“You’ll know when the time comes.”
And then she was gone, and I was back in the Penthouse penthouse, but I was no longer alone. I knew that as well as I knew the scent of Jimmy’s skin.
I took a deep breath. Cinnamon, soap, and water. Still the same. How could that be?
Someone had turned out all the lights, and the only illumination came from the reflection of the city below us.
He slid out of the shadows, his hair wet and slicked away from his face. The blood was gone; only a few thin slices of white remained on his chest where the cuts had been. His loose black pants rode so low I expected them to fall off. I could see his hipbones jutting just above the waistband. He looked even thinner than he had when he’d shown up in Milwaukee. I suppose an all-liquid diet could do that to a man.
How long had he been here? A few days at most. Didn’t mean he hadn’t been running himself ragged, forgetting to eat, ever since Ruthie died.
In another life, another world, with another me, I might be compelled to feed him. Unfortunately, in this world, what he wanted to eat was me.
I cringed at the double entendre and put it straight out of my head. Panic right now would get me nowhere.
I didn’t remember coming to my feet, but I had. Good. I didn’t want to be trapped on the couch, with Jimmy looming over me. Not that I wasn’t trapped in this room and in the biggest pickle of my life.
He moved so fast, I had no sense he was coming until he was there, so close his body brushed mine, our faces only centimeters apart. I couldn’t help it, I took a step back. My legs hit the couch, and I almost went down.
He grabbed me by the arms, and now our bodies weren’t merely brushing, but plastered together like lovers.
I lifted my gaze. He smiled. For an instant, in the half-light, he resembled the Jimmy I’d always craved. Then he tilted his head and the strange red flare in the center of his eyes was visible again.
“Let me go.”
He didn’t even acknowledge the words, just continued to stare into my eyes as if searching. But he was the one who was lost.
“So.” His fingers tightened, the pressure, the pain, causing me to come up on my toes, rubbing my breasts against his bare chest. “Didn’t take you long to fuck the skinwalker and have a vision. I figured you’d be there a few weeks at least before he managed to loosen you up.”
I tensed at the crudeness but refused to look away. “Was that necessary?”
“I hear that it was. What I want to know is, was it good for you?”
I couldn’t resist. “Better than you.”
He let me go so abruptly I fell onto the couch with a little bounce.
“Never use his name again.” Jimmy’s voice was a low, rumbling growl. Not human, not beast, but both.
“I didn’t,” I pointed out.
If Jimmy was completely absent, if he was possessed, or no longer human, then why was he feeling the very human emotion of jealousy? If he didn’t love me just a little, somewhere in there, then why would he care so much that I’d slept with Sawyer?
As bizarre as that spark of jealousy was, it gave me hope. If he could feel that, he could feel more, and if I could get him to remember the love, we might just have a chance.
Love is always stronger than hate, Ruthie had said, and once before, a good memory of a time when our lives had been filled with love had brought him back from a lesser darkness.
I needed to believe what she’d said was true. It was all that I had.
He stalked back and forth in front of the wall of windows. It occurred to me that while he knew I had come into the fullness of Ruthie’s powers, he was unaware of the empathy that made me as powerful as any breed. He couldn’t know. That talent might save my life.
I forced myself to stand again, to move away from the couch and closer to him. “The strega said you asked for me.” Jimmy stopped pacing. “Why?”
“You thought I wanted to save you from death at his hands?” The amusement returned. His moods changed so quickly, I had a hard time keeping up.
I had thought that, for the single instant it had taken me to figure out how foolish I was. “Actually, I thought you wanted to kill me.”
“Eventually.”
He moved again with that preternatural speed, so that it seemed he was standing by the window and then, faster than my eyes could track, he was grabbing me, hauling me against him, pressing his nose to my neck and inhaling deeply.
“What’s happened to you?” I whispered.
He lifted his head, but he didn’t let me go. “We are an ancient race.”
“You aren’t,” I interrupted. “You’re more human than Nephilim.”
He ignored me, continuing with the litany he seemed to have memorized, or perhaps had had implanted in his brain. “We will own this world. Humans will be our slaves, our food, whatever we wish. 1 wanted you to be my first.”