Ana’s hands trembled as she struggled to shove the lock into place in the tiny airplane bathroom. She turned toward the sink, gripped the plastic edge and leaned over it, gasping.
What the hell had she done? She’d totally wanted that, no doubt. Wanted it so bad that she’d told herself it was just sex and it didn’t matter. Fates, she was actually bullshitting herself and falling for it. The shaking breath that she drew in did little to fill her lungs. Which made sense. Her brain wasn’t working, so why should her lungs?
Not to mention her heart. She pinched the bridge of her nose. She should not be thinking about her heart. That was ridiculous. But of its own volition, her hand moved from her head to her chest, rubbed absently. Ugh, this was awful.
When she’d decided to escape Otherworld permanently, she’d wanted all the feelings and emotions to be had on earth. To live and feel and enjoy. But this? This was not what she’d signed up for. This was too much.
Had she ever felt like this when she was mortal? Like there was a wild thing scrabbling around in her chest, desperate and anxious for something? For him? She had no idea how to deal with it. How to deal with him. Their past was a pit of snakes that she was trying to cross on a tightrope. And now he was the only person who could take her place in Otherworld. And idiot that she was, her chest was going crazy over him. For the man who was probably going to leave her stranded on the tightrope.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Do you come back to Scotland often?” Ana asked Cam. It was the first she’d spoken since they’d departed the Edinburgh airport twenty minutes ago in one of his company’s cars.
“No. I don’t like it here.”
“Why not?” she asked from the passenger seat.
Apparently neither one of them wanted to talk about what had happened on the plane. It was fine with him. That conversation couldn’t go anywhere good, considering that one of them would end up back in Otherworld at the end of this.
“I just prefer the jungle. And since I’ve been lying low, it’s safer there. The company has staff that deals with things here, like testing and grant writing. And they have excellent research facilities that we partner with. The operation is too big to not be involved with the university. We need staff, and most prefer to live here around other Mytheans. Company meetings usually happen in Rio. That way, I can stay in the jungle.”
But Scotland, and his past, had managed to creep into the jungle all the same. In the form of Ana. Amazing Ana, who did amazing things with her mouth. She turned his flat world round. It was totally fucked up, but everything that he was doing, the good that he was trying to do with his company, was starting to take a back seat to her. To the feelings that bubbled up whenever he thought of her or looked at her.
He’d thought he had a handle on it all.
She proved that he didn’t.
“So your company arranges for the car like they did the plane?” Ana asked.
He nodded, grateful for the distraction from his thoughts. “They would have picked us up. But I like to drive.”
“Yeah, you’re a bit of a control freak.”
His head whipped toward her. “I’m not.”
“Kinda.”
“Fine. You ever come to Edinburgh?” Better to talk about her than about him.
“Whenever I can. Literally. Whenever there’s a chance to sneak away unnoticed, I do.”
Cam nodded. Before he’d met her, he’d had no reason or desire to go to earth. The other gods were the same. Earth was a mess of mortal emotions, unappealing to the gods. Most even believed that their presence was required in Otherworld to keep it operational.
But then he’d found her in the forest all those years ago and changed the entire course of his life. And hers. Guilt tugged at him. It clung to him like the barnacles to the hull of a ship.
“Why do you come to Edinburgh when you could go anywhere else?” Cam asked as he turned the car onto the less-crowded country road that would take them out to the university.
“My friend Esha lives here. She works for the university.”
“You don’t mind it when she drains your power?”
“No, I like it. Makes me feel mortal again.”
He supposed it would. “It’s dangerous to be weakened like that.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I like having the strength and abilities of a god. But sometimes it’s just nice to feel a bit different. And the world isn’t as bad as it used to be, especially if Esha and I stick to mortal places.”
She had a point. The university, which was more than just an educational institution, kept tabs on the Mytheans who were too violent or likely to reveal their existence to mortals. Only law-abiding Mytheans were permitted to live in cities. The rest were sent back to their afterworlds when they became a threat to the secrecy of all Mytheans. The university had a department that dealt specifically with keeping track of such things. As a result, Edinburgh was safer for the law-abiding Mytheans than it had been in the past.