Head Rush (31 page)

My stomach does a flip at the very thought of it.

I trace a circle in the crumb dust at the bottom of the nut bowl. Fear of fear has always been the worst for me. I have to get it under control. I have to get everything under control!

“Tell me,” he says, warm breath on my ear.

“Fear of fear.” I trace a larger circle in the nut bowl.

“It’s not fear, it’s power. Think of it as power.”

“What if it’s too much? Too overwhelming?”

“It’s just another zing, Justine. You’ve done this a hundred times.”

Not this
, I think.

“Do you have a bad feeling about it? Because you should listen to your instincts—”

“It’s not about instincts.” I turn to him. “I just want to know, how did you do it? All these past months you stayed in Midcity when you could’ve been free and safe elsewhere. Or that day you climbed into Otto’s penthouse like Robin Hood, knowing there were snipers around. And walking into the line of fire with the Brick Slinger. Especially that. What did you say to yourself, to make yourself do it? Didn’t you ever worry you’d collapse into a frightened little ball?”

“Don’t do this, Justine. I know what you’re doing.”

“I’m asking you to tell me. Weren’t you ever scared? Scared of being…
less than
?”

He puts a hand on either side of my face. “All the time.”

My entire being flares with something I can’t name.

“After I hurt so many people with my mistakes back at the little school, and destroyed Otto—I
was
less than. I know how it feels—”

“You were just a boy—”

He presses a finger to my lips. “You can’t change what it was to me, the idea that I’d let so many down. I didn’t ever want to feel like that again, and it felt safer not to care. I used my power to control people. To control everything. I took what I wanted, and the hell with anyone. That was me, curling into a little ball. So, to answer your question, I have felt like it, and I have done it.”

I think back on confident, charismatic Packard, the man I met at Mongolian Delites, the mastermind overlord. A man out only for himself. That was actually a man being safe. I’ve always imagined his living dangerously. I wonder if he’s ever lived as dangerously as he is now.

“You found the strength to stand and fight for what’s right. What did you say to yourself?”

“Mmm…” he smiles. “It’s not quite so noble as that. Going to the penthouse that afternoon, I needed to see you again. It was stupid and reckless, but I wanted to see you and touch you. I didn’t say anything to myself, I just did it. And the Brick Slinger, I couldn’t let him get you, or Shelby or Jordan.” He kisses me on the nose, on the cheek, the forehead, pulling me closer with each kiss, so that we’re chest to chest. “There was no great bravery or nobility in it.”

“Don’t diminish it.”

He puts his forehead to mine. “You
’
re driven by a sense of justice. I just wanted you.”

“That’s not all it was.”

“And you came back. I trusted you would, and you did.”

I push him away, overwhelmed, wishing I could trust like that. I shouldn’t have come. Seeing him tonight, it’s already made everything harder. “This won’t work.” I back up. “I need to keep my wits about me.”

His eyes seem a brighter green against his flushed cheeks. “Who needs wits?”

“Maybe I do.” I back up some more and hit the wall.

“You don’t need wits. You have good instincts.” His voice is husky, and he looks at me with the forward focus of a predator. Or a lover. “Sexy, hot, wonderful, delectable instincts.” He comes in closer.

“Oh, God—” I put up my hands to stop him, only to touch his shirt. I bunch up the fabric in my fists. “Goddammit.”

He pulls my fists off him, clenching his hands around mine, then, slowly, he opens my right hand and kisses my palm, watching my eyes as he presses it against the paneling above my head. The surface feels cool and smooth against the back of my hand, and my stomach goes quivery.

He’s near enough I feel the warmth of his ragged breath on my forehead. He turns to kiss my other palm, and pushes that hand to the wall above my head, so that both my hands are trapped. Then he kisses the silky slip of skin between my elbow and my armpit. Everything is spiraling out of control.

“You okay?” he grates.

I don’t know if I’m okay.

He pulls away. “Justine?”

“Do it again. On the other side.”

He kisses the tender part of my other arm now. I want him to kiss everywhere tender. I want to open up to him, and cast everything to the wind. To be as undone as my skate laces.

I go up on tiptoes to kiss him. The graze of his lips and the press of his cock make my belly go liquid. He lets go of my hands and slides his fingers down my arms, pushing his hard ridge between my legs, a keen deliciousness, even through my long underwear, jeans, and snow pants. I suck in his tongue, a substitute for his cock—not near enough, but delicious all the same.

I tangle my arms around his waist, needing to keep him pressing specifically in that spot. He’s gone on to the buttons of my shirt, feverishly. Soon he’s kissing my breast, sending a blunt wave of lust down through me.

“Justine, I want to discover every inch of you!” he says. He has gotten my shirt open and he kneels, nuzzling my bare tummy with his sandpapery face, pushing down my snowpants. I fist my hands in his hair and step out of them.

“Every single inch of you,” he adds, enthusiastically. He looks up at me, holding my gaze as he fingers the top button of my fly. I watch him watch me. He snaps it open.

“You’ve already discovered every inch of me. You remember it just fine. I’m the one who can’t remember.” Air chills tender inches of bare tummy above the lace of my panties.

“Not really, because, you’re not the woman I made love to that day. You’re the woman who had that day stolen from her. Who fought like hell to bust the revise. And this is the first time of forever.”

I swallow. I have nothing to say to that.

He pushes down my pants, sliding his warm, rough fingers up and down my hips, like he’s learning me.

I grab onto his hair and pull him up for a kiss. I want everything to last. It has to be enough to last. I stiffen up at this thought. God, what am I doing?

He feels my hesitation. “Fall into it. Trust us.
I
trust us,” he says. “I trust us enough for both of us.”

He
trusts us. He believes I won’t let him down; it’s a gift, this trust of his. It’s a gift he’s never given anybody else. He’s as bare and vulnerable as when he went after the Brick Slinger. I see that now.

“You're amazing,” I say.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He kisses me, and I get this flash—this feeling memory—of being down in the Tangle and first realizing I’d been revised. I trusted, I jumped, fell into it. I found what I needed.

And it was glorious. Liberating. That’s the feeling I have now as he nuzzles the top of my head, sways into me, almost like he’s drunk. I move my hand to his cock, touching the outline of him, and he exhales forcefully.

I want him inside me so badly, I feel almost crazy. I move to unbutton his pants. He puts his hand down to help, but I move it away. I just want to do it on my own, to follow that feeling, to fall. His jeans slide easily over his hips; his blue briefs not so easily. I enjoy the silky heaviness of his cock in my hand, and the way his whole being tightens up when I tighten my grip. He nudges my face up, kisses me against warm wall. It’s like I’m enclosed in a slice of heaven. It’s so easy. Things are sometimes easy.

A crinkle. He’s got a condom.

He stops kissing me, out of breath. I let go of him, let him put it on. “Aha, you planned all this,” I joke breathily.

“Planned?” He looks up at me, eyes shining feverishly. “Of course.”

“Oh, that’s a good, good answer,” I breathe, pulling him back for a kiss. “Good, good, good.” I’m all nonsense. He kisses me, pushing his hands all over me, fingers hot between my legs, and my hands roam all over him—belly, shoulders, neck. His skin is warm. Sweaty in places.

He reaches down to my thigh, the back of my knee, and lifts my leg free of my pants, nuzzling and kissing me, and pushes the fat tip of his cock to my core, and I let my head tip back onto the wall, wanting to take him in, wanting everything.

He pushes into me, deeply, filling me. The world seems to stop in midair. Packard exhales. Packard not in control.

“Again,” I say.

He pulls out and presses back into me, and then again, and I open my eyes and find his, and I watch him as he moves, as I move against him. It’s like an underground wave is swelling between us, with every slow thrust, every kiss. Then he’s out—he slides his hands around my butt and lifts me up.

“Hey!” I laugh as he turns and thumps me down on one of the sturdy Mongolian Delites tables. But he looks serious in the candlelight. He pushes things off it—candle holders and silverware crash to the floor.

I lay back onto the scratchy tablecloth, napkins and sugar packets in my hair, heaven all around me. His cheekbones shine with sweat; red curls around his forehead have grown moist and dark.

I wrap my legs around him. “Come here,” I say.

He comes to me, one hand on my belly, one guiding his cock a little ways in. I gasp, wanting more. “Oooh,” I say, coaxingly, smiling.

He goes still, watching me, with all his love and trust bared, it seems, and I stop my smiling and coaxing.

Something real is here.

Slowly, he pushes in. He makes this grunt—not quite a cry. The grunt feels like it contains secret things—surrender and pleasure, and also, ancient need, maybe dredged up from his deepest core.

I have this sense that, with this sound, he’s baring himself more fully than when he pulled off his clothes. Like I’m hearing the sound of a voice in the wilderness, alone no longer. It breaks my heart and also strengthens me.

“Packard,” I say.

He touches my cheek, kisses me. The moment is naked. The way we move together, the way he offers himself up. Trusting me with everything. Trusting us.

It changes something in me, his trust, his gaze, so bare and brave. It scares me a little, and I do something I’ve never done before: I let it scare me. Fear, suddenly, is not the biggest thing.

And just like that, I know something: I can fight Otto. The fear is still there, but it doesn’t matter. The fear of the fear is…gone. So simple, so strange.

New.

His heavy hands slide across my skin. He bends to me and I run my tongue along his neck as he fills me, swells in me. His breath tickles my ear. Everything’s out of control, and I just fall into it.

I love him. It's scary and I let it frighten me. Everything’s new.

He covers my breast with a heavy, dragging touch, and the swell between us breaks apart, like a powerful wave breaking and crashing through me, phosphorescence at its edges. I cry out as I feel his shudder inside me.

He collapses over me, all heavy goodness. He tries to pull out, but I wrap my legs around him, keep him there locked inside me. I don’t want to be apart from him. “Don’t go.”

“Ever?”

I smile. It’s okay.
I can do it.
It’s shocking, and a relief. A puff of a laugh escapes me.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just everything. Tomorrow.”

He lifts himself onto his elbows. “If you’re still worried…your instincts…” he tilts his head. “It doesn’t have to be you.”

“Oh, it has to be me,” I say. “It’ll be me.” I kiss him on the cheek.

He doesn’t reply. Maybe he senses something.

“It has to be me.” I will love Packard tonight. And fight Otto tomorrow. And I’ll fight like hell not to die with him, but if that’s what happens, it happens. Packard trusts me, and I won’t let him down. I feel new. “The good guys will win. I believe that with all my heart.”

He strokes my hair with both of his hands. “You sound so sure.”

“I am,” I whisper, pressing my face to his neck, feeling his heart pound on my cheek, luxuriating in the simple feeling of it. “You know why?”

“Why?”

“Because I have wonderful instincts.”

I’m sitting sideways in the old back booth with my legs on Packard’s lap, smashing my soft-boiled egg over buttered toast. We’ve had sex three times and have eaten two sumptuous meals—our own little all-night orgy. I learned some odd, new things about him. One, he wants to go to Europe, but he’s never ridden in a plane—he’s not sure if he can stand the enclosed space now. Two, he can’t concentrate when he’s wearing socks that are too tight around the ankles—even his gift doesn’t work as well. We made some jokes about his Achilles heel, which I found uproariously funny, due in part to exhaustion, and in part to my buzzing core of adrenalin.

“I need you to promise me something,” I say.

“I’ll promise you anything. If you give me a bite of that.” He nods at my plate.

“Just a bite?”

“For now.” He smooths his hand along my jeans leg. “For appetizers.”

I salt my eggy concoction, then pepper it, schooling myself not to think about the future or anything else, just to feel how much I love him. I sever a soppy square with my fork and float it carefully to his mouth.

He chews and smiles at the same time, which makes me want to kiss him.

“What then?” he asks. “Promise what?”

I gaze out the restaurant window at the dawn light reflecting on the building across the street. Time is running out. I have to be at a special breakfast at 9 a.m. with the Midcity Daughters of Industry.

“If it takes longer than expected to get the antihighcap glasses, and I actually
do
have to show up at the church for the wedding, you can’t come in. You can’t try to get into the church, okay?”

“We know where the glasses are. We’ll get them to you before that. You’ll zing him before that, and I’ll be there to back you.”

“But if it comes to that, to my going to the wedding, I don’t want you there. Simon and Shelby will be there, and it will be full of security, too dangerous for you. Can you imagine how distracting it would be? For the job we have to do? It will be up to us at that point.”