He sounded so…strange…without the speakers. Not as low-pitched, and the foreign accent…gone? Why? Maybe the speakers just warped his tone whenever he spoke. But wouldn’t she have noticed this the last time he’d come to her without the cover of the audio system?
“What’s going on?” she said. “Spill it or I’m out of here.”
“Trust me.”
She heard clothing rustle as he moved closer.
A thought clicked into gear: had he gotten braver and finally decided to forgo all the masquerade crap he loved to hide behind?
Her blood went hot, rushing and stomping until she got lightheaded, light-bodied, a rhythm beating deep and low.
“I want you to turn from my voice,” he said, only feet away now.
Games. Their games.
Her skin awakened, but it was more out of an odd inner alarm than desire. Yet, weren’t fear and lust entwined? Hadn’t she gotten off on other short-lived, rough-and-tumble boning sessions too many times to count?
So why was she hesitating? She’d already decided that it was okay for The Voice to “anchor” her crazy new existence, right? Wild sex had always stabilized her. Why not now?
Before she could answer him, frigid heat enveloped her, like someone had wrapped her in a column of numbing flame. She startled, unable to move her arms, her hands, her legs.
Another of The Voice’s provocative moves?
Why didn’t it feel as good as it usually did?
Dawn thought she heard him breathing just inches away now, but when she caught a whiff of jasmine, she realized that Jonah wasn’t touching her at all: it was one of the Friends binding her.
“Relax,” he whispered. “All I want you to do is relax.”
Listen to him, let it happen, she told herself. You always feel better afterward, so don’t fight it.
Her pulse escalated, liquid gusts flooding her veins.
He came to stand behind her. At the feel of silk against her forehead, then over her eyes, she sucked in a quick breath.
A blindfold.
As he tied it, the sensual material whispered, harsh and sleek, into a knot. The pressure vised around her head, cutting into the long black wig she was still wearing from the Tomlinson interview. Her temples thudded in time with the rest of her body, kicking out a coded message that she couldn’t translate.
The world was all black, a mass of heartbeats and razored hesitation—
Something crashed against the closed door, and Dawn startled away from it. A rain of thumps followed, like fists pelting the thick wood.
She thought she heard cries, thin and rushed, like voices threading through a wind tunnel.
Kalin, stop, Kalin…
In back of her, Jonah made a sound of disgust. “Damn it, you’d better go to your sisters, Kalin. Go.”
The cloak of cold fire unwrapped itself from around Dawn’s body, spinning her mind as the door’s lock snapped, allowing the wood to whoosh open, then slam shut. In the hall, there was a screech, then what sounded like a thousand wails of responding anger.
“Go!” Jonah yelled.
With a clipped cry, all the voices merged into one long scream that traveled down the hall, through the house, into oblivion or wherever the Friends resided.
Something, no, a lot of things, weren’t right. She had to get out of here, now, before—
At the same time Dawn reached for the blindfold, she angled away from Jonah. But before she could maneuver away, he gripped her wrist.
Solid, real—
“No…” he began.
But his words sliced off as he jerked back from her. Still blindfolded, she heard him fall to the ground.
As she fumbled to take the material off, she didn’t even have time to ask another what-the-hell. She got rid of the silk, but when she squinted her eyes to see, she couldn’t. With the candlelight gone, it was too dark.
Meanwhile, Jonah writhed and grunted on the floor, and she frantically slid her hands along the wall, coming to the light switch.
“Stop, Dawn!”
It was The Voice she knew.
She was bolted back to the wall by the command’s power…and also by the thrust of a carnal presence, exponentially more debilitating than before. She realized that, earlier, she’d only been anticipating The Voice, that her body had just been reacting to the promise of what would definitely come.
For a few seconds, she couldn’t move at all, could only gasp at the erotic waves consuming her.
The darkness covered the sounds of Jonah moving—was he sliding along the carpet?—toward the bookcase, then the mild roar of wood slipping back into place.
A secret door, she managed to think. It was probably where Jonah had first entered the room.
And…silence, except for her erratic intake of oxygen. She clawed for it, hampered by the pounding of her body, the sharp ache between her legs.
Melting, she thought, wanting him to come back, to finish what he’d started.
What had just happened?
Again, she grappled for the light switch, finally turning it on.
Illumination flooded the room, but not her mind. She looked at the bookcase, finding it opened to a slit, just as the office door had been.
But she didn’t think it was so much of an invitation this time.