“Don’t do that. You’ll hurt yourself.”
“I can heal it, remember?” she said softly, her gaze on his mouth.
“You okay, Heather? You don’t seem right to me.” God, he wanted to get naked and fuck again. He shook his head, determined to remain clearheaded, but he could feel her presence in his mind.
“I’m sorry, Jack. It’s the power. We’re close, closer than I thought we’d be.” She looked over his shoulder. “We have to keep going. I feel it inside me. Come on. Then you’ll see. We’ll finish this.”
“Wait. Heather, there’s been something I’ve been meaning to ask. This healing. You manipulate energy, right?”
“Yes.”
“Can you twist it, use it to hurt as well as heal?”
She stared at him. “I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”
“You might have to before this is over,” he said grimly. “An offensive skill, or a defensive one if you want to think about it that way, is a skill worth having. If something happens to me, you do whatever you can to survive, you hear me?”
“I don’t know if I can. I wasn’t built to do harm, Jack. That’s not my nature.”
He would have worried more if she’d given him a chance. Instead she increased her pace, and they raced through the woods as if on fire. He still couldn’t feel the energy the way she could, but he believed her. She was acting weird, her eyes glazed yet brighter than they should have been. And she had a glow to her, an aura of purpose he could only follow.
Two hours later, they arrived at a clearing. What should have taken them another six or seven hours had been accomplished in two. Like turning north and hitting the town of Grainau, this distance in such a short time defied the laws of physics. That or they had a shitty map.
A lush, grassy field surrounded an ancient tree. Odd that neither Ida nor Jan had mentioned the tree. It didn’t fit the vegetation around them, nor did it seem real. The thing looked like something from a prop shop. It had a thick black trunk and reached high into the cloudless sky, framed by a blue canvas. Though it had only just reached the beginning of spring, the tree had light green leaves and pink flowers, like a cherry tree but much grander. It smelled like roses. A lot like Heather, come to think of it.
He turned to see what she made of it and saw her on her knees, frantically digging through her things until she withdrew Chronicles from her bag.
“Heather?”
She ignored him and walked under the awning of the tree, now shaded from the sun by the blanket of leaves and flowers of the impossibly blooming tree. The temperature seemed warmer in this clearing, yet it was by no means springtime in the mountains. He judged it to be closer to fifty degrees, if that.
“What the hell?” He watched Heather leafing through the book until she found the section she needed. Then she began reading, muttering under her breath. She frowned. She smiled. She frowned again.
She lay on her belly on the ground and traced her fingers over the pages as she flipped them. Jack set down his backpack and joined her, keeping the gun at his side at the ready. His senses were screaming at him of impending danger, yet he couldn’t see anything. He heard nothing threatening. The unnatural stillness was broken only by Heather’s ramblings and the crinkling pages of Chronicles as she turned them.
He sat by her side and stared down at a few hand-drawn pictures of a woman fellating a man, then having him do the same to her. Eventually the pair engaged in a sixty-nine, and Jack had more than a few ideas of his own. The pictures turned him on in a big way, especially since Heather pulled off her jacket and tugged at the neck of her sweater.
“You okay?” he asked, hoping this place didn’t turn her into a raving lunatic. His entire being hummed, and the feeling of a thousand fingers tapping at his brain made him uncomfortable. Especially because the closer he drew to Heather, the harder that tapping hit him.
Suddenly, he couldn’t see. He couldn’t hear. He could only feel that rhythmic beat pulsing through him. He felt his gun drop and knew he’d passed out, even as he rose above his body.
Holy shit. Am I astral projecting?
Jack stared down at himself on his back while Heather remained oblivious, still muttering to herself as she poured over the book. What a pair. He glanced at the tree and felt it smiling at him. The damn thing was sentient.
And it wasn’t of this earth.
He recalled the first job his team had done for Owen, recovering a lost locket. The locket had belonged to Owen’s relatives, and according to Rory, Owen’s distant cousin and current keeper of the locket, history had claimed it had been crafted from a meteorite. Another not-of-this earth moment.
Jack wondered if the two were connected. He believed in extrasensory perception, could acknowledge that mankind would continue to evolve and already had in spurts, considering his team was living proof of psychic phenomena. But aliens?
The tree didn’t turn into a little green man, and it didn’t speak or suddenly grow feet and walk. But he sensed a presence, and Jack knew the thing needed something he couldn’t give it, but Heather could. He suddenly understood that the tree had seen him as a threat and pulled him out of his body. He tried, wanted to explain that he wouldn’t harm the thing, but he couldn’t talk. Hell, he still didn’t know how he could be floating above himself. Though a few members on the PowerUp! team had come into contact with astral projectors, he himself never had.
He didn’t know what to do to convince the presence—for lack of a better word—that he meant it no ill will. And then he floated back down toward the ground until he was situated over his body. He jerked in a breath as his soul reconnected with his corporeal form and blinked as the disorientation left him.
“I’m back,” he rasped, feeling his chest and reaching for the gun on the ground. He sat up and tucked the gun away, into the small of his back. “Heather?”
She shook her head, and a tear leaked down her cheek. “I can’t see it. I don’t know what to do.”
“Shh.” He took her into his arms and hugged her, rocking her like a small child. “It’s okay. We’ll find it. Relax.”
Her distress continued until she began to worry him. She didn’t respond to his voice or touch, and her link to him was all over the place. One minute he felt her inside his mind, another she was gone, and then she was there, deep inside him where no one had been, ever. Like a part of him, and when she left, he was bereft, almost in tears.
“What the hell, Heather?” He tilted her chin up to stare into her eyes.
She stared blankly back at him, not seeing him.
“Fuck this.” He didn’t know what to do. Why he’d think to kiss her, he had no idea. But the minute his lips met hers, everything changed.
The warmth in his soul returned, because she was there. Present. Meeting his kiss and moaning into his mouth. Her hands crept up his waist and linked behind his neck.
Finally. She was back.
Hungry, needy, and full of desire he had every intention of fulfilling.
Jack kissed her until he couldn’t breathe. When he pulled back from her, he swore.
“I’ve never seen a woman needing to be fucked as much as you do.” She might as well have had the word sex tattooed on her forehead. Carnal intent colored her face, so that she seemed like a walking advertisement for…him.
Jack didn’t think about what he was doing. He did what felt right. Moving her aside, he stripped off all his clothes. Then he took hers off, aware she didn’t resist at all, merely caressed him whenever she could.
He groaned when her hands caught and held his cock. She cupped his balls, rolled them in her hands, and he felt a spurt of precum jolt from his tip.