Lover Arisen (Black Dagger Brotherhood #20)(70)

Taking a deep breath, Devina cradled the bag to her breasts. The smell of the singed hide was strong in her nose, but she told herself it was perfume, it was the very best fucking perfume she had ever smelled. Then she unfurled her arms and stared at the bag.

“You are beautiful,” she said, “in every way. You are everything I’ve ever wanted or needed. I will never, ever leave you. Ever…”

As she repeated the words over and over again, a little audible she was adding to the spell, she traced the scales that were still in good condition with her fingertips, feeling the gentle undulations of the texture, noting the subtle changes in coloring. Moving up to the spangle, she turned the touret and pulled free the blackened diamond plates. Even through the soot, the fine gems gleamed, and she cleared some of the residue off with her thumb. It was a struggle to free the flap, one side of the twin handles especially compromised. But then the inside was exposed.

“Yes…”

The inside was positively immaculate. Fresh as the day it had left the workstation of its craftsman. Resplendent.

Just like her. Sure, there were some superficial issues, but under the bullshit, she was perfection.

Sheer fucking perfection.

Devina remembered everything about buying the Birkin, how she’d felt as it had come out of its herringboned bag in the private room at the store. How her whole body had tingled with orgasmic joy, how the rush at seeing it and knowing it was hers had made her head spin, how her heart had pounded and she’d let out a giddy sound. She was careful to recall how the S.A., who she’d worked with for a couple of years, had stood back and watched in total approval.

Devina had taken herself out to dinner at Astrance that night because she’d wanted others to see what she had—

It was as she pictured herself walking into the tiny, then three-star Michelin restaurant that it happened.

The bag became a window she could look through, the precise line of its form containing a bottom-out that revealed…

An unearthly landscape. Which was not gruesome or particularly unearthly. She just knew within her being that what she was shown was not upon the earth: White marble floors and white walls with candles on stanchions throwing yellow light that did not move in any drafts.

A sanctuary and yet… a place of evil.

Like a camera lens shifting focus, something was pulling out of the white landscape… a bed. A bedding platform—

She gasped.

There was a male lying on it. He was naked and sprawled on white sheets, his blond hair gleaming, his body absolutely magnificent.

Her thought was he was just like a Birkin, lying on its tufted, contoured tissue, inside the white interior of its orange box.

The camera-like angle changed again, swooping around to zero in on a patrician face with high cheekbones and sensual lips, his arched brows arrogant even in his repose, that pale hair so thick and gently curling. And then the visual altered once more, shifting to his shoulders, going across his well-developed pectorals, floating down over his abdominal muscles to his—

“Holy fuck.”

Yeah, that’ll do just fine. Yup. Juuuuuuust fine.

And then she was back up at his face.

It was all perfect, what she would have asked for if she’d had to check off what she’d thought was attractive. And she had the strangest feeling that this was like a virtual shopping trip—and she got to choose whether or not to buy him.

Devina stared at that face. The masculine beauty of it was on a par with what she saw in the mirror any time she checked her makeup, and she liked that high standard. But could she look at this for an eternity?

“I want to see his eyes,” she demanded.

There was a rustle, and at first she thought it was the sheets, as if a plane of sound had opened within the connection. But no, it was the Book.

She looked across at where the tome floated in the air. “His eyes. I need to see them.”

The ruffle was a clear “nope,” although she’d have been hard put to define exactly how she knew that.

“Please?” What the hell, she figured, the polite route had gotten her this far. “Pretty please with sprinkles on top?”

Wasn’t that a human saying?

When the Book just repeated the same ruffle of pages, she cursed under her breath and stared back into the Birkin-window. The male was perfect—and he would adore her, just as she had adored the bag. What did she care about his eye color?

“Fine,” she announced, “I’ll take him.”

Having made the pronouncement, she set the Birkin back on top of its stand and sent the little coffin away. For this service, she would keep the bag permanently in its place, ruined or not: Finally, after so much heartache, she was going to get what she had always wanted, what she deserved.

A male who loved all of her unconditionally.

And they were going to live happily ever after.

Or she was going to beat his ass.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE




Talking.

Super-fast talking, right above Nate’s face. Also… some beeping… electronic beeping that reminded him of the old-fashioned video game that one of the staff at the lab had taught him to play, the one where the black screen was cut in half by a straight vertical line and two slashes volleyed a dot back and forth. Except this beeping was rhythmic and even—