Page 19 of Phoenix Fated (The Phoenix Guardians #4)

AIROS

T he rope appears to be cursed with an impudent desire to immediately knot itself around any available limb or pull taut at precisely the wrong moment in our attempts to practice the dance in some kind of unison.

I'm trying to stay conscious of Jackson, to make sure he doesn't fall in a way that might harm the child, but that's exactly when I find myself wrapped up like a python's prey.

"You step this way, I step that way," Jackson says angrily.

"That's exactly what I did!"

"Bullshit!"

"Watch me," I bark, pointing at the ground.

I do the movements, stamping and sliding my feet through the sand. I pause. Jackson glares at me. He's right.

"Gods damn this," I grunt. "I'm no dancer, who am I fooling?"

"You think I am?" Jackson says. "Hell no. I hid in the bathroom when The Electric Slide came on at my cousin's wedding. But I know you can memorize shit. We just need to not get in each other's way."

I use my foot to draw a line in the sand. "I will stay on this side, you'll stay on that side."

"Right. Okay..." He claps a beat with his hands. "One, two, three..."

An hour later, the line in the sand has been completely trampled.

My robe hangs off my shoulder, torn from when Jackson caught himself falling.

His face is sweaty and dirty, and both of us are exhausted.

My legs and feet feel as though I’ve just sprinted from one end of the desert to the other and back again.

We haven’t had any food since morning, and barely more water all day than what we drank with Azin and Onar, plus the small sip Niah provided us.

The urgency of the situation and our fervor to overcome it had made us blind to our bodies’ needs, but it’s all caught up with us now.

"Where's that bladder?" Jackson mutters.

We both look around.

"It was here, was it not?" I say.

The rope snaps tight as Jackson tries to walk off, and I stumble after him.

"Where is it?" he repeats.

"She must have taken it with her," I say.

"No water? Christ."

I stare at my hands and watch as they split into four and swirl around my vision with flashes of starlight. It's worse than three wine gourds on an empty stomach. Jackson staggers slightly and I quickly catch him by the shoulders.

"I'm good," he mumbles, and brushes my hands away.

"You need water."

"Yeah, no shit. Both of us do. But something tells me we can't just waltz back into camp and ask for it. She took it with her for a reason."

He's right—this is part of the test. But we can't do this without water.

"Anything in there?" he asks, pointing to the wine gourd on my belt.

"Still just as empty as before," I tell him, and then I get an idea. "We'll go to the well."

"You know how to find it?" he asks.

I look up at the stars and try to focus my mind and think clearly. In preparation for a potential escape when Azin and his riders had first brought us to the camp, I'd made observations on the position of the sun. I just have to remember them.

"The camp lies in that direction," I say, pointing off to where Niah left. "And that means...the well should be in that direction."

We start across the spine of the dune with me in the front and Jackson behind me, but it quickly becomes obvious that walking in step with such a short leash between us is not much easier than trying to dance, especially with the undulating consistency of the sand.

Jackson curses under his breath as he repeatedly trips on my heels and runs into my back, and when we reach the edge of the dune, I stop and he bumps into me again.

I nearly lose my footing and fall down the slope.

"Careful," I say.

"I am being fucking careful," he says. "Try walking right."

My patience is almost nonexistent. "Would you like to lead this party?" I snap at him.

" Absolutely ."

I hold up the rope to help it slide around my waist as he walks to the front.

"Alright," he says. " This is how this shit is done. Left foot first. And?—"

Somehow, Jackson misses where the slope begins and immediately trips.

I grab the rope to stop him from tumbling forward, but he falls into my arms, which sends me falling backward onto my ass.

Now I’m sliding down the side of the dune with Jackson sprawled across my lap, facing the difficult, furrowed landscape of sand and stone that stretches between us and the well.

I drive my heels into the sand, trying to slow our descent, but it’s no use.

When we reach the bottom, my heels catch on firm sand, and the sudden stop flips us forward.

Jackson’s face plows into the sand as he skids onto his hands and knees, and I slam into his upturned ass, my hands instinctively gripping his waist for balance.

Even through the layers of cloth between us, I can feel the shape of him pressed against my cock.

I immediately pull away just as Jackson tries to leap forward, but the rope snaps taut between us, and he falls backward while dragging me down on top of him.

His cheek is scratched and bleeding, peppered with bits of dark sand, and his pregnant belly touches my abs as it rises with his breath.

He looks stunned, and for a moment I'm worried that he has hit his head in the fall.

I then realize that my right leg is pushed firmly between his legs, and his heat is blazing against my thigh.

He blinks, and focus returns to his eyes.

"Airos," he growls. "Get off of me."

Jackson is proud and strong-willed. I respect that.

He’s a soldier, after all. But his hardheaded resistance is confounding.

I hate that he ignites every protective instinct I have.

There have been moments over these past days when it seems clear to me that we’ve been fated to cross paths, moments when our minds connect in ways that feel like we’ve known each other for lifetimes.

But he fights against this connection with the same ferocity he fights everything else.

Maybe it won't ever be possible for me to understand why.

And perhaps I shouldn't need to.

All that matters is seeing him and his child safely to the Great Phoenix's temple.

To do this, I don't need to understand him.

I don't need to be close to him. I don't need to care about anything more than his physical protection, so why does every angry look and every harsh word feel like a rejection?

I should be impervious to such trivialities, especially coming from him.

So what is wrong with me? Why can I not ignore the way he makes me feel?