High Voltage (Fever #10)(108)

Not at first. You must settle into this skin. If you stay human any longer right now, you might lose your Hunter form.

Oh, hell, no way! I’d cried.

Still, I felt like the luckiest woman in the world. I had a whole week with Ryodan! After believing I’d lost him forever, a week felt like a small eternity to me.



We’d flown to Dublin, landed on top of the building that housed my flat, where she’d shifted me back into human form (painful!) then reverted, herself, into Shazam. We’d hurried (I was naked—now I understood why Ryodan always had extra clothing stashed in convenient places) below to my flat, where Shazam flashed me a mischievous grin and muttered a cryptic, Go to him, he’s been waiting a long time, before curling up for a nap on our bed.

I’d taken my first shower in months—not that I seemed to need one—dressed with care, weaponed up and freeze-framed straight for Ryodan, electrified with excitement.

As I push through the second set of doors, my smile deepens. The street-level bar and restaurant is lovely, with an elegant staircase that descends to the subclubs. I dash down the staircase and stand behind the balustrade surveying the dance floor, looking for him.

It’s early evening, the club is hopping as usual and I’m pleased to see not a single Fae. A part of me wants an immediate update on events in Dublin and our world, wants to head to the abbey and get all the details, but I learned a valuable lesson about time from both Dancer and Ryodan.

We don’t always have as long as we think we do. Updates can wait.

It’s necessary to be selfish sometimes, and tonight I have every intention of it.

It was pure pleasure to slip into a black spandex dress, heels, and nothing else but creamy Irish skin. Knowing I’m about to slip out of it and go crazy all over that man’s big, powerful body.



I want Ryodan in my bed, inside me, all around me, and that’s my only goal for a good long while. Before I have to leave again, I’ll catch up on my world. Tonight’s for me. Tonight’s for us. And it’s long overdue.

I descend the final set of stairs, thinking maybe I’ll find him in his office, and push through the crowded dance floor, heading for the glass and chrome staircase to the Nine’s private levels. I’m nearly there when someone blasts into me from behind, seizes me in a steely grip, drags me the rest of the way to the stairs, and shoves me down on the steps. Has to be one of the Nine; no one else can noodle me like that.

I toss my hair from my eyes and scowl up. Then, “Lor!” I exclaim, delighted to see him.

He stares at me in utter disbelief. “Dani?”

“Mega in the flesh,” I flash him a hundred-Megawatt grin to prove it. “I’m back. And you are so never going to believe the things I’ve seen and done.”

Then Fade and Kasteo are there with him, all three of them staring at me, with a mixture of irritation and disbelief.

“What’s with you guys? I told him I’d be back.”

“The boss,” Lor says flatly. “You told him that.”

I nod. “I sent him a message.”

“He sure as fuck doesn’t think you’re coming back,” Fade growls. “And I’m sure as fuck glad you are because he’s been goddamn impossible to live with. Go fuck him and make him sane again.” He turns and stalks away.

To Lor, I say, “He thought I wasn’t—wait, I don’t understand.”

“Just go to him, honey,” Lor says. “He’s in his suite. Never comes up. Spends most of his time as the beast. Ain’t eating, ain’t sleeping, ain’t fucking, and it’s getting ugly around here.”



I surge to my feet before he even finishes speaking, lope up the stairs, taking them three at a time, dash onto an elevator and tap my foot impatiently as it descends. How could he not know I was coming back? I don’t believe Y’rill would lie to me. I frown, remembering her exact words: I adjusted it so he would receive it at the proper time. Okay, so what was the mysterious being’s idea of “the proper time”?

When the door whisks aside, I explode from the elevator, freeze-frame down the hall, and blast through the door into the anteroom of Ryodan’s suite.

It’s still trashed. He never cleaned it up. Broken glass crunches beneath my heels as I stalk to the hidden panel that conceals the doorway to his true suite and push it open.

As I step into the room, I inhale sharply. This room, too, is trashed, every piece of furniture demolished. Savage claw marks scar the paneled walls, the chandeliers are torn from the ceiling, wires dangling, exposed, crystal splinters glistening on the floor. The bed is a collapsed jumble of wood, with slashed velvet pillows, shredded linens, pulverized mattress.

I narrow my eyes, letting them adjust to the gloom. He’s here, I can smell him; that spicy, darkly exotic scent that always clings to his skin, animalistic, druggingly masculine, blatantly sexual. I can feel him, every nerve ending in my body electrified by his presence.

There’s more in this room. Rage. Fury. Grief. It’s embedded in every demolished item, gouged into each panel, carved in deep gashes across the floor.



He grieved me. Believed I was never coming back. But why?

All my senses are cranked up to full volume. This is my night. My choice, my long-denied, deepest desire, and I feel achingly, incredibly alive. I hear him inhale, as if questing the air, catching my scent. Then a rough laugh floats from the shadows near the fire where he sits in a tall armchair.