“Too late. You started mumbling and twitching in your sleep a little while ago. I could feel something going on with you. Bad dream? But wait. Before we get into that—come here, my High Priestess. My Queen.” With one hand Stark lifted the covers he’d cocooned around himself, showing me a lovely amount of his bare, muscly chest, while his other hand slipped under my shoulders, drawing me against him.
I snuggled close eagerly, putting off the bad news Kalona had delivered for at least a few more minutes. I kissed his neck and then let my hand trace the broken arrow–shaped scar that had been burned into the flesh over his heart. I kissed him again, this time lingering. His lips were warm and eager, and when his hands slid down my back, kneading the tension Kalona had brought on, I felt like Nala and wished I could purr.
Instead I explored his body, which never got old. His chest was the right amount of muscle. And I loved his scent. He was sexy man mixed with red cherry licorice, his current snack obsession. He was smooth in all the right places and hard in all the right places—and we fit together perfectly.
Soon the dream was temporarily forgotten as I lost myself in the heat and passion that was Stark.
“My beautiful Queen,” he murmured as he kissed my ear as we eventually came back to the present.
“I love it when you call me your Queen.”
“Because you like to pretend you’re British?”
I grinned up at him. “Oh, kind sir, you know me so well,” I said in my best bad British accent.
“Sssh,” he pressed a finger against my lips. “Don’t speak. Or at least don’t speak in that awful accent.”
“Hey! I’ve been working on that accent. Someday soon I’m going to be victorious in my quest to get tickets to the Harry Potter play in London. I’m preparing.” I muttered against his finger, which he refused to move.
“Sssh again. I want to pretend like you’re not going to try to use a British accent while we’re over there.”
“I thought it would be polite.”
“If by polite you mean disaster of monumental proportions, then yes. Polite.”
“Good sir, my accent is simply not that ba—” I tried to speak through his finger in said awesome accent, but he covered my entire mouth with his hand.
“Trust me. It could start an international event. It’s that bad.”
I scowled at him and bit his palm. Stark yelped and pulled his hand back.
“Aphrodite said my accent is good.”
His brows shot up. “And you never considered that she might be setting you up?”
I opened my mouth and then closed it. Sighed. “She’s setting me up.”
“Absolutely. Now, how about good morning round two, my Queen?”
“Certainly, kind sir.”
This time Stark used his lips to stop my unfortunate accent. And all I’ll say is that his lips had a decidedly positive effect.
Several minutes of kissing later, it was Stark who—uncharacteristically—pulled back and, brushing a stray strand of dark hair from my cheek, reminded me of what he temporarily had me forgetting.
“So, bad dream? You haven’t had a scary Neferet nightmare in months.”
“It wasn’t a Neferet nightmare. Or at least not exactly. It was Kalona.”
“You had a Kalona nightmare? That’s weird.”
“Well, it wasn’t a nightmare. It was a visit. Or at least I’m pretty sure it was.” Stark’s look darkened with the same memories that had made me snap at Kalona, and I hurried on to explain. “But not a creeper visit, like he used to do.”
“That’s good. Did Nyx send him to you?”
“No. Actually, he said Nyx doesn’t know. He came to warn me. Apparently, Nyx thinks he’s being, I don’t know—overly cautious, I guess, which he admitted was a possibility.”
Stark sat up and grabbed his T-shirt from the bedside table, pulling it on. He ran his hand through his adorable bed-headed hair and sat across from me looking very Warrior-like and alert. “Explain, please.”
I sat and rearranged the pillows behind me, causing Nala to grumble. “Kalona said he felt that danger was coming. Here. To the House of Night. He wanted to warn me and recommend some reading material.”
“I don’t get why Nyx didn’t want him to do that.”
“I think it has something to do with the recommended reading material,” I said.
“Which is what?”
“Neferet’s old journal. And by old, I mean really old—as in written when she was still Emily Wheiler.”
Stark’s face paled. “Shit. Neferet again? That’s bad. Really bad.”
“Well, Kalona couldn’t say for sure that he thought the danger had to do with Neferet. But he also couldn’t say for sure that it didn’t have to do with her. So, he thought he’d warn me and tell me about the journal.”
“His reasoning?”
“That if something was going on with Neferet—again—we’d need to know everything we possibly can about her.” I raised my hand to stop him as he started to mumble something about that being too little too late. “Yeah, I know. I asked him why he was just now telling me about the journal. He made a semilame excuse.”
“Sounds like him. He’s not a bad guy anymore, but that doesn’t mean he’s not still a pain in the ass,” Stark said.
“Exactly. So, I’m supposed to read the journal and put our circle on a big trouble alert, even though they’re scattered all over the US right now. Or, I think most of them are still in the US. Last time I talked to Damien he was going on and on about needing to open a new House of Night.” I waggled my eyebrows at Stark. “In the Caribbean on Grand Cayman Island.”
Stark grinned through his worry. “That couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that it’s December and New York City is having record cold temps, could it?”
“Um, yes. I think, as Damien would say, there is a direct correlation.” I swung my legs over the side of the bed and put on my cushy slippers. “But he’s still reachable. I’ll text him and Stevie Rae, Shaunee and Shaylin—just to put them on alert. You know, it’s weird. I usually hear from all of them at least once a day, but lately they’ve been pretty quiet.” I froze and met Stark’s eyes, feeling my first wave of foreboding. “Oh, Goddess! Could something have happened to them? Hell! I didn’t even think about that when Kalona was warning me.” I started to reach for my cell phone, which was turned off but charging on my night table. “I’m such an idiot. If they’re in danger and I didn’t—”
Stark intercepted my hand. “They’re fine. Nothing’s happened to them.”
I realized my hand was shaking when he took it in both of his. “You can’t know that,” I said, feeling frantic. “I’m calling them. All of them. Now.”
Stark blew out a long breath and then reluctantly said, “You can’t. They’re in the air.”
“Huh? What do you mean? What’s going on?”
“Z, what’s today’s date?”
I frowned at him. “I don’t know. Um. The twenty-third. Of December. I think.”
“Yeah. It’s the twenty-third. What’s tomorrow?”
“The twenty-fourth.” And then I knew what was going on. “OMG, are they surprising me for my birthmas?”
“Well, they were surprising you. And I kept the damn thing secret for months.” He shook his head. “Aphrodite’s gonna kill me.”
“Wait, for real? They’re coming here for my birthday?” Even Kalona’s weird visit and ominous message couldn’t dampen the flutter of happiness that lifted inside me. “All of them?”
“All of them.”