66
" You stand there all tan and glowing and wonder why I use Voice on you?” he bellowed. “Where the hell do you get off? You’ve been with V’lane again. How many slaps in the face do you think I’m going to take, Ms. Lane?” He grabbed my fist and held it when I tried to punch him again. I swung at him with the other. He caught that, too. “I warned you not to play us against each other.”
“I’m not playing you! I’m trying to survive. And I don’t slap you when I go off with V’lane!” I tried to yank my fists from his hands. “It doesn’t have anything to do with you. I’m trying to get answers, and since you won’t give me any, you can’t blame me for going somewhere else.”
“So, the man who doesn’t get laid at home has the right to go off and cheat?”
“Huh?”
“Which word didn’t you understand?” he sneered.
“You’re the one who’s crippled by illogic. This isn’t home, it never will be, and nobody’s getting laid!” I practically shouted.
“You think I don’t know that?” He shifted his body beneath me, making me painfully aware of something. Two somethings, in fact, one of which was how far up my short skirt was. The other wasn’t my problem. I wriggled, to shimmy my hem down, but his expression perished the thought. When Barrons looks at me like that, it rattles me. Lust, in those ancient, obsidian eyes, offers no trace of humanity. Doesn’t even bother trying.
Savage Mac wants to invite it to come out and play. I think she’s nuts. Nuts, I tell you.
“Let go of my hands.”
“Make me,” he taunted. “Voice me, Ms. Lane. Come on, little girl, show me some power.”
Little girl, my ass. "
― Karen Marie Moning , Faefever (Fever, #3)
67
" Hope you got your things together.’” I sang, stabbing a pillow with my spear. Feathers exploded into the air. “‘Hope you are quite prepared to die!’” I spun in a dazzling whirl of lights, landed a killer back-kick on a phantom Shade, and simultaneously punched the magazine rack. “‘Looks like we’re in for nasty weather!’” I took a swan dive at a short, imaginary Shade, lunged up at a taller one—
—and froze.
Barrons stood inside the front door, dripping cool-world elegance.
I hadn’t heard him come in over the music. He was leaning, shoulder against the wall, arms folded, watching me.
“‘One eye is taken for an eye . . .’” I trailed off, deflating. I didn’t need a mirror to know how stupid I looked. I regarded him sourly for a moment, then moved for the sound dock to turn it off. When I heard a choked sound behind me I spun, and shot him a hostile glare. He wore his usual expression of arrogance and boredom. I resumed my path for the sound dock, and heard it again. This time when I turned back, the corners of his mouth were twitching. I stared at him until they stopped.
I’d reached the sound dock, and just turned it off, when he exploded.
I whirled. “I didn’t look that funny,” I snapped.
His shoulders shook.
“Oh, come on! Stop it!”
He cleared his throat and stopped laughing. Then his gaze took a quick dart upward, fixed on my blazing MacHalo, and he lost it again. I don’t know, maybe it was the brackets sticking out from the sides. Or maybe I should have gotten a black bike helmet, not a hot pink one.
I unfastened it and yanked it off my head. I stomped over to the door, flipped the interior lights back on, slammed him in the chest with my brilliant invention, and stomped upstairs.
“You’d better have stopped laughing by the time I come back down,” I shouted over my shoulder.
I wasn’t sure he even heard me, he was laughing so hard. "
― Karen Marie Moning , Faefever (Fever, #3)
70
" The Sinsar Dubh popped up on my radar, and it was moving straight toward us.
At an extremely high rate of speed.
I whipped the Viper around, tires smoking on the pavement. There was nothing else I could do.
Barrons looked at me sharply. “What? Do you sense it?”
Oh, how ironic, he thought I’d turned us toward it. “No,” I lied, “I just realized I forgot my spear tonight. I left it back at the bookstore. Can you believe it? I never forget my spear. I can’t imagine what I was thinking. I guess I wasn’t. I was talking to my dad while I was getting dressed and I totally spaced it.” I worked the pedals, ripping through the gears.
He didn’t even try to pat me down. He just said, “Liar.”
I sped up, pasting a blushing, uncomfortable look on my face. “All right, Barrons. You got me. But I do need to go back to the bookstore. It’s . . . well . . . it’s personal.” The bloody, stupid Sinsar Dubh was gaining on me. I was being chased by the thing I was supposed to be chasing. There was something very wrong with that. “It’s . . . a woman thing . . . you know.”
“No, I don’t know, Ms. Lane. Why don’t you enlighten me?”
A stream of pubs whizzed by. I was grateful it was too cold for much pedestrian traffic. If I had to slow down, the Book would gain on me, and I already had a headache the size of Texas that was threatening to absorb New Mexico and Oklahoma. “It’s that time. You know. Of the month.” I swallowed a moan of pain.
“That time?” he echoed softly. “You mean time to stop at one of the multiple convenience stores we just whizzed past so you can buy tampons? Is that what you’re telling me?”
I was going to throw up. It was too close. Saliva was pooling in my mouth. How far behind me was it? Two blocks? Less? “Yes,” I cried. “That’s it! But I use a special kind and they don’t carry it.”
“I can smell you, Ms. Lane,” he said, even more softly. “The only blood on you is from your veins, not your womb.”
My head whipped to the left and I stared at him. Okay, that was one of the more disturbing things he’d ever said to me. “Ahhh!” I cried, letting go of both the wheel and the gearshift to clutch my head. The Viper ran up on the sidewalk and took out two newspaper stands and a streetlamp before crashing to a stop against a fire hydrant.
And the blasted, idiotic Book was still coming. I began foaming at the mouth, wondering what would happen if it passed within a few feet of me. Would I die? Would my head really explode? "
― Karen Marie Moning , Faefever (Fever, #3)
75
" I've felt that body on top of mine, been the focus of that consuming gaze. I try not to think about it. I have a box inside me now that never used to exist. I never needed it before. It's down in my deepest, darkest corner, and it's airtight, soudproofed, and palocked. It's where I keep thoughts I don't know what to do with, that could get me into trouble. Eating Unseelie hammers on the inside of that lid incessantly. I try to keep kissing Barrons in that box, too, but it gets out sometimes. "
― Karen Marie Moning , Faefever (Fever, #3)
