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“Are your eyes open?”
“Uh-uh.”
His laugh vibrated through my back. “Open them, baby girl.”
It took more effort than I would like to admit. I wasn’t lying about always wanting to know what it felt like to fly, but now that I was here, who-knew-how-far-up in the air, I wasn’t so sure about this anymore. I blinked, taking in the city lights spread out below me. It was beautiful, like the view out of the window of a plane, but itfeltnothing like being on a plane.
The wind tugged at my hair and clothes, blowing curls across my face. I reached up to try to push them away, but it was a fruitless effort.
“Put your arms out to the sides,” Nathaniel murmured.
I obeyed, letting the cool September air beat at my sweatshirt and flow through my fingers. “Holy crap. I’m actually flying.”
He was right—it felt like freedom. I wasn’t even in control of where we were going, and still I’d never felt more powerful or unrestrained. A part of me wanted to stay in the sky, wrapped in Nathaniel’s arms, and never go back down to earth. I didn’t care that it was impossible to touch the stars or that there was a limit to how high we could go before the oxygen levels became deadly. There was something about being here that made me feel invincible. Like life couldn’t touch us.
“How far can you fly?” I asked, shouting over the wind roaring in my ears.
“It depends on the wind currents, but it’s possible to fly over a hundred miles in a day.”
“How fast are we going?”
“Probably about fifty miles an hour. I can get to over seventy-five when I’m not carrying someone.” His arms tightened around my waist as he angled into a dive.
I shrieked and felt him laughing behind me, though the sound was lost. When I was back on solid ground again, I was going to kill him for that. But there was nothing I could do about it now, and I was sure he took great pleasure in that knowledge.
“I hate you,” I muttered, knowing he couldn’t hear me. That was just as well since it wasn’t true. Not at all.
Fourteen
Nathaniel
I rana towel over my hair in a rush, barely caring if it did any good. I hated showering at the gym—it was too much time away from Sierra in public—but she’d threatened to shoot me if I walked her home wearing four hours’ worth of sweat.
She could shoot me all she wanted—it’s not like it would kill me—but I was afraid of what refusing would mean for my quality of life. I was starting to get a feeling for what I could and couldn’t get away with when it came to her. She didn’t like being babied. If I pushed too hard, she made the whole guardian gig difficult for me.
I yanked a shirt over my still-mostly-wet hair and jogged out of the locker room to take up my normal position of leaning on the wall across from the women’s locker room.
Sierra came out a good fifteen minutes later. A smile pulled at her lips as soon as her gaze landed on me even as she rolled her eyes.
“Has anyone told you you take incredibly long showers?” I asked. “I’m going to die of starvation waiting for you.”
“You could always go home and start dinner.” She smiled up at me sweetly.
I growled, not finding her amusing. “You know I can’t do that.”
“Because you’re possessive and have control issues?”
“Because you were attacked a grand total of two days ago.”
“Which means I should have at least a week before more come.”
“Based on the few weeks of experience you have? I’m not willing to take that chance with your life.”Or mine.
I slung an arm over her shoulder, exactly like the possessive person she’d just accused me of being. It wasn’t like I cared. Iwaspossessive even if I didn’t really have any right to be.
“Food. Now.”
She shook her head and sighed, but she didn’t resist as I led her out of the gym and toward the apartment.
