by Anna Durand
I wrenched my lips from his, breathless, aching and throbbing deep inside for a the release I'd denied us both. "Not like this."
Nevan growled, "Like what?"
I swatted his chest. "Don't get grumpy."
He took a long breath, seeming to collect himself as he exhaled. "What is it?"
"You said — " My panting derailed my words. I took a few precious seconds to catch my breath. "I thought we were going to, you know, have sex."
"That's what we're doing."
"No, I mean… " I leaned back against his raised knees, needing the space between us but hating it at the same time. "I don't want it halfway. All the way or nothing."
"We'll get there." He walked his fingers down my thighs. "We have all night."
"I know you like to play, but I've been waiting a long time for this."
Understanding curved his lips and lit his eyes. "And you want to get right to it. Play later."
"Exactly."
He raised onto his elbows. "I've no objections to taking you right now."
The sheer sensuality of his tone made my sex throb. But I had one more matter to settle first. "I need to ask a very important question."
His groan resonated through his torso, straight into my groin. "If you must."
With a little huff, I shifted my weight to ease the tension building again between my thighs. The movement did not help. "In my world, we have something called safe sex."
"I told ye, my kind and yours enjoy pleasurable relations with no injury — "
"That's not what I meant." I screwed my face up with irritation, which made him grin. "Do elementals have birth control? You know, ways to prevent pregnancy."
"Ah, I see." He boosted his hips up, rubbing his erection into me. "I can't impregnate you without exercising a conscious decision to do so."
"Really?" When he nodded, I couldn't help laughing. "Damn. Wish we had that option over on my side of the falls. For mortals, it's very complicated. I mean, there's pregnancy and then you have STDs — sexually transmitted diseases."
"No wonder your kind are so repressed. It's a wonder you ever loosened up for me."
"Watch it, buddy." I thumped his thigh, but that only made his grin broaden and his eyes twinkle. "So about diseases… "
He pushed up on one arm, half sitting, and captured my wrist with the other hand. Drawing it to his mouth, he tormented the inside of my wrist with his deft tongue. "I'm immortal, love, which means I suffer from no natural diseases or illnesses of any kind."
"Oh. Good." I felt my lips pucker. "But you're not invincible. You could catch a magical disease."
He slapped a palm on his forehead. "Thunder and hail. Do ye ever quit the worrying?"
"Not really."
"Hmm." Both hands on my back, he hauled me down to his chest and murmured seductively in my ear. "In that case, you know what I have to do."
With dizzying swiftness, he flipped us over and took my mouth in a sweet, sensual kiss that went on and on. When he pulled away, he lowered his body over me, bracing himself with both hands at either side of my shoulders, his neck inches from my face. The heat and scent of him radiated across the gap between us and I couldn't breathe, overwhelmed by the knowledge of what was to come. I knew, but lord, I didn't know. How he would take me. How he would stoke me. How his shaft would fill me to bursting. How I would fling my self-control out the window and cling to him with all my strength, riding out the storm.
These were fantasies, nothing more. Any second, I would experience the reality.
When he nuzzled my ear, I sucked in a lungful of blessed oxygen, arching into him as his hair tickled my skin. He moved lower, peppering feathery kisses across vulnerable flesh, eliciting sighs from me that ruffled his hair. He raised his head to gaze at me with a tenderness that floored me. Not just sex. Not for either of us.
He kissed the corner of my mouth. "Everything with you is a revelation. You are a revelation."
"What does that mean?"
"It means shut up, Lindsey." He uttered the decree without a hint of sarcasm or annoyance, but with a gravelly tone that testified to the passion flaming in his eyes, darkening his expression, tensing his body.
I shut up.
He levered himself up on one arm, his erection skimming my belly, and settled a hand on my throat, the fingers loose and relaxed. I must've flinched a bit at the position of his hand, because he murmured wordless encouragements. My muscles slackened of their own volition, my body answering his every call without hesitation. He covered my body with his, easing my thighs apart with his knees. His head was above mine, his cheek against the crown of my head, so that my hair muffled his voice. "Are you ready?"
Helpless to speak, I answered by throwing my arms around him, my hands on his back fisting and loosening, fisting and loosening, my mind senseless from the feel of his muscles undulating beneath my palms. I buried my face in his neck, nibbled his shoulder, crooked my fingers until my nails dug into his skin.
"Take that as a yes," he said, his cracking from the sheer power of his need.
"Nevan." His name tumbled from my lips, chased by breathless little noises. "Yes."
Poised above me, propped on his straight arms, he admired me with rapt wonder, as if my body offered the solution to a great cosmic mystery. I started to ask a question, but he stunned me into silence with a punishing kiss, ravaging my mouth with his tongue and his lips, at once enticing and demanding. Without a word, he pulled away and lifted my hips off the bed. Exhaled a raspy breath. Rolled his hips back. And finally, plunged into me.
He moved inside me, delicate and slow, rocking in and out in with a purpose and strength that stripped away every vestige of my inhibitions. The velvet softness of the bedding electrified my bare skin with each movement. He bent to suckle my earlobe, his breaths soft groans against my flesh. I clenched his hair in my fist, arched my neck to inhale the earthy scent of him. The silky texture of his hair sparked through my nerves, spurring me to unleash a string of mindless noises. He showered kisses down my neck, across my throat, up the opposite side to nip at my jaw, and all the while he thrust in and out, each stroke forceful and controlled.
"Lindsey, my love… "
A strange pain gripped my heart. He was mine and I was his. All the pain of past betrayals fled the instant he'd spoken those two beautiful words. My love. I'd barely noticed the first time he spoke the phrase back in the cave, but in this moment the lilting declaration struck me full force. My hands fell to his shoulders, squeezing and releasing in a fierce rhythm, in time with his thrusts.
"Nevan." His name was a plea and a demand, punctuated by my teeth rasping across his shoulder. "Don't hold back. I let go for you, and oh God, I need you to let go for me."
A guttural, almost feral sound rumbled in his chest. I crushed my open mouth to his throat, to take in the vibrations of his vocal chords, seized by an insatiable need to merge with him in every way imaginable.
Nevan rose into a crouch, pulling out of me, running his hands down the insides of my thighs to my knees. "I cannot deny you anything."
He braced his hands at either side of my shoulders and drove into me, filling me with exquisite pressure, diving deep with one breathtaking thrust. I trussed my legs around him, secured by my locked ankles, and held on for the ride. His length consumed me as he pounded into my flesh again and again, sweat beading on his forehead. I nearly shattered into a million shards, writhing against him like a wild thing, heedless of the senseless pleas bubbling out of me, the speed and desperation of my cries quickening along with his movements until the bed thumped against the floor, counting out the frantic pace of our love-making.
Dropping onto his elbows, his mouth against my ear, he whispered exotic words I couldn't decipher. The beautiful phrases flowed into me like warm liquid, softening my need just enough to keep me teetering on the edge.
My release racked my entire body. I screamed, heart thrashing in my chest as he shouted with his own climax, plunging into me once, twice, three times before collapsing on top of me, startling a strangled cry from me. He rolled onto his side next to me, balanced near the bed's edge.
Robbed of breath, I struggled to compose myself, to no avail. This man had wrecked me. My self-control, gone. My inhibitions, gone. My fear and shame, gone.
My heart… gone. I'd handed it over to him, without even realizing it, the second I granted him permission to ravish me. And oh boy, had he ravished me thoroughly.
His arm around my waist, Nevan pressed his lips to my forehead. "You are indeed a revelation, my sweet mortal angel."
I felt a smile stretch my lips and dimple my cheeks. "No one's ever called me an angel before. I like it." I roved my hand over his muscular arm. "But I'd really like to know what you mean when you say I'm a revelation."
"You've performed a miracle. You resurrected my heart."
My pulse stuttered. For several seconds, I stared at him. My face probably resembled a cartoon character's version of shock, though his expression revealed no disgust or amusement, only adoration.
He guided my hand to the scar on his chest, my fingers over the mark. "I thought Skeiron destroyed my heart forever. For a century, I felt nothing more than surface emotions. No passion, no fire, only an emptiness that made me ache for what I knew could never be." He brought my hand to his lips, kissing my palm. "You proved me wrong. You awakened my heart and showed me how to care for another above myself. And you introduced me to true passion, like none I've experienced in my entire existence. That is why you are a revelation."
Speechless, I could do no more than gape at him.
"No need to speak." He held my palm to his cheek. "I wanted to tell you, that's all, to help you understand why I'm here with you."
My brain sputtered to life at last, spitting out a jumble of thoughts. "Is this the thing you wouldn't tell me until I was receptive to the answer?"
He shook his head once.
I turned onto my side, facing him, and looped my arm around his back to pull him close. He obliged, molding his body to mine. I snuggled my face into his neck. "Mmm… Tell me the other thing. I'm feeling very receptive at the moment."
"Later. Sleep, love. You're exhausted." He pinched my bottom. "Partly my fault."
"Don't think I can sleep."
"Try."
His hands caressed my back in slow circles, light and calming. I relaxed into him, into the fur beneath us, and — despite myself, despite the horrors laying in wait outside this little sanctuary — I slept.
23
I woke alone in the Nevan-size bed, the fur blanket enshrouding me. Yawning, I sat up and stretched. The blanket slipped off to gather around my waist. I flipped it away, to the foot of the bed, and swung my feet over the side. Despite my nudity, I felt no chill. The air inside this underground bubble stayed skin temperature, apparently. My skin temperature. Nevan must've adjusted his… thermostat, for lack of a better term, to suit my body. His flesh ran considerably hotter than mine.
Hot skin. On me. His body pinning me into the bed. His hips undulating, driving him deep inside me. My body sizzled from the memory, a damp ache burgeoning between my thighs.
Last night, when he lay on top of me with our bodies in full contact, he'd shown me astounding passion and a tenderness that stirred a silly, girlie part of me to wish for things I couldn't have. He was a super-powerful sylph from a world of magic, I was an underemployed ex-paralegal from plain old Earth. Where could this go? Nowhere.
I rubbed my arms, but the chill frosting through me originated within, not without. Skeiron was still out there. If we survived his wrath…
We still came from different worlds, literally.
I glanced around the softly lit room, wondering where the source of the light was, unable to trace the diffuse glow to any particular spot. But I wondered about something else with more urgency. Where the hell was Nevan?
What if Skeiron exerted his magical influence to drag Nevan away from me? Or what if Nevan went willingly, to conspire with his king? No, I refused to believe that. Yet his bargain with Skeiron bound him to do his king's bidding, and really, I knew so little about the immortal warrior who'd become my lover. I couldn't compete with supernaturally enforced fealty. I needed to know either way.
I took a big breath and shouted with all my lung power. "Nevan!"
Silence, broken only by the thumping of my heartbeat.
If Skeiron had lured Nevan out into the open… Last time they'd fought, Nevan got skewered and I almost died saving him. Skeiron might kill him this time, for good, with me locked up in this underground hole and helpless to stop it. Not again, please, not again.
"Nevan!" I shouted.
This screaming-for-my-man stuff was absolutely not me, yet I'd resorted to it more than once in the past few days. Maybe I didn't know myself as well as I thought. Then again, it was the only method at my disposal for contacting Nevan.
I hollered his name once more, empowering the cry with all my frustrations.
Nevan winked into view right in front of me, his loincloth-clad groin smack in front of my face. He crouched down, his hands coming to rest on my thighs. "What is it?"
"Are you serious? Asking what's wrong?" I kneed his chest, but he didn't react. "I was afraid Skeiron tricked you into meeting him and he — You weren't here and I didn't know what to think."
His left hand lingered on my thigh as the right one cradled my cheek. "You worry far too much."
"Yeah, we've had this conversation before." I shut my eyes, leaning my face into his touch. "I can't stop worrying until we've dealt with Skeiron and all this Janusite crap."
"I know." His thumb traced the seam of my lips. "I hate to see you tying yourself up in knots again, after I worked so diligently to unravel them."
The sincerity in his tone, and the sensual promise implied by them, unraveled me all over again. Enveloped in his presence, I reveled in the sense of safety he'd imbued into me last night, with his body and his words. One thing I knew for certain. This man could never turn on me, not willingly, and even under duress he'd fight it to his last breath.
"Did you believe I'd abandoned you?" he asked, without inflection, his face unreadable.
"Of course not. I don't want to have to save you again is all." My teasing tone must've bypassed him, because his expression fell into resignation and his head drooped, leaving me to gaze at his hair. "That was a stupid joke, my backwards way of saying I was worried about you. I know you wouldn't abandon me. I trust you."
His head sprang up, making my hand slip down to his cheek. "You must never trust me."
I went cold inside at the finality of his tone. "Last night, you asked me to trust you. This morning, you tell me not to. What gives?"
"Then, we were in your world. Now, we are in mine." He fastened his hands around my waist and brought us both to our feet, keeping me close. "Vow you will never trust me on this side of the falls."
"I won't say it. I can't."
"Lindsey."
"Don't Lindsey me." I shook off his hands. "It would be a lie. I will trust you, no matter what."
"Then you will die."
"Stop being so melodramatic." I squared my shoulders and lifted my chin, which probably didn't look as resolute when I was naked. "The subject is closed."
He blew out three short, erratic breaths, his gaze bouncing around the room as if he couldn't quite focus on any one thing — until he aimed his eyes, now fl
at and dull brown, at me. "Fine. We must talk about our other problems."
At the moment, he seemed anxious and irritated with me over my refusal to un-trust him. Yesterday, he'd told my brother he was immensely fond of me. Last night, he claimed I'd resurrected his heart, though I'd seen zero evidence his emotions had ever shriveled up, mummified by the so-called curse. Skeiron might've lied about imprecating Nevan's heart. Since Nevan disliked talking about it, I was left to draw my own conclusions.
Skeiron was a mass murderer. I could totally believe he'd lie about cursing someone.
The truth might lie in whatever it was he'd refused to tell me last night.
I crooked my fingers around the bed's edge, one finger tapping. "Are you sure Skeiron cursed you? I mean, what proof did he have?"
"It was magic, love. There's no concrete evidence. The proof was in my inability to feel for a century." He caught my hands, gently prying them from the bed's frame to surround them with his hands. "Until you, that is."
"Oh please." I tried to lean away from him, but his hold on my hands inhibited movement. "I'm not convinced you ever were cursed. I think Skeiron played on your guilt about his daughter and used the power of suggestion to make you believe he'd stripped you of your emotions."
He scrutinized my fingers, brushing his thumbs over my knuckles. "Perhaps."
"What does it take to imprecate a heart, anyway?"
"I'm not certain." He pursed his lips as if deep in thought, silent for a moment. "Fae magic, I presume. A great deal of it."
"Ah-ha." At his dubious look, I straightened and lifted my chin. "Tris told me Skeiron massacred the fae witches and no fae is allowed to help him. You confirmed that. So how could he get his hands on a fae curse?"
Nevan's face blanked and his hands fell away from mine, and for several seconds I thought he wouldn't answer. At last, he leveled his shocked gaze at me and spoke. "He couldn't."
