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I can still taste him.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. How could I do that? How could I kiss the guy who betrayed me?
But I did.
And I liked it.
“Did you really call Stacia and have her sent to the Grove?” I ask.
Silas gives Drew a confused look.
“I called her off,” Drew snaps.
I’m relieved. Then disappointed.
I can’t even feel anything in binary. One or the other. Everything is both.
Stacia’s offer to be there by phone shoots through my mind as Drew maneuvers the black, unmarked car onto the highway. We speed up. So does my heart. I remember Stacia’s office, the muted pastels and beach scenes on pictures designed to calm and never excite. Maybe she was right.
Maybe I’m not ready.
Wait. Wait. It’s been a day. I remind myself. One day. One big, big day.
Tomorrow will be calmer.
It has to be, right?
Nothing could be worse than today.
Chapter 23
He tastes like cotton candy and campfires, like smoky wood and the sweet ache of a kiss that you want to feel all day, every day, for the rest of your life. By the time the first kiss ends we’re breathless, the heat from our exhales turning into a cocoon.
My body craves him, drawing close, arms around his waist and holding him so he can’t leave me. Rock solid, with muscles rooted in place, he isn’t going anywhere. I relax and tip my chin up for another kiss. I’m rewarded with fire and ice, with the warm wetness of a determined mouth that needs to tell me without words how much I mean to him.
Now we’re naked, entwined in silk sheets on an endless, soft bed, the brush of his hair-covered legs against my own smooth calves so different, so refreshing. I touch my nose to his chest and inhale, the deep breath bringing him into me, memorizing his scent like an imprint.
His hot palms cup my breasts, making me moan his name.
The wind swirls outside the open window, and large, jagged rock formations bounce moonlight into the room, like an otherworldly mirror that illuminates the perfection of this ethereal moment. I look into his eyes and frown, puzzled by what I see.
They are empty.
My wrists whip behind me like someone retracted them, like I am a mechanical beast with a button you push to make me move in ways that aren’t quite human. My shoulders scream with pain from the sudden change and now I am on my knees on the bed, legs spread by ice-cold fingers that feel like knife blades against my skin.
I scream, but no sound emerges, because my mouth is filled with rope.
And the eyeless man reaches between my lips and pulls the end of the hemp ribbon, tugging as thousands of feet of shiny cloth come out of me, endless, eternal, infinite, like lies lined up in the weave of the fiber, queued for all time.
I can’t breathe. Can’t gag can’t move can’t think—
But worse.
I can’t die.
SLAP!
“Jesus, Lindsay, wake up!” The voice is high, feminine, a sound I know but haven’t heard in so long. My cheek burns with the strike, the edge of her fingernails scraping against my earlobe. My nose fills with a perfume I remember, and I lean forward from instinct, burying my cheek in the soft bosom of a body that I expect will comfort me.
