I See You (Oracle 2) (24 page)

“Clear,” he said, passing the key to me. “Though I imagine you’ll want to check yourself.”

Beau stepped past Blackwell without replying. He conducted a more thorough search of the room, which included lifting the mattress and then the entire bed frame.

“You think Henry would plant something?” I asked Blackwell.

“I think he’s a sorcerer. Younger and less powerful than me, and in a position to … accumulate assets.”

“Like you accumulated me?”

Blackwell smirked. “I’m next door.” He stepped past me to exit the room.

I closed the door behind me, threw the night lock, and was snatched into Beau’s arms before I could turn back.
 

He lifted me off my feet as he pressed my back against his chest, his face into my neck. “Don’t hate me,” he whispered into the sensitive flesh just behind my left ear. “I should have told you … I should have …”

I wrapped my hand up and around the back of his head. “Beau …”

“No, I need to speak now. I need to tell you everything.”

“Okay.”

He carried me to the bed. After setting me down on the end, he kneeled before me. I lifted the strap of my satchel off over my head and set the bag on the floor by my feet, never taking my gaze off Beau’s anguished face. His head was bowed, eyes staring blankly somewhere around the level of my knees. He was visibly overwhelmed by everything he thought he had to say.

I ran my fingertips across his temple, then along the edge of his ear. “Bright in here,” I murmured.

Beau immediately stood, crossed back to the door, and flicked off the yellow overhead light. A dimmer wash of light filtered in from the bathroom, fading into deep shadows by the door. This softened the edges of the room, dulling the garish orange and beige bedcover, smoothing the worn tan carpet, and hiding the chipped edges of the fake wood dresser.

Beau kneeled before me a second time, leaning forward to grip my hips, then pressed his face into my belly. He remained silent, though. I was afraid he’d explode if he didn’t manage to express himself soon.

“I know I …” He started to speak, then corrected himself midthought. “That first time in the Brave. The night we met. I just … I’m good at that. At sex. But I know you hadn’t been with many people before me. That it was sudden for you.”

“I asked you to come back with me, Beau. I couldn’t believe you’d come with me.”

Beau laughed harshly. “And now you know that I’m a whore.”

I gripped his shoulders, struggling to ignore the pain that shot through my chest at his choice of words. I needed to say something … to help … to try … but I’d never been tied to someone so tightly that I took their pain as my own, and the feeling overwhelmed me.

“It sullies everything between us,” Beau cried.

I pressed my hands to his face, holding him so tightly that my knuckles ached. “No,” I whispered fiercely. “Never.”

“Listen … listen to me.”

“I hear you, Beau.”

“I took money from women for sex, even after I left Southaven,” he said. “I never asked for it. At first it was just … arranged. Then —”

“Then they wanted to give it to you,” I said. “A gift. Just let that be gifts.”

“And before?”

“Did you ever harm anyone, Beau? Did you ever physically assault anyone … other than defending yourself from Cy?”

“Not even then,” he whispered. “I might have killed him if I’d hit back.”

“So you did what you needed to survive. If I’d been you … if I’d had to do what you did, what you were forced —”

“Not forced.”

“Coerced, then. As a minor, by people you trusted …”

Beau nodded, though I knew he was simply acknowledging my words. Not agreeing with them.

“Would you love me any less?” I whispered.

“No.” The word was ripped from him. As he fought with his emotions, his grip on my hips became harsh for a second, then relaxed.

“I was …” I stumbled over my thoughts, correcting them as I spoke. “The only reason I didn’t do more shit was because … no one wanted me. Not until you.”

Beau growled, starting to negate my words. But I pressed my hand lightly across his mouth so I could finish.

“Our lives began that night in the Brave.” I gazed down at his perfect face in the dim light. Though I didn’t have to see it to know it better than my own.

“You’d do that for me?” Beau whispered.

“You did that for me. Why should I love you any less?”

I pressed the lightest of kisses to his lips. I wasn’t sure he wanted physical intimacy, given the tenor of our conversation. But I didn’t know how to express everything I felt verbally.

Beau flicked his tongue against my lips. I opened my mouth to deepen the kiss, pressing my tongue against his.

“It’s different with you,” he whispered as he broke off. Pressing his forehead against mine to speak, then kissing me again. “You know that, right? It’s not about … proving or taking. It’s just this.” He ran his hands up my arms, wrists to shoulders, then slipped them down again to flick his thumbs against my erect nipples. Electricity followed in the wake of his touch. His magic stirred up my magic, moving through and around it.

“I know.” I darted my tongue into his mouth and wrapped my legs around him as best I could. “I see you. Sometimes all I can see is you.”

Briefly removing his mouth from mine, Beau slipped his hands up underneath my tank top and pulled it off over my head. I did the same with his T-shirt as he flicked my bra open. He got my sneakers off with two quick tugs at my heels.

I lay back on the bed to shimmy out of my jeans. Beau stood to divest himself of the remainder of his clothing.
 

“I don’t like this bedspread. It’s scratchy,” I pouted teasingly.

Beau laughed, sounding more like himself than he had all day. I grinned back at him as he towered over me completely, epically naked.

He picked me up, threw me over his shoulder, ripped the cover off the bed, and then tossed me back down. Bouncing on the springy mattress, I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Much, much better,” I said.

Beau leaned down over me, planting his hands on either side of my shoulders. Then, not touching me anywhere else, he sucked on my nipples one at a time. The pressure was intense. Almost painful. Needy.

“Salty,” he said, appreciatively smacking his lips.

“We could shower,” I murmured, though I didn’t even remotely want to move an inch away from the bed.

Beau slipped his hand between my legs to make sure I was ready for him. “We’ll do that next,” he said, lowering his body over mine and sliding into me.

I wrapped myself around him — arms, legs, and heart. Our playfulness dissolved into a pure need to touch and taste and feel. To just be in this moment. Together.

∞

The sun was rising by the time we curled up in bed, freshly showered and with the intention of sleeping. I opted for opening windows over turning on the air conditioning, but it was still too hot to cuddle. We lay spooned without touching, my back to Beau’s front.

I’d been drifting for a while when I realized I hadn’t said everything I wanted to say. Everything that needed to be said before dawn.

“We might not be able to stop it, Beau.”

“I know,” he murmured sleepily.

I almost didn’t continue. He needed to sleep, to heal his mind along with replenishing his magic.

“The vision of you … in the parking lot …”

“Which you stopped.”

“Or I put on hold.”

“Blackwell isn’t going to kill me.”

“Chi Wen said I was only successful in thwarting that vision because Blackwell didn’t intend to kill you. It wasn’t your destiny to die in that parking lot.”

“Cy might be an asshole, but he doesn’t want to kill Ettie.”

“Exactly. It’s an accident. I’m not sure we can stop an accident.”
 

“Of course we can. That’s what makes things accidents. Their changeability.”

I didn’t want to argue Beau out of having hope. I didn’t want to be that person to him.

“Have you seen different?” Beau asked. “In this newer vision?”

“No, just …” I said. “Things are piling up … maybe I just haven’t had enough time to really study the sketches.”

“But Blackwell has.” Beau’s sleepy tone sharpened slightly. He tolerated the sorcerer because he respected my choices, but he didn’t like him. Certainly not anywhere near as far as he could throw him.

I rolled over onto my back to stare at the crosshatched pattern of the ceiling. The motel room was slowly brightening. Sunlight was attempting to penetrate the room through gaps in the curtains. Not that it mattered. I was already carving into the pocket of peace we’d created just by voicing my concerns.
 

“Blackwell thinks the visions are about the drugs. Because Ettie isn’t magical, but the drugs are. I think the connection for us is Ettie. Ettie’s death.”

“To draw us here.”

“If you believe that’s how the magic works … if you believe that I’m supposed to function as some sort of hand of fate.” I still wasn’t a fan of the idea of destiny. I liked to think I carved my own path, made my own choices. So the idea that I might not be a hundred percent in control of everything chafed me, though I still had to acknowledge the possibility.

“A conduit, maybe,” Beau said, willing to entertain at least part of my hypothesis. “But you chose to come.”

I swiveled my head to look at Beau. His eyes were closed, which meant I could stare at him as long as I wanted without feeling weird about it. He reached across, grabbing my far hip to tug me closer.

“We’ll get all sweaty,” I said.

“That’s what the shower is for.”

“Oh, yeah? That’s what the shower is for? Could have fooled me.”

Beau laughed huskily. The arm he’d slung across me grew heavier with sleep. “There’ll be more time for words,” he murmured.

I let him sleep, thinking I was too wired, too full of questions and concerns to do so myself. But I was wrong. I drifted, then slept without dreaming.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Can’t you let them sleep longer?” Kandy’s voice floated in through our open window.

I groaned, rolling away from the sound and wishing it had been a cool breeze instead. I fell instantly back to sleep.

What felt like only seconds later, someone was rapping briefly and lightly on our door. The noise was just loud enough to cut through the regular city sounds that I’d had no trouble sleeping through.

I cracked open a single blurry eye. Beau was already crossing to answer the door. He stuck his head out and engaged in a brief murmured conversation. I was surprised that he was both awake and fully clothed. I needed at least three more days of sleep.

Beau shut the door quietly, as if he thought I might still be sleeping, then turned back to find me watching him from the bed. He’d thrown a sheet over me sometime in the night or maybe before he’d answered the door.

“Who was that?” I yawned as I stretched, then regretted the stretching because it woke me up far too fast.

“The marshal. They got a ping off Cy’s cellphone. They need a couple more to triangulate. He just wanted us up and moving.” Beau hovered at the base of the bed, staring down at me. His face was etched with worry.

“What time is it?”

“About ten.”

I groaned. “That’s not even four hours’ sleep.”

“You could stay here.” Beau shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans, still looking at me steadily but not smiling. He was wearing an emerald green T-shirt I didn’t recognize, but which did wonderful, intoxicating things to his dark aquamarine eyes.

“What’s wrong, Beau?”

“What isn’t wrong?”

“I … I thought …” I sat up, wrapping myself in the bed sheet and pulling my knees to my chest.

“Ah, geez. I’m just being … I just can’t shake all this shit out of my head, you know?”

I smiled, but didn’t voice a single one of the wiseass comments rattling around in my head. It was definitely not the time to make light of the last twenty-four hours.

Beau laughed, seemingly despite himself. Then he sobered quickly. “I love you like crazy. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

I nodded. “I can say the same. And I know crazy.”

“If you stay here, then …”

“Then I’ll be bored?”

“And safe.”

“Maybe.” I wasn’t sure anyone could guarantee anyone else’s safety like that anymore. Not in a world full of capricious magic. “I know you don’t want me near your family.”

“I don’t even want you in the same state.”

I snorted. “Right. But I get it. I get them, at least on the surface. They can only hurt me by hurting you, because I’m not invested. They’re just people to me, not family.”

Beau scrubbed his hand across his head, then turned to paw through a couple of plastic bags on the dresser. “Kandy went shopping.”

“She picked that T-shirt for you?”

“Yeah.” He smoothed his hand across his chest and belly. “Do you like it?”

“I think you already know the answer to that.”

Beau offered me a blazing grin.

I fake-scowled at him. “Are there at least toothbrushes and toothpaste in there?”

“Yep, in the bathroom.”

I slipped off the bed to head into the bathroom, noting that the room was embarrassingly trashed from our late evening. I’d have to tidy before we left.

“Is that weird?” I asked from the bathroom door. “Kandy shopping for us?”

“Nah.” Beau was still sorting through the bags. “Pack behavior. She’s ranked higher than me. Obviously, since I have no official position within the pack. So she’s supposed to feed us, clothe us.”

Beau had left an ice-white toothbrush for me, taking a pea-green one for himself. I squeezed a generous dollop of toothpaste on it, then wandered over to the doorway so I could see him while brushing my teeth.

He held up two tank tops, one light gray and one charcoal. I pointed to the charcoal one. He tossed it on the bed and returned the other to a bag. He lifted a black sports bra out of the second bag with a sneer.

I laughed, choking on toothpaste. I owned only two bras, but mine were much more about eye candy than support. I could easily go without.

Beau tossed the sports bra next to the tank top, then added underwear and socks to the clothing pile.