Soul Bound (28 page)

“Not like that. Put your weight into it.” Jace had spent the better part of the morning sharing some of Regan’s hard-earned lessons with Lia, until the sun’s rays had grown fierce enough to shred the fog. Now the grass gleamed a brilliant green beneath a spattering of weeds and wildflowers. “When you strike, you gotta make sure you hit your mark or your target will retaliate, harder and with far more precision.”

“I’m a healer, not a warrior.” Puffs of air escaped her lips, reminding him that she didn’t share his newfound stamina.

“Can you really be one without the other?” he challenged.

Boldness flared in her gaze, right before she lunged, her fingers fastened around the hilt of the dagger Regan had left behind for precisely this purpose. The blade struck him dead center in the heart, and he smiled. “Now that’s what I’m talking about.”

“I still can’t wrap my brain around the fact that you can’t be stabbed. My bones are still reeling from the blow.” She ran her palm over his chest where the blade had glanced off him. “It’s like you’re made of stone.”

He wished that were true. Then he wouldn’t have to struggle not to sweep her into his arms and wrestle her to the ground, wouldn’t ache to claim her lips or feel her soft curves mold to the hard planes of his body.

“Your turn.” A silent dare resonated in her voice, and he froze.

“I’m not stabbing you.”

“I was referring to your other idea. The one about you wrestling me to the ground.”

Great. She’d read his mind again. He really had to get a handle on his thoughts or they’d end up in serious trouble.

“Lia—”

She edged in closer, and her breasts grazed his chest in a tantalizing caress. “You don’t need to fight it anymore. What happened yesterday proves I’m immune.”

“You heard Regan. Being immune doesn’t necessarily mean your soul can’t be taken.”

“By an Ancient. Last time I checked, you weren’t an Ancient.”

His glance drifted to her lush, inviting mouth. It would’ve been so easy to swoop down and swallow it, so easy to drink from the sweet well of delights it promised. But fear nagged at him. What if she was wrong? What if
he
was the one who could break her?

His head fell forward even as his body retreated. “I can’t.”

Her frustration and disappointment rippled through the air. For a brief second he almost gave in, reached out and grabbed her. It took all the willpower he possessed to keep his hands from closing around her shoulders, his arms from crushing her to him.

Inhaling a deep, tempering breath, he sat on an old tree stump and gazed at the horizon, where land met sea and trees conspired to block out the fickle sun.

Lia crouched beside him, clutched his hand and rested the side of her face on his knee. As if guided by a will of their own, his fingers twined in the silky threads of her hair. Warmth tangled his gut, slowly spread to inundate him. It made no sense that she could be so right for him when he was all wrong for her. That her touch could infuse him with strength, even heal him, while his kiss risked shattering her mind and ruthlessly draining her of life.

“You’re wrong.” She gazed up at him, her eyes more startling in their blueness than the sky. “You won’t hurt me. Don’t ask me how I know. I just do.”

“Stop sneaking into my thoughts.”

“I’m not. You’re broadcasting them again.”

“So change the channel.”

She hooked her hand behind his neck, determinedly drew his face to hers. “What if I don’t want to?” Her breath swept across his mouth, made his whole body stiffen and burn. The gaping hole in his chest pulsed. “What if I want to hear your thoughts when you kiss me?”

“I’m not going to—”

With a quickness he failed to anticipate, she bridged the reassuring distance between them and claimed his mouth.

Chapter Twenty-Five

At the touch of her lips, everything inside him ignited in a brilliant blaze. A violent shudder traveled through him, blasting his resolve, incinerating everything but the gnawing hunger sizzling in his blood. He had to have her, to possess the part of her that had once belonged to him.

With an inhuman growl, he leapt to the ground with her trapped beneath him. Swallowing the gasp she released, he drank deeper. He couldn’t hold her close enough, couldn’t get enough of her sweet-tasting mouth. Need clawed at him, part physical and part something he didn’t understand. Something that unfurled its petals, like a carnivorous plant opening to receive its prey. And damned if he could stop it.

She arched her back, as if she, too, couldn’t get close enough. As if she, too, was piloted by a power beyond her control. Around them, blackened shadows gathered as a curtain of clouds swept in to suck the light from the day. Mere feet away, Siletz Bay clamored in wordless warning.

Lia’s reckless act had awakened something that slumbered not only within them, but in the atmosphere. The air seemed to hum with an electric energy he couldn’t explain. It rolled over him, prickled his skin, released tiny bursts in his bloodstream that only fueled the hunger.

The wild heat of his need knocked him to his senses. There was no doubt in his mind the fusing of their mouths had set something in motion. Something more powerful than the both of them. Dredging up whatever strength he had left, he yanked himself off Lia.

“We can’t do this. It’s too dangerous. I want you too damn much.”

Disappointment clouded her features, and he nearly threw himself on top of her again. But he didn’t.

With a pained groan, he zipped into the sheltering embrace of the surrounding woods, where he could struggle in peace to subdue the ravenous beast her kiss had unleashed within him.

There was a feeling that always came upon her on nights when the sky was sprinkled with stars and the clouds unraveled like ribbons of gauze. A feeling of inevitability, as if destiny truly did exist and one’s choices were merely twists and turns on a road that led to a single destination.

Just such a sky stretched over Lia that evening. Everything around her vibrated with a prickling, if not altogether mystical, energy. For the first time, she felt connected to the world surrounding her, as if the atoms that composed her body were an extension of those that formed the air and the trees and the ocean. The stars bubbled with the same current zipping through her veins. The same current that coursed through Jace.

He’d been gone for hours, yet she still felt him with her. It comforted her to know that she’d always carry a part of him inside her, no matter how much distance divided them. The kiss they’d shared had been everything she’d hoped for and more. She’d spent a lifetime looking for that small corner of existence where she belonged, and she’d found it today.

She belonged with Jace. If only he could stop being afraid long enough to admit it.

His kiss hadn’t drained her as he’d expected. It had fueled her, made her stronger and only cemented the mysterious bond that existed between them. Even the universe had recognized that irrefutable truth. She’d sensed it in the tiny ripples that had coursed through the atmosphere the second their mouths had met.

Her mind reached across the yawning space between them, sought out his. For one heartbeat she made contact, sensed his desire to return to her and finish what they’d started. Never before had she succeeded in reading his thoughts without the benefit of a touch. Something had changed tonight. She only wished she knew what that was.

“Come back to me, Jace.”

The only answer was the rustle of leaves and the mournful hoot of an owl rising to fill the night.

Deep in the forest, lulled by a silence interrupted only by the constant lap of waves striking the faraway shore, Jace struggled to resist Lia’s pull. He felt her calling to him. Felt the slicing edge of her loneliness and disappointment.

Dealing with his screwed-up emotions was bad enough. Now he had Lia’s to contend with. The force of her desire was as seductive as her lush mouth and molten gaze. How could any man, especially one as morally depraved as he, possibly resist her? Knots twisted his gut. The hunger was stronger than ever, but different somehow. It no longer screamed to possess but to merge, to give and receive. The brief sense of completion he’d found when his lips had melded with hers taunted him, silently dared him to savor it again.

God, he wanted to. Wanted it with a need that was painful. Something visceral told him he’d never experienced anything as sweet as Lia’s kiss. To a man who’d been a drifter his whole life, there was something infinitely appealing about a woman who could anchor him, give him purpose and chase away the solitude.

His memories hovered on the edge of his consciousness, scraping away at the walls of his mind as if looking for a way in. The man he’d been dueled with the creature he’d become. He couldn’t decide which of the two he preferred. Lia could never have loved the broken man he’d once been. Whether she could love the monster still remained to be seen.

An owl hooted, its cry an eerie aria filling the night. Somewhere behind him, Lia listened to that very sound. He knew he shouldn’t have left her alone, but he feared returning to her. Feared he was a far bigger threat to her than all the Kleptopsychs and Rogues combined.

According to Regan, Cal had worked some of his magic and shielded her. He had to hope that was enough to keep her safe until he pulled himself together. Because if he returned right now, he’d claim her, body and soul, the consequences be damned.

Determined to prevail over his dark urges, he spread out on the hard, stone-littered ground and grudgingly watched the stars puncture the black fabric of night.

Something blunt poked his ribs, annoying in its insistence. The owl’s hoot had been replaced by the coo of a mourning dove. Jace opened his lids, squinting as sunbeams slanted through the leafy trees to punch at his eyes.

“What the hell are you doing sleeping out here like some wild animal?” Regan towered over him, dressed in black, an army-style backpack hanging from her shoulders, her red hair blazing in the wind.

“Must’ve drifted off.” He rose to his feet and dusted the dirt from his clothing. “Is it morning already?” He hadn’t planned on staying out all night. The thought of Lia alone at the house made his stomach buck. “I have to get back to Lia.”

“Relax. She’s fine. I just checked on her. She’s pretty worried about you, though.”

A relieved sigh whooshed from his lungs. “I shouldn’t have left her unprotected.” He was screwing things up. Big-time.

“Why did you?”

What could he say?
Because I want to jump her bones, and I’m afraid if I do, I’ll kill her. Or worse, drive her insane.

“It’s complicated,” was his curt reply.

Regan made a humming sound deep in her throat. “I see. So it’s like that.”

“Don’t tell me you can read my mind, too.”

“No need. I see the way you two look at each other. Like there’s no one else around.”

Jace turned his back to Regan and began his trek back to the house. The last thing he wanted was to discuss his love life with his mother.

Still, after an unsettling stretch of silence, he felt compelled to ask. “How’d you do it?”

Regan, who now walked beside him, angled a puzzled glance his way. “Do what?”

“Make love to my father without killing him.”

She shrugged. “Luck, I guess. I was pretty green back then. Didn’t know all the rules. I could’ve easily drained him.”

Disappointment was a bitter pill to swallow. “That’s what I figured.”

Her gaze bore into him for the longest time. “There are ways, though. Ways to control your urges and the dark energy you emit. The fact that the Hybrids exist is proof that an immortal can successfully mate with a human.”

“How?”

“There’s no secret formula. It’s just mind over matter. For instance, Cal has taught us how to keep a soul from entering us. Creatures like us, we’re wired to attract souls. The second a life-force leaves the human shell that houses it, it naturally seeks us out. But by subduing the dark energy inside us, we can repel it.”

He recalled the incident at the train station, the way the woman’s essence had risen from her broken body and plowed into him. “Can you teach me?”

A luminous smile spread across her face. “That’s the idea.”

The mansion came into view, a tall, regal structure bleached by the morning sun. Sitting on the front steps, arms draped around her bent knees, was Lia. She looked tired, her features pale and drawn. Something inside him leapt at the sight of her.

She sprang from the steps and walked toward them. “I was worried sick. I though they got you.”

“I didn’t mean to scare you.” His voice sounded raw, gravelly. “Fell asleep.”

“In the woods?”

“Guess we’ve got ourselves a real outdoorsy type.” Regan gave him a motherly pat on the back.

Lia’s eyes remained deep and shadowed. He’d hurt her—he didn’t have to read her mind to know it—and that knowledge made him feel even worse than he already did. All he’d ever wanted was to protect her.

“How ’bout we get started?” Regan said in what looked like an attempt to break the tension. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Oh, I almost forgot.” She freed her arms from the straps around her shoulders and flung the backpack at Lia. “I took the liberty of gathering a few of your things. Some clothes, your purse…”

Lia’s complexion instantly brightened as she rummaged through the bag. “Thanks.”

“Did anyone see you?” Jace couldn’t help but worry she’d inadvertently led their enemies straight to them.

Regan rolled her eyes. “What do you think this is? Amateur hour? Have you forgotten I can pop in and out of places at will?”

The certainty with which she answered was enough to satisfy him.

Lia pulled her purse from the backpack and withdrew her cell phone. “Cassie’s called about a dozen times. I should call her.”

“I wouldn’t recommend it.” Regan’s tone was adamant. “They could trace it.”

“The Kleptopsychs?” Lia looked skeptical.

“They can pry information from humans, and they’ve got plants everywhere—hospitals, banks, phone companies.”