Page 7 of Blood Magic (Ariel Kimber 3)

More pink and white. I would put my dirty clothes back on if they hadn’t all been slept in, wrinkled and probably didn’t smell all that great. And I really didn’t want to get out of the shower clean and put on dirty clothes. That sounded like a terrible idea, and I felt gross just at the thought.

I shut the drawer with a slam and pulled out the third one and this time I didn’t bother with the hoping and praying bit, it would do me no good.

The third drawer was full of blue jeans. I pulled out a pair and held it up in front of me. I shook my head. No good. They looked like they would be super tight on me, were worn out in places even though the price tag meant they were brand-new, and had serious bling on the back pockets. It was fake bling, but still. I checked the tag on the inside and shook my head. They were a size too small and there would be absolutely no squeezing my thighs into those pant legs. More wishful thinking on someone’s part? I hoped not because whoever had picked out the new wardrobe was going to be seriously disappointed in me.

I dropped the jeans back into the third drawer and pushed it shut. I hoped they kept the receipt because those jeans were expensive and needed to be returned or they would be wasted and taking up space in the drawer.

Since the third time wasn’t a charm maybe the fourth would be? Doubtful, very doubtful.

I was wrong. The fourth drawer ended up being my favorite by a long shot. I don’t know why, but the pajamas were in the fourth drawer, the bottom drawer. And they weren’t all pink!

I squatted down and dug around in the drawer. Super soft baby blue pajama shorts. More of the same thing but in light green. And in yellow. Pajama pants that were in the same colors as the shorts. It was like I had struck textile gold. I didn’t understand why there was color here that wasn’t matching the pink and white upstairs, but I certainly wasn’t about to question it.

It would seem that the person who had picked out this wardrobe for me had multiple personalities. Good to know. Now I simply needed to figure out who it was and exactly how many personalities they had.

I grabbed a pair of sleep shorts out of the bottom drawer, the baby blue ones, and a white spaghetti strap tank top out of the second drawer. I tossed the underwear on top of the pile and headed for the bathroom.

One thing that did not suck about this bedroom was that it had its own bathroom. And the space was huge. There was a deep tub with multiple jets that looked like it had been made specifically for relaxing and soaking in. Maybe I would get around to using it before Dash and I went back to his cottage in the forest. The shower was encased in glass and had three different shower heads hanging down from the ceiling. When the water came on I imagined it was like rain falling down from the sky onto your body. There was a bench along the wall in there with several bottles in various colors and sizes placed on top of it.

I dumped my armful of clothes on top of the closed toilet lid and padded across a soft, white rug to the shower. After opening the glass door, I fiddled around with the knobs, trying to figure out how to work the damn thing. I finally got it turned on and the water temperature set how I liked it, to almost burn your skin off temps. I liked the water extra hot, it made me feel cleaner for some insane reason.

I stripped off my clothes and left them in a neat pile on the floor in front of the sink. I stepped into the shower and closed the glass door with a soft click. The water that hit me felt fantastic, and the tension slid right out of me. Which would have been a good thing if my body wasn’t so worn out, and I wasn’t utterly exhausted. I felt like I could sit down on the hard floor under the cascading rain shower, curl up into a ball, and fall into a (hopefully) dreamless sleep. It didn’t sound like a bad idea but waking up covered in weird wrinkles and freezing cold didn’t sound all too appealing.

The only part of the labels on the various bottles sitting atop the bench that I paid attention to was where it told me what the bottle contained, whether it was shampoo, conditioner or body wash. There were a bunch of other things as well, but I paid them no mind. I had a feeling they were expensive, and if I knew how much each bottle had cost it would probably make me extremely uncomfortable. More so because I knew they were bought specifically for me, and I wouldn’t use even half of them.

I made quick work in the shower before shutting the water off and reaching for a fluffy, yellow bath towel.

Whoever had picked out the towels clearly wasn’t the same person who’d filled three of the four drawers in that dresser in the other room. Canary yellow was my favorite color. All of the towels hanging up around the bathroom were the same yellow color.

Hanging on a hook on the bathroom door was a fluffy black robe that looked big enough to swallow me whole. It was nothing like the silk number I had at the cottage that had been a gift from Dash and matched the one he wore. I hadn’t even been able to wear the thing yet. I wanted that robe to be hanging off of a hook inside my bathroom. Better yet, I wanted to be standing in the bathroom in the cottage.

I was wrapping the towel around my body as the door opened wide without so much as even a knock.

Quinton froze in the open doorway. Of course it was Uncle Quint, he was notorious for barging into rooms. I ignored him and stepped clear of the shower.

“I told you, I don’t want food right now,” I said as I walked to the toilet and picked up my small stack of clothes. I dropped them on the marble counter top and went to swipe my palm across the fogged-up mirror.

I froze mid-swipe as my dream came rushing back to me at warped speed. I honestly did not care that I would have a scar on my face for all to see. But how did the others feel about it? Quinton felt, but was that all of it? I knew I was a pretty girl. Not because people went out of their way to tell me how pretty I was. I looked remarkably like my mother, who might not have been my birth mother after all, but my father’s sister and a goddamn kidnapper. But shehadbeen incredibly beautiful. Slutty and dirty and crass always, but still incredibly beautiful. People had told her so all the time (not about her being slutty and all of that other negative business, of course). And, if I looked just like her, then that made me beautiful too.

Would I still be considered beautiful with a scar on my face? Would the others still find me attractive with it? Would Quinton? I didn’t even know if they were all attracted to me in the first place. Tyson was. So were my Salt and Pepper twins. And Quinton. I was almost positive Dash was as well. Who knew with Julian and Damien. I knew Julian was nice to me, while Damien was a bit of a dick. And they were all attracted to the fact that I’m a female with magic. There were so few of us to go around that when a coven of males was lucky enough to have a female join them, they shared her amongst themselves. And yes, I mean romantically. Supposedly none of the women seemed to mind. Somehow, I doubted the truth behind this. I felt it was something the Council of Elders probably made up so they didn’t look like the group of misogynistic, phony A-holes that they likely were. Anyway, female witches were like the finest, most precious jewels amongst the covens and I was now one of those precious jewels.

I struggled with this. My mother had been more than happy to be treated like an expensive object, to be taken out and played with whenever it pleased the owner to do so, just as long as she was appropriately compensated for the role she played. I wasn’t into role play, and I didn’t want to be treated like an object, precious or otherwise. Not that I thought any of the guys would ever treat me like that, because I didn’t think they would ever do that to me.

But I also wanted to be liked for more than the fact I was female and had magic. I wanted someone to love me because I was worthy of being loved, and I wanted it to have nothing to do with magic. Did love like that even exist? If it had, I had yet to see it in action.

The big questions, what I think my dreams had, in part, been about?

Well…

I stared into the green eyes of the blonde girl standing in front of me in the mirror. Those green eyes were mine, and that blonde girl was me.

A jagged, angry red line started about two inches away from my mouth and curved inwards towards said mouth and upwards. The stitches started about an inch and a half away from my nose and headed in the direction of my ear. There were only twelve of them, stitches, that is. The angry red line thankfully stopped where the stitches did, but the entire thing would scar. Maybe one day the angry red color would fade to pink, then, if I was lucky, to white. To most people, I would no longer be considered beautiful. And if someone were to refer to me as a “looker” it wouldn’t be because I was nice to look at. Did I have a problem with this? Nope. So, whatwasthe problem?

Back to those big questions, the ones I felt were partially responsible for triggering my dreams.

Would they,anyof them, ever be able to find me attractive with a fucked-up face, or would it always be about the magic now? Would I one day wake up, take a good long look in the mirror and suddenly blame Quint for the permanent mark on my face? Would they expect me to have plastic surgery? Lord knew they could afford it. Would Ty and the twins still look at me with lust in their eyes? All important questions that were unanswered and would likely drive me insane while thinking about.

The only thing Iwascertain of? Dash wouldn’t look at my face and be appalled. And didn’t that thought make me incredibly sad. That man had more scars on his back than I could count, and he understood dysfunctional family dynamic much better than even I could. He deserved a fucking medal.

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