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The surface beneath me bounced. A bed?
I tortured my throat again. “Where—”
“Shhh.” A voice hushed in my ear.
The cool lip of a glass rested against my lips. I swallowed, choked, and lifted my head for more, but the water moved out of reach.
“Evie.”
I opened my eyes at the sound of Jesse’s voice, blinded by the glare of an overhead light. I blinked rapidly, focusing on the bulb. A light bulb?
There it was, screwed into a socket in a ceiling I’d never seen before, surrounded by peeling paint and cracked plaster, its filaments burning with electricity.
“Where are we?” I tried to sit up but my arms wouldn’t cooperate. I looked toward his face, and yellow halos blotted my vision. I’d stared at that damned bulb for too long. “Where’s Roark?”
“Here, love.”
I gasped at the nearness of his accent, so fucking relieved he was lying on my other side. I tried to move toward him, and my aching body clenched in pain. “What about Shea? Darwin?”
“Everyone’s safe.” Jesse’s face filled my view, his stubble thicker but trimmed, the hair on his head clean and clipped short around his ears.
He smiled softly, his expression content despite the fatigue swelling his pink-tinged eyelids.
I turned my head to see Roark, and my breath caught. His dreadlocks were gone, his face completely shaved. I wouldn’t have recognized him at first had it not been for the jade pools of his gorgeous eyes. My God, he looked young. Refined. Like a goddamned gentleman.
I reached up, my arm wobbling in a haze of disorientation, and smoothed my palm over the soft skin on his jaw. I pushed my hand over his ear, his blond curls sifting through my fingers. He leaned closer, allowing me to feel the textured length around the back. Short, but long enough to curl at the ends.
My nostrils filled with the scent of soap and fresh linen. “You smell different.”
It wasn’t a bad smell. It just wasn’t his smell. I played with the satiny curls around his ear and nape. His hair felt amazing, and I bet he didn’t miss the itchy dreadlocks, but I mourned the loss, aching for the comfort of familiarity.
“A shave and a shower, love. It’s feckin’ cla, isn’t it?”
A working shower? A glowing light bulb? My hand fell away. “How? Wait, how long have I been out?”
Jesse cupped my face, angling it toward his. “Two weeks.”
I inhaled a deep breath, chasing off the shock enough to speak. “How? That’s not possible. I mean, how did I eat? Why don’t I feel hungry?”
He tucked my hair behind my ear. “You ate what we fed you. Your body did all the things it needed to survive, but your mind wasn’t…” He glanced up at Roark and returned to me. “It wasn’t here.”
Awake but not aware? Was it a self-preservation mechanism? A cataleptic way to block out the pain?
Jesse gripped my hand and placed my palm against the coppery whiskers on his face. “I wanted to get rid of this, but you told me once to never ever shave.”
My heart gave a heavy thump. Could I love this man any more than I already did?
He turned his head, pressing his mouth against my fingers. “We’re in Charlottesville, Virginia. About eighty miles from Arkendale.”
My pulse revved up, and my muscles tensed, triggering sudden pressure in my bladder. I clamped my hands over my lower belly. “What happened to the plan? The peninsula? Where are the women? All the nymphs?”
“Up ye go.” Roark scooped my naked body into his arms. “Told ye the bettys are safe. Empty your bladder, then we’ll tell ye the rest.”
He carried me through the bedroom, passing heavy wooden furniture, ornate rugs, and framed pictures of unfamiliar faces peeking through a layer of dust and cobwebs. They’d found an extravagant house to hole up in, but it was quiet. Too quiet. The women weren’t here.
I lay my heavy head against his shoulder, noticing he wore a shirt for the first time in months. Jesse trailed behind us, hands in the pockets of clean-looking jeans, his beautiful torso also hidden by a t-shirt, the red cotton unsoiled and free of holes and tears. Despite the new clothes, my savage man still had his scruff, his predatory gait, and his intense glare.
Inside the attached bathroom, Roark set me on a toilet. Marble spread out around us, and a single bulb burned over the vanity. Little flower-shaped soaps lay in a ceramic dish on the counter. Embroidered towels hung on brass hangers. A pair of men’s slippers waited beside the glass shower. What the hell was this place?
“Toilet and shower works.” Jesse perched on the tub across from me, his gaze glued to mine as if he was afraid I’d disappear. “There’s a generator pumping the well water and powering the lights.”
I’d woken in another dimension, in a land of marble and crazy filled with what-the-fuck shit, where everyone used toilets and wore clean shirts and shaved their beards beneath electric lights. Once upon a time, this was the only place that made sense, but now it was all so very odd. Fancy little things and ideas spun round and round. Or was the room spinning? Maybe it was just the weak state of my underused mind and body.
