Dying Wish: A Novel of the Sentinel Wars by Shannon K. Butcher Page A

skin was pale. Dark bruises hung beneath his eyes, marking his exhaustion. “I need to meditate. Recover. When I’m done, we’ll go back.”
    “But I—”
    “Do
not
argue with me right now. I’m warning you.”
    She’d hurt him. She hadn’t meant to, but his agony was obvious. The least she could do was let him suffer in peace. She wished like hell someone would offer her the same courtesy.
    Jackie nodded, picked up her phone, and shoved it into her pants pocket. The golden locket gleamed on the dingy carpet. She picked that up, too, and tucked it back into his bag. “I’ll be ready to go when you are.”
    Iain knelt, drew his sword, and laid it in front of him.The blade gleamed. Delicate vines made of metal wove their way around the hilt and over the cross guard, coming up to cradle the blade and hold it in place. Those vines had been worn from use, nearly gone in the places where his hands gripped the weapon. She wondered how long he’d been fighting with the sword to make that happen.
    He yanked the blanket from his shoulders and tossed it onto the bed. One thick arm reached over his head and grabbed his T-shirt. He pulled it off and laid it beside him. He didn’t look her way. He stayed facing away from her, but she had a nice view of his splendid back, reminding her of exactly what she was missing.
    A deep groove ran down his spine, the muscles on either side of it corded and tight. His wide shoulders tapered to a slim waist, and all the muscles in between were covered in smooth, tan skin. A few bare branches of his lifemark reached over his left shoulder, and as he breathed, they seemed to sway.
    His body was even more powerful than she’d imagined. He seemed to fill the room with his presence, dwarfing everything else. That warmth that he’d given her with his touch came back all on its own, lighting her up inside. A slow, liquid heat coalesced between her thighs, making her tremble.
    She wanted to reach out and touch him, but that had already caused enough problems for one night. Instead, she dragged her gaze away and forced herself to think about what she needed to do next.
    Her journey to find a normal life hadn’t gotten her very far, but she could hardly ask Iain to do more for her. As it was, he looked like he was barely hanging on, struggling to deal with the pain she’d inadvertently caused him.
    They were only a few hours away from Dabyr. She would let him take her back and find someone else—someone she would not touch. Ever.
    Jackie rummaged in her suitcase for a pair of gloves and a scarf. It wasn’t nearly cold enough to need them, but as soon as Iain was ready, she’d wrap herself up tight so there were no more accidents.
    Once she had them ready to go, she settled down at the table by the window and opened her laptop. Joseph hadn’t even hesitated when she’d asked for one. He’d had it delivered within an hour of her request. Of course he hadn’t known then that she’d intended to use it to find herself a new place to live and a job.
    She pulled up her résumé to work on it while she waited for Iain to finish meditating. The two-year gap in her work history was painfully obvious, glaring at her from the screen. She didn’t know how she was going to explain her disappearance without sounding like a lunatic.
    Her only option was to lie, which she hated doing. She’d have to invent an aunt and say that she’d left work to care for her during a prolonged illness. If anyone checked into her story, she’d be found out, but she didn’t know what other choice she had. She wasn’t about to claim she’d been in rehab or sick herself, for fear of not getting hired, and there was no way she could say she’d been abducted by demons and kept alive for her blood.
    With a sigh of frustration, she closed the laptop and laid her head down on her folded arms.
    She hadn’t really thought through all the details yet, but the more she did, the more problems she ran into. Her foreclosed house