His kiss was firm, reassuring-like he knew the turmoil I was going through and wanted to make it right. I wanted someone to make it right, maybe that’s why I let him kiss me, why I leaned against him just a little, opened my lips beneath his.
His tongue found mine and my hands found their way around his neck. His hair tickled my fingers. I wanted to stand there, and forget everything for a while. Pretend I had no bigger issues to deal with than the risk of another employee or a client walking in and finding me hanging on him like an adolescent lost in her first make-out session.
He pulled back just a smidge, enough that our lips separated but our bodies were still pressed together. My breath was ragged and my heart was pounding, but this time it felt good. I felt alive, was happy I’d come back.
“I need to tell you something.”
And like that, my happiness fled.
I loosened my fingers, took a step back, ignored the sudden feeling of loss. “Why’d you do that?”
He ran a hand down my arm, caught my fingers in his. “Because I knew I might not be able to again, not after we talk.”
A ball of dread grew in my stomach. I sat down, more to get away from him, to keep myself from touching him, than to relax. There was no hope of the latter.
He exhaled and walked to the other side of my desk, to the window that overlooked the cafeteria and gym. “I know about the Amazons.”
I stiffened, but then forced myself to relax-or appear to relax. “You mean the women renting the gym? Is that what they’re calling themselves now?”
“I know about you…that you left the tribe, that you were pregnant, but never appeared with the baby.”
My fingers curled around the arms of my chair. He’d been eavesdropping.
His gaze turned on me then, and I knew it was more than that-he knew more about me than I’d ever dreamed possible; he was involved somehow in my life. “Where is he, Mel? What happened?”
I stood, didn’t think about it, just did. “Leave.”
He shook his head. “Bad start. Sorry. It’s just…we’ve wondered for so long. We’ve been able to track almost all of the others, but your child-the one we had the most interest in, he…” He looked at me. “It was a he, wasn’t it?”
I couldn’t answer, but I didn’t want him to leave. I wanted to hear what he had to say. The hand I’d raised when I’d ordered him to leave drifted back down to rest on my desk. “Who the hell are you?”
He stepped away from the window. “I’m an Amazon.”
I laughed without humor. He was crazy. “You are not an Amazon.” I’d felt the evidence of just how male he as when we’d kissed.
“A son.” He watched me then, waited.
I blinked, confused. “A son?” What he was saying sank in then. “You are the son of an Amazon?” I asked.
He nodded, his eyes still alert.
I looked at my computer screen, black and covered in a coating of dust that didn’t show when it was on. I wasn’t sure how to play this-if I should play this.
“There aren’t a lot of us-not as many as there are Amazons, but we’re growing, finding those who don’t know their heritage, bringing in those who we can.”
I leaned back and let my chair rest keep me vertical, hoped my upright posture hid the shock that threatened to send me sliding to the floor. “But why? Why would the sons gather together? What do you want?”
He frowned, an angry line forming between his brows. “Heritage. Support. Understanding.”
“But Amazon sons…” Took after their fathers. Weren’t Amazons.
“I’m as much an Amazon as you are…or”-a strange look flitted over his face-“most Amazons anyway.”
There was something about his tone, the way his eyes didn’t quite meet mine. “What do you mean most Amazons? Why single me out from the grouping?”
“You were the first.”
“The first what?” I was feeling queasy, didn’t want to hear more, but also couldn’t help myself from asking.
“The first child of a son and an Amazon.”
“What?” I couldn’t keep the confusion out of my voice, and outrage, what he was saying…It was possible, of course, the Amazons didn’t keep records of the male lines, but to say my mother…I shook my head. The odds were too great. Part of the benefit of moving around like we did was to avoid the type of inbreeding he seemed to be insinuating.
“This is ridiculous.” I shoved my chair back from my desk.
He moved forward, leaned over my inbox. “Not that. I’m not saying your father was your grandfather or whatever you’re thinking. I’m saying your father was a son of an Amazon-a different Amazon, not your grandmother or your mother, a whole different line. Telios, right?”
I snapped to attention then. He knew about the telios.
He turned around, lifted his shirt up to his shoulders. A fox peered at me from the center of his back. The animal’s paw was poised above the stream, like he was about to dip it into the current, search for a fish. It was a beautiful tattoo, alive and real enough it could have been a telios, but it was wrong-the wrong animal, in the wrong place, and on a male back.
“That isn’t a telios,” I replied.
He pulled his shirt the rest of the way off, high on his right shoulder was another tattoo, a lynx. Again the vibrancy of the colors, the way it seemed to glisten and move as if alive, gave it the appearance of a givnomai, but it was also wrong.
He pointed at it.
I shrugged. “Nice.” That’s all I was giving him. I didn’t know where he’d learned as much as he had, but I wasn’t giving him any more.
He stepped closer. “Touch it.”
His arm moved. The skin under the tattoo shifted, making the lynx seem to move too-but it was an illusion, that was all. There was no magic in that ink. There couldn’t be.
“It won’t bite.” He grinned-a challenge.
I placed my palm on his arm and immediately jerked back, stunned. The tattoo had pulsed under my hand, vibrated with power.
I stared at the lynx, half expecting the tiny animal to jump off Peter’s arm onto my desk. I’d seen…survived…stranger things in the last eight hours.
Peter held out his arm again, in an impossible to miss invitation. I swallowed my hesitancy and placed my palm to his skin. There was no missing the power in that ink. I pulled my hand back a second time, but slower.
Peter turned, presenting his back. Prepared this time, I stroked the line that formed the fox’s head, followed it down his back to the orangey-red, then white, then black stripes on his tail. Throughout, Peter stood still, but I could sense him reacting. His muscles tensed, as if the skin were sensitive, as if he were containing some response.
When he turned, his eyes were almost black, dilated. My body reacted in return. I licked my lips and tried to stop my mind from wondering how it would feel to have his fingers stroking my givnomai and telios. Did he feel my power when I touched his?
But what he was saying wasn’t possible. Mother would surely have noticed something as obvious as telios and givnomai tattoos on any man she was intimate with.
I tapped my fingertips against my palm. “Even Mother wouldn’t have missed those.”
He stared at me, as if reluctant to be pulled out of the moment. Finally, he yanked his shirt back over his head. “You missed them.”
At my startled look, he continued, “When you were fathered, not everyone had the tattoos. As I said, you were the first. We’ve grown a lot since then, learned a lot.”