Eye of the Sh*t Storm by Jackson Ford (most romantic novels .txt) 📕

she says, and the note of desperation in her voice is terrifying. God, I wish I could tell her what I have planned, even though I’d probably leave out the part where it might kill us all.

I lock eyes with Alan. No matter what happens, I have to keep their attention “I’m going to punch a hole in your skull, you bean-counting motherf—”

His expression doesn’t change as he and his buddy roll me right off the edge of the balcony railing.

I get a split-second glimpse of Annie, staring at me in horror. Then gravity takes me, clamping onto my stomach. I go head-over-heels backwards, the bright sunlight blinding me. The terror tries to wipe my mind clean, force me to give into it…

Just as I land face-first on the floating couch.

It’s four stories below the penthouse, hovering in mid-air. It’s a two-seater, with thick, squashy foam cushions, and I hit it like a sack of concrete. It punches the air out of my lungs, almost knocks me senseless. I nearly roll right off. But there is a tiny part of my brain that would prefer not die in a stupid way, and it makes me throw out an arm and grab hold. I come to a stop with one leg dangling off the edge, one black Air Jordan waving crazily in the open air.

No time, no time. I shoot the couch back towards the building while I hang on for dear life. A snap of wind sends snarls my hair around my face, and then I’m over the balcony of the twenty-sixth floor suite. That’s my cue. I tip the couch sideways, go as loose as possible—

—and roll right onto Africa.

He’s lying on the balcony, hyperventilating. Confirmed: his bony-ass frame does not make for a soft landing. I yelp as we crash together, rebounding off him and nearly braining myself on the leg of the outside table.

“Teggan, what—?”

My voice is a high-pitched, breathless hiss. “Not now!”

I zip the couch back out into open air, thinking: Please please please let it be fast enough.

I don’t have a mental lock on Annie. I can move inorganic objects just fine – metal, plastic, whatever – but doing it with organic objects is ridiculously hard. It takes time, and even sensing their position in space takes a lot of concentration. Which means that the couch isn’t lined up right when Annie comes dropping past the twenty-sixth floor.

She bounces sideways. She must have hit it just right – or wrong. Her legs and arms flail, her scream piercing the air. There’s a horrible, nauseating half-second where I’m sure that I’m not going to make it, that I can’t move the couch fast enough…

Then I do. I zip the couch underneath her, catching Annie on the downward arc of her bounce. Before anything else horrible can happen, I pull her and the couch towards us, not even letting it clear the railing before I dump her onto the balcony.

She rolls, bounces again, throws out her arms like a bouncer doing crowd control. Her face comes to a stop a foot from mine. Her mouth is slightly open, all the colour chased from her caramel skin, forehead shiny with sweat and eyes drifting in and out of focus. Africa grips my shoulder, squeezing so tight that my bones creak.

He opens his mouth to say something, then jerks back when I try to put my hand across it. I snap my head towards Annie, put a finger to my lips. Not that there’s any point. She is utterly, completely incapable of speech.

I lower the couch to the balcony, right next to the sliding doors. There’s no sound. Just the whipping rush of the wind beyond the balcony railings.

Then, very distant, from above us: “You see them?”

Another voice. Inaudible.

“Maybe the wind caught ’em.” That sounded like Alan the Accountant.

I let out a long, slow, shaky breath. Holy shit. That actually worked.

Of course it fucking worked. It was, if I say so myself, genius. Twisted, insane genius.

Used to be that I could only feel out objects up to about fifty feet away. Over the past couple years, I’ve gotten a lot stronger. My PK range is up to two hundred feet – and it doesn’t matter what’s in the way. Plus, I can move fast if I have to. So when I saw Africa about to get the heave-ho, I ran a quick check to find an empty suite below us. Then I zipped open the balcony door, grabbed hold of the couch – which had a nice, handy metal frame – and made Africa a landing pad.

Of course, I didn’t just leave it to chance. I find that when you tell people you’re going to tear their dicks off and play a drum solo with them, they tend to pay attention – if only because they find it amusing. They didn’t notice the thump from below. They didn’t care about the person they’d already thrown off a balcony, and especially not when the railing is two feet thick. That type of railing is pretty tough to lean out over – try it, if you don’t believe me, next time you meet your gun dealer at a high-end hotel.

I have to force myself to talk. “And that is the real meaning of couch-surfing.”

Africa is grinning now. He’s got it. Shaking his head, staring at me like I’m the craziest thing he’s ever seen. “You dëma,” he says, keeping his voice low.

I’m unsteady on my feet, but somehow I stumble through to the suite. I was expecting it to be a wreck – this place is home to squatters, after all – but it’s surprisingly clean. The bed is made, and there’s even a bunch of flowers on the nightstand. Dead flowers, but still.

“We must tell Mrs Tanner,” Africa says, as I gently shut the door. “She must know how you handled this, yaaw? You did good. She will be impressed.”

That gets him a strange look from me. Since when is