Chapter 9
“What the hell did you think you were
doing?” Adam yell-whispered at Zoe as he removed the magazine from
the gun. He waved away the soldiers who arrived at the apartment
door, and they moved out in short order.
“It’s my fault.” Layla kept her voice
low, too. No one wanted to bother Abigail. “And my gun. I was just
showing Zoe how it works.”
“Shut up,” Zoe said to her. To Adam she
stuck up her chin. “I can have a gun if I want.”
“Not at Segue, you can’t.” He tucked
the barrel into the back of his pants. “You almost killed Ms.
Mathews.”
Layla waved. “Still alive,
though.”
Adam ignored her. “I can’t be bothered
about what’s going on inside when I’ve got wraiths on my
doorstep.”
“Then give me the gun, and you won’t
have to worry about me.” Zoe smirked and held out her
hand.
Reluctantly, Adam gave both the gun and
the magazine to her. “I want you trained. No exceptions. Today.” He
left cursing under his breath. He shut the door softly, with
excessive control.
“You can leave, too,” Zoe said,
transferring her gaze to Layla. “We’re done.”
What a piece of work. Layla could’ve
been ticked, but she chose to laugh. “You mean we’re not going to
braid each other’s hair?”
Zoe made a face, and Layla let herself
out.
The elevator door at the end of the
hall was closing, which was just as well. Layla needed time in her
own head before she faced her long-lost family. This next reunion
could only be awkward.
She took the hallway at a slow walk,
shaken by what she’d seen in Zoe’s apartment and the implications
for herself. Layla had seen some disturbing things over the course
of her life, but nothing compared to the raw transparency of
Abigail’s condition.
Abigail’s body had been limp in her
bed, like an old woman waiting to die. She seemed bird brittle,
used, her limbs loose. And in her unblinking eyes lurked Shadow,
smoldering with knowledge. Whatever Abigail witnessed in the dark
churn of her vision about Rose must have been terrifying, the
horror of it in the O of her open mouth. And behind her were Khan’s
trees stretching out of nightmare while the rest of the room was
solid, mundane. Abigail wasn’t ordinary. There was no denying that
she’d been cursed with a gift. And somehow Layla knew Zoe couldn’t
save her, no matter how hard she might try.
It was a sorry situation, one that Zoe
shut everyone out of as she simultaneously grieved for and clung to
her sister. To her only family.
And it seemed now that Layla had a
family, too, though she had no idea how to handle the revelation.
The thought made her chest tight with strange, contradictory
emotions that threatened to unravel her. Best thing to do was head
back and go through the motions of the day until it felt normal
again. Gauge Talia’s reaction. Conduct her interviews. Layla
already knew what Khan wanted.
“He’s gone now. You can play with me,”
a child’s voice said.
Layla stopped dead in her tracks, the
fine hairs on her body standing on end. The little girl ghost,
ringlets perfectly in place, stood before her. Pinafore pressed.
Bows perfect.
“Who’s gone?” Layla
managed.
The ghost put a hand up to her mouth to
tell a secret. “The dark man. He follows you.”
Layla looked at Zoe’s apartment door.
But then she remembered ghosts couldn’t act on the world. She
should move on down the hallway and get back to her side of the
building, and as quickly as possible.
“Play a game with me?”
Layla ignored her. She sidled by the
apparition, trembling with cold sweat, and headed for the elevator,
hating the west wing. How anyone could live
there was beyond her.
Then she stumbled to a stop again. The
hallway was morphing before her eyes. Green striped paper appeared
in place of the beige paint on the walls and the floor darkened,
the carpet replaced with a brown runner. Light in the passage
dimmed to a soupy murk. Layla glanced back. The ghost girl,
strangely, appeared more solid. Layla could almost smell the sticky
sweetness of her.
Not act on the mortal
world? What the freak did they call this?
Layla took two steps forward, but doing
so seemed to enhance the effect of the change. She turned back,
uncertain. If she screamed now, would anyone hear?
“Zoe!”
“Play with me.” The little girl sat
cross-legged in the middle of the hallway, and she tucked her skirt
over her knees.
Layla retraced her steps to Zoe’s
apartment, as if she could adjust time by where she stood in the
passage, but the illusion didn’t shift. She was stuck.
“Khan!”
The girl shook her head, curls
bouncing. “The dark man isn’t here.”
Layla swallowed hard and finally
acknowledged her host. “What’s your name?”
“Therese. Sit down, silly, so we can
play.”
Layla didn’t want to, but the child
might be her only way back. Even as Layla lowered herself to the
floor, her stomach turned. She sat cross-legged, too. “I’ll play
just as soon as you return me to my time.”
“Do you know the words?”
Layla wasn’t going to get sucked in to
her game. “I want to go back to my time. Can you help
me?”
“Say the words.” Therese gave her sweet
smile, then shrieked, “Now!”
Scuttling back, Layla said, “I don’t
know the words.”
Therese leaned forward, intently. “Yes,
you do. Dead man, dead man, come alive . . .”
Oh. Layla had
heard that somewhere before.
“Come alive by the number
five.”
Layla recoiled from the madness in
Therese’s expression. Sitting had been a mistake. She stood, headed
for Zoe’s apartment. Anywhere was better than the company of the
ghost child.
“Say it!” Therese screamed behind her,
then added in singsong, “I’ll let you go. Just say: Dead man, dead
man, come alive!”
Not likely. Layla wasn’t stupid enough
to go along with anything about a dead man coming alive, especially
on the instruction of a disturbed ghost of a child in a haunted
hotel that imprisoned wraiths. There had to be other
options.
Layla’s skin crawled as she rapped on
what had to be Zoe’s door.
Please, open.
Her heart hammered, tripping over its rhythm. She flushed with
heat, then cold. The rhyme was bad news, had to be.
In an overlap of time, a translucent
version of Zoe flung open her door and looked both ways down the
hallway. She didn’t acknowledge Layla.
“Zoe!” Layla called, right in her
irritated face.
But Zoe cursed and shut the door
again.
“One, two, three-four-five!” Therese
chanted.
Okay, Zoe was oblivious, but maybe a
fae would be different. If Layla could just find Talia or Khan,
maybe one of them would see her and get her out. Right? Was there
another way? Fear fuzzed her mind like electricity, her thoughts
almost breaking apart into panicky, incoherent bits, but she held
on. She couldn’t stay here. Here was bad. Real bad. She had to get
back to the elevator and the east side, where the ghost couldn’t
follow. Then find help.
Therese was up on her feet. She stamped
her foot, hard. “Dead man, come—”
The space in front of the elevator
suddenly punched black. Shadow reached, swirling into the long
hallway, like octopus arms in a swim of darkness.
Oh, thank goodness. Khan.
But the voice that spoke was female and
shattering. “Lady Amunsdale!”
“She’s mine!” the child screamed
back.
“She’s mine,” Talia answered from the
void. There was no mistaking the authority with which she spoke.
That voice was power, awesome in its cadence.
Darkness pounded down the corridor. It
rushed over Layla, cold and slick, and finally she could see Talia.
Her pale hair whipped in the dark wind of her Shadow, her skin
glowing with a weird light, eyes full-black.
Fae, Layla identified, and stopped
breathing.
Shadow grumbled over the walls,
wrecking them and battering Therese in its wake. Layla felt a pang
for a child harmed, though she was a mean little brat. Therese was
tossed, and when she reemerged, she wasn’t a child at all, but a
rag of a woman, bitterness lining her expression.
“I need her!” Therese the woman
called.
Her reach was perversely long. She
grabbed at Layla’s shirt with bone hands. On instinct, Layla
whirled around to tear off the ghost, but gripped only air, though
the ghost’s touch clawed at her still.
Layla felt as if her soul was slipping
from the moorings of her body. Felt a sudden distinction between
flesh and spirit, and she knew she was grasping after the wrong
thing. Her soul lifted like a balloon, and she let go of Therese
and grabbed hold of herself instead. Two spirits, one body, its
heartbeat stalling.
“Leave her be, Lady Amunsdale.” Talia’s
voice had lowered, but its power still sent currents through the
warping dark. “Now!”
And Layla slammed back into her body
again.
“Dead man, dead man . . .” Therese
chanted again, but she lost her scraping grasp on Layla’s
shoulder.
Layla looked back just in time to see
Shadow harry the ghost off on the tide of its storm. The ghost
reached toward her, straining in desperate misery, but was
swallowed by the abyss at the end of the hallway. In a static suck
of sound, the hallway was returned to its modern appearance, Layla
at one end, Talia at the other, now looking more human, if very
disconcerted.
Forget Khan. What the hell was Talia?
Her, uh, daughter? More like Khan’s.
“Lady Amunsdale is a pest,” Talia said,
breathing heavily. “Don’t let her get to you.”
Layla stammered for something to say.
“She pulled me back in time. She wanted me. Why?”
And what the hell had Talia just done?
An ocean of Shadow? That bone-shattering voice? Those fae were some
serious mothers.
“I don’t know. Might be a complication
of your reincarnation. We’ll have to ask Custo, or maybe my father.
I’m more concerned about how.” Talia
inclined her head toward the elevator. “Let’s get out of here, have
lunch. Puzzle it out together.”
Layla’s drying perspiration sent a
chill down her back, but she boarded the elevator. Talia had to
know about the mother-daughter thing. The word reincarnation hung in the air between them, but Layla
had no idea what to say, so she decided to remain
quiet.
“I freaked you out, didn’t I?” Talia
bit at her bottom lip but kept her gaze on the doors.
“No, no,” Layla lied. “We’re good. I’m
surprised, but good.”
“Come on now. I freak everyone
out.”
“Well, everyone doesn’t know Khan. And
he spoke to me from a painting today.”
Talia laughed, but it seemed forced. “I
told him to go easy on you, and here I . . .”
“Don’t worry.”
“But . . .”
“Really. I’ve seen crazy stuff all my
life and no one ever believed me.”
The tension didn’t leave Talia’s eyes.
“Lunch, then, and you can tell me about it.”
“Sure.” Chances were, Talia would
believe every crazy thing Layla had seen.
“Oh, and for the immediate future,”
Talia said, “it’s probably best for you to stick to the east side
of Segue.”
Layla choked a laugh. “Ya
think?”
Khan laid a peace offering at the foot
of Layla’s bed: her bag from her apartment, so she could be more
comfortable, and a pile of fragrant red roses, forced into
extravagant bloom. Mortal women were supposed to like those, and he
was under his daughter’s instruction to court when he wanted very
much to take.
For the moment, he left Layla to Talia,
who knew better how to settle her into this new life, and lifted
out of Segue and into the weak winter sunshine. With Death hanging
over the land, the temperature dropped, a hush silenced the
afternoon skitter of leaves, and movement slowed. The Reaper was on
the hunt again.
The devil was being careful, growing
wise to the ways of the mortal world. No smears of wrongful death
marked its path, yet it lurked somewhere within the streets. Khan
loomed over the village of Middleton. Only an occasional soul was
about. They hurried inside, drawing their coats more tightly about
them, and glanced over their shoulders as if Death stalked the
streets. And so he did.
He checked each house, set children
wailing with his passage. He made the dogs howl and the cats arch
their backs. The leaves fell more swiftly from the wintery trees as
he blackened the streets with his icy search, and he paused only
when he chanced upon an angel, leaning on a lamppost in the now
failing light.
“She’s here somewhere,” the angel said,
with a wry expression. “Had a little trouble this morning with her.
She’s been messing with people’s heads. We almost had her, but she
got away.”
“No deaths,” Khan answered, or he would
have felt the mark. He did not like the angels, but he was glad
they were searching, too, and probably limiting the harm the woman
could cause on the unsuspecting populace.
“No?” The angels had no gift for death.
“Well, that’s good news.”
“She’ll be turning foul, a monster to
behold.”
“Takes one to know one,” the angel
returned. He shoved his hands into his pockets and walked down the
sidewalk, his back to Death.
The devil, a she, was biding her time. It made no sense for her to
strike in Middleton now, when Layla was so near. Khan could feel a
sense of waiting in the stillness of the air for the moment the
devil deemed it right to strike. The angels were here to keep the
peace in the interim.
The day, like the eons of days before
it, had been swallowed by the night, so Khan returned to the beat
of life within Segue.
The roses were in a vase at Layla’s
bedside.
She paced in the room beyond, wringing
her hands. The air was rife with the charge of her nerves, so he
drew out a chair that she might sit down and calm
herself.
“Khan?”
If her apartment had had any of
Kathleen’s paintings, he could have given her a familiar face to
speak to. But these rooms were like all the others in Segue,
similar in their comfortable furnishings, unimaginative in
decoration.
He needed another medium and found it
in the glass of a window.
He rapped with Shadow for her
attention.
She screamed when she saw him there,
and he considered her perspective. For her, he was a face in the
night, looking in from the dark air some distance from the ground.
It took a moment for her heartbeat to slow again. He was rapt with
the subtle expressions that played across her face, matching them
to the emotion that touched his Shadow: an excited kind of fear,
which he liked; a pleasurecoil of interest, which he liked better;
and best of all, humor, though it was born of exhaustion. If she
could laugh at him, they might have a chance.
“I’m curious,” she said, “how you think
this could possibly work out.”
He pushed for a smile. “You doubt my
ability to seduce you?”
And got raised eyebrows instead. “Well,
right now, you’re a window man, and earlier you were a painting
man, and when you’re all creepy with darkness, a
shadow—”
“Layla!” He cut her off.
She startled, which he regretted, but
he couldn’t have her completing that thought. So often her mind
worked like Kathleen’s; they’d both arrived at the same name for
him. Shadowman. But names have power, and with it, she would surely
know his nature.
Layla sighed hugely, shaking her head.
“You should know that we’re doomed from the start, and not only
because you’re, um, two-dimensional right now.”
“Anything is possible.” He had to
believe that, however small their chances. Possibility was the
essence of Shadow. “You bid me come to you before. I came. You
asked me to touch you before. I answered the call of your desire.
We gave ourselves up to each other. We made our own doom, but I’d
take it again if you’ll have me.”
“Well”—she ran a nervous hand through
her hair—“while I might be . . . intrigued
by your interest, and what you claim is our history, I just . . .”
As she spoke, she worried the skin on her ring finger and looked
away. “This is crazy. Any chance you’ll be out in the real world
soon? It would be much easier to speak to a body.”
His body was the problem. “It may be
some time before I can get back. Please continue. You just
what?”
“I don’t remember you.” She sobered
completely. “Maybe our time has passed. Maybe you were meant to be
with Kathleen, but not so much with me.”
“I’ve searched the whole of your life
for you. Been burned by divine light. Breached Hell even.” His
Shadows grumbled within him. “And now that I have you, I’m not
letting go. Our time is just beginning.”
He watched her swallow hard. Scrape the
skin on her ring finger.
“What troubles you?” he
asked.
Her gaze darted nervously away, then
back. “Well, I’m sorry to have to point this out, but you’re
strange. Frighteningly strange.”
“Get used to it.”
“Yeah, and the bossy, imperious thing .
. .” She made a pained face as if looking for the right words. “I’m
a pretty independent woman. You say something arrogant, flip your
long black hair, and I just want to, uh, mock you, which I think
might be very dangerous. And I’ve had enough danger for today,
thanks.”
She was right. What he had in mind
would be much easier face-to-face. “Go to the bed, Layla, and lie
down.”
She tilted her head, as if thinking.
“See, now, there you go again. I’m not quite sure if you’re aware
of it since it comes so easily to you. You just commanded me to do
something, and I can’t see myself complying.”
Her words were at odds with her
reaction. The word bed had sparked a violet
pulse deep in her womb. Part of her badly wanted to be in bed. It
was her indomitable will and her Earth-centric reservations that
tormented them both. They needed Twilight, and now.
“Layla, will you lie down for me? Or
will you drive me mad?”
“Those are my options?” she scoffed,
goading him.
“I am immortal, yet I do not know how I
will survive you.”
She waggled her head. “Yeah, and
speaking of the immortal thing . . .”
Khan cursed himself. “Lie
down.”
“Don’t boss me.”
“Please, lie
down.”
“I don’t go to bed with people, or”—she
snorted—“immortal fae, that I’ve just
met.”
“You know me, Layla, or you would not
be arguing with me.” Stop fighting, love.
“Your inborn sense of preservation would send you flying from my
presence. And yet you stay, and argue with a dark lord of the fae,
because you know that, of all mortals, you are safe. I ask you to
lie down so that I can share your dreams, so that we might converse
a little easier.”
She frowned. “You scared the crap out
of Dr. James this morning.”
“An excellent example of the typical
mortal response.”
“What are you?”
His Layla was too clever.
“Fae,” he answered.
She gazed at him in the window and
pressed her lips together, deliberating. “The ‘dark lord’ part was
a bit much.”
He bowed his head to concede her point.
Nevertheless, a dark lord he was. That much she would have to
accept.
“It will be your dream, Layla. You
control what happens in it.”
“Dream only,” she said.
“Yes, of course.” What occurred in the
dream, however, was entirely up to her.
She went to her bedroom and set herself
up primly, head centered on her pillow, hands clasped over her
belly, ankles crossed. The coverlet dimpled around her. Her mind
was too agitated for slumber, so he waited for the moment her
shoulders relaxed, her thoughts wandered, and then he cut her free
and let her fall.
Khan emerged in the dockside warehouse
where they’d first met. He took the form Layla knew, the body that
Kathleen had created for him. In dreams, he could be
anything.
The warehouse was done up with the
riches he’d copied from the magazine scrap: plush chairs; books;
the map flat on the table, held down by the figure of a wooden
Buddha, who regarded him tranquilly. Khan found Layla staring into
the gilded mirror. Frustration beat the air around her. The glass
was murky; whatever she sought eluded her.
“Layla,” he said.
The room blurred as she turned, her
mind sifting the details of the dream from a new vantage point. He
held his body fast as the furnishings settled into clarity again.
Dreams were always shifting, always fluid. Beyond this little
island oasis, the trees of Twilight swayed.
“I can’t find her,” she said. “I look
and look and look and I can’t see anything.”
Layla had been searching her
reflection, so he could guess whom she was looking for. He
approached and skimmed his knuckles across her cheek. “She’s here.
You’re here.”
“I’m lost.”
Would she even remember their words
this deep in a dream? How much comfort could she bring back to
consciousness? He didn’t know. He bent to touch her nose in an
Eskimo kiss. “You’re found.”
The color of her anguish shifted to
intense, consuming longing. The dream, the room deepened, the hues
growing harsh, aging. “I don’t want to be alone
anymore.”
“You’re not alone. I’m here. Come what
may, I’ll never let you go again.” To prove it, he brushed his
mouth across hers.
Fine black lines of anger cracked the
room as she became self-aware in the dream setting. It was a
difficult skill to master. Kathleen had been proficient at it as a
child, and Layla was learning just as fast.
“I need to be able to take care of
myself. A ghost attacked me today, and Talia had to save me.” Layla
gestured wildly to the mirror, where another version of herself now
stood, dressed in the gold gown he’d fashioned for her upon their
meeting. The gown ill fit the body it covered. “I’m not your
precious princess Kathleen, locked in the castle tower waiting for
rescue.”
On that point, Layla was mistaken.
“Kathleen fought the only way she could: she endured.”
“Yeah, well in this life, I don’t sit
around.” Her dream voice warped with her intensity.
It was the quintessential human
struggle: to be the master of one’s own fate. Layla didn’t know it,
but even now she fought a power far greater than a wisp of a ghost.
She fought Moira, who inevitably would win.
“A ghost attacked you?” They were
harmless.
“Yeah, the west wing freaky
child.”
Softly, in singsong, a chant began to
echo in the warehouse. “Dead man, dead man, come alive . .
.”
And Khan grew cold as he understood the
threat: the chant was a curse, masquerading as child’s play.
Layla’s lifeline was cut, her time on Earth at an end, and
therefore, her body was forfeit. The ghost, clinging to life,
sought to occupy it. The chant, Dead man, dead man,
come alive, was an invitation for her to take over Layla’s
flesh. And Layla would be cast out, forced to cross or become a
ghost herself.
As a rule, ghosts were shallow things,
rarely capable of intelligence, just strong feeling: sadness, rage,
greed.
This act reeked of design, of a trap.
Moira. Again.
The dream hazed for a moment. “Talia
got her. I mean, damn—”
Good girl. But Talia could not force
the ghost to cross. The “west wing freaky child” still walked the
halls of Segue.
“It’s me who can’t do anything,” Layla
said.
She squinted back into the mirror, but
the figure in the glass was still indistinct, a definite problem.
This reincarnation business was messing with her head
big-time.
“You have more power than you think,”
Khan said. “Those in the mortal world have the most power of
all.”
“Compared to you guys, I have none.”
And the world grew more frightening and unknowable by the
hour.
The dream flashed white, muddled her
senses, before settling again.
She turned back to Khan, Mr. Dark Lord
of the Fae. He wore black, head to toe. Pants that skimmed over his
long, muscled physique. A simple shirt that defined the ridges
beneath. And a minimalist leather coat. His hair fell past his
shoulders, and as she watched, it braided itself, and the sharp
line from jaw to cheekbone was revealed.
What the hell was he?
No, wait. She didn’t want to
know.
The dream flashed again—Khan was near,
then far— all perspective seemed off. Better to feel. That sixth sense overrode everything
else.
Feel everything.
She knew she should be screaming in
fear, but she was stirring with interest and . . . and . . .
tingly, torturous want instead. The
sensation, right down below her belly button, had never been this
strong. Perhaps meeting him in dreamland was a mistake. Fighting
this pull was going to be far more difficult here.
“Are you doing this to me? Making me
feel this way?” It would be inexcusable if he was.
“No,” he answered, but his wicked grin
was back. “I can cast an illusion that might terrify or please, but
I cannot make you feel anything.”
“You can do more than cast an
illusion,” she said. “I’ve seen it.”
“I can sense the rapid beat of your
heart.” He circled her in a blur of movement. “And I can sense your
emotions. Your dream is thick with them. Shall I describe what you
feel?”
The room flashed white again, and it
occurred to her that each lightning strike was her desire,
crackling in the air around them.
“Well, scared. Doesn’t take a genius to
figure that out,” she mumbled.
He bent his head to her ear, the line
of his jaw just touching her temple. Goose bumps roared across her
flesh from the point of contact.
“Bright. Wild. Fearless.”
Layla trembled. “I’m terrified.”
“Of what is going on around you, yes.
But not of me.”
He remained motionless, standing beside
her, waiting. Shadow magic buzzed the air between them, simmering
with energy on her skin. And still he waited.
This was a choice, she understood that
much.
She’d been responding to Khan from the
moment she met him. Khan said he’d been looking for her. Maybe
she’d been looking for him, too. Nothing, no man, had ever made her
feel like this.
So. Stay on safe ground, or
leap?
Lightning struck again. She chose the
storm.
She put a hand to his chest for
balance, raised herself on tiptoe, their gazes meeting for an
electric second, and then she kissed him.
She got his upper lip mostly, full,
taut, just at the parting dimple, but then he opened his mouth to
adjust in a hot, rasping slide she felt all the way down her body.
His arms came around her, gathering her into a tight squeeze that
compounded the urgency of the terrible, building pressure between
them. The kiss seared reason from her mind. All sense of place,
time, even gravity fell away, so that there was only her, now
gripping the roots of his hair, and him, stroking her lips with
his, her tongue with his. The ache in her abdomen tightened into a
fierce, wet knot of bliss-pain. You and I.
Yes. She got it now. The air rushed around them, silky and sensuous
in texture, somehow gliding against her skin as if she were naked.
And in a way, she was. His kiss stripped her of all pretense and
denial.
“Is this how it was?” She was shaking.
Or he was. Or maybe it was thunder.
“Very much so.” He shifted his hold so
he could look into her eyes. Around them the colors of the
warehouse room churned. His expression was near savage with
triumph.
She understood that, too. The dream
flashed bright white again.
Layla shifted, grabbed his wrist, and
dragged his hand to her breast. She pressed to show him what she
wanted, and he laughed against her mouth. Reckless, she thought,
but couldn’t bring herself to care.
The cloth under his palm dissolved and
she was naked in his arms, burning under his hands.
“Khan?” she gasped in shock. This was
moving way too fast.
“It’s your dream. You did that all by
yourself,” he said. He drew his thumb across her peaking nipple,
then grazed his hand down to the curve of her hip, her thigh, to
draw her leg up around him. To bring and tilt her
closer.
And here she’d thought a dream would be
safe . . .
The air charged again, flickering with
a brightness that highlighted the man holding her.
. . . when in a dream she really didn’t
care about safe.
She grazed his neck with her mouth,
mumbling, “At least be naked, too.”
And his apparel evaporated into smoke,
wisping away from his body.
“How can you doubt your power?” He drew
her closer.
None of this was really happening . . .
was it?
Layla’s mouth dropped to his chest. She
curled her tongue around his nipple, her body straining under his
hands. She stroked her cheek against the plane of his muscle.
Licked the ridge where muscle met bone.
“Khan, please . . .”
“Yes?” And his hold on her thigh
shifted, his hand stroking higher to somewhere infinitely more
intimate.
She gripped his shoulders as her heart
raced. Her fingernails dug into his skin.
The sensations were building, his hands
working a magic that burned color from her sight, that propelled
her up and up, toward an exquisite peak, so high . . . that Layla
woke gasping for air.
Where was he?
Gone.
Or rather, she was.
Disappointment mingled with her need, a
bitter combination. She sat up, covers tangled around her legs.
He’d been there, right?
And he’d touched her. Or started to.
But it wasn’t enough. Not nearly.
“Khan?” she gasped. Don’t leave me like this.
She braced herself on the mattress as
the top sheet and cover slowly slid from the bed. Her breath came
quick, but it was enough to keep her mind sharp.
“Khan.”
The room had been lit by starlight, but
now it grew dim and took on a silky texture, sliding sensuous and
cool against her bare arms. Like water, it moved around her and she
longed to feel the Shadow on her thighs and breasts, at her nape
and within her deep places. Longed to have sex with the darkness.
Want beat between her legs for him. For a man who had no body to
ease the burn.
Shadow rolled over her, and she was
both eased back and buoyed up on the torrent. This was better than
the dream and would be best if he could be there with her. If she
could hold on to him and they could do this thing
together.
She held her breath as a hand of
darkness tilted her head. Shadow brushed her mouth, touched her
tongue. A kiss. And as she arched into the thick air, reaching to
grasp something—someone—her clothing was
pulled down from her waist. Cool Shadow spiraled up her calves to
the juncture of her legs. The hem of her shirt fluttered up to bare
her breasts, her nipples tight in the pitch of the
room.
She shrugged for him, and her shirt was
gone, too. It was just her and her man in the shadows, and she was
both terrified and exhilarated at what might come next. No matter
what, he wasn’t going to leave her wanting, like a
dream.
“Khan?”
Shadow seduced her, clinging to her
skin, caressing each millimeter so that every part of her was
claimed, made known to him. She couldn’t hide, couldn’t seek a
little corner of her mind to be safe and alone. He demanded
everything. She could either fight him, a thought that made her
zinging nerves quail, or give in. Allow him to take
her.
The storm on her senses continued, but
he was waiting for her permission. Again.
“Please, yes . . .” She understood now,
a little better, why Kathleen had agreed to this union. If he would
just stroke harder, reach a little farther, then . . .
Yes! Her mind fragmented as darkness
feathered over her, filled her so completely that she couldn’t
breathe, rocking with the throb of his assault.
Pressure mounted in cool pulses against
her swollen flesh. White static hazed her vision in an extended
strike of lightning. And she shattered, bright stars swirling in
the dark as she trembled in his Shadow embrace.
She was held aloft, the only sound her
breath hitching.
Her skin felt tighter, senses
overwhelmed, yet still exquisitely acute.
She arched again in Khan’s hold,
marveling. No human man could ever make her feel like this. She
couldn’t remember when or how they first came together a lifetime
ago, yet the tandem draw and pull of their connection remained. It
didn’t matter if she was Kathleen or Layla, and he was Khan or . .
.
Or. .
.
Layla held her breath.
She’d almost had something there. A
memory. A scrap of her before-life. A name?
“What did Kathleen call you?” she asked
the Shadows surrounding her.
But he couldn’t or wouldn’t
answer.
Cool air swirled around her as she was
lowered slowly to her pillow and the bed. The sheet and covers
rustled and then were pulled over her, rough on her skin and
nipples after the slide of his Shadow.
He was tucking her in.
A brush on her lips. Which was an
evasion.
“Who are you really?”
Another brush. She tilted her chin to
catch more. To beg for an answer. She’d trusted him with herself,
but he wasn’t returning the gesture.
He stroked her cheek, and she knew no
name would be forthcoming. He kept his secrets to
himself.
He was there in the dark, but she was
alone again. As ever.