For those who don't have Facebook and didn't see this . . .
Moning posted a deleted scene from Dreamfever on her Facebook page on 4/21/13. Here it is in full, but be warned, it is spoilery unless you've read all of Dreamfever:
Deleted Scene/DREAMFEVER
“You’re not the only fucking one that got branded!” Barrons slammed his fist into the wall behind my head. Bits of plaster dusted my shoulders.
Oh, really? I wasn’t the only one walking around with a mark on me I didn’t want? Our gazes locked and I jerked. Was he letting me see this, or had intimacy given me a window into his soul. As if he had one. He deserved no less. He hadn’t done it to save me. He’d had sex with me because it was the only way he could continue using me. He’d had sex with me to steal my services back from his enemies at Camp Pri-ya.
And for the first time since the morning he’d gotten up and walked out, leaving me painfully, horrifically aware of both who I was and where I was—in Jericho Barron’s lust-drenched bed on the verge of begging him not to leave me while in full possession of my senses--I could see that it hadn’t left him nearly as untouched as I’d thought. As he’d led me to think.
I searched his face. Beneath his left eye, a tiny muscle contracted, smoothed, contracted again. That minute betrayal was Barron’s equivalent of a normal person having a full-blown hissy fit. Oh, no, far from untouched. Had he stood outside my door as I’d stood outside his, fists at his sides, lips drawn back? Did it have him as bad as it had me? Was it eating at him, gnawing at him with the same sharp vicious little teeth that wouldn’t let me sleep?
Yes, it was. I could see the rage of insatiable, uninvited lust in every line of that dark, stoic face that had once been too subtly etched for me to read. I wasn’t the only one lying awake at night, fevered with memories, tossing, turning, soaking my sheets, burning up--not for Fae sex, but him, damn it all to hell, him.
Remembering being too naked in body and soul, trembling with need. Backing to him, a wild animal. Later, straddling him, holding him down and demanding more and more because Jericho Barrons couldn‘t be depleted. Of anything. Whatever he was. He was without limit.
He hadn’t erased the Fae Princes’ marks--he’d burned his own into them until I could no longer discern the shape of the marks they‘d left. He‘d scarred their scars out of me with a bigger scar. The bastard. And if I’d managed to carve up some part of him in return—
“Good,” I said, hard and low. “Welcome to my world, Barrons. I hope it hurts like hell.”
His hand was on my throat and my back was to the wall. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t need to. He was touching me. Two enormous magnets, repelling and attracting; a manifest of nature, not a matter of will at all. The air between us crackled with energy. Did I smell flesh burning?
“Good?” he said softly, and staring into those black eyes was like staring down the shadowy, demon-littered corridor of the Unseelie mirror in his study. “You think it’s good to have something like me obsessed with you? My dear, dear, bloody idiotic, suicidal Ms. Lane, you have no fucking idea what’s gotten the scent of you in its nostrils, what has the taste of you in its blood, or you’d run. You’d run for what little remains of what you think of as your life.”
He whirled, long black coat fluttering, was out the door, and gone.
I stared into the deepening twilight into which he’d disappeared. Nightfall was painting the stone walkway one of those new Fae shades that hadn’t existed before the walls had come crashing down around our ears; a dreamy silvery-violet, spider-webbed with moonbeams that was eerily beautiful. I shivered. I hated the new colors. They were….somehow just…wrong.
I shook it off.
Obsessed, Barrons had said.
I smiled. Good.
Okay, and this was deleted
why?!
It's fecking awesome and HOT!
Original review:
Behold, I give to you my reaction to the first 50 pages of Dreamfever:
#*$@%*%@$@&$*(@!>?<#&WTF?*faints*#**&^@!$%^#%^7053 .........................!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
More on that later.
Remember when I said in my review for Darkfever that I wasn't
as batshit crazy over Barrons as most people but that I eventually would be? That day has come, my friend. With each book I've grown to love him more and more. I've slowly learned how he operates and slowly become used to his ways of doing things. And let me tell you, they're anything but conventional. Barrons isn't like any leading male character that you will encounter in any genre. Simply put, he's one of a kind. Barrons is the type of character where you have to stay very open minded upon meeting him else you'll be offended almost immediately. I almost was, myself. But patience and keeping an open mind will pay off.
The thing about Barrons is, most of the time, he's rude, insensitive, stoic, and, at times, barbaric. But despite all of this he's become one of my very favorite male characters. If Ms. Moning ever chose to write a story solely about him, I'd be the first person at the bookstore to buy it.
Mac's character continues to surprise me and she'll always be a favorite of mine. The only idiotic err she made in this was at the end. How could she NOT know that he was the beast? I mean, come on! I started to figure that out in book 1! I thought that that was a simple 2 + 2 = 4 equation, but apparently I was wrong. I don't know what Mac was thinking.
Since reading Darkfever I've been thinking that it's Barrons keeping his and Mac's nonexistent relationship from ever becoming something more. I was wrong. Dreamfever shows you something else. In Dreamfever we see that while Barrons is often times aloof and hard for Mac to understand, he's been wanting Mac for quite some time. You see that if Mac would just take her foot out of her ass and take what she really wants (let's be honest with ourselves, she wants Barrons -- Who in their right mind doesn't, anyway?) she'd be a hell of a lot happier and less confused. Besides the beginning that I dare you to only read once, there're quite a few luscious little moments between these two that I really enjoyed. One of them was this:
"I'll snoop anywhere I damned well please, Ms. Lane. I'll
snoop inside your skin if I feel like it."
"You just try," I said, eyes narrowing.
He moved forward in one swift, violent lunge but caught him-
self and locked down hard.
I mirrored the move, without conscious thought at all, as if our
bodies were connected by puppet strings. Lunged forward, froze.
Fisted my hands at my sides. They wanted to touch him. I looked
down. His hands were fisted, too.
I uncurled my hands and crossed my arms.
He crossed his at exactly the same moment.
We both practically flung them down at our sides.
We stared at each other.
The silence lengthened.
You could cut the sexual tension with a knife. I found that scene to be both adorable and frustrating.
Dreamfever is easily my favorite of the series thus far because even though it's not under the circumstances I would've liked, Barrons and Mac finally get intimate. And, all jokes aside, I cried during parts of those scenes. This is one of the parts that really got to me:
He touches my face.
There is something different in his touch. It feels like he's saying good-bye, and I know a moment of panic. But my dream sky darkens and sleep's moon fills the horizon.
"Don't leave me." I thrash in the sheets.
"I'm not, Mac."
I know I am dreaming then, because dreams are home to the absurd and what he says next is beyond absurd.
"You're leaving me, Rainbow Girl."
If you've read this then you know what that is referring to and you
know what it means for Barrons to say something like that.
Yep, I'm a complete sap and I'm not afraid to admit it; I went from
having totally inappropriate/appropriate feelings while reading that
scene to crying to the point where I could no longer make out the
words on the page.
Any author that can make me feel such contrary emotions juxtaposing within the same scene is at the top tier in my opinion.
Bottom line, Dreamfever is fantastic, this whole series is fantastic, and Ms. Moning herself is one fantastic writer.
Here's to hoping that Shadowfever won't disappoint. Cheers, fellow Fever fans!