His eyes dropped and I knew then that he
would never tell me what was going on between us. He would protect
the secrets of his people even at the cost of my sanity. We could
marry and have children who would be privy to information that I
never would be. I would never truly know Gerik.
“We’re done here.” I pushed at his chest.
“Get off me.”
“We’ll never be done.” The words were a
whisper across my senses. I hadn’t actually heard them, I’d felt
them. Could still feel them actually.
We locked eyes.
Words can be interpreted many ways depending
on how they are spoken. Gerik’s last statement to me could have
been spoken as a beautiful promise, but instead he’d blackened
those words and used them to threaten me. Several tense heartbeats
passed before he let me up.
“You’re mine, Trinity,” He called out as I
shut his bedroom door behind me. “You already know that though,
yeah?”
Hands shaking I walked out of his trailer and
came face to face with Stevo, Hockey, Shandor, Marko and… Xan.
“Trinity!” Stevo jumped up from the picnic
tabled and rushed up to me, his face wrought with worry. “Are you
okay?
“She’s fine,” Shandor drawled. “Just a little
overexerted is all.” He laughed. “Right fată?”
Horrified that they witnessed what had just
happened, I ran from them. I ran straight across the living lot,
and directly to my trailer. Locking both doors behind me, I crawled
into bed.
“You’re mine.” Gerik had said.
Possessive much?
Well, I didn’t accept.
I belonged to no one.
The next afternoon I went to practice full of
trepidation and wasn’t surprised when Xan wasn’t there. He had told
me that if I wasn’t serious about practice not to ever come near
him again. Watching me crawl all over Gerik like a cat in heat
while I was supposed to be practicing was probably enough reason
for him to believe I wasn’t taking it seriously.
Then there were the feelings I’d experienced
in his presence. How in the world was I going to deal with
that?
I came across him leaving Drina’s trailer
with a leather satchel of foul smelling herbs.
“Have fun?” He gave me a bitter smile.
I closed my eyes, embarrassed. Why Xan had to
keep finding me in compromising situations, I didn’t know.
“I’m really sorry about missing
practice.”
“I told you if you weren’t serious, not to
waste my time fată.”
“No!” I grabbed his arm when he started to
walk away from me. “I am serious! Please, you don’t
understand!”
It looked as if he didn’t want to understand
from the way he was frowning at the grip I had on his arm.
I unwillingly released him. I very badly
needed someone to talk to and Becki was no longer an option. She’d
barely said two words to me since we’d equally insulted each other.
Not that I’d seen her long enough to tell her I was sorry. No
longer sleeping at home, she had been ditching her chores most days
as well. Xan however, felt the same bias about magic that I did and
maybe somehow that could work in my favor.
“There is so much more going on with me and
Gerik than you think,” I told him.
He made a disgusted face. “And this concerns
me how?”
“It doesn’t, but I need someone to talk to
and I don’t have anyone else.”
He laughed. “So I’m last on the list, huh
fată?”
“No!” I blew out a breath. “This thing with
me and Gerik…it’s not normal. It has to be magic. But because of
who I am, I’m not privy to it. I just get to feel all the horrible
after effects without understanding what’s happening to me.”
I watched Xan study me, wishing I had some
sort of clue as to what was going on inside of his head.
“Xan!” I stomped my foot. “He has some kind
of control over me!”
He just continued to stare at me, rolling his
bottom lip between his teeth.
An idea stuck me. The last time Xan had
kissed me it had it been awful for me. There had been an unseen
force that had been trying to push him away, making me feel… wrong.
If I could just show him…
“Xan!” I shouted needlessly. He was half a
foot away, staring straight at me. Standing up on my tiptoes, I
wrapped my arms around his neck and crushed my mouth to his.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Xan reached for me, with a look on his face
that had my stomach fluttering. I watched his fingers intertwine
with mine. Painstakingly slow, he began to rub the palm of my hand
with the pad of his thumb. I snatched my hand back.
“No,” I told him, shaking my head.
He gave me a crooked smile, his eyebrows
rising. “No? So you don’t want to understand magic then? Fine,
let’s just get started on practice.”
I sighed. “No. I mean yes. Yes to the magic
but no to the hand flirting. Practice later.”
Xan’s eyes sparkled dangerously. “You want to
understand magic you need to understand connection. Everyone is
connected to each other through magic, through Nature, through
sex-”
“Okay Don Juan, just forget I asked.” I
uncrossed my legs and readied myself to stand.
“It was just a joke Trin. Relax.” He leaned
back on his elbows.
“Smoke?” Xan pulled a cigarette from behind
his ear. I nodded. Why not? It’s not like there was anything better
to do these days than get lung cancer. It seemed like one of the
more pleasant ways to go.
He sat up and pulled a lighter out from one
of many pants pockets and lit it for me. Digging around in another
pocket he emerged with a pack of cigarettes and shook one loose for
himself.
“Drink?” He asked, pulling a flask out of
another pocket.
I started laughing.
He frowned. “What?”
“You just remind me of the guy in prison who
can get whatever you need or something.”
“Oh yeah, been to prison fată?”
I blushed. “Yeah, I was a bad, bad girl.”
He snorted. “Who can’t shoot a gun.”
I scrunched up my nose at him and made a
face. He responded by snapping his teeth at me, a gesture that had
my heart racing.
“So you think I got it all in my pants, huh
Trin?” He grinned.
Blushing again, I looked away.
Instead of teasing me more, he lowered his
voice. “Explain this all to me one more time Trin, I’m having a
hard time wrapping my head around it. You say Gerik has some sort
of power over you?”
I swallowed. “I can’t control myself around
him. He calls all the shots, it doesn’t matter if I don’t want
anything to do with him, the second he touches me I turn into....”
I lowered my eyes, embarrassed.
“A sex crazed porn star,” I whispered.
Xan rolled his eyes. “You don’t need to
understand magic to understand what’s happening. It’s real simply
fată. Gerik is one powerful Roma and he’s been given every natural
blessing there is. He’s using magic to get what he wants and what
he wants right now is you.” The bitterness in Xan’s voice wasn’t
hard to miss.
“There has to be more to it than that,” I
told him. “I get the feeling he knows what I’m thinking sometimes.
And the way he smells, why doesn’t anyone else smell it? And why
does it hurt when I kiss you?”
“Alright, say there is something magical
going on between the two of you that Gerik had nothing to do with.”
Xan looked skeptical. “That leaves Natural magic. Something no one
can fight against.”
I threw up my hands in exasperation. “I
wouldn’t know, would I!”
“Alright Trin, what if I were to tell you
that Natural magic is just as paramount to life on this world as
the sun? That magic has its dirty little hands in everything and
everyone. That it’s in the air you breathe, the food you eat and
without it you wouldn’t have ever even been born. None of us would
have existed, humans and animals alike. What if I told you all of
that Trin… what would you do? Succumb to Gerik’s twisted version of
love?”
My mouth did a dying fish thing.
“I… is uh, is everything you said true?”
“Before I say anything, I want you to know
that I’m breaking a whole lot of rules by discussing this with you.
Jericho would kick me outta here without a second thought if he
knew.”
“Then why are you doing it?”
He shrugged, then gave me a lazy smile. “I
want something.”
Of course he did. This was Xan after all. The
guy should just start handing out his price list.
I sighed, “What do you want?”
“A kiss.”
My stomach leapt into my throat. The kiss
outside of Drina’s to prove to him that something was off about me
had gone very wrong, which of course had been the point except it
had been even worse than the first time. Not only flat out
repulsed, my entire body had ached with the need to get away from
him. Tears had even formed. Yet I persevered, for about one whole
minute, until I felt like my body was going to explode from
fighting with itself.
“What? Why a kiss? You saw what kissing you
did to me.”
He lifted a shoulder and muttered, “Maybe I
can make it better than the first two?”
I wasn’t inclined to believe that was going
to happen.
“Forget it.” I stood up to go. I made it only
maybe ten or twelve steps when I was suddenly grabbed, swung around
and slammed against a pair of warm and wet Roma lips.
I cringed away from him. “Please don’t, it
feels terrible Xan.”
“Prove to me that breaking this law, the most
important one my people have, will amount to something,” He
whispered, running the tip of his tongue along the seam of my
lips.
His dark eyes sparkled dangerously. “Show me
it will be worth it fată.”
His fingers crept under my top and began to
dance along my spine. I shivered underneath his touch. Nothing he
was doing was causing me any sort of discomfort; in fact, it was
the opposite I was feeling.
When he cupped my bottom, squeezed hard and
pulled me flush against him, my eyes shut involuntarily as an
onslaught of brand new feelings poured through me.
Gods, what was happening to me?
Anticipation. Anxiety. Excitement. Complete
and utter terror. So many unfamiliar emotions hit me at once.
He growled against my ear. “Open your eyes
fată. Look at me when I touch you.”
My eyes fluttered open to meet his own. His
eyes gave away everything he was thinking. Deep, dark, need that
felt dangerous, but right. It wasn’t hard to see how Xan became
addictive to the opposite sex.
“I want you Trin,” He whispered. His body
moved tempestuously against mine.
The butterflies in my stomach amped up the
Scottish jig they were already doing. Without thinking I grabbed
unto his biceps and dug my fingernails into the roughened, scarred
browned skin wrapped around solid muscle. He groaned against my
mouth.
Oh gods. My body turned butter soft, my brain
melted into girly mush.
Not yet sure exactly what I felt for Xan
didn’t matter, his words had yielded me. Pulling my lips apart with
his teeth, he found his entrance. A heartbeat later, a blast of
frigid cold air tore through me at the same time the resistance to
Xan kicked in. Startled, I pulled away. I looked up at Xan
confused, but he was peering over top of me. I followed his gaze
toward the creek where Gerik stood.
My heart dropped.
“He’s going to kill me,” I whispered, inching
around Xan to take cover behind him.
He turned toward me, his face grim. “No fată
he won’t, take a good look at him.”
Shielding my eyes to block out the sun, I
peered across the front lot. Gerik, legs spread apart, arms
crossed, wore a very satisfied smile on his face. He knew. He’s
always known I could never be with anyone but him.
“He knows I can’t kiss you,” I whispered.
“That’s why he smiling.”
Xan made a dismissive noise in the back of
his throat. Then, in a move that could only be considered either
stupid or bold, Xan flipped Gerik off and stared defiantly back at
him.
I stretched out on the grass that night,
staring up at a star filled sky. My heart was aching for the
simplicity of my life before magic.
I wiped away an errant tear.
If magic can’t save us, if it can’t fix the
world and strips people of their free will, then what’s the point
in any of it? I didn’t even want to acknowledge its existence let
alone be a pawn in one of its games.
Xan had said there were two kinds of magic.
The four elements represented light magic, consisting of Earth,
Air, Water and Fire. Dark magic, the fifth element, is Spirit.
Spirit is the opposite of light magic. If life was light, than
death was dark. Spirit could only occur if light magic is
corrupted, in turn disrupting the balance of Nature.”
“What constitutes as disruption?” I’d asked.
“Who get’s to decide? It there some magical judge and jury?” Xan
had shrugged.
“It’s Nature fată. She gives the gifts and
she doles out the consequences too. Like I said before, she’s
everywhere, got a hand in everything, there isn’t anything that
happens that she didn’t make happen herself or doesn’t know
about.”
If that were really true that would mean none
of us had any real power here, magically capable or not. We were
human, specks of dusts really. Ultimately expendable. It didn’t
make sense that such a great force of power like Nature would have
allowed such an incredible devastation to befall our race if we
really mattered to her.
“Is that what this is about?” I’d asked as a
horrifying thought crossed my mind. “Is Nature trying to rid the
world of us for something someone’s done wrong?”
Xan’s face took on a surprisingly serious
look. “I have no idea Trin. It’s one damn scary thought
though.”
Then he had shrugged again, and his humor
returned. “Or maybe it has nothing to do with magic at all. Maybe
this is some weird experimental disease gone awry that the
government accidentally released.”