Bloodfever

Behind the counter the phone rang. I stared into Barrons’ dark eyes while the phone rang and rang. I remembered kissing him, remembered the images: the desert; the hot, killing sirocco; the lonely boy; the endless wars. I wondered whether if I kissed him again, I’d get inside him again. The phone rang. It occurred to me that it could be my dad. Jerking my gaze away with an effort, I pushed off the sofa and grabbed the phone.

After everything I’d been through, my feelings about things had changed. He and I were partners, not OOP detector and director, and partners had rights.

As I reached the connecting door, I stopped. “Jericho.”
“Mac.”
I hesitated. “Thank you for saving my life.” I slipped through the door. Before I pulled it closed, I added softly, “Again.”

Barrons took a seat on the opposite end of the sofa. Even with all that space between us, we were too close. I remembered the feel of his wild, electric body on top of mine. I remembered lying beneath him with my shirt ripped to my neck, the look on his face. I looked away.

We looked at each other like two too-intimate strangers who’ve woken after the lovemaking and don’t know quite what to say to each other, so they say nothing at all and go their separate ways, promising, of course, that they’ll call, but each time they look at the phone over the next few days, the discomfort and mild embarrassment of having taken off their clothing in front of someone they didn’t really even know rises up, and the phone call never gets made.
Barrons and I had taken our skins off around each other tonight. Shared too many secrets, and none of them the important ones.
I was about to look away when he reached across the seat, touched my jaw with his long, strong, beautiful fingers, and caressed my face.
Being touched by Jericho Barrons with kindness makes you feel like you must be the most special person in the world. It’s like walking up to the biggest, most savage lion in the jungle, lying down, placing your head it its mouth and, rather than taking your life, it licks you and purrs.
I turned away.
He returned his attention to the road.

“The vamp was mine, Barrons!”
“Inspect his teeth, Ms. Lane,” he said tightly. “They were cosmetic enhancements. He was no vampire.”
I punched him lightly in the shoulder. “I don’t care what he was! It was my fight, you bastard!”
He punched me back with the same light, warning force. “You were taking too long to finish it up.”
“Who are you to decide how long is too long?” I gave him another tap in the shoulder.
He returned the blow with equal force. “You were enjoying it!”
“I was not!”
“You were smiling, bouncing on the balls of your feet, egging him on.”
“I was trying to end the fight!” I punched his shoulder, hard this time.
“You were way past trying to end it,” he snapped, punching me back. I nearly fell over. “You were prolonging it. You were glorying in it.”
“You don’t know what the feck you’re talking about!” I shouted.
“I couldn’t tell the difference between the two of you anymore!” he roared.
I smashed my fist into his face. Lies roll off us. It’s the truths we work hardest to silence. “Then you weren’t looking hard enough! I’m the one with boobs!”
“I know you’re the one with boobs! They’re in my fucking face every fucking time I turn around!”
“Maybe you need to get a grip on your libido, Barrons!”
“Fuck you, Ms. Lane!”
“You just try. I’ll kick the shit out of you!”
“You think you could?”
“Bring it on.”
He grabbed a fistful of my T-shirt, and dragged me up against him until our noses touched. “I’ll bring it on, Ms. Lane. But remember you asked for it. So don’t even think about trying to tap out on the mat and quit the fight.”
“You hear anybody crying ‘Uncle’ here, Barrons? I don’t.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
He swapped the fistful of my shirt for one in my hair, and ground his mouth against mine.
I exploded.
I shoved at him, and clawed him closer. He shoved me back, and yanked me tighter to his body. I pulled his hair. He pulled mine. He didn’t fight fair. Actually, he fought exactly fair. He didn’t extend courtesies, not a single one.
I bit his lip. He tripped me and pushed me down to the stone floor of the cavern. I punched him. He straddled me.
I ripped his shirt down the front, left it hanging in tatters from his shoulders.
“I liked that shirt,” he snarled. He rose over me, a dark demon, glistening in the torchlight, dripping sweat and blood, his torso covered with tattoos that disappeared beneath his waistband.
He grabbed the hem of my shirt, tore it straight up to my neck, and inhaled sharply.
I punched him. If he punched me back, I was past feeling it. His mouth was on mine again, the hot silk of his tongue, the sharp, deliberate abrasion of his teeth, the exchange of breath and the small, desperate sounds of need. A tsunami of lust—no doubt amplified by the Fae in my blood—crashed into me, knocking me from my feet, and dragging me out to a dangerous sea. There was no lifeboat here in these deep, killing waters, not even a lighthouse, marking the way back to shore with its soft amber promise. There was only the storm of Barrons and the one I seemed to be, and if there were dark shapes moving in the waters beneath my feet that I should probably take a good hard look at and possibly reconsider trying to swim here, I didn’t care.
He fitted himself to me and began a driving, erotic, rhythmic bump and grind. A lonely boy. A lone man. Alone in a desert beneath a blood-red moon. War everywhere. Always war. A breath-stealing sirocco sweeping down over treacherously sifting sands. A cave in a cliff wall. Sanctuary? No sanctuary left anywhere. Barrons’ tongue was inside my mouth, and somehow I was inside Jericho Barrons. The images were his.
We both heard the noise at the same time and exploded away from each other as quickly as we’d come together, scrambling to opposite sides of the small cavern.
Panting, I stared at him. He was breathing hard, his dark eyes narrowed to slits.

“Are you … r-real?” My mouth had been badly lacerated by my teeth. My tongue was thick with blood and regret. I knew what I was trying to say. I wasn’t sure it was intelligible.
He nodded grimly.
“It was … Mallucé … not dead,” I told him.
Nostrils flared, eyes narrowed, he hissed, “I know, I smell him in here, everywhere. This place reeks of him. Don’t talk. Bloody hell, what did he do to you? What did you do? Did you piss him off on purpose?”
Barrons knew me too well. “He t-told me you … weren’t … coming.” I was cold, so cold. Other than that, there was oddly little pain. I wondered if that meant my spinal cord was damaged.
He glanced wildly about as if looking for something, and if he’d been any other man, I would have called his emotional state frantic. “And you believed him? No, don’t answer that. I said don’t talk. Just be still. Fuck. Mac. Fuck.”
He’d called me Mac. My face hurt too bad to smile, but I did inside. “B-Barrons?”
“I said don’t talk,” he snarled.
I put all my energy into getting this out. “D-Don’t let me … die … down here.” Die … down here, echoed weakly back at me. “Please. Take me … to the … sunshine.” Bury me in a bikini, I thought. Lay me next to my sister.
“Fuck,” he exploded again. “I need things!” He was standing, looking around the cavern again, with that frantic air. I wondered what things he thought he might find here. Splints wouldn’t help this time. I tried to tell him that but nothing came out. I also tried to tell him I was sorry. That didn’t come out either.
I must have blinked. His face was close to mine. His hand was in my hair. His breath was warm on my cheek. “There’s nothing here that I can use, Mac,” he said hollowly. “If we were somewhere else, if I had certain things, there are … spells I could do. But you won’t live long enough for me to get you there.”
A long silence ensued, or he was speaking and I just wasn’t hearing him. Time had no relevance. I was floating.
His face was over me again, a dark angel. Basque and Pict, he’d told me. Criminals and barbarians, I’d mocked. A beautiful face, for all that savagery. “You can’t die, Mac.” His voice was flat, implacable. “I won’t let you.”
“So … stop … me,” I managed, although I wasn’t sure the irony I meant carried through in my tone. My voice was weak, reedy. At least my sense of humor wasn’t gone. And at least Mallucé hadn’t gotten to turn me into a monster before I died. That was a silver lining. I hoped my dad would take good care of my mom. I hoped someone would take care of Dani. I’d wanted to get to know her better. Beneath all that bristle I’d sensed a kindred soul.
I hadn’t avenged Alina. Now who would?
“This isn’t what I wanted,” Barrons was saying. “This isn’t what I would have chosen. You must know that. It’s important you know that.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. There was a kernel of something gnawing at the back of my mind. Something I needed to think about. A choice to be made.
I felt his fingers on my eyelids. He eased them closed.
But I’m not dead yet, I wanted to tell him.
His hand was a warm pressure on my neck. My head lolled to the side.
D-Don’t let me … die … down here, was echoing back at me again in my head. I was astonished by how weak and stupid I sounded. How helpless. All fluff and no steel. I was pathetic with a capital P.
I tasted the second vile taste in my mouth. It drew tight the insides of my cheeks, and saliva pooled in my mouth. I examined the taste, rolling it on my tongue like spoiled wine. This time I recognized the poison before I drank it: cowardice.
I was still making the same mistake. Giving up hope before the fight was over.
My fight wasn’t over. I might not like my choices—in fact, I might despise my choices—but my fight wasn’t over.
It gave me power in the black arts, Mallucé had said of eating Unseelie, the strength of ten men, heightened my senses, healed mortal wounds as quickly as they were inflicted.
I could pass on the black arts. I’d take the strength and heightened senses. I was especially interested in the healing mortal wounds part. I may have blown one chance to live tonight. I would not blow another. Barrons was here now. The cell was open. He could get to the Fae on the slab, feed it to me.
“Barrons.” I forced my eyes open. They felt heavy, weighted by coins.
His face was in my neck and he was breathing hard. Was he grieving me? Already? Would he miss me? Had I, in some tiny way, come to matter to this enigmatic, hard, brilliant, obsessed man? I realized he’d come to matter to me. Good or evil, right or wrong, he mattered to me.
“Barrons,” I said again, this time more strongly, infusing it with everything I had left which wasn’t much, but enough to get his attention.
He raised his head. His face was all harsh planes and angles in the torchlight, his expression bleak. His dark eyes were windows on a bottomless abyss. “I’m sorry, Mac.”
“Not your … fault,” I managed to get out.
“My fault in more ways than you could possibly know, woman.”
Woman, he’d called me. I’d grown up in his eyes. I wondered what he’d think of me soon.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come for you. I shouldn’t have let you walk home alone.”

“People who feel things sometimes have weaknesses, but you wouldn’t know the first thing about that, would you?” I said bitterly. “The only things you feel are greed, mockery, and occasionally you probably get a hard-on, but I bet it’s not over a woman, it’s over money or an artifact or a book. You’re no different than any other player in this game. You’re no different than V’lane. You’re just a cold, mercenary—”
His hand was on my throat, and he was crushing me back with his body into the cold steel beam behind me. “Yes, I have loved, Ms. Lane, and although it’s none of your business, I have lost. Many things. And no, I am not like any other player in this game and I will never be like V’lane, and I get a hard-on a great deal more often than occasionally.” He leaned fully against me and I gasped. “Sometimes it’s over a spoiled little girl, not a woman at all. And yes, I trashed the bookstore when I couldn’t find you. You’ll have to choose a new bedroom, too. And I’m sorry your pretty little world got all screwed up, but everybody’s does, and you go on. It’s how you go on that defines you.” His hand relaxed on my throat. “And I am going to tattoo you, Ms. Lane, however and wherever I please.” His gaze dropped down over my sun-kissed, lightly oiled, very bare skin. The delicately strung together hot pink triangles covered very little, and while I’d not minded so much on the beach, being nearly naked around Barrons felt a lot like going to a shark convention lightly basted in blood.

“Let me guess,” I said dryly, “it’s black?”
He shrugged.
“Tight?”
He laughed. That was twice in one night. Barrons rarely laughed. I narrowed my eyes. “What’s with you?” I asked suspiciously.
“What do you mean, Ms. Lane?” He stepped closer. Too close. Was he looking at my breasts again? I could feel the heat of his big body, along with the energy that always seemed to roll off him, that strange electrical current that bristled, omnipresent beneath his golden skin. There was something different about him tonight. Control was Barrons’ middle name. Why then was I getting this feeling of … wildness … of an emotion I couldn’t identify but was surely kin to violence. And there was something more …
If he’d been any other man and I’d been any other girl, I’d have called the narrowing of his heavy-lidded dark eyes lust. But he was Barrons and I was Mac, and a blossoming of lust was about as likely as orchids blooming in Antarctica.
“I’ll just go change.” I turned away.
He caught my arm, and I glanced back. Backlit by wall sconces, he didn’t look like Barrons at all. Light glanced off the sharp planes and shadowed the angles of his face, merging his bones together into a fierce, brutal mask. Though he was looking directly at me, it was with a thousand-yard stare and if he was seeing me at all, it was not a me I knew. To dispel the profound tension of the moment, I said, “Where are we going tonight, Jericho?”
He shook himself, as if stirring from a dream. “Jericho? Are you kidding me, Ms. Lane?”
I cleared my throat. “I meant Barrons and you know it,” I said crossly. I had no idea why I’d just called him by his first name. The one time I’d tried to elevate our bizarre relationship, for lack of a better word, to a first-name basis—in my defense he’d just saved my life and I was narcotized by gratitude and nearly unconscious at the time—he’d mocked and flatly refused me. “Forget it,” I said stiffly. “Let go of my arm, Barrons. I’ll be ready in twenty minutes.”
His gaze dropped, skimmed my breasts.
I pulled away.
If he’d been any other man and I’d been any other girl, I’d have said Barrons was looking for some action tonight. Maybe, despite the age difference, he and Fiona had been lovers and now that she was gone, he was getting horny. That was a scary thought. One that proved more recalcitrant than I’d have liked when I tried to shove it from my mind.

“Was he a good kisser, Ms. Lane?” Barrons asked, watching me carefully.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand at the memory. “It was like being owned.”
“Some women like that.”
“Not me.”
“Perhaps it depends on the man doing the owning.”
“I doubt it. I couldn’t breathe with him kissing me.”
“One day you may kiss a man you can’t breathe without, and find breath is of little consequence.”
“Right, and one day my prince might come.”
“I doubt he’ll be a prince, Ms. Lane. Men rarely are.”