“I take it something convinced you it was real?”
She nodded, exhaling a long, slow breath.“A few weeks after Iago grabbed me from the temple, he brought me one of my father’s journals. It wasn’t dated or signed—they never were—but I recognized the writing style.” Or lack thereof. When Ambrose was on one of his Nightkeeper rants, his scholarly acumen devolved to repetitive babbles and fragments of things that she now realized might have been actual spells. “In it, he mentioned swimming through some sort of cave system toward where he thought the library should be, and instead finding a scroll. On it was a spell he couldn’t use. He took it and hid it. He didn’t say where, not even a hint.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m positive. The rest of the entries were a combination of lecture notes, complaints about his students, and . . . well, ravings, really.” She met his gaze squarely. “Ambrose had mental problems. I don’t know if it was a true split personality. More likely, he was manic-depressive. He existed day to day on a decently functional balance, especially when he was at the university. But at home or in the rain forest, when something set him off, he was . . .” She trailed off, uncomfortable with the words that came immediately to mind, such as “impossible,” “off his rocker,” or Pim’s favorite, “fucking nuts.” Ambrose had been a demanding, sometimes cruel man. But apparently not all of what she’d dismissed as ravings actually had been. So in the end she went with: “Difficult.”
Michael’s expression had gone shuttered as she’d spoken of Ambrose’s problems. Or maybe he was simply disappointed that she’d gotten so little from the journal. “Are you absolutely sure none of what he wrote, even the rantings, contained clues to where he hid this scroll?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I went over and over the journal, and told the red-robes all the places I could think for them to look.” She shrugged, though the movement didn’t even begin to encapsulate the months of pain and terror, which still existed within her, even though they’d been blunted by a mind-
bender. “I’m sorry. That’s all I’ve got.” She wasn’t just talking about information, either. As she’d been talking, the adrenaline that had sustained her to that point had drained suddenly, leaving her feeling wrung out, strung out. “Honestly? If I knew where to find the scroll or the library, or anything that would’ve helped lead the Xibalbans to either, I would’ve told them months ago,” Michael’s eyes flashed, his voice going rough. “Then he would’ve killed you months ago.”
“There were days that would’ve been a relief.”
She wasn’t aware of him moving, had no warning before he was suddenly in her space, gripping her arms and leaning in, eyes blazing. “Don’t say that. If you had died, one of our best hopes for a connection to the sky would’ve died with you.”
Her first thought was relief that although he was furious, there was no sign of any darkness from him. Her second was even simpler: It was desire, hot and hard, revving her body from zero to want in an instant.
His eyes locked on hers and his breathing went ragged. Heat crackled in the air around them, along with a faint thread of music, as though someone had cranked up a stereo out on the pool deck. But too much had changed for her, too quickly. That morning she had wished she could have gotten to know Michael in the “real” world. Now that her real world had been replaced by his, in a paradigm where their being lovers didn’t seem so out of the question, where did that leave them? Where did she want it to leave them?
She didn’t know, and she couldn’t figure it out while he was touching her. Suddenly stepping closer didn’t seem like such a smart idea. She eased away, tugging to free her hands from his. When they didn’t tug, she said softly, “Michael, let go.”
For a second something flashed in his eyes—a hard, angry expression so at odds with the man that she froze in shock. Then it disappeared and he jolted in place, looking down and seeming surprised to see that he was gripping her hands.
“Gods, I’m sorry,” he said quickly. He released her and stepped back with deliberate care, holding his hands out in an I’m unarmed gesture. “I won’t touch you again.”
The air around them stilled; the music faded. Something seemed to shimmer on the air for a moment, as though he’d just made a silent promise. “Not ever?” she asked, trying to tell herself the sinking in her gut wasn’t disappointment.
He shifted and looked away. “We need to talk about that.”
“And by ‘that’ I take it you mean the sex.”
He stopped in the dirt track and turned to face her squarely. He met her eyes, but his expression was closed now, giving away little of the man within. “What happened last night was amazing, but it went way farther than I’d intended. Too far. We need to back away from . . . from that aspect of things going forward. Skywatch is a pretty big place, but there’s not much privacy. I think it’d be better if we agreed to keep what happened last night just between the two of us.”
She stood a moment, staring at him until he broke eye contact and looked away. When he did, she let out her breath on a hiss, unable to believe that somehow, under the most abnormal circumstances she could’ve conceived of, she’d managed to find herself on the losing end of the Let’s not make this into a bigger deal than it really is speech. “You’re kidding me,” she said hollowly. “You’ve got to be abso-fucking-lutely kidding me.”
A muscle worked at the corner of his jaw, but all he said was, “I’m sorry.”
She told herself it was better this way, that the hints of anger she’d caught from him were a warning sign suggesting maybe he wasn’t the solid, likable guy he seemed. More, she told herself not to cling, not to let him think it had meant anything more to her than it apparently had to him. He’s just another hunter, she told herself, for the first time realizing that she’d inadvertently fallen into another of her old patterns by opening herself to a man who valued the chase and capture more than the long term. In this case, granted, the chase had been finding her, the capture her rescue, but still, once he’d gotten her, he’d realized he didn’t really want her all that much.
What was it about her that attracted the hunters? she wondered on a spurt of self-directed disgust.
More, why did she continue to be attracted to them? Sure, those men tended to be smooth and dangerous, tended to know their lines and moves, which she supposed explained the attraction. But once they’d caught their prey, they moved on, leaving the tattered remains behind. She knew that, damn it. She shouldn’t have been surprised—been there, done that more times than she wished to count, even with Saul, whom she’d picked precisely because he hadn’t looked like a hunter on the surface.
But, logical or not, she was surprised to hear it from Michael, not the least because, even as they stood there faced off opposite each other, electricity hummed in the air between them. She knew damn well the attraction wasn’t one-sided. That couldn’t be her imagination.
Could it?
Summoning anger, more at herself than him, she said stiffly, “That’s fine. Let’s just forget it happened.”
Michael was watching her steadily, and she had a feeling he saw more in her face than she meant him to. But he said only, “That might not be so easy.”