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“Shh, sweetheart. Don’t waste your energy. You’re gonna need it later.”
Another voice pierces my ears from the opposite side of the bed. A tall man, with sun-kissed skin and hair darker than the blackest abyss in the ocean, crosses his arms as he stares down at me, a disapproving frown on his chiseled face. He looks older than Kieran, though his brown eyes lack that ghastly sheen and the same wear and tear.
“Goddamn it, Kieran.” The man scrubs a hand over his face, digging into his jaw with the heel of one palm. “Why doesn’t anyone ever call me for normal shit?”
Kieran shifts, not removing his eyes from my line of sight. They warp under my perusal, his irises stretching and vibrating like an endless vortex. I feel myself being sucked in, a moth to an open flame, and can’t do anything to stop it.
My heart pounds against my ribs, the sound ricocheting off the walls and echoing in my eardrums, as he watches me, an anger reflecting at me that I can’t quite comprehend.
“You’re scaring her,” the other man snaps.
But Kieran doesn’t mind. It’s exactly what he wants.
A sinister smile stretches across his mouth, lips curling back over his teeth as he looms closer—but when I blink, he’s back in place, stoic and still, as if he’d never moved in the first place.
“I’msupposedto scare her.” He glances at the man, finally, allowing me some reprieve from the paralysis his presence puts me under. “Fear keeps her safe.”
Maybe that’s it—maybe my dissociative state has to do with the mere presence of this demon, like he’s sucking my soul straight from my body. Maybe that’s why he’s so close.
Maybe he just can’t stand to be away.
The thought slips away, a message stuck in a bottle and tossed to an angry sea, as the room around me ebbs in waves, waxing and waning against my strained consciousness. It melts around me, the beige walls splintering into little pieces, the men above me glitching out like a television with a bad connection.
“Is she okay?” Kieran’s voice floats closer even as his form gets farther away, and I try to squirm on the bed, try to grab his attention and pull him back in. I don’t know why, but I don’t want him to leave.
Still, my body doesn’t cooperate.
“She looks pale.” There’s a cool weight pressing on my forehead, but I can’t quite pinpoint its origin. “Could she be having some kind of reaction?”
“That’s a risk with all drugs, yes.” The older man’s voice is calm, hard. Angry. It warms my insides that someone feels something on my behalf. “What the fuck were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t. Not really.” A pause, then a deep, labored breath. My sight starts to gray, color exploding like fireworks, the room getting smaller and brighter until all I see is nothing. “Shebroke in, Kal. What was I supposed to do?”
“The answer is never drug the woman you’re attracted to. Trust me on that one.”
My jaw slackens as I listen to them banter, and as I draw in a soft breath, I’m able to produce a modicum of saliva on my tongue. I swallow, letting it lubricate my throat, trying to concentrate on fixing my vision. My body feels simultaneously hot and cold as I struggle, wishing I hadn’t ever come to Kieran’s in the first place.
Shit.That’s what I was doing. I broke into his cottage, watched him get his rocks off, and tried to take back my necklace.
What the hell happened after that?
Blinking, spots of the room I’m in start to reveal themselves again, the light above me splitting into a prism of textures, each one more intricate than the next.
“Will she be okay?”
“Did you give her more than the recommended dosage?”
“I don’t…” Kieran trails off, and I feel a soft pressure near the outside of my right thigh, as if he’s touching me. But I can’t see it, can’t know for sure. I lean into it, loving how it scorches my skin, spreading its warmth along my sweaty, tender flesh. “I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking.”
“How much did you give her?”
“Less than I gave Murphy.”
Silence. An eerie feeling inches along my chest, making the cavity feel impossibly tight. A thousand little critters infesting my body, trying to force me to share the warmth with their parasitic bodies.
I writhe on the inside, attempting to drive them out, but they’re cold-blooded and need the heat. Need to feed on my sad, black heart and gnaw on my bones until I’m unrecognizable.
Maybe that was Kieran’s plan all along. His way of getting me out of his head.
