Bath, eat, sleep, flirt with your blubood. It's good for the soul.

"That's the other thing I don't quite understand about you. You're an earl. You have money. You're not ugly."
"I'm quite handsome, actually," he said.

- Declan & Rose

- Tu entends?
- Quoi?
Tu as haussé les épaules
- Le silence

Je suis obsédée et accro et amoureuse jusqu’à la moelle de Jericho Barrons.

Bien sûr, je ne le lui dis pas. Barrons n’est pas le genre d’homme à qui on fait des confidences sur l’oreiller. Coucher avec lui, reconnaître nos sentiments envers l’autre, a tout changé.

Et rien changé.

Au lit, nous formons un couple.

En-dehors du lit, nous sommes deux entités.

Au lit, je vole des moments de tendresse lorsque le sexe m’a finalement crevée au point où je suis trop lasse pour me tracasser de l’énorme capacité du mal qui a pris ses quartiers en moi. Je le touche, je dépose toutes les choses que je ne dis pas entre mes mains tandis que je trace les tatouages rouges et noirs sur sa peau, les contours acérés et les creux de son visage, enfouissant mes mains dans ses cheveux sombres. Il me regarde en silence tandis que je le fais, les yeux noirs, insondables.

Parfois je me réveille pour découvrir qu’il m’a rapprochée de lui et qu’il me tient, enlacé contre mon dos avec son visage dans mes cheveux, et ces mains qui ne parlent pas comme les miennes caressent ma peau et me disent que je suis chérie, honorée, reconnue.

“You have no idea what I’m dealing with.”

Ah, such as a beast within? he mocks.

“Your beast is different.” I continue talking aloud, refusing to accept the intimacy of a wordless conversation. We’ve had this argument. We’ll continue having it until the day the king frees me. Neither of us will capitulate. I’m not sure either of us can even spell that word.

Perhaps not so very.

“Yes, but mine is more powerful,” I say irritably. Powerful enough to fool even me—someone intimately acquainted with its seductive, evil ways.

His dark eyes glitter with challenge. Care to test that, woman?

The look he gives me sends shivers down my spine and I feel it slip it into a gentler curve that achieves down-and-dirty doggie-style with sure, supple grace. There is no battlefield I prefer to the one I’ve found in this man’s bed. We fight. It’s what we do. I feel so much more intensely alive around him than I’ve ever felt with anyone else.

I’m obsessed and addicted and ripped-down-raw in love with Jericho Barrons.

Of course, I don’t tell him that. Barrons isn’t a pillow talk man. Sleeping with him, acknowledging our feelings for each other, has changed everything.

And nothing.

In bed, we’re one couple.

Out of bed, we’re another.

In bed, I steal moments of tenderness when sex has finally exhausted me to the point where I’m too bone weary to fret anymore about the enormous capacity for evil that’s taken up squatter’s rights inside me. I touch him, put all those things I don’t say into my hands as I trace the red and black tattoos on his skin, the sharp planes and hollows of his face, bury my hands in his dark hair. He watches me in silence when I do, eyes dark, unfathomable.

I sometimes wake up to find he’s pulled me close to him and is holding me, spooned into my back with his face in my hair, and those hands that don’t speak like mine don’t speak move over my skin and tell me I’m cherished, honored, seen.

Out of bed we’re islands.

Ms. Lane and Barrons.

The first time he retreated into distance, it hurt. I felt rejected.

Until I realized I’d done it, too. It wasn’t just him. Our boundaries seem sewn to our clothes; we can no more put one on without the other, than take them off separately.

I sometimes wonder if our passion is so obsessive and enormous that we need distance between the bonfires. I’m a moth to his flame and it frightens me how willingly I’d burn my wings off for him. Destroy the world. Follow him to hell. It’s scary to feel like you can’t breathe without someone. That a man has so much power over you because you love him as much, if not more, than you care for yourself.

So I fly away for a while—maybe just to know I can—and he vanishes to do whatever Barrons does for whatever reasons he does it.

I always come back. He does, too. Actions speak.

I shift restlessly and change the subject. “You invite my enemy here. That’s bullshit.”

A Day in the Life: You search manuscripts for a spell that may not exist. You paint your nails. You clip your nails. Ah, let us not forget you examine your nails.

I scowl. “I do more than that. And leave my nails out of this.”

You don’t visit your parents. You don’t go to the abbey. You’re barely eating and your clothes—

I cut him off by pretending to examine my nails again. This week they alternate black diamond, white ice, black diamond, white ice. The color scheme comforts me, as nothing else in my life is so tidily delineated. I’m acutely aware of the sorry state of my recent outfits and have no desire to hear what he thinks of them. It’s difficult to care when you’re always covered with yellow dust. He’s silent so long I finally glance warily up to find him regarding me with an expression women have been on the receiving end of since time immemorial, as if I’m a species he simply can’t fathom.

Do you think I can’t protect you should you persist with your idiotic passivity?

Idiotic passivity, my ass. As today proved, activity is far more idiotic, and deadly. Is that why he arranged this meeting? To force me to be involved? “Of course not.” I change the subject.

It’s time. He says his next words aloud and there’s a gentleness to them that undoes me. “You’re not living anymore, Rainbow Girl.”

I melt when he calls me that. There’s something in the way he says those two words that makes it seem he’s said a thousand and they all make me glow. It says he sees the pretty-in-pink-Mac I was when I first arrived, the black, kickass Mac I’ve become (unless covered with Unseelie fleas) plus every incarnation in-between and he wants them all.

I know I’m not living anymore. No one could be more excruciatingly aware of that fact. It’s driving me bugfuck. Passivity isn’t my nature and I’m choking on it, drowning in it; my balls held firmly hostage by a Book.

I stare up at him and tell him the words I can’t bring myself to say out loud.

I killed the Gray Woman today.

A corner of his sexy mouth lifts. “Banner fucking day. About time.”

I also killed one of the Guardians.

“Ah, he got in the way.”

I have no idea what happened. I blacked out.

A human would be shocked, horrified, demand to know what happened. Barrons’ gaze doesn’t change and he asks no questions. He tallies debits and credits. “You took two lives and saved thousands.”

Bottom line it all you want, the end doesn’t justify the means, I say silently, pissed that he elevated the conversation I don’t want to be having to a verbal level.

“Debatable.”

I lost control of myself. It took me over and made me kill. Said I’m the car and it’s the driver. The unspoken words hang like knives in the air anyway, cutting me.

“We train harder.”

I hate mys—

“Never say that.”

“I didn’t,” I mutter. Not technically.

“You are what you are. Find a way to live with it.”

“Easier said than done.”

“Someone told you life was easy. You believed them,” he mocks.

“I just don’t see why they all have to come here. Why not hold this little powwow at Chester’s?” I change the subject swiftly.

Like a verbal dancer, he follows my lead and I know why: as far as he’s concerned the discussion is over anyway. He has the blood of countless victims on his hands, while I’m having a hard time dealing with one. To him, this day is no different than any other: I’m possessed by a malevolent demon and I sinned. Tomorrow I’ll try again. I might sin again. I might not. But tomorrow always comes. For me and the demon. Despite my screw-up, my action will ultimately save countless lives. Barrons has the thousand-yard-stare and conscience of an immortal. I’m not there yet. I don’t know if I’ll ever be there. I ended a life before its time today. A family man. A good man. I must find a way to atone.

“I have wards in my bookstore that neutralize the princes’ power while within my walls,” he reminds me.

“You’re inviting my rapists into my home,” I toss the dual reminder that he wasn’t there to save me the night the Unseelie princes captured me in the church, and that it’s my bookstore without inflection, still it detonates in the room.

Abruptly the air is so charged with savagery that I feel squished into a corner on the Chesterfield. Barrons saturates space when he’s in a good mood—not that I would ever really call any mood Barrons exhibits ‘good’—but when he’s furious, it’s hard to breathe. He throws off energy, crams the air with intensity and mass, forcing everything else to retract into itself.

“Or have you forgotten that little fact?” I want them dead. I think he should want them dead. I fondle the spear in my thigh sheath lovingly. “We could kill them together.” I snatch my hand away hastily and busy myself plucking imaginary lint from my black Disturbed concert tee-shirt which I’m wearing not because I’ve been enjoying their music so much but because it’s how I feel. The images the Sinsar Dubh threw at me the second I touched my spear were graphically detailed and from this afternoon.

“You will not kill them when they come here. Nor will I.” The three words are guttural, accompanied by a thick rattle in his chest. It’s the sound of his beast trying to claw its way out of his skin. I can barely understand his last word. “Yet.”

“Why?”

His chest expands so enormously it threatens to pop buttons on his shirt. He says nothing for a moment, face impassive, his body frozen on an inhalation. Finally his ribs relax and he exhales carefully. I admire his self-control. I want it for my own. I may be more sparing with mention of my gang rape in the future. Although I enjoy baiting this bear, I don’t enjoy his pain. Just his fire.

When he speaks again, his words are precisely enunciated. “They are a known quantity, capable of controlling the masses. I’ve watched countless civilizations rise and fall. I’ve isolated seven components necessary to achieve the future I seek. Destroy the princes at this particular moment and it won’t happen. They are currently linchpins. They will not always be.”

The future he seeks? I want to know what Jericho Barrons plans, to be privy to his goals. I don’t ask. He shares when he’s ready and his reply was already generous for him.

And fascinating. I know what linchpins are.

When I was child, Daddy used to ride me around on his lap when he cut grass. I loved those hot Georgia days, drenched with the smell of a fresh mowed lawn, magnolia blossoms bobbing heavy in the humid, sticky air, a glass jar of sweet tea steeping on the front porch, near two ice-filled glasses topped with a sprig of mint from the garden.

One day I ‘helped’ Daddy change the tire on the lawn mower and he taught me about linchpins. I think I fell in love with all things with wheels that day, sprung of a golden summer hour with the man who can always make me feel like both princess and warrior.

A linchpin is a fastener that keeps the wheel from falling off the axle. It’s inserted crosswise directly through the axle’s end where it stays securely in place until manually removed. The end of the pin usually has a loop of metal so it’s easy to pull out.

In a broader sense, a linchpin is a key component that holds the elements of a complicated structure together. Some theorize if you can isolate the linchpin of a social, economic or political assemblage, you can destroy it in one fell swoop with a minute nudge or adjustment. Conversely, if you identify linchpins and protect them until you’ve achieved your desire result, you can shape the outcome. It doesn’t surprise me Barrons lives and breathes The Art of War. “I can kill them when they’re not?” I want to be perfectly clear about this.

“The instant they’re not, I will.”

We’ll fight about who does the honors later. I’ll just have to make sure there are no humans in the vicinity when it happens.

“You could let Ryodan host this summit. At Chester’s.”

“And have your ghoulish army in attendance?”

“You could ward the club against them.”

He snorts. “Now I’m your personal warder. You have no idea how complicated such magic is.”

Actually, I have a fairly good idea. He hasn’t died in a while and his chest is covered, both arms are fully sleeved and half his back is tattooed with black and crimson protection spells. The magic in which he dabbles is dangerous. Speaking of magic, “Barrons, it’s been three weeks since Dani disappeared. Isn’t there some kind of spell you can do?”

“Ward this. Spell that. How did you navigate life before you met me?”

I shrug. “It’s kind of like realizing you married Bewitched. Except not in the married sense,” I add hastily. “But you know what I mean. Why break your back vacuuming when a saucy twitch of the nose can clean the whole house?”

“My nose has never twitched, saucily or otherwise. And that was an utterly absurd premise. The only price for using magic was compounded human stupidity. Humans consistently engender chaos without violating alchemical principles.”

“Oh, my God, you watched—”

“I did not.”

“Yes, you—”

“Did not.”

“You just said—”

“Inescapable pop culture.”

“Oh, you so watched it.” I imagine this big, barbaric man stretched out on a tangle of silk sheets, naked, one arm behind his head, watching the comic antics of Darrin and Samantha Stephens on a large flat screen TV. The idea tickles me, turns me on somehow. It’s so anachronistic, it makes me want to hunt down old DVDs, stretch out beside him and lose myself in a simple show from a simpler time when the only price for magic was compounded human stupidity. Laugh together, do something mindless and fun. Then of course do something else mind-blowing. I’d love a few long rainy carefree days in bed with this man.

“Repetition of an erroneous assertion fails to alter reality. And you know we can’t track her in Faery. That’s why she went.”

Great, now I’m hearing the theme song from Bewitched in my head. It’s always a hard one to get out. “When she gets back, I want somebody tattooing her. The instant she gets back.”

“Bloody hell, after all the grief you gave me. Have you forgotten our tattoos haven’t worked right since the walls fell? Give it time. We’ll find her. At the moment, the most pressing matter on our agenda is this meeting.”

The meeting. I shift restlessly and my amusement vanishes just like that. “Are you sure we can’t move it somewhere else?”

“It happens here. You will attend.”

He asks little of me and gives much in return. I can’t imagine the world without him and don’t want to. Once, I almost destroyed it because I believed him gone forever.

“Aye, aye, master,” I mutter crossly.

He smiles faintly. “You’re learning, Ms. Lane, you’re learning.”

- Extrait qui vient d'être posté par l'auteur

Quelle belle journée.
Je crois que je vais sauter mes médocs et aller foutre un peu le bordel.
- Tee-shirt

Elle pense à son discours. J'ai choisi la personne que je veux être. Ces paroles lui semblent tellement vides maintenant qu'elle n'a plus le choix.

Sarah ne veut pas que son frère soit mort ni que sa meilleure amie soit aux urgences avec un bras en moins ni que son école est disparu.
Elle ne veut pas que la plupart de ses camarades de classe aient été éliminés.
Elle ne veut pas participer à tout ça.
Elle ne veut pas être la Joueuse.
Dommage pour elle.

- Je suppose que c'est un rhino-boy, dit Barrons, pensif.
- Que lui est-il arrivé?
- Je dirais qu'on l'a... Croqué, mademoiselle Lane.

Ce qui compte, c'est ce qu'on choisit. La fin n'a aucune importance, comparée au chemin que l'on emprunte pour y parvenir. Aujourd'hui, je ne brulerais plus les étapes pour lire directement la dernière page. Parce que nous n'avons aucun moyen de savoir ce que la vie nous réserve. Nous n'avons aucune garantie. On peut choisir une route et se rendre compte que, sans le savoir, on a encore emprunté la même direction.

J'inspire un grand coup. Me concentre sur l'étoile la plus étincelante du ciel.
-J'aime bien la manière dont je me sens quand je suis avec lui, je réponds d'une voix paisible. Warner me trouve forte, intelligente et compétente, et tient réellement compte de mon opinion. Il m'aide à me considérer comme son égale; pour lui, je peux accomplir autant de chose que lui, sinon plus. Et si je fais un truc incroyable, ça ne le surprend même pas. Il s'y attend. Il me traite pas comme une petite fille fragile qui a tout le temps besoin d'être protégée.

-Bravo! Je t'achèterai un ballon à la minute où le monde aura arrêté ses conneries.
- Merci. T'es un bon prof.
- Je suis bon dans tout les domaines, observe-t-il.
- Et modeste avec ça!
- Et super beau mec!
Je m'étrangle de rire

(Kenji & Juliette)

- Ton garage...