Fire and Ash (Immortal Touch) (17 page)

“
Almost
everyone?”

“It’s no big deal. Just this one person who’s…getting on my nerves. So what’s new with you? You getting along with Polly Perfect?”

“Meh…I guess. She kinda grows on you after a while. Hey, guess who I ran into last weekend?”

“Who?”

“Rick. He was in the Piggly Wiggly. I took a peek in his cart. Lotta beer, but what do you expect…did you know he eats potted meat? How gross is that? Stuff looks like cat food.”

“Yeah. So how…um, how did he look?”

“I guess he looked all right. At least he didn’t look like he was hung over. He asked about you. I told him you moved out but that was all. He’s not still calling you, is he?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Whaddaya mean, you don’t think so? Either he is or he isn’t.”

“He isn’t.” Why stir up a hornet’s nest? Kelly was liable to do something flaky. She’d been known to slash a tire or two
during her wild college days.

“Have you found my Fernando yet? I keep looking for UPS to deliver him.”

“This place is crawling with them. You should come down sometime…I’ll set you up on a blind date.” Laiken’s image sprang to mind. He’d be perfect for her friend.

“If I can ever get away, I will. They’re really keeping me busy at work. Maybe later in the summer?”

“Anytime.”

They chatted for another fifteen minutes, but when Sami hung up she didn’t feel any better than before. She’d hoped the familiar sound of Kelly’s upbeat voice would bring her out of her funk, but all in all the only thing it accomplished was to emphasize her own crabby mood.

There was no way to avoid Ash forever, and to be honest she didn’t want to. She needed to clear the air. At least give him a chance to apologize for his idiotic stunt. In retrospect, was it possible she’d overreacted? Yes, it was a nasty thing he’d done but as he pointed out, she’d never been in any real danger.

It’s the most intense form of high.

Finally, after an hour of debating the wisdom of what she was about to do, she gathered her courage and headed for the sixteenth floor.

~*~*~*~

Sami hesitated uncertainly at the
Do Not Disturb
door hanger, contemplating giving up and going back down to her own floor. Maybe this sign was
literally
a sign, an indication that she should leave well enough alone. He could have someone in there with him. How embarrassing
that
would be. Anyway, if he wanted to apologize to her, he’d have done it already.

Although
…she
had
threatened him with a lawsuit. So she hadn’t given him much of a choice
but
to steer clear of her.

She forced herself to knock, then
identified herself. “Ash? It’s Sami.”

For a few uncomfortable moments she stood
on the opposite side of his door, feeling awkward and out of place. She was just about to return to the elevator when the steel handle moved up and down and with a
click
, the door opened. He was shirtless, dressed only in a pair of white drawstring pants, and he didn’t seem particularly surprised to see her. Though it was hard to tell because she had yet to pull her eyes away from his six-pack abs. Her fingers itched to touch the hard ridges. Okay, so
maybe
she could get why women seemed to worship the ground he walked on.

“Well…if it isn’t the little mermaid. What brings you here?”

She forced her eyes upward and noticed right away that his normally clear eyes were oddly unfocused and glazed over. Booze, maybe? “Can I talk to you?”

With a lazy smirk, he stood back and
welcomed her in with a swoop of his hand. “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

She
stepped inside, and the door clicked shut behind her. It sounded to her runaway imagination like the slamming of a jail cell.
Life sentence…no possibility for parole.

When he turned his back to her, she was shocked to see for the first time the tattooed angel wings. They covered his shoulder blades and swept gracefully down to
reach the small of his back, so beautiful and natural they seemed like something he’d been born with. She’d never in a million years have classified him as the type to get inked.

He ambled
a bit unsteadily into the living room tastefully decorated with pristine white furniture and a couple of impressive landscape paintings, and stopped abruptly in his tracks to whirl around and face her. “Have you come to settle your debt?” He spoke slowly, a little
too
slowly. Like an intoxicated driver trying too hard to form his words carefully so the cop that pulled him over wouldn’t suspect.

“Are you drunk?” No wonder he didn’t want to be disturbed. God forbid anyone see the master of
all domains inebriated.

“I am…transcending.”
His smile was tranquil, mellow. “Would you care to join me?”

“I’m good. Thanks.” Sighing, she added, “You know
…maybe I should go. I think I’ve come at a bad time.”

“There’s never a bad time to come.” The sleepy smile widened.

“Ash, I don’t mean to pry into your personal life but…are you
on
something?”

“
Am I…or am I not…is that the question? No…the question is why you are here. I was given the impression that you found my company…displeasing.”

“I was
mad. What do you expect? You have to admit, what you did was pretty sick.”

“It was…your first…tutorial.”

Oh boy, he was out in left field somewhere. “I don’t…are you sure you’re all right? You’re acting a little scary.”

“Am I? Do I
…scare you?”

“Your behavior right now is scaring me, yes!”

“My dear sweet angel…you haven’t seen anything yet.” Never taking his eyes from her, he wet his lips as if he saw something tasty.

She waved one hand back and forth in front of his face but he didn’t appear to even notice. “
Did you take something?”

“Did you have something…to give?”

They could go on this way all night, talking in circles. Obviously he didn’t intend to tell her what was wrong with him. “Would you please…”

“
But look at the sunset. Don’t you agree that it’s…spectacular?”

The sunset. Sure.
There were only two things wrong with that statement. First, the sun had gone down two hours ago.

And se
cond, he was staring at the
wall
, for God’s sake.

“I can’t talk to you when you’re like this. You
’re stoned out of your mind!”

Analyzing
the room for a clue to his wasted state, she could see nothing unusual. There was a peculiar smell lingering in the air though, something unfamiliar. The closest comparison in her opinion would have to be incense, and even that was a stretch. Leaving Ash enraptured with his bare section of wall, she followed the aroma into the kitchen. The source was some cloudy, greenish-brown liquid in a small saucepan on the stove. There were crushed bits of leaves floating around in it. She couldn’t even begin to guess what it might be.

Yanking open the doors to the cabinets underneath the sink, she located the trash can and looked inside it suspiciously. A syringe lay conspicuously atop the wadded-up paper towels and empty takeout containers.

Oh,
no
. It was worse than she thought.

“Ash…” she said gently, returning to the spot where he still stood transfixed by the
white wall. “Look at me.”

He complied,
holding her gaze with his eyes, but they didn’t appear to see her. They reached way beyond, viewing something completely different.

“Please tell me you’re not shooting up heroin.”

He seemed offended. “I am not…shooting up heroin. Do I look like a street junkie to you?”

“Can you tell me what you’re on then?”

“Belladonna…”

“
Okay…I don’t know what that is. Is it some kind of designer drug?”

“It is
death…to one like you.” His fingers reached out to delicately stroke her neck while she wondered desperately whether she should call someone. Of course, he’d probably have her fired if she made his indiscretion public. Maybe Stuart could handle this discreetly.

Damn, his touch felt good…

“So blissfully unaware…you’ve been sheltered from every storm, haven’t you? Taught never to play with fire because it burns. But I think…I think you want to touch the flames.”

“Maybe I should fix you some coffee
.”

“
So defiant. So strong. Tell me something, Samara…are you strong enough to walk the thorniest path? Can you handle the deepest cuts?” She inhaled sharply when he leaned forward to whisper softly in her ear, “
I can show you things you’ve never seen. I can take you places you’ve never been.
”

He might as well have
showered her in glowing embers. The heat spread through her, even and warm, and wherever it was that he offered to take her seemed a beautiful and welcome place.

Beautiful…
but dark.

“Come and see the playground of Poseidon.”
He took her hand, urging her to the sliding glass door that was already open to the night, and she hesitantly stepped out on the balcony with him. The night was balmy and the air felt damp. She shivered, but not from the sea breeze. The waves crashed and receded, crashed again.

Still holding her hand, he lifted it to his lips and kissed it
reverently. “How long will it take for you to remove the blinders and open your mind?”

“I don’t know what
it is you want from me, Ash. I just…I don’t know.” Some nameless emotion crept quietly through her, emerging from a place she never knew existed.

“
You’re so close now. Don’t turn back.”

“
What is it you
want?
”

“Do you trust me?”

“I’m afraid of you!”

“I can work with that.”

He lifted her into his powerful arms, and the fabric of her coral sundress fluttered madly in the wind. His breath was warm against her cheek, warm and intimate. She had the wildest notion that she could use his breath to fill her own lungs if she tried.

“Ash…”

“I’ve tasted your essence and you don’t even know it.” He leaned against the balcony railing, and when she looked down all that was beneath her was the sixteen-story drop below. The ground was a hundred miles away, a thousand, ten thousand.

Vertigo hit her, and she tightened her arms around his neck in terror. “Oh,
God!
”

“It’s
all about the path we choose, flightless dove.”

“
Don’t drop me...” She buried her face in his chest in the desperate belief that if she couldn’t see what was happening, it couldn’t happen.

“
Right now, for instance, you have two options. I can put you safely down and you can savor the surge of adrenaline. Or I can let you go and you can experience something even more sublime. The choice is yours.”

“
Don’t let go! Please,
please
don’t let go…”

He
compliantly took two steps back and allowed her to slide unharmed from his embrace. Pressed against the metal railing, her whole body tremored, she could barely catch her breath and her heart threatened to escape without her. She’d never felt so frightened.

Or so alive.

Horrified, she fled room 1608 and his voice followed her, promising, or perhaps threatening…“I won’t let go.”

CHAPTER NINE

I won’t let go.

She was falling and falling down
an endless abyss, falling forever with nothing to grab on to and when she woke damp with perspiration and desire, her pulse raced with the memory of his promise.

It was painful, somehow. She tried to fill the sunny Saturday with
normal, routine activities. Swimming laps in the pool, washing two loads of laundry, picking up a few staples at the corner market, calling her parents, deep-conditioning her hair to reverse the effects of the sun and wind.

But nothing was the same.
There was a longing, a longing for something intangible, something that couldn’t be expressed in words. A hunger for excitement that reached far beyond the locally offered thrills of parasailing and slingshot bungees. A door had been opened, the entrance leading to a place that never should have been unearthed. The sweet and shocking new flavor tempted her, some delicious toxic blend of passion and agony. She didn’t know what it was, whether it even had a name.

But she knew where to find it.