Getting Wilde (18 page)

Kreios’s chuckle brought me back to my senses, and I stiffened. How long had I been sitting there, staring at him? Enthralled like a rabbit by the wolf. “Quit that,” I muttered, wishing there was more scotch in my glass. I felt like I could down the whole bottle.
 

What did I truly yearn to know, he’d asked, and too many options lodged themselves in my brain.
Why is this happening, why now, why to me? And will it all end so horribly as it had before, with everyone I knew just…gone?
 

Unaccountably, my heart turned over,, thumping painfully as my life stretched out before me. My ragtag childhood, my mother’s boozy laughter—her love too impossible to predict, too ephemeral to grasp. The emerging of my own abilities out of nowhere, and Mom’s delight in showing me off to her friends, her neighbors and, finally, to the impossibly perfect cop who’d looked down at me without flinching and asked if I could help find a missing kid.
 

Don’t go there. Don’t ever go there. He’s dead to you.
 

But he wasn’t dead, not really. I felt his sharp presence every time I touched down in Las Vegas. He’d transferred there. Of course he’d transferred there, the one city I needed him not to be. He’d risen to the rank of detective now, and if he ever saw me… If he ever realized that I was alive, and that his frenzied search to find me after that horrifying day in Memphis had all been
for naught, that the moment he’d given up on me and acknowledged I was dead, I’d been five states away singing show tunes at an RV campsite… I couldn’t imagine how much he’d hate me then. But I’d had to do it. I’d had to. No one else could die because of me.
 

They’re all dead to you.
 

“You should never resist your desires, Sara,” Kreios purred, and in my hand, my glass was suddenly more than half-filled with the glittering dark liquid.
 

I swirled it, the aroma of the aged spirits rising around me. “And this is real,” I said flatly, forcing my memories down to focus on the Devil and his tricks. “I could drink this, and it would affect me as much as any drink would. The flames burning those men—those were real too.”
 

He shrugged. “Did they seem real to you? Does the scotch taste real?”
 

I tilted the glass and took a sip, savoring the familiar burn once more. “Yes. But that’s not what I asked.”
 

“What is reality?” Kreios stood and stretched luxuriously, sweeping his hand around the space. I was drawn by the movement of his hand, watching it like it was the pendulum at the end of a hypnotist’s chain. “Is this airplane that Armaeus so generously provided us real?” he asked, strolling a few steps toward the bar before turning to me. “Is the air we breathe and the skin we inhabit real? Am I real?”
 

“Any of me?” A second voice sounded, and my gaze jerked back to Kreios’s chair. Sitting there was a second Kreios, his smile wry as he took in my startled glance. “Armaeus really
has
fallen short on your training, it appears. I could assist you with that.”
 

“It’s all illusion,” I said, swiveling my gaze from one of him to the other. “Which one is—”
 

“Which one would you like to be real?”
 

I nearly dropped my drink as the words fanned across my ear, lips grazing along my neck. A third Kreios had taken up residence in the chair beside me. He leaned into my space as I sat rigidly, his laughter setting whorls of sensation skittering down my skin. “The entire point of an illusion is for you to see what you most want to see, what your mind can allow you to see. And taste.” Kreios part three reached over and slipped the glass of scotch out of my fingers, taking a slow drink before letting his fingers go lax, the glass and scotch dropping out of his hand. Reflexively, I grabbed for it, even as it winked out of existence, and he caught up my hand in his strong, warm grasp, pulling it to his mouth. “And touch,” he murmured.
 

I stared at him as he pressed his lips against my fingertips, the responding reaction deep in the center of my being swift and absolute. The ache of my own memories flipped to a desperate heat that pooled within me, flooding me with need. “This is an illusion,” I tried again, though my words sounded shaky to my own ears.
 

“If you wish it to be,” he said, and his grip on my hand firmed. With a ruthless yank, he pulled me over the short distance between our chairs, then turned and thrust me from him, half hurling me backward across the room. I hit the carpeted floor with a cry, my head cracking the surface hard enough that I saw stars. I heard the attendant’s concerned voice, and then the sound of a slamming door as my vision swam back into focus. The ceiling. I was staring at a ceiling. I caught my breath, scrambling backward across the floor, needing to move—
 

A weight several times more than that of a normal man suddenly fell on me, and I gasped in sharp, bewildered pain as my eyes blinked open, my lungs crushed for another second as my body was spread-eagled flat onto the floor. Kreios hovered above me, his legs locked on mine, his hands pinning my wrists to the floor as he grinned down at me. “I thought this would make you more comfortable.”
 

“Get off me!” I squirmed and immediately realized the problem with that idea, as the position of our bodies left no doubt as to the level of Kreios’s interest in our game, illusion or no.
 

He laughed at my newfound awareness of him, then slowly, deliberately, ground into me, forcing my body to react in a way that could only be described as a betrayal. “You fight so hard,” he mused, his gaze dropping to my heaving torso, rigid against his assault. “This Tyet you wear, what is it you think it can do for you? Simply forestall the inevitable?”
 

“You are an
illusion
,” I gritted out, my words ending on a moan as Kreios edged forward again, dropping over me to take my mouth in a hard, searching kiss. His tongue thrust between my lips, tasting, demanding—and my body felt like it was going to go up in fire, the heat so intense in my core that I desperately feared he’d cast off my clothes as easily as Armaeus had done, and then we would be positioned body against body, need against need, with nothing between us except my own fraying control.
 

“I think you
like
this illusion,” Kreios said, his words tight and almost angry as he shifted his mouth up next to my ear. “I think you have  yourself and your abilities, so locked up inside a cell of your own making that you are afraid to truly feel, Sara Wilde. Afraid to truly own the gifts you were brought into this world to share. And more,” he said, drawing his tongue along my chin as I twisted my head and stretched back from him, trying—impossibly—to escape. He found my lips again anyway, branding them with another kiss. When he finally lifted his head, his words sent an entirely different wave of panic across me. “I think you
like
the way I make you feel, trapped in my—”
 

“
No!
” Summoning strength from the depths of my being, I cracked my head up against Kreios’s forehead, the shock of the movement forcing him to loosen his iron grasp on my hands. Forming my fingers into a bent battering ram, I punched out toward his throat, catching him
enough as he fell back to earn me a snarl. I used the additional space between us to curl my legs up tightly into my body, kicking out at his midsection to propel myself away.
 

It worked. I flipped over onto my hands and knees, and for a heart-thundering second, I was free, army-crawling across the floor, pulling myself to my feet—
 

And then a body crashed into mine again, flattening me once more to the floor, grinding my face into the sumptuous carpet, Kreios’s chest against my shoulder blades, his legs heavy on the back of my thighs, his groin—
 

My eyes crossed as he pressed into me. “Better?” he murmured, though I wasn’t quite up to speech for a long, shuddering breath.
 

“I told you
no
,” I spit out when I could talk again, and the Devil’s laugh drifted down over my ears.
 

“You denied liking the way I made you feel, Sara Wilde. That is a far different thing from telling me to stop making you feel that way.” He drifted a kiss over my hair. “Something for you to remember.”
 

And with that, he stripped himself off my body. Anger exploding through me, I rolled up to my feet, whirling around to fend off another attack.
 

Kreios regarded me with amusement from his chair, his drink still in his hand. Mine sat waiting for me next to my chair, its level indicating that I’d had a few healthy swigs, no more.
 

“An illusion,” I managed shakily, straightening my clothes. Not a stitch had come off my body. Even my Tyet had remained firmly in place, not reacting cold or hot to the Devil’s assault. “That…was all an illusion.”
 

Kreios shrugged. “Did it feel like an illusion?”
 

I gingerly touched my jaw where it had been shoved against the carpeted floor, wincing as my fingers connected with the abraded skin. “But—”
 

“Come here,” he said, his voice echoing in my bones. Ignoring him, I walked over to the bar where the Glenmorangie still sat, and pulled another crystal tumbler from the rack. Kreios’s laughter was rich and full behind me.
 

“You see, you
can
choose that which you prefer to take as real, versus what you choose to see as illusion. Which makes me wonder why you allow yourself to live with the illusions you do.”
 

I turned and scowled at him. “I’m aware of the council’s abilities of manipulation, Kreios. And I appreciate the reminder. But don’t treat me like a fool.”
 

“Then stop
acting
like one.” Just like that, Kreios was in front of me again, his impossibly beautiful eyes staring down at me, his lush lips bare inches from mine, sending my body into another spasm of need. “You, more than most in this world, have the ability to see beyond your fears, your desires. To recognize them merely as tools that serve to unlock a greater truth. You should learn to trust yourself.”
 

“I can’t trust myself!” I shoved him, and he fell back easily, which only served to piss me off more. “You of all people should know that. I can’t—”
 

“Ah-ah-ah,” He raised a finger, the danger shimmering between us almost like a living thing. “Have a care with sharing your fears, sweet Sara. Remember, I cannot know them without your tacit permission.”
 

I broke off, staring at him, my heart thundering, the entire history of my horrible choices parading in front of my eyes, mocking me for
ever
having trusted myself. “Then what can you see?” I asked carefully.
 

“I can see a woman so powerful that she blocks what she cannot endure,” Kreios said. I shifted my gaze to him, and his mouth teased into a smile. “Imagine that. All the horrors that are clearly dancing in your mind are held back from me as if they never happened. Imagine, if these
are the things you
see
, what you have
forgotten
. How deep must your terror be for something to just”—he fluttered long, elegant fingers—“disappear?”
 

I frowned at him, confused, then understanding dawned. “You mean with Armaeus. The fact that parts of…our time together, I can no longer remember.”
 

“I do not blame you, of course. As tedious as the Magician is when standing upright, he must be an absolute trial in bed.”  
 

Heat scored my cheeks, but I managed to regard Kreios with a more or less steady gaze. “And you know
why
I blocked those memories, I take it?”
 

“Of course. I know your innermost needs and desires, Sara.” He grinned. “And this blockage was born of those, not of any
true
fear. So yes, I know why you did it.” He took another step toward me, leaning down. I was too busy wrapping my brain around his words to fully take in his movements—his arms reaching out to gather me close, his body fitting itself to mine, his head bending down, his mouth nuzzling against my lips, setting a thousand fires aflame along every filament of my nervous system. “Would you like me to tell you?” he asked, tasting me, teasing me, his hands sliding down my back. “Would you like to tell me why your need with Armaeus is so great that you must shutter it from your own mind?”
 

I didn’t hesitate. “Yeah, no. Not gonna happen,” I said, my voice solid and sure. I could go another six or seven lifetimes without dipping my toe back into that murky water.
 

Kreios drew back, his eyes bright with delight, his grin unabashed.
 

“Excellent. Then I shall look forward to our next dance, Sara Wilde. You will learn, in time, that when there is no one else who will tell you the truth, that I will be there for you. And when you come to me, I will tell you everything. If you pay the price.” And he dissolved in front of me, leaving me alone in the cabin—except for the form of Aleksander Kreios far across from me, sprawled out on his chair in deep, snoring slumber, a contented expression on his face.
 

“Asshat,” I muttered.
 

His lips quirked up in a smile.
 

The sun poured in mercilessly from all sides when I finally stirred, disoriented, only to realize I was still in my chair, the unit cranked all the way back.
 

“I was wondering if you’d ever awaken,” Kreios drawled. He looked freshly showered, his suit changed to a linen shirt, open at the collar down to his chest, paired with buttery soft khakis. On his feet, he wore sandals, and it took great fortitude for me not to stare. Even the man’s feet were beautiful.