Vanish

Chapter 20

After a shower, I curl up on the bed, lifting my hair from where it’s trapped beneath me and dropping it over my shoulder. For a long time, I hold myself still, silent beneath the sheets as I do my best to ignore Will next to me. I wait for sleep, for the moment when my dizzy, frantic thoughts can slide into rest.

Despite having slept so much already, I’m still tired. My beaten body should be able to fall back asleep. It should.

“How long are you going to pretend to be asleep?”

And there’s why it can’t.

His hushed voice brushes the back of my neck and my flesh puckers to gooseflesh.

He’s why I can’t sleep. I’ve been doing my best to block him out. Impossible, of course. How am I supposed to ignore that Will is inches away? Will, who I’ve longed for since the moment he spared my life months ago in that cave… before I even understood that it was longing I felt.

I open my mouth, but then realize speaking only confirms that I’m awake. I seal my lips shut. Because I can’t speak. Not when I can’t say what he wants to hear.

What even I wish I could say.

His hand closes on my shoulder, and a sigh escapes me. So much for faking sleep.

I don’t resist as he rolls me over. We sink toward the center of the bed, practically chest to chest. His eyes glow in the dark. His hand moves, lifts.

My breath locks in my lungs as he slides his hand through the snarls of my damp hair, holding me, his face so close that our noses brush. The scent of the motel’s complimentary raspberry shampoo swirls around us.

Staring at each other, we don’t speak. I taste his breath then, his lips so near my own. When his eyes dip toward my mouth my stomach twists. Familiar heat swamps me. I bite my lip to keep any sound escaping.

And then I can only think that this is Will.

Will who I’ve wished for and thought lost to me. Will who I’ve dreamed of. Will who has saved me time and again, who I saved at great risk. Who loves me when there is every reason he shouldn’t. Who I love despite all the reasons I shouldn’t.

Will who I have to leave. Again.

I lift my hands to his chest. Flattening my palms, I try not to caress him, try to find the strength to push him away. It’s going to be hard enough saying good-bye tomorrow.

But then he kisses me, and I know I can’t pull away.

His hand at the back of my head slides to my face, his warm palm a rasp on my cheek as he swallows up my moan.

The kiss still feels new. Like the first time. The brush of his mouth sends ripples of sensation along every nerve. I clutch his shoulders, clinging, fingers curling into the lean muscles of his body. I hold on for dear life, the mere texture and taste of his mouth completely devastating me.

My body burns, skin pulling and rippling, overcome, ready to fade out.

Maybe it’s where we are, the circumstances of what has brought us here… or the fact that I may never see him again, but I can’t get enough of him. My mouth moves over his, nibbling, sucking.

His hands roam down my back, tugging me closer.

I move in, wind my arms around his neck. Tangling fingers through his hair, I deepen the kiss, not even minding when his full weight rolls hard over me, sinking me deeper into the mattress.

My body cradles his, instinctively welcoming him. I breathe a greedy sound, not even thinking that we might be moving too far, too fast. There’s only need. Hunger. I’m tired of being denied.

He grips my head in both hands, kissing me thoroughly, biting at my lips in little nips. His fingers press into the tender flesh of my cheeks, holding my face still for him.

Growling, I struggle to move my head, to taste him as he tastes me, but he holds me, traps me… a delicious torment that makes me writhe beneath him.

It isn’t enough. Not even close.

Fire froths at my core, and I struggle to rein it in, to cool my lungs.

I whimper when he glides a hand beneath my shirt, caressing my back in sweeping strokes. He lifts his lips from mine to say, “Your skin… so… hot.”

I gasp sharply against our fused mouths as his hand drifts, brushes my ribs, the quivering skin of my stomach.

I tear my lips free and arch my face away from him to release a steaming breath that I can’t hold in any longer.

He drags an icy kiss down my curved throat, his tongue tracing the tendon there… only escalating the smolder within me.

His mouth lifts from my neck. Cool air caresses the wet flesh. I gulp the chilly air, desperate to douse the inferno building in me.

I feel his stare. Look up and plunge directly into it.

Even in the room’s gloom, his eyes gleam. He stares down at me with such raw intensity that I lift a trembling hand to trace the shadowed outline of his face, caress the hard-etched lines and masculine angles with my fingertips. I brush the dark eyebrows above those eyes that see right through me.

My fingers drift, relax on his mouth, slightly swollen from kissing. His lips move beneath my touch. “Come with me, Jacinda.” The words rumble through my fingers, up my arm, rooting into my heart. And I go cold.

Because he knows. He knows what’s going on in my head. When I escaped into the bathroom tonight, he heard what I wasn’t saying, the words I didn’t want to speak aloud.

I can’t go with him. I can’t run away and be with him in this perfect fantasy we’ve created in our minds.

“I can’t,” I whisper. Then louder, “I can’t.”

I push his shoulder until he rolls off me. Even in the dim room, I can see the change in his expression. He looks angry, his expression like granite.

“How can you go back there?”

“I can’t not go back. They have to know about Miram… and I can’t leave Mom and Tamra wondering what happened to me.”

“We can send a letter,” he growls.

“This isn’t a joke,” I snap.

“Do you see me laughing?” Seizing both my hands, he leans his face close to mine. “Why are you fighting this? Us?”

I shake my head. “I can’t just leave with things like this.”

“You may never get out again. Have you thought about that?” His hands tighten on mine. “What are they going to do to you when you waltz in there and tell them you got yourself caught by hunters? That Miram is lost?”

I shiver. He’s right. It could get ugly. But not totally undeserved on my part. My selfish desires led to this, after all. If I’d listened to Cassian and ended it with Will none of this would ever have happened.

Of course, Miram played her part, too. I’m not above holding her responsible for her involvement. She shouldn’t have been spying on me. That said, she doesn’t deserve the fate awaiting her just because she’s a nosy, spiteful girl.

“I’m going back.”

“Even if it means we’re never together again?”

He knows just what to say. The words that will hurt me the most. The prospect of never seeing him again, hearing his voice, holding him…

I wet my lips, swallow, and say words I never thought possible. Words that echo what’s in my head if not my heart. “But we don’t really belong together, Will.”

He pulls back, drops my hands like I’m something he can’t bear to touch anymore. “You don’t mean that.”

I nod a single time, the motion painful, all I can manage. “It’s insanity. What we are…” What we aren’t. “You can’t deny—”

He flings himself off the bed in an angry move. “You know the difference between you and me, Jacinda?” he bites out, his voice unfamiliar to me and a little scary.

I scramble into a sitting position, blinking at this angry, unknown Will.

“The difference is that I know who I am.”

I bristle. “I know who I am!”

“No. You know what you are. You haven’t figured out who you are.”

“I’m someone with sense enough to realize I can’t live happily ever after with a hunter — someone with the blood of slaughtered draki running through his veins!” I slap a hand over my mouth the moment this flies from my lips.

He stops, stares down at me with a frightening stillness.

Terrible doesn’t describe how I feel in that moment. I told him his blood didn’t matter to me, and I meant it. He can’t help what he is, so it’s vastly unfair to fling that in his face. Without draki blood, he’d likely be dead, and I certainly don’t wish that had happened. And he’d been just a kid at the time. A sick, dying kid. It wasn’t like he had any choice in his method of treatment. How could I fling that in his face?

“That’s it, isn’t it? What’s really bugging you.”

I shake my head, blink against the sting in my eyes.

He continues, “You think hooking up with some draki prince, with Cassian, makes sense?”

I breathe thinly though my nose. “Maybe,” I whisper, not even sure what I’m saying. Even if Cassian did make sense, he isn’t for me. I’d never betray Tamra that way.

He nods, speaks in such a deadened voice that I feel cold inside. “It would be easy to just accept him. I can understand that.” He motions between us. “Easier than this… us.” He steps closer. His legs brush the mattress. His hand lowers to touch my face then, his fingers feather soft on my cheek. I resist leaning into that hand, resist surrendering to the pull he has over me. “Only you’ll never love him. Not like you love me. Right or wrong, that’s the truth. The way it will always be.”

But it can’t be. I can’t let it.

With a shuddery breath, I turn my face from his hand and glance at the digital clock on the bedside table. “I’m not going to fall back asleep now. Why don’t we get an early start?”

He laughs. The mirthless sound is low and deep, shivering over my skin. “Fine. Go home. Run away, Jacinda. But it won’t change anything. You won’t forget me.”

He’s right. But I have to do my best to try.