One of my college Psych professors claimed that every choice we made in life revolved around our desire to acquire a single thing: sex.
He argued that it was a primitive, unalterable biological imperative (thereby excusing the human race our frequent idiocy?). He said that from the clothing a person selected in the morning, to the food they shopped for, to the entertainment they sought, at the very root of it all was our single-minded goal of attracting a mate and getting laid.
I thought he was a jackass, raised a manicured hand, and told him so with lofty disdain. He challenged me to rebut. Mac 1.0 couldn’t.
But Mac 4.0 can.
Sure, a lot of life is about sex. But you have to pull up high and look down on the human race with a bird’s-eye view to see the big picture, a thing I couldn’t do when I was nineteen and pretty in pink and pearls. Shudder. Just what kind of mate was I trying to attract back then? (Don’t expect me to analyze Mac 4.0’s predilection for black and blood. I get it, and I’m perfectly fine with it.)
So, what’s the big picture about our lust for sex?
We’re not trying to acquire something. We want to feel something: Alive. Electrically, intensely, blazingly alive. Good. Bad. Pleasure. Pain. Bring it on—all of it. For people who live small, I guess enough of that can be found in sex. But for those of us who live large, the most alive we ever feel is when we’re punching air with a fist, uncurling our middle finger with a cool smile, and flipping Death the big old bird.
—Mac’s journal
I was mad as hell.
I had so many grievances that I didn‘t even know where to begin listing them. I was pissed-off walking. Or rather pissed-off sitting, tangled in crimson silk sheets that smelled like somebody‘d been having a sexathon.
That would be me.
And that made me even madder.
Just when you think your life has gotten as crappy as it can get, it goes and gets crappier. Gee, Mac doesn‘t get to have a choice about having sex with someone. Good-bye: dating, flirting, and building up to that special romantic moment. Hello: I‘m getting screwed senseless, and then, when I‘ve gotten about as low as I can get, I‘m getting screwed back to my senses—although I wouldn‘t in a million years admit any such thing to the man who was no doubt feeling impossibly smug that, by the power of his sexuality alone, he‘d rescued me from the mindless state it had taken multiple Unseelie death-by-sex Fae to drag me to, kicking and screaming. If I knew Jericho Barrons, he was walking around feeling like his dick was the most huge, magnificent, perfect, important creation under the sun.
Which—I winced—I vaguely recalled telling him a time or two.
Well … maybe several times.
I yanked the sheets up over my breasts with a snarl. The animal I‘d been recently hadn‘t left me. She was still in me and would be forever. I was glad. I welcomed her feral nature. Pink Mac had needed a good dose of savagery. It was a savage world out there.
I was coldly glad to be alive, glad that I lived another day, no matter the methods by which it had been accomplished. I was also seething, furious at everyone I‘d met and everything that had happened to me since the moment I‘d left Ashford, Georgia.
Nothing had gone as planned. Not one thing. My sister‘s murderer was supposed to be a human monster that I was going to bring to justice, either via Ireland‘s Garda or by my own methods. I wasn‘t supposed to get caught up in a deadly war between the human race and a supernatural, supersexed, immortal, and mostly invisible race, little more than a weapon to be used by whoever could figure out how to manipulate me most effectively. And that was only the beginning of the many, many things that had gone wrong.
Speaking of manipulative bastards …
What was the point of Barrons‘ stamping a tattoo on the back of my skull if he hadn‘t been able to use it to find me when I needed help the most? What was the point of V‘lane embedding his name in my tongue if, at the crucial moment, it wouldn‘t work? Weren‘t Barrons and V‘lane supposed to be the most powerful, dangerous, brilliant players of all? That was why I‘d allied myself with them!
But both had failed me when I‘d needed them the most. I‘d counted on them. I‘d believed Barrons could find me. I‘d believed V‘lane would instantly appear when summoned. I‘d believed Inspector Jayne could help me with certain problems. Those three had been the extent of my diversification.
And who‘d saved me?
Dani. A thirteen-year-old kid. A girl.
She‘d blasted in, plucked me right out of the LM‘s grasp, and whisked me to safety. No, not safety. Not quite.
She‘d taken me to Rowena, who locked me in a cell and left me alone, hellishly alone. To die?
There were memories from the time of my capture by the LM and my early incarceration at the abbey that weren‘t accessible. They were in me. I could feel them, deep, dark, secreted away in a mind that had been impressionable but uncomprehending. They weren‘t exactly memories, because memory is stored by a brain that functions and mine hadn‘t during those traumatic hours. More like imprints. Photographs snapped but not understood. Conversations overheard. Things seen. It would take work to dredge them from the muck at the bottom of my psyche. But I would.
The LM hadn‘t expected me to ever escape.
Rowena hadn‘t expected me to live.
―Surprise,‖ I purred. ―I did.‖
I tossed back the sheet and pushed up from the bed. My body felt good. It was sleeker, stronger than I remembered it being. I stretched and glanced down, then blinked, admiring myself. Gone was all softness, save my breasts and butt. My calves, thighs, arms, stomach—all were toned, shaped by smooth, sleek muscle. I flexed a bicep. I had one. Long fingernails dug into my palms. I studied them. On Samhain, they‘d been cut to the quick.
Just how long had I been having sex with Jericho Barrons? How long did it take to resculpt a body like mine had been into—Savage Me was pleased to note—this much more useful new shape? What had we been doing? Constant sexual gymnastics?
I shut down that thought. I had a few too many memories that weren‘t remotely blurry, and they gave rise to impossibly conflicting emotions.
Like: Thanks for saving me, Barrons—too bad I‘m going to have to kill you for doing those things to me and seeing me like that.
I‘d had sex with Jericho Barrons.
Not just sex. Incredibly raw, intensely intimate, completely uninhibited sex. I‘d done everything a woman could do with a man. I‘d pretty much worshipped every inch of him. And he‘d let me.
Oh, no, much more than that—he‘d enthusiastically participated. He‘d egged me on. He‘d plunged right into my animalistic frenzy with me, met me move for move in that dark lust-crazed cave where I‘d been living.
I turned to stare at the big silk-sheeted bed. It was exactly the kind of bed I‘d expect Barrons to sleep in. Sun King ornate, four-postered, draped in silk and velvet; a sensual masculine lair. There were fur-lined handcuffs on the bedposts. I got knotted up in that memory for a minute before I managed to extricate myself.
My breathing was shallow and my hands were fists. ―Oh, yes, I‘m going to have to kill you, Barrons,‖ I said coolly. Partly because, for the most minuscule sliver of an instant, while looking at those handcuffs, I‘d imagined myself climbing back into bed and pretending I wasn‘t cured yet.
And I‘d thought interacting with Barrons had been difficult before. Since the day we‘d met, we‘d maintained a careful wall of non-intimacy between us and rarely slipped. I was Ms. Lane. He was Barrons. That wall had been blasted to dust, and I hadn‘t had anything to say about it. We‘d fast-forwarded from formal and testy most of the time to See Mac Bare All/Body & Soul, without a single ounce of relationship progression along the way. He‘d seen me at my absolute worst, my most vulnerable, while he‘d been in complete control, and I still didn‘t really know a damned thing about him.
We‘d gotten as close as two human beings—well, overlooking the fact that he wasn‘t one—
possibly could. Now, in addition to wondering whether he‘d spiked the Orb of D‘Jai with deadly Shades before he‘d given it to me to give to the sidhe-seers and whether he‘d sabotaged the ritual at the MacKeltars‘ on Halloween because he wanted the walls down between Fae and human realms, I knew that killing aroused him. Turned him on. I hadn‘t forgotten that enlightening little detail I‘d found poking around inside his skull. It cast a harsh new light on the moment I‘d watched him walk out of an Unseelie mirror carrying the savaged, very dead body of a young woman.
Had he killed her just for fun?
My intuition wasn‘t buying it.