And Jackson wanted her to take on the spirit of this dead queen? The same queen who’d been killed a week into her last existence? It was pure insanity. But what was odd was that she believed wholly that she would actually be in a fair partnership with Hatshepsut. She saw how Jackson and Menes shared a single body, mostly Blended but occasionally shifting from one dominance to the other. It was peculiar, and she would never have thought Jackson to be the type to sacrifice control of himself to anything. He was as type A as one could imagine. But then again, so was Menes. And considering absolute death had been Jackson’s only other option …

She sighed and rubbed her neck, leaning back against the Gargoyle. She could appreciate how it must have felt, being given life only to know it wasn’t your own life to live. With what Jackson was suggesting she would have no control of her life. Everything would have to be a consensus. But what if there wasn’t agreement? Could the Bodywalker force her to comply?

She sat up, suddenly realizing where her thoughts had taken her. She wasn’t really considering this was she? No! Why even question or try to understand? It was absolutely out of the question!

Even if there was something compelling about the idea of a love that lived on and on with such utter devotion. To listen to Jackson talk about it … to listen to him talk about what he could see for them …

She stood up, shaking off the thought with a shudder. Stop it, Marissa! You have too many reasons why this is a bad idea. Just think of Lina! It wasn’t only about putting herself in danger. She had already put Lina in danger because of her association with Jackson. Just imagine the danger if she were queen!

Oh god, why did she feel such thrilling excitement at the idea that she could be a queen? It was right within her grasp and that too had its appeals.

No! No! No! God, she’d gone insane. She couldn’t stay here. The longer she stayed there the more she might be tempted to do something really, really stupid. And she was not a stupid person! The one thing she had all but beaten into herself was to not be a stupid person and not to allow herself the opportunity for any mistakes!

She turned her back on Max and her sister and began marching along the walkway to the main house. No, she thought. She would much rather take her chances out in the world than subject herself to this. She was going to find Jackson Waverly and tell him what he and his dead Egyptian pharaoh could go off and do with themselves.

She burst into the house and stopped dead in her tracks when she found herself in utter darkness. It was really eerie to walk from the late-day sun into pitch black, her eyes aching as they tried to adjust. She moved into the house, not yet familiar enough with its layout, fumbling for where the switches might be. She finally found one, lighting the kitchen and dining room in a flare of tandem light. Again her eyes were forced to adjust and she didn’t have the patience for it. She was going to find Jackson and tell him to call off his watchdog. She knew without a doubt that Maxwell, for all his charms, would never let them leave without his boss’s permission.

She found the living quarters—or one wing of them anyway—by throwing switches wherever she could find them. She wondered what kind of glass it was in the windows that allowed them to get so dark. Were they polarized? Where did one get windows like that exactly? What the hell did it matter to her anyway?

Getting herself angrier with every passing moment, she started opening doors. She realized quickly that the rooms were actually suites and she had just as much of a chance of walking in on one of the other people living in the house, like Docia and Ram. That slowed her down, making her more careful and encouraging her to move a little quieter. She turned the lights on in the outer suite of each room then peeked into the actual bedroom with as much discretion as possible, using the light from the living area to reveal what was in the bedroom.

She was abashed with herself for being so disrespectful, but how had Jackson shown her any respect? All he had done was put her into increasing danger, literally asking her to give up her life for him.

She opened a bedroom door with new purpose and the light fell on Jackson’s sleeping form. She wanted to storm into the room, slamming the door and waking him up. But, she began to wonder, is he even able to wake up with it still being light out? Leaving the door propped open so the light came in from the outer suite, she walked up beside the bed. The last time she had seen him during the day was when he’d been paralyzed by the daylight, and it was an image of him that, being reminded of it, chilled her to the core. He’d been so helpless, missing everything that made Jackson the vibrant and powerfully masculine man that he was. But with these darkened windows it should be better, shouldn’t it? He had recovered when he’d been brought into the dark.

Unable to help herself, she reached out and touched his arm, almost as if she expected him to be as solid as stone like the Gargoyle in the gardens. And oh, was he ever, she realized. But not in the way she had been imagining, not in the rigid rigor mortis fashion of that previous time. She realized he was pure muscle under soft, warm skin, the feel of the combination so incredibly compelling. Before she realized what she was doing, she had her entire palm on his shoulder, running down the length of his arm. To wake him, she told herself. Not because she liked and wanted to feel him. Not because just touching him set memories of his kiss to flame inside her whole body. Memories of how he’d touched her, the confidence and aggression threaded all the way through him, which she could see even now as he slept.

That impact hit her that very instant as his hand was suddenly on her forearm, yanking her right off her feet and over his body. She hit the bed with a shout, feeling him roll her over as if she were a floppy little doll that didn’t have any control of where her body was going to end up. She ended up on her back underneath him. He had rolled right on top of her, the covers trapped between their bodies, and the first thing she saw was the long, na**d flank of him. She recognized it well enough, since it wasn’t the first time she had seen him without his clothes on. Nor was it the first time she had felt him pressing his very very na**d weight all against her.

Oh god. How had she ended up in this position again? What in hell had she been thinking?

“What in hell are you thinking, sneaking up on me like that?” he barked at her. “Jesus Christ, Marissa I could have killed you!”

“Well that would solve all your problems then wouldn’t it?” she bit out. “Then whatshername could invade me and you’d be happy as a pig in shit! Get off of me Jackson!”

“Like hell it would answer my problems. And it’s not an invasion Marissa! It’s a partnership. For god’s sake, if you don’t want this then stop … just stop …” He was floundering for words, clearly furious and still waking up. She felt him shift his weight and even through the bedclothes she could feel him getting an erection. She gasped, wanting to be outraged, but then the doctor in her sheepishly realized she could hardly expect anything else after waking him up, what with this technically being his “morning.”

He drove a hand into her hair, gripping her by the back of her skull and forcing her to look at him dead in his eyes. “I’ve told you,” he said, his voice fierce and breathy. “I’ve told you how out of control I am when you’re close to me! Haven’t you been paying attention? Christ, every time I so much as smell you this is what happens to me.” He moved his h*ps forward, pressing his solid erection into the softness of her stomach. “If you don’t want me, then why are you here?”

She opened her mouth to tell him exactly why she had come there.

I’m leaving here. I don’t want anything to do with any of this and I definitely don’t want anything to do with you!

“Jackson,” she said, shocked to hear how breathless she was. Shocked to feel how fast she was breathing, a way of supplying her thundering heart with the oxygen needed. Stunned to feel herself reacting to the feel and smell of him. “I can’t …”

“Then don’t,” he hissed. “Get out of here and stay out.” He rolled off of her, pulling her with him until she was lying across his body, her hands and knees scrambling for purchase. She was wearing a knee-length skirt she’d been given, care of Max, from a heavily filled wardrobe closet that, apparently, came equipped with a plentitude of sizes. Just in case, Max had said, but he hadn’t said in case of what. But there was no slit in the skirt and no room for moving her knees up without the skirt riding up on her thighs. Her hands pressed against his bare chest as she struggled to sit upright. A moment later she found herself straddling him in what had to be the most universally provocative position known to any red-blooded man. He sucked in a breath and she felt his hands latch onto her hips, holding her where she was even as he said tightly, “You need to go, Marissa.”

He was saying go, but the grip of his hands wasn’t allowing for it. Not that she was pushing away like she should be.

“I know I do,” she breathed. “I need to go. I need to leave, Jackson. I can’t stay here. If I do … I can’t let you talk me into something I’m just not … I’m just not the right person for this. You’re so wrong about that. You think I’m this … that I’m more than I really am. I’m so flawed, so scared all of the time … and that was before you even entered my life. I know what you see is something different.” She laughed, the sound low and bitter. “I’m the consummate actress, Jackson. I make everyone believe I’m a woman of confidence and control, but it’s because I keep thinking if I pretend long enough then maybe it will come true. But it never does,” she whispered. “It never does.”

He was quiet for a moment, just looking at her. She couldn’t bear it if she saw disappointment in his eyes, so she turned her head away and moved to leave him. But that same moment his hands came up to frame her head and face, his thumbs stroking up over the high bones of her cheeks, the touch so soft and gentle her eyes suddenly burned with the sting of tears. She wished then that she could be the person he thought she was. She wished she could be the brilliant, brave thing that her sister was. The real deal, not this pretense that she was so tired of.

“Marissa, you’re lying to yourself,” he said gently, making her look into his eyes again, making her realize just how often he did that. He always made sure to look directly at her, making her feel like he thought she deserved that respect at all times. It was so different from the way they had been when in the office environment, each of them pretending not to feel what they were feeling, each of them being harsher than necessary with one another because they were afraid to not be. “Do you think I don’t feel fear every goddamn day of my life? Look at what I do, Marissa. Look at all the things I face day in and day out. I watched that bastard pull a gun on me, aiming dead between my eyes. I saw Chico leap for his throat, something I had spent hours teaching him not to do. Arms and legs only, Marissa. Minimal damage to keep liability down for the department. But he threw all of his training away for the instinct to protect me at all costs, and he willingly paid the ultimate price. Do you know how that made me feel?”

Tears suddenly blurred her vision as finally, finally he confessed to her what he’d needed to tell someone all along. She’d tried and tried to make him deal with it, but he’d been so shut down, pretending it was past him when it really wasn’t.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she got to say to him at last. “Jackson, it wasn’t your fault. You didn’t pull the gun and you didn’t fire it. It wasn’t your fault.”

“No. I know that. I do. Or I tell myself I do and hope that one day it will actually be the truth.”

She smiled then, laughing softly as her tears shed off the tips of her lashes and rained down on him in two little droplets. One landed on his lips and she watched him lick the salt of it away. His hands were soft in her hair, his thumbs still touching her face as though she were the most precious thing he’d ever held in his life.

“I should go,” she said, swallowing against the tightness in her throat and the fluttering excitement being birthed in her chest, the contrast shocking and inexplicable.

“But you’re not going to, are you?” he asked her then, but it was more a statement than a question and it fanned the thrill growing inside of her.

“No,” she whispered as though she were afraid to hear herself admit to it. “I’m not going to.”

“Marissa …” He swallowed visibly. “Marissa if I make love to you I’m never going to let you go. You have to understand that. I’m never going to let you go.”

She waited for fear to come after those words, but it didn’t. It just didn’t. For the very first time in as long as she could remember, there wasn’t a single ounce of the crippling emotion working through her.