Or was she talking herself back into the fantasy?
“We’re on our way,” Lucius said as he came around the nearest rack with a couple of scrolls under one arm, using his shoulder to prop a phone against his ear. “Give us five minutes.” Ending the call, he said to Myr, “Anna and the others can’t find any hidden compartment in the altar. It looks like they’re going to have to break it apart to see if the ruby skull is inside.”
“Ouch.”
The chac-mool had been mortared into place with the ashes from generations of Nightkeepers, and the altar had received the blood of practically every mage to come through the training compound since then. It had overseen the marriages of most of the current Nightkeepers’ parents, and held enough accrued magic to make it a serious power sink. It was a constant, a link to their past and a touchstone of the present. Busting it up was not going to go over well.
“Jade, Natalie and I are going to head up and see if we can help,” Lucius said, dumping the scrolls at the far end of the stone table where Myr was working. “You coming?”
“I think I’ll keep working on this stuff.” She waved at the pile of printouts and artifacts that still needed to be logged, scanned and cross-referenced.
“I’d appreciate it. The more we figure out about these so-called ‘true gods,’ the better.”
“What do you have so far?” She’d heard the others bouncing ideas back and forth, but hadn’t heard an outcome.
He shook his head. “Not much. There’s plenty on the gods, of course . . . but what makes a god a ‘true god’? Are we talking about all of the sky gods, a subset of them, or what?”
“Which leaves us where?”
“Digging a jackhammer out of storage to have a go at the chac-mool?”
Myr winced. “I don’t like that idea.”
“You’re not alone. But the message wasn’t exactly subtle.” He spread his hands, flashing the jun tan he wore on his inner wrist, which marked him as Jade’s mate, a love match. The sight shouldn’t have brought a pang, shouldn’t have made her own wrist feel bare, especially now.
“What if there’s nothing in there?”
“Don’t even think it.” But the shadows in his eyes said he was worried too. He paused. “You sure you want to stay here?”
“Positive.” She waved him off and got back to work, only half listening to the subdued commotion of the others leaving, followed by the library settling into an empty quiet broken only by the noises she made when she shifted things from the “to do” pile to the “done” pile, and the background murmur of running water coming from the jaguar-shaped fountain near the door. There was peace in the solitude, and she found herself relaxing as “to do” got smaller and “done” got so big that it started sloping off to one side, threatening an information avalanche.
An hour or so later—maybe longer—she was startled to reach for another “to do” and find the pile gone. And when she actually sat back and looked around, she realized she was more than a little woozy from sitting still too long and probably from some leftover post-magic fatigue.
“Time to call it a night,” she said. “You might not have solved any of your problems, but at least you got some paperwork done.”
Except, as she grabbed the soft leather jacket she’d worn against the almost-winter chill, she realized that she’d come to a resolution of sorts. There was a strange sort of peace inside her that hadn’t been there before, one that said if she could go up against a ghost-demon and summon a whole village’s worth of butterflies, she could handle starting something new with Rabbit.
Carefully, she told herself. Very carefully. Because she wasn’t going to make the same mistakes this time. This wasn’t about forever after; it was about taking what they both wanted while they still had the chance.
The cloud-hazed night was inky black, with just a glimmer of moonlight to guide her along the pathway to the cottage she and Rabbit had shared for more than two years. She didn’t hesitate at the steps, didn’t pause before knocking—bang, bang, bang—using the sharp, peremptory cadence she’d used back in college, the one that said “move it or lose it, buster.” She caught her breath, though, as the knob turned, then let it out as the panel opened to reveal Rabbit standing barefoot, wearing worn sweats and a black hoodie.
His eyes burned into her, resonating with the leftover heat from their earlier kiss. “You came.”
Adrenaline buzzed in her veins, making her feel powerful. “Were you waiting for me?”
“I was doing my damnedest not to go after you. I would’ve lasted another fifteen minutes, maybe less.” His gaze skimmed over her, feeling like a touch. “Come in. Please.”
She didn’t hesitate. This was what she’d come for, after all.
He stepped back so she could move past him into the kitchen, then shut the door behind her, enclosing them in a four-room cottage that suddenly seemed far smaller than she remembered. It should’ve felt strange, being back there after all this time, but the air smelled of vanilla and patchouli. The twin scents twined together, amping her magic. More, they drew her deeper into the cottage, across the kitchen and living room, and all the way to the bedroom door.
She stopped there, and breathed, “Oh.”
Rabbit came up behind her and stood very close, looking over her shoulder into the room they had shared for so long. Two lit candles sat in holders on the nightstand, one white, one red, both hers. The red one was burned down to little more than a nub, while the white was newer, yet set in wax from a prior white candle, now burned away. Together, they filled the room with warm yellow light, showing where the familiar bedspread was dented in the shape of a big, heavy body curled on its side, with a dog-eared paperback lying nearby.
Her eyes misted at the sight. How many nights had they lain like that together, with her reading and him zoned out on his iPod, the two of them fitting together like the pieces of a puzzle? And how many nights over the past few months had she found herself curled up the same way, alone?
“The candles aren’t because I miss the way things used to be,” he said.
She turned to him, heart lumping in her throat. “They’re not?”
“Not tonight. Tonight I lit them because I was hoping you’d come.”
He stood in the doorway, filling it. But it wasn’t the size of his body or the hugeness of what he was saying that threatened to overwhelm her. It was the excitement that seared through her veins, and the knowledge that she was strong enough to make this work. “A summoning spell, you mean?”
“Hey, it worked on the butterflies.” He paused. “Will you stay with me?”
She didn’t know whether he meant for the next few hours, the night, or for as long as they had left, but she found that it didn’t really matter. “We can’t go back.”
“I don’t want to go back; I want to move forward.” He closed the small distance between them, and took her hand. “This can be whatever you want it to be.” He leaned in and pressed his lips to her temple, her cheek. “Anything, so long as it means I don’t have to stay away from you anymore.”
“Was that what you were doing? FYI, you kind of suck at it.”
He grinned. “Got you here, didn’t it?”
“I guess it did.” Taking a deep breath that smelled of her candles, she turned her head, found his lips, and sank into the kiss she had come for. And, for the moment, at least, she was exactly where she wanted to be, doing exactly what she wanted to do. On her own terms.
* * *
Rabbit met the kiss as relief slashed through him. Excitement. Pounding need. He couldn’t believe she was really there, that this was really happening. Even after everything that had happened today, he hadn’t been sure she would be ready to trust him like this again.
That she was seemed like a minor fucking miracle.
His body lit and his heart thudded. His fingers curled around her jaw, then the back of her skull, as she moved against him, bumping her hips and rubbing her belly against his cock, which wa
s already throbbing and hard. But beside that urgency, there was softness, sweetness. Her lips were lush and giving, her breasts gentle curves that were familiar, yet not, like it was new all over again.
In the back of his mind he was more than half-afraid that he might be dozing, drooling on his Clive Cussler. But if that was the case, fuck, he never wanted to wake up, because this was nothing like the nightmares. It’s real, something whispered inside him, cutting through the wonder and the almost-fear that if he opened his eyes he’d be back alone in the bed, smelling her scent without her being anywhere near. But he wasn’t alone, she wasn’t far away, and this was really happening. He knew it from the way her fingers curled into his waistband, sealing them together, and from the sexy purr she made in the back of her throat when he changed the angle of his mouth.
He caught her wrist, kissed her fingers, and then parted from her to draw her down to the bed they had shared for so long. They didn’t say anything; there didn’t seem to be any need for more words.
The mattress dipped beneath him and poor Clive headed for the floor as she followed him down to the bed and straddled his hips, pinning him and rendering him a very willing prisoner. His hands found her waist and slid up as hers reached for the zipper of his hoodie and tugged it down. Her eyes lit when she found he wasn’t wearing anything beneath it, and she spread the edges of his sweatshirt wide, baring his chest, with the new layer of ridged scars. She sobered and traced the marks with her fingers, and where before the scar tissue had been numb, now they caught fire and throbbed with a sensation that wasn’t quite pleasure, wasn’t quite pain.
He caught her hand. “Don’t. I got what I deserved.”
She flattened her hand over the worst of it, over his heartbeat, but she didn’t argue. Instead, she shifted to kiss the spot where the whip marks intersected, and then, looking up so their eyes met, she said, “Moving forward, right?”
“Moving forward.” Emotion roughened his voice and gave the words the force of a spell. Sex magic poured through him, buoying his excitement and revving his system into overdrive. And for the first time, her magic rose up to answer his as they kissed—she wasn’t holding back anymore, wasn’t blocking the buzz of energy. This wasn’t the connection they’d had before, when their powers had been joined. Instead, the sex magic spiraled out into the air surrounding them, ramping up the heat and throbbing with the beat of his blood in his veins.
Suddenly he couldn’t lie there beneath her anymore. He surged up and over, reversing them so he rose above her, caging her in with his legs and arms.
She grinned and started to wiggle out from underneath him, as she had so often done before, turning her preference for being on top into a game. Now, though, he tightened his arms and dropped his head to nuzzle her neck, kiss her throat, nip at the soft skin behind one ear. She shuddered and moaned, and went pliant beneath him in a sudden capitulation that burned through him.
“Gods, Myr.” His voice was ragged, his cock so hard it hurt, wanting—needing—to be inside her.
He braced himself over her as he dragged his teeth to the dip at the base of her throat and kissed her there, lingering until she arched against him. Her hands came up to grip his waist, then dug in on either side of his spine. Snagging the hem of her shirt, he tugged it up and off, then shucked his hoodie, managing the moves with barely a pause in kissing her cheeks, her eyelids, her temples and then, when she dug her nails into his skin and sought his mouth, her lips.
Then, finally, he lowered himself so they were chest to chest, touching along the lengths of their bodies. He groaned as her soft warmth seeped into him, filling the empty spaces and lighting the shadows, reminding him that he might’ve been doing fine without her, but he was so fucking much better with her.
“Damn, I missed you,” he rasped, pressing his cheek to hers.
She had been his first, his only, and being skin-on-skin with her after three very long—and very life-changing—months reminded him of the way it had been at the beginning, when he’d first been learning how different an orgasm could feel with someone else involved. More, with her involved. Those had been heady, crazy days, first at Skywatch and then at college, where he’d gotten his first taste of feeling like he really belonged somewhere, and belonged to someone special.
Back then, he’d thought he knew it all, could handle it all. Now, he didn’t feel like he knew anything, and was just doing his best to fucking cope.
Except for right now. Right now was perfect. It was magic.
“Don’t,” she said, and reached up to kiss him, not trying to escape now, but curling around him instead.
He didn’t know what she was denying—don’t think, don’t worry, don’t what? But then she moved beneath him, sliding down so his aching cock found its way to nestle between her legs, chafing against the layers of cloth that still separated them. And the blood drained from his head, carrying with it the last of his rational thoughts.
Groaning, he took her mouth and stopped thinking, worrying, whatever-ing, and let himself just feel as he feasted on her lips, her throat, her breasts. Before, he’d often needed to rein in the magic when he made love to her, as sex tried to bring out the mage in him. Now, though, there was no need for that control, because their powers met and balanced off, ramping up the sizzle yet somehow still leaving it all about him and her, and the slide of flesh against flesh.
He suckled on a pink, peaked nipple and heard her moan, went to work on her hip-hugging jeans and felt her shudder when his fingers found the zipper and tugged it down. She was wearing a slick, soft excuse for underwear, one of the thongs he fucking loved. The feel of it made him hotter, harder, turned him damn near crazy.
He got her jeans down in no time flat, leaving them snagged on her boots, so she was open to him but bound at her ankles. He halfway expected her to hold him off until she’d gotten free; instead, she moaned as he came back up her body, kissing his way up her inner thighs to that thin triangle of satiny cloth, which was a deep, fiery red that seemed to glow in the candlelight, edged on either side by a neatly trimmed strip of hair.
His lips were flush with the taste of her and his senses filled with the scent of her arousal as he traced the tip of his tongue along the line of cloth.
“Oh!” She gasped and arched into him, then purred when he did it again, licking deeper this time, tasting her and using his hands to spread her wider, give him better access. She caught his head in her hands, urged him up. “Come here. I can—”
He kissed her deeply, thoroughly, tonguing her until she went still and silent, her body vibrating around his. “Let this first one be about you,” he growled against the soft skin of her lightly muscled thigh.
He’d never before thought of himself as a selfish lover, or an unselfish one—she’d been his teacher, after all, or maybe it was more that they’d learned together. But he was realizing now that while he’d figured out how to please her, it had always been while she took him with her mouth or her body, giving him everything he could think of and more. She’d never asked for anything that was hers alone. More, when he’d offered or tried, she’d always turned the tables, rising over him, taking him, making him come and come until he couldn’t fucking think.
Now, though, he wanted to give her that same care and attention. And if she didn’t want to take it, she was going to have to say it loud and clear, because he wasn’t going to let her shift gears on him this time.
She had come to him, after all. Now he was going to make her come, over and over again. He was going to make her his, if only for this one night, in this one way.
Things were going to be different this time, damn it.
“But don’t you want . . .” she began, then trailed off when he nipped her thigh in warning.
“I want this,” he said softly. “I want you. Like this.” Forever. The last was a whisper in his mind, an impossibility that belonged only in his dreams. But maybe this was a kind of a dream, he thought as he traced his tongue along the smooth, sof
t crease beside the moisture-darkened thong. It was a waking dream. And he never fucking wanted to come out of it.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Myr couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything but lie there, open to him and yet trapped there as well, having become a creature of pure sensation rather than logic or thought. He breathed against her and she moaned; he licked his way up her center and she shuddered; he sucked on the tight bud of her clit through the fabric of her thong and she nearly came.
I should . . . don’t you want . . . always before, she had maintained a thread of control so she could make sure she pleased him, kept him. Now, her thoughts scattered as the heat coiled within her, sharp and edgy, and almost there. Yes, she thought, Oh, yes. Maybe she had come to him for release, but she was getting so much more.
Someone moaned—she thought it was her, though she wasn’t aware of having made the sound. She was mindless, incoherent. It had been too long; she had been too alone, and all she could do was let her head fall back on the pillow. It was her pillow, she realized with glittering surprise, though she couldn’t think right then what it meant that he’d kept it, because he growled low in his throat and quickened the tempo. And when she cracked her lids to look down at the sight of him feasting on her, she found him staring up her body, eyes dark and intense.
The moment their gazes locked, the pleasure snapped tight within her, flaring bright and brilliant. She came in a crazy, unexpected rush that left her helpless to do anything but clamp herself around him—her legs around his torso, her inner muscles around his fingers—and cry out. It was a wordless sound, not his name, not the love words they’d once used. But the feelings were there without the words, as if the past three months—six months? more?—hadn’t happened. Or, more, as if they had happened differently. She was in tune with him, fixed on him, totally gone on him, as if they’d been hot and heavy all along. As if they hadn’t drifted, hadn’t blown up. And even back when things had been the best between them, he’d never taken her like this, never made her feel like this.
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