“I’m kind of busy, Jax, what do you want?”
He held out a small green duffle bag. “A peace offering for messing up your meditation time this evening.”
She took it from him and a frisson danced up her arm as strong as if she’d stuck a fork in an electrical socket. God, she ached to touch him, feel those hard biceps under her fingers and wrap her legs around his hips. Unbidden, she took a step toward him. His Southern Sex God cologne wafted around her, teasing her senses. Another few minutes of this and she’d have him naked and flat on his back.
“I don’t know what you’re thinking right now, but I like it. A lot.”
Jax’s quip snapped her out of the spell. After taking three steps back, she unzipped the bag to reveal a pair of golden sandals accented with silver feathers. “They couldn’t be.”
“Yeah, Hermes’ shoes. Promise me you’ll wear them tomorrow. If we get in a jam, you can fly out of there and back to the beanstalk.”
“This is too much. I can’t. You should wear them.”
“Are you nuts?” He backpedaled out of the tent. “There is no self-respecting North Carolinian man who’d be caught dead in those ugly-ass things. I’d wear a toga and dance a jig first.”
She reached out to stop him from leaving without the shoes, but instead of catching his hand, her fingers snagged the waistband of his shorts. The strong elastic caught her finger between the smooth fabric and his hard abs. Long-denied lust rushed through her like white water rapids. Before she could blink, her panties were wet, her nipples were hard and the part of her brain controlling logical thinking had been whacked by her id.
Jax’s gaze traveled from her hand to her face and back again, burning her with its intensity. He reached down and slid her fingers free from their heavenly prison. His fingers encircled her wrist and he turned her hand palm up. He leaned down and placed a devastating kiss in the center of her hand, implanting dreams of hot, nasty sex on rainy days.
“We’ll talk more tomorrow night, after we come back down. I have something to tell you, something to make amends for.” He lowered her hand to her side, spun on his heel and walked away into the dark night.
Chapter 7
Jax checked his watch. Again. Exactly two and a half minutes had passed since he’d last glanced at the quartz face. The truth bubbled up inside him, threatening to burst out at any moment. No doubt Veronica was going to be a mad as a cat drenched in deep-fat-frying batter, but she deserved to know why he’d called off the wedding. Then they could move forward. Together. No more secrets. No more lies. He couldn’t wait until tonight.
The six pancakes he’d gobbled down this morning at breakfast did a triple flip. Okay, maybe he was a little on edge.
“Why’d you stop? Did you see something?” Veronica asked from a few feet below him on the beanstalk.
Real smooth, dipshit. Get your head in the game before you lose it to a bunch of zombies.
“Nah, we’re almost there.” He gripped a thick vine in his right hand and continued to climb.
The hole from yesterday remained in the cloud cover. He scurried up the last few feet and stopped just shy of the entrance to the zombie playground. With his right hand, he unsnapped the button on his knife sheath. Any delay in pulling out the six-inch blade could make the difference between life and death if he found a living corpse waiting for him on the other side of the clouds.
Time for one last equipment check. While gearing up this morning, he’d had no idea what to bring to a zombie fight, so he’d brought it all. A larger blade remained in a holder tied to his back. Two small knives were snug against his ankles. Throwing stars filled a pocket in his camouflage pants. Another pocket held a flash grenade. Around his neck, he’d fastened a Celtic knot made of Adamantite, the same material Perseus had used to decapitate Medusa. He could kick himself for not wearing it yesterday when its prophetic powers could have warned him of the zombies before they were breathing down his neck.
He was as ready as he’d ever be. Time to roll.
“I’m heading in. Wait for me to give the all clear before coming up.” Jax locked his jaw and hit Veronica with his deadliest glare. “If anything goes wrong, go back down. Do not–I repeat–do not come up after me.”
She rolled her brown eyes at him.
“I mean it, Veronica.”
“I got it. We let the zombies floss their teeth with your bones. No problem.” She waved him on. “Get moving. We’re wasting daylight.”
Grinning at her typical sarcastic remark, Jax poked his head through the hole.
Feeling like a gopher sniffing the wind before scampering out of his dirt home, he pulled himself out of the hole and stood on the cloud ground. Fluffy clouds appeared as far as the eye could see until the castle wall in the far distance broke up the sea of white. He strained, listening for the zombies’ telltale giggle. Nothing but the sound of his heartbeat in his ears.
He forced himself to remain still and scan the perimeter again. Nothing moved among the tree-shaped clouds surrounding the hole or the vastness between the tree line and the castle wall. He took a breath to call out to Veronica and Antoine below, when something flashed across his peripheral vision.
Adrenaline slammed through his system, jacking up his heart rate and squeezing his lungs. His head snapped in the flash’s direction. Only that damned white everywhere. The sixth sense that had saved him from a chupacabra in West Texas buzzed through his body as if he had just put three hundred dollars’ worth of quarters in a vibrating bed. He hadn’t imagined it. Something was out there.
He grasped the knife handle on his hip and inched it out of the sheath. Even though it was a big blade, the troll blacksmith had balanced it perfectly so it had deadly aim. All he needed was a target. Slowing his breathing to a turtle’s pace, he concentrated on his surroundings. A line of bright yellow peeked out from the side of a cloud tree about fifty yards ahead, enough to alert Jax to the zombie’s presence but not enough to strike. Bingo. He could draw the slimy corpse out of his hiding spot by yelling, but if there were more, he might be endangering the others. His need for expediency warred with his protective instincts, but the outcome was never in doubt. He’d die before he let anything happen to Veronica.
So he waited. Lucky for the ulcers bubbling to life in his stomach, it didn’t take long.