At the mention of the bed—the one and only bed—Keira felt herself blush.
For a moment, Walker’s eyes glittered with the sexy, joking-but-wanting look that made Keira’s legs feel unsteady beneath her.
“So,” Keira said as breezily as she could. “You want to tell me exactly why we’re safe here?”
“Let me see if I can show you.” Walker sat on the edge of the bed and gently pulled her down beside him.
The surprise must have showed on Keira’s face because Walker laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m not putting the moves on you.”
She hoped her disappointment wasn’t as obvious as her surprise had been.
“At least, not yet,” Walker added.
Keira rolled her eyes. “You know that saying ‘putting the moves on you’ is about as unmovelike as you can get, right?”
Walker’s lips curved in amusement.
“Okay.” He tipped his head up so that he was staring at the ceiling. “Look up.”
Keira obediently scanned the plaster. “What am I looking for?”
“Darkside,” he said, wrapping his fingers around hers.
His warm palm should have distracted her completely, but instead it seemed to bring the invisible world closer to her. Uneven black walls rose around them, pressing in on either side of the hotel room. They rose up through the ceiling. Squinting, Keira realized that she could see all the way to the top of the walls, even though her view of her world ended at the ceiling.
The hotel was at the bottom of a Darkside ravine.
At the top was the sky, filled with a river of stars so thick and clear that it made Keira’s breath catch. They moved and swirled, literally dancing across the slice of sky that she could see between the close-pressed cliffs.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered. “That’s amazing. I’ve never seen anything so gorgeous in my whole life.”
“I feel exactly the same way.” Instead of complimenting the stunning sky, Walker’s voice was directed straight at Keira.
Immediately, she was more aware of his weight next to her on the bed, the heat of his skin, than any star in the universe. She turned to look at him, drawn like a compass needle to the north.
He brought his lips to hers. This kiss was more certain than their first—insisting, when the other had been hesitant. Walker wound his hands through her hair and she pulled his shoulders toward her, swinging her legs across his lap.
Without warning, they crashed through the mattress, landing hard on the rocky ground.
“What the hell?” Keira looked around.
The hotel room was gone.
Chapter Thirty-One
“OH, SHIT,” SHE WHISPERED, struggling to stand. A gooey black sludge coated the back of her jeans. “Walker, what is this stuff?”
“It’s . . . I guess it’s sort of like what you’d call mud. Listen, we’ve got to get out of here. Can you see the hotel room if you try?”
Keira stared at the black cliffs, trying to see the dusty drapes, the battered nightstand, but there was nothing besides the oozing mud and the rocks and the stars. “I can’t,” she whispered to Walker. “Can you?”
“Of course,” he said. “Let me see if I can pull you back over with me. We did it once before, right?”
“Yeah.” She stepped into his open arms and pressed her face against his shirt. Beneath her cheek, his heart beat furiously. She closed her eyes, focusing on the rhythm. There was a pressing sort of squeeze, and the uncomfortable sensation of something viscous running over her, like cold egg dripping down the back of her neck.
And then it stopped.
She opened her eyes.
First she saw the plaid of Walker’s shirt, and then, beyond that, the stained green carpet of the hotel room. She let out a shaky breath and stepped away from Walker, spinning around so she could see the whole room.
She stared at him, shuddering with cold. “That’s twice. This whole time I’ve seen Darkside, I’ve never gone there. And now, I’ve been there twice in one night. You kiss me and I end up there. What gives?”
“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Here.” He held out his hand. Keira took it, and the cliffs shimmered into view. Her mouth fell open.
“It’s us.” An aching certainty filled Walker’s voice. “The more we touch . . . ” He pulled her into his arms and Darkside came into sharp focus around her. Keira had to close her eyes against the two equally real worlds. It hurt to look at them simultaneously. “The more contact there is between us, the more access you have to Darkside.”
“So when we kissed, if we kiss . . . ” She bit her lip, not wanting to say it. As though it wouldn’t be true if she didn’t say it.
“If we kiss, you end up where the Reformers’ guards can see you. Where they can catch you.”
She let her head fall against his shoulder. “We can’t kiss?”