Текст книги "Shadowfever"

Автор книги: Karen Marie Moning

Соавторы: Karen Marie Moning,Karen Marie Moning
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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 37 страниц)

“You know them?”

“She has … meddled with their bloodline. Their land is protected. No Seelie or Hunter can sift within a certain distance of it.”

“You sound upset about that.”

“It is difficult to see to my queen’s safety when I cannot search all places for the tools I need to do so. I have wondered if they guard the stones.”

I appraised him. “Since we’re trusting each other, you do have one, right?”

“Yes. Have you had any success locating any of the others?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

“All three.”

“You have the other three? We are closer than I had dared hope! Where are they? Do the Keltar have them, as I suspected?”

“No.” Technically, I had them at the moment, safely warded away, but I felt more comfortable letting him believe Barrons did. “Barrons does.”

He hissed, a Fae sound of distaste. “Tell me where they are! I will take them from him, and we will be done with Barrons for good!”

“Why do you despise him?”

“He once slaughtered a broad path through my people.”

“Including your princess?”

“He seduced her, to learn more about the Sinsar Dubh. She became temporarily enamored of him and told him many things about us that should never have been revealed. Barrons has been hunting it a long time. Do you know why?”

I shook my head.

“Nor do I. He is not human, he can kill our kind, and he seeks the Book. I will kill him at the earliest opportunity.”

Good luck with that, I thought. “He will never give up the stones.”

“Take them from him.”

I laughed. “Not possible. You don’t steal from Barrons. It doesn’t work.”

“If you find out where they are, I will help you obtain them. We will do this, just the two of us. Of course, the Keltar are also necessary to restrain it, but no others, MacKayla. When you and I have secured it for the queen, she will reward you richly. Anything you wish can be yours.” He paused a moment, then said delicately, “She could even restore to you things you have lost and grieve.”

I stared out at the sea, trying not to be tempted by the carrot at the end of that stick: Alina. Rowena was insisting I work only with the sidhe-seers. Lor was demanding I work only with Barrons and his men. Now V’lane wanted me to ally myself with him and shut everyone else out.

I trusted all of them about as far as I could throw them.

“Since the day I arrived in Dublin, everyone has been trying to force me to choose sides. I won’t. I’m not going to choose any of you over the others. We’ll do this together or not at all, and when we do, I want the sidhe-seers to watch, so if anything ever goes wrong again in the future, we know how to stop it.”

“Too many humans involved,” he said sharply.

I shrugged. “Then bring some of your Seelie if it makes you feel better.”

The balmy day suddenly cooled. He was deeply displeased. But I didn’t care. I felt that we finally had a solid plan, one that would work. We had the stones and the prophecy; we just needed Christian. I refused to worry about what we would do once the Book was secured, if the queen should be permitted to read it. I could tackle only one seemingly insurmountable obstacle at a time, and I had no idea how we were going to locate Christian in the Silvers. Too bad Barrons hadn’t branded him, too.

I had one more question. It had been gnawing at me the entire time we’d been talking. I couldn’t help but feel there was something about myself I needed to know, a truth that would make clear the dreams I’d been having all my life. “V’lane, what did Cruce look like?”

He lifted a shoulder and let it drop, then folded his arms behind his head and tipped his face to the sun. “The other Unseelie Princes.”

“You said they kept getting better as the king made them. Was Cruce different in any way?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Just something one of the sidhe-seers said,” I lied.

“When do you plan to attempt to fulfill the terms of the prophecy?”

“The moment we can get all the Keltar together and I locate it.”

He looked at me. “Soon, then,” he murmured. “It will be very soon.”

I nodded.

“It must be as soon as possible. I fear for the queen.”

“I asked you about Cruce,” I reminded.

“So many questions about an insignificant prince who ceased to exist hundreds of thousands of years ago.”

“And?” Was that petulance in his voice?

“Were he not dead, I might feel … what is it you humans are so often driven by? Ah, I have it, jealousy.”

“Humor me.”

After a long moment, he gave another of those perfectly imitated human sighs. “According to our histories, Cruce was the most beautiful of all, although the world will never know it—a waste of perfection to never have laid eyes upon one such as he. The torque of his royal line was threaded with silver, and his visage was said to radiate pure gold. But I suspect the reason the king felt such kinship to him—before he permitted his love for a mortal to destroy all they could have been—was because Cruce was the only one of the king’s children to bear a paternal resemblance. Like the king himself, Cruce had majestic black wings.”

25

Shortly after midnight, I was pacing the alley behind Barrons Books and Baubles, arguing with myself and getting nowhere.

Barrons still wasn’t back, which was driving me crazy. I planned to have it out with him the moment he showed up. Knock-down, drag-out, air all the dirty laundry between us. I wanted to know exactly how long I could anticipate him being gone if he got killed again. I was on constant edge, waiting, half afraid he might never come back. I wouldn’t be satisfied that he was really alive until I saw him with my own eyes.

Every time I’d closed my eyes tonight, I slipped into my Cold Place dream. It had been waiting to ambush me the moment I’d relaxed. I’d flipped endless hourglasses of black sand; I’d scoured miles and miles of ice, with increasing urgency, for the beautiful woman; I’d repeatedly fled the winged prince we both feared.

Why did I keep dreaming the damned dream?

Ten minutes ago, when I’d woken from it for the fifth time, I’d been forced to accept that I simply wasn’t going to get any sleep without having it—and that was no sleep at all. The fear and anguish I felt in the dream were so draining that I kept waking up feeling even more exhausted than when I’d closed my eyes.

I stopped pacing and stared at the brick wall.

Now that I knew it was there, I could feel it—the hidden Tabh’r in the brick, the Silver Darroc had carefully camouflaged within the wall catty-corner to the bookstore.

All I had to do was press into it, follow the brick tunnel to the room with the ten mirrors, and pass through the fourth one from the left to get back into the White Mansion. I’d have to hurry, because time passed differently inside the Silvers. I would just take a quick look around. See if there was anything I’d missed the first time.

“Like maybe a portrait of myself hanging on the wall, arm in arm with the Unseelie King,” I muttered.

I closed my eyes. There it was, out in the open. I’d voiced my fear. Now I had to deal with it. It seemed to be the only thing that explained all the loose ends that wouldn’t connect.

Nana had called me Alina.

Ryodan said Isla had only one child (which Rowena confirmed, unless she was lying) and she was dead, and there’d been no “later” for the woman I wanted to believe was my mother.

Nobody knew who my parents were.

Then there was my lifelong feeling of bipolarity, of things repressed just beneath the surface. Memories of another life? When I’d been walking around in the White Mansion with Darroc, it had all been so familiar. I’d recognized things. I’d been there before and not just in my dreams.

Speaking of dreams—how could my slumbering mind conjure up a fourth prince that I’d never seen? How could I have known Cruce had wings?

I could sense the Sinsar Dubh. It kept finding me, liked to play with me. Why? Because in an earlier incarnation—when it had been the Unseelie King, not a book of the banished knowledge—it had loved me? Did I sense it because I’d loved the earlier incarnation of it?

I buried my hands in my hair and tugged, as if the pain might clarify my thoughts or perhaps fortify my will.

See me, Barrons kept saying.

And, more recently, If you can’t face the truth of your reality, you can’t control it.

Ryodan had been right: I was a loose cannon, but not for the reason he thought.

I didn’t know the truth of my reality. And until I did, I was a wild card, something that could flip. The question keeping me awake at night wasn’t whether or not sidhe-seers were an Unseelie caste. That was small compared to my problem. The question that kept me from sleeping was much more alarming.

Impossible as it seemed, was I somehow the Unseelie King’s concubine? Reincarnated and brought back to life in a new body? Fated for her inhuman lover, destined to a tragic cycle of rebirth?

And just what were Barrons and his eight? My ill-fated lover split into nine human vessels? That was a doozy of a thought. No wonder the concubine had found the king insatiable. How could one woman handle nine men?

“What are you doing, Ms. Lane?” As if my thoughts had conjured him, Barrons’ voice slid out of the darkness behind me.

I looked at him. I’d flipped on the exterior lights outside BB&B, powered by the store’s immense generators, but the light was at his back and he was heavily shadowed. Still, I would have known it was him even if I were blind. I could feel him on the air; I could smell him.

He was furious with me. I didn’t care. He was back. He was alive. My heart did a flip-flop. I thrilled to his presence. I would anywhere, anytime, under any circumstances. No matter what he was, what he’d done. Even if he was one-ninth of the Unseelie King who’d begun it all.

“Something’s seriously wrong with me,” I said, half under my breath.

“Just now figuring that out, are you?”

I gave him a look. “Good to see you alive again.”

“Good to be alive.”

“Do you really mean that?” He’d made comments about death in the past, which now made sense to me. Apparently he would never experience it, and at times he’d seemed almost … envious.

“Nice tan. You just can’t stay away from the Fae when I’m gone, can you? Did V’lane take you to the beach again? Did you get a sand burn when he fucked you?”

“Are you the Unseelie King, Barrons? Is that what you and your eight are? Different facets of you, crammed into human form, while you search Dublin for your missing Book?”

“Are you the concubine? The Book certainly seems enamored of you. Can’t stay away. Kills everyone else. Plays with you.”

I blinked. He was always way ahead of me, and he didn’t even know about my dream of the winged prince or my déjà vu experience in the mansion. We’d been thinking the same things about each other. I’d had no idea he’d been wondering if I was the allegedly dead concubine.

“There’s one way to find out. You keep telling me to see you, to face the truth. I’m ready.” I held out my hand.

“If you think I’m letting you into my head again, you’re wrong.”

“If you think you could stop me if I wanted to, you’re wrong.”

“Aren’t you full of yourself?” he mocked.

“I want you to come somewhere with me,” I said. Did Barrons know full well what he was and would just never admit to it? Was it possible the king could subdivide himself into human parts and forget who he was? Or had he been tricked into human form, his individual facets forced to drink from the cauldron, and now the most feared of the Unseelie walked the earth with no greater clue to what he was than his oblivious concubine?

One way or another, I wanted answers. I was sure enough of the truth about myself to run the gauntlet. If I was wrong about him, he didn’t have much to lose, just the equivalent of a few days’ “nap.” And somehow I knew that wouldn’t be the case. I was right about this one. I had to be.

He stared at me in silence.

“C’mon, Barrons. What’s the worst that can happen? I lead you into some trap and you die for however long it is you go away? Not that I’m going to,” I added hastily.

“It’s hardly pleasant, Ms. Lane. It’s also highly inconvenient.”

Inconvenient. That’s what dying for me back on the cliff had been. An inconvenience. And I’d been ready to wipe out a world for him. “Fine. Do what you want. I’m going.”

I turned and pushed into the wall.

“What the fuck do you think you’re—get your ass out of—Ms. Lane! Fuck! Mac!”

As I vanished into the wall, I felt his hand close on my coat, and I laughed. He’d called me Mac, and I wasn’t even dying.

“Which mirror now, Ms. Lane?” He glanced around the white room, scanning the ten mirrors.

“Fourth from the left. Jericho.” I was sick of him calling me Ms. Lane. I picked myself up off the white floor. Once again the Silver had spit me out with entirely too much enthusiasm, and I didn’t even have the stones on me. I didn’t have anything but the spear in my holster, a protein bar, two flashlights, and a bottle of Unseelie in my pockets.

“You don’t have the right to call me Jericho.”

“Why? Because we haven’t been intimate enough? I’ve had sex with you in every possible position, killed you, fed you my blood in the hopes that it would bring you back to life, crammed Unseelie into your stomach, and tried to rearrange your guts. I’d say that’s pretty personal. How much more intimate do we have to get for you to feel comfortable with me calling you Jericho? Jericho.”

I expected him to pounce on the sex-in-every-possible-position comment, but he only said, “You fed me your—”

I pushed into the mirror, cutting him off. Like the first one, it resisted me, then grabbed me and squirted me out on the other side.

His voice preceded his arrival. “You bloody fool, do you never stop to consider the consequences of your actions?” He barreled out of the mirror behind me.

“Of course I do,” I said coolly. “There’s always plenty of time to consider the consequences. After I’ve screwed up.”

“Funny girl, aren’t you, Ms. Lane?”

“Sure am. Jericho. It’s Mac. I’m Mac. No more fake formality between us. Get with the program or get the hell out of here.”

His dark eyes flared. “Big talk. Ms. Lane. Try to enforce it.” Challenge burned in his gaze.

I sauntered toward him. He watched me coldly and I was reminded of the other night, when I’d pretended to be coming on to him, because I was angry. He thought I was doing it again. I wasn’t. Being in the White Mansion with him was doing something strange to me. Unraveling all my inhibitions, as if these walls had no tolerance for lies, or within them there was no need.

Then he was staring past me. “I don’t believe it. We’re in the White Mansion. You just casually lead me in here like you’re running errands to the drugstore. I’ve been looking for this bloody place forever.”

“I thought you’d been everywhere.” He’d never been here? Or did he not remember being here, long ago, in another incarnation?

He turned in a slow circle, absorbing the white marble floors, the high arched ceilings, the columns, the sparkling windows opening on a brilliant, frosted winter’s day. “I knew where it was supposed to be, but the White Mansion shows itself only when and to whom it chooses. This is incredible.” He walked to the window and stared out. Then he turned on me. “Have you found the libraries?”

“What libraries?” I was having a hard time looking at him, mesmerized by the glittering winter day beyond his shoulder. How many times had I sat in that snowy garden, surrounded by dazzling ice sculptures and frozen fountains, waiting for him?

Fire to his chill. Ice to her flame.

I loved this wing. As I stared out the window, the concubine was suddenly there, but she was faint around the edges, a little misty, a partially realized memory.

She sat on a stone bench, in a dress of blood-red and diamonds, through which I could see snow and iced branches. The light was strange, as if everything but her was painted in halftones.

I jerked. The fourth Unseelie Prince, the winged War/Cruce, had just appeared. He was also semi-transparent, a residue from a time long past. At his wrist glinted a wide silver cuff, and around his neck was an amulet, very different from the one Darroc had worn.

I watched with astonishment as the concubine rose and greeted him with a kiss on both marble-white cheeks. There was affection between them. Once, long ago, the beautiful woman in my dream hadn’t been afraid of him. What had changed? The raven-winged prince carried a silver tray, upon which sat a single teacup and an exquisite black rose. She laughed up at him, but her eyes were sad.

Another of his potions to change me?

War/Cruce murmured something I couldn’t catch.

She accepted the cup. Perhaps I do not want his salvation. But she drank deeply, until the cup was empty.

“The king kept all his notes and journals on his experiments in the White Mansion, to prevent those in his Dark Court from stealing his knowledge.” Barrons’ voice jarred me.

I blinked, and the memory was gone.

“You sure do know a lot about the king.” I was going to say more, but I suddenly felt as if a rubber band attached to my belly button had contracted, yanking me toward the other end. I’d been too far away, gone too long.

Without another word, I turned and ran down the corridor, away from him. Gone was all desire to fight with him. I was being summoned. Every fiber in my being was drawn, the same way it was the last time I was here.

“Where are you going? Slow down!” he called behind me.

I couldn’t have slowed if I’d wanted to, and I didn’t. I’d come here for a reason, and that reason was where I was being pulled. The black floors of the Unseelie King were calling me. I wanted to be in that boudoir again. I wanted to see him this time, to see the king’s face. Assuming he had one.

I passed over rose marble, skidded onto bronze floors, dashed through turquoise corridors, and flew through halls of yellow, until I felt the sultry warmth of the crimson wings. I could feel Barrons behind me. He could have caught me if he’d wanted to. He was fast like Dani, like all his men. But he let me run, and he followed.

Why? Because he suspected the same things I did? Because he wanted it out in the open? My heart was pounding with fear and anticipation to have it finally over, to know what I was, what he was.

Barrons was suddenly beside me. I glanced over at him, and he gave me a look that was equal parts fury and lust. He was really going to have to get over that fury part. It was beginning to piss me off. I had just as much to be mad at him about.

“I didn’t have sex with Darroc.” I was mad all over again, itching for physical contact. “Not that I should have to explain myself to you. It’s not like you ever explain yourself to me. But even if I did, even if I was the traitor you’re determined to believe I am, he’s dead, so according to the philosophy of Barrons, who cares? Here I am, with you again. Actions speak, right? You got the action you wanted. OOP detector back under control, tightly leashed. Lead me around by the collar, why don’t you? Isn’t that when you’re happiest? Ruff-ruff,” I mock-barked, seething.

“You haven’t fucked me since you were Pri-ya. There’s an action for you. Says pretty much all there is to say.”

It burned him. Good. It was burning me, too. “This is some kind of pissing contest? Darroc got laid but you didn’t? That’s the only reason you’re mad?” What did he think it said? That I would touch him only if I was sex-starved? Or if the alternative was dying a mindless animal?

“You couldn’t begin to understand.”

“Try me.” If he’d ever just admit to one little feeling about me, I might admit to one about him.

“Don’t push me, Ms. Lane. This place is getting to me. You want the beast on your hands?”

I glanced at him. His eyes were sparking crimson and he was breathing hard, but not from exertion. I knew him. He could run for hours. “You want me, Jericho. Admit it. A lot more than once or twice. I’m under your skin. You think about me all the time. I keep you awake at night. Go ahead, say it.”

“Fuck you, Ms. Lane.”

“Is that your way of saying it?”

“That’s my way of saying grow up, little girl.”

I skidded to a halt, slipping and sliding on the black marble floor. The instant I stopped running, he did, too, as if we were bound by the same tether.

“If I’m a little girl, then that makes you a serious pervert.” The things we did together … I shot him a graphic reminder with my eyes.

Oh, so you’re finally ready to talk about them, his dark gaze mocked. Maybe I don’t want to now.

Too bad. You were always slapping me in the face with reminders. Turnabout’s fair play. But it sure wasn’t a little girl back in that bed, Jericho. It’s not a little girl you’re messing with now.

I poked him in the chest with my finger. “You died in front of my eyes and let me believe it was real, you bastard!” I felt like I was being torn in half—pulled toward the boudoir by destiny, rooted in place by the need to air my grievances.

He knocked my finger away. “Do you think it was fun for me?”

“I hated watching you die!”

“I hated doing it. It hurts every damned time.”

“I grieved!” I shouted. “I felt guilty—”

“Guilt isn’t grief,” he snapped.

“And lost—”

“Get a fucking road map. Lost isn’t grief, either.”

“And—and—and—” I broke off. There was no way I was telling him all the things I’d really felt. Like destroying the world for him.

“And what? What did you feel?”

“Guilt,” I shouted. I punched him, hard.

He shoved me, and I stumbled back against the wall.

I shoved him back. “And lost.”

“Don’t tell me you grieved me when you were really just pissed off about the mess you’d gotten yourself into. I died and you felt sorry for yourself. Nothing more.” His gaze flickered to my lips. I got that. He was once again furious with me and once again perfectly ready to have sex with me. The conundrum that was Barrons. Apparently it was impossible for him to feel anything as far as I was concerned without getting angry about it. Did anger make him want to have sex with me? Or was it that he always wanted to have sex with me that made him so angry?

“I was grieving more than that. You don’t know the first thing about me!”

“And you should have felt guilty.”

“So should you!”

“Guilt is wasted. Live, Ms. Lane.”

“Oh! Ms. Lane! Ms. Frigging Lane! There it is again. You tell me to feel guilty, then you tell me it’s wasted. Make up your mind! And don’t tell me to live. That’s exactly what I was doing that you’re so pissed about. I went on!”

“With the enemy!”

“Do you care how I went on, as long as I did? Isn’t that the lesson you’ve been trying to teach me? That adaptability is survivability? Don’t you think it would have been easier for me to lay down and quit once I thought you were dead? But I didn’t. You know why? Because some overbearing prick taught me that it was how you go on that matters.”

“The word that was supposed to be emphasized there was how. As in honorably.”

“What place does honor have in the face of death? And, please, did you honorably kill that woman you carried out of the Silver in your study?”

“You couldn’t possibly understand that, either.”

“That’s your answer for everything, isn’t it? I couldn’t possibly understand, so you’re not going to bother telling me. You know what I think, Jericho? You’re a coward. You won’t use words, because you don’t want anyone to hold you accountable,” I accused. “You won’t tell the truth, because then somebody might judge you, and God—”

“—has nothing to do with this and—”

“—forbid you actually get personal with me—”

“—I don’t give a damn about being judged—”

“—and I don’t mean try to have sex with me—”

“—I wasn’t trying to have sex with you—”

“—I didn’t mean at this precise moment. I meant—”

“—and it would have been impossible, anyway, because we’ve been running. I don’t have any bloody idea why we’ve been running,” he said irritably, “but you’re the one who started it and you’re the one that stopped.”

“—like knock down a few walls between us and see what happens. No, you’re such a coward that the only time you can call me by my name is when you’re either pretty sure I’m dying or you think I’m so out of my mind that I won’t notice. Seems like a hell of a wall to erect between yourself and someone you don’t like.”

“It’s not a wall. I merely endeavor to help you keep our boundaries straight. And I didn’t say I didn’t like you. ‘Like’ is such a puerile word. Mediocre people like things. The only question of any significant emotive content is: Can you live without it?”

I knew the answer to that question where he was concerned, and I didn’t like it one bit. “You think I need help understanding where our boundaries are? Do you understand where our boundaries are? Because they seemed pretty damned mysterious and movable to me!”

“You’re the one arguing about the names we call each other.”

“What do you call Fiona? Fio! How charming. Oh, and what about that twit at Casa Blanc the night I met that bizarre man McCabe? Marilyn!”

“I can’t believe you remember her name,” he muttered.

“You called her by her full first name, and you didn’t even like her. But not me. Oh, no. I’m Ms. Lane. In bloody frigging perpetuity.”

“I had no idea you had such a hang-up about your name, Mac,” he snarled.

“Jericho,” I snarled back, and pushed him.

He manacled both my wrists with one hand so I couldn’t hit him again. It infuriated me. I head-butted him.

“I thought you died for me!”

He shoved me against the wall and braced his forearm across my throat so I couldn’t head butt him again. “For fuck’s sake, is that what this is about?”

“You didn’t die. You lied to me. You took a little nap and left me on that cliff thinking I’d killed you!”

He searched my face, dark eyes slitted. “Ah, I see. You thought it meant something that I died for you. Did you dress it up in romance? Compose sonnets memorializing my great sacrifice? Did it make you like me better? Did I have to be dead to get you to see me? Wake the fuck up, Ms. Lane. Dying is overrated. Human sentimentality has twisted it into the ultimate act of love. Biggest load of bullshit in the world. Dying for someone isn’t the hard thing. The man that dies escapes. Plain and simple. Game over. End of pain. Alina was the lucky one. Try living for someone. Through it all—good, bad, thick, thin, joy, suffering. That’s the hard thing.”

Alina was the lucky one. I’d thought that, too, and had been ashamed of myself for thinking it. I punched him so hard, he stumbled on the slick black floor, and as he went down, I felt sudden horror at seeing him stumble. I never wanted to see him stumble, so I grabbed him and we both went down to our knees on the black floors. “Damn you, Jericho!”

“Too late, Rainbow Girl.” He grabbed a fist of my hair. “Somebody beat you to it.” He laughed, and when he opened his mouth over mine, fangs grazed my teeth.

Yes, this was what I needed, what I’d needed since the day I woke up in that basement and left his bed. His tongue in my mouth, his hands on my skin. The burn of his body against mine. I grabbed his head with both hands and ground my mouth against his. I tasted my own blood from a nick on his teeth. I didn’t care. I couldn’t get close enough. I needed rough, hard, fast sex, followed by hours and hours of slow and intimately thorough fucking. I needed weeks in bed with him. Maybe if I had willing, cognizant sex with him long enough, I’d get over him already.

Somehow I doubted that.

He hissed. “Fucking fairy in your mouth. You have me in your mouth, you don’t get anybody else. Or you don’t get me.” He sucked on my tongue, hard, and I could feel V’lane’s name unraveling from the center of it. He spat it out like an unfastened piercing. I didn’t care. There hadn’t been enough room in my mouth for them both anyway. I pressed into his body, rubbing desperately against him. How long had it been since I’d had him inside me? Too long. I grabbed the sides of his shirt and ripped, sent buttons flying. I needed skin to skin.

“Another of my favorite shirts. What is it with you and my wardrobe?” He pushed his hands up my shirt and unhooked my bra. When his hands rasped over my nipples, I jerked.

Come, you must hurry …

Shut up, I snarled silently. I’d left that voice back in Dublin, where it had been torturing me in my bedroom.

All will be lost.… It must be you.… Come.

I growled. Couldn’t she leave me alone? She hadn’t spoken in my head for the past forty-five minutes. Why now? I wasn’t asleep. I was awake, wide awake, and I needed this. I needed him. Go away, I willed. “Please,” I groaned.

“Please what, Mac? You’ll have to ask for it this time, spell it out in graphic detail. I’m done giving you everything you want without making you ask for it.”

“Right. Words mean nothing to you, but now you insist on them,” I said against his mouth. “You are such a hypocrite.”

“And you’re bipolar. You want me. You always do. You think I can’t smell it?”

“I’m not bipolar.” Sometimes he struck way too close to home. I popped the button on his pants, unzipped them, and shoved my hands inside. He was rock hard. God, he felt good.

He stiffened, air hissing between clenched teeth.

Make haste … He comes.…

“Leave me alone,” I snapped.

“Over my dead body,” he said roughly. “You’ve got my dick in your hands.” He told me where it was going to be next and my bones turned to water, tried to spill my body across the floor and let him do anything he wanted to me.

“Not you. Her.”

“Her who?”

A hand tugged at the sleeve of my jacket, and I knew without looking that it wasn’t his. “Kiss me and she’ll go away.” I needed him inside me so badly I hurt from it. I was hot and wet and nothing mattered but this moment, this man.

“Who?”

“Kiss me!”

But he didn’t. He pulled back and looked past me, and I knew from the look on his face that I wasn’t the only one who could see her.

“I think she’s me,” I whispered.

He looked at me, back at her, and at me again. “Is that a joke?”

“I know this house. I know this place. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

“Impossible.”

It is nearly too late. Come NOW.

It was no longer a wisp of a plea. It was a command, and the hand was implacable on my arm. I could not disobey, no matter how badly I wanted to stay here and lose myself in sex, no matter how desperately I needed him inside me again, needed to feel we were joined in the most primal way, that I was in Jericho Barrons’ arms and mouth and under his skin.