Chapter 78

As large as the house was that Lucas had managed to find for them, it wasn’t difficult for Jo to find a room without an occupant, even though many of the Hunters were sleeping now that the hunt was over, and the meeting afterward had dismissed over an hour ago. She lay on her back staring up at the foreign ceiling, wondering if she should watch the video of the attack from the perspective of someone outside first or sleep first and watch later.
It was tempting just to close her eyes and see if sleep would come, but she took a few minutes to go over Elliott’s recording from the attack to see if the Vampire’s reaction was as odd as she thought it had been, considering how quickly her own troops were able to get into the fortress.
Her suspicions were right. The Vampires had broken much more quickly than expected. In fact, many of them seemed to run the moment they realized they had been infiltrated. If these were the troops put in place specifically to guard the queen, why would they break so easily? There had to be an explanation, but she couldn’t figure out what it was, and while the topic had come up during their debrief meeting, they hadn’t discussed it much since most of their focus had been on what had happened with Cassidy and where Holland was now.
Jo ran a hand over her face and closed her eyes, shutting off the recording in her head. The bed she was lying in was comfortable, though still foreign. For a moment, her thoughts went to the family that had once lived there. Where were they now? When had they fled and to where? Or were they even still alive? She had to wonder what might’ve become to the places where she used to live. Thoughts of a ragtag army of Vampires or displaced humans sleeping in the room she’d had as a little girl in the headquarters apartment building in Kansas City came to mind, and it was immediately unpleasant. Even though she was pretty sure her dad had taken all of their things and hidden them away somewhere, leaving the place he’d lived for fifty years barren, she could envision strangers, dressed in mismatched clothing that indicated they’d grabbed what they could from wherever they’d been, sitting on their couch, sleeping in their beds, using their shower. It was unsettling, to say the least.
The chances of that happening in her apartment in Colorado were much more likely. Even though she paid rent, she knew her landlord would never come to check to make sure that it was her occupying the flat. Not that there was anything in the place that Jo hadn’t grabbed second hand. None of it was of any value. But it was hers. The dingy couch, full of dust and covered in duct tape was her sanctuary, not some poor human’s who couldn’t afford his or her own place. She could see their faces as they smiled at the load of Hot Pockets and beer in the fridge she hadn’t gotten a chance to consume before her family had shown up and dragged her away on this new adventure.
Now, she was sleeping in someone else’s bed, and it was much more comfortable than the one she’d left behind in Denver, but it was temporary. Everything about this sort of life was temporary, and in a very real way, so was the life itself.
Her own thoughts shifting to the frailty of man were exhausting. She pulled the blankets up over her shoulder out of habit, even though it wasn’t cold in the room, and she wasn’t capable of feeling it even if it were, and closed her eyes again, willing the thoughts from the day to fade away so she could get at least a couple of hours of sleep. When she woke up, maybe her head would be clearer. Maybe all of this would make more sense, and she’d be able to sort out why the Vampires had essentially opened the door and let them in. Maybe when she woke up her aunt would have regained some memories, at least of who she was, who her husband was. Her sister. It would be great if Aunt Cass could remember her sister… Cadence.
Jo faded off into a restless, but welcome, sleep, and while there were unwanted dreams, none of them were worth remembering.
* * *
When her eyes flickered open, the room was much darker. A glance at the window, where thick curtains obscured much of the daylight, but not all of it, told her there was little to keep out at the present time, and that she had been asleep for much longer than she’d anticipated when she’d first sought out the room.
Rolling over served to be more difficult than anticipated as well, mostly due to the arms around her waist. She had to assume she’d called him again, sent Zane another message in her sleep that had brought him here to lie next to her for no particular reason other than the fact that she’d asked him to, and he was never one to disappoint if he could help it.
She hadn’t been fair to him recently, and she knew it. Thoughts of what she’d gotten herself into when she’d taken this assignment always left her stomach queasy, like she’d eaten bad deli meat or taken one too many turns on a tilt-a-whirl ride at the county fair. But when she thought about what Zane had given up to be here, it wasn’t just waves of nausea that flooded her senses, it was guilt. He didn’t have to be here. The only reason he’d gotten involved was because he cared about her, and while she also had strong feelings for him, she’d been shit at showing them recently, even pushing him away from her every time he tried to remind her that it didn’t have to be this way.
His grip loosened as she turned so that she was able to bury her head in his chest without saying a word. Zane brushed back the strands of hair that had come loose from her braid. “How did you sleep?” he asked, his voice gravelly enough to fool her into thinking he’d been asleep, too, even though she highly doubted that was the case.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. Not knowing how she slept was akin to knowing she’d slept well since it meant she hadn’t been plagued by nightmares. She’d take it.
He kissed the top of her head in an unassuming way, the comforting kiss of a friend; the protective kiss of someone who cares deeply but doesn’t dare disturb the carefully balanced, spinning plates of relationship propped up between themselves and the one they wish to reassure.
It was nice. It was warm. It was friendly. It was… comforting. But Jo needed more. She wanted more. And she wanted it from Zane. Not just because he was there, and she could easily get it from him, but because she was tired of dancing around the fact that they’d used to be something they weren’t anymore. Before squatters moved in and claimed him for their own, she needed to reestablish the idea that he belonged to her. If she waited any longer, if she gave her still foggy mind a chance to clear completely, she might let all of the reasons why she’d run away from him to begin with come back to the forefront of her thinking, and then, she’d be rational enough not to do anything at all.
So she acted quickly, raising her lips to his, no longer caring about dragon breath or a million and one excuses that had kept her from accepting the fact that she still had feelings for him. Zane hesitated, looking down at her with eyes that were asking not only if she was sure but if she was sane. Jo didn’t bother to answer, only moved forward with her plan of attack.
As soon as her fingers moved to the buttons of his shirt, any intention he had of waving the white flag were gone, and in a flurry unlike any she’d experienced since the last time they’d made love, which had been so long ago she couldn’t even identify the month, they were naked and in each other’s arms. Thoughts of keeping the noise down so as not to draw the attention of the others were a futile flicker as Zane reminded her of why she liked being with him so much; there was no chance any other coherent thought was going to register in her mind once he was inside of her, moving with the stealth precision of an expert who knew her body better than she knew it herself.
Jo dragged her fingers down a wall of solid muscle before wrapping them around his back, her hips moving in perfect timing with his, her thoughts a jumbled mass of euphoria moving in waves and then replacing the fog of confusion with one of disembodied glory as Zane took her to the peak of pleasure and kept her there so long, she was quite sure her voice would be hoarse for days from all of the banshee shrieks dancing in the air around them. When he finally joined her, she welcomed it, lungs burning, and slowly began to descend the mountain she’d been climbing for so long every muscle in her body ached.
Zane moved off of her, and little pieces of reality began to flood her mind, replacing the shards of vibrant color that had been her only coherent thoughts while they had been one. Now that she was her own entity again, reminders that she had work to do, a queen to capture, an aunt to relocate, an army of Vampires to destroy, an internal struggle between running away from all of it and getting back to work waged. Overwhelm settled back around her shoulders. She was Atlas, and the world had somehow grown even heavier in the last few minutes.
“Are you all right?”
He asked that same question at least three or four times a day, but this time, it was different. This time, he wasn’t just asking if she was handling the responsibility of her new position. He wanted to know if he’d hurt her--not physically, of course. But mentally. Emotionally. Had he gone too far? Should he have refused her advances?
“I’m okay,” Jo assured him, thinking that probably wasn’t quite the truth, but she would be okay, as soon as she put some distance between them again. This didn’t change anything, did it? They weren’t a couple now, after all. He knew that, didn’t he? Or wouldn’t he?
Zane ran his palm along her cheek, the heat of his hand on her face igniting the fires she was desperately trying to extinguish. She looked into his eyes and felt roots shooting down from her feet into the ground beneath her as she questioned why it was she always wanted to run away--from everything. From everyone. For once, why couldn’t she just stay here? Not in this borrowed house or this borrowed bed but in these arms--ones that didn’t have to be borrowed if she didn’t want them to be.
“I worry about you, Jo.” In that moment when he had every right to be worried about himself, about the fact that she was likely about to trample his heart again, he wasn’t worried about that. He was worried about her. Of course he was. That’s who he was. A great guy. The kind of guy that gave up his life in Colorado to trek halfway around the world and insert himself into a fight that wasn’t his in order to make sure that she was, in fact, all right.
“I do, too,” she admitted.
Zane leaned down and pressed his lips to her forehead again, much like he had before they’d made love, and Jo had to wonder if that was the bookend that sealed an incident they would never speak of again or if she was reading too much into it and it was just the actions of a man who truly loved her more than anything in the world, one who still hadn’t learned his lesson that Jo McReynolds didn’t know how to love--not him, not her family, not anyone. Not even herself.