The Space Beyond (The Book of Phoenix) (23 page)

“That’s more like it.” He dipped down, his thumbs separated me, and his tongue swept against me. My pelvis jerked toward him, my hands fisted in his hair, and I cried out. When he didn’t do it again, I looked down at him. He was staring at me, his eyes glassy but expectant.

“More, please,” I whined. He licked me again, and then his tongue lingered over my clit, swirling and flicking. “Oh, yes. Don’t stop.”

Thankfully, he didn’t. His tongue and his fingers and his lips did miraculous things over the entire area, from my pelvis to my ass, making me moan and cry out and convulse against him. He built me up and up and up until I was screaming his name, about to lose myself completely. And when I thought he had no more magic to perform, his lips wrapped around my clit, his fingers slid inside and twisted and stroked, and waves and waves of orgasm overcame me.

“I want you,” I gasped as I tried to pull him upward.

He leaned back, then stood up to take his shorts off. My eyes fell to exactly what I wanted, and my tongue slipped over my lips.

“Beg, Leni,” he said.

“Make love to me,” I said again, my voice raspy and my chest heaving.

He shook his head, but he dropped down over me, bracing himself with his hands. His erection rubbed my belly. “
What
do you want?”

“You,” I said. His eyes narrowed. “Your cock?” His lips quirked. That must have been what he wanted to hear. I lowered my voice. “Give me your cock, Jeric.”

He chuckled softly. I gave him a dirty look. “That sounds a little weird from you. But I still like hearing it. Beg some more.”

I slid one arm over his shoulders and reached the other one down between us, and I wrapped my palm around him, guiding him to the right spot. I tightened my grip slightly and slid my hand up and down a few times, making him moan. I pulled him closer to me, licked up the side of his jaw and wrapped my lips around his ear lobe then scraped my teeth over it.

“Fuck me, Jeric,” I whispered, breathing heavily against his ear. “
Please.
”

He groaned and thrust his hips, sliding inside me. My hands went to his shoulders, and my nails dug lines down his back as he pumped in and out, and I rocked up and down to meet his every stroke. I grabbed his hard ass and lifted my hips out and up.

“That’s right, baby, fuck me hard,” I said, and this must have been exactly what he wanted to hear because he moved faster, going deeper, sending jolts of pleasure up my belly, over my breasts and out to my limbs. Just as I was about to come again, he pulled out.

“Turn over,” he said.

I rolled onto my hands and knees. He slapped my butt cheek, then grabbed my hips and drove into me from behind.

“Oh,
yes
,” I cried out. “More, Jeric. Give it to me.”

He pounded harder. “Keep begging, baby.”

“Fuck me. Harder. Faster. That’s it. Oh,
yeeeessss
.”

“Scream my name for me.”

And I yelled it for the whole park to hear as he drove into me over and over, one of his hands splayed over my belly and his finger pressing and rubbing my clit, while his hips slapped against my ass, taking us all the way to the edge and beyond. With a shout from both of us, our souls exploded out of our bodies and collided into each other, heightening every sensation, until we were both screaming for the other even as our essences swirled into one.

Our bodies stayed in the moment as we slowly drifted down from our high. We hovered in the room, no need to leave, enjoying our togetherness for a while. We noticed the Book had fallen to the floor by the side of the bed, and the revelation that it could have powers passed through us, enlightening Jeric. He also learned of the new messages the Book had left. I couldn’t keep anything from him when we were like this. We hoped the Book’s power of communication didn’t mean someone could hear us any time they wanted to. What just happened was only for us. As Jeric told me many times when I’d been a little hesitant to try a few things, what happened in our bedroom stayed in our bedroom.

Eventually we returned to our bodies and jumped into the shower, one at a time because my bathroom was so tiny. Jeric went first, needing less time than me, and after I washed, I stood under the warm water for a few minutes. The words “Believe” and “Instinct” echoed in my mind as “Save Her” and “Help Her” flashed before my eyes, but then my mind wandered back to my parents. To my father, especially. I was still thinking about him after I’d dressed and was combing my hair out, and then I remembered the newspaper page I’d taken from Bex. More specifically, the article about an international summit my dad attended every year for work. I’d wanted to read more about it and find out where it was being held this year. I thought maybe if I saw him one more time, I’d know for sure what I’d always felt but denied.

As I squatted down to retrieve the article from a drawer under the bed, my eye caught on the Book of Phoenix. Water had apparently dripped from my hair onto the cover, and everywhere there was a drop, the leather glowed a silvery blue. I picked it up, stood and studied it in the light. The drops moved across the leather, accumulating together in the parts of the cover that depicted the ocean, showing it as crystal blue. I brushed my fingers over the water, and it disappeared, returning the leather to its normal, cracked brown. But again, something danced on the edges of my mind. A memory? A thought. I had a new idea—something I thought maybe the Book could do. One of the powers I’d given it.

“Hey, Jeric, come here,” I called out to the living room as I stuffed my phone in my pocket and my feet into the closest pair of shoes. He was by my side in two seconds. “I want to see something.” I had a feeling I knew what would happen if we tested the bottom of the water in the image, below the island and the tree, where the Gate would be, but I wasn’t ready to find out. I wanted to start small. I didn’t really know what to do, but I took a guess. “I’m going to touch the phoenix, and I’m going to
believe
. If something weird happens, grab me, okay?”

“Believe in what?” he asked skeptically.

“Believe in the Book,” I said, and before he asked more questions and analyzed the situation to death, I stroked my finger over the phoenix engraved into the weeping willow’s trunk.

Color filled the bird’s body and tail, and a ghostly image of it rose from the cover and grew. Blues, teals, peaches, pinks, and purples swirled in the shape of the phoenix, and it flew in a circle around us like colorful smoke, there but not there. As its wings rose around us, the colors in the bird’s body turned into yellows, oranges, and reds, and expanded outward to its wings, head, and tail, and the phoenix burst into fire.

Jeric’s arms wrapped around me, and the flames of the bird surrounded us, licking at our bodies, though we felt no heat or burns. Starting at the tips of the tail and working its way upward, black now filled in the shape of the bird. The phoenix exploded in sparks and ash, and then blackness engulfed us. And then bright light and cold air against my skin. I blinked against the brightness until shapes began to form. White capped mountains in the distance under a clear blue sky. If that wasn’t enough to tell us we weren’t in Florida anymore, the much cooler air was.

“What the fuck was that, and where the hell are we?” Jeric demanded as he patted himself down while eyeing me, as though making sure we were each in one piece.

“It … it
worked
,” I said breathlessly as I looked around. We were in a rundown industrial area with empty warehouses on each side of us. One gray wall displayed in faded red lettering “Juneau Shipping.”

“Looks like Alaska,” I said with awe. “Score one for my intuition.”

“
What?
” Jeric threw his hands in the air. They landed on his hips. “Damn it, Leni, what did you do?”

I looked down at the Book still in my hands. “It brought us here.”

He glanced at the Book, at me, then back down, now glaring at it. “No way. This is not happening.”

“Look around you, Jeric. It’s definitely happening.”

“It’s not real.”

I reached over and pinched him hard.

“Ow!” He yanked his arm away.

“It’s real,” I said, and I began walking down the alley toward a road about a block away.

“Where do you think you’re going?” He caught up to me and stepped in front of me, blocking my way. He jabbed a finger at the Book. “That thing needs to take us back. Right now. And how—”

“It was a guess. A theory. Something that popped in my mind, and I knew I needed to try, so I believed as hard as I could. The warehouse might be a portal, like Jacey’s apartment building had been, or maybe not. Maybe the Book doesn’t need a portal. I don’t know how it all works, but … here we are.” I stepped around him and headed for the road.

“Babe, what are you doing?”

“I know why we’re here, Jeric. Why we came to this place.” I continued walking. His footsteps crunched on the road behind me as he caught up. “I’ve been thinking about them all morning.”

He must have made the connection, because the next thing he said was, “Oh, hell, no, Leni. You can’t do this. It’s against the rules. You
can’t
see them.”

“I have to. There’s a reason we’re
here
. In this place. There’s something I have to do. If I’m right, it won’t take long, and if I’m wrong, well, we’ll have other things to worry about.”

His hand landed on my shoulder, stopping me again. “No. Absolutely not.”

I turned around and looked him in the eyes. “You have to trust me, Jeric. You
have
to.”

Our eyes locked, and we stood there in a standoff … until I shivered. His features twisted.

“Shit, babe. Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously.” I spun around, knowing he wouldn’t stop me again. He knew our calling and roles for each other. I had to give him props for actually following my instinct this time without an argument and need to fully consider every possible aspect of the situation.

We made it to the road where people walked on the sidewalk with us, coming and going from the businesses lining the street. Several shot strange looks our way, both of us dressed for Florida, not Alaska, in short sleeves, shorts, and flip-flops. A sign down the street showed the temperature as forty-six. Freezing to me. I rubbed my hands up and down my arms as we came to a corner and stopped to look around. I was about to pull my phone out of my pocket to look at a map, when my eyes landed on exactly what I was looking for: the state capitol building was practically right in front of us, only a block to our right. It was a weekday and the beginning of the workday here, and my father should either be in that building or on his way.

We rounded the corner, and I crashed right into someone. When I looked up to apologize, I gasped audibly.

Tall and thin, with lighter skin than mine smudged with age spots and dark brown eyes surrounded by wrinkles, she looked like she’d aged twenty years since I’d seen her—last Christmas. I thought I’d never see her again. My mother stood right in front of me.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice laced with the edge I knew meant that she was not sorry at all. She stepped to her right to move around me. No recognition of me in the slightest.

“Ma—Mrs. Drago?” I said, catching her forearm with my hand. She looked down at it, then back at me.

“Do I know you?” Her tone was as sharp as ever.

“Um …” My throat stuck to itself, making it difficult to talk or swallow or even breathe. I’d already been through this once, had basically accepted it. I thought I had, anyway. The pain of my own mother not recognizing me wracked through me again, nonetheless, making my chest tighten around my heart and lungs. Always her dutiful daughter, though, I swallowed down the tears and smiled. “Not really. I know your husband, though.”

She sniffed. “You mean my ex. Or soon to be anyway. If you’re looking for him, I just left him and his
assistant
at The Oxfire, a restaurant one block that way.”

She pointed in the direction we’d been headed, then without another word, stalked off.

“Are you okay?” Jeric asked, his voice low as he wrapped his arms around me.

My body trembled, but I didn’t know if it was from the renewed shock or simply the cold air. My soul had felt nothing from hers. No connection beyond the one we’d had of parent and child in this lifetime.

“I need to be sure about him, too,” I said. I broke away from his embrace and strode down the street toward the restaurant.

I didn’t need to walk inside. My father waltzed through the doors with a blonde hanging on his arm. She leaned up on her toes and whispered something in his ear, making them both laugh. I didn’t miss the little nibble she gave his lobe before pulling away. My stomach clenched. The way my mother had said “assistant” with a nastiness only I could detect made sense. He and the woman glanced at us, giving us the standard look for being dressed inappropriately, but no indication of recognition. And he wasn’t the only one who’d known me since I was a child. The voluptuous blonde had been my father’s assistant for as long as I could remember.

“Excuse us,” my father said as he looked me in the eye for a brief moment, before pushing past us, leading the way for his mistress.

“I’ve seen enough,” I choked out to Jeric, and I ran for the alley by the warehouse since we couldn’t just disappear from the middle of a busy sidewalk. I didn’t think about minding my unnatural speed, though, and probably ran faster than I should have. As soon as we reached the same place we’d appeared, I grabbed Jeric’s arm and wrapped it around me. I didn’t know if he needed to be touching me or the Book or what, but it worked last time. I pressed my finger against the phoenix on the Book cover and believed.

The colorful, translucent bird surrounded us again, then black, then white, then my camper.

Jeric immediately drew me into a hug. “I’m sorry, babe. I don’t know why you thought that would be a good idea. I mean, the teleporting or whatever we did was pretty cool, but going to see your parents, Leni? Why would you want to do that? You had to have known—”

“It’s okay. I’m okay. It was something I needed to do.” I stepped away from him, swiped at my moist cheeks, dragged in a jagged breath, and then straightened my back. “Now I know my instincts aren’t completely broken. I was right about my daddy and that woman. Had the feeling since I was little. And that means I need to trust myself … my intuition.”

Jeric’s fingers slid under my chin and lifted it. His gaze swept over my face, as though studying it. “What do you mean, babe?”

“I know what we need to do now.” I only hoped I could convince everyone involved to believe in me just as strongly.