Forever The World of Nightwalkers - By Jacquelyn Frank Page 0,31
every day! And I don’t want you there every second of every day!” She tried to pull away, to back off from him, but he followed her until she once again found herself trapped between him and the wall. “Please,” she breathed, not knowing what else she could say or do. She was completely at a loss as to how to handle this situation. All of her training and professional experience meant absolutely nothing because things like this did not happen. All her training and education told her was that she must have gone right off the deep end. She must have suffered a psychotic break along with the full boat of hallucinations and denial because it felt pretty damn real and she felt pretty damn sane.
“Please? Are you begging me to protect you or are you begging me to watch you die?”
“Stop. Stop saying things like that! Do you have any idea how crazy this all sounds? Jackson, you aren’t an Egyptian pharaoh! You aren’t a body snatcher o-or anything else. You’re a cop. A really good cop with a really good heart and you have what it takes to go really far in the department i-if you would just …”
“Is that how you think of me?” he asked, sounding genuinely pleased to hear her assessment of him. “Isn’t that funny? I always thought you didn’t think I could cut a lifetime career in the SPD.” A short, rough laugh popped out of him. “How strange. All I’ve ever wanted was your good opinion, Marissa. And now here you are giving it to me … but only so long as I deny the truth of who and what I am. Only so long as I allow you to deny it because you aren’t equipped to deal with the understanding that there are more things in heaven and earth than you have ever conceived of before this. You approve of me only if I am the sum of your ideas of who I am or should be.”
Marissa’s breath caught in the back of her throat at the backhanded accusation that she was being close-minded. He couldn’t have known that it was the one thing she couldn’t bear feeling. The idea that she was being intolerant of another human being …
Human being.
She didn’t know why she reached out to touch him. All she had tried to do since that horrible fight had ended was try to get away, pu autocraticag.sh away, repel and resist. But now she reached to touch him, her fingertip resting shakily against his chest and then, a moment later her palm followed to press against his bare skin.
There. There it was. A powerful, steady heartbeat.
“A single heart … two souls. Human in almost every way, Marissa. Human and more,” he said as though he could read her mind. Hell, for all she knew he was reading her mind. Unable to check the impulse, she let her eyes drop down the length of his torso. Naked as he was he was completely exposed to any inspection she wanted to subject him to. But the minute she laid eyes on his sex she whipped her gaze back up. Oh yeah, he sure seemed human to her. And he was definitely more!
“I want to believe you. I-I have to believe you because if I don’t it means I’ve lost hold of reality. And at the same time everything inside me is screaming at me to push it all away. To shut it all away, because if I accept this craziness …”
“Then you must be crazy yourself. And who wants to admit that to themselves? Who wants to face the prospect that they might not be as in control of their own lives as they thought they were.”
“Yes,” she said softly. She looked back into his eyes, the sea-foam color of them so clear and sharp. And that was when she realized that he was so obviously more than Jackson Waverly had been. Jackson had been handsome and vital, dedicated and loyal, devoted to his work and those whose lives he held in his hands every day. She had always considered him to be intelligent, but not in an existential way. The man standing before her was everything Jackson was … and so much more. After Chico’s death he had been growing increasingly less patient, his bitterness taking its toll on him. But she realized that for the pas he scrubbed a