She was giving the Dolan girl’s body forever. Cari’s neck would not break at the gallows drop. This skin would not be broken by a blade. Her bones would not crumble with time.
Why then wouldn’t the girl welcome Maeve when she’d come bearing gifts? Did this age have no hospitality?
The creatures behind Maeve wailed a grievous sound.
How was she to cross, if the Dolan did not bid her come?
Maeve put a finger to her lips and wondered . . .
All her Dolan get were stubborn. They’d been born to rule, and their first subject was always themselves. Cari Dolan was no different.
What did the girl want?
Maeve smiled and the lesser fae laughed once again. Yes. Him.
Enough. He was tired.
Mason knew that Cari’s business was none of his, but if there was a fae bothering her, prowling around Dolan House, then he should check it out. Not knowing was dangerous, plus, he wanted his sleep.
Shadow hummed in his blood almost immediately upon leaving his room. The hum grew electric when he put his hand to the top of the stair’s banister. When he hit the main floor, his nerves were screaming Shadow in a mix of pain-pleasure, which wasn’t his thing at all. He’d had enough of pain. Now he was a pleasure man all the way.
Damn it, Cari.
Down a wide and high main hallway, a light gleamed from the bottom of a closed double doorway. It was queer, like silver, and dense like water.
He approached, then opened one side. “Cari?”
She turned to face him. Her face was streaked with mascara tears, but her eyes were clouded with Shadow. She pulsed with dark light, her skin glowing with the anti-luminescence of earlier that afternoon. She looked almost fae, though he’d never seen a creature of Twilight. But this Cari was not of this world. A leather-bound journal was clutched in her hands.
“I was just thinking about you.” She wavered on her feet, as if drugged. She bit her lip to ruby red, her wide eyes asking for help.
“I think it’s time to go to bed.” What had she been playing at, he wondered?
“I can’t sleep.” She was standing at a slant, holding on to a table to keep herself from falling. She’d found a new enemy—gravity.
He hadn’t thought she could get any worse, but then Cari had always surprised him.
“That makes two of us,” he answered, surly.
Since she was obviously high on Shadow, he had to be the reasonable one. He picked her up, and ignored how her soft, sweet body curled into his. It had been a really long time since he’d held a woman. The fact that he was holding this particular woman didn’t help matters. He powered up the stairs, grateful that the chugging of his heart fought the direction of his blood.
“Where’s your room?” he said low in her ear.
Her mouth moved to his jaw. “Any room.”
“I want your room.” She was not sleeping in his.
She straightened a leg, pointing with her toe. “That way.”
Good. He took her down the hall to that door. He tried to turn the knob with his arms full of Cari. Took three tries, increasingly loud in the echoing space. The statue behind him watched. Didn’t help his coordination that Cari was doing something to his shirt. “Stop it, Cari.” She found his skin—her touch sizzled, sending a current of magic across his chest.
He finally got the door open. Kicked it wide, he was so fed up. As he turned her body so she wouldn’t bang her head on the jam, he caught sight of her stepmother. Mage black eyes, like glossy coal. She looked like she wanted to spit. At him.
This was not what it seemed.
“Faster, Mason,” Cari whispered.
Apparently it was.
He swept Cari inside, his irritation making him stronger, and slammed the door shut behind him. Cari could correct mistaken assumptions tomorrow. If the stepmother was going to kill him in the meantime, he hoped she’d make it quick and clean.
Tucking Cari in bed was like peeling off a kitten. She was going to have a blister of a headache tomorrow. He covered her with the blankets, warning “stay.” But her gaze burned so hot that he didn’t trust she would.
And if she got up? Would a male member of her staff say no?
He wasn’t going to defend her virtue, regardless of how she’d mocked his—Cari could sleep with whomever she wanted—but he would see to her dignity. The new, mighty Dolan, undone by magic. Careful, controlled Cari would be mortified.
She was sitting up, pulling at the neck of her blouse. She couldn’t seem to understand how buttons worked.
Another man might tempt fate and try to “make her more comfortable.” He wasn’t stupid. He didn’t need to see her glowing skin to challenge his willpower. His mind was already stuttering with his response. He’d slept in his clothes many times. So could she.
His attention caught on a side table cluttered with small decorative bottles meant to hold scent. They gleamed in the late night like fat, gaudy jewels, and were stoppered by slivers of moonlight.
They would do just fine.
Mason handled each one, working Shadow with each discovery, his rough fingertips on the crystal planes. He knew Cari watched from the bed. He felt the weight of her interest in the beat of his blood. And when she was just about to sit up again—she’d remembered how to push buttons out of the little holes made for them—he tossed the bottles in the air above her.
She leaned back on her elbows. “Oh!”
He spun the bottles on invisible strings of magic. He’d crafted similar mobiles for Fletcher so many times—with action figures zipping around above his bed. It’d been the only thing that would get Fletcher to actually lie down and stay put long enough to let his body rest. How on Earth did humans manage bedtime for their kids?
Cari settled back, dazzled, watching the jewels spark and spin. “Father gave me those.”
Mason felt the loss in her voice; it echoed his own. What a lonely pair they were.
He sat heavily in a chair near the window and watched her from there. The minutes ticked by and the queer light seemed to leave her skin. Her eyelids fluttered, lush curling fans, then dropped.
He watched her for a while after she slept, the shallow rise and fall of her chest, and smiled at his younger self, who would have been on fire to set foot in Cari’s room. No, boy, he wanted to tell himself. Not in a million years.
When he replaced the bottles on her table, he thought that they did suit her. A small, private extravagance, yet deeply personal. He liked how she wasted nothing on herself, not really.
The glow in the room went pink, the sun finally cresting the horizon. So much for sleep. Of course, with the way the stepmother had looked at him, it was probably for the best anyway.
Cari finally found her spine, forced her gaze away from the bright midmorning light coming from the windows in Mason’s suite, and looked the man in the eyes. “Thank you for helping me out last night.”
She’d waited downstairs for him, but he’d been working in his room all morning. The short table he was using for a desk held an open laptop. A notepad was sketched over with notes in a rough hand. A coffee cup was making a ring on the pages.
“Don’t mention it.” He’d shaven, his hair still wet and a little wavy from a shower. The man had no finish, no affectation of status; he was unrefined and growing more so with clear signs of wear.
He could’ve taken advantage. Why hadn’t he? The thought was tinged with disappointment.
She shrugged. Stupid vanity. “I haven’t had Shadow poisoning since I was fourteen and huffed Shadow to try to spot a fae.” That’s what it had to be. An extreme version of it, this time brought on by her unexpected inheritance.
His brows drew together quizzically. “Huffed Shadow?”