His fingers curled into my hips then relaxed. “It’s been ten minutes. Getting enough air?”
I nodded against his neck.
“Then we wait.” He rolled his knees out.
I settled between them and eased my grip on his shoulders. God, how I missed the feel of Joel’s body under mine.
I relaxed into the heat enfolding me. My heartbeat slowed, parroting the steady one below me. “Explain this joke of bank vault we’re smashed in.”
“It’s a bit of a town, lass. Wee families with wee quid.”
Something pounded the side of the safe. The door rattled.
“Tell me they can’t open that.”
“The inside knob slides the pins. But if they can turn the outside wheel, they can open it.”
I closed my eyes and focused on the vibrations. Their frustration echoed through me. And their desperation. But nothing intelligible. No way could they figure out the wheel. Right?
“Keep your alans on.” He stroked my back. “Why den’ ye tell me more about your super powers?”
The corner of my mouth crept up his neck. He was trying to distract me. Maybe both of us. So I told him about the glowing aphids, my fighting speed, my training with Joel. Then I told him about my visions. How I found my father’s body, the Lakota and the nymph. And the unexplained urgency to cross the Atlantic. It felt liberating to talk about the spirits of my children. Was it because he was a priest that I was able to talk so freely?
“And this pull, where does it take ye now?”
I shrugged. “It doesn’t.”
“Ah.”
The din of moaning and scraping crept along my spine. I shivered.
His hand skimmed over my ribs. “How about your nightmares? How do I lull ye from the next one?”
“If we get out of this mess, you’d be wise to get the hell away from me.”
“Blarney.”
I wished I could meet his eyes. I wasn’t about to tell him about skin-to-skin contact. “Your vow.”
He sighed and the cords between his shoulder and neck contracted against my mouth. My lips tingled with the urge to explore. “I’ll tempt you. I know I will. I have…issues.”
“Like now? Are ye tempting me now?”
His groin was pressed against my thigh. He didn’t feel tempted. Though, the predators clawing inches from our heads offered some distraction. But not enough to distract me from the sudden urge to grind against his leg. There was a sure-fire way to send him running. “I sort of have a sex addiction.”
The air in safe thickened.
“That’s what I was diagnosed with anyway, a few years back. It wasn’t a big deal before. I had Joel.”
He laughed then. He laughed.
“I’m glad you find it so damn entertaining.”
“It’s just…” More laughing. “It’s bloody brilliant.”
“Really. Enlighten me.”
“You’re the last woman left. And ye fancy sex. And now you’re trapped in a vault with a celibate priest. Tell me how ye den’ see the humor in it?”
Surely he heard my teeth grinding. “How about I tell you how I used my brilliant position to manipulate a boy a few weeks ago. And how my exploitation got him butchered on our arrival.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed against my face. “Wha’ happened?”
I told him how Ian sneaked me on and off the ship. How the crew members caught up with me in the port. How Jesse followed me. I left out the attempted mastectomy. I didn’t want his pity or his coddling. “Where’s the laughing now?”
“Ye did wha’ ye had to do.” A pause. “I ask ye to do one thing, lass. Put some faith in me discipline. Me vow is as useless as a nun’s tits if I’m spared from temptation. I can handle it, and you’re not gonna get me killed.”
Fine. He deserved to hear all of it. “What if I told you my nightmares are eased, prevented even, when I’m wrapped naked with another body?” Joel tested the theory and I proved it—semi-nude—with the Lakota and poor Ian.
“Then I’ll say a fit prayer of thanks. The bloody couch is brutal to sleep on.”
“You assume we’re going back to the bunker.”
Muffled gun shots rang out. His arms tightened around me. “Aw, pish.”
“Shh. Listen.” Multiple machine guns fired alongside rifles and shotguns. I counted the discrepancies in the blasts. The aphid vibrations magnified, but their attention was redirected. When I sensed them retreating from the back room, I whispered, “There’s at least ten shooters, maybe more. This may be our only chance.”
“Right then. I’m gonna take a gander. If the room’s clear—”
“The room’s clear.”
“Right. If the lobby’s clear, run. Den’ wait for me—”
“Coddling. Just open the damn door.”
He did.
Ruts burrowed through the safe’s exterior in twisted shards of steel. We collected our weapons and crawled over the bent door. Gunfire clapped from the street.
“Sounds like only five shooters left,” I said. “We need to hurry.”
Assuming close combat, I held the pistol in my right hand, knife in my left, and followed him through the empty lobby. The aphids weren’t far given the pulsing inside me. We stopped behind a pillar at the front of the bank.