Holidays are Hell(111)

This was what she missed most, Zoe thought as she eased over him, blanketing him with her core, lacing his limbs with hers. It wasn't her lost strength or the vitality leached from her world with the stripping of her extrasensory abilities. It was the union   of mind, body, and spirit with a man, who'd known her so long, understood her so well, and frustrated her so completely.

Zoe eased up, Warren shifted, skimming hips, and smiled as he slid home. Zoe swallowed hard. She could swim in this liquid motion, just let herself drift away as a body both outside and inside herself determined the beat of her steadfast heart. She rocked, feeling like she was mere driftwood on a vast open sea, and the only thing keeping her from floating away entirely was the knowledge that their time together was finite—that the sun would rise and their bodies would part, leaving behind slick thighs and an hollowness where he once resided.

Zoe wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand on her way to caressing Warren's cheek, pulling him closer and deeper as she pushed the thoughts away. She didn't want to swim in these feelings, anyway. She wanted to drown in them. And that wasn't allowed.

"Zoe—"

She pressed a finger to his lips, knowing he sensed her pain. She recalled the ability, and the way emotions burning on the air. He wanted to console her, but words weren't going to fix it, and besides, he felt the same way. She saw it in his eyes, felt it in his tensing fingers and the way he pulsed inside of her.

And that was comfort enough.

She smiled, being as brave as the moment would allow, and his image blurred beneath her. The first tear fell as she refitted her body against his, opening to him further, and inviting the hard and the soft, the warm and the wet. And when they came together, the tendons in his neck straining as he cried out below her, Zoe knew she wasn't just sating him, she was completing him. Because duty aside, Zoe Archer and Warren Clarke were simply made for one another. And when she collapsed atop him, the long smooth length of him still filling her, warming her, she knew that Warren had come home as well.



Later, when he was as bone-weary with the need for sleep as she, Warren wrapped his arms around her from behind, spooning her body with his own.

"You're wrong," he finally whispered, and she knew he would let her go.

Zoe smiled bittersweetly as his hands warmed her breasts, nuzzling back, cocooning herself further. Safe for now. "If I am you won't need to ask me to relinquish my star sign again. It'll be someone else's for the taking."

A sigh hollowed out his body.

She turned in his arms because it felt like there were suddenly acres and canyons and miles between them, and quickly drew close again. "But I'm not wrong. I have prophesies and legacies and adventures left to fulfill."

She had a daughter, a destiny… and at the end of it all? Maybe she still had this man to come home to.

So she wouldn't fail. She promised him that, then pressed her lips to his, trying to kiss away the worry that had returned to furrow his brow.

"And if you do?"

It was too practical a question for her liking. She rose, straddled him, and he immediately fell silent, while she shrugged the question away. It didn't matter either way. Death was preferable to a life without meaning, and for the first time since leaving the troop she had a purpose again. That alone was worth giving thanks for.

So she held back the words he wanted to hear—I won't go—once again putting away any chance at personal happiness, and merely smiled as dawn rose on a beautiful Thanksgiving morning.

"We'll see," she told him, flipping her hair back, dropping her palms to his chest. "We'll see who's giving thanks by the day's end."



* * *





Chapter 5





White was the symbol of holiness and purity in Tibetan Buddhism. It represented prosperity, too, so it was no accident that the Tulpa's home was achromatic from rooftop to doorstep, a blank slate against the sea of pastels and dusty stuccoes that otherwise dotted the valley floor.

It wasn't, however, an ivory tower. The Tulpa was reluctant to remove himself from the source of all his energy and strength. Human emotion, particularly negative, fueled him, though most mortals steered clear of the soaring pale home without even knowing they were doing so. Even Shadow agents didn't darken the doorway without invitation. Zoe had been the only agent of Light to even get close enough to peer in a window, and since her infiltration sixteen years earlier, paranormal sensors and precautions had been added to further secure the place.

But, as Warren drove her to the drop point a block away, she didn't worry about those. She was mortal, and the only monitor that would pick her up was attached to the security camera tucked high above the entrance's alcove.