“No. You didn’t hurt me. No, it’s not that.” She didn’t mean anything sexual. Even in his fever-racked state, he was sure of that. She was only interested in his wounds, and making wincing sounds as she peeled shreds of cloth and blood clots away from his oozing flesh.
But she was sitting on top of him, looking down at him, her fingers touching him lightly. He had dreamed of this. His imagination filled in details that he knew weren’t real—her hand sliding down his belly, beneath his waistband, to caress his cock. He could almost feel her fingers curling around—
“John, can you hear me?”
He blinked at her.
She cupped his chin with her hand, looked into his eyes. “John, do you have any clean rags?”
Had he been raging in delirium? Had he been saying things about her? About them?
“John.” She enunciated clearly. “Do you have any clean rags?”
“I heard you. The bottom drawer . . . by the woodstove.” He watched as she went to the chest, bent over, and . . . she had a bottom shaped like a kiss.
She straightened, her arm full of linens, and looked at him.
“What did I say?”
“Nothing.” She frowned as she gazed at him, looking like a mother with a sick child. “Can you hang on a little longer? Stay conscious a little longer?”
“Sure.”
She went to his sink. “How’s your water?”
“Well water. Good. No contaminants, not much sediment, recently washed the filters.” He was making sense, he noted with gratification. Really good sense.
But the next time she spoke, she was standing next to the bed and he could smell wood smoke. She had managed to start a fire in the woodstove. “John, I’m going to put a damp cloth on your forehead. All right?”
He opened his eyes. When had he closed them?
She was holding a white cloth . . . and some scissors. “Then I’m going to cut off your shirt.”
“My only denim shirt.”
She stroked his forehead with the cool cloth, then covered his forehead and eyes. “Mama Cat shredded it.”
“That’s right.” He heard her clipping the material, felt the tug as she pulled it out from underneath him.
“Now I’m going to clean these scratches. It’s going to hurt.” She climbed on top of him again, sat on his stomach.
He wanted to tell her to sit a little lower.
“Can you hold still?” she asked.
“Yes.” Because if he got restless, she’d get off him, and he didn’t want that. “Are you going to take off my pants?”
“After I clean your wounds . . . My God, John, she really dug her claws in.”
“Females always do.”
Genny rubbed his shoulder, wiping away more blood. “Do you have any antibiotics?”
He snorted. “They don’t work on me.”
“Aspirin? Anything to bring down the fever?”
“Only time works.” He heard water splashing nearby. Somehow, she’d placed a basin beside the bed.
“How do you feel?”
“Good.” Every place she touched him felt good.
His mind and body knew what they wanted, and with his control growing more and more precarious every minute, he worried that—
“Good?” she scoffed. “Sure. I think you’re miserable, and likely to get worse.”
“You don’t even know what’s happening to you, do you?”
“Know what, John?” She was indulging him.
He didn’t care. “You don’t know that the rasputye is affecting you.”
She froze in the act of wringing out her rag.
“More and more, you feel my emotions.” He pushed the cloth off his eyes and looked at her. “Don’t you?”
She placed the clean, damp rag on his wounds and let the warm water ease the stiffness forming in the joints. Picking her words with care, she said, “That’s part of the process of getting to know you. I’m starting to understand how you think.”
“Darling, you absorb my emotions. You reflect them back at me. They echo back and forth, transforming, growing, linking us.” Dimly, he was aware he had to stop talking before he spoke of his desire for her.
“John.” She lifted the cloth, wet it again, and placed it back on his forehead. “You’re babbling.”
“Am I?” Beneath the cover of the cloth, he closed his eyes and released the smallest, the very tiniest, pulse of power.
God. It felt so good to deliberately release that power that had been pent up in him for so long. It was like an orgasm long desired and long delayed.
She gasped and scrambled off the bed.
He moved the cloth quickly and looked at her, and realized it had been, not pure power but pure desire, for she stood shocked, flushed, and embarrassed.
How could he not want her? He’d asked if she knew about the Chosen Ones, and she did. He’d told her about himself—not everything, but enough—and she hadn’t run away.
But now she would. Now she knew.
He closed his eyes. He turned his head away. “Just go. I’ll be all right.”
“John.” She put her hand on his chest. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
Chapter 26
Genny lifted John’s head, held him against her chest, and put the glass to his lips. “John, drink some water. Please, John, you need water.”
Because he was burning up, his fever so high she feared for his life.He took a sip, then another. Then for the first time since he’d been wounded last night, he greedily drained the glass.
“Good,” she whispered, and filled the glass from the pitcher beside the bed. “John, that’s good for you.”
Seeing this man, usually so vital, stretched out flat on his back unable to move . . . it tore her heart out.
He turned his head to look up at her, and his eyes sparkled a deep, rich blue, as if his soul had filled with sapphires. “Genesis, listen to me. You have to leave.”
“I’m not leaving a man in your state alone.” She urged him to drink again.
“I can’t control it much longer. It’s been so long since I released it . . . last night I had a taste, and it felt so good . . .”
“I know,” she said in a soothing tone. “It’s okay. I can handle it.”
“But should you?” He kissed the hand that held the glass. “Is it the right thing for me to do?”
“When you’re feeling better, we’ll talk about it.” She laid his head back on the miserably flat pillow and stood.
He’d been sick all night and all day with no end to his fever.
She had slept on and off for the remainder of last night and in two-hour stints during the day, rousing when he called out to someone called Sun Hee in tones of such desperation, Genny’s eyes prickled with tears.
He sternly ordered Gary to remain where he was, then groaned as if in pain and clasped his head as if dizzy.
Exactly at noon, he had ranted about the Seven Devils, sat up in bed and pointed, told Genny to go look to see if the door to the crossroads was open. He’d been so insistent. When she looked out the front windows, she realized the tall stone formations towered close, rising out of the forest to glisten as if they’d been polished.
At one point, he had been so feverish she stripped him down to his shorts, wiped him down with cool water, and fervently wished she was seeing him under different circumstances. As it was, he was lifeless and unresponsive, the scratches on his shoulder oozed and his muscled frame looked almost gaunt from dehydration and infection.
As the sun began to set, she picked up her cell phone to call for a physician, but she had no signal. No signal of any kind. It was as if those huge stone formations cast a damper over their surroundings.
It was now past midnight. When she tried to return to the woodstove to stir the soup she’d made with his store of root vegetables and cans of beef broth, he caught her arm. “Don’t leave me. I see the faces of all the people I killed, all the friends that are gone, and I can’t
bear to be alone.”
“I’m not leaving,” she repeated. Her heart ached for him, for the torments he suffered in his delirium.
He twined his fingers in hers. “But you should go. I’m not safe to be with.”
“No, you’re not.” Because even hurt and torn, he was attractive to her. She felt a different kind of fever, and it wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t romantic. What kind of woman lusted after a sick man?
Yesterday, when they arrived here at his cabin, she had sat on him because she needed to remove his shirt and have free access to his wound. She would have sworn that’s why she did it. Then something crossed between his body and hers, a pulse, a surge of such heat that she had instantaneously trembled on the edge of orgasm.
He had used his power on her.
She didn’t blame him. He had been sick; she’d been stupidly provocative. And since then, he had held himself in check. He didn’t want to embarrass her. He didn’t want to drive her away.
All too obviously, he feared what he would do next.
Going to the fireplace, she stirred the soup. It was taking longer to cook than she had imagined. Who knew? She had never been a Girl Scout. She was more of a microwave girl.
She glanced at John.
That pulse of sexual power . . . was that why the women he had carried away wanted him still? Because he provided sexual ecstasy far beyond any normal man’s skill?
“Genesis. Genny . . .” His voice was hoarse. “You have to go. You have to go now . . .” He threw off the blankets, twisted on the bed, in thrall to some great pain.
And a glowing blue wave of power arced off him, knocked her backward into the wall, shook the walls, and cracked the logs stacked beside the fire.
She shook her head, trying to clear it. Got her balance and straightened. Staggered from the shock. Then hurried to his side, and caught his shoulders in her hands. “John, are you okay?”
He opened his blue, blue eyes, so full of torment. Through fever-cracked lips, he told her, “It’s too late to run.” His eyes closed again. Again he arched on the bed, and then a red wave of power blew off him.
This time, she was touching him—and the power didn’t push her; it blasted through her—her skin, her blood, her brain, every nerve, every cell glowed red with power. Another wave, and behind her eyes, she saw violet. Another wave, aqua this time. She staggered, alive as she had ever been in her life. Afraid and exhilarated and amazed. “John!”
He put his hands over hers. “Hang on,” he said.
The next blast was bigger than the others, shimmering with heat and so yellow she felt as if she was looking directly at the sun.
After that, she lost track of time as pulse after pulse of power arced off his body, out of his mind, through hers, and away. Dimly she heard the cabin walls creaking, felt the dirt floor shifting beneath her feet. She saw all the colors of the rainbow growing and crashing on the beach of her mind, then receding to be replaced by another wave, bigger, brighter, more powerful.
She didn’t know how long she stood leaning over him, her hands wrapped around his shoulders, before the biggest wave swept her off her feet. She lost her grip on his shoulders. She crumpled onto his chest, and cried out at the contact, sensitized in every nerve, every inch of skin.
Beneath her, he gasped.
Dimly she realized she had hurt him, and tried to lift herself away.
But his arms came around her, held her tightly, and his voice rumbled under her ear. “Stay with me. Genesis, stay here.”
She collapsed back down on him and huddled there, breathless, exhausted, amazed.
For the first time since the barrage had started, he lay quiet, breathing deeply. But he still burned with fever.
Yes, John was Chosen. More than that, he was a man of great power, greater than she had ever imagined.
No wonder the people who had lent her money for college wanted John to return.
It was only a matter of time before she felt the energy build up in him again, an energy so demanding it almost raised her off his body.
This time, the waves blew directly from him through her. Everywhere they touched, every cell lit with red and blue, burned with fire and froze with ice, sparkled with rubies and diamonds. Tears leaked out of her eyes; not tears of pain, but tears of sorrow and joy. She felt as if she was being born again, torn from the world where she had lived all her life and thrust into another world.
What had he said? That the rasputye was changing her? She hadn’t believed him . . . but now she knew it was true. Because he was here, and he was changing her.
The waves died away again, leaving her exhausted and exhilarated.
His fever cooled, burned away by the release.
When she could speak, she asked, “Does it hurt you?”
“Choking it back hurts me. Releasing it frees me.” He half smiled, an edge of wildness in his eyes. “And you help me stay in control. Will you stay with me tonight?”
“Yes, John. I’ll stay with you tonight.”
When Genny woke up, the fire had died down, liquid dawn was slipping down the glass of the windows . . . and she lay beneath John on his narrow bed.
His fever was gone. The scratches on his shoulder were deep, red scars. He smelled fresh and damp; he had washed, and his skin had resumed its supple sheen.More important, he had been watching her sleep.
He supported himself on his elbows. His legs wrapped around her legs.
He was naked.
She was dressed.
His belly rested on hers, his erection hard and hot, and his blue eyes glinted with desire.
Her intimate position beneath him, the intensity with which he watched her—they shocked her awake, made her shrink away from him. “We can’t.”
“Why not? Because I was ill?”
“Yes.”
“I’m one of the Chosen, and I am healed.”
She believed he was. “But you’re exhausted.”
“I feel better than I have for two years.”
“All right, then. The truth is—I’m not certain I want to do this.”
He didn’t like that. That sensuous mouth that could make her feel so much tightened, and his deep voice rumbled in his chest. “I can make you certain.”
She stilled. “Make me?”
He lightly touched her lower lip with one finger, a simple gesture that roused her. “Are you afraid?” he asked. “I won’t hurt you.”
“I know that.” But he would wrest her control away, make her weak and clinging, bring her to unwilling peaks of ecstasy . . . make her one of his women.
She didn’t want to be one of his women. She didn’t want to be one of many.
Then he spoke, and a chill swept through her.
For he answered her as if he had plucked the thought from her mind. “I want you to be my woman . . . my only woman.”
Chapter 27
“I searched for those other women, carefully picked each one out to serve a purpose. I always wanted a woman who was dissatisfied with her life, who would take the worship I gave her body and use it to go on to a better life.” Looking stricken, John turned his head away. “Except for the first one. I chose badly with the first one.”
Genny shouldn’t care, but a thought niggled at her. . . . “Who?”He shook his head.
Of course. He would never tell.
“So you want me because I’m dissatisfied with my life?”
John kissed her, his lips chapped by fever. So sure in his touch, he might never have been sick.
“Everything about you is different,” he said. “I didn’t find you. You found me. You found me when I was about to give up, to go into the crossroads and never come out, to die there like all the old experiments gone wrong . . .”
His words chilled her. “You could die there?”
“Time runs differently in the crossroads. Sometimes you can waste your whole life dreaming the dreams you can find there.”
“So you truly believe that the crossroads are . . . are
a special place out of time?”
“I’ve seen the crossroads, not in reality but in my past.” He slid his fingers into her hair, looked into her eyes. “Let me show you. Watch . . .”
His power opened her mind, and opened his mind to her.
The cabin faded away . . .
In its place, Genny saw a strange countryside. The air was bright, but there was no sun. The sky was blue, but it sparkled preternaturally. Spring-bright grass spread like a carpet over the ground. Flowers grew in profusion around the misshapen oaks and yews. A wide waterfall spilled ten feet into a large, tranquil pool.
And on the east and the west, the horizon slanted toward the ground. Even in this hallucination, Genny knew that wasn’t right.
Into this landscape strode a beautiful woman, tall and blond like the women of Rasputye. As she walked, the grass sprang up from beneath her feet as if she weighed nothing.
Yet that was an illusion, too; her weight was more than usual, for she was heavily pregnant. Her belly pressed into her pelvis, and once she stopped and bore down with her hands to her stomach as if trying to push the baby out.
She was in labor.
Yet she strode determinedly, her gaze fixed north.
Genny followed, not really there yet held in thrall by the drama unfolding before her eyes.
The landscape rolled past faster than it should, and as they approached a bleaker land, the woman fell to her knees. She groaned in the agony of birth, then held her screaming son in her bloody hands. She cut the cord, staggered to her feet, and carried the child at arm’s length toward the steel blue sky ahead.
Genny heard the waves crashing on the rocks, saw the salt spray, felt the bone-chilling cold. Miniature icebergs rested on the rocky shore and bobbed in an ocean that stretched as far as the eye could see. The female walked into the water up to her waist—Genny shivered—held the baby up to her face, and spoke as if the infant could understand her. “If you survive, you can have your gift, whatever that will be, and mine, too. And if all that comes to pass, you’ll be the one they fight over.” Throwing back her head, she gave a wild burst of laughter. She placed the infant on an iceberg, listened to its shriek as if the sound gave her pleasure, then turned . . . to look directly into Genny’s eyes.