Lightning In My Wake (The Lightning Series) (12 page)

“Sorry,” I shifted, regaining my footing.

“Don’t ever apologizing for using me to steady yourself,” he said in a faint whisper.

There was too much meaning between our words lately. Everything was a double entendre.

“So this is Tibet,” I made a three sixty. The home was sparse but beautiful. Everything was built of the same teakwood.
I gave myself a tour of the place while Theo stood on the porch which overlooked the landscape of peaks and valleys. The further into the house I got, the cooler it got. And when I reached the very back wall of the home, I realized why. The wall wasn’t a wall at all. It was a solid sheet of mountainous rock. The home wasn’t built on the side of a mountain as I’d first guessed. It was built into the mountain.

The house boasted three large bedrooms and one bathroom that rivaled some modern ones in the States.

I crossed through the living room and went through the sliding doors. Theo hadn’t moved from his previous position. I sidled up to him and made a childish attempt to make conversation by pushing his shoulder with mine.

“If it’s not okay, we can find somewhere else.” He said imperviously.

“Come on. I’m not that bad, am I?”

His lack of answer was my answer.

“I am not high maintenance.”

He cut me a look that argued otherwise.

“Name one thing that makes me high maintenance.”

Theo turned in my direction and began to tick off reasons on his fingers, “The soap, the Slush Puppies, the dresses, the bikinis, the shoes, the shampoo, the fingernails, the…”

“Okay, okay.” Maybe he had a point.

Doubt crawled into my heart. This wasn’t exactly the kind of mission for a newly discovered fickle girl like me. Did he need some stealth woman with highly attuned senses and at least decent manners?

“I’ll try not to be,” I swore the oath to myself more than him.

He squeezed my waist and drew me in closer, “You’re…particular. There’s nothing wrong with that. You know what you want.”

Again with the two-headed meanings.

Everything became clouded in his presence. I inhaled his exhales as if I survived on them. Had I mentioned how divine his lips were? A freckle lay directly in the middle of his bottom lip and it beckoned me to relish once again in the feel of his mouth and the things it did to me.

“You can’t do this to me,” he begged.

“Do what?”

“Always making me wonder where we are,” he took advantage of our position and stroked my back. I could almost feel the details of the pads of his fingers through the lightweight material of my dress. A remembered heat built in my chest and meandered throughout my torso, searching out his touch. “You can’t let me touch you like this and not give me anything. You love me. You said it.” He placed tender nips at my bottom lip and all logical thought fell away.

“I did.”

“You’re mine again,” he inquired sincerely.

I nodded. But I should’ve known the lack of words wouldn’t suffice for him.

“Do I need to pin you down again?” He teased.

I argued, “There’s more going on here more important than me and you.”

He narrowed his smoky eyes and tightened his hold on me. His fingers pulsed, as though they were trying to draw out more of a verbal reaction. When that failed to work, his lips, those delicious, truth serum-like appendages descended on the curve of my neck. The short hairs on the side of his head tickled my cheek bidding caged goose bumps freedom.

But when those lips reached my earlobe, I lost it.

“I’m yours.” I finally relented. All movement froze.

“Is it getting easier,” he asked in secret next to my ear. I wish that expressing my emotions was like recovering from surgery—the more you did, the easier it got. Nope. Not for me.

No,” I answered truthfully.

“It will, Querida. I’ll help you.”

Of course he would.

Must he be so damned—Theo all the time?

“There are more important things at stake here,” I attempted to change the subject off of anything but me.

“There are,” he again took up his luscious assault on my neck. “And now, with all of this settled, I can finally concentrate on it.”

Too bad I couldn’t concentrate on anything but how low his hands had gone. He was going for the thighs. I just knew it.

“I’m hungry,” I grasped at a straw, not quite ready to jump all the way back into our relationship so quickly.
I knew it would throw him into ‘take care of me’ mode.

“Okay. Let’s go into the village for soup or something.”

“Sounds good.”

We flashed down to a valley near the town, courtesy of one of my
satellite apps. Walking into town, I watched the people go about their business. Each country had their own feel and smell. Tibet, so far, smelled like candied incense and mustard powder. Bells and the bustling of street vendors selling their product filled my ears.

Monks dressed in orange garb paraded down the street in a perfect line chanting prayers,
probably for themselves at the news of who would arrive the next day—nosey foreigners. One of them, the last one in the procession, caught my eye. There was something not quite fitting about him amongst his brothers. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what the difference was. Thinner than the others, his carriage and gait registered differently than his predecessors. He caught my gaze and immediately came to a halt.

“What,” Theo followed my stare.

“There’s something different about that one.”

Theo popped a shoulder in nonchalance and dragged me away.
He was always afraid I was going to start a cultural faux pas while in other countries—especially those where caning was a prominent punishment. Really I think he was saving me from possibly setting of the domino that would lead to WWIII, because that’s something I would accidentally do.

No, really, it’s something I would do.

He was completely justified in that line of thinking.

We settled on the only vendor who seemed to speak some English. The enormous hunks of meat had me squelching a gag. So when we sat on the curb of the street, our makeshift dining table, the first thing I did was scoop out my hunk, which I swore was a hoof, and plopped it into Theo’s bowl.

He chuckled at my blatant disgust for all things meat related. I wasn’t a vegetarian as a rule. But eating heavy things usually stagnated my flashing and made me feel sluggish.

“Should we call Collin,” I asked after slurping some of the pungent broth.

“I don’t have his number.”

“
Yeah, I guess we missed some of the basics. So when are we going to the temple?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“I need to call my mom. I need to call Ari and Sway. I set up Ari on all of my jobs.”

He nodded, way too interested in his soup.
I sipped at mine, completely blasé about the whole eating thing. The people around us scattered, taking their oxen and goats with them. Theo now seemed to be in a different world, staring off into space instead of eating.

“If you’re done, maybe we should get back. The vendor woman is eyeing our bowls. She probably thinks we may swipe them or something.”

Still it took him a moment to respond.

“Sure.” He took mine and nested it within his and handed it back to the woman who received it with a smile despite her previous
foul expression. That was the effect Theo had on women in general.

Chapter Thirteen

Theo

Employment opportunities must be pre-approved by the Synod.

It happened again. Colby was talking about the monk at the end of the line. I don’t even know how it happened or why it kept happening.
I stared at the monk, not really noticing anything different about him. And then while I was eating the soup, I heard him speaking and somehow I knew it was him. It was similar to when I’d heard Colby talking to Rebekah but I assumed it was a thing between the two of us.

The monk’s voice was hushed and he spoke not to a person but as a person recording something. It was too much. Every time I turned around there was something else happening to me. I had to find more information. Now wonder most of the stories centered
on Eivan and his inability to handle all of the powers being bestowed upon him at one time. Wasn’t it enough that I was the fluke male who could flash?

I didn’t want to put any more pressure on Colby. She was so benign about most deep things. I thought that was why she spent so much energy on superficial things—it was to deter her from thinking about things that really mattered.

Plus, she was a brat.

Collin wouldn’t arrive until later in the night. With everything that had happened, it sounded ridiculous, but I just needed one night with her. I’d been so deprived of her presence for so long that I just needed my fill of her.

Even though she claimed we were together, she was still distant. Maybe it was just the stress of all this. I almost wish she hadn’t come.

Almost.

When we got to the valley, we flashed to the house.

“Are you tired?” I asked her.

“No. I thought maybe we could go somewhere tonight. Somewhere you like to go. We always used to go wherever I wanted.”

We had always gone where she wanted, but I’d never minded.

“Really?”

“Sure. Do you want to go to The Isle of Skye? Maybe just home? If you want to go spend some time with your parents, it’s fine.”

She was facing the bookshelves, packed with books I that looked to be as ancient as the mountains themselves. There was no TV in the whole place, not that Colby had ever been find of TV with the exception of the travel channel for obvious reasons.

“Let’s go to Catatumbo,” I suggested, wrapping my arms around her waist and pulling her against me.

“But that’s one of my favorites,” she said, turning so that I could see her pronounced pout.

“It’s one of mine too. This is the perfect season for the lightning storms.”

“I know. Let’s grab a blanket or two.”

A side effect of Colby’s lithe stature and purposefully kept low weight
was that she was always cold, which was also another reason why she loved the beach. While other tourists baked, she was completely satisfied in the heat. I grabbed two blankets, both brightly colored, like the clothing of many of the people of Tibet and teased, “Beat you there.”

I hit our spot at the top of the cliff before she did. From our perch the Catatumbo River could be seen for miles and miles. The lightning storms lasted two hundred plus days a year. It was Colby’s spot of choice next to
Scandinavia. She said she felt close to our people surrounded by lightning.

Her tenacity for the history and wellbeing of our people had been on my mind constantly, of late. She revered the tales of how our people came to be and if
Xoana were alive today, Colby would be her biggest fan and greatest ally. Sable once told me, seemingly in jest, that she thought Colby was the spirit of Xoana herself, come back to avenge what started so long ago with the lightning strike on her temple.

If I was what I thought I was—she was my perfect mate.

She was my perfect mate—no matter what.

Colby took a little longer than I expected. Just as I’d decided to check on her, she arrived.

“I grabbed a sweater, just in case.”

I nodded and spread out the blankets. I wished we could just go bac
k to the way things were, before.

I hoped it wasn’t because of what or who I was.

The last thing in the world I wanted was to be away from Colby for one more second.

“Meu amor, you think too much. Come, sit.”

“I don’t know if I can,” she whispered as the light of the lightning around us caused her already blonde hair to glow. That was how I always dreamed of her—it was natural—she belonged to the lightning and it belonged to her. This place always renewed her. It was like she was coming home.

There was no rain in this storm, only lightning and the dry, balmy winds. A loud, almost thundering bolt struck, but this one could be seen where the negative leader met the positive streamer in the middle of the sky. The light made her jump and a smile ten times more brilliant than the electricity show lit up her face.

Colby slowly proceeded to sit down next to me, but I wasn’t having any of that. I gripped her tiny waist and hoisted her up so that she sat between my outstretched legs. An electric sensation pulsed through me in waves at having her this near again.

Thousands of bolts raced through the sky. One particularly close one shot down and startled her. She turned and held on to me.

“Are you worried?” I asked her, craving her negative response.

“Yes.”

“I’m scared for you. I’m worried about me with you and how that will complicate your situation.”

Another bolt made her scoot a little closer. I took advantage of the position and encircled her waist in my arms. She was
as stiff as ice.