Read Online Collide (Entangled Teen) (The Taking Book 3) by Melissa West - Free Book Online

were…” I can’t bring myself to finish the thought.
    He shakes his head, his eyes still on mine. “I would find you.”
    “But what if—”
    “You’re all I have now, all I need. I would find you.” And then his hands are in my hair, securing me to him, his lips on mine. A combination of a sigh and a sob bursts from my mouth and then he’s lifting me up, my legs wrapping around his waist as he carries me to my bed, never letting his lips leave mine. He kisses me like it’s the last kiss we’ll have, like he needs me to breathe. And I can’t get enough.
    We lose ourselves in each other; exploring all the places we’d never paid attention to before. I slip off his shirt and kiss a trail down his back, up his side, loving how even now, broken by the pain of losing Mami, he is still beautiful. Even more beautiful.
    He lifts me up so he can tug off my shirt and then we’re lying in bed naked, a sheet over us as we allow our bodies to meld together, everything else gone but this moment. But us.
    Jackson pulls me to him as the rush turns calm and kisses my head, wrapping his arms tightly around me like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he doesn’t hold me close.
    For a long time, we lie in silence, and I think that he must be asleep, but then I peek over and see his eyes open, staring at the ceiling, and I know that he, like me, will never sleep. Not peacefully, anyway. There are too many unknowns, too many worries. And then there is Mami, and I’m not sure how to ask if he knows.
    “Of course I know,” he says, interpreting my thoughts. “I knew the moment Zeus returned to his office. Like something had died within him. He’d grown more and more malicious the last year, but in that moment I knew he was gone. There was no bringing him back.” He pauses for a moment, then asks, “Were you there?”
    I close my eyes, remembering the pounding in my chest, the resolution on Mami’s face as she stabbed herself to help Vill and me escape. “I was.”
    “Did he do it?”
    I shake my head. “No. She did, actually.”
    “Sacrifice?”
    “Yes.” I feel a twinge of guilt swirl through my stomach at the admission. Mami sacrificed herself for us. Even now, it feels wrong to say it out loud.
    “Why did he take you from our house before the fighting started? Did he know it was coming? Was he using you to bait me?” I asked.
    “Why does Zeus do anything? I don’t think he expected you to fight so hard. He doesn’t know you like the rest of us do.”
    “Lydian betrayed us.”
    “I know. She was with Zeus from the beginning. Not at heart, but she was too afraid to ever truly betray him.”
    “What happened after you left his office?”
    I listen as Jackson explains what happened in the final hours of that horrifying day. How Zeus had locked him inside, then taken him to the portal, sent the fake time stamp to Briya, and then how he and Jackson fought, Jackson narrowly escaping to Earth, only to be captured immediately by Operatives, just like us.
    “So you have no idea where he is?” I ask. “He wasn’t at the portal when we got there.”
    Jackson shrugs. “I don’t know. He could be here. He could be back in Triad. I don’t know. But I know he has the other regions prepped to attack.”
    “So then it’s real.”
    He turns to me. “What?”
    “War. It’s here.”
    He holds me close, tucking me into him, like he and he alone can protect me. And then silence finds us as we prepare for the fight. We’ve trained our entire lives for this moment, and now it’s time to show Zeus that we won’t go down easily, we won’t surrender. We may not live through this, but we won’t die sitting still, waiting for him to come. We’ll be ready.

Chapter Ten
    I wake with a scream, my heart pounding, covered in sweat, and then I feel a hand on my arm, and before I can think better of it, I jump out of bed, ready to attack, when I finally focus on the person in bed with me. Relief flows over me, and I climb back in