Jesse reached into a plastic container and removed a football. He palmed it, testing its weight in his big hand, a small smile playing on his lips. How strange to imagine a life of football games, universities, young men competing against each other for something other than survival, and Jesse smack at the center of all of it. But that had been his life in Texas, attending college on football scholarship.
I watched him put the football back and caught his eyes. “You miss it?”
He shrugged. “Yeah.”
Shea broke the nostalgic moment as she pulled a roundish, laptop-looking thing off a nearby shelf. “Well, here’s my portable ultrasound. Not that we can use it without electricity.” Her face fell. “I’m sorry, Evie.”
Maybe we could use one of the cars to power it. If we found one of those AC/DC power adapters that plugged into the lighter and turned it into a normal plug, we could pull electricity from a car battery.
I shrugged, my armpits sticking with the motion. “I still think you’re awesome.”
She flashed me a smile and started to put the machine back.
“Hang on.” Jesse pushed a hand through his hair. “We’ll take it with us.”
I stared at him, stunned. He stared right back, daring me to question him. He’d followed us in here without a word, and I’d assumed he was interested in the generators, not the ultrasound. If we found a power supply down the road and the ultrasound validated the effectiveness of my birth control, would he trust it enough to let me love him the way we both wanted?
The intensity of his gaze told me he would. The tight clench of his fingers at his sides promised he would not be gentle.
Heat flooded my skin, and the hot flash had little to do with the Georgia climate. Mental images of his naked body, his urgent hands, and his hard, needy cock moving over my skin and between my legs did nothing to cool my rising temperature.
My chest tingled, and my breath lodged in my throat. I thought I’d done a bang-up job reigning in my libido since Michio left, but evidently, I was powerless against Jesse’s lusty glares.
He turned away, as if uninspired by whatever he saw on my face, and nodded at the machine in Shea’s hand. “We’ll put that in the truck.”
Then he strode out the door and into the blinding sunshine, leaving me flushed and unbalanced. Shea glanced at me, raised her brows, and followed after him.
I shared a look with Roark. His forehead wrinkled beneath the sheen of sweat. Not with jealousy. No, he was immune to that weakness.
“What?” I asked, following his gaze to my upper arm.
There, clinging to the curve of my shoulder, was a ladybird. Inches from my face, it stretched blood-red wings, dotted with tiny replicas of the black spots on my back. Its triangular head canted, twitching twin antennas, as if tasting my breaths.
Was it looking at me? I sensed a…a…I didn’t know what it was. A soft hum? A dribble of energy? Like the beetle was telling me something, maybe telling me I was an idiot because I didn’t understand. My skin tightened against the sensation, every conscious thought narrowing on the fact that it was here, and I was here, and that was supposed to make sense. Perhaps that explained everything in some transcendental world where spiritual forces made plans beyond my comprehension.
The ladybird whirred its wings and took off, spiraling above my head and out the door. The trickle of energy went with it, as if drawing an invisible path to Jesse, one I felt a strong urge to follow. But why?
I rubbed my head, berating myself for being so goddamned spiritually constipated.
Roark stared at the doorway long after the ladybird disappeared. His shoulder-length dreadlocks gathered into a knot at the back of his head, giving me a clear view of his jaw, which sawed side to side.
“I can hear your brain chugging over there.” I adjusted the carbine on its sling and wiped the sweat from my forehead. “It was just a beetle. Doesn’t mean Jesus is calling.”
He closed the distance in three long strides and planted his bulky frame in front of me. “Do ye know the lady in ladybird refers to the Virgin Mary?”
I dragged my eyes to his, wary about where this was going. The first time he’d witnessed the crazy beetles swarming my body, he told me it was a sign. That was the night we had sex. The night that wrenched us apart.
“The term originated in the Middle Ages.” He brushed the rough pads of his fingers over my shoulder, his brogue thickening. “Pests were plaguing the crops, destroying the food source. Famine was inevitable. So the farmers prayed to the Blessed Lady, the Virgin Mary, and soon after, the red and black beetles came.”