Ryodan doesn’t move a muscle, just stands there.

She wets her lips and angles her head so that her mouth is a breath away from his, and I’m a mess of quivering frigging nerves in the corner because she just stays like that and her eyes fix on his mouth, and his fixes on hers and I think, Shit, this room is going to blow, then I think, Shit, this is Dani and Ryodan. But it’s not.

It’s two cataclysmic forces of nature that are brilliant and stubborn and strong, who cut their teeth on razor blades and live on a razor edge of violence at all times. I’ve learned a few things about the world, about myself, during my sojourn in Dublin. In the great pasture of life there are really only four kinds of creatures: sheep, as Dani likes to call them; shepherds who try to guide the sheep and keep them on the straight and narrow; sheepdogs who run them from field to field, prevent them from straying, and fight off the predators that come to slaughter and feast; and wolves, savage, fierce, and a law unto their own.

I know what I am. I’m a sheepdog. If my food supply ran out and I was stranded on a mountain with the flock, I would starve before I ate one of the sheep. Nature or nurture, I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. I protect the flock. To my dying breath.

Ryodan’s a wolf. He’d eat the whole damn flock if his survival depended on it.

Dani is a sheepdog, too.

Jada is a wolf.

Two wolves stand in this room, with a complicated past and an uncertain future, their lips a breath apart, and I’m not sure if they’ll kiss or kill each other. Probably both.

Then Jada reaches up and cups the back of his head with one hand, pulls his head forward and down.

And presses her mouth to his.

Ryodan holds perfectly still, still as stone.

So do I. Holy freaking cow.

She kisses him, lips parted, slow and sexy, lightly touching his lips with her tongue, offering wonders that would rock his world, while delivering nothing. Open mouthed, seductive, warm, inviting and … dangerous. Even I can feel the explosive sexual energy held in check behind her bare feather of a touch. She’s making sure he feels it, slapping him in the face with all she could offer—but isn’t. I’ve kissed men like that before.

It’s a challenge. It says “You think you have what it takes to handle me? Oh, honey, prove it.”

Still, he doesn’t move. Just stands there, letting her kiss him, making no response.

Against his lips she murmurs, “You’ll never kill me.”

Then Jada puts her arms around his neck and pulls him against her, melting against him until there is no space between their bodies. She turns her face slowly to the side and rests her cheek against his, her chin on his shoulder. Laces her fingers into his short thick hair.

His hands move to her waist, stop. Drop to his sides. They stand there like that, sort of hugging but not. Pressed together, staring past each other.

Intimate yet a million miles apart.

It’s one of the most subtly erotic moments I’ve seen.

She closes her eyes and for a fleeting instant every bit of tension in the fine muscles of her face vanishes. If pressed to define the moment, I’d call it basking, a cat soaking up sun on an icy winter’s day. Savoring something she’s wanted for a long time, and I wonder, did she think of him while she battled whatever demons she faced for the past five and a half years, lost in Faery? Did she hear his voice in her head during her darkest hours? Did she find strength in the hard truths he’d battered her with? Does touching him make her feel the way I do when I press my body against Barrons—like coming home?

“I’m all you have left of Dani,” she tells him softly. “Be very careful how you push me, Ryodan. I’m not a little girl. I could turn you inside out. Play you the way you play the rest of the world. You’re not a singularity anymore. I’ve become your equal in every way.”

Then she shoves him back and pushes past him with that long-legged gazelle walk, gracefully swipes the palm pad and glides out the door. He may think Jada doesn’t feel, but there is pure fire in the way she moves. She’s sexy, confident, strong. I’ve walked that way myself. It feels good.

I glance between him and the door, dying to stay, knowing I should go. I’ve seen more than my brain can process for one day.

He drops his dark head forward and stands there, unmoving.

As I slip out, just before it slides closed, I hear him murmur, “Ah, Dani, yes you have. As I always knew you would.”

30

“When you feel my heat, look into my eyes It’s where my demons hide”

MAC

Jada leaves at normal speed—what Dani used to call walking like a Joe—and I follow her to the top of the stairs, trying to decide who, in my new ghostlike state, I want to haunt next.

I’m eager to see if Ryodan’s wards can detect me should I decide to explore the lower levels of his underground fortress, or if the Book’s cloak will keep me from tripping them. Worst-case scenario, I set one off and run. Then again, knowing Ryodan, enormous steel doors will come slamming down, barricading me in a tiny space of corridor until he releases some high-tech vapor-dye that paints me visible on his monitors, drags me out, and locks me up in his dungeon.

On the subject of the Book, it’s been perversely silent since I arrived back in the city this morning. I’d pause to wonder why but I’m busy enjoying being invisible and not stalked at the moment, plus my head is spinning from all that I’ve learned. I’m beginning to see that my view of the world was very limited. Life is an iceberg and I’ve only been seeing the tip.