Lara frowned, apparently not amused. Or satisfied.
“What about your life before you went to sea? Your family?
Your childhood?”
Fatigue and pain and the echo of Zayin’s voice, prying, sliding into his dreams, needled his temper. But Lara was his only al y. His only hope.
“I don’t have a family.” Or want one. He didn’t want to be tied down. Tied up, drifting in the cold green sea, everything gone, lost. “I don’t remember my childhood. I don’t remember much of anything before seven years ago.”
Except in his dreams.
“What happened seven years ago?”
“Shipwreck.” Beneath the towel, she was naked. He forced his gaze up to meet her eyes. “I was the only survivor.
Norwegian freighter captain found me tied to a mast and fished me out of the North Sea.”
“And since then?”
He grinned. “Sweetheart, I’d be happy to tel you the story of my life some other time. Right now, I just want to get the hel out of here.”
“You can’t leave.”
He looked her up and down. “You going to try and stop me?”
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“N-no,” she said slowly.
“Good. I need your help.”
“I can’t—”
“A car.” He interrupted before she had the chance to say no. “I figure you owe me a lift.”
“Where are you going?”
An island, its green hills forming a jagged cup around the shining sea, its ancient stones imbued with power.
“Anywhere there’s water,” he said firmly. “A shipyard, a marina. I’ve got contacts, I can get a berth.”
He needed to be at sea. Assuming he could find a boat captain wil ing to hire a crew member with a broken skul and a hex burning around his throat.
She shook her head, her damp hair sliding like water over her bare shoulders. “It’s too dangerous.”
“I’l be okay. I’ve had practice flying under the radar.”
“You have very good shields.”
He had no idea what she was talking about. “I have very good papers.”
“Papers?”
He shot her a grin. “The best money can buy. No memory, remember? No birth certificate, no social security number.”
Her gray eyes were clear and solemn. “It can’t have been easy creating an identity on your own.”
“You do what you need to do to survive.” He wasn’t proud of it. When he jumped ship on the New Jersey docks, he’d been a kid, exact age unknown, without money, education, or prospects. For a couple of years, he’d done any work that was offered, legal or not. “Anyway, as long as the police aren’t searching for me, I’m good to go.”
“Not police. But there could be. people looking for you.”
He didn’t like that ominous little pause.
“Why?”
“Because of who you are.” She moistened her lips.
“What you are. What you did during that fight.”
Fuck. “Did I kil somebody?”
He couldn’t go to jail. Being locked up again would kil him.
She shook her head, her gaze dropping to her lap.
He got a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. “So, these guys who are after me. What do they want? Turf?
Revenge?”
“They believe you are one of us.”
“Why would they think that?”
“Because they felt your power. They wil guess that I was searching for you.”
Searching for. Shit.
His head hurt. Her scent swam in his senses. He couldn’t think.
“You picked me up.”
She nodded.
“I thought you were slumming,” he said.
“I was Cal ed to find you.”
“You left me.” He remembered that much. “For the ponytail.”
She winced. “I’m sorry. You were not what I expected.”
His mind scrambled back to their first meeting. “You knew I wasn’t some rich guy with a boat. I told you that up front.”
“It’s not that. I thought you would be like us. But you’re different.”
“Not. nephilim.”
“Not nephilim,” she agreed. She waited a beat and added,
“And not human.”
Not human?
Another flash of memory, voices talking over his head.
“His toes are webbed.”
The room wobbled. He took a breath — soap and Lara—
and held it until everything steadied inside. So his feet weren’t exactly like everybody else’s. Big fucking deal.
“Bul shit,” he said.
For seven years, he’d lived hand to mouth and moment to moment. He survived by not thinking any further than his next meal, his next job. We flow as the sea flows. The whisper surfaced from another life.
He wrenched his thoughts away. He didn’t dwel on the past. Or his dreams.
Or his damn feet.
“You have power,” Lara said. “Enough for Simon to consider you a threat.”
He shot her a look. “I wasn’t a threat until he locked me in his basement. Now I’m pissed off.”
“I’m sorry.” She frowned at her hands in her lap. Her towel had parted above her knee, along her thigh. Her cheeks flushed with earnestness. “You have to believe me.
I didn’t think. I thought they would help you. I wanted to help.”
He wanted to believe her. Her hand on his chest, her mouth on his mouth, her breath in his lungs.
“Prove it,” he said. “Help me now.”
Her fingers twisted together. “I can’t. I’ve been forbidden to see you. To speak with you. To have any contact with you at al.”
“What are they going to do, give you detention?”
“You don’t understand. I am sworn to obedience.”
She sounded like a cop. Or a nun.
“Shut up and do as you’re told?” he drawled.
Her eyes darkened. Something there, he thought. A shadow of hurt, a flicker of doubt. “Not always,” she said.
“Then come with me,” he said, surprising himself.
Until the words came out of his mouth, he had no idea he was going to say them. He wasn’t looking to get tangled up in a relationship. No ties, no strings. But there was something between them. A connection. He didn’t understand it, but there it was. He didn’t like the thought of leaving her here with psycho Axton and his hex-happy henchman.
“I can’t,” she said. “I can’t leave Rockhaven.”
He should be relieved. He couldn’t rescue her if she didn’t want rescue. But. “They’re not keeping you here, are they? Against your wil?”
She shook her head. “This is my home. I am bound here by the Rule.”
“Rules are made to be broken.”
“Not this Rule.” Her voice was earnest. “It’s our way of thinking. Our way of life. It’s what sets us apart from the rest of the world and binds us together as a community.
Without it, we cannot attain perfection.”
Some perfection. It sounded like a cult to him.
“You don’t belong here,” he said. “You’re not like the rest of them.”
“I am,” she insisted. “I’m with my own kind here. My family.”
He didn’t know enough about families to argue with her.
“Al I need is a ride,” he said. “I’d cal a cab, but I don’t know where the hel we are.”
Or where he was going. North, maybe.
“Pennsylvania. Bucks County,” she said.
He didn’t know Bucks County, Pennsylvania, from Bumfuck, USA, but he had a working sailor’s knowledge of the East Coast. “How far from the Port Authority?
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Newark,” he added when she just blinked those lovely eyes at him.