TWENTY-ONE
I felt far from social when we returned to the mansion, so I made a beeline for my suite and locked the door behind me. A long, scalding-hot shower failed to erase my memories, and my mind was stuck on a continuous loop, replaying Emma’s death over and over again.
Was there something I could have said or done to save her? Some way to convince Anderson or Cyrus that it wasn’t fair to hold an insane woman responsible for her actions?
In some traditions, when you save a person’s life, you then become responsible for that person. It was a cruel, capricious universe that made my rescue the first step on Emma’s path to destruction. In a fair world, Emma would have come out of that pond sane and healthy. Maybe her marriage to Anderson would have dissolved anyway—from what I’d heard, their marriage had already been on shaky footing when Emma was kidnapped—but she would not have fixated on me, nor would she have run off to join the Olympians to spite Anderson.
It burned me somewhere deep inside that I had rescued Emma only to have her die while Anderson looked on.
Because I wasn’t feeling wretched enough already, my mind insisted on dangling my conversation with Maggie in front of me, the conversation during which Maggie had suggested that Emma’s jealousy wasn’t entirely misplaced. No matter how I looked at it, I still saw no sign that Anderson was interested in me that way, but then maybe I didn’t know where to look. Maybe I just didn’t know Anderson well enough yet to pick up the cues. And maybe if I had picked them up, I’d have been able to find some way to discourage him, and then—
My thoughts were spiraling out of control, and I knew it. Logic told me in no uncertain terms that Emma’s death was not my fault. I’d done everything I could to prevent it, and I had absolutely nothing to feel guilty about. But logic was a cold comfort, and despite my attempts to distract myself and stop thinking about it, I was brooding myself into a deep, dark funk.
I tried everything I could think of to occupy my mind with something else, but Emma’s death loomed over me like a massive shadow blocking out the light of the sun.
And then, as I sat on my couch with my computer on my lap and clicked from one website to another, looking for my magic potion of forgetfulness, I clicked by the page where I’d seen the ad for the Indian art exhibit at the Sackler, and I remembered the mixture of comfort and passion I’d experienced in Jamaal’s arms last night, before he’d pulled away from me yet again.
Jamaal had a way of occupying my mind like nothing else in the world did, and as I closed my eyes and tried to remember every touch and caress, every word, every scent, every sound, the rest of the world seemed to fade away. He was such a hard, angry man, and yet his lips were deliciously soft, his hands gentle. I shivered in remembered pleasure, wishing I had kept my wits about me and not touched his scars.
How would things have worked out if I hadn’t made that crucial mistake? If Jamaal were an ordinary man, I knew exactly where things would have led, but Jamaal was anything but ordinary, and there was more than just his scars holding him back.
I was very aware that I was reaching for a distraction, looking for an excuse to end my self-imposed isolation, but it occurred to me that Jamaal had probably gone back out to the clearing to practice with Sita this afternoon once I was safely out of the house. There was good reason to think she might be a bit cranky today after our aborted attempt at romance. I wondered if there was any chance she would take her anger out on Jamaal if I wasn’t around. The thought sent a chill of alarm through me.
Was my sudden concern nothing but a big, fat rationalization, an excuse to fling myself at Jamaal when he’d made it clear he thought we should maintain our distance? Yes. But I didn’t care. I needed a distraction, and Jamaal was the biggest, best distraction I could imagine.
It was a little after eleven at night when I rapped on Jamaal’s door. It didn’t occur to me until after I’d knocked that some people like to get a full night’s sleep and go to bed at a reasonable hour. I had the vague impression that Jamaal was a night owl, but I didn’t have much evidence to support it.
If he didn’t answer the door, should I assume he was asleep? Or should I worry that my fears were more than a flimsy rationalization and Sita had hurt him?
Luckily, I didn’t have to make that decision, because the door opened, and Jamaal stood there in all his manly glory, looking good enough to eat.
He hadn’t been in bed yet, or he wouldn’t have gotten to the door so fast, but he had changed into a pair of plaid pajama bottoms topped with a wife-beater. Instinct told me he wore the top to cover his scars, even in his sleep, and the thought made me hurt somewhere deep inside.
“What do you want?” he asked curtly when I just stood there in his doorway staring at him.
If I’d come down just because I was worried Sita might have hurt him, I could turn around and go back to my room now. He was obviously fine. Besides, he was blasting out keep-away vibes so hard I couldn’t possibly miss them.
“Did you practice with Sita while I was gone today?” I asked, instead of acting on the unsubtle message.
Jamaal sighed and rubbed his eyes like he was tired. I didn’t think he was. I didn’t feel like standing in the hall, so I pushed past him into his sitting room. The door to his bedroom was open, and I could see that the covers on his bed had been neatly pulled back. Jamaal was the kind of neat freak who makes his bed every day, so I knew this meant he’d been about to turn in for the night.
“Go to bed, Nikki,” Jamaal said, a hint of pleading in his voice.
“Tell me what happened with Sita. Was she pissed off because of last night?”
Jamaal looked like he wanted to strangle me. Once upon a time, I’d have been intimidated by that look, but not anymore. As long as he was in control of himself, he would never hurt me, and he was firmly in control. I crossed my arms and gave him my best stubborn, implacable look.
He closed his sitting room door. It wasn’t quite a slam, but it was close.
“Yes, she was pissed off,” he said.
“Did she hurt you?” If she had, he was okay now, but that didn’t stop my blood pressure from rising at the thought.
He rolled his eyes. “Of course not. But she tried to go looking for you even though I told her you weren’t in the house.”
That didn’t sound good. “Maybe she didn’t understand you.” I still had trouble wrapping my brain around the idea that Sita understood anything people said to her. How the hell did a tiger learn English?
I shook my head at myself. I had to stop thinking of Sita as a tiger. That was the form she took, but that wasn’t what she actually was. She was magic, and who knew what her limits were?
“She understood,” Jamaal said grimly. “I wasn’t sure she wasn’t going to pick on someone else to punish me, so I put her away. You have to keep your distance, Nikki. It’s not safe to be around me.”
I heard the hint of bitterness in my own laugh. “I think safe is a thing of my past. In the last couple of months, I’ve been beaten, bitten, kidnapped, murdered—twice!—and threatened with fates worse than death. I doubt I’ll ever feel safe again.” I shivered, suddenly chilled by my own recap of what I’d been through. I was lucky I wasn’t as insane as Emma by this point.
Jamaal took a step toward me, and I think he was planning to give me a hug, but he stopped himself and clenched his fists at his sides.
“The closest I’ve come to feeling safe,” I continued, and this time I took the step forward, “was last night when I was in your arms. When you kissed me, I forgot the rest of the world existed.” I reached out to touch his chest. The fabric of his shirt was thin enough that I could feel the ridges of his scars beneath it. I looked up into his eyes. “I need to forget for a while. Please.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Jamaal said, but he didn’t move away from me, and his eyes were dark with desire. “Sita—”
“Is going to have to learn to live with it. And if she can’t, then you’ll just have to go back to coping with your death magic the old-fashioned way. You managed to do it for a century before her.”
His face hardened. “If you can call what I did ‘managing.’ You remember that long list of bad things that have happened to you? Who was it who beat you?”
I’d thought Jamaal had forgiven himself for that. Apparently, I was wrong. “Even when your temper flared, you wouldn’t have done that to one of your friends,” I said. “You thought I was the enemy. Look, I don’t like it when you go off like a powder keg, and I know fighting the death magic made you miserable, but if using Sita to vent it means you have to live your life in complete isolation from the rest of us, then it isn’t worth it. I’d rather deal with your temper.”
Jamaal shook his head. He opened his mouth to argue, but I reached up and put my fingers on his lips to stop him.
“You deserve to have a life,” I told him, caressing the fullness of his lower lip with my thumb as I closed the last remaining distance between us. Almost against his will, he put his arms around me. There was a look very like fear in his eyes, and I was determined to extinguish it. I raised up on my tiptoes and kissed him, and a small sound of need escaped me.
“This is a bad idea, Nikki,” he said against my lips, but the sexy rasp in his voice and the way his hands gripped me tighter said he was in as much of a mood to be bad as I was.
I breathed deep, taking in his scent of smoke and cloves and something else I suspected was hair product. And underneath was the scent of him, of the man who could chase all other thoughts from my mind with the lightest brush of skin against skin, or even with the faintest hint of a smile. I slid my hands up his chest and looped them around his neck, pulling his head down toward me.
For all his protests, he didn’t resist. His lips came down on mine, and there was no longer room in my brain for anything but the taste of him, the feel of him against me. He was rapidly hardening beneath those soft flannel PJs of his, and I wished I were taller so I could grind something other than my belly against him.
Jamaal apparently had a similar thought, because his hands slid down my back to my butt and he boosted me up with casual strength. I groaned into his mouth and wrapped my legs around him, reveling in the feel of him. His tongue stroked mine rhythmically, and I grabbed hold of a double handful of his hair to remind myself not to let my hands wander. It was hard to remember anything at the moment, hard to think of anything but how glorious his lips felt as he kissed me.
My heart was already tripping along happily in my chest, but when Jamaal carried me through the sitting room and into his bedroom, I thought it might burst. I wanted him more than I wanted my next breath, wanted to lose myself in the sensations he sparked in my body, but I knew from past experience that I needed to keep some small section of my brain on-line and functional if I didn’t want to scare him off again.
Jamaal laid me down on the crisp white sheets of his bed, pushing the covers further aside without breaking the kiss. He came to rest on top of me, his lower body held in the cradle of my legs, which I kept wrapped around him. My hands yearned to explore, to tear away the clothing that separated us. I wanted to feel his skin, hot and slick against mine, but I didn’t dare make any overtures.
I let go of Jamaal’s hair and groped for the headboard. I hadn’t paused to examine it when Jamaal had carried me in, but I had a vague impression it was carved of dark wood and had some posts I could hold on to. Maybe if I kept my hands out of the fray entirely, I could keep them from wandering when they shouldn’t. I found a couple of handholds and latched on, still kissing him for all I was worth and holding him close with my legs.
I almost howled in protest when he broke the kiss, but he didn’t withdraw from me, merely cupped the side of my face in his hand and stared down into my eyes. With his erection pressed up tight against me, there was no missing his desire. Unfortunately, there was no missing the hint of fear in his eyes, either.
“I want you,” he whispered, then rolled his hips against me to emphasize his point. I gasped in pleasure and arched my back. “But you know I have . . . issues.”
I let go of the headboard long enough to run my fingers down the side of his face in a caress that I hoped was equal parts sensual and comforting. “I know. I don’t care about your issues. Tie my hands so I don’t get careless, and then have your way with me.”
A tremor ran through him, and he closed his eyes.
Shit. I was losing him.
“Don’t you dare stop now!” I said, clamping my legs even more firmly around him.
“You deserve better than me.”
“I’ll decide what I deserve.” I was somewhat heartened by the fact that despite his words, he was still rock hard against me. There was a part of him trying to withdraw, but it wasn’t all of him. “I want you inside me.”
He shook his head. “You don’t understand. I had an owner once . . . The scars turned her on. She—”
I shut him up with a kiss, gently taking hold of his lip between my teeth when he would have pulled away. Apparently, he found that sexy, because he momentarily forgot his objections and returned my kiss with an intensity that took my breath away.
He was panting heavily when he ended the kiss. “Have to keep my shirt on,” he said between breaths.
“Don’t care,” I said, and realized I was panting with need, too. Actually, I did care, but the time to talk to Jamaal about whatever had been done to him to make him so skittish about the scars was not now. I didn’t want him thinking about anything that might make him back off yet again, so I channeled my inner porn star. I’m not usually into talking dirty, but for Jamaal I was more than willing to make an exception. “F*ck me. Now!”
It’s amazing the effect those two little words can have on a guy. Jamaal forgot all about his excuses and apologies and explanations. He pushed up to his knees so he could get to the fly of my jeans, and he had them open and down before I could even offer to help. I’d have liked to have taken them off entirely, but he seemed in too much of a hurry and I wasn’t about to complain.
I groaned when he dropped his pajamas and I got a good look at his erection. I’d known from the feel of him against me that he was, shall we say, well endowed, but naked and ready for action, he was nothing short of magnificent. My fingers itched to reach out and touch him, to stroke the smooth hardness of him, but since I hadn’t let him pour out his whole tale of woe, I didn’t dare, not knowing what might trigger traumatic memories.
A shiver of need passed through me, along with a tiny twinge of anxiety. I’m no virgin, but my spectacular ability to fall for inappropriate or unavailable men meant I wasn’t the most sexually experienced twenty-five-year-old in the world, and Jamaal’s size promised an uncomfortable beginning. I hoped it wouldn’t hurt so much that I couldn’t hide it. The last thing I wanted was for Jamaal to feel even a twinge of guilt.
“Condom,” I reminded him as he stretched out above me, having barely remembered in time.
“Not necessary,” he assured me. “The lines don’t mix.”
I took that to mean that descendants of different divinities couldn’t have children together, which I stored away as something to ask questions about some other time. Right now, I was more than prepared to take Jamaal’s word for it. I spread my legs as wide as I could with my damn jeans and panties restricting the motion. Jamaal didn’t take me up on my offer to let him tie my hands, but he did pin my wrists to the pillow above my head. I had no objections.
I arched toward him in anticipation . . .
And felt like I’d been plummeted into a pool of ice-cold water when I heard a feline growl, way too close to me.
Jamaal cursed and shoved me aside, putting himself between me and the five-hundred-pound tiger that had suddenly appeared on the bed beside us. I rolled off the side of the bed, frantically pulling up my pants as I did. Sita growled again, the sound just short of a roar.
“I did not summon you!” Jamaal shouted at her.
Staying out of sight might have been my wisest choice, but I couldn’t help peeking up over the side of the bed. Jamaal was on his knees, his arms spread wide as if that would block Sita from getting to me. We both knew she could jump right over him if she wanted to. He hadn’t bothered to pull his pajamas back up, and I saw that his backside was as scarred as the rest of his torso. He reached out as if to touch Sita—which he seemed to need to do to put her away—but she danced out of reach, baring a very intimidating set of teeth. Her eyes seemed to glow in the darkness of the room, and they locked on me like laser beams.
Jamaal moved to put himself between us again, trying to cut off her line of sight, but I didn’t want him getting hurt because of me, and I worried Sita wasn’t above taking out her temper on him. The idea that she’d just appeared out of nowhere without being summoned wasn’t what you’d call a comfortable one. I wasn’t about to cower while Jamaal took the heat for me, so I rose to my feet and glared at the tiger.
“Jamaal has a right to a life, Sita,” I said. “You can’t keep him entirely to yourself.”
“Shut up, Nikki!” Jamaal snapped at me as Sita growled her disapproval. “Just get out of here while you can.”
There wasn’t much I could do to help, but leaving Jamaal to face an angry tiger by himself didn’t seem like such a hot idea. Of course, staying and getting mauled didn’t sound so great, either.
I shook my finger at Sita like I was scolding a small child. “If you hurt him, I swear to God I’m—”
Sita interrupted me with a roar that rattled my teeth.
“She won’t hurt me,” Jamaal said with conviction. “Now get the f*ck out of my room.”
There were a lot of things I wanted to say just then, but I swallowed them all. Jamaal said he hadn’t summoned her, but could I be sure that was entirely true? We’d taken some slapdash steps to avoid triggering his issues, but maybe it hadn’t been enough. Maybe we’d avoided the conscious issues, but the unconscious ones were deeper and more insidious. So insidious his subconscious had called for Sita to intervene. Maybe he would have to talk through whatever had happened to him in his slave days before he would be able to let someone get so close again.
Or maybe Sita was as out of control as his temper had been, before he’d learned to summon her.
I knew I couldn’t help him. Not right now, anyway. I didn’t want to leave him to face Sita’s wrath alone, but I suspected my continued presence would just make her more angry.
Mentally promising myself that this was not over, that I was not going to give up on Jamaal no matter how difficult the situation, I slowly backed out of the room.
I was awakened in the night by another blast of thunder. I was surprised to discover that I’d fallen asleep at all, considering how long I had tossed and turned, searching for a solution to the Sita problem—one that didn’t involve Jamaal having to shut one or the other of us out of his life. And wondering if he was just one more on the list of unavailable men I was destined to fall for.
I rose from my bed and went to the window, hoping to see that it was pouring down rain, but the sky was clear enough that I could have counted the stars if I’d wanted to. I wondered how big the clearing was going to be when Anderson had finished venting his pain and rage. Hopefully, we’d still have some woods left.
I slept only fitfully after that, waking up every forty minutes or so, brooding about Emma, and Jamaal, and my most recent brush with death. By 4 A.M., I was lying in bed debating whether I should try to get some more sleep or just give up and get out of bed. The decision was taken out of my hands when the phone beside my bed rang.
Phones ringing at four in the morning are rarely a good thing. The only person I’d given my land line number to was Steph. The last time she’d called so early, it was because the Glasses’ house burned down.
Dread pooled in my stomach as I sat up and turned on the light. I blinked in the glare, trying to see the caller ID before picking up the phone.
My hand was halfway to the phone when my vision cleared enough for me to read the caller ID: Cyrus Galanos.