“Where have you brought me?” I ask, gripping my thighs, my stomach nearly dropping at the sheer descent so close by.
“Nowhere,” he says. “We’re right where we were. We’re just surrounded by darkness now. We can’t see your wolves and they can’t see us, but we haven’t moved from this spot. I’ve created this barrier around us so you can focus without the distraction of your wolves and the other animals.”
A check of my palm reveals that even the shimmer of my bond with Reaper is fainter. Blocked somehow. I’m struck by the way the emptiness around me clears my head. It’s almost like shifting into my wolf form—the clarity and sense of purpose as I let go of my worries.
“Do you remember what I said about controlling the nightmare power when we were in the cavern back in Vegas?” Roman asks.
It feels like a lifetime ago, but I recall the moment clearly. Koda had captured my sisters and had them cursed. I didn’t yet know who Roman was. “You said it’s not enough to be born with the ability to control the nightmare power,” I say. “To create fear, I have to first conquer it.”
He waits. “And?”
My lips purse as I dig back into that moment. It’s difficult to forget what he said after that, but I’ve buried it because he had voicedmydeepest fear. “There’s no greater fear than knowing that someone you care about is going to die.” I pull back a little. “You knew my deepest fear from the beginning.”
He nods. “The fear of losing your family.” His gaze doesn’t release me. “You fight to conquer it every day, but it will never leave you. Instead, it drives you. Even now, I sense your energy pulling back to them. Your wolves. Your sisters.” His lips twitch, but he quickly hides his smile. “Even toward Ingrid.”
He’s right, but as he states my need to protect my family, he misses mentioning the one person who isn’t part of my family who draws me like we’re connected by an invisible thread:him.
The pull toward Roman intensifies with every second that we’re alone. Every breath he takes is even, his chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm, and yet he isn’t hiding the tension around his eyes, the slight clench of his jaw, the tightness in his arms as his hands grip mine.
“You identified my fear as if I were an open book,” I say. “But I have no idea about yours.”
“You will have to dig deeper inside me than you will with any other being to find my fear,” he says. “What are you willing to do to know it?”
As his question falls around me, his gaze passes across my lips. They tingle as if he brushed them, and a jolt shoots through me, a burning need to know him that’s both physical and emotional.
My energy spikes again as I meet his challenge. “Whatever it takes.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-FOUR
The corner of Roman’s mouth tugs into a smile that is suddenly dark and wild.
He reaches for me, his big arms wrapping around me and drawing me across into his lap so that I’m straddling him. My legs slip around his hips as easily as if I’ve settled onto him in this position a thousand times. The press of my thighs against his muscles is a tempting distraction, my lips so close to his now.
I inhale a quick breath as he slides his right hand under my shirt, his big palm pressed against my spine. Even though it’s a supportive action, I can’t stop the increased rate of my breathing, not when his fingertips stroke my skin.
He brushes his left hand down my right arm, pulling my hand to the base of his neck, pressing my fingertips to the skin above his collarbone.
“This pulse point,” he says, his voice husky, his eyes filling with onyx. “Right here at the base of the neck. It’s the pulse that visibly pounds when someone is afraid. Once you’re skilled at discerning fear, you’ll be able to find someone’s fear without touching them. Until then, this is how you need to learn.”
I gasp as I recall how drawn I was to the pounding pulse at the base of Crone’s neck at the Purification Ceremony. Instinctively, I was searching for her fear without knowing how.
Roman pulls me closer so that my chest presses to his, my hand clamped beneath his. “Don’t let go. No matter what you see.”
An icy trickle passes through me, but my skin is quickly warmed by his stroking hand. Sensations spiral from the location of his palm outward across my shoulders and down to my lower back, a pulsing heat that ascends and descends as if his fingertips are tracing my spine, the same sensations that lit me on fire in the hotel room.
“Release your nightmare power, but do it slowly,” he says. “It has to be the most controlled release you can manage.”
I thought my power would need to be fierce and strong, so I ask, “Why controlled?”
“You can’t force fear to reveal itself. You have to be as quiet and as insidious as fear itself, working your way into the bloodstream, reaching behind the inner thoughts, tracking your way into the subconscious.” His lips whisper across mine, a seductive pull. “You have to coax fear out. Gently.”
I’m already pressed fully to him, every inch of my skin alive with the pressure of his hard muscles against my softer curves. It’s triggering the demon power within me. My breathing is erratic, and I expect it will be harder to control my power, but instead, all of my senses buzz in a way that brings my surroundings into sharp focus. The emptiness of the sky and the illusion of faraway stars. The drop into nothing mere feet away from me. The heated press of Roman’s body between my legs.
And finally… the trickle of beautiful, alluring darkness that blossoms around my fingertips where he holds them to the base of his neck. The smoky twists of rich purple seep into his skin, descending from my ordinary sight, but my demon sight suddenly explodes with crimson color, every shade of red from the color of roses to the deep hue of mahogany.
My vision colors so abruptly that I jolt, but Roman holds me tightly, the heat from his touch soothing me in a way that only sets alight my other senses. Touch. The sound of his exhalations and inhalations, every breath he takes whispering across my lips so close to his.
When he speaks, his voice is unexpectedly strained and I try to clear my vision to see his face again, to check if I’m causing him pain.
