J. Geissinger - Edge of Oblivion

“You didn’t catch him,” she said, stating the obvious.

He tore apart a croissant with his fingers. “No. I know where he went, though. I’m going out again.”

“That must be handy for an assassin.” She glanced up at him. “The walking-through-walls bit.

I’ve never seen that before. And you have Vapor, too. You’re very Gifted.”

He didn’t reply. Church bells throughout the city began to toll.

“I like that,” Morgan said quietly between bites of scrambled egg. Xander froze with his fork halfway to his mouth.

“The bells,” she said, looking down at her plate. “We don’t have church bells in Sommerley.”

“Oh.” His heart eased out of his throat. Fool.

When he was able to breathe again, he sensed something different. She was so somber. Her finely arched brows were drawn together, her generous mouth turned down.

“Are you all right?” he said, low, not quite looking at her.

She blinked up at him, startled. “Me?” She let out a small, brittle laugh. “I’m...yes! Of course I’m fine! I’m just...so very...”

Then she carefully put down her fork, dropped her face into her hands, and fell silent.

“Morgan,” he said, harsher than he intended.

She put up a hand. “Just give me a minute.” Then she put the hand back over her lowered face.

The impatience that lashed through him was almost unbearable. He held himself immobile, staring at her gleaming dark hair, the fine sweep of her collarbones exposed at the open neckline of her blouse, her long, tapered fingers that were just slightly trembling on her face.

He said her name again, softer. She inhaled, then let her breath out in a sharp exhalation that sounded like she had come to some kind of decision. She lifted her head and looked straight at him, and her gaze was steady and clear.

“I have to know how you’re going to do it.”

He frowned. Do what ?

“It’s just the not knowing. I think if I know, I can...it will be easier for me.”

The food he had eaten turned to a sour lump in his stomach.

“Please tell me,” she whispered. The look she gave him then, pleading and vulnerable, shattered the dull hunk of wood in his chest to pieces.

Glowering, he shoved his chair back from the table and strode across the patio, stopping only when it ended in a balustrade of pink marble lined with baskets of flowers. He had a wild thought to jump off. Somehow that seemed much preferable to answering her question.

How are you going to kill me? was what she was asking.

How, indeed?

He heard her walk up behind him, slowly, her step soft over the stone. He didn’t turn to look at her when she stopped just inches beside him. He felt her gaze like fire on his face.

“I’m not going to run away from you,” she said, very quietly. “You have my word, if that means anything at all.”

There seemed to be a steel band tightening in degrees around his chest with every breath. He crossed his arms over it and stood still as a rock, glaring daggers at a potted red geranium.

“And I want you to know that I’m sorry.”

That got to him. He looked at her, shocked. “You’re sorry . For what?”

She smiled, and he thought he had never seen anything so sad in his entire life.

“For us. I’m sorry for both of us. For the way things are. For the people we could have been, in another life. And I don’t blame you.” She shook her head. “I know it’s just your...”

She faltered, dropped her gaze from his, and turned to the view of the city, dusky rose and amber in the morning light. “I know it’s just your job.”

He was staggered. If this was a ploy to disarm him, it could not have been better planned or targeted more perfectly.

I know it’s just your job. She was granting him absolution for having to kill her. She was forgiving him.

“We’re going to find them,” he said roughly, only half believing it.

“Maybe,” she agreed softly. “But if we don’t, I have to know how you’re going to do it. I have to know. I can’t go on like this, imagining every possible thing you could...” She made a vague gesture with one hand, and it was so helpless and resigned and utterly sweet he wanted to scream in impotent rage.

But he didn’t. All he did was lift his hand, reach out to her, and place two fingers very lightly on the nape of her neck between the C1 and C2 vertebrae.

Her skin was warm and so very soft. Her hair was cool and heavy and silken on the back of his hand, as if he had plunged wrist-deep into water. She closed her eyes and bowed her head, and he couldn’t remove his hand no matter how many times he told himself to.

“A knife?” she whispered.

Wordless, he nodded.

“Will it hurt?”

“No,” he said, his voice suddenly hoarse.

She took a breath and seemed to gather herself. She lifted her head, and he allowed his hand to fall. The sudden loss of the heat of her skin was a cold shock against his fingers.

“Well then.”

She looked at him without fear or reproach, her eyes vivid and shining, almost relieved. She exhaled. She smiled. The change in her was immediate and profound, as if invisible shackles had been released and dropped to her feet. “Let’s finish breakfast, shall we?”

And she turned and walked back to the table, leaving him, once again, stunned and silent.

“The Vatican ?” Morgan turned to Xander in shock.

He gave the cab driver instructions in Italian, then gave a curt nod, ignoring with great effort the view afforded him as Morgan’s skirt rode up over her knees and a pair of long, tanned legs emerged in all their toned glory.

Christ , he thought, gritting his teeth. This is a goddamn disaster. He sat back against the hard taxi seat and stared out the window.

They’d finished breakfast quickly, and she’d showered and changed at the hotel. He wanted to get an early start, picking up where he’d left off yesterday, and she’d insisted on joining him. Two heads are better than one, she’d said, only with her scent in his nose and the sight of that body displayed so spectacularly in a simple black skirt, a fitted red blouse, and those sky-high heels she favored, only one of his heads was working. And it wasn’t the one on top of his neck.

He really needed to get some sleep.

“But—but—how can that be?” she was saying, leaning forward.

By chance, Xander glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the taxi driver gaping in slack-

jawed admiration at the reflection of her cleavage, peeking out in all its creamy, rounded perfection from the undone top button of her red blouse. He bared his teeth, and the man blanched and snapped his eyes forward.

“Aren’t the Expurgari associated with the church? Why would one of us go anywhere near the Vatican? Does he not know ?” Morgan leaned even closer, so close he could smell exactly where she’d dabbed perfume at the hollow of her throat. To his great horror, his mouth began to water.

“Sit back ,” he snapped, glaring at her, “and stop asking so many damn questions!”

She stared back at him, cool, with her eyebrows raised in twin dark quirks, not one iota impressed with his display of anger.

Wonderful. She wasn’t even scared of him. He’d told her exactly how he was going to kill her, and even that had failed to frighten her. If anything, it made her happy .

Of all the deserters and criminals and threats to the tribe he’d tracked in his lifetime, he had to get stuck in Rome for two weeks sharing a hotel room with a headstrong, sexy, intelligent, fearless woman who also happened to be so beautiful it stopped men dead in their tracks in the street.