jaw was strong and his straight nose and lips made her want to take a bite out of them. His hands were on the wheel and he was driving as if he was accustomed to doing ninety-plus miles an hour.
He was a modern man, obviously, but there was an old-world warrior feel to him, too. She heard it in his speech at times. A formality of sorts, from another time. As if he hadn’t really left behind that man he’d been in her dream. As if he was the kind of man who didn’t bow to whatever age he was living in. He forced it to bend to him.
“What do you mean I always knew you?”
“You know exactly what I mean,” he said, steering the car across three lanes of freeway to take the connector ramp to another freeway. He hit the accelerator even harder. “We’ve been together through the centuries, Shea.”
“That can’t be,” she whispered, though everything inside her yearned toward him. Every cell in her body already believed. Her heart, her soul, all felt the pull of him and if her mind wanted to argue, the rest of her really didn’t want to hear about it.
Besides, she argued silently, how else could she explain any of this?
“You’re a witch. I’m your Eternal. It’s as it has been between us since the beginning.”
She breathed deep, drawing in the fading scent of the ocean as they raced in the opposite direction, headed God knew where. It was too much. All of it. Her Eternal. Centuries. Magic. How was she supposed to make sense of this? How was she supposed to know what to do? If her memories were true, then she had made the wrong call before. What was to prevent her from doing it again?
A fresh wash of sickness rushed through her.
“Stop the car!”
“No.”
Fury erupted inside her at the way he dismissed her need. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. She felt as if she were ready to burst. She needed out of that damn car. She needed to stand on her own two feet and try to remember who she was now. That was the woman she was interested in. Shea Jameson in the here and now. She couldn’t change the past, but she could, by God, have a say in her present and her future.
Something rose up inside her as if she had called for it. Rising, burning, it nearly choked her in an effort to escape. She surrendered to that feeling, rode the wave of it as it crested within her and moments later, she literally saw sparks flying in the air between her and the huge man in the driver’s seat.
Like flares lifting from a campfire, the sparks shone frantically, then went out, but ever more of them appeared, swirling like a swarm of fireflies. When she shouted “Stop!” a second time, a rush of power filled the word and the high-performance car sputtered and died.
“Damn it, I don’t know whether to be proud or pissed.” He cursed low and deep as he steered the coasting car to the side of the freeway.
They were near Irvine Ranch now and traffic blew past them as if they didn’t exist. Shea hardly waited for the car to stop completely before she opened the door and bailed. She heard Torin swearing viciously again, but paid no attention as she waved one hand in front of her, shattering the fence that bordered wide-open hills and valleys spilling along the freeway.
The wind screamed at her and the roar of traffic sounded as if it were twenty miles instead of twenty feet behind her. She ran, her feet stumbling on the uneven ground, and then she was in the high grass, still running. Above her, the first stars were bursting into the sky. The moon was a sliver, casting no light into the darkness, but she didn’t care about that.
She ran because she had to.
Because the haunting memories overtaking her were too much to handle.
Not just of the last few days, when she’d found out what it was to be locked down and helpless . . . but the memories of the past—of lives she’d lived and died. Memories of dark magic and chanting voices. And Torin.
Always Torin.
He caught up to her in a matter of seconds. His big hand came down on her arm and he spun her around to look at him. “Running away?” he challenged. “This is what you’ve become? A coward?”