The Glass Man - Lila Gray Book 1

Chapter Five

I opened my eyes to a room aglow with candlelight. It was perfectly warm, and the bed cradled my weary body like a cloud. My inner alarms began to chime. If I was comfortable and warm, something was terribly wrong.

A clear imaged hovering above me. I stared into my own brilliant blue eyes, eddies of gold and aqua dancing around the pupils. My wavy, golden hair spread over a red pillow like a spray of sunlight, and the rest of my body lay concealed beneath a red satin sheet. A mirror was fixed to the ceiling.

Oh God, my eyes. My freak eyes were visible, sending my mind into a downward spiral, my body a live wire.

"You kept me waiting again," my hunter said in the petulant tone he used whenever I pissed him off.

If the man had a name, I didn't know it. Nor did I know what he wanted from me, why he'd killed my family, or why he affected me the way he did. I called him the Glass Man. Partly because of his ice blue eyes. They were cold and pitiless, portholes to his malignant core, to his dark, soulless center. Mostly, it was because his flesh did nothing to conceal the depths of his madness. It swirled up from deep inside him, like smoke trapped in glass, looking for a way to infect every corner of the world around him.

My pulse took off running. I turned slowly, like a little girl who'd discovered a monster had crawled into bed with her—afraid to look, but compelled. He lounged beside me in a clingy pair of grey boxers.

Just a dream. My own personal nightmare, waiting to find me in the wilderness of my life.

He watched me with his head resting on his crooked arm. The hypnotic irises in his eyes had faint hints of silver in constant motion. His black hair fell in waves around his face and had the metallic purple sheen of a grackle's wing. In certain lights, his skin shimmered like the inside of an oyster shell.

"What have you done to your beautiful goldilocks now?" He faked a pout. "Tsk, tsk. Such a pity. You look almost ordinary with that flat brown you've been wandering around with. Why would you waste your energy trying to make yourself look more like them?"

I shrugged, ignoring the implications of what he'd said. Travelling as a tall blonde tended to attract the kind of attention I didn't want, but I'd told him that a hundred times, and he kept asking me the same stupid questions. Wasn't that the marker of insanity?

The weight of his gaze melted me into the bed, and the urge to flee tensed my muscles. I tried to sit up, but the cool silk touched parts of me I wasn't expecting it to, so I sank back into the pillow again.

I was naked.

Bastard.

I clutched the soft sheet to my throat, hating the sense of vulnerability he always stirred in me. The sea of white candles flickering around the room made the scene too intimate for my comfort.

I forced my calm voice out. "What do you want?"

"I want to talk to you."

"And that requires me to be naked?"

"I had the idea last night. Can't believe I've never thought of it before." He spoke through a long sigh. "Remove the clothes, and either you stay here with me until you wake up, or I get to look upon your wonderland again." Raising a dark, sculpted eyebrow, he flashed a grin. "Either way, I win."

"You're insane."

"Possibly." His fingers walked playfully toward me.

Even in my dreams, his nearness rippled my skin in goose flesh. His presence ate the light and cast a cruel, frigid shadow over the room. I fought to control my breathing.