Stopping, I look down, back the way we came …
The girl tugs my hand. “Come on!”
“I want to count them.”
“Next time.” She giggles, giving me another tug. “We’re almost at the top! I want to fly to the stars with you!”
That sounds nice.
I smile and chase her round and round some more. We spill onto a big circular stage that’s supporting a ring of high towers, each carved with strange words. I look up, seeking their tapered tips, my mouth popping open in wonderment when I see how close we are to the moon—huge and silver andbeautiful, painting my upturned face in a pour of fresh light that ignites every cell in my body.
I want to dance naked for it. To drag my fingers through my hair and cup my heavy breasts. I want to climb onto all fours and bay to it like an animal full of nothing but rich, primal,wantingsounds squirming up my throat.
“This is awonderland!”
My words echo …
echo …
echo …
The woman giggles and tugs me into a spin, and we twirl for the moon, her creamy hair like liquid silver beneath those rays of light.
I’m not sure why that makes my chest hurt.
I stare at that silver moon again as somebody tugs me sideways—
I land on my knees on a large, soft pillow, and my stare levels with a pair of blue eyes.
The man before me has hair the color of a tumbleweed, the tousled tips brushing broad, bare, muscular shoulders. Pretty gray words are painted down the sides of his neck, over his chest and chiseled stomach where they disappear beneath the waistband of his pants.
I savor the words. Part of me even wants totouchthem. But there’s something wrong with them. As though they’re in the wrong place …
Orsomething.
He’s a beautiful man, but my body doesn’t respond to him like it did the moans and the smells and the deep, throaty grunts.
Like it does the silver moon.
Why am I here with this man I don’t know in this place that is so very strange?
My mind squeezes, like a muscle trying to contract. I’m certain if I squeeze it hard enough this will all make sense again.
“Petal,” the man says on a throaty laugh. “It’s hit you hard, hasn’t it? I can barely see the purple in your eyes. We’ll have to build up your immunity.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about. Who is thispetal?I don’t think that’s me.
Hearing it doesn’t make me feel good.
Somebody begins speaking strange words that make no sense, and I look up at a robed woman with long hair bound in a very tidy braid, her eyes such a pretty blend of purple and blue—though I don’t like the way they’re looking at me.
I don’t think that woman likes me very much.
Kneeling before her is the naked woman I danced beneath the moon with, her kind eyes staring right at me.
She giggles.
Such an infectious sound.
