Tempted

course. Yet it still felt so real—so horribly familiar.”
    I stared at him, not knowing what to say. Not knowing how to react to this version of Kalona—the version who looked and acted more like an angel than a demon. He reminded me of the Kalona who had surrendered to A-ya, willingly giving himself to the trap of her embrace with a vulnerability that still haunted me. It was such a contrast from the last time I’d been here, when he’d been in super-seduction mode, all groping me, and . . .
    I narrowed my eyes at him. “Just exactly how can I be here again? I’m not sleeping alone, and I don’t mean I’m with one of my girlfriends. Or rather, friends who are girls,” I corrected hastily. “I’m sleeping in the arms of the human guy I’ve Imprinted. He and I are definitely more than friends. You shouldn’t be able to get in here.” I pointed to my head.
    “I am not inside your head. You have never called me into your dreams. I draw your essence to me. The invasion was mine, not through any invitation of yours.”
    “That’s not what you said before.”
    “I lied to you before. I am speaking the truth to you now.”
    “Why?”
    “For the same reason I was able to draw you here through your sleep even though you are in the arms of another. This time—for the first time—my motives are pure. I am not attempting to manipulate you. I am not attempting to seduce you. And I will speak only truth to you.”
    “How can you expect me to believe that?”
    “Whether you believe it or not does not change the nature of truth. You are here, Zoey, when you should not be. Is that not proof enough for you?”
    I chewed my lip. “I don’t know. I don’t know the rules here.”
    “You do know about the power of truth, though. You showed me that during your last visit. Can you not draw on that power to judge the veracity of what I’m saying?”
    Thanks to Damien, I knew veracity meant truth, so I wasn’t standing there chewing my lip with a big question mark on my face because I didn’t get what he meant. I question marked because I didn’t know how to respond to him. Kalona was completely baffling me. Finally I opened my mouth to tell him that, no, I couldn’t count on the power of truth when I didn’t have a clue what he might be lying about, but he held up one hand and stopped my words.
    “You asked me once before if I have always been as I am now, and I only gave you evasions and lies. Today I’d like to give you the truth. Will you let me, Zoey?”
    Again, he called me Zoey! He hadn’t once called me A-ya, as he liked to do. And he wasn’t touching me. At all.
    “I-I don’t know,” I stuttered like a moron and took a half step back, expecting the good-guy act to fade and the seductive immortal to reappear. “What are you going to do to show me?”
    His beautiful amber eyes darkened with sadness. He shook his head. “No, Zoey. You need not fear that I’ll try to make love to you. Should I attempt to shift from truth to seduction, this dream would shatter and you would find yourself waking in another man’s arms. For me to show you what you need to see, you need only take my hand.” He held it out to me, strong and normal-looking.
    I hesitated.
    “I give you my oath that my skin will not burn you with the cold power of the lust I have for you. I know you have no reason to trust me, so I ask only that you trust in truth. Touch me, and you will see that I am not lying to you.”
    It’s just a dream.
I reminded myself.
No matter what he says about the Otherworld, a dream is a dream. This isn’t real.
But truth was real, whether in dreams or the waking world, and the sad truth was that I wanted to take his hand. I wanted to see what it was he needed to show me.
    So I lifted my hand and pressed my palm to his.
    He’d been telling the truth. For the first time, his skin didn’t freeze me with a passion and power that I couldn’t accept, even when I couldn’t make myself completely reject it.
    “I want to show you my past.” The hand not holding mine swept in front of us like he was wiping an invisible window once, twice, three times. Then the air wavered and with an awful ripping sound something opened before us, like he’d torn a piece of the dream realm open. “Now behold the truth!”
    At his command the rip in the sky shivered and then, like a big flat-screen TV had suddenly been turned on, I began watching pieces of Kalona’s past.
    The first scene I saw had me breathless at