Immortally Embraced (22 page)

Slowly, the world came back into focus. I drew my hands up his strong back, over the sliver of skin between his ear and his short, military cut. I felt the heat of him there, fought the urge to lick it.

God in heaven. “What are we doing?”

He flexed his hips, still semi-hard inside me. He chuckled against my ear. “I could show you again if you’d like.”

Yes, yes,
my body panted as he slid over my aching clit.

The man should have come with a warning label.

I braced my head against the pinewood wall. I didn’t want this to end. I wanted him inside me. But this should never have happened in the first place.

He flexed again and I nearly lost my train of thought. Still, I needed to wrap my head around this. He’d been my rock, my confidant. I should be able to talk to him about this.

I licked my lips. “Seriously, Marc. What are we doing?”

A bead of sweat slicked down the side of his face. “We’re taking what we can get.”

Settling for scraps. We were talking about days, weeks if we were lucky. I was at his mercy and at the whim of the gods.

My heart broke a little. “I don’t think I can live like that.” We deserved more. From the moment I’d met him, I’d known I wanted more.

“It’s all we can have.” He pulled back, slipping away from me, out of me as he helped me stand. He tried for a smile and failed. “I’ve been given so few things in this war.”

Me too.

I tipped up the corners of my lips. It was either that or cry.

“Let’s enjoy this gift,” he said, his fingers finding my cheek. “We’ll be together for as long as we can.”

He didn’t say the next part, but I knew it already.

It would have to be enough.

His mouth was tight, but his eyes were soft as he brushed a lock of hair behind my ear.

My stomach hollowed. “I can’t do that.” Legs wobbly, I felt his withdrawal like a physical ache. “I’m not as good at holding back as you are.” He’d said it himself that he could compartmentalize this. Well, I couldn’t. I was all or nothing. I didn’t know how to be anything else.

“Petra—”

My uniform jacket slouched on an empty corner of the lab table. I found it and tugged it on, not really wanting it.

He followed me, held me. “I don’t understand.”

“Yes, you do.” He wasn’t giving me everything and it wasn’t fair, not when I was about to rip a hole in my heart that might never heal. I took a deep breath and said it before I could change my mind. “From now on, we’re just friends.”

Marc looked like I’d slapped him. “Unbelievable. You don’t know what I had to pull in order to get this assignment. It was one in a million, I finally have you back—and you want to be friends?”

That was our mistake—in a nutshell. “You don’t have me back,” I said, buttoning my jacket, ignoring the hurt in his eyes. I didn’t have him back, either.

He was right. I didn’t know what he’d had to do to make it here, but I knew it was temporary. And that he was giving only what he could on this particular day, this week, this month.

The Marc I knew never held his emotions in check. He never held back his love. He was all or nothing—just like me.

This war had changed a lot of things.

He watched every button. “So you’re expecting me to be here with you every day and not touch you?”

“Bingo.”

“I can’t live like this.”

“I say that every day.”

But he was right. This was going to be our own particular brand of hell.

To be here, alone. Constantly tempted with what we’d given up at the whim of the gods. I wanted to strip him naked every time I saw him.

I wanted him more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life. I was raw with it.

But I couldn’t have him, so I might as well save myself the grief and the pain. Last time I’d fallen, it had taken me ten years to get over him. If I tripped again, I might never recover.

He stood motionless. “So if we’re friends, are you going to tell me what you’ve been doing for the past ten years?”

Surviving. I’d have given anything to go to him right then, wrap my arms around him, and never let go.

“Let’s just stick to work,” I said, moving to my desk.

His lips formed a thin line, but he didn’t offer any comment as he buttoned his fatigues and joined me at my desk.

“Not so close,” I said, as his rough jacket brushed my wrist, making me all too aware of his closeness. Of him.

He huffed. “Any more orders?”

“Don’t get pissed at me.”

He gave me a hard stare. “Why not? You won’t let me love you.”

Please. “Love is not the problem, Marc, and you know it.”

My words hung between us. We stood for a moment, shocked, the silence deepening.

He sat, reaching for my lab notes without even looking at them. He bent over them, trying to focus. “This is your progress so far on the ethanol?”

Lovely. Yes. Physical battle he could do. In spades. As far as putting his true self on the line? Well, he’d just proved my point.

“I’m exploring different solvents that will allow us to control the effect of the sphinx venom.”

“Sure,” he said, as he paged through the notes.

Battling a sigh, I sat down on the stool. The effects of our robust reunion were beginning to wear off and fatigue tugged at me. “When do you think your side will start sending equipment?”

“Knowing the goddess? It’s already on the way.”

“About that—” I stiffened. “How well do you know the goddess?”

“Jealous?” he challenged.

For a second, I didn’t know what to say. I was too tired, too raw.

Regret flashed across his features. “I’m sorry. That was an asshole thing to say.” He shook his head. “Nerthus means nothing. I know I sound like an idiot when I talk to her, but courtly words make her feel good. And it got me on this project.”

“Why?” I asked.

He softened. “I wanted to see you again.”

“It’s too dangerous.” He had to understand that. “What if she turns you into her slave boy?”

“I don’t care,” he said simply.

I sighed. The man was impossible. “Yes, well, our last group project didn’t turn out so well. How long were you down?”

“A few days,” he said, purposely making light of it.

“I thought you were dead.”

His eyes caught mine. “I’m sorry for that.”

I planted my hands on my hips. At least this time, he’d sought me out despite the consequences. He didn’t just let me go on with my life, thinking he was gone.

He paged through my notebook. “I heard about this project when I was in the hospital. They needed someone fast. I made a personal appeal to Nerthus.”

“It worked,” I said drily.

Still, forces were at work. That much was clear. I just didn’t know what it meant. “The prophecy said,
Death comes with a gift
.”

“I’m not dead yet,” he said, quoting a Monty Python movie we used to watch. He went back to the notes. “Besides, you can’t put too much stock in the oracles.”

He had no idea. “They’re true.”

Marc kept reading, so I stood and closed the book on him.

“Hey,” he said, trying to keep his spot.

“Listen to me.” He had to understand it. “These things have a way of happening.”

He cleared his throat. “I agree we’re involved in something big, but we’re in control, not some oracle.”

This is where I’d changed and he hadn’t—most likely couldn’t. “It’s a matter of faith,” I said.

He gave me a level look. “I’m a man of science.”

He just had to use my old argument. Fine. I was being rigid, I got it. “I probably deserved that.”

But Marc wouldn’t let it go. “I’m not putting you down. I’m just going on facts. My side is developing a weapon. Your side is developing a mercy drug.” He paused for a moment. “Let’s see if we can develop ours first. If there’s no suffering, maybe the guts and glory will lose its appeal. Maybe the gods will end this war on their own.”

I wanted to believe that. “Maybe that’s how the oracle will work,” I mused.

The lantern light played off his strong features. “Petra, you’ve got to stop hoping some oracle is going to swoop in and save us.” He cupped a hand under my chin. “We have everything we need right here.”

He always had to be in control. I should have known he’d never accept the idea that something larger—something he couldn’t control—was at work.

I shook off his touch. “Let’s just agree to disagree.”

Marc was here with me for a reason. And it wasn’t so he could rip my world apart again.

If I just kept my wits about me, we could use time together for good, for healing. And maybe, just maybe, we’d find what we needed to survive.

chapter nineteen

Marc insisted I take care of myself while he worked up a new ethanol sample and organized my notes. That was the one good thing about having Marc here: I trusted him—well, with everything but my heart.

It was so easy for him to push me, to make me want him. But that was all he could give—the physical, a tease, a reminder of what I could never have. I’d rather have nothing.

So I vowed to keep it light. Be a friend.

Take a shower for God’s sake.

He bent over my notes, engrossed, as he scribbled his own ideas in another journal. “You’d better not be a spy or something,” I said, brushing past him as I headed out for the showers.

“I think that was you,” he called as I left him in the sad, stifling little lab.

Good point.

I made my way out of the minefield, careful of the pranks. Although I wasn’t sure a pot of fish over my head would make much of a difference anymore.

I needed a thorough scrubbing, and at least a few hours’ rest. I felt guilty as hell about it. Marc was as good as me, maybe better with his research background. But we had an anesthetic to discover, a weapon to stop, and three oracles that thought death came with a gift.

Still, it felt good to let go for five minutes.

I kicked up a small cloud of dust as I zigzagged through the cemetery. My shower kit was back in the mess tent, but there was no way I was going to show up there looking like a minefield disaster. I headed for my hutch instead.

“Hey roomie,” I said, charging in the door.

Rodger wasn’t there. His stuff sure was. My bed was lined with three dozen boxes of various Jawas, Ewoks, and bounty hunters. Marius’s bunk was spread with busts of Spock and Kirk, along with plastic-wrapped T-shirts that said things like,
THE DEATH STAR WAS AN INSIDE JOB
, and
PARTY LIKE A VULCAN.
Then there were stack of
Star Trek
logo’ed plain red shirts on the shelf between their bunks that just said,
EXPENDABLE.

Rodger’s bed was laden with every action figure known to man. Then he had
Doctor Who
bobble heads on my bookcase, comics on the stove (real wise move there). I laid my hand on the cast-iron surface. Okay, it was cold. But still …

The floor was crunchy under my feet. I looked down to see that Rodger had laid out his entire rock collection. What? Did he still think he was in his three-bedroom house in Topanga?

Cursing under my breath, I avoided most of the rocks and managed to reach under my cot, where I found a new bar of soap, a fresh bottle of shampoo, another towel, and about seventy-five Yoda pencil sharpeners.

It was official: I was going to kill my roommate.

In the meantime, I crawled into my bed. It was too close and too soft and I didn’t care that this was my last clean set of sheets.

Action figures fell to the floor as I curled up and closed my eyes.

I slept like the dead. It was pure bliss. And as soon as my eyes fluttered open, I knew I’d rested way too long. Sunlight streamed through the open windows of the tent. I’d blown the evening, all of the night, and if my guess was correct, a good portion of the morning. I lay on my side, blanket clutched to my chest, and felt—good.

My eyes were no longer gritty. My head had cleared. My body felt rested and awake. I reached down for my soap and shower goodies, noticing that Rodger had carefully laid out his figurines on his bed for once.

Served him right.

Maybe that’s what the men in my life needed—a swift kick in the pants. Maybe Rodger wouldn’t take over my space if I didn’t let him. Maybe Marc would think twice about trying to kiss me silly if he had some of his own emotion at stake.

Soap and towel in hand, I banged out the door. I should make Marc weak, push him, drive him to that spot where he had to stop compartmentalizing and start feeling what I felt.

Then again, that could kill me. I’d better stick with action figures.

There weren’t many people out this morning, which meant it was late. Everyone was probably at work already or holed up until lunch.

Good. No distractions. I’d get clean and go straight back to the lab.

I’d almost made it to the showers when a goddess stepped into the path in front of me.

She held a silver flame in her open palm, her arm bent, like a waitress holds a tray. An emerald barely-there dress clung to her every curve. An array of tiny diamonds on invisible strings ornamented her neck and chest like a carpet of stars. They sparkled in the light of the silver flame.

I glanced behind me, hoping, praying she was here for someone else, but we were alone.

Silky blond curls cascaded down her back and curled over her shoulders. Her skin itself seemed to glow.

“Finally,” she huffed. “I was beginning to think I couldn’t detect your presence in camp.”

That wasn’t creepy or anything.

“My apologies,” I said, trying to recall the formal language the goddesses preferred, wondering what in Hades she wanted with me, and frankly—wishing I’d been five minutes faster to the shower.

She flipped her hair back. “So what was the little bitch wearing?”

Seven hells. “Who?” My mind raced. “Your goddess … ness?”

“Nerthus,” she said, if I’d hit my head on a rock. “My son said you met her.”

So this was Eris, goddess of chaos.

Lucky me.

I wished with everything I had I could start walking again. Or that someone,
anyone,
would interrupt us. I didn’t want to get involved in a supernatural episode of
Fashion Police.
I was so close to a good dousing and a shampoo. But there was no way I was going to risk the goddess smiting me.