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“You could have slept on the floor. We didn’t have to cuddle up together.”
“For the record, you were the one doing the cuddling.”
“I’ll bet you came harder with me than you ever have in your life.” Though she doubted her own words, she at leastsoundedconfident.
“If that were the case, I’d lament my sex life.” He headed for the door.
“Are you seriously going to leave me here?”
He paused halfway out, but didn’t look back. “It is no’ wise for you to return with me.”
She tripped to a stop. Was he casting her out? “And what will you tell them about me?”Don’t cry. Don’t cry.Perhaps she should be grateful he wasn’t outright killing her, but the hurt was gut-wrenching.
When her mother had died, then later, her father, it had been like a swath ripped callously from her soul. A painful separation that would forever leave a ghastly mark, never to heal.
When Orik glanced back and muttered, “That you were no’ what you seemed,” another patch of her soul was torn away.
22
Watching Orik walk away, Jessie wondered if he really intended to abandon her in the middle of nowhere.Stranded on a strange, heartless planet, her heart slowly crumbling.
“Screw that!”
She raced to get dressed, donning the first clean outfit she pulled from the closet: a peasant blouse, olive green capri pants that fit like a glove, and those strange hiking boots that magically fit her—she’d forgotten to ask him about them.
No way was she about to let Orik leave her to become fodder for a coven of witches, just because she happened to develop some extraordinary abilities.
Just as she scrambled out the door, she skidded to a stop, realizing she’d forgotten her knife.
Swiping it from the end table where Orik had left it, she clipped it to her waist and darted after him.
The storm had cleared, and now the air was thick with moisture, the sun beating through the leaves of the thick canopy. It didn’t take her long to catch up with him, though he barreled past foliage in a tiff.
“Hey!” she hollered from behind. “So that’s it? You’re just done with me?”
“I’ve no reason to protect a witch from her own kin.”
“Kin? Mykinall lie in graves back on Earth. I’ve no kin here. But I thought I had a friend. Am I wrong?”
“If you’re referring to me, then yes, you are mistaken. I doona befriend your kind. I doonaprotectyour kind.”
“You mean humans?”
He ignored that. “I want nothing to do with—”
Leaves rustled from the direction they’d come from. They both stopped and glanced back. She caught sight of Phoenix bounding after them, darting from one low branch to the next so fast that Jessie could hardly track her movements.
When Phoenix leapt onto her shoulder, balancing with ease, Orik pulled his gun and aimed it at the creature. Phoenix hissed. Like lightning, she jumped off Jessie’s shoulder and darted around them in a barely visible flurry, bouncing off a series of high branches. Jessie and Orik turned in circles, trying to trace her trajectory as she encircled them, pausing briefly to hiss and bob her head as though sizing up Orik for attack, no doubt because she felt threatened. So far as Jessie could tell, that was the only time Phoenix had shown aggression.
Orik jaggedly followed her with his weapon, finger on the trigger.
“Stop!” She rushed forward and hugged Orik’s beefy arm with all her might, fouling his aim. “Please don’t hurt her.”
He glanced down at her, appearing completely flummoxed, his skin pale, almost sickly. His eyes were shifting between his normal gray and the green she associated with his dragon. When his eyes dropped to where she touched him, she realized she had his forearm resting between her breasts. After a moment, he seemed to snap out of a trance and he pulled his arm away, his gaze shifting to a mix of confusion and revolution.
Did he hate witches so much that he could no longer see her as anything else?
He focused on the lema. “You doona know what that thing can do.”
