The Space Between (The Book of Phoenix) (6 page)

BOOK: The Space Between (The Book of Phoenix)
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She inspected every inch of my body and not only with her baby blue eyes. I let her think she had control—a game her type liked to play—but only for so long. There was only one reason she was in this room with me, so when my turn came, I gave it to her like she’d never had it before. I didn’t have to hear to know she screamed, but each time the wall vibrated as the bed slammed into it, Leni’s name reverberated in my mind. I grabbed a fistful of straight, black hair, but felt curls. When I squeezed my eyes shut, green eyes and honey skin swam behind my eyelids. I couldn’t shake her, even as the peach and I went on and on, making a mess of the extra bed. There was a reason hotels came with two beds—one for sleep and one for play. I never did both in the same place. Jeric Winters did not sleep in wet spots.

When I was about to blow during our second round of the night, my gut clenched as though I’d been punched.

The instinctual pull that had led me halfway across the world and back to here hooked into my insides and reeled me in like a carp. Only stronger than usual. More urgent than ever.
Outside
. I needed to get outside. The reason I was in this God-forsaken town sobered me instantly. Was
she
out there? The one I’d been searching for all this time?

Something was seriously wrong, and I . . .
needed
. . . to be out there. The feeling overwhelmed me, took command of my muscles. Without giving the order a second thought, I jumped off the peach, barely registering her confused daze, and grabbed a towel as I headed for the door.

When I threw it open, a few cuss words slipped out of my mouth right before I hurdled the railing and sprinted for the parking lot.

Chapter 5

  I lay in bed with my arm securing a pillow over my head, although it did no good. I should have gone to the lake. Why
didn’t
I go to the lake? The drive would have been worth it to sleep in my peaceful camper, surrounded only by nature. But no. For some idiotic reason, I thought it’d be better to stay close to town. I had things to do tomorrow. Places to go. Phone calls to make.

Today’s visit to the courthouse did nothing but confirm what Officer Unfriendly had told me yesterday—Theodore Drago didn’t exist according to the State of Georgia. But the court clerk, doing her best to show her southern hospitality, said if I brought in some paperwork of his, maybe we could get to the bottom of this mystery. Unfortunately, that meant making a phone call I really didn’t want to make. Tomorrow morning I would have to, though. It was time, anyway. I’d hoped to find Uncle Theo along with a perfectly sound explanation and not have to worry Daddy, but apparently that wasn’t going to happen.

But all of this wasn’t what had me still awake at one a.m. Neither did the fact that a strange tattoo of a flame had mysteriously shown up on my inner wrist. I didn’t have to think about it all day when my stack of bracelets covered it, but when I took them off tonight, the mark and where it had come from confounded me. But not enough to keep me awake when jetlag should have claimed me hours ago.

I missed Italy. More specifically, at this very moment, I missed the ancient inns where I stayed with their thick, heavy walls separating the rooms. The walls here could be sliced through with a box cutter. Earlier, it had been a baby in the room to the left of mine, crying its poor little heart out. For hours. When she finally settled down, the television in the room above mine blared some kind of musical show, and I think the occupant was dancing along with the people on TV. And they must have been clogging. That went off at eleven, and my room had fallen blissfully silent. I relished the peace, thinking I could finally go to sleep. As I drifted off, though, the giggles and the squealing began next door, right next to my head, followed by groans and moans and a rhythmic pounding against the wall. It went on for seemingly ever. What guy could even go that long? Judging by the girl’s screams, which were now reaching a crescendo, he must have been an animal. Or maybe unable to ejaculate?
Ugh. Just finish already
.

But they didn’t. I couldn’t take one more bang against the wall, one more shout of “yes!” I sprang out of the bed, grabbed my key-card while stuffing my feet into my cowboy boots and charged out of the room. My initial intention had been to go for a walk, hoping by the time I returned, the couple would be worn out, but being the middle of a dark night and near the highway, leaving the hotel’s well-lit property probably wasn’t such a good idea. I thought about going for a drive, but if I was going to do so, I may as well drive to the lake.

Why not?
Good question. Why shouldn’t I go to the lake and make the drive back when I had the paperwork I needed? Besides the facts that it was 1:30 a.m., I was exhausted, and if they were done, I could be asleep in minutes here, nothing stopped me. I made a deal with myself: one lap around the hotel and if the wallbangers were still going at it, I was packing up.

The first-floor rooms opened to a sidewalk encircling the building, with a railing on the outside to keep anyone from traipsing through the landscaping to the parking lot. After passing several rooms, I reached the outlet that spilled onto the blacktop, where I felt a little more comfortable than being so close to people’s doors. My imagination pictured someone grabbing me as I walked by and yanking me inside their room to do all kinds of disgusting acts.

When I nearly completed my lap of the parking lot, though, I wished I’d stayed closer to the building. An eerie feeling raised the hairs on the nape of my neck, then out of nowhere, two big, black shadows flew at me.

Literally
flew
.

They soared through the air, shapeless like obsidian mist, and joined together over my head. They swirled into a cloud, and the black vapor spiraled down and around me, like some kind of tornado, though no wind blew. Not a single hair on my head stirred, but a screech of, “We always find you” filled my ears. I threw my hands up as shields, and I tried to scream, but my heart had lodged in my throat, blocking any sound. My mouth clamped shut before I sucked any of this craziness into my body, and I shot my arms out in a sort of karate-chop. For the briefest of moments, not even a nanosecond, my hands hit something solid, but then the mist disappeared completely. Gone. As if it had never been there.

I glanced down at myself, wiped my hands over my t-shirt and pajama bottoms, expecting to find them damp or covered in black dust, but there was nothing. When I looked up, a man ran at me, wearing nothing but a towel and spewing a series of slurred profanity.

And my breath sucked back in all over again.

He stopped dead in his tracks five yards away in front of me, and his fist grabbed at the towel’s corners before it came loose, while his deep blue eyes popped wide open. A bazillion thoughts jumbled in my mind. What was he doing here? Did he follow me all the way from Italy? Was that
him
causing the bed to bang against the wall? What happened to his hair? This was too wild to be a coincidence. Maybe he had something to do with everything going on. It should be illegal to look so hot. Were those
piercings
in his
nipples
?

Jeric and I stood there staring at each other as if caught up in some kind of surreal warp where time stood still. His mouth hung open, and he was clearly as surprised to see me as I was to see him. His hands twitched to say something, and the towel began to slip. He caught it in time, although the terrycloth now hung much lower on his hips. I couldn’t stop staring at those hips, where his muscles began to form a V that ended behind the fabric. My thighs trembled, and my throat went dry.

“What’s going on?” a female voice called from behind him.

Of course, he didn’t hear her, didn’t react, but I broke my stare and looked up. A woman with raven hair, only her hands and arms covering her girl-junk, stood in the doorway next to mine, eyeing Jeric and then me. I thought I might puke. When a barely audible but still sickening splat hit the pavement in front of Jeric, and my gaze followed the sound to the used condom lying at his feet, I did throw up a little in my mouth.

I looked up at his red face, back at the girl who whined for him to return, then turned away, hoping to skirt by this unbelievable situation, go to my room and pretend none of this ever happened. A hand grabbed my wrist. My stomach tilted and whirled and fell off a cliff, leaving me even queasier than I already was. The word “
dyad
” wafted through my mind again, and once more I felt like I knew him. Really
knew
him like I knew myself. But I didn’t. Not really. I shook my arm free and strode off, toward the other end of the breezeway so I wouldn’t have to pass their room to get to mine.

My heart raced and my hands shook like an addict’s as I tried to swipe the card and open my door. After three tries, I was finally in, slamming the door behind me, then leaning against it to catch my breath. I closed my eyes and inhaled through my nose, then blew the air out just as slowly. My heart eventually resumed its normal pace.

Why was I so upset? Was it seeing him again? Here, of all places? That had to be it because I had absolutely no right to have a single feeling about his state of nakedness or the pounding and screams keeping me up all night. He was a guy in an airport, a passing stranger, nothing that justified me to care what he’d been doing and with whom.

Except he was here, in my hometown. What were the odds? Although, that could explain why I thought I knew him. Just because he’d been headed to Miami didn’t mean he was from there. Maybe I’d seen him around? But again, what were the odds? And why wouldn’t he mention anything about it when I said I lived near Atlanta?

“Who cares about him,” I muttered, trying to convince myself I didn’t. I needed to care more about the attack, or whatever the black mist had been, although it felt so unreal now that I wondered if I’d imagined the whole thing.

A pounding on the door right behind me, as though directly on my back, made me jump and do a half-spin at the same time. I stared at the door with wide eyes. Was it Jeric or that . . . thing? Either way, did I dare answer it? The door rattled in its jamb as the force of the banging increased. I peeked through the peephole. Jeric’s face molded into an expression of anger and worry as his fists continued to beat the door. If he didn’t stop, he’d wake up the baby next door as well as the rest of the hotel. Reluctantly, I opened the door, right in time to hear his woman screaming profanities at him from the parking lot. Over his shoulder, I saw her flipping him off right before ducking into the driver’s side of an older model T-bird. This satisfied me in a way it shouldn’t have.

My eyes returned to Jeric, who at least had thrown on jeans, but nothing else. Unlike his arms, his perfectly sculpted torso was bare of any tattoos except one scripted sentence running up his side along his ribs. And yes, his nipples were decorated with little hoops pierced through them, I couldn’t help noticing. In fact, they sort of fascinated me, and I had to force myself to tear my eyes away and up to his, where I found another, tiny loop at the end of his left eyebrow. Interesting. His reaction to me was even more intriguing. His stormy-blue gaze raked over my face, then took in the rest of me in my PJs and boots. His hands fluttered in front of me, not to talk but as though he wanted to touch me, but was hesitant to do so.

“You’re okay?” he finally signed, and I nodded hesitantly, still unsure of him. “You looked like you were being attacked, the way your fists were flying, but I didn’t see anyone. Otherwise, I would have pounded them.”

I blinked at him. He hadn’t seen the black mist? Had it only been my imagination?

“Um,” I started to say. I blinked again, then signed, “Something startled me. It was nothing.”

“Are you sure?” He peered at me as though he didn’t believe me. He hadn’t seen what I had, but was still concerned. Had he heard me scream? Of course not. I hadn’t been able to scream, but even if I had, he wouldn’t have heard it, and I doubted his bimbo could have heard me over her shrieking.

“How did you know?” I asked. “What brought you out?”

His face twisted in a chagrined grimace. He only shrugged, though, taking a moment before answering. “I was coming out for air and saw you out there, looking terrified as hell.”

Ha. A breath of air. Geez, I wondered why he’d needed one.

“Your girlfriend left,” I signed, nodding toward the parking lot that was now missing a T-bird. “She looked pretty pissed.”

“I don’t do girlfriends, unless they’re someone else’s,” he signed with a cocky grin. “And she was mad I made her leave.”

“Why’d you throw her out?” None of my business, but he was sort of making it so.

“I didn’t. I told her to go home. I don’t do sleepovers either.”

“Of course not.” He couldn’t see sarcasm in my signs, but he must have sensed it.

“They usually don’t get mad.”

They.
Ugh.

“Don’t you have any respect for women?” I asked, distracted.

His cocky grin faded. “Sure. I respect those who want a boyfriend by staying away from them. And I respect those women who sometimes want a good lay and nothing more by giving it to them. No harm to either side. Just a good time.”

I studied his face, then sighed. Girls I’d worked and danced with before had done the same thing, so I knew such women existed. I guess if it worked for all involved, it wasn’t my place to judge. His sex life wasn’t exactly any of my business anyway.

“I’m fine,” I signed. “Like I said, something startled me. Probably a raccoon in the bushes or something.”

He gave me a once over, hesitated, and then pushed past me, strode down the hall and to the far bed that was still made. He sat in the middle of it, stretched his legs in front of him and leaned against the headboard.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Making sure you’re really okay. I don’t feel it.”

I stared at him with an open mouth. As hot as he was and as much as I wanted to wallow in his concern and cocoon myself in those muscular arms, this was too much. I flew into a tirade, glad he could read lips, although my hands moved, too, flying about to emphasize my every word. Mama would have been so disappointed in me for losing my temper. She would have told me to paste on a smile and kindly show the gentleman to the door. Except Jeric was no gentleman, and at the moment, I didn’t want to be a lady.

“What do you mean you don’t
feel
it? And who the hell do you think you are? You can’t just traipse into my hotel room and claim a spot! Why are you even here in the first place? Are you stalking me? Did you follow me from Sulmona to Rome and now here? I’m not one of those girls who will spread my legs for you at your command, you know. I don’t care if you
are
an underwear model. So get your ass out of here before I call the front desk and have you thrown out.”

Jeric moved like a boa making a strike, and he suddenly stood right in front of me, his hands on each side of my face, holding me still. Effectively silencing me. Our eyes locked for a few pounding beats of the heart, then his gaze fell to my lips and his tongue slid slowly over his own. He was going to kiss me. I inhaled sharply. I was going to let him. At least, I was until the mix of perfume and booze assaulted my nose. He must have seen the disgust in my eyes because his smoldering eyes darkened, and he took a step back.

BOOK: The Space Between (The Book of Phoenix)
3.02Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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