Jai shifts, moving his feet shoulder width apart, pulling me even tighter against him. I feel his fingers toying with my hair against my back, wrapping thin locks of it around his finger, tugging slightly at my scalp.
“What do I do about Ted and Huss?” He asks, his voice vibrating through his chest and into my ear canal. “I can’t let them go.”
“They’re big boys who can make their own decisions. If they didn’t want to do it, they wouldn’t be here.”
“But it’s not right. Huss is barely holding it together and Ted will do it out of loyalty to me. Their lives are worth a hell of a lot more than fifty grand. If something happens to them…”
I squeeze him. “I know.”
Swoooosh!Whissssssshhh!
Wind lashes us, each one stronger and colder than the last, blowing away all the body heat we generated in its absence. I shiver a violent shiver that travels the length of my body.
“Cold?” Jai asks, releasing me from his arms.
I nod, pulling back to hug myself. I wonder if it’d be as obvious if I wasn’t vibrating like the New York subway or have goosebumps as high as Mount Everest.
Jai tugs on the hem of his black sweater and stretches it as far as he can, holding it forward enough for me to slip inside too.
I tilt my head, holding back a smile. “You want me to get in there with you?”
He smiles, his full lips curling into a soft and sincere smile that makes my heart flutter. “There’s always room for you.”
I squeeze myself tighter, caressing my own biceps with my thumb, and contemplate his offer, slightly stressing myself over his words.
Always. Do we have always? Does that word even apply to us? How long do we have? Say we survive this...will we still have each other when it’s over? Will he still want me? I’m not stupid. I know what I am to him—a stray cat that pulls on his heart strings. That’s all. I hate that I’m comparing myself to a cat for this given his annoying pet name for me, but I know exactly how this is going to go. He’ll take me home and heal me up. Then, when I’m settled and I’m too dependent on him, thinking I’ve finally found someone who actually gives a shit about me, it’s finished.
Why? Why do I think this?
Because we’re from two different worlds.
Because why would he settle for a stray when he can have a pedigree?
Because I’m an insecure asshole who doesn’t know how to appreciate things until they’re gone.
Because…just because.
His heavy hand on my shoulder pulls me from my self-doubting thoughts. It’s relieving, like throwing me a life raft after five minutes of treading water in a turbulent ocean. Peace and calm, that’s what he offers me.
“You think too much.” He tugs me forward, lifting his sweater and stuffing me underneath.
Caught in the fabric, his smell surges over me like whitewash carried on the top of a powerful wave. I slide my face up the clothed ridges of his abdominals and over his firm chest, the sound of stretching fabric around me, until I pop out through the neck of the sweater.
Space is limited and his chin touches my forehead as a result. The sweater holds us tightly, so tight I can’t move my arms.
Forcing it, I pull back and peer up at him, the fabric around the neck of the sweater complains, threatening to snap.
“I bet you’re regretting this.” I point as the edge of the fabric cuts into his neck.
“Are you still cold?”
I observe the amount of body heat that generates off him and how quickly it makes my goosebumps fade. I shake my head.
“Then no. I don’t regret it...even if it is cutting off my circulation.”
Our gaze is locked, the subtlest smile tugging at the corners of his lips.
My heart flips.
My palms sweat.
Slowly, he cranes his neck and kisses me on the mouth. My breath catches in my throat, the sound lost in the howl of the wind, as his tongue sweeps mine.
My eyes flutter shut.
The ground liquefies.
Time and space falls away.
It no longer matters where we are, or what we’re doing, and the sharp bullets of ice that are carried by the force of the wind are melted in the heat we conjure before they have the chance to whip along my burning skin.
Kissing under a golden oak tree in fall, our feet drowned in crunchy, crimson leaves with winter lingering on the precipice...is this the kind of shit girls fall for in those romance books? Is it this what I’m falling for?
Until him, I’ve never felt like I fit in. I’ve never felt good enough to be anyone’s friend and certainly not anyone’s lover.
But here I am—attached—sewn so tightly to another human being that if we were to be cut in half I would spill out and my seam would never be the same again. I’m attached to him in a way that makes me want to throw up—in a way I’ve never been attached to anyone before.
He releases me from my stupor as he pulls his mouth away from mine. I open my eyes and am met with his. He watches me, his jaw clenching with an uncertainty that makes my heart race in my chest. It pounds my lungs, leaving me breathless.
“Run away with me, Kitten.”
My breath rushes from my pummeled lungs only to catch in my throat.
“What?”
“I did what I came to do. Joel’s problems aren’t mine...run away with me.”
Blank. Blank white walls slam into me and I’ve got nothing. Actually nothing.
“Uh…run...run away? With you?”
His brows furrow as he diverts his stare away from me, his dark ocean-like eyes awkwardly scanning over the lake. “Well, that’s not offensive at all.”
“I don’t mean it like that...I just...you want to leave your brother? After everything?”
He drags his stare back and the emotionless state of them scares me. I hate the hostility that exudes from him whenever his brother enters the conversation. It changes him into a completely different person—like the intense Jai I met underground.
“Saving him hasn’t helped any...” He drops his head back against the tree, exposing his throat. “I thought that maybe once he’s back he’d want to take care of Jessica again and I’d finally be able to do something for myself.”
I push on to the tips of my toes and plant a soft kiss on the hollow of his throat.
A harsh blow of wind whips by, shaking the trees, and causing leaves to rain down on us. Jai drops his head, burying it into the hair that blows against the nape of my neck. Eventually, like always, the wind runs out of breath, but Jai doesn’t lift his head.
A minute passes and soon that minute stretches into two.
Then four.
New blasts of wind are conjured. Blow after blow they slam us, but he doesn’t budge.
Not until I finally speak.
“He needs your help. What are you afraid of?”
Jai inhales deeply through his nose and blows it out his mouth before finally lifting his head. His sincere blue eyes replace decaying bark and dried sap as he straightens his posture.
“Honestly?”
I nod. “Honestly.”
“I’m afraid this will end...and I’m not ready for this to end.”
I tip my head on a slight angle, unable to keep myself from being sarcastic.
“You like being locked up in a lake house—an old lake house I should mention—while a psychopathic murderer with his own damn army hunts us down?”
He rolls his eyes. “That part I can obviously do without, but here, in this little lake house with you? Yes.”
Butterflies emerge from cocoons and race around my tummy, their wings lightly flicking me, causing heat to flood my body, rising rapidly until it pools in my cheeks.
“Jai...”
“You know, I keep having this recurring dream...all of this is over. There’s no Skull, no drama...no responsibilities.”
I arch an eyebrow, shifting my weight onto my left leg. “Not even one?”
He shakes his head. “Not a single one.”