Games of Zeus 02- Silent Echoes (27 page)

In one tug, Ian yanked his brother around to the flat of his back, tugged up his knees, twisted and had Michael’s face against the floor.

“Ooh,” Taylor said. “Sorry, Michael, but I’m pretty sure Ian wins.”

Ian let go, and his brother fell flat to the floor. He stood, wiped at his pants, rubbed his hands together and stared at Taylor. “Your turn.”

• • •

“What?” Her shriek came fast as Ian moved toward her.

He reached her before she could even rise from the couch, laying his palms against her cheeks and his lips against hers. Her arms snaked around his neck, squeezing his body closer. Softness reached the edges of her lips, trailed across to the opposite side and returned. She opened, letting her tongue dance with his.

“Ahem.”

She pulled him nearer, wanting more, desperate for the touch of his skin against hers, for the roughness of his chin’s shadow against every inch of her body.

“Ahem.”

Their kiss—an experience that tied together centuries of a past with the singular presence of that moment—never faltered.

“A-
hem
!”

Her smile broke Ian’s touch. “I think Michael’s trying to tell us we’re in a public space.”

“It’s my apartment,” Ian said. “He can leave.”

“You wouldn’t do that to me, would ya? I came all the way up—”

Taylor snuck a glance at Michael.

He jiggled keys in his hands without adding any sound, his head angling toward the door.

She closed her eyes.

Ian stayed silent, rubbing his forehead against hers as the door opened and closed again.

“Your brother’s a good man.”

Another touch to her lips. “I know. He wouldn’t let me leave today, even though I told him I didn’t really want him around. Or want to be here. He knew you were coming, didn’t he?”

She nodded with her head still against his. “Yeah. Lexi and Emma … and Tripp put him up to it.”

“Damn them.” He pulled away.

“Don’t you go now, Ian Sands.” Taylor tugged him back.

He relaxed against her again, melding her to his body, his arms wrapping behind her. His lips caressed her neck. “God, I missed you.”

“It’s only been a couple weeks,” she said. “Ish.”

“It felt like years. Decades. Centuries. Like I had you in my hand and someone took you away, and then I got you again only to have to leave you.”

She trailed her fingers up and down his neck. “Well, if our powers of deduction are right, that’s exactly what happened.”

He stiffened within her hold. “It’s going to end badly.”

“Maybe. But, what if it doesn’t? What if there’s a pawn to our rook?”

“If the psycho lady—”

“Psychic, Ian. Actually, she said all she could do was communicate with the dead. I’m not sure what that makes her if she can’t see futures. Lexi, on the other hand, seems determined to prove we’re meant to be without telling me how she knows.”

He chuckled against the skin of her shoulder. “And, she’s supposedly always right.”

Taylor pushed at his chest so she could stare into his eyes. “Different time. Different place. And, what if you kill me … say … when I’m ninety? I’d have lived a long and happy life by then. We have no conclusive data on me in the previous instances, right?”

Ian spun away to the mantle. “How can you look at this so calmly?” One hand rested against the wall.

Taylor shuffled over to him. “I don’t
feel
it, Ian. I don’t feel like you’re going to hurt me. I had three really long dreams while I was … incapacitated. I only told you part of what I experienced. Each was amazing and full of life, a love so strong I could barely breathe when I was around you—”

“And, they ended, didn’t they? Just like last time. Both of us dead. That wasn’t an unsolved murder with a lynch mob. I killed you, and I buried your body. The proof is in the pudding as you southern girls say, and those bones were right there. End of story, except, here we are again.”

Taylor rested her head against his back, his heart beating under her ear. “You don’t feel it?”

“I feel connected to you. I did the moment I met you. Actually, even before that just on the phone about that damn house in North Carolina. I don’t dream about it, Taylor. I can’t see it. There’s no way to explain.”

She reached up and pressed her lips to his. “I know. Trust me, I know. I might have some memories, but I feel it, too.”

“My life will never be the same if I do something to hurt you.”

“You once said I was the tough chick who uses power tools. I’m not weak. I’m not one to sit around and wait to see what bad experience will fall down upon me. I don’t feel it … in here.” She tapped her chest above her heart. “If I did, I’d be running away so fast you’d see nothing but a blur. But, I don’t feel that. I just feel … desire. Need. Want.” She sucked in a breath. “Love.”

25

Tendrils of Taylor’s hair flew up before she could control it.

She grabbed at strands and patted them flat, taking the whole tail and resecuring it.

“Um …” Ian circled a pointed finger. “That’s kinda freaky.”

“Sorry. Yeah. Does that sometimes when I’m a little emotional.”

“What else can you do with the air?” Ian tugged at Taylor’s hand, nudging her toward the couch. “If you can prevent three people from belly flopping against a wood floor … what else?”

Taylor offered him a small shrug. “That’s kinda it. Like I told you before, I can move stuff. I don’t use it much … not since my college years.”
Not since Tanner.
Taylor stared into Ian’s eyes. She read a question in the deep green—one to which she’d kept the answer to herself.

He didn’t move, didn’t shift—didn’t blink.

“Tanner knew about my gift.” She said it on a whoosh of air.

Ian jerked back. “What?”

She wanted to reach out and grab his hands to get him back close to her. “Something happened on campus one day. Two men fell from the top of a bell tower they were in the process of renovating. I didn’t see what was going on until … well … until they hit the ground.” The memories sent a jolt of pain through her heart. “The third lost his footing right afterward, and I couldn’t see him dying when I was standing right there, so I pushed the wind toward the tower.” She took a deep breath. “That current nudged a branch from one of the big oaks into the scaffolding and then him against the facade of the building, so it looked like he slid down to a safe level.”

“And Tanner saw you?”

She shook her head. “Not exactly. He was the third guy.” Her throat dried up on her. “Can I get some water?”

Ian scrambled up and dashed into the kitchen. “Evian or Voss?”

“Straight from the tap. I’m not a fancy girl.”

Clatter emanated from the kitchen. He came back with a glass and a bottle with big lettering on it.

“Very cultured, Ian.”

“It’s New York. Who knows what’s in the pipes?” He took the same spot again, tucking his leg up under himself and twisting off the cap.

“How much did you pay for this?” Taylor smirked at him.

“Does that really matter?” He took a swig.

“Humor me.”

Ian raised an eyebrow. “Probably about five bucks.”

Her eyes popped open. “Per bottle or a case?”

“Does it
matter
?”

“I’m trying to get a handle on you. Mid-thirties, single, uptown New York apartment that I know you put up as collateral for me.”

He stopped in mid-sip. “Is this confessions day with Ian and Taylor?” A small chuckle accompanied his sip. “Should we be lying on a couch as if talking to the best shrink?”

“Confessions, yes. Shrinks, no.” She held out her glass.

Ian clinked it. “So, yeah, I put up my apartment.”

“Even before you got to know me?”

“Isn’t that obvious?”

“Why?”

“Finish your story about Tanner, and maybe I’ll tell you.”

“Fine.” She set the bottle on the glass coffee table. “So, he’d been up there, watched his buddies fall—they didn’t die, by the way. For some reason, they’d surrounded the base of the pedestal with tarps and both of them fell into them. Broke a couple legs and a few ribs, but that was the extent. Talk about lucky.” Taylor waved the thought away. “So, Tanner’s up there, and down below is me, and he said when he felt the air push him back up, he turned, and I was standing there. My hair was blowing in a breeze that didn’t affect anyone else, and my hand was held out in such a way that he knew I’d had something to do with it. He asked me out as soon as he got down. And, on our first date, that’s all we talked about.”

“Kinda selfish, don’t you think?”

Taylor busted out a laugh. “Ian, you’re too funny.”

“I try. Though, I’m not sure what I did to make you laugh like that. I’ll do it again if I get a repeat performance.”

She bit back the bubbling giggle. “Nothing. Nothing. Just being you. So … on Tanner, it’s selfish of him to talk about things that can’t happen in this world? Wouldn’t that peak your curiosity enough to have endless conversations?” Her hand landed on Ian’s leg. “He was curious. Unfortunately, that turned into an obsession I didn’t even see coming. He wanted me to try stuff, to practice, to test the limits of what I could do.”

“And. did you?”

“Yeah. That’s also how I learned to really control it, and why I don’t use it unless I need to.”

“Tanner’s dead, you know.”

Taylor nodded. “Riley told me. I don’t believe it.”

Ian flinched.

She waved her hands back and forth. “Not that you’re lying. But he faked it before. For all we know, he needed to get out of town because he’d set up another woman of his dreams.”

“He really is. They confirmed with DNA and dental records.”

“Which can all be faked.”

“You really are cynical.” He leaned in, his lips a breath from hers. “I kinda like that in a woman.”

Taylor chuckled and gave him a quick kiss. “You haven’t answered my original question. I think I ponied up enough. It’s your turn now, mister.” She poked a finger into his chest. The touch made her want him more. “So, tell me, Ian …” Taylor teased his lips with her tongue. “… why did you agree to potentially lose this place?”

“What else would I do for a friend in need—especially a hot one.” His smile crept in.

She sucked in air but kept her lips glued to his. “You didn’t even know me at the time.” Her words came out barely a whisper.

“You might have had dreams. You might have spent days dying under the watch of a dozen doctors. Remember what I said about the phone calls? That and the wedding made me insane for months—kept my life out of balance. I felt it. Knew it.”

“Love at first sight?”

“Or first lives.” His lips formed into a smile a second before they crushed Taylor’s again.

The buzz of a fire alarm tore them apart.

“Son of a bitch!” Ian said as Taylor covered her ears.

Ian braced his hands against his own and nodded toward the door. The emergency lights flickered. The scream of the siren grew and retreated. Ended and restarted.

“This isn’t a test.” Ian’s head shook. “We gotta go.”

Taylor couldn’t move. Thirty-gazillion stories up. Fire below or above, she didn’t know. Didn’t care. Just as with a pool or a house falling down around her, she froze.

Ian tugged at her arm.

Her body failed to move even as her mind called out to her to snap out of it, to go, to take the stairs and get out.

Ian’s face appeared in front of her. His hands clamped around her arms. A small shake had her looking down at him, seeing but not seeing him. The mere thought of a fire that could consume the whole of her sent her body into a panic.

Another blast of sound hit her ears, but Taylor couldn’t make herself budge.

Ian disappeared from view. A jingle of keys followed. A second later, he winged her into his arms and ran out the door.

• • •

A one week course in fire safety in college did not prepare Ian for three dozen flights of stairs with a one-hundred-and-thirty-pound weight in his arms. On the landing of his floor, all four doors remained closed. He headed toward the stair exit, bumped it with his hip and headed in. The blink of the emergency lights flashed through the well, adding a red haze with each new appearance and blare.

With each of Ian’s steps, Taylor’s stiffness relaxed until her weight evened out in his arm. He kept her tucked in, refusing to get them both stuck in a high rise fire.
No way this is how I kill her.

After one flight down, the scent of burning plastic made his nose twitch.

At the second level below, they met with the couple who’d moved in across the hall from him. The man clung to his wife, who Ian had to guess would pop her watermelon-sized belly at any moment.

Their slowness pushed him to a stop as the alarm made them all jump.

“Go around us,” Jacob said.

Ian started to do just that, but Taylor wiggled out of his hold. He pulled her back in.

“I’m okay. Don’t know how, but I’m okay, now.” She stirred until her feet hit the tread below them.

Jacob and his wife continued down, one step at a time, she heaving great breaths as he held her hand and mumbled at her ear.

Way too many flights to go.

Jacob and his wife came down two more steps, and she cried out.

“Carry her!” Staring at Ian, Taylor pointed at the struggling couple.

Another three people broke through from the fire door, their voices a jumble of sounds that Ian couldn’t pick out. He spun to Jacob. “You know how to hold in a chair position?” The look Jacob gave Ian said ‘no’. Another glance to Taylor got a ‘do it’.

The newest folks in their group pushed past without pausing as Ian walked up three steps and showed Jacob how to hold his hands. “I’m Ian,” he said as Taylor nudged the woman into their arms.

“Ellen,” she said between pants. With a turn to Jacob, she added, “And, I want to move to the ‘burbs.”

He chuckled as she settled into their hold.

“Keep your pace with mine,” Ian said. “Slow around the corners.”

“I heard someone say there was a kitchen fire and to stop on twenty for the elevators there,” Jacob said.

Ten flights to go then.