I shut my mouth, closed the door, and leaned back against it. The corners of his lips turned up as if at some private amusement, and for a moment I thought we were having one of those silent conversations.
You think it’s safe to close yourself in with the Beast?
If you think I’m afraid of you, you’re wrong.
You should be afraid.
Maybe you should be afraid of me. Go ahead, piss me off, Barrons. See what happens.
Little girl thinks she’s all grown up now.
His mouth moved into a smile that I’ve grown familiar with over the past few months, shaped of competing tensions: part mockery, part pissed off, and part turned on. Men are so complicated.
“Now you know what they think of you. I’m all that stands between you and my men,” he said.
That and a very deep glassy lake. I’d dive to the bottom if I had to. Even though he was alive again, even though I now understood I never would have destroyed this world to resurrect him, I was no longer the woman I’d been before I’d helped kill him and never would be again.
The transformation I’d undergone had done permanent damage. The emotions I’d felt, believing he was dead, had cut deep, leaving my heart battle-scarred, my soul changed. The grief might be over, but the memory of those days, the choices I’d made, the things I’d almost done, would be a part of me forever. I suspected some part of me was still slightly numb and might be for a long time.
My gaze strayed to his neck. It was as if his throat had never been cut. There was no wound, no scar. He was completely healed. I’d seen him naked last night and knew there were no scars on his torso, either. His body bore no evidence of the violent death he’d endured.
I glanced back at his face. He was staring at my newly dyed hair. I pushed it back, tucked it behind my ears. From the hostility in his gaze, I knew if I opened my mouth again, he’d just cut me off, so I waited, enjoying the view.
One of the things I realized when I’d been grieving him was how attractive I find him. Barrons is … addictive. He grows on you until you can’t begin to imagine anyone you’d like to look at more. He wears his dark hair slicked back from his face, sometimes cut, sometimes long, as if he can’t be bothered to regularly get it trimmed. I now know why, at well over six feet of long, hard muscle, he moves with such animal grace.
He’s an animal.
His forehead, nose, mouth, and jaw bear the stamp of a gene pool that died out long ago, blended with whatever it is that makes him the beast. Though symmetrical, with strong planes and angles, his face is too primitive to be handsome. Barrons might have evolved enough to walk upright, but he never relinquished the purity and unapologetic drives of a born predator. The aggressive ruthlessness and bloodlust of my demon guardian is his inherent nature.
When I first arrived in Dublin, he terrified me.
I inhale deeply, inflating my lungs with a long, slow breath. Though ten feet and a wide desk separate us, I can smell him. The scent of his skin is one I will never forget, no matter how long I live. I know the taste of him in my mouth. I know the smell we make together. Sex is a perfumery that creates its own fragrance, takes two people and makes them smell like a third. It’s a scent neither person can make alone. I wonder if that third smell can become a drug of blended pheromones that can be generated only by the mixture of those two people’s sweat, saliva, and semen. I’d like to shove him back on the desk. Straddle him. Dump a storm of emotion across his body with mine.
I realize he’s staring at me, hard, and that my thoughts might have been a bit transparent. Desire’s a hard thing not to telegraph. It changes the way we breathe and subtly rearranges our limbs. If you’re attuned to someone, it’s impossible not to notice.
“Is there something you want from me, Ms. Lane?” he says very softly. Lust stirs in his ancient eyes. I remember the first time I glimpsed it there. I’d wanted to run, screaming. Savage Mac had wanted to play.
The answer to his question was a resounding yes. I wanted to launch myself across his desk and expel something violent from my system. I wanted to beat him, punish him for the pain I’d suffered. I wanted to kiss him, slam myself down on him, reassure myself that he was alive in the most elemental way I could.
If anyone is going to kill her, he’d said moments ago, it’s me.
God, how I’d grieved him!
He speaks of killing me so casually. Still not trusting me. Never trusting me. Those dark currents gurgle, begin to gush. I am furious. With him. He deserves a dose of grief himself. I wet my lips. “As a matter of fact there is.”
He inclines his head imperiously, waiting.
“And only you can give it to me,” I purr, arching my back.
His gaze drops to my breasts. “I’m listening.”
“It’s long overdue. I haven’t been able to think about anything else. It nearly drove me crazy today, waiting for you to get here so I could ask for it.”
He stands up and rakes me with a scathing look.
Sloppy seconds, his eyes say.
You had it first, I counter silently. I think that means he got the leftovers.
I push away from the door, circle the desk, trailing my fingertips lightly over his Silver as I pass it. He watches my hand and I know he’s remembering how I once touched him.
I stop a few inches from him. I’m humming with energy. He is, too. I can feel it.
“I’ve become obsessed with getting it, and if you say no, I’ll just have to take it.”
He inhales sharply. “You think you can?” Challenge stirs in his dark gaze.
I have a sudden vision of the two of us having an all-out fight from end to end of the bookstore, culminating in fierce, no-holds-barred sex, and my mouth goes so dry I can’t swallow for a moment.
“It might take me a while to … get my hands on exactly what I want, but I have no doubt I could.”
His eyes say: Bring it on. But you’ve got a lot to pay for.
He hates me for teaming up with Darroc. He believes we were lovers.
And he’d have sex with me in a heartbeat. Against his better judgment, with no tenderness at all, but he’d do it. I don’t get men. If I thought he’d betrayed me with … say, Fiona, a day after he’d helped kill me, I’d make him suffer for a good long time before I slept with him again.
He believes that I had sex with my sister’s lover the day after I stabbed him, that I forgot all about him and moved on. Men are wired different. I think for them, it’s about stamping out all trace, all memory, of their competitor as quickly and completely as possible. And they feel that the only way they can do it is with their body, their sweat, their semen. As if they can re-mark us. I think sex is so intense for them, they can be so easily ruled by it, that they think we can, too.
I look up at him, into those dark, bottomless eyes. “Can you die—ever?”
For a long moment he doesn’t speak. Then he moves his head once, in silent negation.
“As in: never? No matter what happens to you?”
I get that silent slice to the left and back to the middle again.
The bastard. Now I understand the anger I’ve been feeling beneath the elation. Some part of my brain had already put this together:
He’d let me grieve.
He never told me he was a beast that couldn’t be killed. He could have spared me all the pain I’d endured with one tiny little truth, one small confession, and I’d never have felt so violent and dark and broken. If he’d only just said: Ms. Lane, I can’t be killed. So if you ever see me die, don’t sweat it. I’ll be back.
I’d lost myself. Because of him. Because of his idiotic need to keep everything about himself secret. There was no excuse for it.
But even worse was this: I’d thought he’d given his life to save me, when all he’d really done was the equivalent of take a little nap. What did “dying” for someone mean when you knew you couldn’t die? Not a damn thing. An inconvenience. IYD hadn’t been a big deal after all.
I
’d wept, I’d mourned. I’d built a massive and utterly undeserved Monument to Barrons, The Man Who’d Died So I Could Live, in my head. I’d thought he’d made the ultimate sacrifice for me, and it had milked my emotions brutally. I’d let it consume me, take me over, turn me into someone I couldn’t believe I’d been capable of becoming.
And he’d never been willing to die so I could live. It had been business as usual—Barrons keeping his OOP detector alive and functioning, coolly impersonal, focused on his goals. So what if he was the one who would never let me die? It didn’t cost him anything. He wanted the Book. I was the way to get it. He had nothing to lose. I finally understood why he was always so fearless.
I’d thought he’d cared about me so much he’d been willing to give up his life. I’d romanticized it and gotten swept away in a misguided fantasy. And if he’d stayed here last night, I’d have made a complete fool of myself. I’d have confessed feelings to him that I’d felt only because I’d thought he’d given his life for mine.
Nothing had changed.
There was no deeper level of understanding or emotion between us.
He was Jericho Barrons, OOP director, pissed off at me because he thought I’d taken up with the enemy, irked that he’d had to endure an inconvenient death, but still not telling me a thing, using me to achieve his mysterious ends.
He bristles with impatience. I feel the lust rolling off him, the violence beneath it.
“You said you wanted something. What is it, Ms. Lane?”
I smile coolly. “The deed to my bookstore, Barrons. What else?”
The Dani Daily
106 Days AWC
DING-DONG THE DICK IS DEAD!
Read all about it!
THE LORD MASTER WAS MURDERED!!!
Dude, like it was my 14th birthday or something already, ’stead of next week on the 20th, I got the über-coolest present: Darroc, the fecker that brought the walls down between our worlds, is DEAD! These eyeballs saw it happen up close and personal last night! And get this—one o’ his own Hunters killed him! Took off his head!
Time to fight is NOW, while we got ’em on the run with nobody in charge! Jayne and his men got a method; join the madness at Dublin Castle!
Annie, I got the nest of Creepers in the back of your place last night.
Anonymous847, I cleared the warehouse, but—dude—you didn’t need me. There was only two. ’Member, you can build your own Shade-Busters. I told you all about it coupla rags ago. If you need supplies, check out Dex’s on Main. I tacked the recipe to the wall by the bar.
Keeping it short, got a lot of Fae ass to kick while I’m still thirteen! Which ain’t much longer, only SIX more days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
MEGA OUT!
PS: Happy V’day, which I’m officially changing to V’lane’s Day. Speaking of—anybody seen the prince recently? If so, gotta tell him the Mega’s looking for him. Got some stuff he needs to know about.
17
“Turn right, here,” I said.
Barrons shot me a look that pretty much said, Fuck off and die.
I returned it. “I left the stones at Darroc’s penthouse.”
He yanked the wheel of the Viper to the right so hard, I nearly ended up in his lap. I knew what a mistake that would be. Since our sexually charged incident back at the bookstore, he hadn’t spoken a single word.
I’d never seen him so angry. And I’ve seen Barrons angry a lot.
When I’d delivered my frosty coup de grâce, he regarded me with such contempt that, if I’d been a lesser woman, I’d have withered up and died. I’m not lesser. He deserved it.
Then he’d stalked away from me and stood staring into the Silver for long moments. When he’d finally turned back, he raked a glance from my tousled blond hair to my wedge flip-flops, then shot a look at the ceiling, telling me as clearly as if he’d spoken aloud to go change into something a grown woman would wear, because we were leaving.
When I’d come back down, he herded me into the garage without touching me. I’d felt tension ebbing and flowing like a violent surf beneath his skin, the same way the colors had crashed ceaselessly beneath the skin of the Unseelie Princes.
He’d chosen the Viper from his collection and slid into the driver’s seat. I knew he’d done it to provoke me. To remind me that nothing was mine. Everything was his.
“This is bullshit, and you know it,” I snapped. I couldn’t fight about what was really pissing me off, so I’d work with the material at hand. “Mom and Dad are out, I’m alive, and Darroc is dead. You never specified who had to do what or how it had to happen. You only demanded an end result. Your terms were met.”
The Viper rumbled down the street, and I felt a flash of envy. I knew the thrill of the exhaust pipe’s heat in the driver’s compartment, the sleek pleasure of the gear stick in my hand, the rush of massive muscle idling hungrily, waiting for my next command. I sighed and looked out the window, watching the darkness slide by.
I didn’t have to give Barrons directions. He knew exactly where I’d stayed two nights ago. He turned right, then left, twelve blocks to the east, and seven to the south.
The city was as silent as he was. Although I sensed a great number of Fae, they weren’t out in the streets. I wondered if they were having a Fae summit somewhere, planning their next moves. I wondered if the Unseelie nation had been unsettled by the loss of their liberator and leader and if they were meeting to choose a new one. I wondered who would step up to take over. One of the Unseelie Princes?
In a way, Darroc hadn’t been a bad choice to have leading the Dark Court. He’d wanted our world intact, because he’d wanted to rule it alongside the Fae realm. He’d liked his human pleasures and had intended to continue them. His years among us had increased his appetite for mortal women and mortal luxuries; ergo, he’d have preserved them.
But there was no guarantee that whoever stepped up to the plate next would feel the same. In fact, there was little likelihood that the new Unseelie leader would feel anything even remotely human.
If one of the dark princes took over—say, Death or Pestilence—they’d have no long-term goals, no restraint. They’d indulge until there was nothing left to devour. We’d actually been lucky to have an ex-Seelie leading the Unseelie. I knew what the princes were made of: emptiness darker and vaster than the night sky. Their appetites were boundless, insatiable.
I’d seen what had happened in the street between the Seelie and Unseelie when they’d faced off. The ground had begun to split. If the two courts clashed on a grand scale, if they went at each other en masse, they would destroy our world.
While they could move on to a new planet, we couldn’t.
The human race would die out.
I’d thought I had no pressing obligations, no express deadlines. But I did. The longer the Book was loose and the Fae battled each other, the greater the danger of total human annihilation.
I wondered if Barrons realized any of this. I wondered if he even cared. Whatever he was could probably survive any fallout, nuclear or Fae. Would he simply hook up with the other immortals on our planet and move on with them? I needed to know where he stood. “We’ve got serious problems, Barrons.”
He slammed the brakes so hard I got whiplash. If I hadn’t had my seat belt on, I’d have gone through the windshield. I’d been so lost in thought that I hadn’t realized we’d arrived.
“Mortal over here!” I said irritably, rubbing my neck. “You might try remembering tha—ack, what the—Barrons!” I was yanked out of the car by my arm so hard, it nearly popped out of socket.
I hadn’t even seen him get out and come around to my side. Then I was over the curb, up on the sidewalk, and flattened against the brick wall of a building.
He leaned into me, trapping my legs with his, completing the cage with his arms.
I braced my palms against his chest to hold him at bay. His rib cage rose and fell beneath my hands, pumping like bellows. He was rock hard against my thigh, much bigger than I’d ever
felt him. Too big. I heard the sound of ripping fabric.
I looked up at his face and did a double take. His skin was the color of mahogany, darkening by the second. He was taller than he should be, and sparks of crimson glittered in his eyes. When he snarled, I caught the flash of long black fangs in the moonlight.
He was changing. His hair was getting longer, thicker, matting around his face. He dropped his head close and sharp fangs grazed my ear.
“Never. Use sex. As a weapon. Against me. Again.” The words were guttural, misshapen by teeth too large for a human mouth, but I understood them perfectly.
I shrugged.
“Don’t give me a fucking shrug!” he snarled. His cheek was against mine and I could feel the planes of it sharpening, broadening. Again, I heard cloth ripping.
“I was angry.” I’d had every right to be.
“So am I. You don’t see me playing head games.”
“You manipulate me all the time.”
“Am I ruthless? Yes. Do I keep my own counsel? Sure. Do I push you sometimes to get you to say something you want to say anyway? Certainly. But I never mind-fuck you.”
“Look, Barrons, what do you want from me? It was …” I searched for the right word and didn’t like what I found. “Immature. Okay? But you aren’t blameless. You were talking about killing me.”
The rattlesnake moved in his throat.
“You owe me an apology, too,” I snapped.
“For what?” Something grazed my ear, tore the tender skin, and I felt a warm rush of blood, then his tongue touched my skin.
“For not telling me you couldn’t die. Do you have any idea what watching you die did to me?”
“Ah. Let’s see. Yes. Made you fuck Darroc within hours.”
“Jealous, Barrons? Sounds like it.” There was no way I was explaining myself. He hadn’t given me any explanations. Because he hadn’t, I’d assumed all kinds of things and very nearly made a grand ass of myself in front of him last night.
Air hissed between his fangs as he shoved away from the wall. I hadn’t realized how cold the night was until the heat of his body was gone. He stood in the middle of the street with his back to me, hands fisted at his sides, long talons sliding through monstrous fingers, shuddering, snarling.
Karen Marie Moning’s Fever Series 5-Book Bundle: Darkfever, Bloodfever, Faefever, Dreamfever, Shadowfever Page 136