The Walls of Jericho

Nightmares and Dreams

Just my luck.

Only I could fall asleep like a homeless waif on a deserted beach and wake up with a hulking pissed off man looming over me, completely naked. Rolling to my knees, I get to my feet unhurriedly.

I wonder vaguely what time it is, then realize I don't care. I’ve had enough of this day already and the sun hasn’t even come up yet. 

Brushing the sand off myself, I apologize, trying really hard not to look at the creepy man who found me in the dark. “I’m sorry. I got turned around in the dark. It was late. I was tired. I only meant to rest a few minutes. I’ll get out of your hair.” Reaching for my ballet slippers, I freeze in place feeling a hand close around my upper arm. As if in response to my sudden chill, immediately, a penetrating heat sinks into me, steady and warm.

It’s a lot like Channing.

God, I'm pathetic.

Another thought sends a chill over me. Did he send another werewolf after me? Not that Channing’s all that clever, but I don’t put it past Damien to find a glaring loophole in my statement that I didn’t want to see any of them again. The place where Channing bit me aches with a dull pulse, as if offended that I’d speak such calumny.

the strange little voice inside me repeats.

I have other things to think about right now. A huge naked man with a grip on my arm, first of all.

“How did you get here?” the aforementioned naked man demands, giving a little shake to my arm where he grips it.

I pry ineffectually at his vicelike fingers. “Look. I said I’m sorry. I said I’m leaving. Get your hands off me and I’ll go. I promise you’ll never find me here again.” When he doesn’t let go, I glance up at him.

What is the deal here? I toss the silent thought to the cosmos. First you send me Anubis, the Egyptian wolf god, in Channing. Now you send me Sobek, the Egyptian crocodile god of the Nile, in this unnamed man, naked and dripping wet at the edge of the hungry ocean. Spare me, okay?

The muted light noise from the city perched on the bluffs above and the lingering drops of ocean water turns his skin to a polished ebony, rippling over a body of beautiful muscles. From his brawny shoulders and chest to a narrow waist and legs, every lean ounce of him promises he’s a man to be reckoned with. His commanding presence should terrify me.

I yawn instead.

It's remarkably hard to find yourself impressed when you're heart-weary and bone-tired. “Not much sense in me telling you again since you didn’t listen the first time. Now let me go so I can go.”

“I will not.” He grips me tighter, jerking me against his naked chest so he can grasp my other arm. “This is private property. I’ll prosecute for trespassing.”

“Seriously, man. You need to relax. You’re going to give yourself an aneurysm. Trespassing is a misdemeanor crime, okay? You won’t even get fifty dollars fine out of me for it. Pretty small satisfaction, don't you think?” He’s still not letting go, and I have to admit, the kind of heat he’s giving off, I sort of don’t want him to.

Except that the other thing happening with me pressed against his nakedness is he’s getting excited. It’s no small thing. Literally. It is a bad thing though.

“No, it’s not ‘okay’, you disrespectful vagrant.”

"Vagrant? Oh, come on! See? That was just uncalled for." There’s not much energy out here on the beach and I’d never reach towards the hungry ocean to find some, but it’s no trouble at all to draw from the city above. My magic’s all for it, ready to suck in the electric juice I send it seeking  like a five-year-old sucks soda through a straw, but I don’t need that much. Just enough to put this guy out for a while.

Long enough to make my escape.

“Listen, I’d like to do this the rational human way, if you don’t mind. So let go. Go back to your middle-of-the-night naked swim and enjoy yourself with both my apologies and compliments. Never think about this again and I promise, it’ll never happen again.”

“I’m calling the police.”

I roll my eyes. “And what? You’re going to stand here buck naked and pitch to them that I’m committing a crime? I’m pretty sure public indecency is a bigger one, but you can check the books on your free time. I’ve got other things to do. Sorry.”

“The only thing you’re going to—.”

He never gets to finish his next threat. I lift my hand, first and second fingers extended, and connect with his naked wet torso. I know it was kind of rude, but he wasn’t exactly polite himself.

Obviously, he goes rigid, jerking violently as the current flows through him. It takes a few million volts, give or take a couple hundred, running through him for several long seconds before he starts to fall. I might’ve tried to catch him so he didn’t drop like a rock.

Then again, it’s sand—it’s soft—and he did threaten to prosecute me for trespassing.

Which reminds me, unless I want to be here when he wakes up with his second reason to file charges, I’d best be climbing.

The extra boost of energy left over after tasing the crocodile god makes it easier to climb and I reach the top in a matter of minutes. I can still see his dark form laid out on the pale sand from up on the bluff. Nibbling on my bottom lip, I hope I haven’t killed him.

But what if he’s hurt. It’s my fault.

As if the tiny little voice knew, below there’s a loud groan.

Okay. Problem solved. Let's get out of here. 

**

It’s well past dawn when I finally make it back to Mr. Adriani’s house. My house key was in my clothes, the ones Channing still has, so I use the spare stuck to the back of the porch light’s metal housing with a magnet.

There’s loud snoring from the second floor when I step into the living room—doubtless that’s Ferdi. Mr. Adriani doesn’t snore. Since they’re both still asleep, I opt to leave them that way. Amusingly, the place is neat as a pin.

Well, Channing did say Ferdi was like a drill sergeant. It’s the one way I profit from all this nonsense.

The ache in the hollow of my neck throbs as if protesting my harsh words.

For the first time in my life, I really regret claiming the third floor bedroom as mine. Abandoning the ballet slippers at the bottom of the interminable stairs, I start the last slow climb on bare aching feet to reach my bedroom sanctuary. By now, my whole body throbs, not just the place where Channing marked me. The exhaustion and the fatigue that have set in are real and a big deal.

I’m going to need to sleep.

A lot.

Using that as encouragement, I take the next stair, then the next. Good job, aching feet and sore thighs! One flight down, one to go. Just twelve more steps. You can do it! Eleven more steps to a warm soft bed. I can’t help my low groan as I reach the top.

My wonderful girly bedroom looks exactly as it did when I last saw it and I’m grateful for that. I don’t think I could have dealt with it mentally knowing Channing had been pawing through my personal belongings. 

It’d be too weird.

I huff a snort since it's all I can manage. It'd be weird to have him going through my belongings, says the girl who shared her body with him. 

What was I thinking?

I stagger the few steps to the bedside and debate a few seconds about just falling in. Except I was sleeping on sand before this, and despite the long walk, I’m sure some clings to my clothes. I’d prefer not to have it in my bed.

Much as a shower sounds nice, it doesn’t sound better than sleep.

Stripping myself of my clothes, I crawl in, curling into a ball under the covers. 

**

From the instant my eyes close, I can’t seem to stop replaying all the things that have happened.

There’s no mercy from it. No gradual drift away from waking dreams and into deep blissful unconsciousness. The last twenty-four hours cycle on a miserable continuous loop of disjointed dreams.

As if I didn’t have enough to contend with, naturally, they also linger on the good bits of the last twenty-four hours. Like waking immersed in the salt-ocean-sand scent of Channing. Or how he cared for me. How he makes love, really enthusiastically and really well.

Okay, so maybe those parts should be lingered over.

Except it’s far too short to really enjoy them much and far too long to let them die, which is definitely what needs to happen. 

I’m the girl with a plan, not this sappy crybaby girl moping a little over a stupid crush that went seriously wrong. I’m not the girl who’s boy-crazy. Certainly not for a boy who mentioned killing me himself.

You know what? Shut up, I tell whatever this annoying little by-stander in my brain is. I don’t need advice from the peanut gallery. Especially not bad uninvited advice.

Still, I run the same damn sequence in my head, replay after replay, during the hours that I sleep. It becomes it’s own pain, a throbbing living presence, like the scar on my neck.

Because, much as I want to blame this whole thing on Channing, I’m just as guilty as he is.

He asked me to accept him, and I did. I never gave him a chance to understand the girl he was offering himself to, and I certainly had no idea who or what he was.

I had my own crush.

A fantasy in my head about the cute hunky guy with his gorgeous blue eyes that came into Esteban’s three or four times a week. The guy who suffered through eating that horrible slop masquerading as food and my constant snarky comments, just so he could ask me for my phone number and get turned down time after time. As patient as he could be for the last five years.

Five years he’d tolerantly waited, uncomplaining, for me to come around.

I'm a terrible person. I couldn’t even make it twenty-four hours without giving up on him.

I’d wanted his presence every day at work, his existence woven into the fabric of mine. Only on my terms. Not his. Not even a compromise. I’d let him believe he was getting the thing that he wanted. I’d dangled myself like a carrot, then jerked it away and dismissed him cruelly.

I let the magic speak the words I’m too cowardly to say.

That is not allowing me my choice.>

Crap. I didn't expect an answer.

I can’t even throw my own pity party correctly.

**

The salt of the sea is still on my lips and I imagine that deserted stretch of beach again. Not in the cold and the dark with creepy hunky Sobek lurking, but sunbaked and warm and inviting.

That delicious combination of scents spices the air around me. God, so warm and wonderful. So perfect on my skin.

Let me have this replay. Please. Let every second of this dream linger.

Strong warm arm sliding around my waist, drawing me closer at the hip. Heat like the warm sun on my back.

My insecurities bubble to the surface, like coffee in a percolator.

The muscled arm at my waist squeezes in rebuke, then the hand at my hip creeps upward and sweeps my hair aside. It brushes, light as wind over the crook in my neck. A soft breath like warm wind caressing that tender hollow.

Wet rough-soft tongue sliding over that sensitive spot, where once Channing marked me as his own. It starts a violent shiver spiking down and up my spine. I can still feel the pinch. Hard enough it makes me catch my breath.

Let it linger.

Time slows, creeps, stands still. Somewhere in that endless moment, that nip mutates from a gentle tooth to become a tender kiss.

**