Endless Knight(24)

I gasped at the contact.

Growing bolder, he skimmed the backs of his fingers along a glyph as it floated across my damp skin. His hooded eyes followed the path of his fingers. “Hypnotique.” His breaths were short puffs of smoke in the cold night, his expression fascinated.

With infinite slowness, he stroked until I was panting, until I ached. I bit my bottom lip to keep from moaning out loud. I needed him to kiss me. I needed those strong arms, squeezing me to him.

“Your skin is so soft. Satinée,” he murmured. “You goan to drive me crazy before it’s all done, ain’t you?”


“Jack, please.”


“Please what?” He looked up, met my eyes.

Accept me, kiss me. I moistened my lips.

He noticed. Though his brows drew together as if he were pained, he didn’t give me the kiss I craved from him. Yet his fingers still traced my skin, higher, higher.

When he bared my bra and grazed his knuckles over me, I couldn’t stand it anymore—I scrambled to my knees, grasped his broad shoulders, and kissed him.

His muscles stiffened beneath my palms. Against his lips, I murmured, “Kiss me back?”


Heartbeats passed.

Then, with a groan, he did. Slow slants of his lips over mine grew more heated, more urgent. He leaned me down over his arm, laying his rough palm on my cheek to hold me steady for his kiss.

Groans broke from his lungs, moans from my lips. As ever, the fire between us stoked into an inferno. That combustible chemistry. He kissed me like he wanted to brand me—


Someone cleared his throat.

When Jackson released me and drew back, I saw Matthew standing awkwardly at the entrance to the hut.

As I pulled my shirt down, Jackson grated to me, “You taste like my Evie, feel like her. But you’re not her.” He swiped the back of his hand over his lips.

Ah, and here was the rage.

“We’re out here with no protection from Baggers, no lookout, and I’m still a heartbeat from taking you! You mesmerizing me too? That’s the only goddamned reason I’d still be thinking about you after all this shit. All my life, I never went looking for trouble, but it always found me! You’re just the latest helping of grief.”


My eyes pricked with tears. “I didn’t want it to be like this.”


“Then let me go! End this hold you got over me.”


“I didn’t mesmerize you. I wouldn’t.” Surely I wouldn’t?

“?‘Come, touch, pay a price?’ That’s your call? Well, I did. I’m paying it still.”


He snatched up his bow and bag and strode away into the dark, leaving me trembling, cold, adrift. I stared after him for long moments. When I pulled my knees to my chest, Matthew crossed to sit beside me. “Not Arcana.”


“Can you see Jackson’s future?”


“I see far.” He frowned. “Not with him. Unknown. Variable. Strike from equation!”


“Would he be safer away from us?”


Matthew gave me a raised-brow really? look. Stupid question. Then he tilted his head. “More dreams of Death?”


I forced myself to stop staring in Jackson’s direction and pay attention to Matthew, who sounded relatively coherent. “Yes. The same encounter with Death, after he’s stabbed me.” Again, I’d noted that he looked younger then. “If he’s immortal, how does Death age?”


“Duration of the games. Game begins—he ages. Game ends—he stops.”


“He doesn’t look that much older now. How long do these games last?”


Matthew sighed. “This will be one of the longest.”


“If I can regenerate, then is his Touch of Death the only way to kill me?” Or maybe I was like the Bagmen, taken out with a shot to the brainpan?

Shrug.

Change of tack. “Does he always kill me?”


“Not always. And Lady Lotus didn’t die once.”


I swallowed. “Meaning others have slain me—and I actually won a game?” I almost wished I hadn’t known that. “How many did I personally take out then?”


Hesitation. “More than anyone before. Or since.”


I was a record-holder. No wonder Selena worried about me getting a word out when we met new Arcana. They’d all be after my head. “Who else got me?”


Matthew studied his hand, hard, end of subject.

“At least tell me how many times Death has done it.”


“This Death? Two out of last three.” Matthew’s brown eyes were so grave as he said, “Practice makes perfect.”


9


DAY 254 A.F.

SOMEWHERE IN THE APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS


“If it seems too good to be true . . .” Jackson muttered to no one in particular.

We’d come upon an abandoned homestead, a quaint cabin perched high on a rise, with rocking chairs on the front porch and a nearby barn. It looked like it’d once belonged to someone who’d smoked a corncob pipe, wore “dungarees,” and called bears “bars.”


At the sight of a man-made shelter, I almost salivated. We hadn’t had a proper roof over our heads since the hut five days ago. As usual, everyone except Selena was soaked and freezing. My teeth were chattering again, my stomach growling. At these higher altitudes there was more bone-chilling fog and even frost.