Forever (32 page)

“Jackson, no!” she burst out, unable to control herself due to her outright shock.

Jackson turned slowly, his eyes sweeping to hers, the anger in them hard and very evident. He didn’t say a word, just expression on his facele and ihlypointedly turned his back to her to speak to Max once more. “He’s to travel in the cabin of the jet, Max. Don’t crate him and put him in the hold.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Max said, clearly protesting the idea that Jackson thought he might.

“I know. It just … needed to be said. I had to make sure.”

“Jackson!” She barked his name out as she marched up to his side. When he didn’t acknowledge her she shoved herself between the two men and grabbed him by his shirt, wishing she could shake him. “You cannot give up that dog! What are you thinking? You know how much he means to—”

“What I know,” he bit off into her face, “is that someone just reminded me that anyone and anything near me risks themselves just by knowing me. Someone reminded me that what I am turns an innocent soul into a target, brings stress and heartache and horrible things into the life of that innocent. So excuse me, but I’ll be damned if Sargent is going to get himself killed while trying to protect me from a supernatural creature he has no defense for! And he’s been trained for a job that he loves. That he’s eager for. This is me being unselfish, Marissa. But I can see why you wouldn’t recognize it.”

All right, Marissa thought with irritation, just when had she become the designated asshole in the house?
Everyone was taking these mean little potshots at her and she’d had just about enough of it.

“Don’t you dare fault me for taking the time to understand and evaluate something before jumping in with both feet! And you!” She whirled to face Max who was trying to discreetly leave the argument. She pointed to the ground and let out an imperious, “Stay!” Max went still, lifting a brow in curiosity and Sargent’s butt hit the ground in a very obedient staying position. “If I’m going to be queen around here, I’m going to expect to be fully … and I mean
fully …
informed of any important decisions! I’m not going to be a figurehead or something pretty sitting on a throne while all the big strong men take care of all the business.” She whipped back around to face Jackson. “I don’t know what Hatshepsut’s feelings are on the subject, but I suspect all this high-handed bullying bullshit doesn’t fly with her, and it doesn’t fly with me either. So with the both of us together you’re in for a major attitude adjustment. We aren’t going to put up with it!”

She stopped talking, breathing hard and glaring at Jackson as her temper started to cool. She hadn’t noticed his eyes going wide, hadn’t noticed the slight slack in his jaw.

“Did …” He cleared his throat of an unidentifiable emotion. “Did you just say
we
?”

She could have knocked him on his ass with a feather, that was how numb with shock Jackson was. Surely she didn’t mean …? Yes, he thought quickly before he got his hopes up, she was just speaking hypothetically.

“Yes, I said we, provided you can quit being an ass long enough to kill me. And what’s the deal with that anyway? The rules, I mean. Can I just overdose or lick mustard off a spoon or … what are the rules to this
dying thing, because I know there has to be rules and you can damn well bet I’m going to get it right.”

“Oh my god. expression on his facesvg.” It was all he could think of to say. He knew he was staring at her, knew he was looking like an ass because he couldn’t form a single coherent thought in his head about what to do next. He couldn’t because his heart was racing with fear and excitement. Fear that he was dreaming, excitement that he wasn’t.

“Jackson,” she said dryly, “when a woman offers to kill herself for you she kind of expects a little more than ‘Oh my god.’ ”

“Oh my fucking god,” he shouted at her right before letting every single impulse flowing through him loose. He grabbed for her with both hands, dragged her up against his chest, wrapping her in a suffocating hug while crushing her mouth under his. He kissed her as hard and as deep as he dared, overjoyed to feel her whole body softening and relaxing, her lips parting to allow him to do ravishing things to her mouth. He kissed her so long and so intensely that he thought he was getting light-headed from lack of oxygen. When he finally pulled back from her it was to her smiling eyes, watching her lick her lips clean of their mutual flavors.

“Max, you can go now,” she said, dismissing the man with a wave but never once looking away from Jackson. “Back at the house,
not
on a plane. Understood?”

“Yup.” Max chuckled and headed off with Sargent in tow.

“I can’t believe,” Jackson stammered, still not knowing what to say. “Are you one hundred percent …?”

“Are you ever going to finish your sentences?” she teased him.

“My god, I’m going to kill you,” he said fiercely, wanting to shake her for taking delight in his flabbergasted state.

“Well, that’s kind of the idea, right?”

In lieu of shaking the hell out of her he yanked her back up against himself. This time it was she who leapt for the kiss, meshing her mouth to his as if they were a single being, then breaking again and again as each successive contact grew hotter and hotter and faster. Before he knew it she was climbing up his body, arms wrapping around his head and neck and legs wrapping around his waist. It took four blind, heated steps before he found the side of the house and slammed her up against it, following hard with the press of his body. God. Oh god, what was it about her that made him want to forget every nicety he’d ever learned as a lover and just … fuck her crazy. And then take her slower, sweeter, afterward. But it was always this first. This hunger. This rapacious need to just be inside her however he could manage it and as soon as was humanly possible.

Together they pulled up her skirt, his hands running hot beneath it and letting her fill them with soft, sleek flesh. Her backside was curvy enough to earn the title “booty,” but it was always played down with the sharp lines of professional clothing. Sexy yet conservative. The kind of conservative sexy that made you want to un-conservative her. Unwrap her. Undo her. Just as he was coming undone, he realized. Not just the way she was feverishly working to open his jeans and push them down off his hips, but just undone. If she knew how devastated he had been when she’d said those things to him earlier … even now it choked him to think of her wishing he’d actually died. Because that was what it had been. If not for Menes, he would have died. Of course, if not for Tameri saving his sister he wouldn’t have even been in that place and time, but that was splitting hairs.

And that didn’t matter now. With one hand on her backside he reached to take himself in hand and aimed himself in the direction he desired to go. He notched
himself against her and, gripping her hard to keep her still, he lunged up into her in a single, stunning thrust. She broke from his mouth to cry out, her hands reaching for his hair, grabbing it up into her fists and doing everything but pulling. He didn’t pause, didn’t wait. He had no time for that. He was completely blindsided by the knowledge that he could come in just a couple more strokes. He didn’t understand it really. He had no experience with which to judge this desperation. He’d always been in total control of his relationships, headlong feelings and undue attachments not anything he’d ever indulged in or craved.

He was just as bad as she was, he realized. He was the pot and she the kettle. At least she had an excuse. A bid to be more professional. What was his reasoning?
It was just safer that way
, he thought. And there was nothing safe about this. For all they would be immortal and nearly unbreakable, this was akin to taking his life in his hands. Or giving it into hers. And god, but it terrified him.

But it didn’t keep him from taking her hard right then and there, both of them moaning with pleasure loud enough to be heard … well, just about anywhere. He wished he could make himself be self-conscious about that. Make himself show her more respect than he felt he was doing just then, but he couldn’t. Didn’t. Wouldn’t.

All he could do was thrust himself into her again and again, as fast as he could humanly manage, sucking air in through his teeth when the urge to climax grabbed him by the balls and ripped through him. It happened so fast. So blindingly fast. And it pulled out of him until it hurt. He was barely aware of the fingernails dug deep into his shoulders, or the way she gasped to catch her breath, or the way she was like liquid in his arms and against the wall.

The wall.

Holy hell! He’d just taken her against the side of the damn house! In
public
! Well, nearly anyway. He knew no one would have dared come in the direction of the ruckus they’d just made. In that way, he realized, it was damn good to be the king.

“Death by sex,” she breathed into his ear. “Oh yes. I hadn’t considered that one.”

That made him snort a laugh out his nose. Sometimes she just tickled the heck out of him. Like the time she’d taken umbrage with Howard Redman’s lewd assessment of her ass every single time she walked past his desk. Any other woman might have found another path. But not his Marissa. She had leaned over the desk, he could swear she was purposely giving him a peep down her blouse, and had whispered very loudly that what he was doing was called sexual harassment and that the department had a zero-tolerance policy and that he better be careful before some gutsy pissed-off chick decided to sue him right down to his saggy, baggy little boxer shorts.

“Now, Mr. Redman,” she’d said, “if you want t his facenuihl

“That’s the last of them,” she said, her hand trembling as she put the glass of water down by the empty pill bottles. She nervously licked her lips and then straightened the collar of yet another one of his shirts against her throat.

“Come and sit back,” he invited her, patting the bed beside him. He was sitting back against the headboard, where an empty pillow was waiting for her.

She slid over to him, the cotton sheet and its remarkably smooth thread count feeling incredibly soft. She curled up against him.

“I’m so scared I’m nauseous,” she said as she wrapped her arms tightly around him and hugged herself to his warmth and strength. “Or maybe that’s the medication. I’ve never swallowed that many pills all at once before.”

“I don’t blame you for being scared. And I’m not going to tell you not to be. This is your process and you are going to go through it any way you want to. It’s not every day you get to commit suicide.”

“I know. And I’m warning you now, if this gets messed up I’m coming back to haunt you. And I’m going to be a jealous ghost. I’m going to be there especially when you try to touch someone else.”

He smiled. She could feel the way his lips moved
against her scalp and hair. How strange that every feeling, every sensation seemed so incredibly acute. She was noticing the way he smelled. Clean and freshly showered. They’d gone in together, bathed together, made love together. Then he had donned a clean pair of jeans and she had put on a clean shirt. But it was still his. It felt, she thought, like being covered by him. The touch of cotton against the hairs of her body was like a petting touch all over all at once. Her legs and feet were bare. She hadn’t even put on any underwear. Just his shirt.

“What will we do first? When I come back?” she asked.

He chuckled. “I’m thinking sex might be involved. That seems to be the way of it lately.”

“You’re probably right.” She smiled up at him, tipping her head back so she could see the peacock green of his eyes. “After all, we kind of had over a year of long-distance flirting, however subconscious it might have been.”

“True.” He drew soft fingers along the side of her fa expression on his facesouhrdce, drawing on her as though tracing her image. “Can you try to remember something for me?” She nodded. “Just be yourself. When you meet her? She’s not a pharaoh. She’s not a figure of a larger than life romance. And she’s not even a Bodywalker when she’s there. She’s at the purest form of her soul, and she will want to know you on the same level. She won’t expect more than you can give. She won’t try to bully you or subjugate you. That doesn’t interest her. Next to her relationship with me, her relationship with you is going to mean everything to her.”

“That’s … it’s comforting to hear you say that,” she confessed. “I’m still nervous as hell.” She glanced down at her hand, rubbing her fingers together. They were starting to feel a little numb and she felt the first hint
that she was being affected. She’d never tried recreational drugs, but the sensation lapping like a soft tide throughout her face and body was probably what getting stoned felt like. Suddenly she wished she knew.

“I’ve never been drunk. I should have done that,” she observed. “I don’t suppose a Bodywalker gets drunk?”

“No. We process the alcohol too quickly. It’s fun to try. Sometimes if you work hard at it you can catch a good buzz.”

“That’s what I have at the moment. A good buzz.” She was silent for a moment, focusing inward to the sensations walking sluggishly through her. “Promise me something? If something goes wrong—”