J. Geissinger - Shadow’s Edge

England. Sommerley. Her room. Ikati .

Leander.

She remembered she’d dreamt of him, here in this gilded room as the sunlight stole over the horizon and warmed the darkness beneath her closed eyelids to burnished ambers and golds. Dreamt of his face and his eyes and the silky-sweet timbre of his voice as it rolled over the vowels in her name.

She’d dreamt of him and of the dark forest beyond her windows, a forest that beckoned to something deep and dark inside her, a forest she explored with him by her side, a muscled, ebony panther who moved through trees and bracken and undergrowth without a sound except the whisper-thin noise of wind sliding over sleek fur.

Don’t mistake us for humans, Jenna. The Ikati are animals...

She was going to have to do something about both Christian and Leander, and she had no idea what that something might be. She’d fled to the relative safety of this lavishly feminine room last night after her confrontation with Christian and hadn’t emerged since, not even to eat.

Coward.

Aggravated, she flung back the heavy duvet and picked up the sheer robe of ivory silk left by the maid who had turned down her bed. She swung it over her shoulders and, with a jerk, tied the sash around her waist.

She felt plush carpet then cool marble beneath her feet as she padded through the sun-washed room into the adjoining bathroom. She reached for the curved handle of the sink faucet to wash her face, but her hand stilled midreach as she saw a quilted cosmetics bag on the marbled countertop next to a soap dish that looked like solid gold.

Her cosmetics bag.

She straightened and frowned at it.

Leander had waited outside her apartment in the limousine yesterday while she packed. He’d given her twenty minutes. She had flung everything she thought she’d need for a short trip into a single leather suitcase, but hadn’t remembered until this moment she’d left her cosmetics bag behind.

Not that it mattered, because it was somehow here .

She picked up the bag, letting her fingers trail over the familiar fabric, the quilted stitching. She unzipped it; everything was packed neatly inside.

Jenna turned and eyed the frosted glass door to the walk-in closet. She set the bag on the sink, pulled the silk sash tighter around her waist, squared her shoulders, and walked over to the door.

Four pairs of jeans, a half dozen T-shirts, underwear, socks, two pairs of shoes. That’s what she’d thrown into her carry-on yesterday. That was all that had fit.

But what she stared at now—folded in fluted mahogany cubbies, tucked into rolling shelves, hanging from polished wood dowels, nestled into sliding racks row after row—was her entire wardrobe.

Every item of clothing she owned was arranged in perfect order, color by color, shirts and dresses and handbags and shoes, all lined up and tucked in and laid out within this walk-in. Her jewelry, ensconced in velvet trays within four sliding drawers of a large center island. Her panties, folded like handkerchiefs and arranged by color in drawers on the other side. Even her lingerie hung in rainbow colors in one section, categorized lightest to darkest, then by length within the color spectrum.

In addition to everything she owned, there were things she didn’t recognize. Formal dresses, cocktail dresses, and evening gowns filled a length of wall, overcoats and jackets in every style and color took up another. A third section was dedicated entirely to handbags and shoes, many which she recognized as designer and extremely expensive.

It didn’t really surprise Jenna much when she peeked at the tags on these strange and beautiful clothes. Everything was her size.

She stood motionless in the center of the large room, trying to decide what to do. She pressed her hands hard against the sides of her head and closed her eyes with a heavy exhalation.

It was in exactly this position Leander found her.

“Let me know if that helps a headache,” he said. “I’ve found nothing to cure my own.”

Because she smelled his particular fragrance of musk and exotic spices long before she felt the faint tremor of floorboards under his step travel up her spine to lodge in a knot of tension under her stomach, Jenna didn’t turn at the sound of his voice.

“I generally find,” she said, looking sourly at a fire-engine red Valentino gown with a thigh-high slit, “that throwing something heavy against a wall is a satisfying way to relieve a tension headache. Especially if it should be so accommodating as to shatter into a million pieces.”

She looked over her shoulder at him.

“My, my.” He leaned against the doorframe with a wan smile. “I had no idea you had such violent tendencies. If you like I’ll have a porcelain vase sent up. I imagine that would do the trick.”

There were faint shadows under his eyes. He wore the same black silk shirt and black trousers he wore on the plane, except now both were wrinkled. Beneath his golden complexion, he looked pale.

“Or maybe it would help if you just told me why all my clothes are in this closet.”

He gazed at her. “Because it’s your closet. Where else would they be?”

The tremor in her stomach began a slow burn.

“At my home. Where they should be,” she said. A vein pulsed in her forehead and she fought the urge to press her fingers against it.

“Which is exactly where they are,” he replied, soft as silk.

She stared daggers at him. “Don’t play games with me, Leander, please. Putting aside for a moment the logistics of how my entire wardrobe arrived here overnight, just tell me why it’s here and who the rest of this stuff belongs to.”

It was incredible to her that although he didn’t move or twitch a single muscle as he leaned casually against the door, he still managed to exude a current of rapacious action, like a bubble that engulfed everything around him.

Yet today there was dark tension beneath his veneer of effortless elegance, a hint of something she’d not seen before. Worry?

“I thought you would need a more extensive wardrobe than you brought with you, so,” he shrugged, the picture of cool composure, “I asked Morgan to find a few things for you. She loves fashion and she loves to shop, as you may have noticed.”

Jenna’s palms went clammy, but she was determined not to let him see her rising panic. She might be a coward, but she certainly wasn’t going to let him in on that little fact. “How generous. But that was hardly necessary, seeing how I’ll be leaving in a few days. To go home.”

He slowly raised his eyebrows.

“My actual home,” she clarified, breathing steadily against the blood surging through her veins. “Where I live .”

Something feral glimmered in his eyes but subsided as his smile deepened, bringing out a dimple in his cheek. “I hope everything fits. Though I must admit,” he murmured, letting his gaze drift over the clinging silk of her dressing gown, “I quite enjoy this particular ensemble .”

And there it was again, the thing that always sprang up between them, the warmth and the pull. In spite of her best efforts to the contrary, there was no ignoring or dimming the desire that rocked between them. Now that she’d tasted him, now that she’d felt the taut, muscled weight of his body above hers, she had only to look at his gently curving lips to feel something scorch through her stomach.

Now she knew what he could do for her, and so did the beast clawing under her skin.

She stilled a moment, concentrating on the throbbing pulse of heat between them, trying with lasered focus to make it disappear.

“I hate to interrupt your contemplation of my shirt,” he said, bemused. “I’m sure it has all manner of interesting stains upon it, as I’ve been up the entire night trying to—”