“So how do we do it and where are we going?”
We’d checked out of the hotel completely. It hadn’t occurred to me that, now, we had nowhere to stay.
“Oh. Sorry. Ray’s.”
“Ray’s?”
“Well, I promised I’d check on him and it’d be good for you to see him too. You’ll need somewhere to stay.”
“But what about you?”
“Oh, don’t worry about me.”
The fuck I was staying at Ray’s—promise or not—with my legal bullshit out of the way.
“I want to stay with you,” I mumbled. “I mean, don’t you need me for the summoning?”
“Well, yes, of course. But not overnight. Ethel and I will figure it out. But you are staying at Ray’s.”
“Why?”
Violet threw her head back laughing. “Why, James Thomas Maynard, you have mistaken me for the wrong type of girl!” With that, she took her hand out of my lap and put it to the wheel.
That was it. She was dead. If she thought I forgot the moment in the bathroom or that she’d been toying with both my mind and dick for the better part of a week, she was out of her fucking mind. I wasn’t her buddy Anus or whatever his stupid name was. I was a normal guy. Only I had something the others didn’t. I was the one made for her. And now, I knew it.
“Actually, Violet Renee Hennessey, the only one mistaken here is you. You’ll see...Honey.”
Violet cleared her throat and pulled at her collar. Rubbing the back of her neck while gripping the steering wheel with her free hand, she finally spoke, “Renee?”
I nodded.
“How did you know my middle name?”
“I have secrets too. And I’m tired. You are right. Ray’s it is. But I suggest your feline friend goes back to that. We bring her in there too and Ray’s bound to have a heart attack.”
“Yeah, Violet. He has secrets too.”
“Shut up, Ethel.”
For once, me and Mistress Pain agreed on something. And the rest of the ride was silent.
Chapter Sixteen
Violet
“I would die happy if I lived on that pizza for the rest of my life. North Carolina has nothing like this.” I rubbed my stomach and flung myself back on the bed.
James laughed and pushed the boxes onto the floor. “That is why it is called New York Pizza...just saying.” He laid down beside me, on his back also.
I turned my head towards him and stared at his profile. I never noticed his small laugh lines, as his lips curled up in a smile. “Maybe I should call her.”
He dropped his smile and turned his head toward me. “What good would that do?”
I couldn’t break away from those green eyes that were uniquely his. “I don’t know. I feel bad we just dropped her on Ray and left.”
He reached over and tucked a stray hair behind my ear. “First of all, we didn’t just drop her off there. This was her idea. She said something about a beacon straight to her when we contacted Odin...”
He stopped talking when I laughed. “You have to use the right words. She said if we were able to summon Odin, the amount of energy it would take would be like a ‘glowing runway path, complete with arrows and her dressed like a bouquet of flowers.’”
“You will never hear those words leave these lips.” He pulled something from his pocket but I couldn’t quite see what it was. “The hotel and pizza were your idea.”
“Couldn’t you see it? Neither of us can open an in between layer. Imagine if we were successful in summoning Odin in front of the gods and everyone in Central Park. When we first talked to him it was by accident. I am not even sure how we are going to manage this.” A silver gleam shined against the motel lighting when he flicked the blade open from his pocket knife. That was what he pulled out.
“Give me your hand.” He held out his hand to me palm up.
“Why?”
James rolled his eyes at me. He rolled his eyes! “Let’s get this over with and summon a god.”
I wasn’t sure where he was going with this, so I placed my hand in his. He was quick. One second the knife was in his other hand, the next the blade was cutting my palm. “Ouch...” I barely got out when he sliced his own palm and intertwined our fingers. He was making sure our blood would flow out together because there was no space for air in between our hands.
I waited a few minutes, hoping Odin would show up. I really wanted this to work. When nothing happened, I looked from our hands back to him. “Summoning doesn’t usually work this way.”
He closed his pocket knife with his fingers and threw it on top of the pizza boxes. “Trying something is better than sitting here planning and doing nothing at all. At least now you can go back to Ethel and tell her we tried.”
I closed his wound with his healing blood, and I felt the warmth move through my veins as he did the same for me. Once we were healed, neither of us made a move to separate our hands. We just laid there on our backs looking into each other’s eyes.
“I haven’t had an easy life.” James finally broke the silence.
I raised an eyebrow. “Me either.”
“You don’t understand. I knew everyone’s death. Everyone I managed to get close to. I knew their deaths and couldn’t do a thing about it. Even Jenn.”
My heart stopped. I couldn’t breathe. “Who’s Jenn?”
He reached across his body again, and instead of tucking my hair behind my ear, he ran his fingers through it. Over and over again. “She was a lot like you. We argued all the time and for a while there, I thought she was the one. I saw it. I knew the waves would take her under, but I didn’t know it would be that day. I should have gone back and saved her and our unborn baby. Instead, I ran back to New York.” He was whispering by the time he said “New York.”
I stopped his hand from running through my hair by holding it against my cheek. “Honey. I wished I found you earlier and maybe we could have saved them.”
His lips turned into a small smile and he threw my words back at me. “You called me Honey.” He leaned forward, almost touching my lips. “I like you like this. No makeup. No fake lashes. Just stripped bare for me to see.”
He dropped the subject of Jenn when his lips pressed against mine. I didn’t really care if this was what it took to cheer him up. His lips were soft, pliable even, but his tongue was dominant. He controlled the pace, in and out. He controlled whether or not I moved my own tongue against his. He even controlled the air in my lungs by how deep his kiss was. In all my years, I had never felt anything like this.
He finally let go of our intertwined grasp and pushed up my shirt. He twisted the shirt around my wrists tight enough that when he hooked the shirt on the bedframe, I couldn’t move my hands. He created a makeshift knot.
I took a deep breath. If he needed control like this, then I would gladly do this for him. I trusted him.
He created a pattern down my neck: lick, kiss, and suck. The same rhythm between my breasts and all the way down to the zipper of my jeans. I bet Ethel has never done this.
Bet.
James got my pants off leaving me exposed in my lacy purple undergarments. I snapped my knees together. “This isn’t a good idea.”