Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
It’s a stormy crossing to the prison, which has nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with the bite mark now decorating my skin.
After a brisk search by a new guard, I take my usual seat and wait for Valdemar to be brought in.
I’ve toyed with ideas of how I’m going to confront him, whether to draw the truth from him slowly or try to catch him out, but as soon as he arrives in the room with a smirk on his face, I know I’m going to blow.
He knows what he’s done. I can see it in his eyes.
Lowering himself into his chair, he doesn’t take his eyes off me.
Chewing on the side of my cheek, I watch as his gaze falls from my face to the side of my neck, the bite mark peeping out of the open-necked shirt I’ve purposely worn.
“I owe you an apology, angel,” he says.
“You owe me more than that, goddammit,” I hiss like a kettle that’s reached boiling point.
“I lost control.” His stare is hard, like he’s trying to hold me down under it.
Fighting the urge to shout, I whisper through my teeth, “What the fuck?” The guards are poised by the back wall, and the other visitors are settling down to talk to their criminals. It won’t do to cause a scene. I can’t risk getting kicked out when I need confirmation of what I suspect is going on here. “Your gift.”
Now it’s me holding him under my glare.
“You can infiltrate people’s dreams, can’t you? And that’s what you’ve been doing with me, isn’t it?” I try to deliver this with venom, but by the time I reach the last question, my anger has turned to shame. I’m embarrassed to learn that he’s seen me naked, touched my body in the most intimate of ways, that he’s made me come over and over again, and that I’ve cried out his name as I’ve done so.
His silence is all the proof I need.
“The bite marks,” I begin, pulling my shirt up over my shoulder. “How did you…?” I don’t know how to finish the question, but Valdemar is ready with his answer.
“My gift allows me to visit people’s dreams. I see what you see, feel what you feel. And sometimes, when the dreams become intense, I can leave physical marks upon people, just like I did with you.”
“You can hurt people in their dreams?” I ask.
“It’s possible, yes.”
I don’t want to ask how often he’s hurt people in their dreams, how often he’s used his gift as a weapon against others, as it’s not them I’m thinking of right now but me.
“You’ve violated me in my sleep.” I stretch each word out, making sure he hears them loud and clear because I can’t raise my voice in here.
“I’ve done nothing of the sort.”
“How can you say that? I am asleep. It’s as good as coming into my room and assaulting me in the night.”
Valdemar’s cheeks flare, his face flush with anger. “No. I would never.”
“But you have. Repeatedly.” Crossing my arms, I sit back in the chair, trying to put some distance between us.
“I’ve never abused my gift with you. You don’t do anything your subconscious won’t allow you to,” he says.
“Bullshit,” I spit.
“It’s true.”
“So, when a person dreams of leaping off a building, you’re telling me that’s really what they want to do?” I have to fight to keep my voice down.
“For some people, yes. Dreams allow them to do the things they want to do in real life but can’t or won’t or aren’t brave enough to do. When you dream, your imagination is untamed and free from judgment, even your own,” he explains.
My laugh earns me a glare from the old guy sitting next to us.
“Is that what you tell yourself to keep your conscience clean?” I throw at Valdemar.
“I’d like to think you know me well enough to understand that my conscience is anything but clean and I have no desire to cleanse myself of all the terrible things I’ve done. And to add to that, I’d like to think that you know I would never do anything you weren’t comfortable with.”
“This is bullshit,” I repeat, shaking my head.
“Angel—” he begins, but I cut him off.
“Don’t angel me.”
He waits as I compose myself.
“Do you know how violated I feel?” I say.
As he presses his lips together, I note the glint of satisfaction in his eyes, the delight he’s taken from this.
“I’ve only done what you asked. In that very first dream, you took the lead, angel. You told me what you wanted, and I gave it to you. I’ve touched you like no one else has, worshipped you in the way you deserve. You can’t sit there and tell me you haven’t enjoyed it.”
“You fucking….” I close my eyes, reining in my anger. I can’t lose my temper here. I’ll get kicked out. Taking a deep breath, I open my eyes. “I don’t want you to touch me again. You don’t have my permission. Do you understand?” He doesn’t respond, isn’t even looking at me, and my blood boils. “Are you even listening to me?”
His eyes have wandered, focussing somewhere over my shoulder, and for a second, I wonder if Ed is here. I pray to God he isn’t. This is embarrassing enough without having my dead brother present.
Following his gaze, I glance over my shoulder to see two men sitting opposite each other. I’ve seen the inmate—a bald guy, lean cut and clean-shaven—before, but his visitor—a man with dark features, broad shoulders, and a scar running down the side of his face—is new.
They look hostile, and I wonder how different their argument must be to mine and Valdemar’s.
I turn my attention back to Valdemar, whose gaze is still on the men behind us.
He speaks, but his voice has changed; it’s cold, efficient. Not the usual tone he takes with me. “Put your hand on the table.”
“What?”
“Just do it,” he insists.
His eyes never leave the men, and I feel a drop in the atmosphere, the churn of something that Valdemar senses like the darkening of the sky and the eerie silence before a storm.
Sliding my hand over the table, I lay it flat in the middle as my stomach rolls.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve grown complacent, forgetting that this is a prison containing some of the most ruthless men to have walked this earth—one of whom is sitting opposite me.
“Valdemar.” His name barely leaves my mouth as he grabs my hand and pulls me up from my seat at the same time as what I can only describe as a bloodthirsty cry erupts behind me.
I’m pulled across the room and pressed into a corner, Valdemar’s body against mine, shielding me from whatever is going down behind him.
I’ve never been in a warzone, never reported from a rally gone wrong or about angry protestors, but that’s what it feels like as I hear the shouts from the guards, swearing from inmates, raucous war cries, the sound of fists pounding flesh, the thud of kicks hitting stomachs, and the guards ordering people to get back, to get down, to stop.
From my vantage point, I can only see the large form of Valdemar as he huddles around me in the corner. Taking my head in his hands, he moves my gaze to his.
“You’re okay,” he tells me. “You’re safe. I’m here.”
I find myself nodding. He doesn’t look away from me, never even glances over his shoulder to see what’s happening.
“I need you to get on the floor,” he instructs.
“Why?”
“Please, just do it,” he insists.
I hold on to his forearms as we slide to the floor, Valdemar still keeping me protected from the riot behind him, and even amongst the carnage, I can’t help but notice how natural it feels to touch him, how familiar.
“That’s it. Now take this.” Letting go of me, he pulls his T-shirt over his head and presses it into my hands. Reading my puzzled expression, he says, “They’re going to let off tear gas. It’s what they do when a fight breaks out. I need you to put my shirt over your face. If we stay low, we should be okay, but I need you to do as I say.”
I grab his T-shirt and hold the soft material over my mouth and nose.
The smell of warm spice and damp oak fills my nose as the shirt swallows me.
“Put your head against my chest,” he tells me. “We need to block out as much of the gas as we can.”
His chest, now bare, looms over me, and I want nothing more than to gaze at the perfection of his skin, to take in the artwork of his tattoos, the intricacy of the designs, to examine the large raven whose wings are spread across his pecs.
“What about you?” I ask, wondering when I started to worry about Valdemar Montresor.
“I’m not the concern here. You are. Now do as I say.”
I push my forehead into his chest as he cups the back of my head with his hand, holding me in place as the riot wages out.
My sense of sight gone, fear should be overwhelming me. I should be shaking, nausea eating away at me from being in a locked room with angry criminals at large, the threat of impending tear gas looming in the air. But I feel none of these things as I’m held by Valdemar, the smell of him thick and heavy, the security of his arms around me, the pressure of his body against mine. It’s exactly like it is in my dreams, yet this is real.