“Sweetheart,” she said in an aw-shucks tone. “Something is not working here.”
The Book fluffled itself. Fluffled again.
Bringing the Birkin-window with her, she knew that she was leaving footprints that steamed in her wake, little curls of anger rising up from the floor. Nothing she could do about that, though. Maybe the Book wouldn’t notice.
“Yes?” She forced her eyebrows to raise in pleasant inquiry. “You were about to say?”
More fluttering, while the Book remained open to the same place.
Devina tried not to roll her eyes. “But I already read it thrice, just as it said. Although of course, I would love to read the spell again.”
Her eyes trained loosely on the words, the ink indelible on the page and yet capable of shimmering as the lettering registered: Blah, blah, blah, regard as you would be regarded, blah, blah, the object of your desire, blah, eternity, blah, blah, blah, other lovers, world revolves around the perfect pair…
She got to the end and wanted to scream, Well, get on with it, then! All she could think of, all she gave a shit about, was getting that male whatever-the-hell-he-was out of the viewing pane and into her lair. At which point, she was going to fuck him and then—
“What.” Devina gritted her molars. “I mean, do you think I’m missing something here?”
In response, the text shined up at her so brightly she had to blink the glare away. And then, as her vision adjusted, she followed along a sequence of highlighted words. But if the Book thought this was helping her read, it was wrong. The exercise of focus was like hopscotching for her, her eyes jumping from one block of letters to the next, leaving what had just been looked at behind.
When she got to the end of the spell, she put her hands on her hips while the Birkin floated in thin air right next to her. “And?”
The text flared again.
“Look.” She blew an exhale up at bangs that did not cover her forehead. “I did what you told me to do. I stared at what I love most in my collection, and I like what you showed me in return. He’ll do just fine. So, I don’t mean to be an impatient bitch”—no, she actually was an impatient bitch; there wasn’t any oops-maybe-I’m-coming-across-wrong about it—“but let’s move this along.”
The pages in the Book stood straight out of the binding, like it had been called to attention. Then they flopped back into place as if the thing had given up trying to talk to her.
“Thank you.” Then she leaned in and put her hand on her heart. “And I mean that sincerely—”
There was an explosion of light out of the windowpane of the Birkin, the beam a column of pure energy expressed as illumination. It was so powerful, Devina even stumbled back, the purse now a portal between dimensions, not anything made by Hermès.
And from out of the tear in the fabric of space and time, came her true love.
The male she had seen on the bed emerged from the opening, squeezing through the confines that remained limited to the Birkin’s profile. The constraint distorted his features, pulling his skin taut on his face, his neck straining as his shoulders got caught in the aperture until one popped out, then the other came free—after which his torso emerged, followed by his hips, his sex.
His legs and feet were last, and he landed on the hard floor in a flop.
Its job done, the energy retracted, the beam sucking back into the ruined Birkin.
Which then dropped down as well.
The male was facedown and he was breathing hard. And for what seemed like an eternity, he just lay there with his ribs pumping in and out. But then he planted his palms and pushed his pecs up off the floor.
The muscles in his shoulders and down his arms bunched under his smooth, hairless skin, and the display of his spine undulating was erotic as fuck. And he had a great… ass, wow what an ass he had.
Devina licked her lips. And ducked a hand inside her blouse to feel her own breast.
She couldn’t wait to have his mouth on her—
With a sudden shift, the male looked around his bicep, his beautiful face turned upward as if he sensed her. His lids were still closed, but his mouth was parted, and oh, fuck, yeah, the muscles of his chest were corded with power.
And then his eyes opened.
Devina gasped.
His irises and pupils were reversed, the center a sapphire blue, the outer rim jet black, and what radiated out of them was straight-up malevolence. The contrast of those two pits of hell with his sunshine-blond-and-white-streaked hair was electric. Especially as he looked down her body, that cunning, aggressive stare taking its sweet time—and stopping altogether when he saw her hand inside her silk shirt.