Shadow's Edge

9

“You’re hopeless,” Jenna answered with a laugh. She refilled Mrs. Colfax’s glass and picked up her own.

With a twinge of sadness, she thought of her mother and the toast she used to make on Jenna’s every birthday. She raised her glass and swallowed around the lump in her throat. This one’s for you, Mom.

“Life is pain and everyone dies, but true love lives forever.”

Mrs. Colfax pursed her lips. “Tch. How uplifting. And please don’t tell me you believe that hornswoggle, my dear. The myth of true love is one of the greatest self-deceptions ever embraced by the female s*x. It’s right up there with the ridiculous notion that money can’t buy happiness and size doesn’t matter. Now eat your steak—and don’t tell me it’s overcooked; I made sure they prepared it just as you like. Bloody rare.”

Hours later—dinner finished, dishes cleared, Mrs. Colfax off to the glass Goliath—Jenna lay in bed, staring up at the shadows crawling over the ceiling, thinking about love and death and self-deception, about a pair of fine green eyes burning bright.

She fell asleep with the image of those eyes still glowing behind her lids.

Jenna had been having the same dream since childhood, and though the details varied, the sense of happiness she awoke with never did. She was running through an ancient forest with total abandon, leaping over fallen logs and moss-covered boulders, flying through air swirling so thick with morning mists it seemed to brush against her bare skin like silken tresses of hair. Moist beds of moss and green leaves were crushed into perfume underfoot as she ran, only somehow she felt the loamy forest floor through the soles of four feet instead of two. But this dream was different. And profoundly disturbing.

It began with the whisper of her name in her ear.

The voice was both familiar and alien, and strangely comforting. She turned toward it, reaching out with a sigh. Her fingertips met soft skin over a strong jaw, traced the outline of full lips, but her lids were so heavy she was unable to open her eyes to see the face under her hand. The lips moved to her face, brushed her forehead, temple, cheek, then pressed softly against the corner of her mouth. She shivered with pleasure. The barest musk of spice and smoke and summer heat teased her nose.

“Yes,” Jenna murmured into the darkness. Then she felt the hands.

A hand with strong, cool fingers curled around the back of her neck, cradling her head. Another softly stroked the slope of her cheek, then moved down the line of her throat to where her pulse beat hot and strong beneath the skin. She felt the lips touch her there, heard her name whispered again.

She arched her back, made a small sound deep in her throat, and whispered, “Yes, please.”

The fingers tightened in her hair, pulled her head gently back, exposing her bare throat. A feather-light kiss on her neck turned to a deeper, insistent suck as a warm mouth opened over the column of her throat. Jenna moaned, a sharp ache of longing between her legs.

“Tell me you want me,” the voice murmured, husky-sweet, teasing, lips moving over her skin.

“Yes, yes,” she said, heartbeat accelerating, breath coming shorter.

“Say it,” the voice softly commanded, and she trembled under the current of desire that scorched through her. Goosebumps formed over every inch of her skin, hardening her n*****s into raw nerves that longed for the lap of his tongue, the gentle tug of his teeth.

“I want you, I want you, I want—”

But her whispered chant was cut off by the lips crushing down on hers. The fingers dug into the flesh at her hips. Her hands reached out, pulled the face down harder. She twined her fingers into locks of thick, silken hair.

She pressed her body up against a hard chest, wanting more, so much more, but suddenly the kiss was over, the hands were gone, and nothing more remained but a low, throaty laugh that drifted into silence as she jerked upward out of bed, waking, and sat trembling and gasping in the dark room.

It was hours before she fell back to sleep.

When she opened her eyes in the morning, she was lying on her side, knees drawn up, hands folded beneath her cheek, the bed sheets in disarray around her waist. Sunlight slanted through the slit in the heavy blackout shades and fell into a pool of gold on the beige carpet.

A lone seagull cried out somewhere in the distance and the sharp tang of hot espresso reached her nose from the neighbor’s kitchen. The alarm clock swam into view, the small bedside table with its reading lamp, framed photo of her mother in a rare smile, her desk with computer and telephone beyond.

The book she was reading before bed lay open upon the nightstand, though she remembered distinctly closing it before setting it down and turning off the light.

She frowned and stared at it for a moment before pushing herself up from the pillow to a sitting position. She had closed it, she knew—she remembered thinking at the time that she shouldn’t be dog-earing a library book. She picked the book up and looked at it, then decided she’d probably been too tired to remember anything clearly. With a shrug, she set it back down on the nightstand, yawned, and stretched.