Rejected (Shadow Beast Shifters, #1)(67)

It was then that I realized I was naked as fuck, and he was in the shower with me, completely soaked. “Your clothes,” I murmured inanely.

“Not important,” he replied. “You almost died; might be worth focusing on that.”

“Asshole,” I muttered back, my eyes fluttering closed as an exhaustion, pure and consuming, sent me to the land of dreams.

“You know it, Sunshine,” was the last thing I heard before everything went completely dark.

I’D WOKEN up with a few hangovers in my time. Not a lot because an alcoholic mother did kind of deter me from drinking to excess, but Simone had managed to sneak—from her parents’ collection—a bottle or two. Both times we’d finished it all, and since it had been before our first shifts, we’d definitely suffered the aftereffects.

Waking from the Shadow Realm door trying to possess me was nothing like that. It was more like death was tugging me closer to the afterlife, one painful drumbeat of my brain at a time.

As I opened my eyes, the light split my head in two, and I rolled over to vomit off the side of the bed. Vomiting with a raging headache only made the pain worse, so of course, I threw up again.

Vicious cycle right there.

“You’ll be cleaning that up.”

He sounded unamused, and I felt the same way as I propped one eye open to glare fucking death at him. “What did you do to me?” I croaked, wiping at my mouth as I hung listlessly from the side of the bed. A bed that was most definitely not mine.

I should have known straight away because while there was nothing wrong with my mattress—it was amazingly comfortable—this one was a cloud of luxury. The sheets were too soft to be any material on Earth, and they smelled so good, like…

I jerked upright, groaning as I did. “I’m in your bed.”

Looking around as quickly as my broken head would allow, I attempted to see everything in the “forbidden bedchamber.” I’d searched for this multiple times, but there’d been no sign of another bedroom in the entire lair.

“This was the closest room to get you into,” Shadow said. “A few more seconds, and the dark spell on the Shadow Realm door would have consumed you.”

He was sitting in a wide, olive-colored leather chair, with a back so high, it was even taller than him at his eight-feet height. His arms were relaxed on the armrests, a white long-sleeved shirt wrapped around the impressive muscles. His long legs were clothed in faded denim, man-spread before him. And all the while, those gold-and-red eyes examined my face.

He looked like a man who’d been sitting there for many hours, patiently waiting.

“What actually happened?” I asked, relieved to feel a slight decrease in the pounding in my head.

“What happened is you’re weaker than I expected, and when you had a chance to break through a very powerful spell on the Shadow Realm door, you only managed to almost die.”

Right. “I’m good at almost dying,” I said conversationally, choosing not to bother being angry about him acting like a piece of shit. “But maybe, if you’d been a little more forthcoming about the Shadow Realm and what sort of spell is on the door, we wouldn’t be in this position.”

Shadow shook his head, leaning forward to draw me in with his intense stare. “You see, there was no reason you needed to know that information to do what was needed. You just had to be strong enough to break the spell without it consuming your soul.”

Consuming my soul. Well, that didn’t sound like fun. Running my hands across my body, as if I could check if everything was still intact, I felt only naked skin. Blinking down at the silky sheets pooled around my waist, my tits hanging out for the world to see, I shook my head. “Well, damn. Why didn’t you tell me I was butt-ass naked?”

Shadow’s chest rumbled as he actually laughed. “You act nothing like any virgin I’ve ever met.”

I snorted, still not attempting to cover myself. At this point, I’d been sitting here for who-knew-how-long and covering up now would just be redundant. “Had a few sacrificed to you over the years, I’d guess.”

With a shake of his head, he stood, unfolding his long length from the chair and stalking closer to me. I swallowed at the dryness in my throat. How one could go from near death to horny as fuck in a few minutes was beyond me, but, hey, at least I wasn’t boring.

When he stood above me, I tilted my head back. “Mera,” he said, his voice not giving anything away.

“Shadow,” I replied.

“You need to get the fuck out of my bed, get dressed, brush your teeth, and find the damn path back to the Shadow Realm. Before it’s too late.”

Ouch. Well, okay then.

Avoiding the vomit, I dropped my legs off the side of his massive bed while taking a moment to look around, since this would probably be the only time I’d be invited into his secret chambers.

The room was darkly masculine, of course—king of darkness wouldn’t be caught dead with anything else—and appeared to be mostly dominated by the huge bed. Outside of that, there was a television, and I stared longingly at it. It had been months since I’d indulged in my love of old movies and cheesy sitcoms, and to know Shadow had one just chilling here was such a jolt of reality.

I felt homesick.

“How many channels do you get down here?” I said half-jokingly, jerking my head toward the massive flat screen.