Always mine, his insistent growl reminded me.
As it built, I clung harder and tried to keep myself in check. I hated it. I wanted to cut loose and be myself. At home, we had no worries, but right now, this was about more than just a good time; this was about necessity, a need ingrained in our veins and blood that ached, but still keeping people from seeing my ability at the same time.
I leaned my chin down and squeezed my eyes shut, but he took my chin between his fingers and pulled it back up. He covered my mouth with his, and though he didn’t say anything, he didn’t have to—he pressed against me, head to toe, and commanded my body to surrender. It was amazing how it worked like that. I shook against his hold, but kept kissing him as our sighs collided between our breaths. The bursts I saw behind my eyelids weren’t energy ribbons this time but the mutualizing coming to an end. I gripped his hair tightly in my fingers and found him doing the same thing to the ends of my hair right under my ear—a handful in his fist absentmindedly. The hot and cold zings consumed me, littering my veins until it was all too much. I didn’t know how many times we’d mutualized over the years, a million it could’ve been, but it didn’t matter—the first time, the last time, they all were the same and different in their own way, but equally amazing.
He wasn’t able to keep the reins as tight on himself like I was and the groan that moved from his lips to my sensitized skin caused goose bumps to run over me. I covered his lips with my fingers and silently begged him to stop before I blew the place up as he moved his hand in his mind to caress my leg, ankle to hip bone.
He chuckled, loving his torture of me as the oblivious passerby’s moved in the light just feet away from us. He pulled my wrist up, his panting breaths beating against my skin as he kissed my tattoo with his name lovingly written there. He started to ease away from me, but I gripped his shirt front in my fist. “Not yet. Stay.”
“Not going anywhere,” he assured as he lifted me and took us to sit in one of the outside deli chairs.
He sat and held me on his lap, but I didn’t snuggle in and cuddle. I stared at him. His face, holding a few years more on it, was still hard and gorgeous, his chin strong and his dimples even more defined with his stubble in full force. He was even more handsome with his young, boyish looks on the way out, making room for a very grown-up, powerful looking Champion of our clan. Handsome and loving husband to me, and still being the playful father to my children.
It felt like an eternity had passed sometimes since our wedding, but it had only been ten years in actuality. Still, ten years was a lot to wrap your head around. All those years of letting him love me and trying my best to love him back even more, in return.
I palmed his cheek and rubbed my thumb over his dimple when they made an appearance with his grin. His hands on my sides flexed and caressed up and down my torso as he watched me watch him.
“It’s amazing to me that you’re still surprised by it,” he mused, one of his hands drifting to my neck—to my Visionary mark. He brushed his thumb across it several times before leaning in and kissing it, staying close to me to speak, answering my silent question. “That I love you and this is really our life.”I leaned to the side, gripping his head and sighing into his hair. “It’s a good life. It’s not uncommon to be grateful to the point of disbelief.”
A flash of the visions I had played in the back of my mind and I couldn’t help but let it seep into our perfect moment. He wrapped an arm around my lower back and pulled me to him, pressing his face against mine. “I will fix this for you, baby. I will make all the bad things go away. I promise you.” I nodded slightly, but he shook his head. “Believe me when I say that whoever is behind this will regret the day they made you suffer.”
I leaned back just enough to see his eyes—his honest blue eyes that never lied to me. “You think someone did this on purpose? Not something supernatural?”
He sighed. “This isn’t your ability, sweetheart. If it was, then I would see the visions, too. I’d have them with you like I always do. This is something else. It just doesn’t feel right. It feels…” he rubbed my upper arms to soothe me as he said the words, “evil.”
“The Watsons,” my mouth spouted immediately, almost as if the words weren’t my own. The Watsons were always the first people who came to mind when I thought of anything that came against us that had evil intentions.
“I can’t prove it, obviously, and I have no real reason to think that. They’d be stupid to show up now after all this time, with no powers and no way to defend themselves. But I feel like they have something to do with it for some reason, like they’ve been waiting in the shadows for the right time to strike.”
He was right. His words rang true in my ears and my veins, but I still felt like I needed to rebel. “Please, no,” I begged in a whisper. “Anything but that.”
“Right now,” he said, taking my face in his hands, “I’m taking you for a quiet lunch and we’re not going to think about that.” He kissed the corner of my mouth and helped me stand.
I stalled and rubbed my palms over the tattoos on his forearms. They were new, one on each arm for each of our kiddos. Rodney’s name was on a cog wheel on Caleb’s left arm, and Ava’s was across a piece of filigree fence with a vine crawling over it. The man carried his whole life on his skin.
Taking my hand, he towed me into the street and ducked into the deli. I knew he could hear Kyle’s thoughts as he borrowed my ability. He and Lynne were in the deli already and were waiting for us. They knew we’d come when we were…finished. They knew we’d hear their thoughts and know where they were. Kyle was sorry for being an ass, but still believed that Caleb was wrong for looking at me as the Visionary second. He was a true Ace in his thinking. They all thought that way. He would never understand.
“Maggie is my business,” Caleb told him as he pulled my chair out for me, “so let’s stop talking about it since we’re not going to agree. We don’t have to agree; that’s the beauty of it. She doesn’t belong to you.”
Kyle rolled his eyes, but lifted his hand as Caleb sat down across from him. “All right, all right. I give, Champion.”
“You know I hate it when you call me that,” Caleb grumbled and told the waiter he’d have water.
“I know,” Kyle rebutted and looked over at me. “Any idea what’s going on?”
“No Visionary talk,” Caleb ordered. “Maggie has been through enough this week.” His hand inched over to mine on the table, his thumb rubbing my knuckles. “We’ll figure it out, we always do, but right now we’re going to enjoy this last day in London before we go home.”
“I think there’s probably more important things.”
Caleb kept going. “And let Maggie have a few minutes of calm before we go back, because when we do, we’ve got to figure out who on the council is trying to sabotage us. Because someone is working with the Watsons. We’re almost sure of it.”
Kyle looked at me and scoffed. “You agree with this bologna?”
I nodded. “Every word.”
He gulped. “Whatever you say, boss. I’m right behind you, always.”
I told Caleb to order for me. It was our thing. He always ordered for me when we went somewhere new. He knew me inside out and knew what I liked, but today, my mind could barely focus on the glass of water in front of me, let alone what kind of food I wanted. My mind churned with possibilities of who could be behind things and what purpose it could serve.
Stop it, he ordered softly. Don’t make me pull rank.
I outrank you, Jacobson.
Technically. He grinned, his dimples winking. I’m still your Champion, however, and I order you to stop worrying until we have to. Whatever this is…we’ll deal with it, together.
Okay. I nodded and sighed, cracking my neck side to side. I’ll try to have fun.
That’s my girl.
The waitress interrupted our flirting with our food of real shepherd’s pie, and Kyle and Lynne’s kippers. After we ate ourselves full, we walked down Market Street to the shops and marketplace.
The tingling started in the back of my mind softly, like a reminder, but Caleb seemed oblivious to it, so I tried not to think about it at all. I was going to give Caleb the perfect day he wanted if I got nothing else done on this trip.
After a few hours, we finally made our way back toward the lift and I was sporting a new charm for my bracelet—an infinity charm Caleb found. We got Ava and Rodney some things, too, my husband’s arms loaded down, making him very cute.
We passed the fountain across the street, the one that I had heard the splash from and seen the vision. I walked cautiously over, half expecting it to be filled with something other than water, but it was crystal clear.
The fountain was beautiful, old in its design and architecture. The woman who sat on top covering herself with a stone blanket smirked at us from her perch. I wondered who she was modeled from, who she was supposed to be. I let the tips of my fingers float across the water, and the vision hit me like no other vision had ever come.
I was falling. It was me, actually me. I wasn’t watching them fall. The scream screeched from her lungs—my lungs. I watched the ground come closer and closer, knowing the end was coming, my time was almost over. The fountain was below me like a mirror, portraying an eerie copy of myself and my death.