She saw glowing, malevolent green eyes watching her in the dark when she lay in bed not sleeping. When she did get to sleep, she dreamed of herself, skim milk pale and covered with goosebumps, cold, wearing soiled, limp, red silk lingerie. Alone, shivering in the snow. All the many monsters of her life circling round, licking their lips.
And that voice, whispering. That evil voice. Men don’t love women like you. They use them and discard them, like the trash that they are.
This wasn’t her usual horror of being made a fool of. This was worse. The stakes were so much higher. If she called it wrong, if she opened herself up, offered herself to Val, and proved to be mistaken, she wouldn’t just feel like a fool. Not this time.
She would be dead. Destroyed. It would be the end. She didn’t have the courage to risk it. Her reserves of courage were all used up.
Hah. Now who was being melodramatic? She slid her hand up under the goggles to wipe the tears away. What would she say to him if she got him on e-mail anyway? Hi, what’s up? How do you feel?
God help her. Did she really want to know?
Even now, she imagined that she could feel his presence. Her skin prickled with warmth. If she turned, there he’d be, gazing at her out of those dark, smoldering eyes filled with speechless longing.
But she would not give in to the urge to turn. The blankness she felt when she saw the empty space where he wasn’t was too fucking depressing. She had to stop doing that to herself.
But her neck itched madly, hairs prickling. She took off the headphones, and hesitated for a moment. Her heart thudded.
Ah, what the hell. Why not compound her misery?
She turned, looked…and gasped.
The world shifted on its axis. Her blush started from the very soles of her feet, or even deeper. From some other lost dimension of her being: the molten core of her soul, the bottom of the ocean of her heart.
She felt naked. Inside out. Sweet, shivering chills chased themselves across her skin. Part terror, part astonished joy.
He said nothing, just gazed at her. His hair was longer, too long for the cool style he had before. It dangled over his eyes and ears in unkempt waves, streaked with threads of stark white.
He was thinner, more compact than before. His eyes shadowed, his skin paler, his jaw sharp. His cheekbones jutted out like they’d been carved with a dull knife. But it was him.
God, how he filled the space he occupied. How he dominated it. He took the place he inhabited and claimed it utterly, made it his own.
The way he had claimed her. By some freak miracle.
She cleared her throat. “Aren’t you going to say something?” The words burst past the aching block in her throat.
His mouth twitched. “I was waiting for you to start.”
She snorted out of sheer force of habit. “Typical. Men always shrug off the responsibility.”
“No, Tamar. It is you who are being typical,” he said calmly. “Hiding behind your sarcasm the way a child hides behind her mother’s legs. Traveling across the world to you is a statement in itself. I am awaiting a response to it.”
Her blush got hotter. She didn’t know what to look at, what to do with her hands, with her mouth. She felt…fluttery. A speechless ditz.
“My response,” she repeated. “What am I supposed to respond?”
His lips twitched, a wicked ghost of a smile hinting at how much he was enjoying her flustered state. She wanted to smack him for it, the uppity bastard. Condescending to her.
“Anything you like,” he said blandly. “But if you need suggestions, I will gladly give them to you.”
She clenched her jaw, forbidding herself to weep. “No one tells me what to say or think,” she said inanely. Gah. As if it needed to be said.
His deep-grooved, blindingly beautiful grin rocked her back, gasping for breath. “Certainly not,” he said. “The very idea.”
“What do you want from me, Janos?” she demanded.
“Everything,” he said simply. “And call me Val. I have earned that much from you, by now.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “Back off. Too much, too soon.”
He was silent for a moment. “If you wish. I am in no hurry. I am not going anywhere. We can go as slowly as you like.”
“This is my place,” she flared. “I say who stays and who goes.”
“Of course, of course,” he soothed. “Let us talk of things that do not make you anxious. Neutral topics.”
She was irritated afresh. Condescending to her again. “We have no neutral topics,” she snapped.
He sighed. “You are a difficult woman,” he said plaintively.
She gave him a tight, falsely sweet smile. “Oh? Do ya think?”
He flicked his gaze upward, praying for patience, no doubt. “How about the weather?” he suggested, his voice even.
She waved her hand toward the window. “Take a look,” she said. “It’s gray. There’s fog. It’s the Washington coast. End of conversation. Nice try. No dice.”
“All right, moving on,” he murmured. “How is Rachel?”
That was far from a neutral subject. “She’s better,” Tam said cautiously. “She still has screaming nightmares every night. But she’s started to talk again, and she’s eating a little more and going outside the house, at least when I’m with her.”
He nodded. “Good, then. I am glad. And your health?”
She shrugged. “Fine.”
He let his waiting silence speak for him, insisting.
Tam made a rude, impatient sound. “Really. I’m not lying to you. The last time I had liver function tests, there was definite improvement. The tissue is regenerating. There’s some organ damage, of course, but nothing that’ll kill me any time soon. I’m not going to climb Everest or run any marathons for a while, that’s all. It was just the month-long mother of all hangovers.”
“And the arm?” he persisted. “The McClouds told me you had surgeries.”
“The McClouds talk way too much,” Tam muttered. “And one in particular takes quite a lot upon herself to open my door to uninvited guests. That McCloud is going to hear from me about it.”
His mouth tightened. “Ah. That’s all I am to you, Tamar? An uninvited guest?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Do not guilt trip me, Janos.”
“Why not?” he said. “I have nothing to lose. I might as well see if guilt will work with you, since nothing else does. I saw what that poison did to Georg. I thought you were dying. Why did you not tell me that you had taken the antidote?”
She gave him a sideways look. “I had a lot on my mind.”
His mouth hardened. “You really are a bitch, Tamar.”
“And that’s a surprise to you? That’s not liable to change, Janos. If it puts you off—”
“It does not put me off,” he said. “On the contrary.”
She floundered for a moment. “I—I—what do you—”
“I know you now, Tamar,” he said. “The more acid you are, the more tender the place you are trying to protect. The crueler you are to me, the more I have cause to hope.”
Cause to hope. His words made her heart shake in her chest.