At once, fickle thing that she was, Raine didn’t want to go back. She wanted to stay here. She wanted to see what his hair felt like on her naked thighs. She wanted to hear the music in his throat as he moaned his pleasure in her ears. But the music in his voice was pressing her. It was making her obey his instructions despite her will not to.
Was he a dark angel after all? It really didn’t matter. He was pure magic. “You know something?” Speaking aloud, she found some strength to fight his compulsion after all. “You remind me of someone.”
Yeah. Like the grim reaper, the angel of death, the darkest and most seductive of all creatures, the only thing in the universe that could not be defeated…
“It’s not your time, you must go back.”
His words hit her like blows and she felt herself sucked back to the real world. “You…you look like…” She wanted to finish her sentence, but it was too late.
Raine opened her eyes to a world of white.
“Death,” she finished, her word forming a dense fog in the air. Snow was cold on her lips and she was lying on the hard, uneven ground of the real world.
Boom.
The sound had reached her.
Boom.
Raine saw it.
Oh…crap…aliens….
She screamed, but was deaf to all save the sound of the…
Boom!
Chapter Three
Now…
Raine gasped, her hand going to her throat. Despite the blaze in the hearth, she felt as frigid as if the snow were still blowing on her skin. She looked at Grimm and shivered. She couldn’t read his face, but she knew he was intensely focused on her next words. “What the eff was that thing?” she asked, her vivid recollection suddenly failing her, though she knew there was still yet so much more to remember. “How did you find me? How did you get me away from it?”
Grimm’s eyes seemed to dim. “So you remember the accident. And I can see that you remember meeting me.”
How on earth could he think she was capable of forgetting something like that? Forgetting him would be as difficult as forgetting how to blink.
But she had forgotten…for a moment. The realization sobered her.
“You remember the Daemon, but you cannot as yet recall what happened next?”
Raine frowned up at him. “Daemon?” She seized on the word. It resonated through her like an atomic malfunction.
Grimm pursed his lips and was silent for a while before he elaborated. “That is the name we have for the creatures you encountered,” he provided helpfully.
For a second she had imagined that “Daemon” was someone’s name. Someone with pale blond hair and bright, cunning eyes… She shook her head to clear her muddied thoughts.
“Then it really wasn’t a dream?” Raine asked haltingly, but she already knew the answer, deep in her heart. “It happened. It was all real.” She seized on a thought and Raine, reared on television and books about flying saucers, accepted it with a fervency that was hardly surprising. “Was there an invasion? Is the human race enslaved—is the surface world under alien rule, is that why we’re underground now? Oh crap in a hat, are we the resistance?” She hopped up and started bouncing on her feet. Her words came so quickly now that her voice ended up practically vibrating in an odd sort of hum instead of articulating as any real language identifiable to her own ears. It was strangely pretty, and Raine wondered, outside herself and disconnected as she was, if she might sample the sound into some music later, turn it into a song. “Are we at war? Whose side is winning?”
Grimm shook his head, his features a study in patience, deliberately placid and devoid of any emotion she might misinterpret. “Slow down, Raine. Yes, the Daemons are very real, but they are not aliens. I am sorry to disappoint you but we are not living out any lurid fiction or fantasy-fueled action novelette. What happened to you is real enough without such dramatic embellishments.”
Properly chastised, Raine tried not to let her animated features deflate too quickly in disappointment.
“Your accident was real, your injuries were real—our meeting was real. Think back and try to remember what happened after. Take your time. The details will come to you.”
Raine frowned, reality completely erasing all traces of her excitement. “There are others—you said Daemons, plural—so there are more of those…things.”
He inclined his head, the elusive bloodstone color in his hair flashing in the firelight, catching her for a moment and holding her transfixed.
She blinked and put her hand up to her brow, fully expecting to find a bleeding wound. She felt the faint roughness of an old scar, puckered and grooved across the centerline of her forehead. Panic swelled and grew inside her, a malignant tumor that consumed her mind with the destructive force of a tidal wave. “I was hurt. I was bleeding.”
“Yes. You were hurt.”
“There’s not even a wound.” Her voice was barely above a whisper and it took every ounce of her strength to summon that much sound. Her body was cold and hot at the same time, her nerves shot through with something akin to fright and strangely not unlike fury.
Fury at what, exactly, she couldn’t have articulated.
“You have healed from those wounds. And others. A good deal of time has passed since your initial accident.” His resonant voice was gentle. Careful. “I am sorry.”
Grimm’s measured kindness enraged her for reasons she couldn’t explain. “How much time?”
“When you are ready for the answer to that question, it will come to you.” His words were not unkind, but he didn’t give her a chance to interject before continuing. “Can you remember anything else yet? You should try, Raine. Think carefully now.”
Out of sheer desperation, she ransacked her memory. It was as transparent and ragged as an old hem, but prevalent throughout the torn fabric of her mind was the concern over how much time had passed between her car accident and this present moment. Even questions about how she came to be here or how this charismatic demigod had found her and healed her seemed unimportant by comparison. Time, and the wasted loss of it, concerned her greatly. It pressed on her like a smothering pillow. “I can’t.”
“You are distracted. You need something upon which to focus your pent-up angst, then the memories will come.” Grimm sounded so certain. So sure of himself. She waffled between admiration at his confidence and the urge to slap him for it.
Raine clenched her fists. “I have to tell Steffy I’m okay—she’s my roommate, my best friend. She’ll be worried about me. And my sister’s probably sick to death, wondering what’s happened to me. I need to let them know where I am, that I’m not dying in some hospital somewhere—”
Grimm was already shaking his head. “You need not concern yourself on their accounts. Stefany and Emily both know you are alive and well.”
Alarm bells chimed in her head. “You didn’t kidnap me or anything, did you?” As if he’d admit it just because she’d asked. Why did she always behave so stupidly around this guy? Impotent with her own vapid behavior, even as she was trapped by it, Raine scoffed at herself. “Never mind. That was a stupid, dramatic bit of nonsense; of course you didn’t kidnap me. I’m being an idiot.” She made a self-deprecating face and turned, swaying a little on her feet.
His hands were there at once to support her, one on her left hip the other on her right arm. Grimm’s touch set off explosions in her blood, spots like wax burns that dropped onto her skin in bursts of unexpectedly white-hot, pleasure-edged pain wherever his flesh touched hers. Raine abruptly became aware of how little she was wearing, how lightly the fabric of her clothing rode her skin and how easily it could have been swept aside with just a quick motion of his elegant hands.
She shivered delicately, but it felt like an earthquake beneath her skin.
“Steady.” His voice in her ear was carried on a warm puff of breath. Her teeth clenched around a startled moan, her body instinctively softening against the hardness of his, fitting together as a loc
k invites a key. Her breath was shallow, quick and too loud in the stillness.
“I’m fine. You can let go of me.” He had to be the one to let go, because she couldn’t. He was a magnet, her bones drawn to him by a force beyond her will and reason. Her blood hummed in her veins the closer she was to Grimm. Her nerves sang beneath her skin and even as she feared such a visceral response to a man who was a virtual stranger, Raine already craved the sensations like a lifelong junkie.
“Of course I did not kidnap you.” Amusement lurked in the deep currents of his speech. “I am here to help you weather this, to be with you for what you’ve liked to call your ‘time out’. I am to be your comfort and protection, should you have need of either, but you are not a prisoner here.” He stepped away from her, the folds of his cloak fluttering about her ankles as if reaching for her when its master wouldn’t.
Swallowing a sigh, Raine felt a physical ache in her heart, as if a dull blade had cut her or resided there still. Desperate for a distraction, Raine cast a look around. She wondered where she was and tried hard to ignore the pang of longing that twisted her insides when he put a few more footsteps between them.
It was so dark—
The very moment that thought streaked across her brain a smattering of round lamps switched on, suspended from a great height overhead in the…wait, was the ceiling made of crystal? “Uh, where is here?” She darted her eyes about the chamber, eagerly taking in every detail, every blinding sparkle.
She glanced down and wiggled her toes. Beneath her bare feet, a glossy surface reflected a blurred image of herself. Feeling faint, Raine looked back up and saw the domed ceiling reaching up to unimaginable heights, glittering with the brilliance of cut diamonds as stalactites of faceted crystals hung down, raw and uncut, catching the light and refracting it in sharp prisms of color. The walls were smooth and leveled to a height of about seven feet, but above that they were as roughhewn and natural as the ceiling, with great formations of crystal prisms, some as thick as redwood trees, others as delicate as willow branches, fashioned from every mineral and gem imaginable. “Whoa.” Her voice trembled. “Cheese and rice, what is this place?”
“Home.”
Grimm’s home was fashioned from gemstones? An explosion fired in her mind, opening all her senses wide, and Raine had a strong impression of ancient, earthly power surrounding them. “Are we underground?” As soon as she asked the question, she felt certain that they were, indeed, underground.
“Yes,” he answered. “We are in a geode, but not just any geode. There is more than one type of gem forming this amazing structure, as you can see.” He pointed, his long sleeve accentuating the bones of his hand. “There you can find the usual amethyst. But over here is a deposit of olivine—or you might better know it as peridot. There is your people’s prized black diamond. Over here is an enormous profusion of black, volcanic glass—obsidian. There is hematite, smoky quartz, blue topaz, sapphires of every hue and more.”
Raine realized abruptly that she was standing in the midst of a grand treasure and he was the dragon, standing guard over it.
Was she safe? She felt giddy with the possibility, the almost near probability that she might not be. Fascinating.
Hearing him speak these things aloud, she realized they were things she had known before and somehow forgotten, the same way she’d forgotten Grimm’s face and name. Raine knew this place, this amazing and unbelievable world, but somehow she had forgotten. “Man, this sucks.”
“The décor is not to your liking?” His chuckle was as dark as his eyes, as if he already understood and sympathized with her plight.
Raine scowled up at him—dang he was tall. Why was he so tall? She was tall for a woman, she shouldn’t have to crane her neck to look up at him. It wasn’t fair. “Do you think this is funny?”
Grimm shook his head, his mirth gone silent but still alive in his twitching lips. “No.”
“Liar. Of course you do.” She rolled her eyes, instantly forgiving him even though she wanted to stay mad since her anger enervated her. She just couldn’t stay mad at him. Something about him just got to her, reached under her skin and burrowed against her muscles with a titillating heat. She put her hand to her head, wondering if she’d sustained brain damage from the crash. “I didn’t mean this place sucks, just that my Swiss cheese memory does. This place is beautiful, magical and totally unbelievably beautiful.” Just like him.
“There is more, much more, if you feel the need to explore.”
When would she get another chance to see such a wonder? This chamber alone was bigger than any house she’d been in before. It was a mansion inside a cave, like something from a dark, razor-blade winged fairytale. There was a fireplace in the room, for goodness sake. There was a thick rug in front of the fire and furniture, fancy lighting and really expensive furnishings—lush and fine, the likes of which she’d never had in her lower-middle-class life. The room screamed posh wealth and luxe comfort. Everything was wrought for effect, both visual and sensory. One detail nagged her, though. She grabbed a thought before it could flit away.
“Grimm, how did we get in here? How do we get out? I don’t see any doors.”
“We have no need of doors.” He said it as if it was the most normal thing to say, instead of one of the most ludicrous things she’d ever heard come out of anyone’s mouth.
She scoffed. “That’s ridiculous.”
He merely raised a brow.
“I need doors.”
“Are you certain of that?” His phrase pierced through her cognitive fog, like a splinter of glass at the edge of her thoughts. Why was it that everything he said seemed to have deeper undercurrents of meaning? And why was it she couldn’t decipher them, when something inside her responded in a way that made it all seem familiar and well-known?
“Am I certain I need doors?” She gaped at the inane question. “Uh, yeah.” Sarcasm was acidic in her tone. “I’m pretty sure the laws of physics still apply, no matter how brain damaged I am. I can’t walk through walls, guy.”
“If you say so,” he placated, watching her features carefully. Raine felt he was reading her with his gaze, that he knew a lot more about her than he should.
“I don’t think I want to explore.” Suddenly Raine wanted nothing more than to leave this place. She hated her discomfiture because it felt so much like weakness, but she couldn’t shake the dread of what she might learn if she studied this palace of wonders too closely.
He inclined his head toward her. “Another time, perhaps.”
Raine absently rubbed at the scar in her hairline and averted her gaze. “You said Steffy and Emily know I’m okay. Are they here too?” The dazzling glitter of a thousand gemstones caught the light and fractured into a rainbow of brilliant colors. Raine realized that more than anything right now what she really wanted to do was lie on the polished floor—it too was crystal—and stare up at the glittering constellations in the ceiling for days, lose herself in them, let them hypnotize her away from reality. But she worried. Some shadow stained her fascination with this place and with its gorgeous master and she wouldn’t be able to rest easy until she addressed it. “Can I see them?”
“Do not be troubled, Raine. There is nothing to fear. You are safe. And yes, you can see them if you’d like.”
“Take me to them.” She let her eyes fall from the magnificence of the room and settle on him—an even more spectacular sight. His mouth was pursed and she wondered what he was thinking. “Please,” she added.
“Do you wish to change attire first?”
Raine started and looked down at herself, again realizing her questionable state of dress. She was wearing a pair of pink, skintight boy-shorts and a matching spaghetti-strapped tank, cut straight across her bust to accentuate her small breasts. It was so short, it barely covered the swell of her midriff.
She was mortified—he could see everything through her clothes if he wanted to.
Wait.
While she’d never bee
n what one could call curvaceous—gawky, lanky and awkward, yes, all of those—she definitely didn’t have a cute little potbelly like the one she felt beneath her fingers. What she was wearing abruptly ceased to matter—it was the flesh and bone beneath the clothes that concerned her now. Her hands shook as she placed them against the very feminine curves of her breasts and belly. The slight swelling might not have impressed most mature women, but this was foreign territory underneath her fingers.
She had biceps—impressive ones. And abs. Strong thighs and shapely calves.
What. The. Heck.
Her body was not her own. This form did not belong to her.
She hugged herself, thoroughly inspecting the wiry sinew of muscles that had no business being on her arms, shoulders and back. Her thighs and legs were taut with muscle and her entire shape had rearranged itself, strange as it was. She was curvier in some places, softer but leaner and harder in others. She’d gained weight in some places and lost it in others. She let out a choked breath of air she’d unknowingly withheld for too long.
“Raine.” His melodic murmur was meant to soothe, she got that, but it didn’t soothe her at all. Nothing could have taken away the whirling panic expanding through her entire being. “Be calm. You are not alone in this. The fear will pass.”
How long had she been out of it? A month? A year? And what on earth had she been up to—body building? Boot camp? Spy training? Why couldn’t she remember? She was a stranger in her own head. Her body was a foreign landscape. She didn’t know her own shape anymore. She rubbed her hands over her midsection, around hips that were too trim and down her hard, bulging, muscled thighs. She inspected her face again with her fingertips and was immensely relieved to find familiar territory here. Her crooked nose—broken in a bout of roughhousing gone too far with her big sister when they were younger—and her wide brow were the same. Her ears were small, a bit too long to be cute and slightly pointed, the same as they had always been. Her fingers migrated to her scalp and her fingers ran though her hair.
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