The water fight was fast and furious. Water geysered nearly to the ceiling and splashed against the wall. Twice he launched himself at her, bringing her down like a crocodile might its prey, rolling her under the water before she could wiggle away from him and surface to attack again.
She threw herself at him, arms circling his neck, and body slammed him, taking them both under and when they came up, they rested on the side of the warm pool and let the bubbles fizz against their skin.
She rubbed her arms and glanced upward as if she might be able to see the sky. «I can always tell when the sun is about to rise. My skin prickles and becomes uncomfortable. Most Carpathians can stay out in the early morning hours but I cannot.»
«Not at all?»
She rested one hip against the smooth basin and wrung out her hair. «My skin is so fair, all the years spent in the ground away from even moonlight while I was healing, and I get burned. More like a light sunburn, I guess, but I blister fairly easily.» She smiled at him as a memory came to her. «Once, I found a bottle of sunblock a hiker had dropped. I tried it.»
He tucked her hair behind her ear. «I take it that didn't go very well.»
«Not really, no.»
«Have you tried staying up longer while you are here, underground?»
She rubbed her arms again, shivering a little. «Sometimes when I get working on experimenting with new chemicals to hold the vampire in place, I do not feel the sensation for a while, but most of the time, I am so uneasy, I just go to ground.»
«Your formula to coat your weapons is brilliant.»
She sent him a quick, pleased smile, a little shy when he gave her compliments. «I am still working on it. It needs to last a little longer before their blood eats through it. The more time I give myself, by preventing them from shifting, the more of an edge I have.»
«We have,» he corrected.
She nodded. «We have,» she agreed.
«Is your skin hurting now?» Razvan asked, clearly prepared to carry her back to their bedchamber.
«Not really. It is close to dawn though. Very close.»
She liked being with him. She hadn't thought she would. She had been alone for so long she thought it would be uncomfortable to share her space with him, but she enjoyed his sense of humor. He was an intelligent man, quick-witted yet he lacked an ego, which might have made it difficult for someone like her to be with a partner. He was peaceful, and she often found herself wanting to just stand beside him, to feel the way his serenity radiated from him to surround and hold her. Truthfully, she found him sexy and rather intoxicating.
Razvan smiled at her. «I am reading your mind.»
She tossed her head. «Do not read too much into whatever I was thinking.»
Razvan lowered himself into the water, ducking his head and then coming up fast right beside her, his hands skimming up her thighs, over the curves of her hips, along her tucked-in waist and higher up along her rib cage until he was holding the soft weight of her breasts in his palms. «I think you should read my mind.»
Before she could reply he dipped his head and drew her nipple deep into his mouth. It mattered little that he had already made love to her twice, that her body had been sated. She instantly felt the heat swamping her. His wet hair slid over her abdomen and teased her mound as he tugged and teased and suckled.
She held him there for a moment, savoring the pleasure filling her and then she dipped her fingers beneath the water and found his erection already growing firm. At the touch of her fingers his shaft jerked and pulsed. She smirked, realizing the power of her touch as she caressed his hard length with strokes before wrapping her fingers around him to enclose his hard flesh in a tight fist.
Razvan lifted his head and looked at her with dark, hungry eyes. «What are you doing?»
«A little exploring of my own.»
He leaned back until his hip brushed the wall of the basin to steady himself. Her touch left him weak, his body shuddering with need.
«You could always sit,» Ivory suggested, her voice silky, «as this may take some time. I am very thorough when I explore.»
Swallowing hard, Razvan sat up on the very edge of the smooth rock, allowing his legs to dangle in the pool. His erection throbbed against his stomach, rock hard and growing by the moment. When she cupped his balls and leaned down for her first tentative lick, his breath exploded from his lungs. When her mouth took him, he was lost in her body, in her mind, in everything she was to him.
Razvan fisted his hands in her hair and held on, knowing this was the beginning of a wild ride with his beloved lifemate.
CHAPTER 16
«What is this?» Razvan looked over Ivory's shoulder, his body watched her work.
He had awakened that evening with the feeling of her fingers caressing his skin. The wonder of having Ivory in his life, in his bed, his soul merged with hers, was beyond anything he could ever have imagined. Their lovemaking had been gentle and tender and then turned ferocious and wild.
Hunting had been fun together. They had watched the rising moon burning across the snowcapped mountains, pouring silver across the midnight blue skies to spotlight the sparkling snow layered across the meadows and hanging in the trees. They flew through the sky together, high above the trees, wing tip to wing tip, the wind ruffling feathers, both caught up in the freedom of the owls soaring, wheeling and dipping, performing acrobatics just for fun because they could.
Somersaulting with her, talons linked, Razvan knew that everything he needed was here, in this one woman. She had saved him with her smile. With her inner beauty. Her soul. She had become his own personal miracle. He wasn't altogether certain the earth had healed him. She had. With the colors she had provided, bringing life to his world. With the joy she had restored, so that each moment meant something to him. She had replaced the shadows in his eyes, in his heart, with love. She had replaced the darkness in his soul with light.
He swallowed hard, his chin nuzzling her shoulder as he peered at the book she had open as she studied her books in her workroom. He could see she had written in the ancient text and he read the words to himself, frowning over them.
The mage walks forth as the Hell Gate closes Lightning strikes with his first order Energy spirals from his fingertips A spell does form upon his lips Tall and dark, handsomely slender His silver eyes burn like lighted embers A power, a presence one cannot explain A drawing feeling that will not leave the brain A longing, a yearning that burns like fire To be wanted and taken with heated desire The mage walks forth unfolding his arms His victim comes quietly, succumbed by his charms The embers of passion burst forth in flame As the mage draws heart's blood from deep within Consuming all, leaving no remains The victim languishes in untold pain The mage, having taken body and soul, Now turns from the broken to seek one who is whole The pattern is set, the ending the same The mage needs heart's blood to be whole and remain
Razvan's stomach lurched, and just like that his world spun away from him, collapsing into images of blood and screams and death. He dropped his arms and stepped back, turning away from her. «Why would you write such a vile thing? Why would you give him such honor as to set him down on paper and give him to history?»
Ivory turned at his low tone, caught his arm and stepped in front of him. His eyes were filled with horror. Nightmare memories. His were not the nightmares that evaporated because the mind played tricks, his were made of true memories that would last an eternity. She had inadvertently conjured up the images of his past.
«It is not to memorialize him. I have to hold his image when I work. The image I saw, so that I know him, so that I am never tricked as I work on his spells. He is evil. He will always be evil. He chose to be evil. And I have to keep my mind clear at all times. Razvan, I am sorry I hurt you with the image of him, but it is my protection.»
He wrapped her braid around his fist but he remained silent, drawing in breath, matching the rhythm of his heart to hers.
«When I work with his spells, Ra
zvan, it is dangerous. I cannot tell you how dangerous. You said you were not good with spells. Well, I am, but to be so, I have to form the words in my head, conjure up the images to go with them, and I cannot make any mistakes when I am working with his spells.»
He took another deep breath, visibly fighting to get his control back. «I still do not understand.»
She gestured around the room. «This is my fortress. Solid rock. He cannot come here. He cannot trace me through the solid rock, but if I make a mistake, if I forget for one moment who and what I am dealing with, then I make myself vulnerable.»
He frowned. «Even here?»
«He is utterly evil. The first line says it all. 'The mage walks forth as the Hell Gate closes.' He is not entirely earthly. He has visited hell and returned, needing the blood of others to survive.»
His frown deepened. «I lived with him for hundreds of years. He is evil, yes, but he is not a demon. He is mage.»
She nodded. «Yes, he is mage. There is always a balance in the universe. Where there is good, there must also be evil. One can use the earth's natural elements to weave for good. It is done all the time for healing and other things our people need. One can also weave spells for evil, calling upon demons and bargaining with them.»
«I know that he does that. I have seen foul creatures in his caverns, but I have never seen portals to another world or another realm that even a mage can walk through.»
«No, I am certain he would not be foolish enough to allow anyone to know what happened. He wants to appear all-powerful to everyone-even to himself. He needs that illusion. As far as I can tell, as far back as when I attended his school, he was using apprentices to write spells and then he used those spells as the base for his own. He can no longer come up with new spells, I am certain of it. Each mage has a rhythm, a twist in how they cast and what they use, a signature, if you will. Xavier's spells cover a multitude of other mage's spells.»
Razvan ran agitated hands over his face and then through his streaked hair. «What else have you learned by studying him?»
She ran her hand down his arm to soothe him. «I know it is disturbing to speak of him.»
The feeling of her fingers on his skin shook him. As long as he lived, he would never get over the wonder that she had been chosen for him. «Your description fits him so well. I lived with him and thought I knew him better than anyone living, yet . . .» He gestured toward the book and her flowing, obviously offensive words. «Yet you managed to convey the very essence of him.»
«I hope you are right, Razvan. I am staking both our lives on this.» She took his hand and tugged until he followed her out of the room. They sank into the chairs in the memory room. «I have to know you are with me on this, Razvan. It will not be easy and I cannot have you hesitate when we confront him.»
He leaned back in the chair and regarded her steadily. «You never have to worry that I would hesitate. We are in this together. It is my choice. I made it when you asked me to live. I knew then we would go after him.»
She allowed herself a sigh of relief. She shouldn't have doubted him. He had the courage to be whatever she needed. He found no shame in following her lead. No hesitation in accepting their destiny. He was more of a man than any other she knew.
«You know what I think, Razvan? I believe Xavier has to find another body. He was not merely possessing you, leaving pieces behind in you to stay in control. I believe he was looking for a host body and a way to enter it, to claim it completely and make the body his own. He wanted to be Carpathian. You were born with Dragonseeker blood running in your veins, known to be one of the most powerful lineages, if not the most powerful. He coveted that bloodline. That is why he went after Rhiannon. And that is why he drank the blood of her children and grandchildren. He craves a body from the Dragonseeker bloodline.»
«No Dragonseeker has ever turned.» There was no pride in his voice. It was merely a statement. «I would not allow him to make me the first.»
She smiled at him, her smile lifting him back from the shadowy place that he had dropped into. «No, you did not. And you saved all of us. No one will know what you did, but I know, Razvan. If he had acquired a Dragonseeker body as was his goal, there is no way to judge the harm he would have done.»
He took her hand, played with her fingers, shaking his head a bit. «It is my stubbornness.»
«It is your immeasurable courage,» she corrected. «It is not as if anyone could have endured as you did.»
He brought her fingers to his mouth and bit gently. «You will make me blush.»
She doubted that. He had no ego. None. He simply accepted his life and lived in the moment, focusing his entire attention on what he was doing and giving his best to whatever task was at hand. She did a little blushing thinking of how he focused so completely on her when they made love. Nothing else was in his mind but giving her pleasure. It was an intoxicating, exhilarating experience, and one she was already addicted to. She lost herself in him so completely, and found herself wanting to give him that same complete focus.
«My entry in that diary is the formula with which we will defeat him.»
Everything in him stilled. «We are going to bait a trap.»
She kept her eyes steadily on his. «Yes, we are. He needs a body. And he needs heart's blood. Dragonseeker blood.»
«You are going to ask me to put myself in his hands once again.»
His voice was strictly neutral and his mind was firmly closed to hers. Her heart contracted. There was no expression. No condemnation. No judgment whatsoever. He merely waited her answer, his fingers still on hers. Sometimes, like now, his courage terrified her. His belief in her shocked her.
«You would put yourself into his hands if I asked you to, wouldn't you?» she said, her stomach knotting.
«Yes.»
She shook her head. «I could not ever conceive of putting you anywhere near where that evil mage could get his hands on you.»
For the first time he stirred and something crossed his face so swiftly she couldn't quite catch it, but it made her nervous. «Just what or who is the bait?»
«I now have Dragonseeker blood running in my veins. When I open them and leave tracks, he will be unable to resist. I am a woman and he will think me easily controlled.»
He sat back in his chair, his lips drawn into a tight, implacable line. Tiny embers smoldered in the depths of his eyes, but again, he went silent-waiting.
«I have thought this through, Razvan,» she hastily explained. «It is all there. He will come for me, darkly handsome, taking your form, using his mind to draw me to him. He will want to seduce me, and he will open his arms to bring me in close to him.»
«No.»
«You know I am right. This is the way.»
«No.» Razvan rose and called to the pack. «I am taking the wolves running. Would you care to join us?»
«We need to discuss this.»
«There is no discussion. Are you coming?» He moved away from her with swift, long strides, snapping his fingers and calling to the pack.
Ivory stood for a long moment, unsure whether to be angry or happy that he would be so protective. No one had wanted to protect her, not since she was a young girl and her brothers and the De La Cruz family had surrounded her with love. Ten men doting on her had made her feel like a princess-a smothered one at times, but still a princess. Razvan had gone through so much with Xavier. He just needed to get used to the idea.
She was astonished when she saw him spread his arms as she did, and Blaez and Rikki leapt onto his back, merging into his skins as tattoos. For one moment she found herself a little upset. The pack had never been divided. They were her family.
«The pack is not divided,» Razvan said. «We are a family.»
He was back to his usual calm. Matter-of-fact. Or maybe he always had been. Even saying an adamant no to her, he had not raised his voice or sounded upset, just implacable.
She nodded in agreement. «Yes, we are. It is a good thing for both of us to carry
the wolves. They will guard our backs.»
He flashed a small, tentative grin, removing the years from his face until he looked almost boyish. «It is amazing to be so accepted by them.»
She felt that peculiar wrenching in the vicinity of her heart that he often produced in her. His simple pleasure touched her. «Where are we going?»
«I want to go to the place where you found the soil for our bedchamber.»
«The cave of gems.»
He nodded. «The soil is pure, so we know that Xavier has not had a chance to spread his poison everywhere. I would like to find how far the infection has spread, how large of an area there actually is. I cannot believe this would be the only place. Once we know how to look, we can send word to other Carpathians to check their soil.»
«You believe we can cleanse it?»
Dark Slayer 20 Page 32
