“Another of my favorite shirts. What is it with you and my wardrobe?” He pushed his hands up my shirt and unhooked my bra. When his hands rasped over my nipples, I jerked.
Come, you must hurry …
Shut up, I snarled silently. I’d left that voice back in Dublin, where it had been torturing me in my bedroom.
All will be lost.… It must be you.… Come.
I growled. Couldn’t she leave me alone? She hadn’t spoken in my head for the past forty-five minutes. Why now? I wasn’t asleep. I was awake, wide awake, and I needed this. I needed him. Go away, I willed. “Please,” I groaned.
“Please what, Mac? You’ll have to ask for it this time, spell it out in graphic detail. I’m done giving you everything you want without making you ask for it.”
“Right. Words mean nothing to you, but now you insist on them,” I said against his mouth. “You are such a hypocrite.”
“And you’re bipolar. You want me. You always do. You think I can’t smell it?”
“I’m not bipolar.” Sometimes he struck way too close to home. I popped the button on his pants, unzipped them, and shoved my hands inside. He was rock hard. God, he felt good.
He stiffened, air hissing between clenched teeth.
Make haste … He comes.…
“Leave me alone,” I snapped.
“Over my dead body,” he said roughly. “You’ve got my dick in your hands.” He told me where it was going to be next and my bones turned to water, tried to spill my body across the floor and let him do anything he wanted to me.
“Not you. Her.”
“Her who?”
A hand tugged at the sleeve of my jacket, and I knew without looking that it wasn’t his. “Kiss me and she’ll go away.” I needed him inside me so badly I hurt from it. I was hot and wet and nothing mattered but this moment, this man.
“Who?”
“Kiss me!”
But he didn’t. He pulled back and looked past me, and I knew from the look on his face that I wasn’t the only one who could see her.
“I think she’s me,” I whispered.
He looked at me, back at her, and at me again. “Is that a joke?”
“I know this house. I know this place. I don’t know how else to explain it.”
“Impossible.”
It is nearly too late. Come NOW.
It was no longer a wisp of a plea. It was a command, and the hand was implacable on my arm. I could not disobey, no matter how badly I wanted to stay here and lose myself in sex, no matter how desperately I needed him inside me again, needed to feel we were joined in the most primal way, that I was in Jericho Barrons’ arms and mouth and under his skin.
And, God, did I need it! So much that I resented it. I never wanted to want a man this much—so much that not having him was physical pain. I never wanted to feel that any man had so much control over me and my life.
I pushed up from my knees and shoved past him.
He grabbed the sleeve of my coat; it ripped as I pulled away. “We need to talk about this! Mac!”
I dashed down the corridor, running after her like a dog chasing its own tail.
The concubine’s white half of the boudoir was carpeted in dewy petals and lit by a thousand candles. The winking diamonds that floated on the air were tiny fiery stars. Those few that passed through the enormous mirror to the dark king’s side were instantly extinguished, as if there wasn’t oxygen enough to support flame, or the darkness there was too dense to permit light.
The concubine sprawled nude on piles of snowy ermine before the white hearth.
In the shadows on the far side of the bedchamber, darkness moved. The king watched her through the mirror. I could feel him there, immense, ancient, sexual. She knew he was watching. She stretched languidly, slid her hands up her body into her hair, and arched her back.
I’d expected to find the other end of the rubber band here, ending with the concubine, but it tugged me still. It stretched invisibly on, through the massive black Silver that divided their bedchamber in half.
I wanted to step through and join that immense ancientness.
I never wanted to step one foot closer to those shadows.
Was the king himself summoning me? Or was part of the king standing behind me, even now? I had to know. I’d called Jericho a coward but could too easily be accused of the same.
I need … the voice summoned.
I understood that. I did, too. Sex. Answers. An end to my fears, one way or another.
But the voice hadn’t come from the woman on the rug.
It had come from the dark side of the boudoir, which was all bed because he required that much bed. It was a command I couldn’t refuse. I would slip through the mirror and Barrons would lay me back on the Unseelie King’s bed and cover me with lust and darkness. And we would know who we were. It would be okay. It would all be out in the open finally.