Lightning Kissed (13 page)

Plus, she was a brat.

Collin wouldn’t arrive until later in the
night. With everything that had happened, it sounded ridiculous,
but I just needed one night with her. I’d been deprived of her
presence for so long that I just needed my fill of her.

Even though she claimed we were together,
she was still distant. Maybe it was just the stress of all this. I
almost wish she hadn’t come.

Almost.

When we got to the valley, we flashed to the
house.

“Are you tired?” I asked her.

“No. I thought maybe we could go somewhere
tonight. Somewhere you like to go. We always used to go wherever I
wanted.”

We had always gone where she wanted, but I’d
never minded.

“Really?”

“Sure. Do you want to go to The Isle of
Skye? Maybe just home? If you want to go spend some time with your
parents, it’s fine.”

She was facing the bookshelves, packed with
books that appeared to be as ancient as the mountains themselves.
There was no TV in the whole place, not that Colby had ever been
fond of TV, with the exception of the travel channel for obvious
reasons.

“Let’s go to Catatumbo,” I suggested,
wrapping my arms around her waist and pulling her against me.

“But that’s one of my favorites,” she said,
turning so that I could see her pronounced pout.

“It’s one of mine too. This is the perfect
season for the lightning storms.”

“I know. Let’s grab a blanket or two.”

A side effect of Colby’s lithe stature and
purposefully kept low weight was that she was always cold, which
was also another reason why she loved the beach. While other
tourists baked, she was completely satisfied in the heat. I grabbed
two blankets, both brightly colored, like the clothing of the
Tibetan people and teased, “Beat you there.”

I hit our spot at the top of the cliff
before she did. From our perch, the Catatumbo River could be seen
for miles and miles. The lightning storms lasted two hundred plus
days a year. It was Colby’s spot of choice next to Scandinavia. She
said she felt close to our people when surrounded by lightning.

Her tenacity for the history and wellbeing
of our people had been on my mind constantly, of late. She revered
the tales of how our people came to be and if Xoana were alive
today, Colby would be her biggest fan and greatest ally. Sable once
told me, seemingly in jest, that she thought Colby was the spirit
of Xoana herself, come back to avenge what started so long ago with
the lightning strike on her temple.

If I was what I thought I was—she was my
perfect mate.

She was my perfect mate—no matter what.

Colby took a little longer than I expected.
Just as I’d decided to check on her, she arrived.

“I grabbed a sweater, just in case.”

I nodded and spread out the blankets. I
wished we could just go back to the way things were, before.

I hoped it wasn’t because of what or who I
was.

The last thing in the world I wanted was to
be away from Colby for one more second.

“
Meu amor
, you think too much. Come,
sit.”

“I don’t know if I can,” she whispered as
the lightning around us caused her already blonde hair to glow.
That was how I always dreamed of her—it was natural—she belonged to
the lightning and it belonged to her. This place always renewed
her. It was like she was coming home.

There was no rain in this storm, only
lightning and the dry, balmy winds. A loud, almost thundering bolt
struck, but this one could be seen where the negative leader met
the positive streamer in the middle of the sky. The light made her
jump, and a smile ten times more brilliant than the electricity lit
up her face.

Colby slowly proceeded to sit down next to
me, but I wasn’t having any of that. I gripped her tiny waist and
hoisted her up so that she sat between my outstretched legs. An
electric sensation pulsed through me in waves at having her so near
again.

Thousands of bolts raced through the sky.
One particularly close one shot down and startled her. She turned
and held on to me.

“Are you worried?” I asked her, craving her
negative response.

“Yes.”

“I’m scared for you. I’m worried about me
with you and how that will complicate your situation.”

Another bolt made her scoot a little closer.
I took advantage of the position and encircled her waist in my
arms. She was as stiff as ice.

Must she make me work so damned hard?

“You are like the
relâmpago
,” I whispered in her ear.

“Why?” She leaned back and let herself get
comfortable in my hold.

“Because you come from the heavens, from
Paraíso, and you strike the sky making everything
around you light up. And I’m just one of those streamers, hoping
that you will reach down and touch me.”

She grunted out her aggravation. “I can’t do
that, Theo. I can’t open my chest and let you know everything. It
doesn’t mean I don’t feel it, because I do. It feels like peeling
my skin off.”

I chuckled and she moved with me, my laugh
jostling us both.

“Good thing I’m sappy enough for us
both.”

“Sway,” she said and let her friend’s name
float into the air without explanation or purpose.

“What about her?”

“Eivan could restore the Resin. She wouldn’t
tell a soul. You could try your power on her.”

I let my forehead rest on her shoulder. I
wasn’t ready for that. Being ready to try that meant I’d come to a
point where acceptance was real. And it was nowhere near real.
Eidolon in my head was still a childhood story like Robin Hood. Too
good to be true.

“Can we just let it settle—find out more
information before we go doing magic shows?”

She nuzzled her back closer into my chest,
distracting me from the subject. I appreciated the gesture.

“I forced myself not to miss this.” She
tightened her hold on my arms around her, and I obliged drawing her
in the space between us. That was just about the most emotion I was
going to get without pinning her down, but I’d take it. I could
read between the lines.

My phone buzzed. I threw it on the ground
next to me, silencing it, but Colby picked it up.

“Hello,” she answered in a sweet tone. She
always answered my phone, mostly because I hated it.

“Already? Boy, you are so quick. Make
yourself at home. We will be there soon.”

He said something else that made her giggle
and slap her knee, breaking her free of my hold.

The bastard.

“Collin just landed. We should get
back.”

“There’s no hurry. Collin’s a big boy.”

She tensed. I was no mind reader, but I
could tell I was about to be on the receiving end of a Colby
attack.

“What’s your problem? You’ve never shown the
least bit of jealousy before. And that was when we were in high
school. That was when I expected you to be a jealous little ninny.
Now you’ve chosen to grow a green tail over a man who is old enough
to court Rebekah. Give me a freakin’ break, Theodore.”

Her eyes squinted. The splotches on her neck
and chest were in full force.

Plus, she’d called me Theodore.

She always got formal when she was
angry.

It kinda got me going.

But I’d never tell her that.

She’d never do it again.

I had to admit, the jealousy thing had taken
me by just as much surprise as it had her. But there were only so
many things a guy could suppress. Right at that moment, for
instance, I was squashing down the urge to kiss her senseless.

“In high school I knew you were mine, that’s
the difference.”

I’d also become a little piss ant,
apparently.

She didn’t say anything and I didn’t expect
her to. I caved, “I’ll lay off the snide remarks, okay?”

Nodding once, she tucked herself back into
place. My heart throbbed against my ribcage. It was the same
throbbing I got when I kissed her under the boardwalk.

Colby reached back and tousled my hair,
pulling me down to rest my chin on her shoulder. These little
gestures were her language. She spoke so many things to me through
her mannerisms, which was why I hadn’t minded her lack of loving
words over the years.

In my arms was my
heart—
a respiração em meus
pulmões.

“Maybe the lightning is just meeting the
streamer in the middle. It can’t help itself. It would leave the
beauty of heaven to be with the streamer if only for one
second.”

The skin on her neck pebbled as I breathed
warm air against it and fair hairs on the back of her neck rose to
the challenge.

“Can you be my
rock,
Querida
?
Will you be my Sevella if all of this is true?”

LUCENT FEMALES
ARE TO KEEP AN UPSTANDING REPUTATION AT ALL TIMES.

I changed the subject quickly and pretended
to be distraught over having still not called my mother or Ari or
Sway. We flashed back to the house.

Collin was all business. He’d made a pit
stop in South Korea and put a set of information-carrying USB
drives in the hand of someone he said he trusted with his life. The
boys were pretty beat, but I was wide awake. I placed calls to Sway
and Ari, letting them know where we were, but no more. I told them
the bare minimal information in case they were ever questioned in
connection to us.

“Tell me everything,” my mom insisted.

“Mom, what if you’re questioned? I don’t
want the Synod up your ass because of me.”

“Oh, Colby, the Synod has been up my ass
more times than I care to admit. Just tell me. It will help you to
get it off your chest.”

“Okay.” I flopped onto the chair on the
porch and spilled my guts. Some things came out as a robotic
spewing of facts and some things came out with an emotional tone of
voice I didn’t know I was capable of. My mom knew my aversion to
feelings but never missed a beat. Before I knew what had happened,
I was a blubbering mess, just hopping from topic to topic with no
intelligent train of thought.

Arms folded a blanket around my legs and put
two tissues in my hands and then disappeared.

“Mom, I’m a newspaper where he’s a romance
novel.”

She laughed loud and long at that remark.
“No, you’re more like a travel magazine.”

“Make fun of me, Mom. Thanks.”

That made her laugh even harder.

“Go to bed, Colby. You sound like a mess and
it’s taking everything in me not to flash over there and hold you.
I’m going to Rebekah’s tomorrow. She said she’s got some kind of
stomach bug and she doesn’t get sick often.”

“That’s because she’s taken to eating big,
greasy slabs of meatloaf. No wonder she’s having digestion
issues.”

“Meatloaf? I just gagged, Colby. Don’t say
that word again.”

I sighed into the phone. “Thanks, Mom.”

“I love you more than time and space, Colby.
And Theo does too.”

“I love you too, Mom.”

“See? Not so hard, huh? Do the boy a solid
and tell him you love him more than just once a year.”

“Do you a solid? Have you learned how to
travel to the seventies?”

“No. I wish. Goodnight, my girl. Be
safe.”

“Goodnight, Mom.”

Shrugging out of the blanket, I did the best
I could to mop up the remains of my emotion fest. It was Theo who
had covered me and provided the tissues. Knowing him, he was
watching me through the window. I moved to get up when I saw a
flicker of something in the distance. Whatever it was, it bobbed
from place to place. It must’ve been an animal.

Blindly reaching behind me, I knocked on the
windows. Theo was out first, followed by Collin.

“There’s something out there.”

“Resin.”

“I think it’s an animal. But it was so
fast.”

Panicking, I jumped behind Theo. “I read
that there’s a huge jumping spider here.”

Their response? Both of the men I’d so
foolishly trusted with my protection and safekeeping doubled over
laughing. Still scanning the bushes for movement I saw it again,
but this time, the figure gave itself away.

“Lucent.” I pointed in awe. “There was a
flash. It’s one of us.”

All eyes focused on where I was pointing but
that was the last we saw of whoever it was. If it were Resin, there
would be no flashing. But if it were Lucent, who would be so near
to us without making themselves known?

“Let’s get inside. You’re staying with me
tonight, just in case. We don’t know who is on our side and who
isn’t at this point.”

Collin cleared his throat not so smoothly.
“I don’t think that’s proper. You two are not bonded.”

He was a lot more handsome when he was
fueled by rebellion. All this prim and proper didn’t fit along with
his beard and Viking-esque vibe.

“Don’t worry, Collin, the only person in the
world who is more concerned about rules is this one.” I jutted my
thumb toward Theo, who looked a little offended. “Trust me. I’ve
been with him in one way or another since I was seven and—well—all
marriage type rules are being followed.”