“Why did you stay in Greece for so long?”
“You. I needed you so I could be ready for all of this. You whisked me away from the tundra, taking me away from the labs. Even that small nod toward being rescued was enough to make me hope for a better future. And my prediction … about us … I didn’t know when it would happen. It seemed more likely to come true if we were in the same vicinity, there in the stronghold. But then it was time for me to go. I felt compelled, or I’d miss my chance.”
“And how did you escape?”
She patted his cheek, grinning. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
He didn’t want to ask, not after the moment of assurance and calm he’d felt, but one thing she said was too unimaginable to take on pure faith. “And the dragon? At the Grievance?”
“I don’t know about that one either.” She stood in a shaft of sunlight. Her smile was bittersweet, almost chagrined. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“It’s a fixed point now? Like me and the doctor?”
“I hope so. For I’d dearly love to see a dragon in the flesh.”
Mal nodded slowly. “That would be something to see.”
*
Experiencing the relief of Mal’s admission left Avyi both elated and exhausted. His belief wasn’t something to be celebrated. She would never forget the heartbreaking pain in his eyes. He was a man whose world was blasting apart, and she was the cause. So instead of celebrating, she simply thanked the Dragon for giving her one ally—the first of her life.
Despite the contentious start to their journey, there in Crete, Avyi had put faith in the idea that, yes, one day their disagreements would be worth the reward of belonging—if not to him, then to the community she might return to at his behest.
She had wanted the sense of belonging she’d seen in the futures of the unborn. She had wanted what would never be given freely to a freakish foundling whose very gift was the source of her misery. Mal gave her that. No matter what happened now, she would always be grateful for the events that had brought them to that moment.
No matter what happened now …
Too many visions had come true, especially when they were so near to the conclusion of each successive prediction. She could walk, run, scream, fight, set them both on fire. Cadmin, the rebels, a dragon … She and Mal were deep into forces neither could control. All they had was each other, and that was a blessing she couldn’t take for granted.
He was the leader of the Dragon Kings. He had been chosen by the Great Dragon to shepherd them through an undeniable crisis. She’d had faith, even when she was nothing but Dr. Aster’s Pet. There was an Honorable Giva out there in the world, and he would save their people.
The backs of her legs tingled, as did the skin on her arm where Mal’s anger had snapped and stung. He met her beneath the dappled shade of an olive tree and loosely held her hand between their bodies. His expression was quietly intense.
“I am not who you think I am. The good isn’t as good, and the bad is worse. If you tell me no matter what I do, I’ll still be your partner wrapped up in white sheets, what incentive does that give me to behave? I could slap you across the face. I could shave your head or steal that bow and arrow from you, never to be found again. We’d still wind up tangled in bed.”
She shook her head, squeezed his fingers. “But you won’t—not any of that.”
“You can’t be sure.”
“This has nothing to do with gifts and predictions.” She cupped his nape. “I deserve better. You’ve already given me that. You can give our people that. I’ve lived on hope most of my life. Let me have just this little bit more.”
Mal swept her into his arms with such force and speed that Avyi gasped. “If I’m going to be forced up against choices that aren’t choices at all, I might as well bend the inevitable to my will. I’m not going to make love to you by accident, just because we wound up trapped in the same berth … or hole in the earth, for fuck’s sake. I’m going to do it now, because I want to.”
“What are you talking about?”
He walked to the main door of the apartments. “Can you get through this gate?”
“The padlock is too big. And it’s rusted. You could always conjure a light show.”
“I’m not in the mood to risk more attention. Buzz each one instead.”
“This is crazy.”
A chuckle wove from his chest into hers, unfurling the last of the tension between them, as easily as one of Mal’s tornado tempers receding to the point of clear blue sky. “Don’t start with me. Buzz something.”
Avyi pushed button after button, with Mal answering in perfect Italian. He lived in the building. The gate had been left open. There was a set of keys on the front step. “Are they yours?”
After the third such conversation, a young man grumbled and said he’d be right down.
“Your turn,” Mal said. He set her down. “You’re looking for keys when he holds the door open for you.” He took the bow and was gone, secreting himself at the rear of the garden.
A minute later, Avyi was kneeling between the garden gate and the front door, rifling through the bushes and her hiker’s backpack, muttering to herself in English.
“Hey,” the man said in Italian. The rest of his words were a jumble.
Standing, shrugging, she countered his hostility in English. “I don’t know what you’re saying. I’m living here with my roommate. Quit yelling at me. I’m tired and I want to go to bed.”
The young man, who looked worse than hungover, switched to his halting English. “The man. Said there were keys.”
“I don’t know anything about a man.” She dangled a key ring—the one to Mal’s town car. The flash of clinking metal wouldn’t hold up under closer inspection, but the man remained confused and unwilling to keep arguing. “Now out of my way, please,” she finished, pushing past him and into the building.
She walked up a narrow flight of stairs and waited at the second landing, listening. The young man grumbled with what sounded like Italian curses and slammed his door on the ground floor. She pulled a pin from her hair and searched the apartments. Picking locks had become somewhat of a specialty when she had checked on fragile patients Dr. Aster had insisted were beyond hope. Avyi had needed to know for certain, touching them, seeing the inevitable for herself. Never once had the doctor been wrong, but she’d tried every time.
Knock. Pick. Enter. Repeat.
Each was occupied except for a room on the third floor, which seemed to be set up as a bed-and-breakfast. There was a small kitchenette, furnishings, and a stack of city maps. A small makeshift souvenir area with miniatures of the Duomo and postcards featuring night views of the city took up one corner of the small living room. Three bedrooms were each outfitted with their own locks. A sign-in sheet was clipped by magnet to the refrigerator, and a calendar of guests’ comings and goings hung beside it.
As did the keys.
Perfect.
She ran down to the foyer and opened the door for Mal. He examined the bed-and-breakfast with an expression of frank approval. “The best no money can buy.”
“That must be a new concept for you.”
He flashed his magnetic blue eyes without apology. “We can’t help how we were raised,” he said. “Neither of us. Good or ill. It affects every perspective.”
“Did any of your perspectives imagine breaking in to spend the night as …” She checked the itinerary. “The Grovers from Chicago?”
“No. Your predictions?”
“Not a hint.” They locked themselves in one of the guest rooms. It was much larger than Avyi had imagined, considering the small, tidy nature of the kitchen and dining area. A double bed. A wide-screen TV. A full bathroom. She took the bow and arrow from him, wincing at a surge of promise that drove into her marrow, and hid them safely in a closet. Then she flopped on the bed. “I’m impressed. We did well.”
He crossed his arms, staring down at her. “Why did you agree with me? To come here and do this?”
Avyi didn’t like the grim curve of his mouth. She wanted a smile at least. If he smiled, so would she. That might take some doing, because although she was being watched by the most potent man she’d ever known, she was also being watched by the man who had the farthest to go to reach his full potential—his best, most powerful self. The leader that existed within the Honorable Giva had not yet matured. Believing her was the first step. Now she wanted to make love to the champion he would become—fearless, faultless, relentless.
“Just like you said. Because I want to.”
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Mal watched as Avyi undressed without ceremony, but not without the awareness of his eyes as he stared, riveted. Her sidelong glances were equal parts tease and uncertainty. He liked both emotions. Although they had already made love twice, they would do so now with intention. Despite the electric kiss they’d shared while pressed against the wrought-iron gate, they were calmer now. More deliberate. The encounter promised to be slower and more intimate. Mal practically steeled himself for that, so strong was his connection to the woman coming to be.
At last, he could see the skin she bared to afternoon sunlight that entered through the twin windows on either side of the double bed. Nothing was concealed from him now. He wanted to see her. Ached to see her. They needed privacy away from terrible deeds and memories that wouldn’t ever leave them be.
Maybe they could set them aside, if only for a few hours.
She stretched, languorously, and with a smile, rubbed her hair into a tangled mess, as if she’d already been thoroughly ravished. “As much as I’m looking forward to this, it will be good to get it out of the way.”
“Get it out of the way?”
“So we’re not trapped by it anymore.”
Mal frowned as he turned the blinds and shut the curtains. “Trapped?”
“We can dispense with one of our fixed points and move on, so …” Her bra dropped to the floor, and she stepped out of her panties. “We get it over with. Prediction fulfilled. No guideposts to tell you and me where to go next. We choose, with no more obligation.”
He knew he heard her speaking, and on some level he registered the words as being sensible, if not mercenary, but he was beyond true conscious thought when looking at Avyi. She was naked. Pert, small breasts were tipped with nipples a shade darker than her golden-pale skin. She had no markings. Not even Dr. Aster had left behind physical proof of his abuse.
“Don’t you think?”
As if lured, Mal moved to within arm’s reach. “Thinking has stopped.”
“I’ll consider that a compliment.”
“Meant as one.”
He pulled her closer, with his hands at her waist. “You’re beautiful.”
With a slight frown, she tensed.
Mal was going to lose his mind within minutes, and he was going to do so with a bone-dry mouth and a throbbing hard-on. “Why the frown?” he managed to choke out.
“Beautiful. It’s beneath you. I know you can do better.”
Mal grinned, then let it disappear just as quickly. “You make me want to try. To sacrifice. To believe the impossible.”
“All because I took my clothes off?” She stood plainly before him, no crouching posture, no sensuous pose. Just the thin lines of her limbs, the breasts that hinted at a deeper femininity than her slim hips, and a small black thatch of private hair she didn’t bother to hide. She didn’t hide anything. Her expression said, I dare you to look away.
“Because you brought us here,” he said. “We brought us here.”
“It’s just life. Good or bad. And you know this will be good.”
“Good? I know you can do better.”
He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled off his belt. Every piece of clothing that was flung onto the floor added to a sense of shedding his skin. He was the Giva, and he was a man who was finding his way. Even his body seemed to be cooperating with his newfound sense of inner determination, because his ankles were healing at record speed. Was it because he was using his power more frequently? Because he simply couldn’t be hindered by weakness, now or ever?
There was no knowing what to do when so much was already in motion, especially the moment when he and Avyi lay facing one another, completely bared.
Avyi stretched her arms toward him, her expression softer than he could have imagined of the woman everyone else still thought of as the Pet. “Come show me.”
She snapped her fingers, where sparks of static flickered like miniature fireworks. He’d already given her those bursts of power from what he struggled to contain. “Enjoy my body, Malnefoley. Let me enjoy yours.”
He nodded, resting his forehead against her stomach, reveling in the soft way she stroked the back of his neck. She had sure hands, finding places of tension and working them to nothingness. He was aroused to a staggering degree. A great deal of it had to do with curiosity. She was beautiful. But her mysteries flipped his brain. Their previous encounters were preludes to these moments. When she’d predicted them together, had she known how they would kiss? What position they’d assume? How they would reach the conclusion of their passion?
No. Those weren’t fixed points. He liked that. When it came to these intimate moments, they still had free will.
She wrapped her hands around Mal’s shaft with such swift assurance that he hissed his shocked pleasure. “Damn, Avyi. You go so fast.”
“We make the rules now.”
He stared down at her, to where her eyes shone with unearthly beauty. Her skin was aglow with pale gold, as if her veins pulsed with the energy he consumed, amplified, released. “If you were making the rules, how would you want this?”
With two fast strokes, she threw her head back and laughed. Mal couldn’t decide which had unmanned him more thoroughly—the rough, sensual treatment of his cock or the unexpected melody of her laughter. “I want you any way I can get you,” she said. Then, with more tenderness, she lifted her head off the pillow just enough to kiss his forehead. “That’s how it’s been since we met.”
She clenched him hard, setting a rhythm he enjoyed too much. He groaned and dropped his face between her breasts, kissing and gasping against her skin. “I want it like this,” she said against the top of his head. “With your big hands on my ass. With your mouth on my breasts. Until neither of us will stand for anything less than magnificent.”
“With the pace you’re setting, magnificent won’t last long.”
“Your tornado tempers don’t last long either. They tear the heavens in two and leave everyone utterly amazed, even terrified.” Without gentleness, she pulled his prick until he bowed his hips toward hers. She notched his engorged, aching head where she was wet, hot, and just as eager. There, she waited. “I’m not terrified, Mal. Not about this. But I do want to be amazed.”
*
Avyi looked into his storm-cloud-blue eyes and wondered just what she’d invited. Mal’s moods were unpredictable in ways she was just beginning to comprehend. This was the pinnacle of sorts, but she’d only ever envisioned the aftermath. They would be tangled together, sweaty, satisfied. Nothing else was guaranteed. At the moment when the future would change between them, she wanted promises. Promises that neither of them could make.
So she concentrated on Mal, on his tension and the energy that literally thrummed in his blood, humming, making him even more extraordinary.
He tipped to the side and cupped her face in his hands, kissing, kissing oh so deeply, with so much passion. They were strikes of flint, flinging sparks, shooting off fireworks and sending lightning across the sky. He made her feel those images rather than see them. Her skin tingled where he touched. He was ahead of her every time. She’d want his hand on her breast, and he would already have his palm opened wide across her sensitive flesh. She’d crave the wet suck of his mouth against her throat, and he would already be tasting, nipping, inhaling her scent and whispering her name. Avyi. Her name—his claim on her, in a way that no one eve
r had exerted, and never would again.
She lay belly to belly with him, pushed into the mattress by his firm body. He grabbed her thigh and brought it up and over his flank. The sound he growled just beneath her jaw was untamed and possessive. Whoever he was outside of this room, or high above the Chasm when arguing with stubborn politicians—that was gone. He was ramping up faster, with more intensity, his hands everywhere and his mouth following.
“You stopped gripping me,” he rasped.
“You seemed convinced this would end too quickly.”
“I changed my mind.”
He took hold of her wrist and pushed it between their bodies. Their fingertips knotted in a fist around his shaft, which was fuller and heavier than before. Avyi moaned and closed her eyes. He was going to fill her. More than that, he was going to fill her over and over, until the pressure of his thrusts was all she knew, all she wanted.
“Yes,” she said on a long, hissing exhalation. “More.”
“Greedy.”
“So are you.”
“Yes.” He moved her hand with his, up and down, until their flesh created rhythmic, erotic sounds in that still bedroom. “You make me crazy. You … strip me.”
“I want you stripped. Nothing else comes between us now.”
Mal grinned against her cheek. “Not much room for that.”
He slid down her body, reversing the slow, sensuous climb of when he’d first crawled onto the bed. He stopped midway down her body. With the slightest lift of his eyebrows, he asked silent permission. Avyi couldn’t answer with words, only nodded with a dip of her chin. Mal parted her knees, leaned in, tasted.
“Oh!”
Avyi couldn’t control her hips when his mouth fixed on her pussy and used every weapon in a full-out assault. “Amazing,” he whispered against her heated flesh. “That’s what you wanted.”
“You think a lot of yourself—” The words were a gasp, cut short when he flicked his tongue inside her channel, then swirled up to encircle with fissures of pain-sharp pleasure.
“I do. Too much. But I can’t get enough of how you taste.” He nibbled the tendon up the inside of one thigh. “I could stay here all day.”
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