Out of This World (7 page)

Rach sagged against the closest tree for one brief beat before letting out a soft cry and straightening away from the trunk as if it were possessed.

But she was the possessed one.

“Oh my God.” Turning in a circle, she looked madly around the small clearing like a cornered animal, one hand over her mouth, her eyes wide and wild. “They're everywhere!”

“What's everywhere?”

“Creepy crawlies!”

“Rach?”

She shook her head violently, holding up a hand to hold me off.

Uh-oh. She'd cracked. She'd utterly lost it. I knew firsthand that she didn't fall apart easily. She had an inner strength that got her through any hardship that came her way. I'd seen her struggle through a tough college curriculum while working full time to support herself; I'd seen her work like crazy to make it on her own in the art world; and I'd seen her go through the death of her father. She'd lived through them as she experienced everything else: with her spirit and strength intact.

But she was at her limit here. That, or she'd hit her head harder than she'd let on. Fearing that, I stepped toward her, but she backed away. “Hey. Hey, are you okay?”

“No. No, I'm not okay. There's…
things
out here, Kel. Rabid raccoons and crazy squirrels and gigantic bugs and…” She clamped her mouth shut. Still wet, she shivered.

I took another step toward her, and she jerked.

“It's just me,” I said in the voice I used with the dolphins when they were spooked. “Just me, Rach.”

Her gaze ran over my face, my body, and then she went beet red, squeezing her eyes tightly shut. “Yeah. It's just that, well, it's a lot more of you than you think.”

Huh?
“Come on. We'll go back.”

Her laugh sounded more than half-hysterical. “Yeah. How exactly?”

I reached out my hand for hers, tugging her close. “We'll get back.”

“So you're not lost?”

“Well…” I looked around. “Maybe just a little.”

“Oh God.”

“But I can get us unlost. Okay?”

“How about to L.A.? Can you get us back to L.A.?” she joked weakly, then stopped my heart when she snuggled against me, pressing her face to my throat.

God, I loved when she did that.

Unable to help myself, I banded my arms tightly around her. I might have buried my face in her hair and inhaled deeply, too, but no one had to know that part, because it was the story of my life: lusting and yearning after this woman who usually thought of me as something she might absently pat on the head and feed a cookie.

So instead, I just held her for as long as she wanted.

“Something's really—” She broke off.

“Really what, Rach?”

“Wrong. Really,
really
wrong.”

Pulling back, I looked her in the face, feeling an underlying sense of anxiety brought on by her tone.

“You mean something more than all this?”

She resisted looking into my eyes. Instead, she tried to burrow in again, tighter this time, nearly strangling me in the process.

But that was fine with me, because there were better things than breathing. Like holding her. Her lips brushed my neck, her hair stabbing into my eyes, but I didn't mind, because the silky strands smelled like honey and vanilla, and I could have smelled her all damn day long. Jeez, I was pretty far gone if I was noticing the scent of her hair over the thought of any injuries she might have sustained….

“I want to go back,” she whispered. “We can talk there.”

“Okay.” Besides, I wasn't any happier than she was, out here, in the middle of nowhere, with killer lightning bolts. “Let's go.”

And holding her hand, I started to lead the way.

If only I knew exactly which way that was.

H
i, my name is Rachel, and I'm officially freaked out, thank you very much. The clouds had all but vanished from the sky, which still seemed a very strange color, and when I looked at it for more than a second and focused, that odd sense of seeing right through everything hit me again. You'd think there'd be nothing up there in the wild blue yonder but clouds. Wrong. There was plenty: birds, satellites, planes filled with people watching movies, sleeping, talking.

God.

I couldn't look down either, because the ground was no better. It was filled with things like slugs and worms and other bugs the likes of which might make one go crazy if one thought about it for too long.

So I purposely drew a deep breath and didn't focus on anything but the intangible. Axel, still missing. Kel and I, still standing here all alone. And, at least in my case, frightened half to death.

Kel squeezed my fingers. “No worries, Rach. We'll be okay.”

I was trying not to panic, but I wasn't having much luck. “No worries,” I repeated like a mantra. “No worries…”

“This way,” Kellan said, pointing. Then he pulled off his T-shirt, and even though I'd already peeked, the sight of him left me utterly speechless.

“Um,” I said ever so intelligently, my tongue hanging out at the sight of all his well-toned flesh and hard sinew, “what are you doing?”

“Just as you suggested.” He ripped the hemline off the T-shirt with shocking ease, the muscles in his arms rippling, causing me to drool more. I swallowed hard and tried not to stare at his bared chest or abs, but as I've already established, I have no willpower at all.

He tied a strip of cloth around a branch, then touched my jaw, oblivious to my lusting. “No worries, right?”

Let's face it, the men in my life—both the bad boys I tend to collect and my brothers—spend little time coddling me, much less soothing or reassuring me.

Having Kellan do all three felt both foreign and utterly, shockingly…lovely.

Kel took a moment to look all around us carefully, as if memorizing landmarks.

Meanwhile, I couldn't tear my gaze off him. “Kel?”

“Yeah?”

“Why don't you need your glasses?”

He went still, then lifted his head, those piercing baby blues meeting mine. “I don't know.”

There was a moment of silence, which I characteristically broke first. “That's a little freaky, don't you think?”

He actually went to push his glasses farther up his nose, and remembered they weren't there. “A little, yeah.”

“Just so you know, the
Twilight Zone
theme song is running through my head.”

“As long as it's not the sound track from
Psycho
.” Taking charge and my hand at the same time, he pulled me onward.

I stared at his sleek, smooth back, damp from either the rain or sweat. Which one didn't matter, because both appealed. I was dizzy, wet and confused.

And desperately hungry for cookies.

Kel stopped to tear off a second strip of his shirt and tie it around yet a different branch. “Come on.”

“Right.” This take-charge Kellan was new. And incredibly appealing. “You think this is the right way?”

“Yep.”

Confident, too. Double whammy. We made more stops, tying a handful of strips to branches. Kel did the tying, muscles tight, brow furrowed. His jaw was scruffy, his hair its usual riotous mess. His eyes were fierce with concentration, and just looking into them made me shiver. The good kind of shiver, the kind that started at the toes, made pit stops at every erogenous zone and ended at the roots.

He lifted his gaze to mine, catching me staring, and some of his intensity cleared, but none of the heat.

And just like that, I knew.

I wanted to kiss him.

Shocked by the unexpected need, I shifted closer. Since he was so damn tall, I had to tip my head back to see into his face, which I did just in time to catch him taking a hard swallow.

“Rach,” he said, suddenly, endearingly, looking uncertain and off-balance again. “What are you—”

“Shh.” I wanted to just look at him forever, but that was weird. In any case, I'd definitely been staring for a beat too long now, and we were verging on awkward.

He swallowed again, and I slid my hands up his bare chest, giving myself another shiver, because his skin was warm and tough. I could feel his heart leap.

I could see it, too, but I didn't want to accept that, not right now. Right now, I wanted oblivion, I wanted comfort, and I wanted his kiss more than I wanted my next breath. “Kellan?”

He gave one unsure shake of his head, and touched mine. “You're hurt.”

“Not so much.” I lifted my hand to cover his on my jaw.

He pulled free and took a step back. “You're off your axis, then.”

But I'd seen it, the hint of something restless and hungry behind the mellowness.

He wanted me, too.

I closed the gap again, just one step, bringing us back within each other's breathing space. His was such a nice space, I thought.

How was it I'd never seen that?

He had that stubborn lock of wet hair falling into his eyes, dripping onto his nose, and unable to help myself, I pushed it over his forehead. And then there I was, my fingers in his hair, wanting more, so much more.

And given the way his hands went to my hips and squeezed, he felt the same way.

Unbelievably, everything around us seemed to sort of fade away, and I found myself lost in something new: his heated eyes.

“Rach, you're sending off a weird vibe here, and—”

I nudged my body up against his, and in response, he let out a rough, ragged breath.

Not so Zen-like now, was he?

The knowledge made me smile; the power made me feel drunk. One look at my face, and Kellan groaned. “I don't know what's up with you, but—”

“Shut up, Kel.” And to make sure of it, I kissed him.

He went utterly still, like a wall of stone, like a man who'd just entered either heaven or hell but wasn't sure which.

Then I touched the corner of his mouth with my tongue, and with another ragged groan, he hauled me up off the ground and dove in like a man starved for a feast.

And in perhaps the best surprise of the day, I learned something new about Kellan McInty.

The guy could kiss.

I mean, seriously kiss. Unlike anyone in my past, which had always been a little like the story of the Three Bears—either too much or not enough—Kel had it down: a hungry pressure, an uncivilized connection and just the
right
amount of tongue.

And then my mild-mannered, easygoing Kel did something a little shocking. He bumped it up to the next level, sinking his fingers into my hair, gripping my head so that the angle suited him better, and took it deeper, pressing me back against the closest tree. Now I had the hard tree trunk against my spine and Kellan's hard body against my front.

I'd been kissed plenty, but I had to admit, not as if nothing else mattered—not the lightning, not being lost in the woods, not a single thing…

Finally he lifted his head, his blue eyes so dark, they were nearly black. He stroked my lower lip with his thumb as he looked at me. “That was different for us.”

Before I could say a word in response, he kissed me again. And when I say kiss, I mean more like
devour.
As in no-holds-barred, destroy-any-lingering-thoughts, melt-all-the-bones-in-my-body
devour
. Seriously, I couldn't have whispered my own name if my life had depended on it.

Then he upped the heat even more by pressing a thigh hard between mine, while still taking my mouth with a possessiveness I'd never ever have guessed he carried. He kissed me long and deep, and so thoroughly, I'd completely forgotten where we were by the time he lifted his head.

His mouth, wet from mine, curved wryly. “Yeah. Definitely different.”

I couldn't tear my gaze from his lips, which I desperately wanted back on mine.
“Very.”

From somewhere behind us came a thrashing sound, familiar now, so I didn't leap out of my skin this time. And then two seconds later, Axel appeared, sticking his head through a bush. “Dudes, you gotta keep up.”

“Yeah,” Kellan said, holding my gaze, not to mention still having me pinned against the tree so that I could feel what the kiss had done to him.
Yowza.
“We'll try to keep up.”

I might have spoken, but my body kept humming with an undeniable sexual tension. Plus there was that underlying headache from whatever had happened to me out here.

Oh, and let's not forget my new superpowers.

Yeah, lots on my mind today, and I was quiet on the walk back. With Axel's dubious tracking skills, it definitely took longer than it should have, but with my thoughts racing faster than the speed of light, it didn't matter.

Unfortunately, out here in the Twilight Zone, day faded faster than a blink of an eye. No twilight, no dusk, just a disconcerting blink, and
poof
, daylight to nightfall with no warning at all.

Eeriest thing ever.

Well, except maybe for waking up on the ground with the ability to see through everything.

Luckily we had been within easy reach of the B&B when everything had happened. Unlike earlier though, the house wasn't lit, but was dark as can be. Without meaning to, I focused, and saw right into the house, into the darkness, and saw nothing.

So why did the hairs rise on the back of my neck?

“Lost power,” Axel declared with a shrug that said it was no big deal. “Shit happens, right?”

I gulped. I hated the dark, had ever since I had gotten hooked on reading Stephen King novels in eighth grade. “Does it happen a lot?”

“Enough. No biggee.”

No biggee, the stoner said. Okay, then, I'd just relax.

Not.

Kellan pulled me aside and lifted my face, studying me for a long moment the best he could in the dark, letting me study him back, which wasn't such a good idea, as I drowned myself in his eyes. “It's going to be okay,” he said.

Again, I felt that melting sensation, as if he really could make it so.

“I have the flashlight, remember.” He flicked it on and handed it to me.

I silently blessed his mother and sisters for drilling the sweet, sensitive gene into him, because he knew I hated the dark.

“Thanks,” I whispered, my throat unexpectedly thick.

“You're back to being very quiet,” he said. “Making me a little nervous.”

He should be more nervous about the fact that I now knew the answer to the age-old question, Shorts or briefs? But as he didn't yet know my secret, he might not appreciate the fact that I found his plaid boxers both sexy
and
amusing. I did manage a little smile, but he didn't catch it, his eyes holding mine captive.

“Everything's not okay, is it?” he murmured.

And much as I wanted to pretend it was, or at least to make fun of his plaid boxers, I slowly shook my head.

“Let's get inside,” he said. Then, so briefly I might have imagined it, he stroked my jaw. “Get you dry, hopefully fed with something other than that pasta sauce Marilee's working on, because trust me, yeesh.” He paused, waiting for another smile, but I couldn't muster one, not even for him.

“We'll figure it all out from there,” he said very quietly, still holding onto me. “Okay?”

I'd always prided myself on my independence. Having him comfort me still felt foreign. So I have no idea why suddenly I wanted to put my head on his shoulder and cry.

Silly. I'd never lacked for much in my life—well, except money—but maybe, as I was discovering, having a bit more warm-and-fuzzy in my life wasn't a bad thing.

“A few cookies, and I'll be fine. Good as new,” I said.

“Atta girl.”

We entered the back door of the inn, clomping into the kitchen with our wet clothes. The room glowed from candles and the lit woodstove, each causing flickering shadows to dance in the dark corners.

I purposely didn't look in the corners.

Marilee stood at the woodstove in black leggings, sheepskin boots and a long white sweater. Beneath she wore some damn expensive-looking lingerie, which I tried like hell not to notice.

She was stirring her large pot, frowning into it so fiercely, I wondered if she'd just taken a taste and discovered how bad it was.

She glanced up when we came in, her eyes widening at the sight of us drenched, probably still looking a little wigged out and, in some of our cases, still smoking. But her gaze kept returning to Kel—specifically, to his bare chest. “My God,” she murmured. “What happened?”