Lightning Kissed (16 page)

“Resin,” she whisper yelled and snapped her
fingers, getting us to pay attention. Collin jolted to action,
grabbing his bag and scouting outside from the windows.

“Can you take Collin?” I asked Colby. I
hadn’t really gotten a chance to investigate the hows and whys of
Colby’s newfound bring a buddy program. I wished I had.

“Yes, but first I need something. Go ahead
and go somewhere, anywhere, and I will catch up.” I caught her
wrist. “I’m not leaving you.”

“Two seconds, Theo. I’m grabbing one thing
and then I’m gone. I swear it. If I’m not with you in ten minutes,
come after me.”

I was screaming then. “They could have you
in ten minutes.”

“I wouldn’t let them. I will flash before
getting caught.”

“Ten minutes, Evans.”

She grabbed me by the collar and jerked me
toward her for a small but powerful kiss. “I swear.”

Giving up on the feeling in my gut, I
flashed to Brussels. I looked at my watch; she had seven minutes
and forty seven seconds. I ducked into the nearest hotel and made
reservations for two rooms.

Five minutes and three seconds.

I was gonna kill her if she got herself hurt
or caught. Forget the Eidolon business. Forget the voices and the
effing books and everything that came with it.

I might be able to travel the planet in a
flash—but Colby Evans was my whole world.

I’d just gotten her back—there was no way I
would lose her now.

Desperate in only a few minutes, I called
her phone. Nothing. I called Collin’s phone. Nothing. Seven minutes
had gone by and I was about to explode. I could feel her presence
still in Tibet. And if I concentrated hard enough, I could track
her motions. She was running, not from something, but toward
something—Pema’s cabin.

“Sir!”

The sound of yelling tore me from her. The
girl behind the desk was shoving printed papers at me and waving a
pen. She didn’t realize that Colby was not here yet, and the only
real reason I was still here, not insane, and with a purpose for
the first time in my life, was because of Colby. Didn’t the girl
realize while she was making me remember my own name and forcing me
to sign some bullshit form my girl could be captured?

As the pen hit the paper, scribbling my
name, I felt it, the shift of her presence. I could feel her entire
path this time. It was as if my chest was a map, somewhere in my
soul were the planes of the Earth, and she was moving along them
with ease like a figure along a board game. The feeling seized
momentarily and my heart along with it, thinking something had
happened. As quickly as it fled, it returned, close. She was close,
within five hundred or so feet of me.

Shoving the paper to the hotel clerk, I
finally relaxed. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as
Colby and Collin entered the lobby. A simple nod toward the
elevator and we were shuffling wordlessly in single file line. We
were on the seventh floor, and on every floor, we stopped to take
in more people. Every person in that hotel was conspiring against
my getting information from them. I’d been confined to the corner
and held Colby flush against me. It was the slowest elevator in the
history of mankind.

“Are you okay?” I hummed against her ear. A
shiver rustled through her at the nearness.

“Yes,” she sighed out.

With my hands on her hips, I drew her
closer. The bag in her hand was enormous and I recognized it as one
of Collins’ bags. Finally, we arrived at the seventh floor and we
exited, the trio of us making great haste toward our rooms. I
jutted a key toward Collin and he took it in question.

“Give us five minutes and then we need to
talk.”

He went into his room without hesitation and
I dragged Colby behind me into our room. As soon as the door was
shut, all bets were off.

I shoved her against the closest wall and
pinned both of her hands above her. “Don’t do that to me again.
Promise.”

The pink blush on her cheeks intensified,
both from the adrenaline of flashing and I hoped, from the position
I now held her in.

“Okay, okay.”

“No,” I demanded, pulsing my hips against
hers in an uncharacteristic show of male claim. “Say it. Promise
me. Your word has always been true. Say it.” I never broke my stare
from her eyes. She needed to know that no matter what, from then
on, us being separated just was not going to happen. Her chest
heaved with ragged breaths as she composed herself enough to submit
to my insistence.

“I promise. But I had to get the books.”

“You stole the books! The books from Pema?
You stole them?”

She smirked at me. Usually I would’ve found
that particular smirk endearing, but in that moment, I found it
annoying.

“She said we had three days. She didn’t
specify anything else. We still have two days with them.”

I opened my mouth several times to argue
with her, but even I had to admit she had a valid point. Giving up
on a pointless argument, I marked my surrender by resting my
forehead against hers and letting go of my hold on her arms. The
relief flooded me.

“I was worried.”

“It was ten seconds.”

“Felt like a lot more,
Querida. Eu sempre
vou me preocupar
.” I ghosted my nose along the perimeter of her
face, breathing her in. She smelled like the mountains we just left
mixed with her own scent. I reveled in the sensation of being this
close to her again. Our hearts were pounding together. Before long,
Colby’s hands were in my hair. The atmosphere around us changed,
and the desperation of my worry converted into something raw, an
emotion that could only be expressed through our bodies—through my
mouth on hers.

Kissing Colby was like witnessing a miracle.
It couldn’t be explained by any rational hypothesis or theory.
Science would never do it justice. Every caress of her lips touched
my heart and tugged at my soul. I felt the peak of desperation grow
after only a few seconds. It was the moment where she craved
something closer. Her hands grew greedy and painfully grasped at my
hair. It fueled me on. A whimper broke free of her as I pulled back
slightly, outlining her heart-shaped top lip with my tongue.

Every time I kissed her, I thought I’d die
right there, from pure, unadulterated bliss.

We were both breathless when I began to slow
down. She deflated with her face buried against my chest.

“God, I missed that,” she said and we both
laughed.

Combing my fingers through her hair, I
kissed her temple and her cheek. “I did too. How many did you
steal?”

“Only four. I grabbed the ones that Collin
said hadn’t been touched.”

“Good ole Collin.”

She looked up at me. “Theo, how did they
find us?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. But we need to
find out. Let’s go talk to Collin.”

“Yeah.”

THE RESIN ARE NOT
TO BE TRUSTED.

Collin was pacing by the time we got into
his room.

“How?”

“We don’t know. Someone is either tracking
us—or someone we think we can trust can’t be trusted.”

I lounged on one of Collin’s beds. It irked
Theo how comfortable I was with Collin. I could just tell.

“Who did you tell?”

The question was directed at me along with
his pointer finger. I wondered why the speculation was pointed at
me. He was the one who was in constant contact with Pema without
our knowledge.

“I told my mother, and my two friends,
that’s all. All three are trustworthy.”

The Viking was always teetering on the edge
between me loving him like a brother and me wanting to send him to
Valhalla.

“Obviously not!”

The redness now apparent on my face was no
longer from our tryst in the other room, but from anger. How dare
he accuse my friends, or worse, my mother of such treachery?

“And you, Mr. Guardian? Let’s not forget
it’s you who works directly for the Synod. Maybe it’s you that’s
been feeding them information. We all know they have spies in the
Resin.”

Collin grabbed his chest. I’d fatally
wounded him with my accusation. I didn’t really believe he would
rat us out. But my hurt feelings at being the prime suspect made me
retaliate.

“I would never. I know who Theodore is.”

Poor guy, I’d really hurt him. I did that
with my big mouth, often.

“You told Sway,” Theo whispered, looking
down at his shoes. One clump of hair had fallen out of place, like
it was ashamed to be associated with what he had to say. His shoes
always became interesting when he was telling me something he
thought I would react strongly to. Accusing Sway of ratting us out
to the Escuro was going too far. I wouldn’t even entertain the
thought.

“Sway is my dearest friend besides Ari and
you. There’s no way.”

How dare he? It was one thing to make broad
accusations in my direction, but to directly implicate Sway. Sway
was amazing. Yes, she’d been distraught after everything, but
crying out traitor was a whole different can of worms.

My phone buzzed in my pocket while Theo and
Collin went back and forth on several other outlandish tangents. I
pulled it out to check, and my day went from flirty girl to whore
in five seconds flat.

“What?” Theo eyed my change of
expression.

I threw myself back on the bed in a dramatic
fashion and held out my phone for him to see.

“What did you do?” he half accused, half
joked.

“I can’t even think of anything this time
other than all this.” I swirled a circle with my finger indicating
the mess with Theo.

I felt a hefty depression on the bed and
looked up to see Collin sitting next to me. “You must be prudent
and respectful. Go in and be completely humble.”

And then I fell off the bed laughing.

“What is so funny, female? Is respect and
decency something to be laughed at?”

“Colby hasn’t been anything but arrogant and
sarcastic to the Synod in her life. Plus, she wouldn’t know prudent
if it jumped out of the ocean and bit her in the ass.”

“Hey!”

Theo disregarded my offense.

“How long do you have?”

That was the thing about the Synod. When
they said jump, it was common knowledge that you responded with how
high, how long, and what you should wear while you’re jumping. Of
course, I was a little rebellious. If they told me two hours, I
flashed in one hour and fifty nine minutes. On the outside, I
played it cool. But the Synod was a scary bitch—or bitches. It was
made up of seven Lucents who had been together so long, my mother
and I joked that their menstrual cycles were probably in sync.

At least, they always seemed to be PMSing
when I visited.

“I have two hours. I need a shower. I smell
like Tibet.”

“Are we going to plan this or are you just
going to go in there and insult them?”

Theo and I both spoke at once. “Insult
them.”

Ignoring the pleas of Collin, I went into
the other room and quickly showered. I changed into my most
unimpressive outfit. My rebellious attitude came from my mother.
And she got hers from Rebekah. I didn’t even know why I went and
answered their ludicrous questions. I wasn’t afraid of them.

Mean Girls made these ladies look like
puppies.

I threw on a toddler-sized white t-shirt and
tied it in the front and paired it with a long black maxi skirt.
Flip flops made me look even more like a hippie. I put on every
single bangle I owned.

Next was my favorite part. Regina, one of
the Synod, tried to pass a law in the sixties about Lucents’
outward appearance. It included the overuse of make-up and big
hair.

So every time I went there, I used enough
eyeliner to offend Lady Gaga.

“Are you still doing that?” Theo leaned
against the bathroom threshold. I applied a lethal amount of black
eyeliner and then added a thick layer of smoke eye shadow to carry
the effect all the way to completely offensive.

“Yes. What are they going to do?”

“Um, sell you to the Resin?”

“Ha, ha, ha. You think it looks sexy and you
don’t want me to waste all this on the Synod.”

“So true. But hey, Colby?”

“Yeah.”

He was the epitome of cool, calm and
collected. Or so he showed on the outside.

“Don’t piss them off, okay? And if they ask
you—if they ask specific questions about me, just tell them. Don’t
try to lie or get yourself tangled in something you can’t get out
of.”

I smirked at him through the mirror.
“Please, I’m like their golden child. They like to call me in to
make me feel like I’m under their thumb. But they know better.”

“Colby,
meu Amada
, please.”

The eyeliner got thrown into my makeup bag,
and I hopped up on the counter, now facing him.

“You know what I know about you,” I said,
kicking my legs against the cabinets.