all Jackson’s plans. It was all boiling down together, a reduction of motives all pointing in the same direction. It was about wanting a woman and being willing to get her by any means necessary.
Of course he didn’t like the dying part any more than she did. The thought of her going through that kind of trauma was not well received in his mind. Menes concurred on that, but he was more practical. One way or another she was going to die, be it now or many years from now. At least this way she would be saved and she would be hisaid when that, for as long as the fates allowed for them. And by the gods he prayed it would be longer than the last time. That was perhaps what had been the sharpest of the pain of losing Hatshepsut last time. She had only been reborn for a week before Odjit had taken her life. One week. It had been as heated and fervent as it always was, their spirits close in the Ether but lacking the physicality to touch. So when they were reborn they wanted nothing more than to feel each other in any way possible.
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