She watched the slow, shallow rise and fall of his chest. She possessed so many gifts, that of knowing truth from lie, the ability to sometimes see the future, the ability to read minds, and yet none of those could help Gray. Then...
Her eyes widened in horror as he gasped for air - then stopped breathing altogether.
CHAPTER SIX
What the hell was happening to him?
The panicked thought tumbled through Gray's mind with dizzying speed. He tried to search his surroundings, but he couldn't open his eyes. He couldn't fucking open his eyes.
The knowledge hit him, and his body jerked; his lungs seized. Sharp needle-pricks stung his chest, and he realized he didn't even have the strength to draw in a single molecule of air. My God, he was going to die.
Every survival instinct he possessed screamed for him to fight, to take action. To do something. Anything. All he needed was one breath. As seconds passed, the lack of oxygen seared him with fire. The flames ate at him, consuming him. Devouring him. Colors flashed through his head, so many colors, all too bright in their intensity.
But with the colors came calm. Not acceptance, never that, but a sense of knowing his pain would vanish completely if he sank into the never-ending void of darkness that awaited him, beckoning. How beguiling the void was, like the last cold beer in the Sahara.
A part of him longed to simply fall into the peaceful abyss. The other part, the part that refused to be a failure... failure - was that Jewel's voice he heard? He fought to reach her, grinding his teeth together, clenching his muscles, and squeezing his hands into fists.
Where was she?
Hissing voices and grunts of fury suddenly echoed in his ears, claiming his focus; his own death dripped from each timbre, the evil sounds chilling his every cell. And with the sounds, a need to taste blood, warm and living blood, grew inside him. He yearned to drink sweet, crimson nectar from someone's throat. Yes, he needed to, would die if he didn't.
What the hell was happening to him? Around him? Inside him? His eyelids remained heavy, too heavy to open and look. He heard the clang of... swords? Claws? The louder the intonations became, the weaker he became. His chest constricted, making him all the more aware he needed to breathe.
"Gray." The gentle beseeching drifted above the chaos encompassing him, drowning out the horrifying battle sounds. "Gray."
Jewel.
He recognized her sexy accent. She seemed closer than before. Reachable. The need for tasting blood abandoned him, replaced by a need to see Jewel. With every ounce of strength he possessed, he finally managed to pry open his eyelids - no, not his eyelids, but his mental eye - the very act more excruciating than taking a bullet.
In a flash of white light, Jewel materialized.
Dark walls surrounded her, and he realized they weren't in the forest. They were in some sort of shadow land.
"Your mind," she said. "We're inside your mind."
He saw her float toward him, her hips swaying seductively. Her sheer white robe whispered around her ankles, a vivid contrast to the silky black hair cascading down her back. She looked like an angel.
Her rose-petal lips eased into a sweet smile. "Gray," she said again. "Breathe with me." Can't, he wanted to tell her. His mouth refused to obey.
"Breathe with me," she repeated, the command sharp. "In. Out. Open your mouth. In. Out."
Never had anything been so impossible. The paralysis affected both mind and body, leaving him completely frozen.
"Perhaps there is another way, the way you helped me in the water." Jewel closed the remaining distance between them, crouched down, and pried his mouth open with her fingers. She fit her soft, soft lips over his. Her hair hung like a curtain around them as she blew her very essence into his mouth. The sweetness of her breath seeped down his throat and little by little, his lungs accepted the oxygen.
The fragrance of sea-storms and magic wafted to his nostrils. Jewel's scent. So lovely. So necessary. "In. Out. In," she said when he began breathing on his own. "You're doing wonderfully."
With her face hovering over his, his lips tingling from the touch of hers, he couldn't help but remember how turned on he'd been when she'd talked about having sex on a waterbed - how he'd wanted to be the man doing those naughty things to her, touching between her thighs, sinking his fingers into her hot, wet sheath.