“Don’t you think you should speak to your mother?” The look on his face told me the change of subject was deliberate—and nonnegotiable.
I was tempted to press, despite my conviction that it wouldn’t do any good, but I managed to resist. “You’re not going to lay a guilt trip on me, are you? Because you have to know my mom isn’t going to tell me anything even if I cave and talk to her.”
“I know you believe that. I don’t know if it’s true.”
My head jerked up, and I opened my mouth to say something scathing. Lugh stopped my words with an imperious gesture.
“But I also know,” he continued loudly, “that the more anyone tries to talk you into doing it, the more you’re going to dig your heels in.”
That effectively shut me up. He was right, of course, though I wasn’t completely comfortable with the admission. It made me sound kind of childish.
“So if you didn’t bring me here to persuade me to do what you want, and you’re not going to answer all the questions I have, then what are you actually up to?” I asked. I realized my eyes were roving over the exposed areas of his chest, and I once again dropped my gaze to my own hands. They were much less interesting.
“Would you believe I was just hoping we could get reacquainted?”
“No.”
He laughed again, tricking me into looking up. God, he was gorgeous! His hair was unbound today, framing his face in a raven’s wing halo. My skin remembered how silky that hair was to the touch. Not that we’d ever had any sexual relationship, nothing above some very aggressive flirting on his part—and some rampant desire on mine.
He cocked his head at me. “You’re not dating Brian anymore. Why are you still so uncomfortable with your attraction to me?”
I tried not to squirm. “Hey, you’re the one who can see into all the nooks and crannies in my mind. You tell me.”
He looked terribly amused. “Would you actually listen to anything I told you?”
Of course, he knew the answer to that, too. “Is there any chance we could just stick to business?”
He leaned forward on the couch, letting his hair flow over his shoulders to drape over the skin of his chest. I pressed my thighs together and reminded myself of the unfair advantage he had in the seduction and manipulation department.
“Your emotional well-being is my business,” he said. “You’re my host, and yet I’m utterly dependent on you. It is not the most comfortable of situations for either of us. The better you cope with the reality of our relationship, the better off we’ll both be.”
I shook my head. “None of that means you have to keep coming on to me!”
He met my mutinous gaze. “Do you think I’d keep doing it if you weren’t responding to me?”
“Since this is a dream and you control everything about it, you can make me respond whether I want to or not.”
He smiled, the expression equal parts amusement and exasperation. “Keep telling yourself that, if it makes you feel better. You are, after all, the admitted queen of denial.”
“And proud of it, too.”
He laughed, the sound like warm black velvet gliding over my skin. Goose bumps peppered my arms, and Lugh’s unique scent—a blend of musk and spice like nothing I’d ever smelled before—tickled my nose. I might deny to him that I felt any genuine attraction, but it was getting harder by the minute to deny it to myself. I closed my eyes, willing myself to wake up, to escape.
Lugh interrupted my thoughts. “As a prince among demons, I have rarely had the opportunity to walk the Mortal Plain. You are only my third host in a very long life. But I’ve never seen—or even heard of—someone who keeps so much of herself walled off from the outside world.”
My eyes popped open. “What are you, my therapist?”
He smiled. “You, my dear, would drive a therapist to drink.”
I couldn’t help my reluctant laugh. He definitely had me pegged. “My parents made me see a therapist when I was a teenager. And if I didn’t drive him to drink, it wasn’t for lack of trying.”
“I know,” Lugh reminded me, and I scowled. He gave me an apologetic shrug. “I can’t help that I see inside your mind. Should I pretend I don’t?”
I sighed. “No, of course not. But I’m sure you see well enough to know how uncomfortable I am with the idea.”
He nodded. “I do. And I’m sorry. But I can’t help it.”
It seemed to me we were at an impasse, and I desperately hoped that meant he was about to let me wake up—or, better yet, drift off into dreamless slumber.
No dice.
“There is one part of your mind I can’t see into,” he said.
That sure as hell got my attention. “What do you mean?”
“I mean there are some memories that are so solidly walled off that I can’t breach your defenses even when I try.”
I instantly knew what he was talking about, but fascinating though it might be to know there was anything in my mind he couldn’t read, I still latched onto what—to me—was the most important thing he’d said.
“You’ve been trying to breach my defenses?” My voice had risen and sounded shrill. I tried to take it down a notch. “And here you were apologizing for what you couldn’t help seeing! For an apology to count, you have to actually mean it.”
“I do mean it. But you can’t expect a demon not to be fascinated when he finds a part of his host’s mind that he can’t penetrate.”
“Sure I can!”
He sighed and shook his head. If I was lucky, I’d drive him to drink.
“So you’re not at all interested in this fact yourself?” he asked. “You aren’t even mildly curious as to why I can’t see into that dark corner of your mind?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know that it’s any great mystery. If I don’t actually remember it myself, then why should you be able to see it?”
He gave me a knowing look. “Because the memory’s in there. Nothing that happened to you damaged your memory itself—you’ve just repressed it with frightening ferocity.”
I scowled at him. “I was drugged to the gills the whole time I was at the hospital! I don’t think it’s unusual that I wouldn’t have much memory of the time.”
I had just turned thirteen when I was diagnosed with encephalitis, a rare but potentially life-threatening inflammation of the brain. I’d been suffering from headaches and fever and a stiff neck, and my parents had rushed me to the hospital fearing that I had the much more common meningitis. By the time I was admitted, I was delirious, and I don’t remember a thing from that time until I got out of the hospital.
I’d spent more than a week at The Healing Circle, much of the time on a ventilator, fighting for my life. My parents told me I was unconscious throughout most of it, and that when I was conscious I suffered from delusions and hallucinations. The doctors determined that I’d gotten sick from a mosquito bite. Unbelievable how much trouble such a tiny insect can cause.
Yeah, there were times when the idea that I’d lost a whole week of my life as if it never existed was freaky and strange. But most of the time it seemed easy to explain away.
Lugh looked like he was deep in thought, but of course he didn’t let the conversation die a natural death.
“I don’t know if I can explain it to you in a way you’d understand,” he said. “Maybe you have to be able to see as intimately into another’s mind as I can for it to make sense. But believe me, whatever’s going on with your memory is not normal, and it’s not just because of drugs. You were drugged when Raphael tricked you into summoning me. I can feel a…blank spot, for lack of a better term, in your memory from where the drugs damaged it. The time you were at the hospital isn’t blank, it’s walled off. There’s a difference.” He licked his lips as if nervous. “Something happened to you in that hospital. Something your subconscious is desperate to forget.”
I shivered. “If my subconscious is that desperate to forget it, then there must be a damn good reason.”