Chapter Sixteen #2
How could the lightest of touches throb like a pulse between Josie’s legs?
“What happens if this doesn’t work?” she asked, unsure whether she meant what was happening between herself and Pax, or reviving Number Five. “No matter how hard I try, I can’t imagine a scenario where this turns out well,” Josie said. “What happens when Number Five’s tank fills back up? What if…?”
Pax smiled, an occurrence so rare it called up butterflies in her stomach and made her dizzy.
“What if you told yourself a story?” he said gently. “By the end of the story, you are guaranteed to have a happy ending. Can you imagine that? Being happy in the end?”
“I don’t know.” Josie was too tired not to be honest. “I’ve never tried.”
Pax lifted the palm of his hand and cradled her face.
“You don’t believe you deserve happiness.”
Josie blinked hard against her tears, but she didn’t move away from him.
“You do,” he told her. “You do deserve to be happy.”
To hear the secret words of her heart, the desire for a happy ending, scared her. To hear them in a man’s voice made her even more frightened. What if Josie once again believed in another person’s promises? How many times could her heart break before there was nothing left of it?
“How can I believe in a story so filled with magic when magic doesn’t exist in this world?” she asked. “A brave knight, a troupe of faeries, a changing staircase—all of this is something out of a lonely girl’s fever dream.”
Pax’s smile widened to the point where it bordered on goofy. Josie’s insides turned from mushy to actual liquid at the sight.
“I’m your fever dream?” he asked happily, the goofiness spreading to his wide, surprised eyes.
Josie couldn’t help but smile back even though she knew her smile was probably as goofy.
“Mom, I can has some lasagna with my nuggets?” Amos called from inside the apartment.
At the sound of her son’s voice, Josie stepped away and shook her head. The critic who lived in her brain wouldn’t let her hold on to maudlin wishes like happy endings and trustworthy hearts for long.
The goofy smile on his face melted into disappointment. For the first time since she met him, Pax was easy to read.
Dammit.
Damn her for a sucker.
“Lasagna and nuggets are a terrific taste combination, Mr. Pax,” she said, forcing lightness into her words. “C’mon in and let us open your culinary horizons.”
· · ·
In the orphanage where he grew up, the children had been taught to read, but there had been no storybooks for children.
They learned to read for practical purposes.
Pax’s old commander used to say an army runs on stomachs and shitters, and even the most lowly of soldiers should know how to build a waste pit and make a hot meal.
As such, Pax read books on engineering, botany, geology, and accounting. Accounting had been the most important class, because if you were going to fill those stomachs (and those shitters), you had to pay for the food.
He’d wager Josie hadn’t grown up with a lot of storybooks, either. If she had, she’d be more comfortable with happy endings.
“You can read ’nother book, Mr. Pax?”
Pax sat on the floor of Amos’s bedroom on a blue carpet decorated with red webbing. Next to him sat Amos, and surrounding them both were heaps of children’s books. Amos had eventually calmed down and eaten his chicken nuggets, then had a second dinner when Josie warmed up the lasagna.
After, both Pax and Amos were disappointed there was no screen time because of Amos’s behavior earlier, but high spirits had been restored when Amos was allowed to have four books before bedtime.
“I gonna pick the longest books, Mr. Pax,” Amos had confided. “We’ll stay up for a long time.”
First, they’d read a book about Busytown.
Pax found this world fascinating and resolved to find out more about why animals dressed as humans made such compelling characters.
They read a book about trucks, complete with smells and textures.
Amazing. Next came The Cat in the Hat, which had Pax on the edge of his seat.
Having visited a world full of beings remarkably like the cat, Pax was thrilled when everything ended up with neither bloodshed nor loss of limbs.
Amos had tried to get Pax to read a Sonic chapter book, but Josie had caught on to Amos’s plan, and they finished with Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!
Pax would have continued to read through Amos’s entire collection, but Josie was as disciplined as his old commander although, happily, softer and better smelling.
“I am afraid we have reached our limit, Mr. Amos,” Pax said.
He’d hovered in the doorway as the little family completed their ritual.
Kissing Amos on the forehead was standard human tradition as he’d seen it before on Miss Nekesa’s Barbie DVDs.
The rest—a song, a hug in a certain position, a recitation of blessings and discussion of which donut is the superior donut (neither of them were correct in pointing out the obvious superiority of chocolate peanut-covered) appeared organic to the two of them.
At the thought of them partaking in this exchange every night, Pax had to smother an intense jealousy that growled in his gut like hunger.
“Have you read every book in Amos’s library?” he asked Josie later as they drank tea in the living room.
Josie raised her brows as though the answer should be obvious. “Many, many times over,” she said.
“And, afterward, the two of you sing a song and do the other things you did tonight?” he asked.
“Mmmm.” Josie nodded in the affirmative as she sipped her tea. She caught her bottom lip with her teeth. “Did you think it was weird, or too much, or…?”
Pax shook his head no. “How is it you can have such a beautiful child and still have such great doubt about your abilities?”
Setting a hand to her chest, Josie winced. “Ow. Okay, straight to the heavy stuff, huh?”
He shrugged. “I apologize. I was genuinely curious. I did not see it as ‘heavy stuff.’ ”
Josie set her tea on the low table in front of the sofa, and her hair fell from behind her shoulder into a wave of brown and gold. Her hair smelled like a candy back on his world, one made from extraordinarily tiny flowers called Harpsingers.
Normally, a man like Pax, even though he was a paladin, would never have been able to taste a Harpsingers candy.
One ounce of the sweet was worth more than an ounce of gold or diamonds.
He’d attended a crowning ceremony as a guard, however, and each guest had received a fingernail-size piece of candy wrapped in a bag made of silk shot through with gold.
The bags had been placed on the center of each plate when the guests sat at the coronation dinner.
Lady Vanigna, aunt to the new king, had picked hers up and sniffed in dismay. “How exceedingly banal,” she’d announced, and thrown the bag over her shoulder. It had hit Pax in the chest and he’d caught it, but when he made to return it to her, she told him to keep it.
For a long time, he’d treasured the candy, taking it out now and again during the worst of campaigns just to smell it. The scent alone could make him forget the carnage feet away from his tent flap and instead remember hot summer afternoons and the relief of a quick plunge into an icy river.
Josie’s hair smelled like that candy.
This was the perfectly sound excuse for why, when she sat up, he didn’t move away quickly enough, and she caught him sniffing her head.
Pax’s face heated at her amused grin. How was it a man as universally feared as himself turned into a foolish child in the company of one tiny human woman?
“It’s pretty easy to second-guess yourself as a parent these days,” Josie said, graciously ignoring his embarrassment. “Especially as a single mother from a ‘broken home.’ ”
Unfamiliar with the motions she made with her fingers when she said, “broken home,” Pax frowned and shifted his body to face Josie’s and better see her expressions.
“It’s what some people call families where there aren’t traditional parents, like a mom and dad, or conventional supports.” Josie sighed. “Usually, it describes the household of a poor single mother.”
“In the Princess Barbie movies, she often comes from a broken home,” he informed her. “Shocking, how often parents die or are taken away by enchantment in these worlds.”
“Yeah,” she said lightly. “Well, my mother was taken away by an enchantment to drugs, and I don’t know who my father is, so not as exciting as Princess Barbie. I’ve been alone since I was sixteen. I’m flying blind with a lot of this parenting stuff.”
“Flying blind means…?”
“Making it up as I go along,” she answered. “Gloria knows this. It’s why she’s waiting for me to fuck it up, and oh my God, here I go complaining to you again.”
Not for the first time, Pax wished for his sword and Butthead and an enemy he could cleave in two.
“Gloria wants you to fail?” he asked.
“She wants to take Amos away from me.”
Anger at the thought nearly choked him.
“She cannot,” he said firmly, shaking his head while Josie explained about custody and laws and whatever other stupid human rules governing parents and children there were that made no sense to Pax. Genuine anguish underlay Josie’s words but the source of it wasn’t anything he could touch…or kill.
“It helps to talk to someone about it. Now that I say it out loud, it doesn’t sound as bleak as it did when it was running around in my brain.”
“I wish I could do more than simply listen,” Pax said. “I want to…” The words dried up when Josie shifted her position to sit facing him, one arm on the back of the couch and that hand holding her head, fingers entwined with her candy hair.
She was not the most beautiful woman he’d encountered in all the worlds. Nor was she the most clever or the most amusing. Instead, she embodied a mix of these traits that seemed to be tailored specifically for him.
“Yes?” Josie asked softly, waiting for him to finish his thought.
The time for thinking had passed, however.
“I want to kiss you again, Josie,” he told her, eyes on her mouth with lips the color of spring flowers. “I want to listen to your fears as well, but after that, so we don’t forget, I want very much to kiss you.”
Josie’s lips parted and his body tensed at the sight.
“I want to kiss you, too, Pax.”
Her eyes sparkled in the dim light and a thread of desire ran up his spine when he leaned forward to kiss her, gently at first, the briefest brush of his lips against hers like a shower of sparks until the flame took hold and he kissed her deeply, taking her breath and returning it with his.
Her mouth tasted sweet like vanilla tea, and he stroked the satin skin of her cheeks with the tips of his fingers, relishing the friction when she shivered at his touch.
Unlike the last time, they moved slowly, building heat.
He kept the kisses long and slow until she pushed against him and lapped at his tongue like a cat.
The sensation went straight to his cock, and he leaned forward, caging her in his arms. She arched into his chest, but when he stroked her waist, letting his fingers casually pull up the sides of her shirt, she pulled back.
Although unaccustomed to wooing women, Pax was accustomed to watching and learning. He was hyperaware of every move she made, the speed of her pulse, and the tiny ways she adjusted her body to his.
Reluctantly, Pax broke the kiss and rested his hands on her shoulders. “I do not wish to overstay my welcome. Thank you, for dinner. For letting me read with Amos. For…this.”
Josie panted as though they’d run a race, her eyes unfocused. “It felt good,” she assured him. “I’m overwhelmed. It’s been a long time since I—” She stopped and looked away as though suddenly pained. “Since I’ve been kissed,” Josie finished.
Foolish man, why had he wanted her to say something else, something more?
One last kiss, a sweet note of finality, and he said good night. Pax kept his composure until the elevator doors closed on him, and he slumped, banging his forehead against the wall.
“What is wrong with me?” he said aloud, secretly hoping Number Five was listening and could send him a sign of what he might do next, but all that happened was a shower of thick, soft cabbage rose petals fell on his head.