Immortal (Fallen Angels #6)(42)
Author: J.R. Ward

Unfortunately, he hadn’t gotten the chance to enjoy much of that.

Not with this whole savior thing coming along and knocking him on his ass.

As his eyes swung around the store’s cavernous interior, he intended to check out the lighting kiosk in the middle of the place, with its hanging chandeliers and stand-up units and fake-sunshine glow.

Instead, his peepers locked on Sissy and suffered from a serious case of nope-not-leaving.

In the words of their greeter guy, Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo figure.

Jesus Christ, what a mess. The only thing he’d done right was help her through her first time. Everything else had been a cluster fuck, especially the way it had ended between them with him leaving on some lame-ass statement about having to take a shower. Or something. Fuck, he couldn’t even recall what he’d said to her.

The problem was, when they’d been having the sex, he’d been so fucking wound up that all he’d wanted to do was pound into her hard—his body had been a thin inch from totally out of control. Afraid of hurting her, he’d pulled out and come all over the sheets, his hips pistoning into the mattress—which had been better than her. Or so he’d thought.

After that, it had been a case of cue the awkward silence, which had only gotten worse as he’d rolled away from her and tried to get his shit together: Instead of calming things down, the orgasm had only made him hungrier. So much so, he’d been worried about trying to act on it. Which was not what you did when you’d just taken someone’s—

“Do we have nails and a hammer?” Sissy asked.

Ad shook his head. “You wanna pick them up while we get the lumber?”

“Yup. Perfect.” As if she’d been looking for an excuse to break off.

And go her own way she did, peeling away and dematerializing into the stacks. Naturally, he couldn’t let her head off alone—

Ad grabbed onto his arm. “Let her go. We’re all under the same roof, and maybe the ride home will be less of a nightmare if you give her a little space.”

“The trip over here wasn’t that bad.”

“Compared to open-heart surgery, sure.”

As Ad dragged him along, they passed by more of the helpful types with the orange aprons, and he wondered if he could ask one of them what to do. Man, if only women were like houses, the kind of thing you could fix with some good manual labor and a toolbox.

“What the fuck happened between you two?” Ad paused and checked out an end cap of Levolors. “And do me a favor and don’t say ‘nothing.’ We could all be wiped off the face of the planet in another day and a half. We don’t have a lot of time, but more to the point, this could all be nothing but bullshit very, very soon, so what do you have to lose?”

“No offense, but do you really think you have anything to add to a discussion about women?”

Ad frowned and started walking again. “Good point.”

They were turning the corner into big-boy land with the wood when Jim blurted, “She’s not a virgin anymore.”

Ad coughed into his hand. “Oh. Yeah. Ah, am I supposed to say congratulations?”

“Obviously not. I didn’t know what to say afterward. I just … up and left. Well, not exactly.” Again, he’d managed to choke out something to her about needing a shower. Which in retrospect had suggested he couldn’t wait to get clean or something. “I dunno, I was freaking out.”

“Because it was a disappointment?”

“No … because it was that good. And my brain wasn’t working right, so I blew it. By the time I’d gotten my head together, she’d gone downstairs and everything was in the crapper.”

And there was another truth in all of it: He’d been worried he was heading back into distraction land—and they all knew how well that had worked for them. Nigel. Purgatory. Busted-up parlor.

Losing.

Guess he’d needed a second to figure out whether or not he was lying to himself when he thought he could do both: fight and be with her. Not that he’d made much of a conscious choice when he’d gone down to her bedroom. That little stroll had been more like a ricochet function, him bouncing off the dire straits of Purgatory into the one thing that he knew would connect him to freedom.

Plus he’d just plain wanted her.

And now things were fucked.

The sad thing? Put him in the wilderness and he could survive for weeks on his own. He could build bombs and dismantle them. He was able to put a bullet in a thimble at three hundred yards—or into a human head.

But he had never suffered from a case of brain jam like he’d had right after that session with Sissy. And meanwhile she was pissed off and hurt—and he wasn’t sure what to do to make things better.

Maybe a little breather was good.

As he’d told himself before, he should focus on the war—and worry about having a love life of some kind after they’d crossed the finish line.

Shit.

Sissy found the hammer section and was dumbfounded. To her, a hammer was what her dad had had in his old Sears toolbox—something with a worn wooden handle and a head that was corroded. The stuff for sale here was some kind of glamorous cousin, all about the ultra-deluxe, the titanium, the sure-grip, and the shiny.

It was like a jewelry store for dudes.

She was about to grab one when she realized she’d forgotten that she was invisi—a fact that was made apparent as some woman who looked as lost as she herself felt plowed through her with an orange plastic shopping cart full of venetian blinds.

The sensation it caused was something like a fever breaking through her body, hot and cold vibrations rocking her. And the woman seemed to sense something, too—she yanked her cart to a stop and looked around.

Clearly, Ad and Jim had thought to make themselves apparent or the greeter wouldn’t have talked to them.

“Damn it,” Sissy whispered.

Then again, did she really want to run the risk of meeting up with someone she knew? Not that any of her friends from college or high school were going to be hanging in a place like this at eleven in the morning on a weekday—but you never knew about friends of her parents’.

And God knew she had enough to worry about already.

She had no frickin’ idea what the hell had gone wrong with Jim. And whereas she’d started out hurt and confused, now she’d evolved to a fuck-you phase of things.

That anger of hers to the rescue, she guessed.

The only thing that kept her from going off on him was the reality that they weren’t in a relationship. He didn’t owe her anything more than what they’d exchanged in her bed. And at least that part of it had gone well. She couldn’t imagine anybody treating her any better than he had. But then things had gotten twisted—and stayed that way.