She’d floated through them, dream to dream, a voice, an image, a memory. In the car with Roarke, stopped in the driveway, falling on each other, tearing clothes, desperate, insane to feel, needing him inside her, pounding, pounding, as if her life depended on it. And neither of them aware Barrow had planted that subliminal command, that life-or-death desperation to mate. In the closet, at the party, and she injured and bruised. Roarke pushing her against the wall, tearing into her with no care, driven to the wild and feral by that same planted seed. “Ssh, just a dream.” Somewhere outside that dream she heard him, felt him soothing her, stroking all that hurt and insult away again. That’s what Barrow had done, to both of them. That’s what Bastwick had defended. And worse. Worse. Mathias, hanged by his own hand, Fitzhugh bathed in his own blood.
