He shoved me back against a wall, palmed open a door I hadn’t even noticed, backed me in, spun me around, and crushed me against the wall, kicking the door shut behind us.
Then my jeans were down and he was inside me with a rough growl, and I was ready for him because I’m always ready for him, pushing deep and hard, and I was flattened against the wall with my hands over my head, shoving back with my ass, and that was all I needed to find a lifeline, to connect, to remain sane.
—
When we returned to Ryodan’s office, I felt remarkably better. I could think again. I wasn’t a raw mass of pain and confusion and fear. I’d dumped all that on Barrons’s big hard body. I’d turned the savagery I was feeling toward myself and the world on him. I’d nipped and fought and fucked and cleansed.
God, I love that man.
He’d understood exactly what I was doing. No words. No discussion. No pointless questions or offering of empty platitudes about whatever was bothering me.
He’d assessed.
I was pain and violence.
He’d given his body as a Band-Aid for the wound.
I suspected there would be times he would seek the same from me, and I made a promise to myself in that wonderful, fantastic, lovely closet that if I ever sensed in him what I felt myself tonight, I’d rise to his need as willingly and intensely as he’d risen to mine.
He’d taken and given, encouraged and incited…and finally soothed my wildness.
Sex is so damned healing.
“Better?” Ryodan said dryly after we walked back in.
My hair was a mess. Barrons’s shirt collar was askew. And Ryodan never missed a trick.
“Much, thanks. You?” I said just as dryly.
“Not as good as you,” he murmured, silver gaze cool.
“Where’s Da—Jada and Dancer?” I said, looking around. I could smell that they’d recently been there. We must have just missed them.
“I saw no reason to waste their time simply because you were wasting mine.”
I arched a brow. “And that means?”
“That he sent them off to do something else because he wants to talk to you without them around,” Barrons said.
I stiffened, dropping my leg from the arm of the chair where I’d tossed myself in a fairly relaxed position. Sat up straight and folded my arms. Ryodan wanting to talk to me in semiprivate is never a good thing. Private would worry the hell out of me.
“We need to talk about the Sinsar Dubh, Mac,” said Ryodan.
I blew out a gusty sigh. Recent sex aside, this was not turning out to be a banner day in Dublin. “What about it?” I was irritable all over again.
“Dancer has a theory. He thinks the Hoar Frost King inadvertently deposited the components of a Song of Destruction. He thinks the only thing that will stop the black holes from taking over this world entirely is a Song of Making.”
That made two of us. I said nothing.
“The Sinsar Dubh allegedly contains parts of that song.”
“Allegedly,” I underscored. “The truth is, none of us know a damn thing about the Book. It’s all legend and myth and supposition.”
“Which is precisely why we need you to tell us what’s actually in it. Unless you’d rather we try Cruce,” Ryodan said evenly.
Surely not even Ryodan was arrogant enough to try to interrogate Cruce in his prison. “You think you could question a psychopathic Book?”
“I suspect that’s not what he is.”
“What do you mean?”
“In the past, the Book possessed whoever touched it. That’s not what happened with him. He knew the First Language and was able to read it. The spells traveled up his arms, into his body. Did you ever see that happen before when someone handled it?”
I shook my head. It had always seized control of the person, taken them over completely. Never had the Book itself been destroyed.
Yet only a thin pile of gold dust and a handful of red, winking gemstones had remained of the Sinsar Dubh on the slab.
“The sentient Book crumbled once he was finished. Legend holds there are two parts to the Sinsar Dubh. A Book of words, spells on a page. And a second facet, the thing that evolved into a living, intelligent, hate-obsessed being with far more power than the words it contained. It appeared the sentient Sinsar Dubh was destroyed that night, and Cruce merely absorbed the knowledge.”
“Oh, God,” I breathed. “You could be right.” That prick. Had he gotten all the power without any of the price? That would make him pretty much…well, nearly the Unseelie king. I narrowed my eyes. “We don’t know that for certain.”
“But if it’s true, we wonder if you could do the same.”
“Can you tell us anything, Ms. Lane?” Barrons said.
I swiveled my head to look at him. I’d been “Mac” mere minutes ago. “Why do you do that?”
His eyes said, Do you really want to call me Jericho?