Dance of the Gods

by Nora Roberts

  Now he was riding the dragon, he thought, flying on the power of it. She was like trying to hold flame, so the sheer burn of her made him delirious. He used teeth and tongue, gorging himself as her fingers dug into his shoulders, his back, his sides. Then she was under him again, her hips grinding up while their mouths clashed.

  He pulled the loose pants she wore down her hips, and there was nothing beneath them but woman, hot and wet. Hotter and wetter when his hand found her. Her harsh, throaty moan seared across his lips.

  When the orgasm ripped through her, she could only think, God, thank God. But the greed whipped back, spun through like a cyclone that had her biting, scratching, tearing. She would give no quarter here, and ask none, but only clamped strong legs around him. Held on to that exquisite shock when he plunged into her.

  And drove her like a mad thing, thrust upon urgent thrust, until they were both burned out.

  What had she done? She’d just had crazed, kick-your-ass sex without a single thought of self-preservation, of consequences, of…anything. No thought, none at all, just brutal, primal need.

  He was still inside her, and if felt as though their bodies had melted together in the heat. How would she separate herself again? How could she come out of this whole?

  She wasn’t supposed to feel like this. She wasn’t supposed to want something—someone—so much she forgot herself. Let herself be taken even as she took, and in blind, feral passion.

  She hadn’t stopped it. She hadn’t been able to stop it. And now she would pay.

  He murmured something; she couldn’t make it out. Then he nuzzled—a kind of nose in the neck like a puppy—before he rolled aside.

  The simple sweetness of the gesture after the ferocity all but broke her into pieces.

  “Crushing you.” He grabbed a couple of ragged breaths. “Well, that was fairly amazing, and not at all the way I’d had it all planned out. Are you all right then?”

  Careful, she warned herself. Careful and cool. “No problem.”

  She sat up, reached for her pants.

  “Hang on a minute.” He patted her arm. “My head’s still spinning here. And I barely took the time to look at you seeing as we were both in a rush.”

  “Got the job done.” She hitched on her pants. “That’s what counts.”

  He pushed himself up, reached her shirt before she did. “Look here at me, would you?”

  “I’m not big on postgame analysis, and I’ve got things to do.”

  “I don’t remember a game. A battle, perhaps. I thought we’d both come out on the winning side of it.”

  “Yeah, so like I said, no problem.” She would start to tremble in a minute, any minute. “I need my shirt.”

  He studied her face. “Where did you go? You have so many little hiding places.”

  “I don’t hide.” She ripped the shirt out of his hand.

  “Aye, you do. Someone gets too close, you go sliding off into one of your shadows.”

  “Okay, why do you want to piss me off?” She dragged on her shirt. “We had sex—really good sex. It’s been coming on for a while, and now it’s done. We can put the focus back where it belongs.”

  “I don’t think things are so very different here than in Geall that what we just had between us would be just sex.”

  “Look, cowboy, if you want romance—”

  He got to his feet, slowly. It was the look in his eyes that warned her his temper was back. That was fine, in fact, that was good. They’d swipe at each other, and he’d go.

  “There wasn’t anything romantic about it. I thought there would be the first time we came together, but things took a different turn, and no complaints. Now you’re trying to shove me away, knock me back, the way you did before with your fist. Let me say that the fist was more honest than this.”

  “You got what you were after.”

  “You know better. You know it wasn’t only this.”

  “What’s the point in anything else? What’s the goddamn point? It’s got nowhere to go.”

  “Have you been looking into Glenna’s crystal? You see tomorrow now, and the day after?”

  “I know things like this are doomed before they start. Cian’s not the only one who is what he is, Larkin.”

  “Ah, now we come to it.”

  “Just—” She lifted her hands, shoved at the air, turned away. “Let it go. If the occasional grope in the dark isn’t enough for you, look somewhere else.”

  So, he’d hurt her along the way, he realized. He was hardly the first, and couldn’t quite decide if he was sorry for his part of it as yet. “I don’t know what’s enough for me when it comes to you.” He scooped up his pants, yanked them on. “But I know I care for you. I know you matter.”

  “Oh please.” She grabbed the water from her desk, gulped some down. “You don’t even like me.”

  “Where does that fly from? Why would you say something so foolish and so false?”

  “You seem to have forgotten what started this whole thing, what you came in here for in the first place.”

  “I haven’t, but I don’t see what that has to do with how I feel about you.”

  “Well, for God’s sake, Larkin, how could you feel anything for someone when you’re standing on the other side of a basic line?”

  He considered his words now. He was, he knew, being compared to the Jeremy she’d spoken of before. Someone who’d been unable—or unwilling—to love and accept who she was.”

  “Blair, you’re a hardheaded woman, and I’ve my own streak of stubbornness. My own stands and thoughts and—what did you call it?—sensibilities. And so what?”

  “So. You, me.” She pointed to him, tapped her own chest, then swiped a finger between them. “Line.”

  “Oh, bollocks. You think I can’t disagree with you, and passionately, come to that, and care for you? Respect you, admire you, even knowing inside my heart you’re wrong about the thing we’re arguing over? The same, I wager as inside yours you believe I’m wrong. I’m not,” he said with the barest hint of a smile, “but that’s another matter. If everyone has to believe the same, if there’s never any passionate differences, how do people come together in your world?”

  “They don’t,” she said after a moment. “Not with me.”

  “Then you’re just stupid, aren’t you? And narrow in your thinking,” he added when she gaped at him. “Hard in the head as well, as I believe I’ve already mentioned.”

  She took another careful sip of water. “I’m not stupid.”

  “Just the rest of it then.” He nodded as he took a step toward her. “Blair, it’s not always where you end up, is it, that’s the most important thing? It’s the journey itself, and what you find, what you do along the way. Now I’ve found you, and that’s an important thing.”

  “Where we’re going matters.”

  “It does. But so does where we are. I have feelings for you, feelings I’ve never had for anyone. They don’t always fit comfortably inside me, but I have a way of shifting things around until I find the fit.”

  “You maybe. I’m not good at this.”

  “As I am, you’ll just have to follow my lead.”

  “How did you manage to turn this around on me?”

  He only smiled, then kissed her cheek, her brow, her other cheek. “I just managed to get you faced toward me. That’s the right direction.”

  She had to keep her mind focused on the job, the work. If she didn’t, Blair found it tended to wander in that direction Larkin had spoken of. Then she’d catch herself daydreaming, smiling for no reason, or remembering what it was like to wake up beside a man who looked at her in a way that made her feel so much like a woman.

  There was too much to do to take time indulging in fantasies.

  “You have to be practical, Glenna. We all do. Now.” Blair tapped Glenna’s storage chest with her foot. “What’s essential in here?”

  “All of it.”

  “Glenna.”

  “Blair.” Glenna fol
ded her arms. “Are we or are we not going into battle against über evil?”

  “Yes, we are. Which means we go in lean, stripped down, mobile.”

  “No, which means we go in loaded. These are my weapons.” Glenna swept out a hand, a bit, Blair thought, like one of those game show models showing off fabulous prizes. “Are you leaving your weapons behind?”

  “No, but I can also carry mine on my back, which you can’t do with this two-ton chest.”

  “It doesn’t weigh two tons. Seventy-five pounds, tops.” Glenna’s lips trembled at Blair’s long, cool stare. “Okay, maybe eighty.”

  “The books alone—”

  “May make all the difference. Who’s to say? I’ll worry about the transport.”

  “This better be a damn big stone circle,” Blair muttered. “You know you’re taking more than the rest of us combined.”

  “What can I say? I’m a diva.”

  Blair rolled her eyes, stalked to the tower window to stare out into the rain.

  There was little time here left, she thought. Nearly moving day. And while she could sense—nearly see—a few of Lilith’s forces in the trees, there’d be no movement toward the house. No attack.

  She’d expected something. After what Larkin had pulled off, the sheer balls of it, she’d expected a reprisal. It seemed impossible Lilith would take such an insult, such a loss, without slapping back.

  “Maybe she’s too busy gearing up for Geall, too.”

  “What?”

  “Lilith.” Blair turned back to Glenna. “Nothing out of her for days now. And Larkin’s infiltration had to sting. Jesus, when you think about it, one man—unarmed—not only getting in, but getting prisoners out. It’s a kick in the face.”

  Glenna’s eyes glinted. “I wish that was literal as well as figurative.”

  “Get in line. But anyway, maybe she’s too busy preparing to move her front to bother harassing us right now.”

  “Very likely.”

  “I’m going to head down to the war room. We need to work out the fine details of the traps we want to set.”

  “Will it make a difference?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it, all of it. What we’ve done, what they’ve done.” Glenna rubbed a hand over the top of her chest. “But the time and the place are set. Nothing we do will change that time, that place.”

  “No, Morrigan made that clear in our last little chat. But what we do, how we handle the time between now and then will set the tone for that time and place. She was saying that, too. Hey, pal, it’s okay to be nervous.”

  “Good.” With brisk efficiency, Glenna set vials she’d replenished back in her healing case. “I called my parents today. I told them I’d probably be out of touch for a few weeks. Told them what an incredible time I’m having. I couldn’t tell them about any of this, of course. I haven’t even told them about Hoyt yet because it’s too hard to explain.”

  She closed the case and turned. “It’s not that I’m not afraid to die. I am, of course—maybe more now than I was when this began. I have more to lose now.”

  “Hoyt, and happy ever.”

  “Exactly. But I’m prepared to die if that’s what it takes. Maybe more now than when this began, for those exact reasons.”

  “Love sure can twist you up.”

  “Oh boy,” was Glenna’s heartfelt agreement. “And I wouldn’t change a single moment since I met him. Still, it’s so hard, Blair. I have no way of telling my family how or why if I don’t make it through this. They’ll never know what happened to me. And that weighs on me.”

  “Then don’t die.”

  Glenna gave a half laugh. “A better idea.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make light of it.”

  “No, it’s kind of bolstering, actually. But…if anything happens to me, would you take this to my family?” She held out an envelope. “I know it’s a lot to ask,” she began when Blair hesitated.

  “No, but…Why me?”

  “You and Cian have the best chance of coming through this. I can’t ask him to do it. They won’t understand, even with this, but at least they won’t spend the rest of their lives wondering if I’m alive or dead. I don’t want to put them through that.”

  Blair studied the envelope, the artistic flare of the handwriting forming her parents’ names and address. “I tried to contact my father, twice, since this started. E-mail, because I don’t actually know where he is. He hasn’t answered me.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. He must be out of reach for—”

  “No, probably not. He just doesn’t answer me, that’s fairly typical. And I really need to get over it. It isn’t that he wouldn’t care. Big vamp war—he’d care. And if I died, he’d be sorry. Because he trained me not to, and going down would be a reflection on him.”

  “That sounds harsh.”

  “He is.” She looked into Glenna’s face, clear-eyed. “And he doesn’t love me.”

  “Oh, Blair.”

  “Time to suck that up, too. Past time. You’ve got something else here.” She tapped the letter. “And it’s important.”

  “It is,” Glenna agreed. “But they’re not my only family.”

  “I get that. What we’ve got, the six of us? It’s one of the good things I’ve picked up along the way.”

  With a nod, Blair tucked the envelope into the back pocket of her jeans. “I’ll give this back to you, November first.”

  “That’d be good.”

  “See you downstairs.”

  “Soon. Oh, and Blair? It’s nice, you and Larkin. It’s nice to see.”

  “See what?”

  Now Glenna let out a genuine laugh. “What, am I blind? Added to that I have the super X-ray vision of a newlywed. I’m just saying I like the way you are together. It seems like a nice fit.”

  “It’s just—It’s not…I’m not looking for the big, Hollywood finish, the one where the music crescendos and the light goes all pink and pretty.”

  “Why not?”

  “Just not the way it is. I’ll take it a day at a time. People like me look too far down the road, they end up falling into the big hole somebody dug right in front of them.”

  “If they don’t look far enough or hard enough, they don’t see what they were really looking for.”

  “Right now, I’ll settle for avoiding the hole.”

  She headed out. No way to explain, she thought, not to a woman still floating on the wings of new love, that there were some people who just weren’t built for it. Some people didn’t have that strolling hand-in-hand with the man of their dreams into the sunset in their destiny.

  When she strolled into the sunset, she went alone, she went armed and she went looking for death.

  Not exactly the stuff of romance and hopeful futures.

  She’d tried it once, and it had been a disaster that had blown up in her face. Larkin was no Jeremy, that was for damn certain. Larkin was tougher, and stronger, and sweeter for that matter.

  But that didn’t change the basics. She had her duty—the mission—and he had his world. Those weren’t the elements for a long-term connection.

  Her particular branch of the old McKenna family tree would die out with her. She’d made up her mind to that when she’d scraped herself up after Jeremy.

  She started to swing toward the stairs, but the music stopped her. Cocking her head, she strained to hear, to recognize. Was that Usher?

  Jeez, was Larkin up in the training room fooling around with her MP3? She’d have to kill him.

  She jogged up the stairs. It wasn’t that she couldn’t appreciate the fact he enjoyed her music. But she’d spent a lot of time downloading and setting up that player. He didn’t even know how the damn thing worked.

  “Listen, cowboy, I don’t want you—”

  The room was empty, the terrace doors firmly shut. And music poured through the air.

  “Okay, weird.” She set her hand on the stake she always carried in her b
elt, and sidestepped slowly toward the weapons. The lights were on full; nothing could hide in shadows. But she closed her hand over the handle of a scythe.

  The music shut off; a switch flicked.

  Lora stepped through the wall of mirrors.

  “Hello, cherie.”

  “Nice trick.”

  “One of my favorites.” Turning a circle, she seemed to study the room. She wore heeled boots, snug black pants with a fitted jacket that showed a flirty bit of frothy lace between the deep plunge of lapels.

  “So, this is where you spar and sweat, and prepare to die.”

  “This is where we train to kick your ass.”

  “So tough, so formidable.” She floated around the room with the spiked heels of those boots gliding just above the floor.

  Not here, Blair told herself. Not really here, just the illusion of her. But to prove it, she hurled a stake. And watched it pass right through Lora’s figure to embed itself into the wall.

  “That was rude.” Lora turned with a little pout. “Hardly a way to welcome a guest.”

  “You weren’t invited.”

  “No, we were interrupted the last time, before you could invite me in. But still, I brought you a present. Something picked just especially for you. I went all the way to America for it. All the way to Boston.”

  She did a long, sweeping turn with her eyes bright as suns. “Wouldn’t you like to see? Or would you like to guess? Yes, yes, you must guess! Three guesses.”

  To show complete lack of interest, Blair stood hip-shot, a hand hooked in the pocket of her jeans. “I don’t play games with the undead, Fifi.”

  “You’re just no fun, are you? But one day we’ll have fun, you and I.” She floated closer, running her tongue over fangs before she smiled. “I have so many plans for you. Men have let you down, haven’t they? Poor Blair. Withheld their love, and you crying out for it inside.”

  “The only thing I’m crying out for is an end to this conversation before it makes me sick.”

  “What you need is a woman. What you need…” She trailed a finger in the air, a breath away from Blair’s cheek. “Yes, bien sur, you need the power and the pleasure I’d give you.”

  “I don’t go for cheap blondes with silly French accents. Plus the outfit? It’s so last week.”

  Lora hissed, her head snapping forward as if to bite.

  “I’ll make you sorry, and I’ll make you grovel. Then I’ll make you scream.”

  Deliberately, Blair widened her eyes. “Golly. Does that mean you don’t want to date me anymore?”

  With a laugh, Lora spun away. “I like you, I really do. You have, ah…flair. That’s why I brought you such a special present. I’ll just go get it. Wait one minute.”

  She stepped backward, through the mirrors.