He didn’t remember the black forest pancakes … the exchanged glances … the kisses. The laughter.
He wrapped his fingers around the hilt of his blade.
I didn’t reciprocate. Instead, I lifted my hands away from my body. I stood before him, arms lifted, hands empty, seemingly defenseless.
“Warner,” I whispered.
His stern expression softened. His eyes widened with sadness, then clouded with anger.
I reached for him, and in two steps he’d crushed me in his arms.
I kissed him fiercely, high up on my tiptoes to grab fistfuls of his hair and press myself fully against him.
“Jade,” he groaned.
“Warner,” I whispered a second time. Then I disentangled myself and reached down to collect the map. Still holding onto Warner with one hand, I tugged him back with me to pick up the necklace and loop it loosely around my neck. Its rightful place.
Then I took my dragon to bed.
∞
I should have immediately walked through the portal with the instrument of assassination. I should have sought out Pulou. I should have explained my actions to my father. They needed to know what Warner and I knew about Shailaja.
But I didn’t.
I took Warner’s hand and wordlessly led him through the wards of the bakery kitchen, then up the back stairs to my apartment. I didn’t bother to turn on the lights or check to see if there was a note on the fridge from my absent mother.
I tugged him into the bathroom, closed the door behind us, and turned the shower on as hot as it would go. I wanted to take him directly into my room, but I just couldn’t get over the fact that I had dried vampire vomit in my hair.
The tiny frosted window in the bathroom offered barely any light. I stripped off my clothing, throwing everything on the floor except my necklace. Then I stepped into the tub while Warner watched me. I left the shower curtain partly open, turning my back to the spray so I could wet my hair and take my turn to watch Warner undress in the near darkness.
The training leathers were actual clothing, not manifested by his magic. I could really only see his movements in the dark, but that was enough for right now, right here.
Warner stepped into the shower with me, and I traded places with him so he could enjoy the searing hot water while I washed my hair.
The pineapple scent of my shampoo mixed with the vanilla of my soap as we washed. We stood next to each other but didn’t talk, nor did we touch other than a brush of fingers when I passed him the soap, or a moment’s contact between our hips and shoulders as we traded places underneath the hot water.
As soon as we were marginally clean, I turned off the water. I offered Warner a fresh towel, and we dried off in the dark, steam-filled narrow bathroom. Warner was so wide at the shoulders that he had to angle his elbows so he didn’t hit the walls when toweling his hair.
Still damp in various places I couldn’t be bothered with, I dropped my towel on the floor and tugged Warner’s out of his hand to treat it the same way.
Then I pulled him — naked — through the hall and into my bedroom.
This time, I locked the door behind us. I ignored the unmade bed and the messy pile of clean laundry in the chair, crossing over to light a chocolate-scented square pillar candle on the bedside table.
I had never lit this candle before, though I’d owned it for a couple of years. I’d purchased it from a gift shop on West Fourth Avenue as a tiny splurge, back when I hadn’t had much money to spare while I was opening the bakery. I often smelled it, using it as a sensory treat before bedtime.
I turned, bathing in the soft glow of the candle as I looked back at Warner.
He stood with his back to the door, large enough that he filled the room before even really stepping into it.
I reached up and slowly pulled the necklace off over my head.
He groaned. The gold of his dragon magic rolled over his otherwise shadowed eyes.
Warmth melted through my lower belly at the unbidden noise.
Not taking my eyes off the length, breadth, and beauty of him by candlelight, I lowered the necklace onto the side table, letting it slowly coil in a pool of golden rings and silver centipedes.
I lifted my fingers away from the chain and sent my dowser senses out in search of his magic. Without the protective barrier of the necklace, his smoky-edged, creamy dark-chocolate-and-cherry magic flooded my senses so swiftly that my body jerked toward him involuntarily. I cried out.
Before I could feel embarrassed by this reaction, he was wrapping his arms around me, holding me fast and tight against his warm length.
“I’m here,” he whispered into my wet hair.
I nodded.
“I’m here, Jade,” he repeated.
I started to cry.
He kissed my tears. Then, cupping my face in his large hands, he wiped them away with his thumbs.
I inhaled, slowly and deeply, to calm myself, but the tears were only the beginning of the release of my grief.
“We’ll go slowly next time,” I said, my tone as firm as I could make it when I still felt as if my chest had been shattered into jagged puzzle pieces. Pieces that being physical with Warner might help to put back together.
I’d almost lost myself in the alley, and I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I’d made it all the way back.
He nodded. “Only if you promise me a next time.”
“There will be a next time.” I ran my hands up his chest, catching the dark, short hair that bisected his expanse of skin in between my fingers. As I reached his breastbone, he pressed his hands against mine, pinning them there hard enough that I could feel his heart beating.
“Promise me,” he said huskily. “Promise that we will —”
“I’m not the one who left,” I said. “I’m here. I’m always here.” Before I could regret the edge of accusation in my words, I pushed beyond my own issues and gave him the commitment I thought he was looking for. “I’ll always call you back.”
Warner nodded, seemingly satisfied by this. He reached across and brushed the hair away from my face. “I would never leave voluntarily.”
I let the painful subject drop. I didn’t want to talk.
I wanted to taste, to feel.
I knocked him playfully with my hip, turning him slightly so the candlelight fell across the tattoo I’d only caught glimpses of before. The image of a black dragon was wrapped over his right shoulder and partway across his collarbone. The edge blurred underneath his chest hair.
“On your back might have been a better choice,” I teased.
“It wasn’t an aesthetic decision.”
I ran my fingers along the thick black lines etched across his shoulder. The tattoo was a simple line drawing, with just enough detail to identify it as a dragon — scales, long tail, teeth and claws. I could feel magic tingling underneath my fingertips, separate but entwined with Warner’s. Something akin to the transportation spell that brought him back from stasis.
Warner nuzzled my neck and ran his hands across and down my shoulders, sides, and hips to cup my ass.
Yeah, I wasn’t thinking about unknown magic anymore.
I nudged him back against the bed, hard enough to force him to sit down. He looked up at me with a smile, then tugged me closer by the hips to flick my nipple with his tongue. First the right nipple, then the left.
I groaned. My knees became gooey — which was okay, because Warner was more than willing to hold me upright.
He returned his attention back to my right breast, sucking this time, and for a moment, I forgot I was in a rush. I forgot I was initiating.
He slid his hand from my hip, splaying his fingers across my belly, and slipped his thumb down through the curls between my legs.
I cried out and pretty much collapsed against him. This involuntarily awkward movement briefly killed the moment. Which was fine, because I remembered I had an agenda.
I was done with the foreplay.
I pushed him do
wn on the bed. He leaned back, willing and grinning. He was so freaking, insanely gorgeous lying there with the candlelight washing across him. Rough and ready. Really, really ready. Breathtakingly ready.
His grin widened.
“Yes, I’m ogling your manhood.”
He laughed. “Stay there, Jade, standing over me all golden and pink, warm and ready. I’d have you there forever. I’d look at only you for the rest of my days.”
“That would be a seriously long time, dragon.”
“Indeed.”
Grinning and definitely as ready as he thought I was, I bent over to fumble in my bedside table for a condom.
“What’s this?” he asked as I pressed it into his hand.
Right. Sixteenth century.
“I’ll show you. Birth control.” I ripped the package open and pulled the condom out.
“We’d be so blessed,” he murmured. But then he seemed to have trouble holding onto that thought as I showed him how to roll the condom on.
Getting that done as quickly as possible, I climbed on top of him.
He gripped my hips as I started to settle over him. I paused. “Wait,” I said.
“Wait? Now?”
I laughed as I climbed over him to the other side of the bed. “I want you on top.”
“Ah, good. I’m more versed that way.”
My husky laugh was cut off as he slipped his finger between my legs, found his way, then settled his weight over me.
He slipped inside me with a groan.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and whispered in his ear as he took his first stroke. “Slow next time, okay?”
“I’m not sure I’ll last more than a minute anyway.”
He found his rhythm quickly and without further coaching. Which was good, because I was beyond any ability to form coherent sentences.
I wrapped my legs around him, tilting my pelvis up for deeper penetration. He groaned and buried his face in my neck.
Warmth spread through me, riding the taste of his creamy chocolate and sweet, sweet cherry magic. I let myself melt into the bed. I let myself be pinned by his comforting weight.
I gathered all his magic around me until all I could taste and feel was him. Him in my mouth, him on my taste buds, him in my head, tingling against my skin. Tiny shocks of pleasure rolled up and over me from where we were connected at our very cores.
Tight against each other … as close as two people could be.
He slipped his hand between us, lifting himself slightly away to do so, and I almost cried out at the change in total contact. But my cry turned into a moan as he pressed his thumb between us, between my legs.
The tiny shocks of pleasure turned hot and fierce.
He bucked, off rhythm. Then squeezed me too tightly as he came.
“Jade,” Warner whispered, his thumb still rubbing me. I threw my head back, tensing every muscle in my body as the pleasure deepened and sharpened, radiating out from underneath his touch to flood across my belly and through my chest.
“Jade,” he repeated as my orgasm washed over me and I shuddered underneath him.
I opened my eyes to find him smiling down at me. He was coated in the golden gleam of his own magic.
I ran my fingers up the back of his neck and he shivered with residual pleasure.
“That looked tasty,” he whispered.
I laughed, completely content for this moment. “It was.”
“Think how much better it will be next time.”
I smiled. He lowered his head and kissed me softly … as if tasting me.
I sighed, then kissed him back.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
My phone buzzed. Just a single buzz, but I heard it even though it was buried in my satchel in the bathroom and the bedroom door was closed.
I thought I’d been sleeping, but I guess I wasn’t. Because when the phone buzzed, I realized I’d been staring at the darkness of my bedroom ceiling.
The candle had burnt out.
Warner was asleep next to me, pressing his naked shoulder and hip against me, but with his head turned away. His breath was deep, exhausted. I was lucky he hadn’t collapsed immediately after the transportation spell. Lucky that being placed in stasis for only a few hours affected him much less than four hundred and fifty years had the first time.
The phone buzzed again. The interval told me I had a text message waiting for me.
I wanted to wake Warner, to shower and romp a second time, but I didn’t.
I was sandwiched between him and the wall — my room wasn’t big enough for the queen bed to fit without being pressed against the wall. But I sat up and climbed over him without waking him.
I retrieved a bra, T-shirt, underwear, and yoga pants from the clean pile of laundry on the chair in the corner. I padded barefoot out into the hall, then cut immediately left into the bathroom.
I retrieved my knife in its invisible sheath, tasting Gran’s witch magic for just a moment before I strapped it on and my own magic neutralized hers.
The text message was from Kett.
>I have survived.
I stared at these three words for many minutes, trying to decide what to text back. Whether to make a joke, or tell him how terrified I’d been, or to thank him for the jet … and the chocolate.
Applying my thumbs to the phone, I simply typed:
I’m pleased.
He’d like the simplicity of that. He knew all the other stuff anyway, but his cool vampire demeanor would get ruffled if I mentioned it. He’d know what to read into my message.
He didn’t text back. I didn’t expect him to, but I waited for a few minutes anyway.
Then I went to fulfill the duty I no longer wanted. To void an obligation I never should have taken on in the first place. An obligation currently attached to my necklace.
The obligation had been an adventure, once. But now it only filled me with unwanted anger. A fierce, fierce anger that the lovemaking had only reinforced.
Anger at having been given the almost impossible task of collecting artifacts that could kill guardians, who I’d thought to be indestructible. Anger that Shailaja had been allowed to run around for three months and trash my bakery. Anger that the guardians had lost track of her in the first place, over four hundred years ago.
Anger at the tone of reprimand in my father’s voice.
And guilt. Guilt because I’d been fully prepared to kill Shailaja — assuming that was even in my power. Guilt because I’d felt she needed to die. Who was I to judge such things?
Shailaja was dangerous. I knew that much, and I certainly didn’t want her coming after the instrument of assassination currently sitting on my bedside table.
So no matter how torn I felt about it, and how much I just wanted to crawl back into bed — sleepless or not –– I left Warner to return to the nexus.
∞
The dirt of the bakery basement felt warm and welcoming underneath my bare feet. I didn’t bother with the overhead light when I could open the portal with a mere thought. As always, its golden magic — even if just for the moment of crossing — filled all the dark places in my soul.
Chi Wen was waiting for me on the other side.
He was wearing his gold-trimmed white robes as usual. Nothing about the far seer ever changed. He actually blended so thoroughly in with the white marble floor and gilded columns of the nexus that for a brief second, I thought I’d dreamed him up. That my eyesight was more damaged than I thought.
But I wasn’t so lucky.
I saw his eyes. They were full-blown white-gold. Terrifyingly bright orbs of gold.
I stumbled.
The portal shut behind me.
Instead of bowing, I fell to my knees before the far seer. For one beyond-petrified moment, I’d seen my future in his eyes. In his presence and his stoicism.
“Far seer,” I cried, stopping myself from reaching for the edge of his tunic, stopping myself from begging for absolution. For what I didn’t yet know, but I wa
s terrified he was going to show me.
“Dragon slayer,” he murmured as he touched the unruly curls on the top of my head. His guardian magic blew through me like a hurricane, electrifying my spine until it poured out of my fingers and feet.
But he didn’t send me a vision.
He dropped his hand from my head. “I would see what you’ve collected.”
“But is it safe? Shailaja …”
“Is under the watchful gaze of the healer and the treasure keeper.”
I reached down and unhooked the centipedes from my necklace. They came undone with the simple thought of undoing, lying dormant across my palm.
I raised my hand and the instruments of assassination to the far seer. He peered down at the artifacts, then he nodded.
“It’s not every day you see your own death offered to you on the hand of a beautiful young woman.”
I wrapped my fingers around the centipedes, holding them protectively against my chest. I suddenly wanted them as far away from the guardian of Asia as I could get them without running back through the portal.
God, I really, really wanted to run. But I was scared as hell that the far seer would give chase.
He chuckled.
“I … you … see your own death?” I managed to ask.
“No,” he answered. “I cannot see my path, nor do I see the nine. Our destinies are hidden from me.”
“But another sees,” I murmured, remembering the far seer’s words about Rochelle, the oracle, and the task he’d laid at Kandy’s feet. Dread soured my stomach.
“Not yet, but soon. She has been resting. But now you have come, so she must wake.”
“I don’t understand.”
He nodded, not unsympathetically. Then he held his hand out to me, as if he wanted me to give him the centipedes.
I shook my head so fiercely that the room blurred behind my own curls as they flapped around my face.
Chi Wen chuckled again as a silver box appeared in his hand. It was smaller than the box in the mountain cavern, and covered in raw diamonds, not runes. Dragon alchemy. And the metal was presumably platinum, not silver.
Still kneeling, I opened the box’s hinged lid and placed the centipedes inside. They didn’t wake as I snapped the lid shut.
Maps, Artifacts, and Other Arcane Magic (Dowser Series Book 5) Page 23
