The brothers exchange glances over me.
“That we’ll never hurt you,” Roan says evenly. “That we will protect you with our own lives.”
“We will never lie to you,” Lukan adds.
“Are you really Lukan and Roan?” I ask, glancing from one to the other.
Both hesitate. Glances are exchanged. It’s a third voice walking into the room that answers.
“No.”
Kellen pauses on the threshold, a bear of a man twisting massive hands into his top and dragging it up over his head. The sight of all those solid muscles catching the firelight is momentarily overruled by all the blood. It’s soaked through his shirt. Dripping from his fingers. It’s speckled across his face.
“Oh my God, Kellen!” I gasp, forgetting I can’t feel my legs and try to lunge to my feet.
It’s only by the sheer grace of Lukan’s fast reflexes that keep me from tumbling to the floor.
“Easy, love. It’s not mine.” Kellen uses his ruined shirt to wipe the stain off his face and from his hands. Then, without pause, he balls it up between his hands and chucks it into the fire where it feeds the already roaring flames. “And to answer your question, no, we are not these faces. They were chosen because they make you comfortable.”
Smart.
They did make me comfortable. Comfortable enough that I didn’t question anything. Comfortable enough to lower my guard and feel safe.
“So, what are you?” I ask softly, letting my gaze travel the broad width of his chest. Follow the lines and grooves where the shadows dip suggestively down the waistband of his pants.
I have to remind myself that this is Kellen’s body. Whatever he looks like underneath may not be at all what I’m being gifted currently.
But I doubt that. I know with a certainty I can’t explain that they are perfect in their true form. That they will be everything I crave. It’s a deep, irrefutable knot in my chest.
“We’ve had many names by many cultures,” Roan murmurs. “But we’re Shades.”
That’s what the snake lady had called them —fragments of a useless demiurge, desperate for freedom.
Still, I ask, “What’s a Shade? What’s a demiurge?”
It does dawn in some part of my brain that I should be hysterical. The bubble tickles the back of my throat, but I know if I fall into it, if I let it pull me under, I will never pull out and I need answers.
“Demiurge are gods. They created the universe and rule over all the realms, and Shades...” Lukan murmurs. “Shades are shadows. Echoes of a soul. We’re that blur you see from the corner of your eye when nothing’s there.”
I remind myself that I just survived getting injected with venom by a woman with a snake body and saw the ghost of my dead aunt who threw me into the basement. This isn’t as strange, yet I have to draw in a slow, easing breath to brace myself.
I lick my lips. “What are you going to do to me?”
The pad of Lukan’s thumb sweeps along the bottom curve of my mouth, following the path of my tongue.
“We want you to come back home, Rina.” My chin is tilted with the nudge of the same thumb. “Return to us like you were meant to.” The thumb skims across the line of my jaw. “We want you to be our queen again.”
It really shouldn’t, but the brush of his fingers has my pulse racing. My nipples have become hard, sensitive points begging them to touch. There can’t be a worse possible time to get aroused, but they’re making it impossible not to melt into everything they say when Roan resumes his slow descent across my abdomen with open mouthed kisses.
“You ... I’ve never ... shit!” I squeeze my eyes shut with the cradle of Lukan’s palm beneath my left breast lifting it to the immediate attachment Roan takes on the peak with his teeth. “You keep saying back,” I blurt out before my brain melts completely. “When did I...?”
Lukan’s mouth finds mine. His tongue slips between my lips, coaxes mine to join him. Mirroring the steady flicks of his brother’s on my breast. All the while, the steady weight of desire on Kellen’s face scorches my soul.
“You have belonged to us for much longer than you remember, little one,” Kellen murmurs, gaze hot on my face when I open my eyes. “We lost you once. We won’t let you go again.”
“But you have to say yes, baby.” Roan pushes up to steal my mouth from Lukan. His fingers close into my hair and he holds me against him as his brother palms my breasts. “Stay with us, Rina. Please.”
The low, tortured whisper propels my arms up. It has my fingers curling into his hair.
