Trail of Lightning (The Sixth World #1)(78)

“Ah,” Kai says, coming into the room. “It’s very popular. I’m sure someone borrowed it and forgot to return it.”

“Those bastards.”

He chuckles, comes closer. Pulls a random book from the shelf. “How about this one?” On the cover is a shirtless, muscled, generic-looking Plains Indian guy with long flowing locks, passionately kissing a white woman whose red hair is caught in a prairie breeze. Wagon trains and buffalo roam in the background.

“Mmm . . . a romance. Didn’t peg you as the type.”

He slides the book back onto the shelf. “Then you don’t know me that well.”

“Oh, I know you pretty well,” I say, thinking of the past few days and nights. Remembering his arms around me, his body pressed against mine.

He tilts his head and squints at me, one eye closed, like he’s trying to figure out if I’m actually flirting. I am, or at least I’m trying to. The truth is, I have no idea what I’m doing. But Kai takes mercy on me, the edges of his mouth turning up into a grin. “That was strictly for health reasons,” he says.

“Really?” I say. “I can’t remember Tah ever having to snuggle to help me heal.”

“Speaking of healing, how do you feel?”

I sigh and lean against the bookcase, some of the levity of the moment gone. “Rode hard and put up wet,” I admit.

He looks at me blankly. “I have no idea what that means.”

“Such a city boy.”

“Guilty as charged.”

I hesitate, wondering what to tell him. But after all he’s done for me, he deserves honesty. “I’m hurting,” I admit. “Inside and out. I know my body will heal, but the rest of me . . .” I shrug. “I loved him, Kai.”

He’s quiet for a moment, head down. “It was touch and go for a while there,” he concedes. “Your wrist I could heal, and your back. But your spirit. It didn’t want to come back.”

Is he trying to tell me I was dead? I shudder, unwilling to entertain the thought. If I’d died, I’d know, wouldn’t I? Even Kai couldn’t bring someone back from the dead.

“You know people who love you don’t hurt you like that,” he says, eyes steady on me. “Love’s not supposed to try to kill you.”

I don’t know what to say to that. I know he’s right. That whatever there was between Neizghání and me is no more, if it ever was. But feelings don’t just die overnight. I can’t stop what I feel.

But I can let some of it go, start to make room for something, someone, new.

“You know this makes us even,” I say, my voice full of false bravery, trying to find that bright place we were moments ago.

He frowns, unsure where I’m going. “What do you mean?”

I take a step toward him, closing the distance between us. “I save your life, you save mine. Even, right?” We’re face-to-face now, so close I can feel his breath on my skin, smell the cedar in his wild hair.

His smile is cocky. “Well, technically I saved your life twice. You forgot Rock Springs.”

“I had Rock Springs handled,” I whisper close, my lips touching the curve of his ear. “You were just showing off.”

His arms slip around my waist and he murmurs back, “That’s not the way I remember it.”

He hesitates above my lips, asking first, his face filled with the same kindness, the same unfamiliar but gentle strength that saved my life, the same loyalty that made him have my back against Hastiin earlier. And even though part of me feels like I’m facing down the most terrifying monster I’ve ever had to fight, I lean forward and press my mouth to his. His lips are surprisingly soft. His hands move up my back until his graceful fingers tangle in my hair and he pulls me closer.

The kiss is as far away from the sadistic fire of Neizghání’s as it could be and still be considered a kiss. If Neizghání was scorching flame, Kai is the soothing cool of a perfect mountain spring, flowing through my body, calming my anxiety, holding the potential to tame my loneliness and grief with a simple touch.

Medicine People Clan—the thought flickers through the back of my mind. Kai’s kiss itself is a curative.

And then he shifts against me, his hip pressing into mine. His leg slips up between my knees. And I let myself go.

He surges against me, hungry. He moans, a low rumble that sends a thrill of desire through my body. I pull him tighter, rake my fingernails across the bare skin on his arms, kiss him harder. His hand slides down my back, cups the swell of my ass.

And I’m back on the ridge at my nalí’s, lying in a pool of my own vomit. Back on Black Mesa, shivering in the shadow of a coal mine, the blood of dead men drying under my fingernails. Back on the mountains above Lukachukai, cutting off a child’s head.

When all I want to be is right now, in my body, with Kai.

My desire shuts off like a goddamn light switch.

He senses something’s wrong and pulls away, eyes worried. “Are you okay?” he says, breath short and voice low and thick with need. It’s so flattering that I laugh, a brief burst of joy.

“Yeah, I’m good,” I lie. “It’s just, I need to go slow.”

He grins, relieved. Leans in to rest his forehead against mine. “We can go as slow as you want, Mags.” He runs his hands down my sides, grazing the wound below my ribs. I wince. Gingerly I lift up my shirt to look at the place where Neizghání stabbed me. The scar is about four inches across. The wound must have been clean, more deep than wide, the lightning blade acting more like a brand as it slipped from my side, cauterizing the flesh. A raised scar the shape of a lightning bolt that will never go away. Kai runs his fingers over it, pressing gently. There’s something there, under the skin. It rolls under his fingertips. Scar tissue? It doesn’t matter. With a burst of insight, I know what it means. Neizghání has branded me as his property.