“Forget I said that.”
“Forgotten,” she muttered.
He grinned. “So you still feel the urge to heal me?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. But the Source is affecting me the closer we get.”
He stopped and turned around, no longer amused. “Explain this. You said you had to heal me before. But now it’s worse? Do you hurt? Are you able to think beyond your power?”
“I am.” She bit her lower lip, and he smoothed her flesh with his thumb.
“Don’t do that. You’ll hurt yourself.”
“I can heal it, remember?” she said softly, her gaze on his mouth.
“You okay, Heather? You don’t seem right to me.” God, he wanted to get naked and fuck again. He shook his head, determined to remain clearheaded, but he could feel her presence in his mind.
“I’m sorry, Jack. It’s the power. We’re close, closer than I thought we’d be.” She looked over his shoulder. “We have to keep going. I feel it inside me. Come on. Then you’ll see. We’ll finish this.”
“Wait. Heather, there’s been something I’ve been meaning to ask. This healing. You manipulate energy, right?”
“Yes.”
“Can you twist it, use it to hurt as well as heal?”
She stared at him. “I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”
“You might have to before this is over,” he said grimly. “An offensive skill, or a defensive one if you want to think about it that way, is a skill worth having. If something happens to me, you do whatever you can to survive, you hear me?”
“I don’t know if I can. I wasn’t built to do harm, Jack. That’s not my nature.”
He would have worried more if she’d given him a chance. Instead she increased her pace, and they raced through the woods as if on fire. He still couldn’t feel the energy the way she could, but he believed her. She was acting weird, her eyes glazed yet brighter than they should have been. And she had a glow to her, an aura of purpose he could only follow.
Two hours later, they arrived at a clearing. What should have taken them another six or seven hours had been accomplished in two. Like turning north and hitting the town of Grainau, this distance in such a short time defied the laws of physics. That or they had a shitty map.
A lush, grassy field surrounded an ancient tree. Odd that neither Ida nor Jan had mentioned the tree. It didn’t fit the vegetation around them, nor did it seem real. The thing looked like something from a prop shop. It had a thick black trunk and reached high into the cloudless sky, framed by a blue canvas. Though it had only just reached the beginning of spring, the tree had light green leaves and pink flowers, like a cherry tree but much grander. It smelled like roses. A lot like Heather, come to think of it.
He turned to see what she made of it and saw her on her knees, frantically digging through her things until she withdrew
Chronicles
from her bag.
“Heather?”
She ignored him and walked under the awning of the tree, now shaded from the sun by the blanket of leaves and flowers of the impossibly blooming tree. The temperature seemed warmer in this clearing, yet it was by no means springtime in the mountains. He judged it to be closer to fifty degrees, if that.
“What the hell?” He watched Heather leafing through the book until she found the section she needed. Then she began reading, muttering under her breath. She frowned. She smiled. She frowned again.
She lay on her belly on the ground and traced her fingers over the pages as she flipped them. Jack set down his backpack and joined her, keeping the gun at his side at the ready. His senses were screaming at him of impending danger, yet he couldn’t see anything. He heard nothing threatening. The unnatural stillness was broken only by Heather’s ramblings and the crinkling pages of
Chronicles
as she turned them.
He sat by her side and stared down at a few hand-drawn pictures of a woman fellating a man, then having him do the same to her. Eventually the pair engaged in a sixty-nine, and Jack had more than a few ideas of his own. The pictures turned him on in a big way, especially since Heather pulled off her jacket and tugged at the neck of her sweater.
“You okay?” he asked, hoping this place didn’t turn her into a raving lunatic. His entire being hummed, and the feeling of a thousand fingers tapping at his brain made him uncomfortable. Especially because the closer he drew to Heather, the harder that tapping hit him.
Suddenly, he couldn’t see. He couldn’t hear. He could only feel that rhythmic beat pulsing through him. He felt his gun drop and knew he’d passed out, even as he rose above his body.
Holy shit. Am I astral projecting?
Jack stared down at himself on his back while Heather remained oblivious, still muttering to herself as she poured over the book. What a pair. He glanced at the tree and felt it
smiling
at him. The damn thing was
sentient.
And it wasn’t of this earth.
He recalled the first job his team had done for Owen, recovering a lost locket. The locket had belonged to Owen’s relatives, and according to Rory, Owen’s distant cousin and current keeper of the locket, history had claimed it had been crafted from a meteorite. Another not-of-this earth moment.
Jack wondered if the two were connected. He believed in extrasensory perception, could acknowledge that mankind would continue to evolve and already had in spurts, considering his team was living proof of psychic phenomena. But aliens?
The tree didn’t turn into a little green man, and it didn’t speak or suddenly grow feet and walk. But he sensed a presence, and Jack knew the thing needed something he couldn’t give it, but Heather could. He suddenly understood that the tree had seen him as a threat and pulled him out of his body. He tried, wanted to explain that he wouldn’t harm the thing, but he couldn’t talk. Hell, he still didn’t know how he could be floating above himself. Though a few members on the PowerUp! team had come into contact with astral projectors, he himself never had.
He didn’t know what to do to convince the
presence
—for lack of a better word—that he meant it no ill will. And then he floated back down toward the ground until he was situated over his body. He jerked in a breath as his soul reconnected with his corporeal form and blinked as the disorientation left him.
“I’m back,” he rasped, feeling his chest and reaching for the gun on the ground. He sat up and tucked the gun away, into the small of his back. “Heather?”
She shook her head, and a tear leaked down her cheek. “I can’t see it. I don’t know what to do.”
“Shh.” He took her into his arms and hugged her, rocking her like a small child. “It’s okay. We’ll find it. Relax.”
Her distress continued until she began to worry him. She didn’t respond to his voice or touch, and her link to him was all over the place. One minute he felt her inside his mind, another she was gone, and then she was there, deep inside him where no one had been,
ever
. Like a part of him, and when she left, he was bereft, almost in tears.
“What the hell, Heather?” He tilted her chin up to stare into her eyes.
She stared blankly back at him, not seeing him.
“Fuck this.” He didn’t know what to do. Why he’d think to kiss her, he had no idea. But the minute his lips met hers, everything changed.
The warmth in his soul returned, because she was there. Present. Meeting his kiss and moaning into his mouth. Her hands crept up his waist and linked behind his neck.
Finally. She was back.
Hungry, needy, and full of desire he had every intention of fulfilling.
Jack kissed her until he couldn’t breathe. When he pulled back from her, he swore.
“I’ve never seen a woman needing to be fucked as much as you do.” She might as well have had the word
sex
tattooed on her forehead. Carnal intent colored her face, so that she seemed like a walking advertisement for…him.
Jack didn’t think about what he was doing. He did what felt right. Moving her aside, he stripped off all his clothes. Then he took hers off, aware she didn’t resist at all, merely caressed him whenever she could.
He groaned when her hands caught and held his cock. She cupped his balls, rolled them in her hands, and he felt a spurt of precum jolt from his tip.
He didn’t want to hold back, so he didn’t. He sucked her nipples, stroked her pussy, and thrust one finger, then two, inside her. She squirmed and moaned, but he wouldn’t stop. Not until she surrendered herself to him.
Jack stood and pulled her to her knees. He held himself by the root, aware he’d never been harder in his life. “Suck me, baby. Take me to the back of your throat.”
She blinked up at him, as if awakening from a dream.
“I said suck me.”
Heather opened her mouth wider, and he pushed himself between her slick lips into the hot, wet depth of her. He swore his eyes rolled into the back of his head as he started fucking her mouth. Right there in the heart of a magical clearing, he was having the best sex of his life with the woman he might actually love.
As if she heard the thought, she sucked harder and moaned, then stroked his ass.
He shoved deeper, and she gagged. “Oh shit. I’m sorry, but I… Oh fuck.
Heather
.”
With one hand, she massaged his balls as she deep-throated him. But with her other, she ran her fingers over the rim of his ass, teasing and penetrating with the tip of a finger. She continued to blow him, and then she pushed her finger into his virgin ass, and the sensation was indescribable.
Jack yelled as he came, jetting down her throat until he was utterly spent.
He wavered on his feet as she finished swallowing him and let him fall from her mouth.
To his shock, he was still hard.
“Impossible,” he croaked, but his body didn’t lie. He stared down at her and saw her lick her lips, taking a drop of his cum into her mouth.
“I’m hurting. Make it go away…lover,” she purred in a voice not her own.
But Jack still heard her, knew she was buried as deeply as his pain had been. “Come on, baby. Put that pussy over my face.” He lay down on his back and gripped her hips when she straddled him. She lowered her wet pussy, and he feasted. Licking and sucking, loving the silky need she had for him.
He was hard, affected by the power of this place. Yet his desire was for no one but Heather. And he knew, though he wasn’t sure how, that she felt the same for him.
“Yes. Just for you,”
echoed in his mind. And then she left him only to return, positioned in a sixty-nine, her pussy over his mouth, her head by his dick. Jack felt her mouth over him, and he arched into her as he pulled her back down and ate her out.
Desperate, feverish for her pleasure, he consumed her, fighting against his impending orgasm as she climbed closer to her own. He wanted her to know truth, to know love and feeling and acceptance. And she gave him everything, healing him with love and deed as she touched him with loving hands.
Jack gave himself up to her, and in the doing, opened a lock of sorts. He felt her pleasure and swallowed her cream as she convulsed and sucked his cock.
He jerked and jetted into her mouth, coming again when he should have had nothing left. Against all odds, he loved a woman. He thought it, wasn’t sure if he’d said it, but knew it to be true. And he felt fear as he hadn’t in years before the blackness overwhelmed him, and he knew nothing more.
HEATHER WOKE AS if from a dream. She pulled away from Jack’s body, tasting the musk of his surrender. She lifted herself from his mouth and turned back around, still shivering at the intense orgasm echoing through her.
What the heck had happened? She blinked up at the large tree, feeling as if she’d missed the key to the puzzle. But before she could figure it out, she glanced down at Jack, who lay still with his eyes closed, and felt her entire existence shift and settle. “I love you.”
She stared at him in awe, not sure she’d actually said the words aloud until she said them again. “I love you.”
He didn’t move but seemed to be in a deep sleep.
Heather felt sluggish, like a woman completely enthralled by her lover and satisfied beyond belief. She should have been freezing her tail off, embarrassed to be naked in the middle of the forest after fellating a man
twice.
Yet she experienced love, true joining. Her gaze slipped to the trunk of the tree, where a slight discoloration drew her attention to a piece of missing bark.
Something clicked. It all made sense.
All of it
. Heather scrambled to find
Chronicles
again. She rushed through the pages until she found chapter nine and the pictures of what she and Jack had just done together. Flushing at her boldness yet pleased beyond measure that she’d found heaven with Jack, she ripped out the pages and crumpled them into a ball. She walked over and stood by the tree.
“I’m returning what was taken,” she said softly and held the ball of paper against the tree, focusing with everything she had to heal what had been hurt. She let herself become one with the grand tree and sensed an entity so much larger than she ever would have guessed.
Heather let herself flow and watched as the paper liquefied, then darkened in color as it turned once more into the bark it had previously been. While her fingers rested against the newly healed bark, she saw blurred images of the past. Of Johann Stallbridge meeting the tree and acknowledging its sentience. Then the slight tearing of the bark, ripping a part of it away and taking it with him. He’d turned the bark into paper and written of his grand love for his wife, illustrating just how he’d made love to her under the soft branches and velvety leaves of the tree.
The Source had given up a part of itself as a gift, even to one who sought to steal its generosity. It blessed her great-grandfather, but he’d known all along he could never keep it. Yet generations had passed, and the one person to make things right hadn’t arrived. No one had been born who could heal. Her family possessed an abundance of talent. But not until Heather’s birth had a Stallbridge been born who could heal all wounds, both physical and spiritual.