Shadowfever
Page 116

I was kind of astonished by it: What a man hed chosen to be! He could easily have gone feral. He was the strongest, fastest, smartest, most powerful creature Id ever seen. He could kill everything and everyone, including Fae. He could never be killed. Yet he walked upright and lived in Dublin and he had a bookstore and great cars and collected rare things of beauty. He bitched when his rugs got burned and got pissy when somebody messed with his clothes. He took care of some people, whether he seemed to like doing it or not. And he had a sense of honor that wasnt animal.
Honor is animal. Animals are pure. People are fucked up. Quit fucking thinking. He let go of my mouth long enough to speak, then I couldnt breathe again.
I didnt play nice. I wasnt feeling nice. I was plastered at an awkward angle against the couch, completely in his control unless I wanted to try to break my own neck to get free. I wanted to know what spell he wanted, though, so I drew in on myself and volleyed into his head.
Crimson silk sheets.
Im in her and shes looking at me like Im her world. The woman undoes me.
I flinch. Im having sex with me, seeing myself from his eyes. I look incredible nakedis that how he sees me? He doesnt see any of my flaws. Ive never looked half as good to myself. I want to pull out. It feels perverse. Im fascinated. But this was not what I was hunting for at all
Where are the handcuffs? Ah, grab her fucking head, shes going down on me again. Shell make me come. Tie her up. Is she back? How much longer do I have?
He senses me there.
Get out of my HEAD!
I deepen the kiss, bite his tongue, and he is violent with lust. I take advantage, diving deep. Theres a thought hes shielding. I want it.
Nobody home but She for Whom I Am the World. Cant go on like this, cant keep doing it.
Why couldnt he go on? What couldnt he keep doing? Im having sex with him, any way he wants me, while I stare up at him with utter worship. Where was the problem there?
Weariness suddenly crashes over me. Im in his body, and Im coming beneath him, and Im checking my eyes warily.
What the fuck am I doing here?
He knew what he was, what I was.
He knew we came from different worlds, didnt belong together.
Yet for a few months thered been no lines of demarcation between us. Wed existed in a place beyond definitions, where no rules had mattered, and I wasnt the only one whod reveled in it. But the entire time Id been lost in sexual bliss, hed been aware of time passing, of everything that was happeningthat I was mindless, I wasnt willing, and when I snapped out of it Id blame him.
Keep hoping to see the light in her eyes. Even knowing itll mean shes saying good-bye.
I had. Irrational or not, Id held it against him. Hed seen me naked, body and soul, and I hadnt seen him at all.Id been blinded by helpless lust that hadnt been for him. I had been lust, and hed been there.
Just one time, hes thinking as we watch my glazed eyes go even emptier.
One time, what? Instead of pushing, I try a stealth attack. I pretend to retreat, let him think hes won, and at the last minute turn around. Instead of lunging for his thoughts, I stay very, very still and listen.
He pushes my hair out of my face. I look like an animal. Theres no sentience in my gaze. Im a cavewoman, with a minuscule, prehistoric brain.
When you know who I am. Let me be your man.
He blasts me from his skull with such force that I nearly pass out. My ears ring and my head hurts.
Im sucking air. Hes gone.
34
I walked through Temple Bar with a spring in my step. Id woken early, taken one look at the sunshine shafting in through my bedroom window, dressed, and headed out to run errands.
The fridge was empty, I had two birthdays I was determined to celebrate before they got any more belated, and I was going to have to do some serious improvising with ingredients to bake a cake. Since Halloween, butter, eggs, and milk were a scarce commodity, but a Southern woman could do a lot with shortening, condensed milk, and powdered eggs. I was going to bake a chocolate cake with thick, creamy double-chocolate fudge icing if it was the last thing I did. Dani and I would watch movies and paint our fingernails. It would be like old times with Alina.
I turned my face up to the sun as I hurried down the street. After what seemed an interminable hiatus, spring had returned to Dublin.
The season of sunshine and rebirth was overdue for me. Though Id managed to avoid miserable months of cold weather, busy in Faery or the Silvers, it had still been the longest winter of my life.
Spring didnt look any different than winter, but you could feel it in the airthe kiss of warmth on the breeze, the scent blowing off the ocean that carried the promise of buds and blossoms, if not here, somewhere else in the world. Id never thought Id miss flies and insects, but I did. There wasnt a single thing growing in Dublinand that meant no moths, butterflies, birds, or bees. Not a single flower bloomed, no shoots pushed out from young limbs, not a blade of grass grew. The Shades had decimated the city on their way out, before slamming the door shut with a bang last Halloween. The soil was barren.
I was no horticulturalist, but Id been doing some research. I was pretty sure if we reintroduced the right nutrients into the soil, in time, wed be able to grow things again.
We had a lot to reclaim. Trees to remove and replace. Planters and flower boxes to fill. Parks to redesign. I planned to start small, haul dirt back from the abbey, grow a few daisies, buttercups, maybe some petunias and impatiens. Fill my bookstore with ferns and spider plants and begin taking back the night in my own space before spilling over onto the rooftop garden and beyond.