She kissed the stranger who was her husband, not letting herself think of yesterday or tomorrow, of marriage or magic. The only thing that mattered was that moment and the things they were making each other feel. She didn’t care that the feelings were coming from the mirror spell or a backlash of the magic she’d poured into their mated bond to bring him back. She cared only that he was alive, that they had recovered a piece of their shared past . . . and that it was a memory worth holding on to.
Although she didn’t know how their first kiss had ended, she imagined how it had gone from there, putting herself into the fantasy.
When Brandt reversed them in a smooth, powerful move, so he was above her, pressing into her, the yielding mattress at her back became the soft limestone sand at the edge of the subterranean pool.
When she dragged his T-shirt up and off, so she could stroke the hard-edged leanness of his chest and abs, following the feathery line of coarse, wiry hair from the wings of his collarbones to the yielding elastic of his bike shorts, the long, masculine groan she elicited from him echoed off water and stone.
And when they wrestled the remainder of their clothes off and shoved aside the bedding, leaving them twined together, fully naked and exposed, the excitement of skin on skin came with a hint of the forbidden when she imagined what it might have been like to be with him in that cave.
But although the fantasy came quickly, vividly, the man who slid his legs alongside hers was very real. Almost too real. So she held on to the fantasy, using it as a buffer when emotion threatened to break through the heat and make her think when all she wanted to do was feel.
Chasing sensation, she trailed her mouth down the strong column of his neck, pressing lightly with her teeth as she worked inward, headed for the spot just above where his collarbones joined, where a kiss could make him shudder. Before her lips reached that destination, though, he tunneled his fingers through her hair and gripped, anchoring her as he brought their mouths together for a hard kiss that was more heat than finesse, more demand than request.
The move put her off balance, with a sense of “Wait. That’s not what comes next!” But that realization warned her she was falling into a pattern she hadn’t been entirely aware of, one that had grown up in their years together, as she had figured out what he liked and how to give it to him.
This was different, though— he was different. His hands were fast and borderline rough as he cupped her breasts, kneading them and dragging his thumbs across her nipples, making her arch against him, her fingers fluttering against his shoulders as she lost herself momentarily in the pleasure. His mouth shaped hers and she came alive to the scrape of teeth and the slide of tongue when he mimicked the act of love, in and out, until her body throbbed in time with his thrusts.
Her breath went thin; her head spun with knife-edge arousal and she had the feeling of being at the lip of a precipice, balanced between safety and free fall. She didn’t know this lover. Or rather, she suspected she had known him at one time, but they had lost each other along the way. She didn’t know what came next, didn’t quite know where to put her hands or how to move her body as old patterns gave way to nerves and the thrill of experimentation.
Refusing to let herself be taken without leaving her mark on him first, she twined herself around him, seeking the upper hand. He yielded, lying back with a growl that turned to a harsh, rattling groan when she dragged her teeth lightly across his ribs and down, trailing kisses and nips along his torso.
The salt on his skin made her think of the ocean-fed lagoon; the hammer of his pulse reminded her of the heavy thud of fireworks.
He lay still, his muscles locking as she tasted the points of his hip bones and the taut skin between, but when she shifted to move lower, he uncoiled lightning fast; in a blink, she was beneath him once again, trapped under his superior strength and bulk as he looked down at her, his chest heaving, his eyes wild.
She expected him to slow things down. Instead, he grated, “More.” Then he proceeded to give her more, taking it for himself in the process. He kissed her long and deep as he ran one hand down to hook her knee up alongside his hip, so his body settled tighter against hers while his hips moved in a slow, tantalizing rhythm.
Whimper-moaning with mingled need and satisfaction, she dug her fingers into the strong muscles of his back, and lower down, where the long muscles of his quads blended into the hard handfuls of his ass. There, she felt the same near gauntness she’d noticed earlier in his face. He’d lost weight—his muscle mass was the same, but what little fat he’d carried had burned away, distilling his body to its essence. And although he’d been far from soft before, she thrilled to his new hardness, and the fact that he was using his bulk to pin her in place and make her writhe with pleasure.
He rubbed his hard cock against her, bringing her to another precipice, not one of free fall this time, but of an orgasm that sparkled behind her eyelids, equal parts magic and sensation. The skin of her inner wrist warmed and pulsed as their jun tan connection cracked open and let a trickle of arousal flow from her to him and back again.
“Yes,” she said with her heart, mind, and voice. “Yes, now.” Her mouth found his and she poured herself into a kiss.
He went utterly still against her, save for the throb of his hard shaft against her center. Then he exhaled a pent-up breath on a whisper that she thought was her name. Shifting, he nudged the wide head of his cock against the initial resistance at the entrance to her body. She was wet and wanting, but tight because of how long it had been since they had given up the pretense of sleeping in the same bed.
The pressure wrung a growl from deep within his chest as he thrust home on a strong surge.
He invaded her, stretched her, filled her. And when he was seated to the hilt, pressing up against the end of her channel and making her breath go thin with the intensity of it all, he went still once more.
For a long moment, they lay joined and motionless as the counterpoint beat of their hearts echoed in the throb of his hard flesh, the pulse of her inner muscles. Unable to stay safe in the darkness behind her eyelids, she opened her eyes and looked up at him.
His gold-flecked brown eyes were entirely focused on her, on the moment. He wasn’t the twentysomething grad student who had glimpsed her across a crowded playa and chased her down, but in that moment he wasn’t the hard, remote Nightkeeper mage she’d been coexisting with for more than a year either. In his eyes she glimpsed the man who’d carried her over the threshold of their starter house and made love to her in every single room, including the laundry nook during the spin-
dry cycle.
Her eyes prickled at the memory, warning that she’d fallen out of the safe refuge of fantasy and magic. The heat and need, though, hadn’t dissipated. The jun tan sent incandescent energy through them both; he hardened further within her, stretching her and setting off chain reactions of inner fireworks. She focused on those bursts and slid back into the fantasy, remembering how her younger self had felt when she turned and found him watching her, how it had felt to lead him into the cave, to kiss him.
For a second, she could’ve sworn that the cool blue bedroom walls around them darkened and aged, turning to stone. Wishful thinking or not, it was enough to push away the tears and put her back in the moment, in the fantasy. Locking her inner muscles around him in a liquid squeeze, she said, as he had done earlier, “More.”
His expression turned inward, went glazed, and his teeth flashed on a purely masculine grin that held an edge of violence. “Hell, yeah, there’s more.” His voice dropped to a husky rasp that sent frissons of anticipation coursing through her body. “Hang on to me and I’ll show you just how much.”
He pressed her flat with his body, stilling her small, inciting movements. Then, although she would’ve sworn he was seated as deeply as he could be, he rolled his hips and went farther, startling a low moan out of her as he hit her sweet spots inside and out. When he withdrew fractionally, she moaned again, this time in p
rotest at the loss of that delicious pressure.
“Hang on,” he repeated. “Let me take us there.” He pushed forward again, then eased back. Forward.
Back. And as pleasure vised her, locking her muscles around him, beneath him, she did as he’d demanded, clutching his wide shoulders, which became her anchor.
He was pulsing more than thrusting, his movements on the scope of fractions of an inch, but her body lit as hard and hot as if he’d been pistoning into her, driving them both beyond reason. What was more, the deep, subtle thrusts left them almost entirely joined throughout. He was inside her, almost becoming part of her. His pleasure echoed through the jun tan connection; she felt the satisfaction of each thrust from his perspective, then felt it from hers and sent the sensation echoing back to him. The feedback loop joined them even more deeply than his flesh within her, uniting them.
Nerves quivered, but she focused on the moment, on the man, turning her face into his neck and pressing her lips to the hollow dip at his collarbone. He shuddered against her but didn’t change his stroke or tempo, flexing his hips and withdrawing, flexing and withdrawing, bringing her pleasure inside and out, until the sum total threatened to overwhelm her.
Tears stung again, but she was beyond processing where they came from, or why. She could only feel what she hadn’t felt in so long, if ever. Her orgasm hovered close at hand, as if waiting for some signal from him, under his spell just as surely as she was. But although he was in charge of their lovemaking, she held power of her own. She exerted it now, contracting her inner muscles to counterpoint his pulsing thrusts, beginning to work him as he was working her.
His breath hissed out and his fingers flexed on her hips, where he held her against his relentless thrusts. That might have been his only outward response, but she felt a surge in the jun tan connection.
Pressure and aching, impossible arousal echoed along the bond, sparking red-gold behind her eyelids as orgasm drew near. His. Hers. Theirs.
She tightened around him, her body taking over the volition. It seemed that each muscle fiber sent a starburst of warm anticipation when it contracted, building a new layer of heat atop the desperate pleasure within her. She dug her fingers into his shoulders, finding purchase at the base of his neck and hanging on for dear life.
“Yes,” someone said. “Yes, there!” She wasn’t sure if the words had come from him or her, or if they were entirely internal, a cry of pleasure shared along the jun tan bond. She buried her face against his throat, reveling in the slick skin, the heat, the feeling of being there, with him. Not alone.
He must have quickened his pace and lengthened his strokes an iota at a time, because they weren’t locked together anymore, weren’t pulsing together, touching along every possible inch of skin.
Instead, he was fully moving within her, thrusting an inch at first, then more, both speed and swing increasing faster and faster, as though he’d fallen off the edge of self-control.
Her blood burned in her veins and her body undulated in opposition to his building thrusts, creating crazy-hot pressure with the liquid slide of skin and sex. The cave fantasy disappeared and the room around them ceased to exist as her entire universe contracted to the sum of her body and his, and the energy they created together. He groaned her name and wrapped his arms around her, enfolding her in an embrace that made her feel simultaneously protected and vulnerable.
Her strung-tight muscles reached the warm, breathless numbness that presaged climax, leaving her almost helpless in the throes, with her mouth pressed to his throat, open in a silent scream. His body was rigid, hot, and sweat-slicked; their mingled scents ripened the air with an earthy, primal musk that seemed to connect her, not just to him, but to the earth itself, and all its inhabitants. Then that preternatural flash disappeared as the tingling numbness contracted suddenly, centering itself on her moisture-slicked channel and the hooded flesh just outside it, and the slap and slide of his body into hers.
“Gods,” she whispered.
He responded with a groan that might have been her name, might have been a denial of the gods themselves. Then even those thoughts were lost as he thrust deep and held himself there, pressed against her inside and out, his cock throbbing within her.
The world went still; she was wrapped around him, pierced by him, and filled with the red-gold energy of the jun tan. She hovered there for three heartbeats. Then she tipped over in a screaming rush of pleasure. Her gut wrenched on an orgasm so powerful it was almost terrifying. She cried out on a shuddering breath and clutched at him, vising her legs around his hips and digging her fingers into his back as he bucked against her, groaning her name.
He pushed against her, counterpointing the rhythmic pulses of her inner flesh, which sent ecstasy radiating outward, washing the world behind her eyelids red-gold. His pleasure rushed through her, and hers transmitted to him in return, echoing between them through the Nightkeepers’ mating magic, as they clung shuddering together, her face buried in the crook of his neck, his cheek pressed to the crown of her head.
Pulse led to pulse in a magic-amplified climax that echoed long past human-normal, long past the point where it ceased being just sex and became far too important.
Eventually, though, the waves of sensation leveled off and subsided, the jun tan bond faded to background, and they became nothing more than a man and a woman wrapped around each other, their bodies cooling together in the aftermath.
Only they weren’t just a man and a woman. And as the seconds ticked by in silence, Patience’s postcoital bliss gave way to the knowledge that they couldn’t stay like that much longer.
And didn’t that just suck?
She didn’t want to go back to their real lives . . . and she really didn’t want to talk about what had just happened. The sex had gotten way too intense, made too many new memories. And she ran the risk of wanting to burrow in and cling, which hadn’t been part of the deal.
They had gone into each other’s arms with the unspoken agreement that they were acting on the vision magic, burning off the impulse she’d created by channeling herself into the jun tan bond.
The closer she stuck to that truce, the better it would be. They couldn’t afford to add more complications, not now.
So she took a deep breath, channeled her warrior self as best she could, given that she was lying naked in Brandt’s arms, and said, “Okay, here’s the deal according to my nahwal. You can still become the Triad mage, but only if I help you settle some debt and make peace with your ancestors.
And we’ve got four days to do it.”
CHAPTER SIX
“I have to . . . Wait— what?” Brandt stared at Patience.
In the aftermath of their lovemaking, her face was soft, her lips kiss-stung, her eyes the blue of a Caribbean lagoon. But rather than looking well loved and dreamy, she looked . . . businesslike.
Not that he could blame her, given what she’d just hit him with. His thoughts churned. What debt?
What peace with his ancestors?
But on a far more primal level, he was aware of the warm tingle at his wrist, the tangle of their bodies, the fading echoes of the sex they had just shared, and the hint of vulnerability beneath her outer calm. She had come into the magic after him, risking herself to save his sorry ass. He wanted to reach for her, wanted to kiss her and put himself back into the jun tan connection, the one place where they still synced up perfectly.
Before the impulse could fully form, though, his warrior’s talent came online.
He gritted his teeth and tried to stop the shift, but the fighting magic ran so strong in the eagle bloodline—along with arrogance and egotism, at least according to Woody—that he damn well couldn’t stop the change. Which pissed him off. The other magi had found ways to balance the needs of their magic and their mates . . . so why the hell couldn’t he? Why didn’t—
Pain lanced through his skull. Shit, he thought, pressing his fingers against his closed eyelids. The headaches had come with the tale
nt . . . or, rather, they came whenever he thought about going against his warrior’s mandate.
Frustration roughened his tone. “Tell me everything.”
“The message came from your nahwal via mine . . . because apparently you and yours have a communication problem.”
“‘A communication problem,’” he repeated. “That sounds like something you would say, not a nahwal.”
She stilled against him. Then she pulled away from their postsex tangle and climbed from the bed.
Her shoulders were tight as she collected her clothes and started pulling them on.
He cursed himself thoroughly. “I’m sorry. That was an asshole comment. I’m . . . shit. I’m sorry.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Headache.”
She nodded without looking at him. “Your head’s been through a lot in the past twelve hours or so.”
Twelve hours. He glanced to the other side of the bed and saw his reflection in the glossy black bottom of a tipped-over pot. Magic. “You found a spell that could bring me back.”
“With help from Lucius.” Her expression took on a glint of defiance. “And the oracle.”
He stifled the instinctive wince, not wanting to get into another back-and-forth about her wasting time on a pointless hobby when they had more important things to worry about. “Thanks. I owe you one.”
It sounded pitifully inadequate, but what the hell else could he say?
“Nobody’s keeping score. So here goes with the ‘while you were sleeping’ recap . . .” She leaned up against the bureau with her arms crossed, in a semi-casual pose that made her look like a guest in the bedroom they had once shared, as she took him through the events of the past twelve hours.
He started getting dressed, but by the time she got to the part about Anna and Mendez being the second and third Triad magi, he was sitting on the side of the mattress in his jeans, with a T-shirt wadded in one hand, forgotten, while she described her card-sparked hunch on the etznab spell, and using it to put them both into the vision of their first night together.
Blood Spells n-5 Page 7
