Eternal Hope (The Hope Series) (23 page)

It was impossible to know what to say. Aside from the fact that Daniel probably didn’t
actually
want any counsel from him, the question was too difficult to answer. Any response he formulated seemed extremely inadequate. Silence fell over the car, and Daniel sat stewing. Kayden was about to do something he’d thought he’d never do again- ask him if he was okay- but before he could, the silence was shattered. Farley started screaming.

The room was brightly lit by a hundred candles- probably more. Their flames flickered and guttered, casting long shadows on the walls that reached up and danced across the ceiling. She smiled lazily, feeling sleepy as she watched the movement morph and twist above. A heavy calm rested over her, weighting her into the soft bed beneath her. The cool, smooth sensation of silk against her skin was delicious. She writhed on top of the covers, enjoying the way it whispered over her stomach and her thighs.

“Quite comfortable, my love?”

Neither the voice nor the question was surprising. She’d known from the instant she’d woken up that she wasn’t alone, and the knowledge that someone watched over her, waiting for her to rouse herself, was comforting. Safe. She blinked her eyelids and stretched out her body, cat-like, ignoring the tingling pain across her lower back. That pain wasn’t important. The only important thing was being here and feeling this drowsy contentment flood through her veins. She propped herself up in the bed, scanning the room until she found him. He sat at the end of the bed, reading a book with his ankles crossed in front of him.

She knew him. Every single line of his body was familiar; the short, caramel hair that was swept back out of his face; the way his lips curled and grew fuller in the middle, shaping a kiss in the making; how one of his shoulders angled down with the way he held his body; the curious, entertained arch of his dark eyebrow. The details of him were ingrained in every part of her.

He gave her a slow, exultant smile. “Back from the dead, my love?”

She returned the smile, stifling back a yawn. She rolled onto her stomach and crawled across the bed, collapsing in front of him. When she rested her head against his legs, he put down his book and gently stroked her hair.

“You were sleeping for a long time,” he whispered.

“I know. My bones feel stiff.”

“I have a cure for that.” He lifted her head up and slipped onto the bed, climbing over her legs so that he held himself above her. The candlelight played across his face, all warm honey and lazy afternoon sun. His brown eyes were smiling, the way they did when he was thinking thoughts too outrageous to voice. She grinned up at him, pretending not to notice the desire visibly burning through him as he looked her up and down.

“Come on,” she breathed. “My bones are made from lead. Where’s this miracle cure?”

His smile grew wider, his lips parted ever so slightly with a wry twist that sparked the beginnings of longing deep in her chest. He teased her, hovering an inch above her, laughing silently as she arched towards him, hungry for a kiss. Eventually she grew tired of his game and wrapped her hands around the back of his neck, pulling him down on top of her. He laughed, but that quickly trailed off as she started biting playfully at his throat. The breath huffed out of him, heavy and hot.

He snatched hold of her wrists and pinned them to the bed, locking her underneath him. “You are trouble, my love.”

“And this, coming from the very embodiment of trouble,” she laughed.

He ran his hand up the outside of her bare thigh, pushing the thin layer of white silk aside. His touch sent a shiver of pleasure through her body. There was something she needed, something she wanted more than anything else in the entire world, and it was related to his touch. She looked up at him, feeling her whole body ignite with the overpowering need for… something. He looked down at her, a troubled expression flashing across his face.

“Please…” she breathed.

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.” He pushed backwards to rest on his heels, still straddling her body. She sat up, leaning into him.

“Don’t worry so much. Just… go with it.” An odd sense of alarm buzzed at the back of her mind, but she pushed it aside. There was no reason to deny this feeling of happiness, this insatiable craving that pulsed through every cell of her body. She slipped her hands under his black shirt, teasing at the buttons from the inside. He groaned and closed his eyes, pushing her back down onto the bed. “Just this once, okay?”

She nodded, reaching up to kiss him again. His tongue tasted sweet like those pears he loved so much. A fire started burning inside her, making her lips tingle and her head throb. She was ready. He was, too- she could tell. His finger traced across her closed eyelids and down the bridge of her nose. It finally rested on her lips; she kissed it gently, knowing what it did to him.

When she spoke, her voice caught in her throat. “Promise me this is forever.”

“Forever,’ he agreed. “Always. My heart, my life, my soul. Every part of me is yours.”

“And I, yours.”

The pain was immediate and severe. It knocked the wind out of her and scrambled her mind, making it hard to think. Somehow she managed to open her eyes. He was sitting over her with a tender look on his face, watching as she jackknifed and flailed. Her limbs writhed without her permission, thrashing on the bed. A memory of a similar unbearable pain fluttered like a ghost on the outskirts of her consciousness, trying to push its way in. There was something about a light… a light filling her whole and bursting through her body in hot, jagged forks. Something about… her father?

Farley bucked on the bed, her eyes wild, roving around the room as her body convulsed. There was a guy kneeling over her, and he looked like he was really enjoying whatever it was he was doing to her. She fought to raise her hands up and shove him away, but as he she did so something about the blinding pain charging through her nerve endings changed. The pain was still there, but a hot, euphoric feeling began to build alongside it, clouding her head. The sensation was slow and languorous, sweet and irresistible. She gasped and lunged forward, fighting for breath. She had to stop whatever was happening before she got too lost and that was no longer an option. Her palms slammed into the guy’s chest and he fell backwards onto the bed, looking stunned. A hurt expression materialized on his face.

“Aria?”

Farley froze, staring at him like he was the devil. He studied her face for a moment before sitting back up onto his heels and reaching out a hand towards her. It was shaking.

“
Aria
,” he repeated, harder this time. More forceful.

“No,” Farley hissed, scrambling away from him. Her back hit the wall behind her and a candle toppled over, spilling molten liquid wax all down her arm and onto the floor. She sucked in sharply through her teeth, feeling it burn her skin. He looked startled, more scared than her.

“What’s going on?” He gently wrapped his hand around her left ankle in a familiar way that sent a hot pull through her body. She kicked free of his loose hold and panicked, pulling down the non-existent silk nightdress she wore so it covered at least part of her thighs.

“I don’t know. Where am I?”

His face crumpled into a mask of confusion. “The north Quarter. Is… is everything alright? Aria, was it too much?”

“Too much?” Farley swallowed, remembering the sinking feeling of ecstasy that had bathed her body. She shivered. “I told you. I’m not Aria.”

The guy clenched down on his jaw. “Who are you, then? What are you doing to my wife?”

Wife?
He seemed a little young to have a wife. “I’m Farley. And I’m not doing anything to her. We were being attacked by Simeon’s men. The next thing I know, I find myself here with you electrocuting the crap out of me.”

The guy froze, the front of his shirt all rumpled and creased. He ran a hand back through his hair. “What did you say?”

“I said I was somewhere else. I was being attacked, and then
wham
… you looked like you were getting your rocks off while I was getting my hair permed for life.”

He leaned forwards, resting his hands on either side of her legs. “But who?
Who
was attacking you?”

There was something very unnerving about the way he looked at her, piercing through her with his eyes. She tugged at the bottom of the silk nightdress, feeling naked in more than one way. “By Simeon.”

The guy flinched, pulling back. “Impossible.
I
am Simeon.”

A thousand things ran through Farley’s head: should she scream? Should she try and make a run for the door? Should she throw a candle at him and hope the wax seared his face right off? In the end, she didn’t have time to do anything. Her mind barely had a chance to stop spinning before the room began to tilt for real. The candle flames leapt a foot high without any warning, and the fire immediately caught on the gauzy, fairytale material that hung from the walls around the bed. The flames literally made a
whoompf
sound as they leapt upwards, lapping hungrily towards the ceiling. Farley screamed, terrified, while the room was devoured by smoke and the hellish red blaze.

Simeon sat on the bed staring at her, apparently oblivious to the fact that the room had morphed into a roaring inferno. She swung around searching for a door but the smoke made seeing impossible. It was then that the walls began to melt- the bed, the floor, the furniture- everything started to soften and liquefy. Even Simeon began to puddle. The sight of his skin blistering and falling away was too traumatizing to watch. She clenched her eyes closed and crouched into a ball, choking on the acrid air. As she rocked back and forth, a piercing shout cut above the ear-popping rush of the fire.

“
Get out! Get out! GET OUT!
”

When she woke, Daniel was reading, his voice a hushed murmur. The words were melancholy, filled with sadness. She held her breath and listened.

If I found a rhythm

The cold, dead beat of the sea

Crushing, breaking, rushing sea,

Found metronome

Amongst the weeds and wares

Of a timeless force of nature,

Would there be sense?

A sense of longing?

Brittle hopes for a labored soul

To conceive

On this light dawn.

It hits your jaw.

A gentle, lonely kiss.

Met with shadow

Without rhyme

Remains hidden, whispers of

Original things

Lost along the way

This life of light and sound.

The sound of a book snapping closed filled the room, too loud after the muted words of the poem. Farley kept her eyes closed, knowing the tears behind her eyelids wouldn’t stop flowing if they were allowed to fall. It wasn’t the poem. It was everything.

The vision was too horrendous for words. Had she inadvertently stepped back and caught a glimpse of Simeon’s past? How would that have even happened? Or was he just playing with her, affecting the vision somehow, showing her things he thought would make her feel sorry for him. Because she did. She felt so, so sorry for him. And that was the most terrifying thing of all.

The Simeon she’d met in the vision had been incredibly in love with the girl in his bed. Farley had felt a disjointed connection to everything that had happened before she pushed through and took control. It was almost like
she
had been Aria for those few minutes, and she had loved Simeon, too. It was a pure, happy love only tainted by their weird sexual practices. But even that was confusing, because Simeon really hadn’t wanted to do it. Aria had him twisted around her little finger.

That whole memory was something Farley really didn’t want to examine too closely. If she did, she was going to have to relive it, which meant admitting to herself that the latter part of the experience had felt pretty damn good. She shifted in the bed, trying not to remember the worried look on Simeon’s face when she’d freaked out and pushed him away.

“She’s waking up,” a voice said. It was Kayden.

“Alright. Give her some room.”

Farley let her eyes flicker open. Faded sunlight washed in through the window of her bedroom, falling in thick bars across the wall. Kayden sat at the foot of her bed, peering forward anxiously, wearing what could only be described as concern across his forehead. Daniel lay on the floor on his back, staring up at the ceiling, clasping a closed book to his chest. His hair fell back to the floorboards, messy and wild. After a moment he gave her a careful look out of the corner of his eye.