The Space Between (The Book of Phoenix) (40 page)

With a sharp exhale, he moved himself over me, then leaned back on his knees as his fingers glided under my panties. With hooded eyes, he gazed at my body as he slid the last piece of fabric either of us wore down, over my knees, off of my ankles. He teased me some more with his lips on my face, my neck, my chest, setting me on fire. Time passed. The room darkened with the sunset before he finally reached for his wallet and pulled out a condom. Something deep within my belly clenched with anticipation. He moved between my legs and hovered over me, his eyes asking me once again. My hands grabbed his ass, and I lifted my hips in answer.

I cried out when he first entered, although I expected the pain. He carefully moved inside of me, every one of my muscles clenched around him, then slowly stroked back and forth until I eventually relaxed and the pain turned to pleasure. We fell into a rhythm, rocking against each other, our moves becoming faster until we almost reached the brink. Then he’d shift us, turn us, put us into a new position, and start slow again, building up, up, up. He moved on top of me again and my legs braced against his shoulders and he pushed into me and I might have screamed as a wave of pure and unadulterated bliss washed over me. I shuddered even as I rocked against him. He drove into me again, harder and deeper. My world shattered. My body disintegrated.

I fell apart beneath him, but at the same time, I exploded outward, as if escaping the confines of my body. Jeric shouted as he exploded, too. Our souls soared, collided, combined, melded into each other. We hovered over the bed, still feeling the sensation of our bodies physically connected below us, but . . .

Oh.

My.

God
.

The physical sensation didn’t compare. Nothing on earth could possibly compare. Euphoria like no other as our souls united,
re
united, became one again.

I never knew how much I missed him, that a part of me, a
huge
part, was even gone until now.

Chapter 34

  Holy. Fucking. Shit.

The sensation of our joined bodies felt distant, on the far edge of any consciousness I still held onto. Our energies tangled together in the air as we hovered above the physical world below. That’s what I felt more than anything—Leni’s soul woven into mine. And nothing could have felt more right.

“Is this normal?”

I felt the question more than heard it, the words reverberating through us, so I didn’t know if I heard Leni’s real voice or not, but I could listen to its angelic quality forever. Damn. I could
hear
her. Feel her. Whatever.

“Hell no,” I answered, and her energy within me sparked brightly at the sound of my “voice.” Or the feel of it. Again, whatever. “This is all about me and you. Us.”

“I could stay like this forever,” she said with a sigh of pleasure that coursed through us.

I tried to move us, willing our energy to the right, to snag a better look at our bodies. They appeared to be frozen in place. A slight tug came from my physical body, as though if I tried to go too far, it would yank my soul back into it.

“Wow. Look at us,” Leni said.

I chuckled. “We look sexy as hell. Especially you. That look on your face . . .”

The feeling of embarrassment ran through us. “Well, you are screwing me out of my mind. Literally.”

“No, Leni. I’m making love to you.”

Her energy heated around and through me. “This is the most amazing feeling. Ever. Will it always be like this between us?”

“I fucking hope so.”

We studied ourselves for a moment longer.

“Should we go back?” Leni asked. “I really don’t want to.”

“Mmm . . . it’s not nice to leave us like that. We’re in the middle of the best part.”

Her smile ran through me. “Exactly. I don’t want it to end.”

“Nothing’s ending, babe. This is only the beginning.”

I imagined wrapping my arms around her and pulling her into me, and our energies shifted, as if feeling my hug. Reluctantly, we disentangled our souls and slid into our bodies.

“
Oh, Jeric, yes!
” Leni’s voice, like her soul’s but more real, screamed in my head. She clenched my cock inside her, making me come harder than I’d ever done before.

Then we both collapsed.

*
*
*

Leni lay on her stomach, her face turned toward me, looking unbelievably sexy as she slept. Maybe because I knew she was naked under the sheet. The morning sun had woken me about an hour ago, but with only a break long enough to take a piss, I’d lain here watching her sleep the whole time. Whatever had happened last night had totally wiped us out. We’d slept for over twelve hours. And my body ached with the need to do it again.

Please wake up soon
, I thought,
so I can make you come like that again.

Her eyelids immediately popped open, her eyes wider than I’d ever seen. “Did you just say something?”

I bolted upright, my own eyes widening. Because I’d heard her voice. Like last night, right when she came—not with my ears, but in my head.

“I heard you,” I thought, and her face exploded with emotion as she sprang to her knees.

“Me, too!” She signed and thought the words at the same time. “In my head! Oh, my God, Jeric!”

My heart swelled with excitement as did my dick, because the sheet had fallen to the bed around her legs, and her tits were bouncing beautifully. Her expression flickered, and she grabbed the sheet to wrap around herself. Oh, shit. This could be a problem.

“Can you hear my thoughts?” I asked her with my mind and my hands. “
All
of them?”

Her face turned a deep shade of red. “Can you hear
mine
?”

If she was thinking anything at all, which she had to have been with that heavy flush, I didn’t hear her thoughts, only her direct question. But I couldn’t help myself.

The corners of my mouth twitched with a grin. “You’re thinking you want to play with my piercings again. Flick them with your tongue. Feel my muscles under your hands. Wrap your mouth around my—”

“Stop!” she shrieked in my mind as she curled over her legs and tugged the sheet over her head. Hiding from me. “I was
not
thinking that. Not all of it.”

I laughed and tried to pull the sheet off of her, but she held it tightly.

“Not all of it?” I teased. “So you were thinking
some
of it?”

After a long moment, she lifted her head and peeked out of the sheet, her eyes narrowed. “Wait. You didn’t hear my thoughts at all, did you?”

I teased her for a bit longer by not replying, but I eventually shook my head.

“Then how did you know I—” She didn’t finish her sentence. Her face reddened again.

I stroked her cheek with my thumb, enjoying how I could touch her and communicate at the same time. “I was just hoping, because that’s what I was thinking about you. And when you pulled the sheet up to cover those gorgeous tits of yours, I thought you’d heard my thoughts.”

She sat all the way up, keeping the sheet around her as much as possible. “Are you thinking anything right now?”

I gave her a sly grin. “If you can’t hear my thoughts, I’m sure you can guess what they are.”

She looked down to my lap, the sheet now a tent over me, and returned my grin. Unable to contain myself a moment longer, I yanked the sheet out of her hands and attacked her.

Her perfect mouth met mine and opened for me, and I couldn’t get enough of her—enough of her soft skin, the taste of her, the feel of her. Of her voice in my head, moaning my name and asking for more. The desire to do what we did last night built into an agonizing ache that hardened me like a rock.

“I need to feel you,” I finally thought to her, our eyes locked. “
All
of you.”

She kept her eyes on mine and nodded.

I couldn’t rip through the Trojan wrapper or get the condom on fast enough, but finally,
finally
I was inside her. We fell into a rhythm and although I didn’t want to rush it, we built up quickly. I couldn’t help it. She felt so fucking
good
. Our souls exploded out of our bodies and came together once again.

The feeling was as amazing as the first time, but not quite as shocking. After a few minutes of enjoying the sensation, we agreed to see what we could do like this, with our souls out of our bodies. We moved around the room, and even out of it to the front of the camper, taking in this small corner of the world from such a different perspective. We both felt the tug to the physical world, and we returned, sliding back in as our bodies shattered together.

We collapsed to the bed and lay next to each other, hand in hand. I couldn’t keep my eyes open and drifted off to sleep, awaking with a panic. To
Leni’s
panic coursing through my body. I could feel it as if it were my own. I sat up, glad to see the sun hadn’t moved too far in the sky—we’d only slept an hour or so, better than twelve.

Leni lay next to me and stared at the ceiling with her arms crossed over her chest, her fingers tapping a rhythm on her bicep.

“What’s the matter, babe?” I asked her as I pushed up on my elbow.

“We need to go,” she said. “The feeling’s back. Is my truck done? Did you ever find out? We need to get out of here.”

She suddenly sat up and bolted out of the bed. She grabbed clothes and pulled on a pair of white cut-off shorts and a loose-fitting, gauzy top that slid off one shoulder. She looked so sexy, I wanted to rip them off of her.

“Leni, what’s the rush?”

She threw my jeans and t-shirt at me. “I feel it. We have to get out of here. They’re coming again.”

Her panic got to me, and I began to dress as hurriedly as she did. “Who?”

“The Shadowmen. They’re coming to kill us. That’s what they do.”

I stood up and buttoned my fly. “How do you know this?”

“I don’t know.” She glanced around the camper as if it held answers. “I just do. I feel it. We have to get to the mansion, like right
now
.”

My own heart flew into a panic now, and I stopped mid-motion, my shirt in my hands. “No fucking way. We’re not going there.”

She spun on me, her face filled with disbelief. “We have to!”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Why?”

My stomach dropped as the memories flooded over me again. My throat tightened. “I’m not doing that to you again, Leni. Please understand.”

Her expression morphed from anger to understanding. “You blame yourself,” her voice said softly in my head. “You think you killed Jacey . . . you killed me.”

“How could I not?” I demanded. “It was my fault. I should have never taken you there. I won’t make the same mistake twice.”

“But Jeric, it wasn’t—”

“Forget it, Leni!” I silently yelled. “You don’t exactly have the best instincts, remember?”

Her face fell, and guilt stabbed my heart with the low blow, especially because I felt the pull, too, stronger than it had been for days. But I also remembered what had happened last time, when she’d been too out of it to know.

“We’re not going,” I said. “End of discussion.”

I charged out of the camper door, turned in a circle under the awning and pushed my hands through my hair, not knowing what to do, where to go. Leni’s fear about the Shadowmen felt very real, but so was my fear of going to the mansion. I wasn’t taking her into that fiasco again.

Too many people had died because of me in that last life, including Jacey. Although I’d hurt a lot of people in this one—physically and emotionally—my body count was zero, despite what my grandfather chose to believe about my parents and my sister. Leni was absolutely not about to become the first.

Chapter 35

  I sat in a chair in the darkened room, my elbows on my knees as I stared out the window, my head pounding as I tried to figure out what to do. Jacey lay in the bed, coming in and out of consciousness, her body weakening by the hour. But it was the look in her eyes that would forever haunt me. The gleam of life behind them slipping away. She kept insisting we continue on, but I had no way of following the pull. Not when it came from the middle of the water. And not with all those Shadowmen out there.

Several large, dark shadows flew wide circles in the sky, buzzards waiting for us to come out. I had no idea how many more lurked on the ground in the shadows of the building and trees around us, but the scene felt way too familiar. I was not leading her to her death as I’d done to my brothers.

I closed my eyes, unable to fight the memories.

A special ops mission in the Middle East only those with the highest of clearances knew about. My team of six men who were like brothers to me crouching in an abandoned building on the outskirts of the city. Across the street was a secured compound where a covert meeting of known terrorists was taking place. We were to go in, make the kill, and get out. But the target had way too many bodyguards surrounding the compound. One bad move on our part, by any one of us, and we’d blow the whole mission.

My men wanted to move in. I wanted to analyze the situation further, knowing there had to be another way. But we were running out of time. Fast.

“Let’s do it, sir,” Jeeves whispered from his crouched position next to me. “We got this. Let’s kill these camel-fuckers and get the hell out.”

He was just a kid. We all were really. At twenty-two, I was one of the oldest on the team. And the one in charge.

I knew there were too many guns out there. I should have never done what I did.

But still, I gave the order.

We charged out of our hole, everyone firing as we went. Gunfire filled the quiet night, and the bodyguards immediately shot back. We took down two. Three. A fourth. Then we lost control of the situation.
I
lost control. Smoke and the smell of gunpowder filled the air as my men began dropping in front of me. One after another. Until they were all down.

My men.

My brothers.

The only family I’d ever felt was real.

Gone.

All of them.

The details of what happened next were unclear. A backup team had arrived right as we’d moved in, but I hadn’t known. Otherwise, I would have waited for them to get into position. And my men, my brothers, would still be alive. Instead, only I survived. The backup team completed our mission. Every accolade I was given for my efforts and sacrifice felt like a punch in the nuts, a reminder of those who had made the true sacrifice. I couldn’t wait for the day of my discharge. It should have been dishonorable.

I opened my eyes and rubbed my hand over my face, not surprised to find it moist with tears. I wasn’t about to take Jacey into that same situation. I’d thought we’d found backup when the people had pulled us into this abandoned hotel on the water’s edge, thinking we’d found others like us, trying to help. But they’d led us into this room and left, not to be seen again. Besides, there were only two of them and two of us. We didn’t even have Sammy anymore. He’d taken off, deeper into the building when we’d come in, and I hadn’t seen him since. And there were a dozen or two Shadowmen out there, not counting the ones I couldn’t see.

No, I wasn’t doing it again.

I’d survived the death of my brothers. Of having to face their wives and parents because I’d felt I needed to. I owed that much to them. Each visit was harder than the previous one, creating another crack in my heart.