She hesitated to break the mood, but she had to know. “What is the Gray Land?”
He stiffened. His entire body, everything about him, turned to stone.
“I have to know. Tell me, please.” Raine swallowed, her heart lodged in her throat. “It’s where we met. But it’s more than that. I had been there before we first met—”
“You choose to relive this now? Timing, woman!”
He rose off her as if strings held him from behind his shoulders, lifting his body. It was the most alien thing she’d ever seen and it scared her that he’d done it on purpose, done it simply to show off to her that he wasn’t human.
“I know you had been there before, Raine.” He bent at the waist and offered his hand but she didn’t take it.
“How could you know that?” Her voice was small.
“I just do.”
Raine got to her feet without taking her eyes from him, feeling betrayed in a way she couldn’t define. He withdrew his hand, moved to put the room between them—it was an unusually large room—and sat on a curved chair in a corner, his fingers elegantly flicking the ends of his cloak, draping the folds over the arms in a violent spill of ebony ink, edges sharp in their asymmetry.
Raine’s stomach gave a lurch. He was suddenly so strange, so different from her. She was made aware of how little she really knew about him. How isolated she was, how trapped here in this alien place…
“What is the Gray Land?” she pressed, feeling renewed urgency for an answer.
“It is of no importance, as you will not be returning there.” His dismissal was more akin to abandonment. “Ever.”
Raine first felt a stab of hurt and after an initial bleed that ebbed to a spurting wound, she began to burn with…God help them both, with fury. Pure rage.
Don’t ever get mad, baby. You were made bigger than your sister because you’re gentler than she is. Emily was given the heat of both your tempers for a reason. If you get mad, you’re big enough to break somebody, so don’t ever forget yourself.
Raine’s mother had been right about just about everything. She had been especially right about this.
With Grimm’s kiss still hot on her throat, her simmering desire bloomed into fury. Fury turned her blood to napalm and all it needed was a match to set off an explosion. “How do you know I’d been there before?”
“Because I said so.”
That was definitely a match. “What is wrong with you?” Raine stomped over to him. “Why are you acting like this?”
“Like what?”
“Like a, a, well, like a prick.” There. She’d said exactly what she’d been thinking. Might as well go the whole nine yards now. “It was a simple question, damn it. There’s no way you could just guess something like that out of the blue so how the hell did you find out?”
He looked at her, and while most people might not have noticed the imperceptible widening of his eyes or the tightening of his jaw, Raine did. “You don’t swear, Nightingale. You think it’s a filthy habit.”
“You don’t know me. And you don’t use contractions.” She leaned closer but jolted to stillness just beyond the reach of his cloak. “Why are you clamming up all of a sudden? What are you hiding?”
“I want you to stay away from that place.” His voice was steel.
“I was just there! I’m perfectly safe there—whatever that place is, which you won’t even tell me, even though it was a perfectly legitimate question for me to ask.”
“That was a memory you were visiting, Raine, not the present Gray Land. Things have changed since the last time you were there. You are not safe to visit that realm anymore. You are forbidden to go, is that clear?” There was such authority in his tone, it was obvious he expected her to obey.
Raine was taken aback by his behavior—he’d been so tender, so passionate just a few minutes ago and now he was emanating waves of threatening danger. He was a chameleon. Raine’s mouth gaped like a fish desperate for oxygen. She was mute with disbelief.
When she found her voice again it was throbbing with rage. “No.”
He raised a brow. “Sorry, what?”
“No, it isn’t clear. I am not a dog to obey you blindly. You don’t get to tell me what to do.”
His nostrils flared. “I believe I just did.”
“Well, you can command me until you’re blue in the face, but I’ll do whatever I want. You’re not my owner, Grimm.”
“I never implied ownership. I am, however, your protector, thus your safety is and always will be my first concern. Henceforth, you will not Travel to the Gray Land, or else I will be forced to take drastic steps to ensure you obey me.” He let his gaze rove over her from head to toe. “I don’t think you want to explore that scenario, Nightingale.”
“Oh!” Raine gaped. “You are such a jerk!”
“And you are acting irrationally. I am only concerned with your safety and you are flirting with danger on a whim.”
“Argh! Grimm, you’re making me crazier than I already am.” She gripped the hair at her temples and gritted her teeth against the impulse to scream in his face.
“You have my humblest apologies,” he said with blatant insincerity.
She scoffed.
He tilted his head, his mouth tight. Raine couldn’t tell if he was angry or amused or both. “Fine, if it will appease you, I’ll answer your question. But you will obey me.” He spoke through his teeth. He was definitely angry, but why? “The Gray Land, as you have named it, is a dimension just like any other. It is a very special realm, or was, one with a unique but necessary purpose. It is a place that souls must cross before traveling onward to their next incarnation. It is a dimension of possibility, a conduit for passage that some might call Sheol or limbo, but it is neither of those things as humans might understand them. It transcends definition; I’ve come as close to explaining its function as I can. You have to see it, visit it, to understand it, and usually you don’t come back from the Gray Land to tell anyone about it so it hardly warrants explanation anyway.”
Raine frowned, absorbing all he was saying as best she could. His words came quickly and his voice was mesmerizing, so it wasn’t easy. Thankfully she remembered enough that what he said resonated with what she already knew and it made sense. The Gray Land was like a layover for souls on their way to the next phase of existence.
“Some souls do get stuck there. It is a most unfavorable fate,” he continued. “The Gray Land is unfathomably vast, yet paradoxically it can seem quite small. It is a realm of imagination but of late it has been full of darker things.” He halted abruptly and Raine was afforded a rare opportunity to witness Grimm at a loss for words.
She did not care to witness such a thing ever again.
“You mustn’t go there.” The gloom gathered about him. Shadows moved where there should have been no shadows. “There are things there that I would rather you never have to traffic with. You are alive, Raine. Stay away and continue to remain so.” A muscle worked furiously in his jaw.
Raine nodded, letting go of her upset at once lest it burn her alive from within—not an easy thing for her to do. His obvious unease fed hers.
“I lost my mother there,” she confessed after too many long minutes of silence, her voice strained and small. “We were in an auto accident together—not the one that got me into this mess,” she clarified quickly. “It was a long time ago. We both ended up in the Gray Land together. I was young and it was the first time I was ever there. I had no idea what was happening. I lost her in the mists. I looked for what seemed like ages but I couldn’t find her. I woke up in the backseat of our minivan—no more than a few seconds had passed here in the real world but that’s all the time it took for me to lose her forever.” Raine took a deep breath, surprised at how fresh the hurt and loss was, even now. “She died—that’s why I couldn’t find her—she crossed over and I didn’t. I should have held her hand or something. Maybe she’d still be alive today if I had. I found myself going back there in times
of stress, wondering if she would come back.”
“That’s not how it works,” he murmured.
“How would you know?” Raine snapped.
“How matters little, I just know.” Grimm waved her words away. “Enough of this talk, stop dwelling on the mysteries of that place. You are done with it.”
“Like that’s gonna make me lose interest,” she scoffed, rolling her eyes.
“How about you stop aching over past wounds that are not your fault? Focus on the here and now.”
That stung. “Geez, cranky much?”
“You have been maudlin all evening. Has it served you or has it stifled you?” he snapped back.
“Excuse me for having brain damage, dick!” She threw her hands up and pointed her fingers at her head for emphasis. “I’m sorry if it’s a little depressing to me that I’m missing a few years of my life—cheese and rice, what’s got your panties all twisted up?”
Nostrils flaring, Grimm surged up from the chair and grabbed her hand, shoving it over his crotch, holding it captive there when she would have snatched it away. Her cheeks flared red with mortification at what she felt.
He was just as enormous as he’d been in her fantasy…
Had it been only fantasy?
“If I wore panties—or anything else beneath these clothes—this is what would have them twisting, woman,” his baritone voice thundered. “Does this explain enough or do I need to write it out in lyrical form for you to understand why I am such a jerk?”
Raine gasped. He was emanating heat like a banked fire waiting to be fanned into flame and jutting forward like an ancient sculpture of Priapos come to life. He was dangerous in that moment and she sensed it in every cell of her being. She went very still, cautious now with the knowledge and fear that anything could set him off.
“Do you feel how hard and swollen I am with need? How can you not—my size is part of my allure, no? You love my thick, long cock, do you not?” He loomed over her, crowding her with his height and his overwhelming presence. His breath was warm and spicy in her face. The ends of his hair were fanning her shoulders on an invisible breeze, his cloak flicking her ankles like grasping fingers. “Moments ago you came with a scream on your mouth, moving your lush hips under me. I have yet to come. I want to come inside you. Desperately.” His words ended in a hoarse rasp. “Does that explain my cranky behavior to your satisfaction?”
He was thicker than the spread of her palm and harder than she had dared imagine. Instantly faint with lust, hot and flushed with a need she could never have imagined possible, her breath came in short gasps that did nothing to cool or calm her down. “Grimm, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I was just so caught up—”
“Of course you were,” he snarled. “You cannot help it, I know. Much has happened. Your memories return faster than we dared hope. Your powers too. But is it too much to ask that your feelings for—” He broke off abruptly and closed his eyes as if praying for patience. “Is it too much to ask that you feel something for me?” he finished in a calmer tone.
“Wait a minute now,” she started, agape. “Hey. We’ve been doing some serious flirting, but my having deeper feelings for you is not a foregone conclusion here.” Her voice broke as she realized that, yes, it was.
Hadn’t she desired him from the first utterance of his incredible voice? Who could have resisted such magic in that music? Certainly not Raine.
If his eyes could have glowed red they would have, so hotly did they blaze. His baritone voice adopted a deeper edge, reaching inside her, touching her in forbidden places. “Oh Raine. You find me attractive. Your body yearns for me to the point of pain.” His nostrils flared. “I can smell the fresh desire riding your skin, flavoring the musk of your sweat. It is there in your breath and in the honey between your legs. Even your heart pumps blood that is heady and sweet with the chemicals of lust and love. You are ripe, woman.” His bright, even teeth flashed. “Not just for anyone, but for me. You can deny this to yourself, but never to me.”
“Shut up.” Raine was shaking. Could he really smell all those intimate, secret things? “I don’t know what to say to that, Grimm.” She was so aware of his cock beneath her fingers, she had to fight the urge to wrap what she could of her hand around him. Oh, my head may not know what to do in this situation but my body sure does. Have I ever been this wet? What do I do? “I’m not ready for this,” she lied.
“If that’s true, then it should be easy for you to take your hand off my dick.”
Raine flinched at the volume of his words. His voice was cold but his gaze still burned into her, seeing more of her than she was willing to share. Grimm had freed her hand long ago, there was no reason she should keep touching him. No reason but that she couldn’t stop. He was strong and solid under her palm and when she stroked him, she could feel the beat of his heart in—
He shoved her away. If any other guy had shoved her like this, she would have just stumbled back slightly, maybe. But this was Grimm. When he shoved her, Raine flew back across the room and tumbled, end over end until she rested back against the wall.
A minute passed in dumbfounded silence.
Two.
Oddly enough she didn’t feel any real pain. She just sat there. Silent in stunned surprise.
He had shoved her. No guy had ever dared lay a hand on her in anger.
He had shoved her.
Was she injured? No. Not that she could tell.
Was she hurt? She didn’t feel any pain…what she felt was pissed off. Seriously. Fucking. Pissed.
“You…you…asshole!” she sputtered. This swearing was getting easier, the words coming out of her mouth with surprising ease, as if she was a pro at it instead of a prude. Kneeling, she fisted her hands and drove them into the floor. It was a foolish and entirely immature thing to do, but her anger was driving her more than any logical thought. And besides, her fists went into the floor. Into and through it, all the way past her wrists.
A ripple effect danced through the glassy surface and the next thing Raine knew a sharp stalagmite slab stabbed up through the floor beneath Grimm’s feet and sent him soaring high. He looked like a crow, ruffled black feathers in the air when his cloak fluttered about him before he came crashing down. Raine pulled her hands out of the floor. There was that ripple effect again and the stalagmite disappeared, leaving the glassy surface behind untouched and virgin. Raine looked at her hands, turning them this way and that, marveling that there wasn’t a single scratch on her skin.
Had that actually just happened?
She rose to her feet and walked over to Grimm, looking down at him with a strange sort of detached bemusement—idly Raine wondered if she might be in shock. It was possible. It had been one hell of a day.
Grimm’s hair was a mess over his face, hiding his features from her. So it was that she missed his intention when suddenly his hand darted out and grabbed her ankle, jerking it out from under her, sending her sprawling.
This time when her back would have struck the floor, perhaps even her head, Grimm spun his body in a lightning-quick maneuver, saving her.
Somehow he ended up with his arms about her, catching her before she made contact with the floor, orchestrating things so that she landed on him instead. He held her like that, her back to his front, his arms forming a cage around her.
“Let me go,” she panted, struggling to be free, dazed by the events of the past few seconds.
“No.”
His melodious voice was so frigging calm in her ear that she wanted to bite his lips off. Or maybe kiss them off, she didn’t know. Drat, he smelled good. No, stop it. You’re fighting him, not fucking him.
Oh dear, did she just say that out loud?
He confirmed that, yes, she had indeed spoken out loud. “Would you rather fight me or fuck me, Raine?” The frustration in his tone was palpable in the air. “This is getting a little ridiculous, really, so could you decide please? For both our sakes?”
Oh geez, oh man, was she ac
tually considering this?
Of course she was. Her entire body was one raw nerve screaming for appeasement, crying out for sensual gratification. Her hormones had completely taken the wheel, her reason had fled ages ago.
But she really didn’t know him well enough to sleep with him. She grasped at the excuse in desperation. Raine reminded herself that she wasn’t the kind of girl who could hop into bed with a virtual stranger.
Dang it, just whom was she trying to convince?
Who cares, he’s hot. Besides, you know him. Don’t bother lying to yourself. You can’t hide behind the fib that you don’t remember him anymore. You know him better than you know yourself right now—case in point, what the heck was all that kung-fu magic crap with the floor? I mean come on, why aren’t you freaking out about that and why isn’t he surprised by it, huh?
Your body recognizes him, it always has. And you want him. Bad. You’re still wet for him, maybe even more now than before. You’re just being stubborn, and Emily always said there comes a point where stubbornness becomes stupidity. The only good thing in all of this chaos is Grimm. All things being equal, looks like you won this war, girl.
Gah! Just shut up, please.
“I could make the choice for you, Raine.” The words were almost too soft for her to hear, but they reached inside her to a place she could not recognize, as if he knew the map of her desires better than she did. His arms cradled her now, his hands flat on her stomach, almost caressing. “I could. But I would rather not. You are so nearly there already.”
She was. It was idiotic to resist him—from the very moment they’d met she’d gravitated toward him like a comet being drawn toward a stellar body. The question was, would she be broken down by their collision or transformed into something explosive and marvelous to behold?
She was draped on top of him, touching him from the back of her head all the way down to the heels of her feet. It was the most intimate embrace and they weren’t undressed, but just his hands on her tummy made her want to spin around and grind herself over him wantonly. His chest cushioning her head made her want to turn and bite his nipple through his shirt. It was madness.
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