J. Geissinger - Edge of Oblivion

He stopped breathing. Instantly, he got hard.

“Do something!” she pleaded, hoarse.

He told himself in the next moment that he was only helping her, that this was the best, most effective way to distract her and break the mind link, but even as he was telling himself these things he didn’t really believe it. He knew himself far too well.

In two quick steps he closed the distance between them, wrapped his arms hard around her body, put his mouth over hers, and kissed her.

And, unexpectedly, with heat and fervor and a passion that unlocked something deep within him he’d put away long ago, she kissed him back.

Time spun away, sound faded out, everything ground to a standstill. Her hands were in his hair and his were on her soft curves, her jaw, the dip of her waist. She arched into him, soft and lush, and he thought he’d never felt anything so fine as her and this and the sweet warmth of her mouth, of her tongue on his, gliding and sensual and wantonly demanding.

More , her body said, straining against him. More , her soft mouth said, hungry. More! that little mewling noise in her throat demanded when he pressed his pelvis to hers and she felt the full length of his arousal, throbbing hot.

And he wanted to give her more. In that moment he wanted to give her anything and everything —whatever she asked for, whatever would quench this aching burn in his chest and the roaring in his ears and the poison eating through his blood, poison he’d had his first taste of the moment they’d met.

He wanted to be inside her. He wanted to hear her moan his name. He wanted—

Suddenly she broke away.

She stood there staring at him, blank, panting, her arms still tight around his neck. Then, with a horrified cry, she skipped back and slapped him hard across the face.

“Son of a bitch!” she cried, distraught.

He worked his jaw where she’d hit him and tried very hard to concentrate on the fact that she no longer seemed to be happy about the kiss. Inside him, his desire for her pounded .

“You do realize that’s not my name,” he said drily.

“What the hell do you—how could you—what the hell were you thinking ?”

That last bit was shrieked, and the cathedral’s vaulted marble ceiling conducted it, splintering it into an echoing symphony that shattered the silence in the vast halls all around them. Startled exclamations and muttered reprovals came from various angles, but he ignored them.

In spite of the uncomfortable strain against the front of his pants and the horrifying realization that perhaps it wasn’t him she’d been thinking of when they shared that passionate kiss, Xander kept his voice carefully neutral and businesslike when he answered.

“You asked me to help—”

“I didn’t mean like that !”

“And because I couldn’t sense him anywhere nearby, that was the most expedient way to break the link. Otherwise I would have gone after him.” He cleared his throat. “Obviously.”

She was shaking and flushed and clearly free of whatever spell she’d been under. With her rigid bearing and glittering eyes and flustered distraction, she was utterly lovely. She was also pissed .

Right now he was very glad for that collar.

“You’re trying to tell me you knew that would work?” she asked, dubious. She crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes at him.

He crossed his arms as well, rose to his full height, and coldly gazed down his nose at her. “Of course. Why else would I kiss you?”

Her nostrils flared. She tossed her hair back over one shoulder with a shake of her head. “I see,” she said, regaining a little of her fractured poise. “Am I that repulsive to you?”

He paused, regarding her with a look he knew was mercilessly forbidding, willing himself to do the right thing and be done with all this foolishness. But he couldn’t bring himself to say it. He couldn’t make himself say yes .

She took his silence as an affirmation anyway and went even redder. “The feeling is mutual, Ace.”

He sent her a grim smile and sidestepped that. “Let’s get back to business, shall we? Do you feel him now?”

She swallowed hard and looked around. “No,” she said, low. “It’s broken.”

“And when you first felt”—he floundered for an appropriate word—“when you first felt the connection, where were you?”

She jerked her chin to a nearby chapel, decorated with mosaics and statues, featuring a prominent wood, stone, and marble altar that housed the lighted, ghoulish remains of a dead pope in a crystal casket.

“I want you to come with me over there, and if you feel anything—anything at all—we’re going to leave and I’m going to come back alone. Understood?”

She didn’t answer. She wasn’t looking at him, and he wondered if she ever would again.

“Morgan,” he said more softly, trying a different tactic. “Are we agreed?”

After a moment, she jerked her head up and down: yes.

Progress. Good.

He opened his palm to the chapel. She went before him, hesitating only when she drew near the altar.

It was topped with eight taper candles in bronze holders, just in front of a massive mosaic depicting the martyrdom of St. Sebastian. There were pink marble columns and corbels with carved cherubs and gold leaf slathered on every available surface.

“Anything?” he murmured, close behind her.

She held very still with her head cocked, as if listening. She looked left and then right, frowning a little, her chin lifted. Her gaze traveled up the soaring marble columns to the vaulted ceiling far above, and she paused, considering. Then she dropped her lashes and looked at the floor beneath her feet.

“It’s...odd,” she finally said. “There’s a faint echo of something. Almost like déjà vu. But I can’t put my finger on where it might be coming from. It’s like he’s everywhere. And nowhere.”

Xander was disappointed, primarily because he’d found only the same thing in his search the night before. It made him a little harsher than he should have been. He was really looking forward to getting his hands on this bastard.

“Well, that’s helpful. Maybe it’s God you feel.”

Her lips flattened. She turned to look him full in the face. “You,” she said, “are an unmitigated ass .”

He stared back at her, wrestling with the urge to kiss her again. Those damn lips —

“And you’re not trying hard enough,” he said, his voice tight. “If he’s close you should be able to find him, like you did yesterday. Just concentrate.”

“If it were that easy, I’d have found him already!” she said, exasperated. “Maybe it’s this building.” She wrinkled her nose at the lighted casket. “There’s too much weird juju in here.”

He had to admit the dead guy was giving off a really funky odor beneath all that careful casket sealant. And there was something else he couldn’t place, something unnerving, a whiff of ancient earth and dead air and cold, unlit corridors. It reminded him of a crypt. It also very inconveniently interfered with his own ability to sense his surroundings as fully as he normally did. Everything was oddly muted.

It had been the same last night. He’d waited for the sun to go down before attempting to infiltrate the cupola where the man in white had disappeared. The scent of Alpha was on the stone outside and the glass panes, even lingered like an afterthought in the air above the altar, but then it evanesced and disappeared altogether. But there was something, some indefinable energy, in the very walls of the cathedral itself, vibrating from the foundations...

It made no sense. None of this made any sense.