“You’re the one arguing about the names we call each other.”

“What do you call Fiona? Fio! How charming. Oh, and what about that twit at Casa Blanc the night I met that bizarre man McCabe? Marilyn!”

“I can’t believe you remember her name,” he muttered.

“You called her by her full first name, and you didn’t even like her. But not me. Oh, no. I’m Ms. Lane. In bloody frigging perpetuity.”

“I had no idea you had such a hang-up about your name, Mac,” he snarled.

“Jericho,” I snarled back, and pushed him.

He manacled both my wrists with one hand so I couldn’t hit him again. It infuriated me. I head-butted him.

“I thought you died for me!”

He shoved me against the wall and braced his forearm across my throat so I couldn’t head butt him again. “For fuck’s sake, is that what this is about?”

“You didn’t die. You lied to me. You took a little nap and left me on that cliff thinking I’d killed you!”

He searched my face, dark eyes slitted. “Ah, I see. You thought it meant something that I died for you. Did you dress it up in romance? Compose sonnets memorializing my great sacrifice? Did it make you like me better? Did I have to be dead to get you to see me? Wake the fuck up, Ms. Lane. Dying is overrated. Human sentimentality has twisted it into the ultimate act of love. Biggest load of bullshit in the world. Dying for someone isn’t the hard thing. The man that dies escapes. Plain and simple. Game over. End of pain. Alina was the lucky one. Try living for someone. Through it all—good, bad, thick, thin, joy, suffering. That’s the hard thing.”

Alina was the lucky one. I’d thought that, too, and had been ashamed of myself for thinking it. I punched him so hard, he stumbled on the slick black floor, and as he went down, I felt sudden horror at seeing him stumble. I never wanted to see him stumble, so I grabbed him and we both went down to our knees on the black floors. “Damn you, Jericho!”

“Too late, Rainbow Girl.” He grabbed a fist of my hair. “Somebody beat you to it.” He laughed, and when he opened his mouth over mine, fangs grazed my teeth.

Yes, this was what I needed, what I’d needed since the day I woke up in that basement and left his bed. His tongue in my mouth, his hands on my skin. The burn of his body against mine. I grabbed his head with both hands and ground my mouth against his. I tasted my own blood from a nick on his teeth. I didn’t care. I couldn’t get close enough. I needed rough, hard, fast sex, followed by hours and hours of slow and intimately thorough fucking. I needed weeks in bed with him. Maybe if I had willing, cognizant sex with him long enough, I’d get over him already.

Somehow I doubted that.

He hissed. “Fucking fairy in your mouth. You have me in your mouth, you don’t get anybody else. Or you don’t get me.” He sucked on my tongue, hard, and I could feel V’lane’s name unraveling from the center of it. He spat it out like an unfastened piercing. I didn’t care. There hadn’t been enough room in my mouth for them both anyway. I pressed into his body, rubbing desperately against him. How long had it been since I’d had him inside me? Too long. I grabbed the sides of his shirt and ripped, sent buttons flying. I needed skin to skin.

“Another of my favorite shirts. What is it with you and my wardrobe?” He pushed his hands up my shirt and unhooked my bra. When his hands rasped over my nipples, I jerked.

Come, you must hurry …

Shut up, I snarled silently. I’d left that voice back in Dublin, where it had been torturing me in my bedroom.

All will be lost.… It must be you.… Come.

I growled. Couldn’t she leave me alone? She hadn’t spoken in my head for the past forty-five minutes. Why now? I wasn’t asleep. I was awake, wide awake, and I needed this. I needed him. Go away, I willed. “Please,” I groaned.

“Please what, Mac? You’ll have to ask for it this time, spell it out in graphic detail. I’m done giving you everything you want without making you ask for it.”

“Right. Words mean nothing to you, but now you insist on them,” I said against his mouth. “You are such a hypocrite.”

“And you’re bipolar. You want me. You always do. You think I can’t smell it?”

“I’m not bipolar.” Sometimes he struck way too close to home. I popped the button on his pants, unzipped them, and shoved my hands inside. He was rock hard. God, he felt good.

He stiffened, air hissing between clenched teeth.

Make haste … He comes.…

“Leave me alone,” I snapped.

“Over my dead body,” he said roughly. “You’ve got my dick in your hands.” He told me where it was going to be next and my bones turned to water, tried to spill my body across the floor and let him do anything he wanted to me.

“Not you. Her.”

“Her who?”

A hand tugged at the sleeve of my jacket, and I knew without looking that it wasn’t his. “Kiss me and she’ll go away.” I needed him inside me so badly I hurt from it. I was hot and wet and nothing mattered but this moment, this man.

“Who?”

“Kiss me!”

But he didn’t. He pulled back and looked past me, and I knew from the look on his face that I wasn’t the only one who could see her.

“I think she’s me,” I whispered.

He looked at me, back at her, and at me again. “Is that a joke?”

“I know this house. I know this place. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

“Impossible.”

It is nearly too late. Come NOW.

It was no longer a wisp of a plea. It was a command, and the hand was implacable on my arm. I could not disobey, no matter how badly I wanted to stay here and lose myself in sex, no matter how desperately I needed him inside me again, needed to feel we were joined in the most primal way, that I was in Jericho Barrons’ arms and mouth and under his skin.

And, God, did I need it! So much that I resented it. I never wanted to want a man this much—so much that not having him was physical pain. I never wanted to feel that any man had so much control over me and my life.

I pushed up from my knees and shoved past him.

He grabbed the sleeve of my coat; it ripped as I pulled away. “We need to talk about this! Mac!”

I dashed down the corridor, running after her like a dog chasing its own tail.