Shadowfever (Fever #5)

by Karen Marie Moning

Each morning we wake up, we get to choose between hope and fear and apply one of those emotions to everything we do.

I hold him like I never permitted myself to hold him when he was alive. I tell him all the things I never said. For a time, I have no idea where he ends and I begin.

Try living for someone. Through it all—good, bad, thick, thin, joy, suffering. That’s the hard thing.”

He gave me that wolf smile and I thought, Right, star-crossed lovers with a double-edged sword.

Barrons was one of the most complicated men I’d ever met and at the same time one of the simplest: You were with him, or you were against him. Period. End of story. You got only one chance with him. And if you betrayed him, you ceased to exist in his world until he got around to killing you.

“God said, Let there be light. I said, Say please.”

Suddenly there was a fist in my hair, behind me, pulling my head back, arching my spine up from the sofa. He closed his mouth over mine and pushed his tongue in, forcing my teeth wide. I grabbed his arm, but as sharply as he had my head pulled back, all I could do was steady myself. He wrapped his other hand around my neck, forcing my chin higher, kissing me more deeply, harder, keeping me from resisting.

Not that I wanted to. Heart slamming in my chest, my legs moved apart. There are different kinds of kisses. I’d thought I’d experienced them all, if not prior to coming to Dublin, certainly after months of being Pri-ya, in bed with this man. This was a new one. All I could do was hold on to his arm and survive. “Kiss” wasn’t the right word at all. He fused us together—my jaws so wide, I couldn’t even kiss him back. I could only take what he was doing to me. I felt the sharp slide of fangs over my tongue as he sucked it into his mouth. I knew then—as he’d never let me see in our bed in that basement—that he was far more animal than man. Maybe he hadn’t always been, but he was now. Maybe, long ago, in the beginning, he’d missed being a man—if, in fact, he’d been one to begin with. But he didn’t anymore. He’d gone native. I was kind of astonished by it: What a man he’d chosen to be! He could easily have gone feral. He was the strongest, fastest, smartest, most powerful creature I’d 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 ...

I’m in her and she’s looking at me like I’m her world. The woman undoes me.

Get out of my HEAD! I deepen the kiss, bite his tongue, and he is violent with lust. I take advantage, diving deep. There’s a thought he’s shielding. I want it. Nobody home but She for Whom I Am the World. Can’t go on like this, can’t keep doing it.

Yet for a few months there’d been no lines of demarcation between us. We’d existed in a place beyond definitions, where no rules had mattered, and I wasn’t the only one who’d reveled in it. But the entire time I’d been lost in sexual bliss, he’d been aware of time passing, of everything that was happening—that I was mindless, I wasn’t willing, and when I snapped out of it I’d blame him. Keep hoping to see the light in her eyes. Even knowing it’ll mean she’s saying good-bye.

I had. Irrational or not, I’d held it against him. He’d seen me naked, body and soul, and I hadn’t seen him at all. I’d been blinded by helpless lust that hadn’t been for him. I had been lust, and he’d been there.

When you know who I am. Let me be your man.

“We’re translating the Kama Sutra,” Barrons said, “with interactive aids.”

I was lost in grief and fury and hated being alive. And still I wanted to stand up, stripping as I went, and have sex with him right here on the bookstore floor. Was that the sum total of my existence? I didn’t get the erudition of I think therefore I am. Instead, I got I am, therefore I want to fuck Jericho Barrons.

don’t hear Barrons roaring, too, until he’s scooping me up into his arms and carrying me from the room, slamming doors behind him. “What the fuck, Mac? What the fuck?” He keeps saying, over and over. His eyes are wild, his face white, his lips

thin. “What were you thinking coming down here without me? I’d’ve brought you if I thought you’d be so stupid. Don’t do this to me! You can’t fucking do this to me!”

He doesn’t answer me. He stares at me as if memorizing my face. I see something move deep in his eyes. I should have made love to this man. I was always afraid to be tender. I’m bemused by my own idiocy. He flinches. “Don’t you think for a fucking minute you can put all that in your eyes, then die. That’s bullshit. I’m not doing this again.”

“I’m not good, Mac. Never have been.” What—true-confession time? my eyes tease. Don’t need it. “I want what I want and I take it.” Is he warning me? What could he possibly threaten me with now? “There’s nothing I can’t live with. Only things I won’t live without.”

His nostrils flare, and when he tries to speak, only a deep rattle comes out. He tries twice more before he gets it right. “They would have left you like that forever. I’m going to slice them into tiny pieces and feed them to one another. Slowly. Over centuries.” His voice is as calm as a sociopath’s.

Are we reborn over and over again, to repeat the same cycles? “Would it be so bad?” “Are you reading my mind?” “You’re thinking with your eyes.” He smiles. I touch his face, and the smile vanishes. “Do it again.” “Don’t be a jackass.” I laugh. But there’s no amusement left in his face. It was swiftly erased. He looks at me with cold, hard eyes. I see what’s in them now. To the rest of the world, they might seem empty. I remember thinking a few times myself that they were void of all humanity, but that’s simply not true. He feels. Rage. Pain. Lust. So much emotion, electric beneath his skin. So much volatility. Man and beast, always at war. I know now it’s never easy for him. The battle he fights is nonstop. How does this man go on every day?

He places the last pillow on the pile, and looks at me. He jerks his head toward the pile of pillows. “I watched you die. I need to fuck you, Mac.” The words slam into me like bullets, taking my knees out. I lean back against a piece of furniture—an armoire, I think. I really don’t care. It holds me up. It wasn’t a request. It was acknowledgment of a requirement to make it from this moment to the next, like I need a transfusion, my blood has been poisoned. “Do you want me to?” There is no purr, or coyness, or seduction in his voice. There is a question that needs an answer. Bare bones. That’s what he’s after. That’s what he offers. “Yes.” He strips his shirt over his head and I catch my breath, watching those long, hard muscles ripple. I know how his shoulders look, bunched, when he’s on top of me, how his face gets tight with lust, as he eases inside me. “Who am I?” “Jericho.” “Who are you?” He kicks off his boots, steps out of his pants. He’s commando tonight. My breath whooshes out of me in a run-on word: “Whogivesafuck?” “Finally.” The word is soft. The man is not. “I need a shower.”

His eyes glitter, his teeth flash in the darkness. “A little blood never bothers me.” He glides toward me, in that way that barely displaces air. A velvet shadow in the darkness. He is the night. He always has been. I used to be a sunshine girl.

I would have destroyed the world for him.

“I’m not the hero, Mac. Never have been. Never will be. Let us be perfectly clear: I’m not the antihero, either, so quit waiting to discover my hidden potential. There’s nothing to redeem me.” I want him anyway. It’s what he wanted to know. I exhale impatiently and shove hair from my face. “Are you going to talk me to death or fuck me, Jericho Barrons?” “Say it again. The last part.” I do. “They’ll try to kill you.” “Good thing I’m hard to kill.” Only one thing concerned me. “Will you?” “Never. I’m the one who will always watch over you. Always be there to fuck you back to your senses when you need it, the one who will never let you die.”

I’d snort, but then his tongue is in my mouth, my jaws are wide, and I can’t breathe, and he’s right. One day you do meet a man who kisses you and you can’t breathe around it and you realize you don’t need air. Oxygen is trivial. Desire makes life happen. Makes it matter. Makes everything worth it. Desire is life. Hunger to see the next sunrise or sunset, to touch the one you love, to try again.

“Harder. Deeper. Come on, Barrons. More.” I feel violent. I am unbreakable. I am elastic around him. Insatiable. His hand is on the side of my neck, around my throat, half cupping my face. His eyes bore into mine. He watches every nuance, every detail of every expression, as if his existence depends on it. He fucks with the single-minded devotion of a dying man hunting God.

“I never get enough, Mac. Drives me bug-fuck. I should kill you for what you make me feel.” I understand perfectly. He is my vulnerability. I would become Shiva, the world-eater, for him.

I’m Pri-ya again. I always will be with this man.

I know part of what turns me on so hard, makes me so violent with lust, is that he’s dangerous. I fell for the bad guy. I’m crazy about the one who’s trouble. The alpha that doesn’t play well with others and doesn’t take orders from anyone.

“Maybe there’s nothing wrong with you at all, Mac,” he says. “Maybe you’re exactly what you’re supposed to be, and the only reason you feel so conflicted about it is that you keep trying to bat for the wrong team.” He thrusts deep, rocks his hips forward with a muscle I’d be willing to bet no human man had.

“Were you Pri-ya the entire time?” I gasp and try to duck my head so he can’t see my eyes. My eyes betray me sometimes, no matter how hard I try, especially when my feelings are intense. He grabs my head and holds it with two fistfuls of my hair, forcing me to look at him. “I knew it—you weren’t!” His mouth is on mine, he has me against the wall. I can’t breathe and I don’t care. He is exultant. “How long?” he demands.

“I knew what was happening from the moment you asked me what I wore to the prom.” I drop to my knees beside him, take his head in my arms and cradle him at my breast. His face is half beast, half man. “I began to surface. It was like I was there but trying not to be there. I’m here, Jericho. Stay with me.”

lick the juice from his hands. I push him back and eat the pulp off his stomach, lower, then end up with my bare ass on the cool marble of the island and him inside me again, my legs locked around his hips. He stares down at me, as if he’s memorizing my face, watches me like he can’t quite believe I’m here.

“You have the amulet, don’t you?” He catches his tongue in his teeth briefly and gives me a full-on smile. It says: I’m the biggest baddest fuck and I have all the toys.

“You really think evil is a choice?” I ask. “Everything is. Each moment. Each day.” “I didn’t sleep with Darroc. But I would have.” “Irrelevant.” He moves inside me. “I’m here now.” “I was going to seduce the shortcut out of him so I could get the Book. Then I was going to unmake this world and replace it with another, so I could have you back.” He freezes. I can’t see his face. He’s behind me. It’s part of why I can say it. I don’t think I could say it to his face and see myself reflected in his eyes. I wasn’t going to unmake the world for my sister. I’d loved her all my life. I’d known him for only a few short months. “Might have been a bit strenuous for your first attempt at creation,” he says finally. He’s trying not to laugh. I tell him I would have doomed mankind for him, and he tries

begins moving again. After a while, he pulls me around and kisses me. “You’re Mac,” he says. “And I’m Jericho. And nothing else matters. Never will. You exist in a place that is beyond all rules for me. Do you understand that?” I do. Jericho Barrons just told me he loves me.

“Not exactly incentive to get me out of here.” “We have to save the world,” I reminded. He reached for me. “The world can wait. I can’t.”

His eyes were black and bottomless. I was just about to look away when something moved in them. I trust you.

I felt like he’d handed me the keys to the kingdom. That sealed it: I could do anything.

“More than watching. Keeping me tethered, like you did when I was Pri-ya and couldn’t find my way back. I never would have made it without you, Jericho. I was lost, but I could feel you there, grounding me, holding my kite string.” He’d stalked into hell for me, sat down on my sprung sofa in my insane place, and kept me from being stuck there forever. He’d dragged me out by sheer force of will. He always would. “I need you,” I said simply. A haze of crimson stained his eyes. He pulled a sweater

over his head, muscles flexing, tattoos rippling. “It’s not too late,” he said roughly. “We can let the world go to hell. There are other worlds. Plenty of them. We can even take your parents. Whoever you want.”

“The moment I laid eyes on you, I knew you were trouble.” “Ditto.” “I wanted to drag you between the shelves, fuck you senseless, and send you home.” “If you’d done that, I never would have left.” “You’re still here anyway.” “You don’t have to sound so sour about it.” “You’re upsetting my entire existence.” “Fine, I’ll leave.” “Try and I’ll chain you up.” He glowered at me. “That’s

vacillating.” He sighed. After a moment, he held out his hand. I slipped mine into his.

I couldn’t get to you, he’d exploded when he’d finally stopped kissing me long enough to speak. But you did, I’d told him. I heard you roaring. It was what tipped me off. You got through. I couldn’t save you. His expression had been stark, furious. I couldn’t save him, either. And I was in no hurry to tell him that. Did you get it? The spell of unmaking?

Ancient eyes had stared at me, filled with ancient grief. And something more. Something so alien and unexpected that I’d almost burst into tears. I’d seen many things in his eyes in the time that I’d known him: lust, amusement, sympathy, mockery, caution, fury. But I had never seen this. Hope. Jericho Barrons had hope, and I was the reason for it. Yes, I lied. I got it. I would never forget his smile. It had illuminated him from the inside out.

What’s mine is mine. He went very still. Is that how you think of me?

I’d learned a thing or two. Hope strengthens. Fear kills. Bet your ass you’re mine, bud, I shot at him. I was staking my claim and I’d fight for it—lie, cheat, and steal. So I hadn’t gotten the spell. Yet. Tomorrow was another day. And if that was all he’d wanted me for, he didn’t deserve me.

Barrons tossed his head back and laughed, teeth flashing in his dark face.