Anna imagined their shock when a nude legendary wolf had made himself at home in their midst.
“So we won’t steal a night together,” Anna decided. “We’ll claim it. We’ll take it. After all this time, we deserve a taste of what might have been.”
“I would walk away now, if you wished it,” Soren offered. His touch was gentle, but his body was hard with tension. Heat radiated off his naked skin as he held himself in check.
“One day soon we’ll both walk away. But not now. Not tonight,” Anna whispered. She met his gaze. Steam had dissipated. The water around her legs had grown cold. But she didn’t shiver. The heat in Soren’s amber eyes warmed her.
“Not tonight,” Soren agreed.
Anna reached for him. Soren dropped his hand, and she placed her palms on his shoulders. She measured their broad span for a stunned second. Then she looked into Soren’s eyes. They had narrowed slightly with humor at her reaction, crinkling at the edges.
“I don’t remember you being this...big,” Anna said. Her face flushed as she thought of other ways he was big in addition to his shoulders. The crinkles at the edges of his eyes grew deeper. But then his humor disappeared. He leaned to place his forehead against hers.
“I would never hurt you,” Soren said. “One of the reasons I run is to know myself again. To get used to this body. I work every day for precision and control.”
Anna’s heartbeat kicked up a notch. She knew. She saw. His strength and grace. His power and his perfection. Oh, he had scars. He had lived a very long time and fought many battles. But they only added a storied past to his perfection. Legends behind his handsome face.
“I want to know you,” Anna confessed.
Soren stilled. His breath caught and his movement ceased. He continued, unmoving, as she caressed from his strong neck down to the rounded curves of his biceps. She measured them on both sides with the spread of her fingers, which didn’t reach even halfway around. Then she paused to hold his obvious strength in the palms of her hands.
Only then did he release a long, slow exhale. He lifted his forehead from hers. She looked up at his sudden movement away from her. But it was only temporary. When her chin lifted and her lips became accessible, Soren leaned in again to capture her lower lip. He suckled it while he watched her reaction and then when she gasped, he bathed it with his rough, moist tongue.
“I’m yours. For tonight,” Soren said against her mouth as he released her. The intimate offer caused a hot coil of desire to suddenly tighten in the pit of her stomach. Her chest also tightened, but she ignored that darker emotion in favor of pressing her mouth to his for a deeper taste.
He’d sensitized her lips with his suckling. His tongue had shattered her equilibrium. She was light-headed even before the crackle of the Ether’s energy arced from her mouth to his. The jolt was only an amplification of the chemistry that already existed between them. But it enhanced, from the slide of their tongues to the tingle in her nipples to the fire at the juncture of her thighs.
Soren cried out his pleasure in the slight electric pain of the arc that must have enhanced what was already happening to him, too.
“Tonight might kill me,” he growled. She tasted perspiration on his lips.
“No. We’ll die tomorrow and the next day and the next. Tonight we live. We savor,” Anna said.
Soren reached for the towel she’d left on a chair near the tub. He wrapped her in its soft folds and lifted her into his arms. She didn’t protest. She held on as he carried her into the bedroom beneath the stars.
It was dark before dawn. The moon had disappeared, and only the persistent twinkle of stars remained visible through the glass dome over their heads. Suddenly, Anna held tighter to Soren’s neck as she thought of her aviary. And all the times they’d sat together on the ramparts of Bronwal beneath the stars.
“Is it too much? The difference in me?” Soren asked. He had paused in the middle of the room. The shadows hid his face but not his concerns.
“I could ask you the same,” Anna said. “My answer is yes and no. You are Soren, the red Romanov wolf. You are the same in all the ways that matter, and you are new in ways that shake me to my toes.”
She pressed her lips to his shoulder and flicked her tongue out to taste his skin. She licked his neck and then suckled where his pulse throbbed. He shuddered beneath the sensual attack. He brought a hand up to thread into her hair and hold her as she nuzzled and nipped his skin.
“You are wholly new to me, but that’s because I didn’t know you—all of you—before. You are a woman and a warrior and a witch. I thought you were my Bell, but you are Anna. Never to be mine, but precious all the same,” Soren said.
Anna’s eyes burned with unshed emotion.
He might not love her, but he didn’t hate all Volkhvy. Not now. Not while he held her and felt her lips on his skin. He carried her to the bed, but he didn’t lay her on it. Instead, just as he’d done when he’d stepped into the mirror, he turned to back up to the bed and sit on its edge. He lay back on the mounded coverlet. He took her with him into the soft bed. They sank together. The canopy’s diaphanous coverings were translucent, but they still created a sense of privacy and retreat.
They’d found an intimate hideaway in a chaotic world.
“I’ve wanted you in this bed,” Anna said. His arms loosened, and she was able to rearrange herself as she liked. She liked. A lot. There was so much man beneath her that she didn’t know where to begin, but she naturally settled her heat against his flat, hard stomach. His erection bumped against her, fiery, hot and ready.
But he’d given her a gift, and she intended to collect.
“You’re mine? For tonight?” Anna asked.
“Yes,” Soren replied. He held himself still again. She could tell he was waiting to see what she wanted and wished. Heady anticipation filled her, hardening her nipples and pulsing between her legs. She arched her back and rocked against him, energy flaring along with her desire, arcing between their bodies everywhere they touched. “Yes,” Soren repeated, this time breathless with need.
He was long and hard against her bottom. Thickened and slick. She was slick, too. Her excitement had quickened her core. She slid against his stomach as she undulated, and the sweet scent of her musk rose in the air.
“Mine,” Anna said. And this time she wasn’t asking for clarification or permission.
She slid off to lie beside him, but even as he groaned a protest, she claimed her wolf. She leaned over him to explore his naked chest with her lips. Although her heartbeat fluttered, she wasn’t tentative. Nearly overwhelmed by the feast before her, yes, but not intimidated.
Anna took her time, but only in order to memorize every inch of him. She would never be able to make love to him again. Every kiss. Every caress. Every hot gasp she drew from his naked body had to be remembered forever.
She kissed around the hard swell of each pectoral muscle. Even though his muscles were hard, she could feel his heartbeat beneath her lips. She tasted the perspiration of his excitement. She rode the rapid rise and fall of his shallow breathing as she leaned into him.
The starlight wasn’t enough. She couldn’t see him as well as she’d like. She could only depend upon her lips to trace and her tongue to taste.
And her hand to follow.
She controlled her power. She only allowed the lightest of electric shocks to arc between her fingers and his skin. The green glow lit up the contours of his muscled chest, his rippled abdomen and the dip that led to...
Anna tamped down her power and took his hot erection in her hand. He was excited and well-endowed. He more than filled her hand with several inches revealed beyond the grip of her fist. Soren tossed his head back in abandon and jerked his hips up to thrust himself into her fist. She leaned over him to muffle his moans with her kisses. She licked his gasps from his lips and teased her tongue into his
mouth. He reached to hold the back of her head and deepen the kiss while she stroked the smooth, steely length of him.
“Yes. Anna. Yes. Please,” Soren moaned into her mouth.
He was an enchanted shape-shifter, powerful and dangerous and more than most women would brave. But Anna wasn’t most women. She was a warrior. And it seemed like she’d been waiting for Soren to beg for her touch for a long time.
Anna rose up on her knees and Soren stilled again as if he knew what she wanted to do. He stopped thrusting. He fell silent. Until she leaned to take the head of his erection in her mouth. She closed her mouth over him. She licked and suckled and he cried out once more.
Suddenly, she was afraid of her hunger to please him. One night wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.
But it was all she had.
Anna’s fear fled.
She moved her hand out of the way so she could envelop him deeply. She took all of him into her mouth. And then she found a rhythm that made him call out her name. He took up most of her bed. He could fight a whole horde of Dark Volkhvy. But his sweet, salty pleasure was hers and hers alone. He was hers. For tonight. She brought the legendary wolf to earth, to fully inhabit his human body.
* * *
For her.
Always for her.
Soren shook as he fought his release, every muscle and every cell tensed against it until he collapsed back on the bed. Anna didn’t protest. She allowed him to pull her back up to lie across his chest.
“If you kill me, you’ll have to go after the sword alone,” he teased. Her hair had tumbled down. If he drowned in silky rose-scented curls, he would die happy, but she didn’t need to know that. He already tingled from the effects of her power. It vibrated beneath his skin, making him breathless the same way a rush of adrenaline would.
He didn’t hate it.
That alone should make him get up and walk away.
“You like my power, but you don’t like that you like it,” Anna guessed.
“I’ve shifted twice in the last few days, but making love makes me feel very human. Maybe too human,” Soren said. “I want this feeling to last.”
The last was a confession. One he hated to make. Because it didn’t matter what he wanted. Tomorrow they would leave the island to go in search of the emerald sword.
Chapter 19
When Soren’s mood shifted, Anna felt the air in the room tighten with unspoken tension. He was a Romanov wolf. She wasn’t the only one who tapped into the Ether to channel power. The Romanovs had been changed by the Ether’s power. Vasilisa had manipulated their genes so that they became the powerful shape-shifters she needed to fight the Dark Volkhvy.
Soren’s moods could literally rock the world if he chose to shift. And, apparently, he could rock hers even when he chose to stay human.
“This changes nothing. We’re still going to destroy the sword. We have to. We have to keep your family safe from the Dark Volkhvy,” Anna said. “From the ascendance of a new Dark prince...or princess.”
“You’re right and you’re wrong. We’re going to destroy the sword, but this still changes everything,” Soren said. His hands grasped her arms and he lifted her off his chest and onto one of the pillows at the head of her bed. Now he leaned over her. She was trapped between his broad chest and the soft mattress. His eyes, so dark in the absence of light, met hers. She couldn’t read any secrets in their glittering depths. Her only hope was that he also couldn’t read hers. He was right. His kisses changed everything. More than kisses would restructure her world, whether or not he remained in it.
“This changes everything, but I can’t stop. Not if you don’t want me to,” Soren said.
She didn’t want him to stop. Now or ever. She settled for silence when speaking would reveal too much.
Soren kissed her and this time he was in total control of how long, how lingering, how deep and how slow he explored her mouth. Time stopped, but unlike when they dematerialized during the curse, they didn’t disappear. She was more physical than she’d ever been. She was alive under his lips and in his arms. Her pulse throbbed in her veins. Her body throbbed along with it. Anna’s eyes filled again. She was thankful for the darkness. Maybe if he tasted salt on her skin he would blame it on perspiration instead of tears.
She hoped in vain.
He drank the salty emotion from her cheeks with tender licks and kisses. He recognized her pain. He swam in it with her. He softly murmured her name. And then he smoothed a calloused hand over her jaw and tilted her chin as he tenderly kissed down to her neck.
Suddenly, her pain was overwhelmed with need.
She’d grown excited and wet when she’d suckled him. Now lust welled up again between her legs. Yes. This would make losing him harder, but she welcomed that later, greater pain if they could indulge in this connection now.
Soren’s hand caressed down from her jaw to her chest. He cupped the globe of one breast in the palm of his hand. He kissed her again as he gently thumbed her pebbled nipple.
It was Anna’s turn to breathe a yes against his lips.
“Nothing else matters right now. Only this. Only touching you and pleasuring you and the two of us finally coming together,” Soren said.
“Yes,” Anna agreed. But it was more of a plea than an agreement. She lied. Losing him mattered. What she was meant to be mattered. But losing the sword mattered less than having him the only time they could allow.
Soren accepted her encouragement. He stroked his hand down to her trembling stomach, spreading heat all the way. Then he found the wet pulse between her legs. He dropped his hot mouth to capture the nipple he had ripened with his calloused thumb and, at the same time, he parted her intimate folds. He sucked and licked her breast as his fingers slid slickly over the tight bud of flesh that pulsed with her desire.
Anna cried out. Her hips bucked up to meet his touch, and she reached for the back of his neck to hold on. He lifted his lips from her breast to her mouth. He alternated between deep, suckling kisses and murmurs of encouragement. He seemed to savor her sounds of pleasure.
“We can’t be together. But you’re mine tonight. I want every tremble. Every sigh you’ll give me,” Soren said. “I want to carry this memory with me forever.” His breath tickled hotly against her skin. Her tears had dried. His deft fingers owned all her attention. “Let go. Let me give you the ultimate pleasure. Give me your release.”
She was shaking with tension. The salt on her face was no longer caused by sadness. Her body was flushed with heat. Her breasts rose and fell as she panted for breath and struggled for control. Her fingers slipped on his neck from the perspiration her excitement had generated. But she couldn’t let go for him. She was holding the power of the Ether at bay...for him. She couldn’t do both.
* * *
He’d never seen a woman so close to the edge of her climax but still holding on. Anna’s wet heat engulfed his slowly thrusting finger, and her hips rose and fell to match the rhythm of his hand. The heat of her thigh was torture to his hardened cock as she moved, but he was determined to bring her to release before he settled himself between her legs. They’d been kept apart too long. He wouldn’t rush their lovemaking now. He could sense that something was wrong even though she held him and moaned with pleasure. She arched for his hand, but he could tell she was holding back.
“What do you want, Anna? Tell me,” he urged against her lips.
“I can’t... The Ether’s energy is all around us. It’s gathering inside me. If I relax, I won’t be able to control it,” Anna replied. In the darkness of the shadowy room, her eyes had opened. He could tell because her emerald irises sparkled with the light of her power, barely held in check. The flecks of light illuminated her face. Her lashes were damp. Her cheeks were flushed. Her lips were swollen with heat and hunger. In that moment, he almost broke his internal vow to bring her to pleasure firs
t. He wanted to take her, to join with her, to meld their bodies together.
But first, he had to trust her.
He’d paused the movement of his hand as she spoke. Now he gently pressed to claim her with his finger again. At the same time, he leaned close so that her sparkling eyes would illuminate his face. He wanted Anna to see his acceptance of her power. His desire for her to let go of all control.
For tonight. For him.
“I’m the red Romanov wolf. You don’t have to control yourself for me. I was born and bred in the Ether’s power. I want your pleasure. I want to bathe in your light,” Soren said against her lips. He stared into her eyes. He saw them widen. He saw them brighten.
And then an emerald flash that would have sent a lesser man to the floor rocked him backward.
Soren held on to the headboard with his free hand. His muscles bunched and Anna’s hold tightened around his neck. The burst of power didn’t separate them. They stayed together as Anna’s most intimate muscles contracted around his hand. She cried out. She called his name. It was the sweetest sound he’d heard in an age. His body tingled as her power infiltrated every cell. He didn’t fight it. He basked in its glow.
And, finally, he allowed himself to settle between her parted legs.
* * *
Soren covered her with his hard, warm body and Anna gathered him close with her arms and legs. She needed his solid muscled back to anchor her to the earth. As their breathing synchronized, it seemed as if all her molecules reassembled in a slightly better position than they had been before.
She was whole. Somewhere the emerald sword shone. She was sure of it, even though she couldn’t see it. Carnal connection had nothing to do with claiming her partnership with the red wolf. It was Soren’s brief acceptance and pleasure in her power that caused the sword’s glow and her feeling of perfect symmetry.
Then her legendary lover positioned himself so that their bodies could join, and suddenly Anna had a different definition of whole. The momentary pain was nothing compared to the tingling of her power that still pulsed beneath her skin. Replete seconds before, she immediately grew hungry for more when Soren began to slowly rock his hips between her thighs. She was slick to ease his passage.
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