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“I never escaped your box. Not once.”
“Not even.”
“Fine. I’ll tell you what I missed about you.”
“I didn’t ask and don’t want to know.”
“I missed the way your mind works. How you’re willing to make the difficult decisions few people are willing to face, the ones that cost a piece of your soul. How you suffer no hesitation acting on those decisions, despite their price, and each time you hit breaking point, you come up with a new way to put yourself back together again. How you never stop caring, no matter how badly the world treats you, and bloody hell, this world has treated you abominably. How, despite the war you eternally wage between your brain and your heart, you possess the finest of both intellect and emotion I’ve ever seen. You dazzle me, Dani O’Malley. You bloody fucking dazzle me. Top or bottom?”
His question didn’t penetrate at first. I was too distracted by the compliments. He saw my best, the things I was proud of. Flatter my appearance? Not so flattered. I was born in my body. Praise my brain, my spirit? I melt. I’ve worked hard on them both. Then my face screwed up into a scowl and I nearly exploded, What? but swallowed it at the last second. I wasn’t issuing Ryodan an invitation to continue on that topic.
He took it anyway. “Specifically, would you still need to slam down on top of me and vent that endless passion of yours in a hard, savage fuck or have you grown up enough that you could sprawl back on my bed and let me give, while you do all the taking? Who knows, maybe you’d even toss me a few pointers while I was at it. Demand what you wanted. I’d like that. Dani O’Malley taking for a change, thinking only about herself.”
I was having a hard time getting a breath. Pointers. As if. I’d seen Ryodan in action. The man needed no pointers.
“We’re narrowing it down to just those two at the moment. We’ll move on to other positions later. Although I admit to significant interest on the topic of me behind you versus you backed up against a wall, with those long, beautiful, powerful legs of yours wrapped around my waist.”
Behind. First. I grabbed my sword, shoved my door open, kicked my legs out and turned back to look at him, using his own words against him, from long ago. “Some secrets, kid,” I hissed with saccharine venom, “you learn only by participating.”
He threw his head back and laughed, white teeth flashing, eyes glittering.
I closed my eyes, shutting out the vision that had eternally, incessantly, escaped my box.
Ryodan. Laughing.
That was one of the things I’d missed the most about him. The rare moments I’d startled him into a laugh. Glimpsed unadulterated joy blazing in his eyes.
I definitely preferred the top. But that was none of his business. When he stopped laughing, I opened my eyes again.
“Unfortunate,” he said. “Of the two, top is my preference as well.”
“Stay out of my head.” If he’d thought about me so bloody much, he should have called.
“We’ll have to fight for it. See who wins.”
An image of Ryodan and me, stripped naked, sweat-slicked and lust-driven, battling for dominance, slammed into my brain, stupefying me for a moment. “In your dreams.” As I surged from the car, I concentrated on shutting the door gently. If I slammed it, he’d know how much he’d just gotten to me.
The window shattered, glass t
inkling to the pavement at my feet. I sighed. Brain/hand disconnect was clearly one of my unwritten rules around him.
His laughter—that very laughter I’d missed so much—floated out the broken window into the night.
Bright side: I couldn’t be more in the mood for war.
When they come for me
KAT TUCKED THE BLANKET snugly around her sleeping daughter, retrieved the worn copy of The Little Engine That Could from the bed, and turned to slip it back on the shelf.
As she moved to the door and turned off the lights, she glanced back at Rae and, as it always did, her heart swelled inside her chest with more love than she’d believed a single person could hold.
Rae had spent most of the afternoon into the late evening in the gardens, playing with the Spyrssidhe. I love the Spur-shee, Mommy, she’d said before she drifted off. They’re not like me. They’re so light inside.
Other mothers would have asked the question her comment implied. If they’re light inside but they’re not like you, what does that make you?
She hadn’t asked. Time would tell. If Rae believed she was dark for some reason, yet loved as instinctively and freely as she did, there was no point in asking.
Using her gift of empathy on her daughter had proved worthless. Rae felt so much love for her mother, Kat could feel nothing beyond it.
