“Yes,” he hissed against her mouth, gripping her hip, her shoulder, then digging his fingers into her hair to drag her mouth up to his for a fierce, wild kiss that tasted of sage and made her head spin. “Gods, yes.”
He was hugely thick where she wrapped her hand around him, long from base to tip, where he was wide and blunt, and pressed eagerly into her hand. She curved her fingers around him, felt a thrill when she couldn’t completely enclose him, another when he groaned and met her stroke with a jerky, desperate thrust.
There was slick wetness on her fingers, on her skin, between her legs where she gripped his thigh, rode it. She was feverish, her heart pounding with the desperation to take him inside her. There was no need for a condom; the magi used sterilization spells and didn’t carry disease. And, despite the faint pinch beneath her heart, there was no need to wait, no reason to go slow.
At his urging she parted for him, arched into his touch as he cupped her, his hand gliding across where she, too, was sleekly bare. He pressed his forehead to her, his breath an excited rasp. “Fuck, that’s sexy.”
Then he slid a finger inside her, worked her with his thumb and sent her cartwheeling. Light flared behind her eyelids as a hard, hot orgasm barreled through her, paralyzing her for a moment with its raging intensity. She bowed up into him and rode out the pleasure that washed through her as he kissed her, held her, worked her, the whole time whispering dark, earthy curses that became love words in his rasping voice.
Every inch of her was sensitized to the fluid slide of skin on skin as she rose over him. She spread her legs wide to straddle him, the move changing the sensations and sending new urgency licking through her. Then she leaned in so they were nose to nose as she reached down to touch him, stroke him, center him at the entrance to her body. He let her have the moment, his hands gently kneading her hips, his eyes steady on hers, warm in the afternoon sunlight, then clouding as she eased him inside. The blunt head of his cock stretched and filled her, setting off chain reactions that began at her wet clasp and flared outward. The tightness eased as she moved down his shaft, then returned when he was fully seated within her.
They fit together tightly, with a seamlessness that brought a prickle of tears, a churn of emotion that she fought back. This was real. It was magic.
She closed her eyes and let her head fall back, then began to move her hips gently, experimentally. Heat flared through her, ramping higher as he slid his hands to her waist, up to her breasts. A long breath shuddered out of her and she rocked against him.
“Fuuuck.” As if unable to stay still any longer, he jackknifed up, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her hard and hot as he slid them, still intimately connected, to the edge of the mattress. He got one leg down, curled the other around behind her, and surged into her, his strong grip counterpointing the thrust. And again.
Heat detonated, wringing a moan from her. She floundered for a few seconds, awash in pleasure. They were face-to-face, belly-to-belly, locked in a kiss as he set a hard, fast pace that caught her up, swept her along, and left her no choice but to dig in and meet him stroke for stroke. She got a foot on the floor and used the leverage to buck against him, then cried out when he slid his hands down to cup her ass and exert a dark and dangerous pressure. Bucking against him, she whimpered against his mouth.
He rasped her name, his body shuddering, losing rhythm and then regaining it as he pounded into her, with her, taking them beyond the slap of flesh to a whiplash of pure energy that filled her mind and tightened her chest. Then he hit a sweet spot deep inside her, bringing a wave of searing pleasure, a gut-wrenching oh, holy shit of sensation. She dug her fingers into the heavy muscles of his shoulders and poured herself into a kiss as he found the spot a second time, then a third. And then she was coming in great, fluid waves of pleasure that crashed over her, rolled through her.
She cried his name on a long, guttural moan that should have belonged to another woman—someone who loved, and was loved. Then her orgasm coalesced and notched higher, wringing her boneless as he locked himself against her and came, shuddering against her, around her, inside her. “Reese,” he said. “Jesus gods, Reese.”
She turned her face into his, seeking his lips. They kissed for a long time, stayed locked together for even longer until, finally, his strung-tight body eased against hers and he pulled her down so they were wrapped together on the bed with her back to his front. He took an impossibly deep breath and let it out on a long, satisfied sigh. Then he wrapped his arms around her, and simply held her as the silence wrapped around them, bringing the smell of sage and black cohosh and the dragging fatigue of drugged sleep.
He was still holding her like that when she awoke the next morning, stone sober, with a single thought ringing in her too-clear head: Oh, crap.
CHAPTER NINE
Moving quietly, heart thudding as she prayed he would stay asleep a few minutes longer, Reese slipped out of Dez’s bed and did the clothes-grope thing in the muddy light of predawn.
She had her hand on the doorknob when he said, “Sneaking out?” His voice was clear and cool, fully awake.
She froze for a moment, then flattened her hand on the door. “I thought it would be easier to hash this out later, over coffee and some work.”
“Probably would be.”
She turned back to find him sitting up in the bed, cross-legged, with the sheet pooled in his lap. The morning cast him in light and shadow, picking out the heavy ridges of muscle across his chest and abdomen. The edges of his pale irises had gone shadowy, intensifying his gaze and bringing a quiver of nerves, along with the realization that her instincts were silent on this one. “So let it be easy,” she said softly. “Let me go.”
“That was the one thing I never could do.” He hesitated, then said, “Yesterday, when you came in I was dreaming that we were fighting the makol together as a mated couple. When I woke up, there you were.”
Her throat tightened, but she forced a smile. “Turns out the antidote was also an aphrodisiac. I think we should chalk it up as: It happened. It was fun. It won’t happen again.” Please let’s just leave it at that.
His eyes darkened. “Is that all it was?”
“It was . . .” She swallowed hard as mental doors she’d long ago soldered shut threatened to reopen. “What else could it have been?”
He rose and started pulling on yesterday’s clothes. Without looking at her, he said, “It was what I would have given anything for a decade ago.”
A slow churn in her stomach said yes. “And now?”
Sending her a sidelong look, he said, “If I asked you to, would you go back to Denver and wait for me to call when it’s safe?”
The heat—and even some of the vulnerability—faded as she realized she didn’t know whether he wanted her back in Denver for her own good, or his own. Probably both.
“I’m not trying to stay safe,” she said. “I want to make a difference.” Which was the truth even outside of their reunion—the Nightkeepers and their war were too important for her to walk away.
Still, though, saying the words sent an ache through her. She didn’t want to fight with him; she wanted . . . hell, she didn’t know what she wanted anymore. To find herself dropped into another lifetime, maybe, where things had been different all along. Which was about as likely as her suddenly developing magical powers of her own—as in, not very.
“Reese . . .” Dressed now, and standing in the center of the room, he reached out to her, but didn’t make contact. “The Triad magic broke Anna’s mind, and a makol ripped Lucius’s godsdamned leg off right in front of me—I was standing twenty, maybe thirty feet away, and I couldn’t get my shield on him in time. Entire villages are disappearing. And now that Keban has seen you with me, he’s going to be coming after you too.”
The list sent a shudder through her, but she didn’t back down. “You think I haven’t thought about all that? Of course I have. But I’m not letting another bully run me out of town. Not Keban, not Iago
, and not the Banol Kax.” And most of all, not you. “Besides, I don’t need you to protect me from myself. I’m tired of guys who think—” She bit off the rest. “Look, last night was . . .” magical. “I think it was something we needed to do in order to put the past behind us; sort of the night we never had together. It was . . . a moment, that’s all. A memory.” One that made her throat tighten and her body thrum, yes, but she didn’t want to love a man she couldn’t trust, and there was no way she could be involved with him and keep it casual.
“Damn it, Reese.” Eyes flaring dangerously, he closed the distance between them, until he was crowding her, their thighs brushing as he angled to box her in. The warmth of his body—hell, the sheer physical punch of his presence—had liquid heat shimmying inside her even before he lifted a hand to touch her face, just a single finger stroke that left a trail of sparks. “What if I don’t want it to just be a memory?” His voice was low and intimate, and brought a hard throb of desire. “What if I want to repeat it?”
Her throat dried and her voice shook when she said, “I don’t.”
“Liar,” he rasped. And brought his lips down on hers.
There were no niceties, no sweet seduction. His mouth crushed hers and his tongue plundered as his hands came up to grip her hips, fingers digging in.
Reese jerked back and he followed. She slapped her hands on his shoulders to push him away, but instead found her fingers spreading to span the wide breadth, then curving up and around the back of his neck. He kissed her deeply, bending her back until she felt helpless beneath his strength, trapped by his body and the wicked, clever things he was doing with his tongue.
Heat slammed through her. Greed. Without the safety of a drugged haze, she felt everything acutely, like each new sensation held the bright, sharp glitter of cut glass as they twined together and the air crackled with a static charge.
Then he made a harsh noise at the back of his throat and broke the kiss to press his forehead against hers, muttering an oath. He was breathing hard; they both were. And she was shaking with the desire that raced in her bloodstream, along with the hot flush of shame and anger that he had overwhelmed her so thoroughly, and with so little effort.
“Your body wants me,” he rasped, taking a long stroke up from her hip to fist a hand in her hair, capturing her and holding her trapped. “But what does that brain of yours think? Can you be with someone you don’t trust, aren’t even sure you really like?” His voice was suddenly hard and intimidating, making her think of the other Dez, his shadow self.
Her hands balled into fists. But before she could decide between punching him or going with frosty politeness, the brain he had mentioned kicked back in—along with her suspicions. Instead of backing off, she leaned into him, pressing her lips near his ear to whisper, “You’re trying to scare me into leaving, but it won’t work. So why don’t you just tell me . . . what are you hiding?”
He jerked away with a bitter oath and strode away a few steps, leaving her sprawled back on the bureau, body still imprinted with the memory of his. When he looked back at her, his expression was nearly blank. “I’m not hiding anything.”
“Don′t lie to me.” The words cracked out of her far sharper than she had intended, riding a slash of anger and disappointment. “And don’t forget that you’re not a mind-bender . . . and Rabbit is. The way I see it, there are only two ways to keep me from diming you out, dragging you back to Skywatch, and hooking you up to your friendly local Nightkeeper lie detector: One, you tell me what’s really going on here, and convince me to help you keep your secret . . . or two, you shut me up. Permanently.”
He took a step toward her with a hard look that made her stomach lurch. But then he stopped and just stared at her, eyes dark and inscrutable. “Jesus, Reese.”
She touched her armband. “Your choice.”
Nothing.
Heart thudding, she activated it.
Still nothing.
She reached for the emergency pickup button.
“I know what Keban is up to.” The words sounded as though they had been dragged out of his chest.
“Go on.” Her hand hovered over the button.
He took a deep breath, hesitated, and then said slowly, “He used to talk about a Xibalban artifact that was so powerful, so destructive, that the Nightkeepers split it up and hid the pieces, on the very slim chance that its power was ever needed.” He paused. “I think he’s trying to rebuild it.”
A chill skimmed through her at the sudden hollowness in his expression. She let her hand fall away from the transmitter. “What, exactly, does it do?”
“It’s a damned WMD—it′ll turn everything inside out, upside down, blow shit up.” He shrugged. “All I know is that when I came out of the coma, I knew for damn certain that if more pieces of the artifact surfaced, it was up to me to destroy them. They’re additive—each has its own power, with new levels being revealed as they’re put together until they’re all one whole. Which can’t happen.” He spread his hands. “That’s why the gods made me a Triad mage: To keep the artifact out of play. Keban was convinced that rebuilding it was the only way to win the end-time war. But he’s wrong. If it gets put back together, we’re all fucked.”
That read to her as the truth. But maybe not all of it. “Why not tell the others?”
“Because this says not to.” He tapped a closed fist over his heart, tattoos and glyphs dark against his skin. “Something—my instincts, my magic, who knows?—keeps telling me that I need to do this on my own, that Keban is my problem, my responsibility.” He paused. “I’m asking you to let it stay that way.”
And damned if her gut didn’t say she should go along with it, that bringing this back to Skywatch now would only slow them down at a time when every day counted. So she nodded. “Fine. I’ll help you, and I’ll keep it off Strike’s radar. On one condition.”
She couldn’t read his expression when he said, “Let me guess. We won’t be waking up together tomorrow morning.”
That tugged—both the thought and the deadpan delivery—but she smiled coolly. “I’m capable of making that call on my own. No, I want you to promise me that you’re going to destroy the weapon. Not . . . use it.”
For a second she thought she saw something flash in his eyes, there and gone so quickly that she couldn’t identify it. But after only the briefest hesitation, he nodded and said, “I promise I’ll do everything in my power to protect the Nightkeepers.” Then he crossed his wrists in front of his chest and double-tapped his thumbs to his chest, in a too-familiar oath sign.
Reese froze. Her mouth went dry. And something inside her said: holy shit. Not because of his promise, but because when he crossed his wrists, a new picture was formed by the narrow tattoos he’d gotten a few days after falling under the star demon’s influence. It was an “X” shape that she recognized as the world cross, representing north, south, east, and west. More, when he held his arms like that, in front of his chest, the four compass points became glyphs: the star demon, the wind god, the skybearer . . . and at the point representing “south,” a two-faced mask that was half man and half screaming skull.
“Oh, shit,” she breathed. “The answer′s been in front of us the whole damn time.”
Which damn sure ended the conversation about them sleeping together. And maybe—probably—that was for the best.
The next ten minutes were a blur of phone calls and photo uploads to Lucius, who agreed to track down a two-faced mask like the one hidden in Dez’s tattoo. After that, and before she and Dez could get into any of the zillion unanswered questions that remained jumbled in her head, Reese made a flimsy excuse about packing, and escaped to her own room. Just inside it, she paused and leaned against the wall, closing her eyes as her heart pounded and the world threatened to spin around her.
Gods, she just needed a moment, a little breathing room. But she wasn’t going to be doing much breathing in there, it turned out. Because the room reeked of boiled sage and looked like somethi
ng out of a Top Chef challenge about cooking a six-course meal with a Mr. Coffee.
It was her space, though, and felt safe, even if that was an illusion.
After opening the window to air the place out, she pulled on her new leather against the wintry chill, leaned back against the windowsill, and just freaking breathed for a minute while she tried to figure out if she was making a mondo mistake in agreeing to keep Dez’s secret. She was all about going with her gut, but he was one of the few places where her instincts had failed her, repeatedly and badly. And how could there be logic in hiding the weapon’s existence from the rest of the Nightkeepers? Help, she thought, but there was nobody to turn to. She was on her own.
Looking up at the sky, she said softly, “Is this what you want?”
The suburban universe she had grown up in had been largely Christian, but Dez’s stories—the fairy tales that had driven back the darkness and the fear—had opened her to a world of many gods, each with a different area of expertise. Together with their earthly warriors, those gods were supposed to guard the barrier that closed off the underworld and protected mankind against evil. In theory, anyway. In reality, only a single god remained on the earthly plane right now: the sun god, Kinich Ahau. The others were locked up in the sky, unable to directly contact the Nightkeepers because Iago had destroyed the intersection beneath Chichén Itzá, the place where the earth, sky, and underworld had come close together. With the Nightkeepers unable to find another intersection or skyroad, they were cut off from their gods.
But, really, it didn’t take a message from above to tell her what she needed to do next. And really, it wasn’t about Dez or the end-time war, or even her job. This was about her, about something she had put off for far too long.
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