Then, suddenly, her fingers were wrapped around him, guiding him. He stiffened, broke the kiss and groaned as she teased the tip of his hard shaft along her wet folds.
Pulling his head from hers, he looked down at the spread of her coppery curls and the glint of her blue eyes. “Gods, Reda. We don’t have much time.”
“I know.” She reached up and kissed his cheek. “So be quick.” And she curled a leg around his hips, and urged him home.
Groaning, he plunged into her, then hissed with pleasure as her heated wetness snugged around him, urging him on. He was already teetering at the edge of control when she arched up to meet him, and the liquid, heated friction snapped those last thin threads that said he needed to see to her pleasure before his own.
Grating her name, he caught her by the shoulder and hip, anchoring her as he thrust heavily—once, twice, a third time was all it took before he felt the tingling, tightening sensation that presaged a climax. He didn’t try to fight it, but rode it instead, pistoning twice more before the tingles became a roar of heat, the need to cut loose, and he bowed against her, thrust as deep as he could and releasing himself into her with a shattering groan.
He went blind and deaf, insensate to anything but the pleasure of coming inside her as his orgasm went on and on, seeming to last longer than the sex itself.
Slowly, he became aware of sharp prickles where her fingernails dug into his shoulders, the press of her heels into the backs of his thighs, where she had locked her ankles. And the fact that he was probably crushing her.
“Gods.” He levered himself up on arms that wobbled like the legs of a newborn beast-chaser foal, and looked down at her, expecting to see… Hell, he didn’t know what he expected. But it wasn’t wide-eyed wonder tinged with fear.
But then again, he realized after a moment, that pretty much summed it up.
“It wasn’t just the drug, was it?” she asked softly.
“No.” He shook his head. “This is us, sweet Reda.” He wanted to ask her if she had come, but couldn’t bring himself to admit that he had been that far lost within himself. So instead he resolved that when they stopped next to rest, he would even things up. The thought put a burn of anticipation in his gut and made him look forward to that break and the next, and however many it took them to reach the Meriden Arch.
And after that…damn it, he didn’t know what came after that, except that he had a vow to keep and responsibilities to fulfill. He only hoped to hell he could do all that and do right by Reda, too.
Somehow.
CHAPTER NINE
FOR REDA, THE NEXT TWO days passed in a blur, yet at the same time there were moments that were imprinted so sharply in her mind that she knew she would remember them forever.
There had been alien fairy-tale moments: like when she watched a hawk skim over the treetops, only to have it grow larger and larger as it approached, then belch smoky flame from a crocodilian head before it screeched and veered off; or when the thunder of hoofbeats called their attention to a herd moving on the other side of a low hill and, just as she turned to ask Dayn why the wolfyn and their guests didn’t ride the horses, they crested to see two-dozen massive equids with coal-black coats, ember-red eyes and wickedly sharp unicorn horns that glinted in the sun.
Those moments had grown more alien still when he had told her that the demidragons were nothing compared to the true dragons of Elden legends, like the vicious Feiynd, with its black-pearl scales and assassin’s instincts. Or how the wolfyn and unicorns were uneasy allies, their peace treaty based on mutual dislike, and that he—a horse lover since childhood—had tried to learn the unicorn’s language, only to find that while wolfyn tongues could speak it, human forms couldn’t.
There had been hauntingly beautiful moments, like the sight of a wolfyn pack gathered on a faraway hill, silhouetted against the fat, full moon as they howled in a spine-tingling descant; and how, when they had crested the jagged ridge that separated the territories of two packs—the Nose-Claws and the Bite-Tails, both of whom they had managed to avoid by staying near concealment—a grassy green plain had spread out before them, forming a bowl-shaped crater with a nearly circular lake at its center, reflecting the pale sky and the shape of a round cloud overhead.
And then there was Dayn. He was in all of those memories and so many others from those precious two days. He was her woodsman, her prince, her lover, and in that short, precious, unselfconscious space of time, she had come to know him intimately. She knew how he moved, how he tasted, what it took to make him sigh and how far she could tease before his control snapped and his fangs came out. Literally.
His vampire heritage didn’t scare her anymore; he was just a man like any other, albeit one with the powers of his realm and his heritage. He was stubborn at times, and was inexplicably fond of chewing on wolfsleep sap, which she found tasteless, with a weird consistency. But those were insignificant quirks when measured against the whole.
They hadn’t used the wolfsbene again, but instead hiked under their own power, with occasional hits of the stimulant potion, which seemed to be the local equivalent of coffee, or maybe an energy drink. They had traveled steadily, talking quietly or walking in companionable silence, stopping every six or eight hours to rest…and make love. And at times she’d had to pinch herself to be sure she really wasn’t dreaming, after all.
But, like a dream, the journey couldn’t go on forever, and they were nearing the end of theirs.
“Ready to roll?” Dayn asked, coming out of a section of woods that ran almost all the way up to the road’s edge. He carried only a single rucksack now, along with his crossbow and short swords; she was wearing the other rucksack along with the bow and arrows she probably wouldn’t ever use. It was warmer today than it had been, and he was down to his shirtsleeves, with his jacket and sweater packed away.
The sight of him in his plaid shirt, pants and boots—so like the woodcuttings that had brought her to him—made her heart turn over in her chest and put a wistful lump in her throat. If only… she thought, but didn’t bother even completing the wish.
“Let’s do this,” she said, pushing to her feet. By his estimation, they would reach the arch in an hour or two, well before sunset. They hadn’t really talked about what they would do when they got there, but she harbored a secret hope that they could steal one last time together, maybe right beside the waterfall.
She wanted that to be the memory she rekindled when she looked at the final page of the book. Lovemaking, not loss. She’d had the joy; she would take the pain that came at the end of this strange magical adventure.
Still, though, her throat went tight as she came even with him on the trail. She flattened her palm on his chest and reached up on her tiptoes to kiss the side of his neck, where the blood vessels ran, and where she was oddly proud to have given him a hickey. He covered her hand with his and squeezed, but when she moved to pull away, he held on to her, trapping her hand against his heart for a moment longer before letting her go.
They started down the road together, shoulder to shoulder, in a silence broken only by the calls of different creatures. She knew them now: the deep roar of the demidragon, the high, clarion cry of the bugle beast, the deceptively sweet trill of the mudhump, which was truly repulsive in both looks and smell.
On one level, she hated the thought of leaving the magic behind, even hated the thought of leaving this strange wolfyn realm. Yet at the same time, she yearned to be back in her safe apartment, in a world where she knew how things worked and she didn’t need to be looking over her shoulder all the time, didn’t need to remember to be brave.
About an hour into this last leg of their journey, as they marched up the long incline of a rolling hill, Dayn spat his last piece of wolfsleep gum into the bushes, rinsed his mouth with a few sips from the waterskin they had refilled just that morning and wordlessly offered it to her.
“No, thanks, I’m good.” Her voice felt rusty, her throat tight.
He tucked the
skin back in his rucksack and adjusted the strap an extra time, then fiddled with his sword belt. Shrugged inside his shirt.
She glanced over and raised an eyebrow. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” His voice, too, was husky. “It’s just…we’ll be able to see the arch from the top of this hill.” He didn’t meet her eyes as he said it.
“Oh.” Oh, God. Her newly reawakened libido tugged at the thought of making love at the edge of the waterfall, but that pleasant flutter was quickly submerged by the thought of what would follow. Aware that her steps had slowed, she made herself speed back up. One foot in front of the other. “Well. I guess we made it.”
He unslung his rucksack, pulled out his jacket and shrugged into it, only to yank it off seconds later with a frustrated noise. “I hate this. I hate…” He trailed off, staring at his hands. “Oh, gods. This isn’t coming from me. It’s the magic. The vortex is already starting up.”
“No.” She spun toward the crest of the hill, but didn’t see anything strange about the sky or trees, nothing to say there was magic beyond. There was no glow, no noise. She couldn’t even hear the waterfall.
Dayn knew magic, though. He was magic.
“Come on!” He tucked a piece of wolfsbene in her hand, and downed his own in a single gulp. “We’ll make a run for it!”
She gulped the gritty lump, forcing it past the tightness in her throat and the pressure that made her want to cry out that it wasn’t fair, that she needed more time with him. Just another hour, that was all. Though in her heart of hearts she knew even that wouldn’t have been enough, and maybe it was better this way. Swallowing, she nodded. “Let’s go.”
They charged up the rest of the incline together, strides lengthening from moment to moment as the drug kicked in. Power raced through her veins, lighting her up and making her feel mighty, invincible…and even hotter for Dayn’s body than she had been moments before. She wanted to trip him and follow him down, cover his body with hers and ride him until they were both wrung limp. She wanted to kiss him, touch him, own him, belong to him.
Instead, she concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other as they crested the top of the hill. The sound of the waterfall hit her first and then the valley opened up in front of them and she stumbled to a halt as she saw it: Meriden Arch.
Dayn stopped beside her, standing so their arms touched.
Even from the half-mile distance, she could see that it was a match to the woodcutting: a high stone archway capped the top of a waterfall that crashed halfway down an interrupted cliff face to fall in a tumbled pool that gushed to a river leading away. Heavy foliage flanked the waterway and the cliff faces, then thinned to a rolling green valley. All that was the same.
The shimmering in the air below the arch, though, was new.
He was right. The vortex was already forming.
“We need to go.” His voice broke on the last word.
“I know.” She reached out and took his hand. Their fingers twined together. And they ran down the hill together, shoulder to shoulder, as if they were mated, though that was only a dream.
Her eyes were burning by the time they hit the flat-lands, her throat by the time they reached the edge of the pool, pausing near where a wide trail zigzagged up the cliff and led to the archway, where lightning arcs leaped from stone to stone. The air sparkled and swirled but hadn’t yet begun to rotate.
They had a little time, then, to say their goodbyes. She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. She lifted their joined hands to her lips and kissed his knuckles, grazing the skin with her teeth and making him shudder.
“Sweet Reda.” He cupped her face in his hands and bent to kiss her.
She leaned into his touch, into his kiss, feeling a poignant ache grow along with the now-familiar heat, which was made sharper by the burn of the wolfsbene in her blood. She gripped his wrists, held on to him, tried to imprint the moment on her soul.
He drew away before she was ready to let him go. But his eyes were very intent on hers, searching her face as he said, “Come with me. Come to Elden.”
“Oh,” she whispered as a full-body shiver ran through her; and her blood ran hot and then cold, then hot again. It wasn’t like she hadn’t thought about it—of course she had. But logic—and, worse, her gut instinct—said it was the wrong answer. Tears prickled, but she willed them back. “I want to,” she said, forcing her voice to stay steady. “God, of course I do.”
His voice, his eyes, went flat. “But you won’t.”
“The vortices are unpredictable and we don’t know if there’s a direct connection between our realms. It could be a one-way trip for me.”
“Would that be so terrible?”
The question stung, mostly because, on many levels, the answer was “not really.”
If she didn’t return to Salem, her father and brothers would spend a couple of months trying desperately to find her, more because it was the right thing to do than because they really missed her, though, and because they would need a logical explanation for her disappearance. And her friends and coworkers would go through the motions, believing deep down inside that she had changed her name and moved to an island somewhere, as she had occasionally threatened to do.
Six months, a year from now, she would be a memory, maybe a scholarship somewhere. And how much did that thought suck?
“You think I haven’t asked myself that?” she said softly. “You think I don’t know that I haven’t left a single indelible mark on the human realm?”
His fingers tightened on hers. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make it worse. But if that’s the case, why go back?” His kiss was hard and possessive, and made her burn for him. “Come with me, my sweet Reda.”
She wanted to; oh, how she wanted to. But for a change, logic and practicality had it right. “Say I do…then what?” Please say you know, please say something that would make it make sense.
But his expression went bleak. “I know it’s too much to ask, too damned dangerous. There are, what? A hundred ways for things to go to hell once I get home? A thousand? Which means I’m an asshole for even asking—I should want you to be safe above everything else, right? It should be enough that I see you go into that vortex—” he pointed at where the shimmers were beginning to rotate “—and can have faith that you made it home okay. It should be enough that I’ve got the memories of the past few days to take with me, to remember when things turn to shit. Which they probably will.”
Her throat locked, because he was saying all the things she’d been telling herself, yet she still wanted to shout, Yes! Yes, I’ll come with you. All she got out, though, was a fractured sigh of, “Dayn.”
Eyes firing, he took her other hand and lifted it, so both of her palms were pressed to his chest, folded in his hands. She could feel their heartbeats keeping time, feel the urges of the wolfsbene pounding in her veins as he said, “Maybe I haven’t grown up as much as I thought, because every part of me wants to be selfish right now, and keep you with me. Please say you’ll come. I promise that I’ll—”
“Don’t,” she interrupted, pulling a hand free to touch his lips and silence him. “You can’t make promises to me. God, you shouldn’t even be thinking about me.”
“I know. But I can’t stop.” He kissed her fingers. “Come with me. I need you. I don’t want to do this without you.”
It was every childish fantasy come to life—the handsome, powerful prince begging her to run away from her unsatisfying life to live the adventure with him, the dream.
But dreams always ended, didn’t they?
“Say everything goes according to plan,” she said. “Suppose you and your brothers and sister find one another, take out the sorcerer and reclaim Elden. What then? What happens to us?”
“We live happily ever after.” His answer should have seemed glib; instead, it made her yearn.
“I’m not a princess, Dayn. I’m just another guardsman’s daughter.”
She wanted him to
look surprised, wanted to think he hadn’t seen it. Instead, a spark entered his eyes. “It’s no coincidence that the book came to your mother. The stories she told you are straight out of kingdom folklore.”
“You think she was a guest in the human realm.” She did, too. It was only logical.
“Not only that, I think she had the kind of powers that travel in royal lines, or at least the nobility. Why else would my father’s spell have sent the book to her? How else would she have known how important it was, or that it was meant for you, not her?” He lowered his voice and leaned in to whisper, “Mindspeak, Reda. I think my father reached out to her the same way he did to me. And he could only do that if there was a bloodline connection, however faint.”
Reda’s head spun, because she hadn’t taken it that far. She might have sagged if he hadn’t been there to lean on. Her eyes locked on the love bite at the side of his neck. “You think I’m a vampire.” She wasn’t sure if her sudden queasiness was nausea or excitement.
“Half or less, and blood drinking doesn’t run true. But…yeah, I think the heritage is there.”
She shook her head, denying the logic more than the possibility. “You’re reaching.”
“Maybe. Or maybe I have faith that our feelings mean something, that all of this means something.” His gesture encompassed the realm, the vortex and the two of them. “The book didn’t come to you randomly. None of this is a coincidence, Reda. And we’re not over. I won’t let us be.”
She saw the kiss coming and nearly moved away, knowing that she couldn’t think clearly in his arms—or rather, that the clarity she found there wasn’t always based on reason. But the wolfsbene rooted her in place and her traitorous body had her reaching for him, sliding her fingers up into his thick hair and opening her mouth beneath his.
They had made love only a few hours before, but heat leaped through her anew when his lips slanted across hers and their tongues touched and slid. And for the first time, something clicked inside her and a small voice whispered, Yes. This is it. There’s no way you can walk away from this.
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