Call Out (13 page)

We rode the elevator up to our floor, still
in silence, and made our way down the hall to our room. London
pulled out the spare key card and slid it into the reader on the
door. The light flashed red, and he tried it again. Still red.

“Damn it,” he breathed.

“Let me,” I said, reaching for the card. My
fingers brushed his, and a frisson of desire ran through me.

We’d touched a hundred times in the past few
days, and this shouldn’t have been any different. But it was. It
wasn’t hard to figure out why. On top of the feelings that had been
building between London and me, I’d had a brush with death – or as
close as I wanted to get, anyway. Something about being faced with
our own mortality makes us humans want to have sex. Some primitive
need to prove that we’re still alive, I guess. Or maybe a need to
thumb our noses at Death.

I slid the key card into the reader, and this
time the little light turned green. I opened the door and stepped
inside. London followed me in, shutting the door behind him. Once
we heard the latch click, London turned away from the door. I was
standing so near we almost touched. I hesitated, scared to make the
first move.

London didn’t hesitate but played the opening
gambit, though it wasn’t at all what I expected. He pulled me
against him, cradling my head against his chest, and just held me
for a minute or two. I could hear his heart racing, feel it
hammering against his ribs under my cheek. My own was in a similar
state.

When I couldn’t resist anymore, I rubbed my
face against his chest. My lips grazed his nipple through the thin
fabric of his t-shirt, and I grinned when his breath hitched. He
moved back, putting distance between us, but only so he could lean
down to kiss me. The angle was awkward. I tried to go up on my toes
to make it a little easier on London, but my muscles still weren’t
working quite right. I ended up falling forward, sending us both
staggering a few steps until London’s back hit the door.

“Maybe this is a bad idea,” London said,
running a hand up under my hair to stroke the back of my neck.

“Or maybe you’re just too damned tall,” I
countered. I pulled away, took a couple of steps farther into the
room, then turned and crooked a finger at London. He grinned and
followed.

Kissing London worked much better sprawled
out on the bed.

The first kiss was tentative, testing the
waters. The second was bolder, mapping out new territory. With the
third kiss, London staked his claim on me. It was the kind of kiss
that cheesy romance novels describe as ‘punishing’: primitive and
almost brutal, built on raw need and blind lust.

If I had fantasized about sex with London –
and all the king’s horses couldn’t make me own up to it - I would
have pictured it as tender and romantic, two people learning the
nuances of one another’s bodies by candlelight. I would never have
imagined the frantic race to get undressed, the bruising kisses,
the clawing and pinching and biting. I also wouldn’t have imagined
the utterly unsexy scramble to find a condom. And I definitely
wouldn’t have imagined earthshattering sex ending in an abrupt
eruption of tears.

One second I was riding wave after wave of
pleasure, racing for the precipice. The next, I was shaking with
sobs, my face turned away so that London wouldn’t see. Of course,
you can’t hide what you’re feeling from an empath, but I kind of
forgot about that in the moment.

London rolled off of me, and I turned my back
to him, curling up in a tiny, shaking ball. A moment later, a warm
body wrapped itself around me. I turned over, tucking my head
against London’s chest. He held me and murmured comforting
nonsense. After a while, I felt a trickle of calm, a pale echo of
the projection he’d done earlier. Whether because my own emotions
were so much stronger and more tangled, or because London was
exhausted, the calming trick just didn’t work as well this time
around, though it did help a little.

My sobs quieted after a little while, and I
muttered an apology.

“Uh-uh,” London replied. “Don’t say you’re
sorry. You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

For some stupid reason, that made me cry even
harder. London sighed and kissed my forehead before climbing out of
bed. I wanted to beg him not to go, but I couldn’t really blame him
for wanting to get away from me. Dealing with a meltdown like this
is bad enough for a guy when he doesn’t have to actually feel
it.

London surprised me by crawling back into the
bed and pulling me close. He handed me a couple of tissues, and as
stupid as it is, my heart melted a little. I dried my eyes and
wiped my nose, trying to get myself under control. I owed London
that much. I turned over again, my back to him, and he snuggled
closer, his arm tightening around me. He pressed his lips to my
shoulder then buried his face in my hair.

Cocooned in warmth – both physical and
emotional – I reigned in my emotions, bit by bit. The tears
subsided, and the tangle of fear, exhaustion, relief, and a million
other emotions drained away to be replaced with a comforting
numbness. My breathing evened out, and I drifted, not asleep, not
awake, but hovering in the netherworld between the two.

Chapter Thirteen

I don’t remember being close to crossing the
line between sleep and wakefulness, but I must have slipped over it
at some point because I startled awake, unsure what had woken me.
The door to the hotel room opened, then, and I heard Brian’s voice.
London pulled the duvet up to my chin just before the overhead
light blinded me.

“Yeah, I think that we should...oh. Sorry,”
Dylan said.

I burrowed further under the duvet, hiding my
face under pretense of blocking out the harsh light.

“We’ll just....” Brian stammered.

“Go,” Dylan finished. “We’ll just go.”

The mattress shifted as London turned away
from me to look at our friends.

“It’s okay,” he said. “Just give us a few,
okay?”

“Yeah,” Brian replied. “We’ll just...wait
outside.”

I heard the door open and shut. I felt the
bed shift again, felt London moving away from me, and I peered over
the duvet to watch him as he pulled on the clothes we’d scattered
across the room. I marveled at the angry red claw marks that I only
vaguely remember leaving on his back. Ouch.

When he was mostly dressed and I still hadn’t
gotten up, London turned to look at me.

“Are you okay?”

I wanted to point out that the question was
kind of silly, since I knew he could tell how I felt. I opted for
tact instead, or maybe I just couldn’t summon the energy to be a
smartass.

“Sure,” I told him, though I wasn’t at all
certain it was true.

“Elizabeth....”

“I’m okay,” I said, cutting him off. “I just
need...can I....” I sighed, not sure how to ask for what I needed.
I felt numb and sort of disconnected. I didn’t want to have to
talk, about anything, and I didn’t want anyone worrying over me. “I
just need to be alone for a bit,” I said at last.

He looked at me for a moment, and then nodded
and headed out into the hallway, still barefoot. Once the door
closed behind him, I forced myself up out of the bed. I
contemplated my discarded clothing for about two seconds before
deciding to ignore it in favor of a hot shower.

The warm, stinging spray didn’t jolt me out
of my near-stupor the way I had hoped it would. Reality still
seemed distant, my emotions walled away. I wondered if I might be
in shock. That possibility should have worried me, but I didn’t
feel much of anything.

I thought about how I’d been overwhelmed by
emotions just a short time before, resulting in my embarrassing
meltdown. Relief, horror, guilt, love, lust, fear, joy, sorrow,
confusion, suspicion, and grief had all flooded into my
consciousness at once. I hadn’t had a chance to sort through them,
to make sense of them and process them. They’d just come sweeping
in out of nowhere and tried to drown me. Without London there to
anchor me, they might have succeeded.

London. God, how he must have felt. But he’d
pushed it aside to take care of me.

And just like that, emotion began to creep
back in, starting with concern for his well-being. The relief of
having Dylan safe followed close behind.

By the time I dragged myself out of the
shower, I felt a little more like a real, living, breathing,
feeling human being.

I dried my hair, washed my face, and brushed
my teeth. Since I hadn’t thought to grab my PJs, I wrapped a towel
around me and stepped out of the bathroom, prepared to be somewhat
embarrassed. I lucked out, though; Dylan was the only one waiting
for me.

“So what the hell did you do to poor London?
He’s kind of freaking out.”

Okay, maybe not so lucky. I flipped the
security latch on the door, dropped the towel, and started pulling
on clothes while I considered my answer.

“How much did Brian tell you about what’s
been going on? About London, and how we found you?”

“Everything, I guess.”

“So you know about the whole empathy
thing.”

Dylan nodded. “Yeah, I know. And I know you
well enough to know he’s not freaking out because you got all
lovey-dovey on him during the afterglow.”

I sighed and flopped down on the bed. “What
afterglow?”

“You can’t expect me to believe that you two
didn’t hit it,” she said, crossing her arms across her chest.

“Oh, we had sex. We had really amazing
sex.”

“And?”

“And...I completely freakin’ lost it, Dylan.
I don’t even know what happened. But instead of euphoria and
afterglow, we got meltdown and crying jag.” I sighed again, pulling
my feet up to sit cross-legged on the bed. “My feelings were this
overwhelming, jumbled up mess. If London had to feel even a
fraction of what I was feeling, then I’m not surprised he’s
freaked.”

Dylan’s forehead furrowed in contemplation.
“He seemed fine when we walked in on you two, but when he came out
into the hall he was pretty upset. I thought maybe you had to give
him the ‘just friends’ speech or something.”

I shook my head. “I didn’t, though. All I
said to him was that I wanted a few minutes alone.”

“There’s something else going on,” Dylan
said. “There has to be. Maybe Brian can drag it out of him, if he
ever gets off the damn phone. Correction, if they ever get off the
damn phones.”

“Speaking of phones, I guess I better let
Alex know you’re okay and that he doesn’t need to file that missing
persons report.”

“Done. I borrowed your cell while you were in
the shower. He and Blas had already left San Antonio. They were up
around Georgetown. But at least I caught him before he had my face
plastered on the side of a milk carton,” she said. “And you so owe
me one for listening to him rant instead of making you do it.”

“Maybe we can call it even. You know, the
whole rescuing-you-from-evil-Jessica-Rabbit thing.”

Dylan laughed. “I knew you’d see the
resemblance, too! That bitch has issues.” The smile slid from her
face. “What happened back there, Em? Do we need to worry about her
tracking us down?”

I looked away, trying not to remember the
sight of flames crackling over Julia’s skin and the sound of her
pained, terrified shrieks. “I don’t really know. London might, but
I’m not sure we should ask him.”

“Why not?”

“I think....I think he might have killed her,
Dylan.”

“Good. She needed killing,” Dylan replied.
Under any other circumstances, I would have been astounded. Joking
about offing someone is one thing, but saying it and meaning it....
Still, all I could do was agree. The woman had been torturing me,
and she’d probably done the same to Dylan. She’d hurt London, too.
And I figured what we knew was only the tip of the proverbial
iceberg. If she hadn’t hurt more people and done worse things in
the past, she would have at some point further on down the
line.

I knew, though, that London’s feelings would
be a lot more conflicted. After all, he’d loved Julia once. He’d
wanted to marry her. Somehow, he’d missed the fact that she was a
sociopath. That or something had changed her after their breakup. I
wasn’t sure it mattered, but I also couldn’t help but be curious.
Likely, I’d never have an answer, so I pushed the question
aside.

“I’m going to hit the shower,” Dylan said,
scooping a plastic Wal-Mart bag up off the floor. “I feel gross.”
She made it as far as the bathroom door before she turned back.
“Oh, crap. I forgot. Brian talked to Adrian. The rest of the tour
entourage is in town, and we’ve got – well Brian and London have
got – rooms at the Hard Rock. We decided to move over there, since
four people in a room with one king bed is not only breaking all
sorts of rules but also just not likely to end well.”

Dylan stepped into the bathroom and shut the
door, leaving me alone. I pulled jeans on over my boxers and
starting repacking, only to be interrupted by one of the boys
trying to get into the hotel room. I had forgotten to disengage the
safety latch.

“Sorry,” I said to London as I let him into
the room.

He gave me a little smile that didn’t reach
his eyes. “You’re feeling better?”

I nodded.

“Good. That’s good.”

He paid little attention to me as he gathered
the few things of his that needed to be repacked. Five minutes
later, I’d had all the uncomfortable silence I could stand. I
couldn’t ignore what had passed between us anymore.

I reached out to touch London’s hand,
intending only to get his attention. He jerked away and took a few
quick steps backward.

“Don’t.”

“Sorry,” I muttered, feeling stupid.

“It’s not....” he turned away and slammed his
palm against the wall. “Dammit. It’s not your fault, okay? Any of
it. I just...I never really learned how to shield, how to protect
myself. And with all the...with all the magic I’ve been slinging
around, my defenses are pretty much nonexistent.”