“Better hurry. A few more seconds and you’ll have to call game.” I tried to breathe easily, trying not to reveal fear or intimidation, trying especially not to reveal that it came from the nearness of his body and not the gun pointed loosely at my side. I am not afraid, I repeated over and over in my mind, but it was a lie. I was trembling in my Wonderbra.
“Well that’s the thing about being the one to make the rules,” Hunter said, his voice low and filled with something that alarmed me even more. “You get to break them any time you want.”
Even with night settling around us, this close to mine his face was clearly defined. His brown eyes pooled with depth, his black hair was slick with shadows, and his breath was like the stream blowing in off the gulf. Desire usually smelled earthy, but Hunter’s was dense, musky with heat. He smelled dangerous…and I liked my men dangerous.
“Break the rules?” I asked, meeting his gaze directly. “Or change them to meet your needs?”
“Same difference.” His eyes traveled down to my lips, then back again.
My eyes did the same. “You’re complicating things.”
His brows quirked philosophically. “Life tends to be complicated.”
“So we should just consider this a training exercise, then?” I asked, swallowing hard. “For life, I mean?”
He hummed in the back of his throat, inching closer. “Not all life lessons are unpleasant.”
I leaned into him, my eyes fluttering shut. Even humans reacted to pheromones, though they were unaware of it, but when you could smell them-really scent every molecule and particle making up a particular chemical compound-well, it was like walking into a hothouse on a blustery winter day. It flooded the senses…and made you want to undress. Blood raced to places in my body that weren’t supposed to have a pulse. I groaned, releasing my own pheromones into the air, and pushed his weapon aside so nothing lay between us.
Hunter closed the gap with his body.
We’d kissed once before. I’d possessed the aureole that first time, and in order to keep him safe I’d passed it along to him, exhaling the power of temporary immortality into his mouth, a chaste kiss turned torrid as his body responded to it, to me, even while unconscious. Unfortunately a bit of my soul or essence or something had been passed into Hunter as well-and we now knew things about each other no other person alive knew. He had lost his parents to the Shadows, I my sister. He had a child he’d die to protect; I had one I didn’t even acknowledge. I blamed our sense of shared intimacy on this bartered knowledge, just as I blamed this moment on the circumstances, telling myself that any woman would have to be dead not to feel a modicum of sexual attraction to a six-foot-three, rock-hard superhero. And while that first kiss had been a gift given out of duty rather than passion, it wasn’t until now that I realized I’d stored the taste of him inside me.
It was shocking to find a gentle, restful place on his warrior’s body, and I slipped my tongue along the edges of his lips-only a quick taste, I thought-just to experience the vitality behind all that softness. His immediate response flooded me, my brain numbing as his lips pressed against mine so that I was unable to process scent and taste, thought and reason, longing and touch, all at the same time. That kiss was like swollen storm clouds ready to erupt, and when he moaned into my mouth it was dewy and thunderous and zinging with ozone.
“What the hell is going on in there?”
We broke the kiss, both of us pulling back at the same time, and I blinked hard to get my bearings, to stop my head from spinning and my heart from slamming in my breast. Hunter called time, his voice so hoarse and deep it could set off car alarms, and I glanced up to find that not only had it grown full dark, but the sky above the maze was roiling with cloud cover. The haze was thick and low like an orchard of vaporous hanging fruit, laced in mist, sweet and ripe in the moist heat. I swallowed hard.
So this was what happened when two superheroes made things complicated.
And goddammit, it was too much. I felt like I’d just gorged on something rich and fine, and now-even after only a swift taste-I felt weighed down, like I was buried beneath boulders. Being this open and vulnerable felt like I was digging my own grave. I didn’t want any more pain squeezing at my heart. I’d had enough for one lifetime.
And that was what truly made Hunter dangerous, I thought, wiping a hand across my mouth. He made me forget he could hurt me.
I shifted my gaze, breath shaky, to find him regarding me just as warily. I cursed inwardly as his powerful aura snapped white and gold sparks around him, like he was a sparkler on the Fourth of July, and I was the darkness. It reminded me of the differences between us; male to female, his pure, unadulterated Light to my half Shadow, but instead of that complementing me, it made me feel bereft and lacking. But then I glanced at his lips again before I could stop myself. They were parted and still moist from my kiss.
Stop it, Jo, I told myself, slamming down the mental shields that would keep my secrets even from myself. And so I did.
The gun was lolling in his fingers, and I moved swiftly, firing downward so the pellet struck somewhere in the buttocks, or perhaps the thigh. He jolted, grinding closer, making me immediately wish I’d chosen another tactic, and remaining too close, he didn’t release me. And he didn’t turn green because he’d already called time. In fact, he didn’t turn anything but mad.
“You set me up,” I said as his eyes flashed betrayal. “You sent me in here knowing the others would either take each other out or be too surprised to see me to react. You followed because you wanted this.”
I ignored the fact that I’d wanted it, too. Because of our once-shared power he knew I hungered for him, and that one kiss was enough to leave me raw and aching and vulnerable. So I refused to feel guilty under the weight of that steady stare. He’d made this happen, even knowing there was a place inside me he couldn’t touch, a bruised spot already occupied and fiercely guarded where Ben lived, and always would. That wouldn’t change just because Hunter lured me into straying mazes, made storm clouds roil above my head…and caused my heart to pound like the thunder fueling it all.
“You’re treacherous,” Hunter whispered, giving me the space I wanted, the jaw I’d just been caressing clenched hard in the dying light.
“You’re an opportunist,” I replied, letting Ben’s image fuel my indignation.
Hunter shook his head and gave a mirthless laugh as he turned away. “I’m just a man,” he said, and the soft vulnerability shocked me into silence. I swallowed down the lump that’d suddenly grown in my throat, and resumed breathing as I watched him leave, thunder rumbling along the already thinning clouds above. Once alone, I slumped against the wall, and let the cool concrete seep into my skin. I remained there until the sky was again arching and wide, spread out above me like a blank slate. Then I went to join the others like nothing had happened. As if I was fine.
As if storm clouds and superheroes weren’t complicated, treacherous, tempting things.
10
“What, in this particular Universe, were you thinking?”
I’d been back in the sanctuary just long enough to take a shower before my reaming began. Warren stood before me in the astrolab, a dome-shaped room with a ceiling of stars, though right now the bright lights were whitewashing the galaxy into oblivion. The room was scattered with books and papers and maps, pencils, rulers, scales…all more mathematical than mystical. This was Tekla’s office, where she mapped out her natal charts and made her predications. Currently, though, she was observing Warren and me from a stool in the corner like a bird on a perch, and damned if she wasn’t the most watchful, calculating creature I knew.