Fever 4 - DreamFever by Karen Marie Moning Read Free Book Online Page A

not know how to live
without her. There is a hole inside me that nothing fills." There is something else inside
me, too, besides that hole. Something so awful that I will not look at it. I am weary. I do
not want to feel anymore. No pain, no loss, no failure. Only the colors of black and red.
Death, silence, lust, power. Those things give me peace.
      "I understand."
      I draw back and look at him. His eyes are deep with shadows. I know those shadows.
He does understand. "Then why do you push me?"
      "Because if you don't find something to fill that hole, Mac, someone else will. And if
someone else fills it, they own you. Forever. You'll never get yourself back."
      "You are a confusing man."
      "What's this?" He smiles faintly. "I am a man now? I am no longer a beast?"
      It is all I have called him until now. My lover, my beast.
       But I have found another new word: "man." I look at him. His face seems to shimmer
and change, and for a moment he is shockingly familiar, as if I have known him
somewhere before here and now. I touch him, trace his arrogant, handsome features
slowly. He turns his face into my palm, kisses it. I see shapes behind him. Books and
shelves and cases of trinkets.
      I gasp.
      His hands close tight on my waist, hurting me. "What? What did you see?"
       "You. Books. Lots of them. You ... I ... know you. You are ..." I trail off. A sign
creaking on a pole in the wind. Amber sconces. A fireplace. Rain. Eternal rain. A bell
rings. I like the sound. I shake my head. There was no such place or time. I shake my
head harder.
      He surprises me. He does not push me with words I do not like to hear. He does not
shout at me or call me Mac or insist I talk more.
      In fact, when I open my mouth to speak again, he kisses me, hard.
      He shuts me up with his tongue, deep.
      He kisses me until I cannot speak or even breathe, until I do not even care if I ever
breathe again. Until I have forgotten that for a moment he was not a beast but a man.
Until the images that so disturbed me are singed to ash by the heat of our lust and gone.
      He carries me to the bed and tosses me on it. I feel anger in his body, although I do
not know why.
      I stretch my naked body on the sleek silk, luxuriating in sensation, in the sure
knowledge of what is to come. Of what he is about to do. Of what he makes me feel.
      He stares down at me. "See how you look at me. Fuck. I understand why they do it."
      "Who does what?"
      "The Fae. Turn women Pri-ya."
      I do not like those words. They terrify me. I am lust. He is my world. I tell him so.
       He laughs, and his eyes glitter like night sky pierced by a million stars. "What am I,
Mac?" He pours his sleek, powerful body over mine, laces our fingers together, and
stretches my hands above my head.
      "You are my world."
      "And what do you want from me? Say my name."
      "I want you inside me, Jericho. Now."
      Our sex is savage, as if we are punishing each other. I feel something changing. In
me. In him. In this room. I do not like it. I try to stop it with my body, drive it back. I do
not look at this room in which we exist. I do not let my mind wander beyond the walls. I
am here and he is, too, most of the time, and that is enough.
      Later, when I am drifting like a balloon, in that happy, free place that is the twilight
sky before dreams, I hear him take a deep breath as if he is about to speak.
      He releases it.
      Curses.
      Takes another breath but says nothing again.
       He grunts and punches his pillow. He is divided, this strange man, as if he both wants
to speak and wants not to.
      Finally, he says tightly, "What did you wear to your senior prom, Mac?"
       "Pink dress," I mumble. "Tiffany bought the same one. Totally ruined my prom. But
my shoes were Betsey Johnson. Hers were Stuart Weitzman. My shoes were better." I
laugh. It is the sound of someone I do not recognize, young and without care. It is the
laugh of a woman who knows no pain,