Feverborn

by Karen Marie Moning

  I needed a higher pain threshold. Not that mine was low to begin with.

  I had no intention of eating Unseelie again.

  I’d eaten it three times to date—after Mallucé had tortured and beaten me to the edge of death, in the middle of the riots on Halloween, and eight days ago when I’d descended the cliff to save Christian. Each time I’d eaten it, I’d been painfully aware that I had no clue what the long-term ramifications were. Christian told me it was the combination of dark magic gone awry plus eating Unseelie flesh that turned him into one of the dark princes. I figured I already was a bang-up candidate to turn Unseelie princess.

  Then again, Christian had only eaten it one time and I’d eaten it three so far. The damage was probably already done.

  At least that’s the excuse I gave myself, rationalizing that the temptation of recent withdrawal had nothing to do with my current need-based decision to partake. After the rape, I’d despised the idea of having anything Unseelie in my mouth ever again. Then I had to eat it on the cliff and remembered how it felt and, oops, well, no longer suffering that revulsion.

  It was a painful hike to the spilled contents of the fridge and back. I made it wearing only my boots so I wouldn’t get paint all over my bare feet, pausing to nudge them off before I reentered the clean part of the bookstore.

  Once back in the bathroom, I dropped back down on the towel and leaned against the wall. I wiped off the lid of the baby food jar and unscrewed it. Without allowing myself time to reconsider, I tossed the contents into my mouth.

  It was as disgusting as ever.

  The taste of the gray, gristly, pustule-laced flesh was straight out of a nightmare. It was rotten eggs and castor oil, maggoty flesh and tar.

  It wriggled in my mouth, tried to escape from behind my clenched teeth. I froze like that for a moment, with jumping beans of slimy Unseelie on my tongue, refusing to open my mouth yet unable to quell my gag reflex.

  I pounded the floor with a fist to distract my recalcitrant throat muscles and swallowed. After a few moments icy heat flushed my body and a burst of power hit my heart like a shot of adrenaline.

  Abruptly all my muscles slid smooth and sure and sexy beneath my skin, my spine straightened to perfection, my shoulders drew back, my breasts went out, my hips canted in, my stomach smoothed. It was like having all the tiny niggling imperfections of humanity ironed out of my body. If this was how Fae felt all the time, I envied it. I may have been given an elixir that changed me, but, unlike Fae, I still suffer everyday aches and pains, still need to sleep and eat and drink.

  The squirming flesh wriggled all the way down to my stomach, where it fluttered like a flock of maddened moths determined to flap their way to freedom.

  My heart thundered, my brain felt as if a vacuum had sucked it clean of all confusion and fear, my body was a live wire.

  It was exhilarating.

  It was sexy as hell.

  I stretched euphorically, drunk on Fae power. Wondering how I’d been living without it since that night on the cliff. Really, I was probably already as altered as I was going to get from the stuff, wasn’t I?

  Then I realized I had an entirely new problem.

  I could no longer feel the bullets. And now I had only a vague idea where to dig.

  I have no clue why what happened next did.

  Since a wish was what had started it all, maybe I was wishing it so hard the Book finally decided to humor me.

  Or maybe the Sinsar Dubh didn’t like the idea of me cutting myself up.

  Or maybe it knew something I didn’t, and I really could die and was about to kill myself by slicing a necessary vein.

  Whatever the reason, I was abruptly visible.

  I gazed down at my body, so happy to see myself that I didn’t move for a few seconds. Then I stretched a leg and admired it. Flexed my toes. Examined my fingernails. They were a mess. Short, ragged, and unpolished. Criminy. I needed to trim. And my skin was dry. How could my skin be dry when it rained all the time here?

  Okay, so maybe I was postponing my barbaric surgery a bit by reveling in the lovely vision of my badly groomed body. I’d missed me.

  God, it was good to be back!

  I studied my thigh clinically, with a complete absence of fear, pain, or really any kind of concern at all, made a deep surgical slice and started digging around. Blood pooled, evaporated, pooled.

  Wow, it was rather interesting in there. I’d never looked at myself on the inside before. What a miracle the body was. What a shame the composition was organic and stamped with such a finite expiration.

  But not me, I marveled as I dug. For the first time since learning I’d been tampered with via an unidentified Fae elixir, I felt a small flush of pleasure at the prospect of a longer life. Hated the things that might be done to me in my enhanced condition, loved the idea of more sunrises, more nights with Barrons, more time to try to figure life out.

  “Focus, Mac,” I muttered. The bullets were only my most immediate problem. I had a whole list of others, the least of which was discovering who’d ratted out all my secrets.

  My skin was already trying to close around the blade. With Unseelie flesh in me, I was healing even faster than I had before. I realized I had to keep slicing while I had the knife in there, moving the blade back and forth. It was curiously like operating on someone else’s body. I barely felt it.

  It took me two tries to get the bullet out of my thigh. Three to get the one in my arm out.

  Of course, that’s how he found me.

  Sprawled on the floor with a couple of chunks of misshapen metal nestled in the valley between my leg and hip, a switchblade in one hand, alcohol which I hadn’t had time to use in another, a feral look of triumph on my face. I might have even been laughing a little.

  Butt-ass naked.

  6

  “Remember when I moved in you and the holy dove was moving, too…”

  I felt drugged. I was drugged, high on my victory over the bullets, blood pounding with immortal strength, stamina, and lust.

  My mind registered Barrons, my body said: Let’s get down and dirty. I’m in the perfect condition for it. Last time I’d eaten Unseelie flesh, he’d been killed a few minutes later. I’d suffered both the high and withdrawal alone. Had endured most of the high getting home from Germany, trying not to think or feel too much.

  How long had it been since we’d devolved into an animalistic, no holds barred fuck-fest? What in the world had been wrong with me?

  I knew the answer to that question. It was the thing I was keeping to myself, cocooned inside, a voracious worm in the rotten apple that was MacKayla Lane O’Connor.

  Now, with the impunity and belligerence of an Unseelie-flesh high riding me, Barrons standing there looking half savage, half man, and no immediate threats to my existence, I had a single imperative. I was clarified—the Mac I used to be, back in more ways than one. Maybe this was what I needed to do to get through the days until I’d sorted out my many messes. Become an addict.

  I’d never had sex with Barrons while I was amped up on Unseelie but I’d enormously wanted to. The small taste I’d gotten in Mallucé’s grotto had infiltrated my dreams, tantalized me, goaded me to indulge again. Pri-ya was horrific. It made you mindlessly insatiable, little better than a puppet.

  But an Unseelie-flesh high was fully aware unquenchable lust—with an unbreakable body. If we fucked too hard, so what? My skin would heal even as we were doing it, letting me have more and more. We could do that thing I loved to do so much, that drove Barrons absolutely bugfuck crazy, with no repercussions.

  I shivered with lust, suddenly understanding the See-you-in-Faery girls more than I wanted to.

  Our eyes locked and I jerked.

  Fucking river of blood in my House.

  I actually saw the capital H in his eyes and knew Barrons’s House was whatever he’d claimed as his own, and nobody, but nobody, shit in it. There would be hell to pay, and I wasn’t certain I wouldn’t steer him in Brody�
�s direction before the night was through. I’ve learned a thing or two during my time in Dublin: when you let the bad guy walk, he comes back. Until you don’t let him walk.

  Paint, I corrected. But his primal senses had told him that before he’d even walked in the front door. The man could smell if I was having my period. Or even just close to starting it.

  Barrons snarled, black fangs flashing, and I realized walking through the bookstore in its current condition must have awakened a memory from another time when he’d stalked a battlefield of blood, wondering what he would find. Most likely discovering everyone he knew—with the exception of his immortal companions—dead. I wondered how long he’d had to live before he quit letting himself have one ounce of interest in a human. How it must have felt to lose everyone around him like I’d lost Alina. Oh, yes, easier not to care. To ultimately let oneself revile.

  Barrons’s beast is always close to the surface. I sometimes wonder if one day he won’t simply change, lope away, and never walk as a man again. Go be pure in the form that makes the most sense to him, on some other world, in a skin that’s much harder to kill and, for him, much easier to live in.

  His dark eyes flashed. Fuck. Didn’t know what I’d find. There are still some things that can kill you. Hate that.

  Ah, so he’d considered the possibility Dani had come after me with my own spear. Fuck. Didn’t know if you’d come back. To me, I was quick to chew off. Hate that.

  He smiled but it vanished quickly. His lips tightened, his mouth reshaped in a way I knew well. He was thinking about what he’d like to be doing to me with it. And it wasn’t talking. Barrons doesn’t waste time on the mundane. Another man might have said, “Gee, how are you visible again?” Or, “What the hell happened to my bookstore?” Or, “Who did this and are you okay?”

  Not him. He scanned me, made sure I was in one piece, and got down to what really mattered.

  Me. Naked.

  He stripped.

  Muscles rippled in his shoulders as he yanked off his shirt. When he kicked off his boots, jerked his belt from his pants and let them fall, I swallowed hard. Barrons is a commando man. I love his dick. I love what he does to me with it. I adore his balls. They’re smooth and silky and there’s this seam down the center that I love to lick before I close my mouth over his dick, and just when I know he’s lost in the sleek warmth of my tongue moving slow and easy, swirling, sucking him in with thinking it’s going to be sweet, I lock my mouth down hard, cup his balls in my hand and jerk harder than I should, and it undoes him every damn time. I’m obsessed with his body and the way it responds to my touch. He’s my mountain of man I get to play on, experiment with, and see how high I can make him fly.

  Not a single tattoo marred his recently reborn skin. He was dark, muscled, sleek perfection. I was halfway to orgasm just from watching him strip. Well, that, my hand between my legs, and his intense gaze fixed on the movement. Pri-ya, I’d done this a lot, and while I’d sprawled on the bed, he’d sat in a chair next to it, watching me with heavy-lidded lust and fascination and often a flicker of something that looked a lot like jealousy. Then he’d knock my hand away, stretch himself over me, and drive home hard. You need me for this his eyes would say. If for nothing else, at least this.

  He was right. There was masturbation.

  There was sex with Barrons.

  And there was abso-frigging-lutely no comparison between the two.

  I pushed up from the floor, bullets dropping forgotten from the cradle of my hip. My spine fluid, my body strong, I pulsed with desire that rode the razor edge of violence. I don’t understand why that happens to me with him. It never happened before with any other guy. With Barrons, I get turned on and I get hostile. I want to have violent sex, I want to smash and break things. I want to push him, I want to force myself into his head. I want to see how much he can take. I want to see how much I can get.

  Got something you want to say, Rainbow Girl?

  I knew what he wanted. What he always wants from me: to know that I’m aware and I’m choosing and I’m one hundred percent committed, to him, to life, to myself, to the moment, which doesn’t sound like so much but it’s a damn tall order. And he wants his name in that sentence somewhere.

  I tossed my head and shot him a savage look. Fuck me, Jericho Barrons. You’re my world, I didn’t add. At least I hope I didn’t. I let my lids flutter at the end, half closed, shielding my heart.

  Then he was on me and I was crushed back against the wall, my bare feet dangling above the floor and he was sliding me up it, big hands splayed on my hips. His physical strength is surreal, an indisputable bonus when it comes to sex.

  When he buried his face in my thighs, I wrapped my legs around his head, arched my back to push against his mouth, and fisted my hands in his thick, dark hair. When a fang grazed my clitoris, I pulled his hair—hard—and he laughed because, like me, when we’re having sex, drugged or not, there’s no such thing as pain. We did everything possible when I was Pri-ya. I became conditioned to him in that state. It’s all sensation. And it’s all good.

  I let my head fall back against the wall, lost myself in the bliss of his hot mouth on me, his tongue moving inside me.

  I arched my neck and roared when I came. Damn the man, he touches me and I explode and just keep moving in a red-hot haze of lust from one orgasm to the next until at last he stops touching me. He knows exactly how to work my body. It’s incredible. It’s frightening.

  In desire, in lust, Barrons and I are perfect together. In everyday life, we’re porcupines who must navigate the circumference of each other’s existence carefully because one poke and either of us might bare our teeth and scuttle off. Not because the needles hurt but because we’re both…volatile. Temperamental. Proud. Obtuse as hell. It makes for difficult days and incredible nights. I can’t change. He won’t. It is what it is.

  Here, now, in lust, we unite, bond in a way that makes the days work fine. I realize as I explode again and hear him make that low, raw sound in the back of his throat that makes me crazy, vibrates into my pelvic core, spreads in a rumbling purr through my body, enhancing my orgasm to exquisite proportions, that this is essential to us, to our ability to stay together.

  I don’t dare not fuck this man frequently because this is the glue that holds us, the tie that binds, the only tether, collar, leash either of us can permit, the place where everything else falls away and we become something more than we are alone. I get now why he fucks with the single-minded devotion of a dying man hunting God. Sex with him is the closest thing to holy I’ve ever known. Barrons is my church. Every caress, each kiss, a hallelujah.

  Burn me in Hell if you have a problem with that.

  He’ll be there with me.

  We won’t care.

  As the orgasm ebbed, flashed red-hot then ebbed again, he leaned back and slid me down the front of his body, eyes glittering crimson, face half transformed into beast. He was two full feet taller than he had been before, shoulders massively wider, skin darkened to burnished mahogany. I could feel talons on my skin. Low humps of horns were sprouting on his skull.

  I was shaking with aftershock, and still, fresh lust blazed through me, sanctifying my blood, opening a floodgate I’d not even realized I’d closed. I was breathless for a moment, stunned by the sudden unsought awareness that I’d once again been repressing all emotion for months. Every single bit of it. Just like I did after I believed I’d killed him on a cliff with Ryodan. Skimming the surface, a flat stone skipping across a bottomless loch, grateful to be a dispassionate observer, the invisible narrator of everyone else’s life. I’d hungered to be unseen. I’d wanted to disappear long before it happened. I have a critical fault line of a defect and it’s not the Book inside me. And it’s not something I can fix. At least not any way I’ve been able to figure out. The relentless, unsolvable clusterfuck in my own head made me choose to deaden myself rather than contend with the uncontendable.

  Yet one carnal touch from Barrons and I was a
live again. Awake and so very damned alive. And my problem that couldn’t be fixed would be as ever present and unmanageable as always when we were done. May as well savor the now.

  He dropped his dark, misshapen head forward and long matted hair brushed my back. “I taste Unseelie in you,” he murmured thickly into the hollow of my neck around teeth much too large for a human mouth. I felt his tongue trace my jugular. Felt my heartbeat in my neck, pulsing against his fangs. His next words were guttural, violent, barely human, “Just how hard do you want to play?” He shook me a little then, like a dog with a rabbit in its teeth.

  “How hard can you take it?” I purred into his chest.

  He raised his head and looked down at me and laughed like I’ve never heard him laugh as a man. Oh, yes, Barrons prefers the beast. There’s something so sure and uncomplicated in that form. As if there, a prehensile creature, he’s free in a way I can’t begin to understand. I want to explore what he feels wearing that primal ebon skin, how life tastes to him on those killing fangs, cozy up to the basest he has to offer, meet it in kind.

  I slammed my palms into his chest, knocking him backward. He crashed into the wall of the bathroom so hard his head went down, and when it whipped back, his smile was feral, exultant. “You want to fight or fuck, Mac?”

  I bounced from foot to foot, wired with fury and sexual energy. I may never understand why I always feel them together around him but I sure as hell can enjoy it. “Both.”

  “Think you can take me?”

  “Going to damn well try.”

  “Think you’ll survive it?”

  I stabbed a finger in his chest and smiled up at him. “I think I’m gonna own it. Jericho.”

  He growled low in his chest. “Bring it the fuck on, Mac.”

  I brought it.

  7

  “I’m gonna walk before they make me run…”

  I stretched, supremely satisfied, rolled over on my side, and looked at Barrons. He was in human form again, flat on his back, chest not moving, and I knew if I lay my ear against his skin, I’d hear no heartbeat thudding behind his breastbone.