Faefever (Fever, #3)

by Karen Marie Moning

I’d die for him.

Nobody looks good in their darkest hour. But it’s those hours that make us what we are.

I’d learned that pretty much everything I’d been raised to believe about myself wasn’t true.

despite my lazy, occasionally overblown drawl, we weren’t southern at all,

It’s not fiction, and there’s no escape.

I want her murderer dead, preferably by my own hand.

These three powerful, dangerous men need me.

death darkens my doorstep daily.

I’m in Dublin. It’s nighttime. I’m walking the cobbled pavement of Temple Bar. I’m alive, vibrantly so. There’s nothing like a recent brush with death to make you feel larger than life.

Was this supposed to be funny? How anticlimactic. How absurd.

Fae relics had a tendency to take on a life and purpose of their own

Chiseled from savagery by a sculptor-savant, Barrons is a throwback to a lawless time, and looks as stoically primitive as he behaves.

Smelling him all around me. Feeling like he was inside me, or I was inside him. Wondering how much more inside him I’d get if I let him inside me

Jericho Barrons was a man it wouldn’t be hard to romanticize

He was the stuff of heroes. And psychotic killers.

I wasn’t about to romanticize him. I knew he was ruthless.

Who was Jericho Barrons? What was Jericho Barrons?

Those were no simple egg, tuna, or chicken salad sandwiches, those scrumptious little confections I’d worked so hard to make, and was now dying to eat. Dreaming of eating. Hungering for in a way I’d never hungered for human food.

“Lady, you are one sick fuck.”

I’d die for him.

Barrons was old. Impossibly old.

He is so unearthly beautiful that it makes a part of my soul weep. When I look at him, I hunger for things I don’t understand. I ache to be touched by him. I’m terrified of his touch.

I liked that: him at my mercy.

“But first I’d like to know what the fuck you were doing kissing him.”

“Then why was his tongue in your mouth? Was he conducting a clinical test of your gag reflex?”

“I’m a spitter, if that’s what you’re asking.” I flashed him a too-sweet smile. “Didn’t look that way to me. I think you’re a swallower. His tongue was halfway to China and you were still taking it.”

“It’s a Fae prince’s fundamental nature to enslave a woman with sex, Ms. Lane. It’s a woman’s fundamental nature to be enslaved. Try to rise above it.”

“You wear my brand, Ms. Lane,” floated over his shoulder, “and if I’m not mistaken, you now wear his. Who owns you? I don’t think it’s you.”

I have a box inside me now that never used to exist. I never needed it before. It’s down in my deepest, darkest corner, and it’s airtight, soundproofed, and padlocked. It’s where I keep thoughts I don’t know what to do with, that could get me into trouble.

“Why don’t you ask your fairy little boyfriend to take you wherever you want to go?”

Barrons’ lips twitched. I’d almost made him smile. Barrons smiles about as often as the sun comes out in Dublin, and it has the same effect on me; makes me feel warm and stupid.

I muttered something that would make my mother cringe,

Driving a hot car is a lot like sex to me, or a lot like I keep thinking sex should be: a total body experience, overwhelming to all the senses, taking you places you’ve never been, packing a punch that leaves you breathless and touches your soul. The Viper was way more satisfying than my last boyfriend.

It wouldn’t kill me to phrase it nicely. Mom always said you draw more flies with honey than vinegar.

You will let me fuck you.”

“It is merely coitus, a physical act, the same as eating or voiding waste. Why attach such importance to it?”

“Because sex has been so stupendous in your brief life? Because you have had lovers that have made your body burn, and set your soul on fire?”

It’s not the hand you’re dealt that matters. It’s how you play the cards.

Women were screaming. Many and loudly. It was deafening.

“The last sidhe-seer with that ability died a long time ago. We’ve not been successful at breeding those bloodlines.”

“She interferes and offends you. I will eliminate her.”

I’ve been waking up every night at 2:17 A.M. on the dot, as if it’s my official preprogrammed time slot to have an anxiety attack,

Putting outfits together soothes me. Accessorizing is balm to my soul.

“What should I call you?” “Don’t.”

Nah. He’d never let a woman stay the night. No matter how good the sex was.

It’s just that in the Deep South, women learn at a young age that when the world is falling apart around you, it’s time to take down the drapes and make a new dress.

I like it when a man’s on time. Not early. Not late. Punctual. It’s one of those lost dating courtesies, not that Barrons and I are dating, but I think dating courtesies are common courtesies that should be practiced in most all civilized encounters. I pine for the days of good, old-fashioned manners.

We’re born alone and we die alone. That place.”

Like jacked-up pickup trucks in the Deep South, Harleys are an ode to testosterone: the bigger and louder the better. Down south, trucks and bikes roar Look at me! Hot damn, I’m big and noisy and wild and, yeehaw, wouldn’t you like a piece of me?

“The day I give you answers will be the day you no longer need them.”