by May Dawson
“You were stupid to come in here,” he told me.
“You’re stupid to come in here too,” I shot back.
“I took down Winter’s wards and spells carefully. You blundered in here.”
“You opened the door for me? How sweet.”
“You can’t see a fucking door open and resist going through it, can you?” His hand slipped from my mouth, as if he trusted me not to scream, and dropped instead to my throat. “You almost got yourself murdered when I left you alone for a few hours.”
I’d been thinking about that, replaying the way Alice had entered my room. She’d broken the spell on purpose, hadn’t she?
Alice had set me up to escape.
Or she’d set me up to die.
I really needed to know which one it was.
“Sorry I didn’t appreciate being locked in a closet, left to starve…”
“If I hadn’t, they would have done far worse things to you,” he said. “I’ve been trying to protect you since you came here, but you are making it very difficult.”
The cadences of his voice were all so familiar. I didn’t have my wolf senses anymore to know his scent, but he’d stopped wearing all that cologne. I twisted in his arms, pressing my face against the curve of his throat. As his jaw brushed across the top of my head, his breath hitched.
And I knew.
I ran my hand up the hard plane of his chest, felt his heart beating faster under his white shirt, even though his face as he stared down at me was as cold and cruel and beautiful as ever.
I stroked my fingertips up the back of his neck, then ran my thumb over the hard curve of his cheekbone.
“I miss your real face, Silas Zip,” I murmured.
His jaw tensed. He caught my biceps in an iron grip, and I couldn’t tell if he was holding me away from him or holding me against him.
“How’d you know?”
“I know you. Not just your face or your scent. I know you.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” he said, those dark eyes smoldering into mine, full of heat and longing.
“That was why you kept on hurting me,” I studied his face, still trying to figure out all the answers. “You were afraid that I saw through your mask.”
“It’s a very good mask,” he said. “It’s fooled them for months now.”
“Is this where you’ve been since you left me?”
“After a very unpleasant detour back home, yes.”
“I hate you for leaving me,” I said, fisting his shirt in my hand, pulling him down toward me. He let me yank his body closer. “I hate you most of all for not letting me know you were alive. I grieved you. I burned.”
There was no better way to describe it. I had burned with my desire for him, with my guilt.
“As did I,” he promised. His hand twined in my hair, gathering it at the base of my head. . “I didn’t get enough of you the last time I kissed you.”
Everything in my body responded to that grip. It felt like something in me was breaking loose. He leaned toward me, and my hips pressed forward against his, seeking more of his body against mine. But I stopped him with my palm on his shoulder, even though it felt like my heart raced with my need for him.
“Who are you, really?” I murmured.
“I’m whoever I need to be,” he said.
That wasn’t much of an answer, and my lips parted to tell him that, but his mouth claimed mine instead. I let out a soft breath into his mouth, shocked at how suddenly he had kissed me. My fingers dug into his shoulders as his tongue swept into my mouth.
I pressed my body against his, my arm slipping over his shoulders, bringing him as close to me as he could be with clothes between us.
The two of us traded kisses that left me flushed and breathless when I broke away. I still had so much I couldn’t understand. I could feel Silas in this man now, this man with the stranger’s face but the familiar body, but I wasn’t sure that Silas himself was who I thought.
“Did you hate being cruel to me?” I asked, tilting my head to one side. “Or did you like it?”
He didn’t answer, he just studied me with glittering eyes. I couldn’t tell who he really was—the Silas I’d known at school, who was quirky and kind and self-assured, or the Echo I’d come to know here, who was dangerous and commanding and capable of anything.
“I think I could like being cruel to you sometimes,” he said finally, “but not that way.”
His lips grazed my ear. “I’ve felt the way your body responded to me even when you were afraid. I think you might like it too.”
“You Stockholmed me,” I accused. “Either that, or I just…”
“Loved me already?” He caressed my cheek with his thumb, his hand on my face possessive. “I hoped maybe, subconsciously, you wouldn’t be as scared because of the bond between us, even though I hoped you wouldn’t figure it out consciously.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me, you asshole?”
“Because Winter was going to torture you.” His lips pulled to one side. “I stole his thunder.”
My lips parted to tell him off, and he used his hand in my hair to draw me toward him, his mouth covering mine. He kissed me breathless, until heat pooled low in my core.
I broke away just long enough to say, “Our first time should be romantic, and not in the workshop of an evil warlock.”
“He’s gone, searching for Cain’s shield, but it would be foolish to have sex in here,” he admitted. “It’s an unnecessary risk.”
He already had his hands on my hips, boosting me up onto the edge of the workshop table. The hard edge bit into my ass as my legs dangled off the ledge. Before I had the chance, he put his hands on my knees and pushed them open, then pressed himself between my legs.
My thighs tightened around his lean waist as he leaned forward, his lips pressing mine. He nipped my lower lip, teased my lips open with his tongue. He kissed me as if he wanted to possess me. I moaned into his mouth as my fingers kneaded the muscle of his broad shoulders, then sank deep enough to bruise as heat flamed across my core.
I broke away long enough to say, “Just because I desperately want to have fucked-up sex in my fucked-up father’s fucked-up museum of horrors, don’t think you’re off the hook. You lied to me. You pretended to be someone else. You hurt me--literally. I’m going to be angry later. I’m going to be angry over and over.”
“I’m not particularly frightened of your wrath. But I’ll bear that in mind.” He kissed down the side of my neck, and I scooted forward on the counter so I could press myself against him. My aching center found the bulge of his cock, even though his pants, and his breath hitched as I ground myself against it. My legs tightened harder around his hips.
“You’re the biggest jackass I know,” I muttered, turning my face into his throat. “And that’s really saying something in my world.”
His laughter shook his chest. Then his fingers skimmed over the back of my throat until he found the zipper at the back of my dress. He drew it down until cool air caressed my back. Then his fingers slipped up my spine, tracing the skin he’d just bared. His touch raised sparks all along my back.
“Don’t be gentle now, you’ve always been so scary before,” I muttered, and he caught the two sides of the zipper and yanked it forward, forcing it over my shoulders and down my arms. He bared me to the waist. Silas had seen me in various states of undress as roommates, and yet I’d never felt so naked in front of him as his gaze swept over my naked breasts.
“You don’t mind me scary,” he reminded me, a simple statement of fact. His voice dropped to murmur into my ear, “Whichever version of me you get, you know I always adore you.”
Then he leaned forward, his mouth capturing mine again. His lips were demanding, unyielding. There was nothing gentle in the way he claimed me. His hands slid up my bare sides, then he cupped my breasts.
When his thumb teased over my nipple, I moaned into his mouth. He toyed with me until heat pooled low in my core, until I re
ached down and pulled his shirt loose from his jeans. He pulled his t-shirt over his head in one smooth motion, revealing his lean but taut frame.
I reached for him, taking him in my hand through his jeans. I stroked him a few times, heard his breath hitch, then tried to yank his belt and jeans apart.
I squirmed out of the last of the dress. He practically tore my underwear away down my thighs, and it would’ve made me smile except our lips crashed together again. His hand tangled in my hair, holding me close to him as his cock pressed between my thighs.
I reached down and took him in hand, swirled his tip through my wetness. The two of us traded fevered kisses as I used him like a toy, brushing him against me until we were both gasping from the sensation.
“Fuck, Maddie,” he muttered, his voice full of desire.
I pressed him against my core, and he slid inside me, sheathing himself in me so deeply that I gasped. He didn’t hesitate. My fingers curled into his shoulders, hard enough that my fingernails sank deep into his skin, but he didn’t seem to notice. Instead, he rocked inside me.
“Lay back,” he growled, and I did, catching the opposite edge of the table in my hands. His eyes were full of heat, and I loved the way he looked at me, as if he needed me, as if he’d waited for this as long as we’d known each other.
He drew my calves up onto his shoulders, my panties still tangled around my knees, and yanked my ass to the very edge of the table. He plunged inside me over and over, pounding against me, his balls slapping against me. The sound of our bodies moving together, of the wet sound of his cock sliding home over and over, and our mingled moans filled the air.
I’d thought I’d lost him forever, and now here he was, burying himself deep inside me, hitting something inside that made sparks dance across my vision. My fingers tightened on the edge of the table as I tried to hold myself back. It felt as if my body was coming apart.
As my orgasm tightened every muscle in my body, I moaned out loud, and suddenly he leaned over me, slapping his hand over my mouth. “Quietly,” he warned me, and I moaned against his palm. The pressure of his hand against my mouth just aroused me more.
I bit my lip, doing my best to silence my moans as he plunged into me over and over, as my muscles tightened around him in waves. Stars danced in front of my vision, and I couldn’t quite see his face clearly. He might have looked like Silas or Echo or…both, by turns.
He kept going, holding my legs braced against his chest with one arm, as my orgasm took me over. His shoulder muscles tensed against my calves, his shaft swelling inside me. His hand was still over my mouth, forcing my legs to come with his shoulders so that my feet swayed over my head. I’d let him twist me like a pretzel if he wanted to; I came so hard around his cock that it was a good thing his hand was where it was.
Then he paused, studying me. I raised my brows and nipped the palm of his hand.
“I would’ve thought you learned you don’t want to play rough with me,” he teased, but there was no true heat in his voice.
He didn’t take his hand off my mouth either, though.
“Never said that,” I murmured, the words muffled.
“God, I missed you,” he muttered, drawing me into his arms. I clung to him, unable to believe that I really had him back.
If only I could keep him.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“I’m so confused about who you are,” I said, as he zipped me back up. My core still ached from the way the two of us had crashed into each other. I ran my hand over my flushed face, knowing that it must look like I’d had wild sex.
“Think of me as Echo for now,” he said. “You can’t afford to slip.”
“But what about after?”
His hands wrapped my hips and spun me around. “I think we should save worrying about after, because we might not make it there,” he told me.
I pulled a face, but he was right about the uncertain future. “Why are you here?”
He took my hand in his, his grip firm and comforting. He’d held my hand quite a few times at the academy, and I was sure that if he’d held my hand before now, I would’ve recognized him.
“This is my mission,” he said. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know, Maddie, but you might have to wait for a good time. Maybe when our chances are better that we won’t be caught and interrogated. For now, can we search the creepy house and get out of here?”
“Fine.” But I had a lot of questions.
He shook his head, pulling a pair of black leather gloves from his pocket. “Don’t touch anything. Just follow me.”
This version of Silas was apparently bossy as hell, as if I didn’t get enough of that back at the academy. “You know, I was having a lot more fun until you got here.”
He turned his head over his shoulder so he could wink at me. “I know that’s a lie, sweetheart.”
I followed him into the room, but suddenly, he stopped dead. His shoulders were broad enough to fence me from the room. “Go back,” he said. “You don’t need to see this.”
Instead, I shoved past him—as much as I could, despite his narrow frame, he was pretty much unmovable—and entered the room. He sighed. “I should’ve said hurry up and come in, then you’d be walking away, wouldn’t you?”
“Would you stop, I don’t—” My wisecrack died on my lips as I scented bleach, then took in the scene around me.
One of the Everly sisters lay across a blood-stained table; the other one sat up in a chair beside her table.
Both of them were dead.
The one on the table was cut open from her belly to her sternum. I almost gagged at the sight of the gore, and I pressed my hand over my mouth. Her arm flopped out, and her sister sat right beside her, her head raised as if she were alive, staring at nothing with button eyes and smiling. She held her sister’s hand.
Then the sitting sister turned her unseeing eyes to us and said, “Welcome home.”
I jumped back, horror skittering through my chest, but Echo was right there. His hands fell on my shoulders, a comforting weight. “Hold on. I think I know what’s going on.”
Winter was a murderer. What happened to his whole story about how the witches weren’t cruel like we were?
He moved closer to the sisters than I liked, then examined them both carefully.
“They’re dead,” he said. “They won’t hurt you. It’s a doll spell.”
“It’s what?”
“Winter killed them and turned them into…well…dolls,” he said. “They repeat a handful of phrases. They follow simple orders, when they can, but they have no memories, and they don’t feel anything. They can’t hurt you.”
“That’s not comforting. Why would Winter want dolls?”
Echo looked at me as if he were choosing his words carefully, and understanding dawned for me. Winter had taken the two girls and yet there was no sign of Tritan. I knit my fingers more tightly over my mouth. “Oh my god, I’m going to puke.”
“No, you’re not,” he told me. “Help me search the rest of the room.”
“I thought I wasn’t supposed to touch anything.”
“There we go,” he muttered, as if my little bit of spirit was welcome now after that discovery.
Together, the two of us searched the room, although I kept looking back to check on the dolls. They were always in the same place.
“Is this the first time you’ve been in his workshop?”
He shook his head. “I made it in here once before. I was being watched pretty closely the first two months until I won them over. It’s lucky they finally caved, or they wouldn’t have left me with you.”
“Yes, lucky me,” I said dryly, even though things would have gone even worse for me with Tritan and the Everly sisters without Echo’s protection. “And here I’d been starting to forget why wolves hate witches.”
“Everyone’s pretty terrible,” he said. “Humans, shifters, witches. In every world.”
“Are you trying to steal Jensen’s voice of optim
ism award?”
“I was raised in an orphanage, kidnapped to fight a war, then came to your fine world only to eat industrial meatloaf and be forced off a bridge,” he said. “You’ll have to forgive me for a bleak outlook in life.”
“You pretended to be so sunny at the academy.”
“I pretended to be an idiot at the academy.”
“It was never very convincing,” I said.
He leaned back from the cabinets to look at me, and there was something uncertain in his gaze.
“What is it?”
“You liked that version of Silas,” he said. “I hope you like me now.”
“You do? I thought I was supposed to be scared of Echo.”
He pulled a face. “Okay, fine. I hope you like me in the future.”
“When you’re not Echo or Silas?”
He heaved a sigh. “Nevermind.”
“What do the pieces of the Dark Collar look like, anyway?” I asked
He opened a cabinet and his lips tightened. “Like this. Shit. He’s got another one he didn’t tell me about.”
He pulled out a book from alongside the relics and began to flip through it.
“What language is that?” I frowned over his shoulder at the page, which was full of a strange, squiggling hand.
“Fae,” he said shortly.
“Can you read it?”
“Yes.”
My version of Silas was chattier. I fell silent, picking up a towel and using those to maneuver the pieces of the Dark Collar. They were heavy metal pieces that seemed as if they could snap together like a puzzle to form what looked like a crown. I push them until formed a circle.
“Don’t do that,” he warned, laying the book down beside the pieces of the metal puzzle. “According to this book, the Dark Collar can be used two ways. Broken apart to form the boundaries for an enchantment to control the shifters—”
He pushed the pieces away from each other as if to demonstrate.
“Or it can be assembled,” I said. “What does it do? Collar one shifter, like the Cure?”
“That’s the thing,” he said. “The Dark Collar began as the Dark Crown, at least according to this. Fae shifters crafted it.”
