My heart pounded like it had been frozen for so long, it’d forgotten it could pump this fast. I needed more. Couldn’t wait. Without thinking, I reached out and snaked an arm around Anaya’s waist and jerked her on top of my lap. She gasped and the sound forced my eyes open.
“Cash…”
I pulled her other hand up and placed it on the right side of my face. My skin instantly began to thaw. So good. I’d almost forgotten what being warm felt like. Her thighs set my hips on fire, the flames spreading all the way down to my toes.
Heat. Peace. Pain. I could barely breathe through it all.
“Please,” I said. “Please, don’t let go.”
She slid her palms down my neck until they rested over the pulse throbbing just under my skin. She shook her head. “I won’t.”
Anaya pressed her forehead to mine and our breaths clashed in the one inch of space between our mouths. It took everything in me not to kiss her. She’d made it clear she didn’t want me, but it didn’t stop me from wanting her. I shuddered, gripping her hips, not wanting to let go. Not ever wanting this moment to end. Slowly, every part of me warmed. The blood in my veins. The bones and skin that held me together. All of it blazed with Anaya’s essence.
“Thank you,” I whispered against her cheek.
Anaya nodded, causing my lips to brush against her face. “Just…try to sleep. You need it.”
I needed a lot of things in that moment. But having her molded to me like this, her heat filling up my insides, my hands on the swell of her hips…let’s just say sleep was pretty far down the list.
“Like this?” I asked.
Her thumbs rubbed up and down my throat, causing me to squeeze her tighter. “Yes. Like this.”
“Why does this feel…”
“Right?”
“Yeah,” I said.
Anaya sighed and shook her head. Her braids created a tent around our faces. She smelled like the sea. She smelled…familiar. “I don’t know,” she said. “I…don’t know.”
Chapter 16
Anaya
“Rise and shine.”
Cash groaned, pushing his face back into the pillow, and I frowned. I was risking a lot being here today. Especially after last night. Cash falling asleep cocooned in my warmth, his hands touching places that hadn’t known another in a thousand years…it had been too much. Too close. But it had helped him. He had actually slept all night. I hoped today would add to that progress as well as give me the answers that Balthazar refused to give.
“Sleeping,” he grumbled into the cool pillowcase.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “You can sleep when you’re dead. Get up.”
“How about you crawl in here with me to keep me warm instead? Fair warning, though, I can’t be held responsible for what happens once you’ve entered my lair.”
I could see half of his grin against the pillow and I couldn’t stop myself from smiling, wondering exactly what he would do if I took him up on his offer. I shouldn’t have been wondering things like that. Not when I would eventually end up trading him in for a ticket back to Tarik. I touched a fingertip to the back of his neck and watched him bow up off the bed as heat singed down his spine.
He inhaled, and stilled as if he expected me to go on. I pulled my hand away.
“Come on.” I sat on the edge of his bed and the sheets began to warm. “I want to show you something. It will make you feel better.”
Cash rolled over and squinted up at me.
“Don’t you have souls to reap?”
“Not at the moment.” I yanked the blankets off him. “But that’s why we should hurry. My time is limited.”
Cash grumbled something under his breath and stumbled off to the shower. When he emerged, his hair was wet and spiky and he was wearing a green T-shirt that said Kiss me. I’m pretending to be
Irish.
He caught me reading it and grinned, scrubbing his fingers through his hair to shake the excess water out. “You wouldn’t be the first girl this shirt has worked on. But you could be the first dead one if you wanted.”
I rolled my eyes. “Let’s go.”
A half hour later, I’d directed him to a small lake on the edge of town. Thankfully, we were alone.
The water looked like a smooth glass mirror, reflecting the bright-green pine trees that bordered the rocky beach. The sky above us was bright blue and perfect, lending just the right amount of heat to the breeze sifting between the trees. Cash climbed out of his Bronco and approached me from behind, hands shoved in his pockets. Probably to keep them warm.
“So, what are we doing out here at the butt-crack of dawn?”
“We’re going to try something to make you feel a little better.”
I rubbed my arms and stuck a toe into the water. After a few moments, steam started to roll off the surface. Cash peeked over my shoulder and blew out a breath. “You’re doing that?”
I nodded and kicked my sandals off, then stepped into the water, wading out until it lapped up around my waist. The bottom of my white dress floated up so that it felt like I was sitting on a cloud.
Little green and orange fish rippled around me, curiously inspecting my fingertips hovering on the surface. I smiled and smoothed my hand in a circle around me and they scattered. When I looked up, Cash was standing on the beach, mouth half-open, looking uncertain. A shadow swirled up the base of a tree behind him, but I don’t think he noticed. He was too focused on me, the look in his eyes tearing down the walls I’d worked decades to build up around my heart.
“Are you coming in?” I waded out a few steps deeper and leaned my head back to dip my braids in the now-warm water. Cash made a stuttering sound that I assumed was supposed to be words, then started yanking at his clothes. First his T-shirt. Then his jeans and shoes. My breath caught in my throat and I looked away, feeling warmer than usual. Once he was down to his boxers, he stepped into the water and swam out to meet me.
He shuddered out a breath. Steam rolled off the water that splashed up against his well-defined chest. He dunked his head under the lake water and popped back up with a laugh. He smoothed his hair back as water streamed down his face. Seeing him like this, laughing and alive, started the unraveling in my stomach all over again. I fisted the sides of my dress in my hands to keep them from doing something I’d just regret later.
“It’s so warm!” He swam close enough so that we were only inches apart. Steam rose up between us.
“How did you do that?”
I shrugged and treaded water. “I thought of it last night. I always wondered how far the heat could go if I let it.”
Cash’s gaze lingered on my face and he swallowed. “Pretty far I guess.”
“I always loved the water when I was alive,” I said, my mind wandering back to dangerous memories of days spent on the edge of the sea.
“Oh yeah?” Cash grinned. “Where did you live?”
I let myself sink a few inches so that the water coated my lips, then pushed myself back up. “Egypt.
Near the sea. Our home was so close, the sound of the waves breaking onto the shore used to put me to sleep at night.”
“Lucky,” Cash said. “The only thing I ever remember putting me to sleep when I was a kid was
Mom and Dad arguing. Then after she was gone it was just quiet all the time. The quiet almost made me miss the arguing.”
My chest ached thinking about him small and alone at night. “I’m sorry.”
Cash floated on his back while his arms made lazy circles in the water as if he hadn’t heard me. “I always wanted to live by the ocean. I’ve never lived anywhere but here, but when I went to the beach with Em a few times, it always felt like home. I never wanted to leave.”