He slapped his palm against the wall, spoke a low word, and lurched through the doorway. The stranger roared and lunged for the door, but a stone panel slid across the opening, sealing them in.
‘‘Oh, God!’’ Heart pounding, Leah splashed toward the door. She was halfway there when the chamber dropped a few more feet and the incoming water doubled, blasting from the screaming skulls with pounding force. Moments later, the torches snuffed out, leaving the room lit by the unearthly radiance of the water, which quickly climbed to her throat, then buoyed her off the floor until she was treading to keep her head above the surface.
Heart racing, she turned to the stranger. Remembering the grenade thing he’d done with her cuffs, she said, ‘‘Can you open the door?’’
He shook his head. ‘‘No, but I can try something else. Come here.’’ Swimming now, he gathered her close and fitted her body against his as the cool, white-green water edged up past her ears and touched her cheeks. ‘‘Hang on.’’
Leah grabbed onto him as her head bumped the ceiling. ‘‘Hurry!’’
His arms tightened around her and she felt that click of connection, the twist in her belly that said, There you are. He held her close, said a few words in that strange language. . . .
And nothing happened.
Come on. Heart hammering, Strike tried again, bearing down and thinking of the garden center. For fuck’s sake, teleport!
He was wearing a new mark on his forearm, the talent glyph of a teleporter. But no matter how hard he concentrated on the garden center, giving himself a destination this time, the yellow travel thread refused to appear in his mind.
Focus, he thought as the water closed over them. Clear your head.
Still nothing.
The blonde bowed against him, convulsing. Gods, he prayed, help me get us out of here. Please.
But there was no answer as her heartbeat slowed and his own lungful of air grew stale.
Pulse racing, he tried again, this time picturing the studio apartment the Nightkeepers—or rather Jox— maintained near Chichén Itzá as a bolt-hole. Maybe the garden center was too far away. Maybe he could manage something local.
Or not.
Darkness closed in. Despair. How was it possible that he’d survived the massacre only to die like this, in the moment it seemed like the world might actually need him after all?
Gods, he thought, though he’d never been a big one for praying, help me out here.
And, incredibly, there was an answer. Golden light flared, the power of the sky and sun, the color of the gods. Strike’s heart stuttered in his chest as he heard a rattle of scales, a whisper of feathers. And what could only be the voice of a god, pure and clarion.
Accept my power, child of man, the entity said, and it wasn’t talking to him. It was talking to the woman he held cradled against his chest. The one he’d dreamed of.
The makol had called her the gods’ keeper. Yet the writs said that only a female Nightkeeper could become such a thing, and she wore no Nightkeeper’s mark.
Accept the magic and the light, the voice urged again, and there was a tinge of desperation in the words.
The Godkeepers were a myth, Strike thought, a dream. Prophesied to arise at the end of the age, destined to fight the Banol Kax for possession of the earth during the Great Conjunction with their warrior mates at their sides, they were part of the stories he’d been tempted to stop believing as he’d grown to adulthood and the magic had started to seem like a childhood fantasy. But he now had proof-positive the magic was real. What if the Godkeepers were, too? What if the dreams had been telling him that this woman—this human woman—was somehow destined to become his mate, his Godkeeper?
Come on, Blondie, he urged inwardly. Come on. Not because he was in any position to take a mate, but because the gods came first, and if the cosmic shit was really about to hit the fan, the Nightkeepers—or what was left of them—were going to need all the help they could get.
She writhed in his arms, fighting the invading presence even as her heart faltered. Slowed. Stopped.
Come on! Strike shouted inwardly as his oxygen ran out and the universe coalesced to a pinprick of darkness. Terror howled through him, fear for himself, for the woman.
The god’s golden voice came again, aimed at him this time, the mental touch growing fainter by the second as the solstice passed. Save her, Nightkeeper.
‘‘I don’t know how,’’ Strike said aloud, the words emerging as precious bubbles carrying the very last of his air. But then he realized he did. For a god to pass through the portal and link with a Nightkeeper female, she had to be near death. That was the only way to touch the other side of the barrier, except for . . .
Sex.
He acted fast, cursing himself for having not thought of it sooner, for being hindered by modern ethics in a situation ruled by ancient law. He palmed the ajawmakol ’s knife from his belt, drew the blade in a quick slash across his tongue, and then opened her mouth to draw a matching scratch on hers.
Then, as he had done in his dreams, he held her close and kissed her.
A loud crack split the room, and the water rushed out, dumping them both on the floor, but he kept kissing her, willing her to respond. To live. To become what she seemed destined to be.
But she didn’t move, didn’t breathe.
She was dying.
In the space between the purple-black funnel that’d sucked her down and a vortex of golden light that called her onward, Leah found a world of gray-green mist that smelled of her brother’s cologne. The familiar scent beckoned her inside and cocooned her in warmth. ‘‘Matty?’’ she called, suddenly certain he was nearby, though that didn’t make any sense unless she was dead.
So what if she was? she thought on a sad, soft burst of acceptance. Would it really be so bad to turn her back on that life and—
Blondie.
She frowned at the word whispered on the mist. ‘‘Don’t call me that.’’ It had been one of her brother’s favorite torments, one he’d never outgrown. That and the inevitable blonde jokes. ‘‘Where are you?’’
Come on, baby. Don’t let me down.
The whisper didn’t sound like her brother now. It sounded more like . . . She thought for a moment, but couldn’t place a name, didn’t quite have the face, remembered only a pair of piercing cobalt eyes above a warrior’s cheekbones. The image came with a wash of heat and the phantom press of lips.
That’s it, Blondie. Breathe.
She felt the lips again, followed by the touch of a tongue, and other sensations began to intrude. The good, solid weight of a man’s body pressed against hers, kindling heat where there’d been nothing. She sucked in a breath when the sensation spiraled higher, hotter, catching her unawares and vulnerable.
‘‘I’ve got you. You’re okay.’’ She could hear him for real now, and she could feel a cool, wet stone surface pressing against her hips and spine. She opened her eyes and found herself still in the circular chamber with the carved walls and screaming skulls. The torches were lit again, not burning purple now, but rather a warm amber that softened the sharp planes of the warrior’s face. He was lying full-length atop her, pressing against her through their sodden clothing. He stared at her as though he knew her already, and said something in that same strange language Zipacna had used.
It was probably Mayan, given the circumstances, which should’ve freaked her shit right out. But somehow the language and the strange goings-on didn’t seem nearly as important as the weight of his body and the hard press of his erection at the juncture of her thighs. Wild heat flared, running through her veins like power. Like fury. Like sex.
Sex. The need for it thrilled within her. She was incomplete, unfinished. Suddenly, joining with this man, this stranger, was the most important thing in the world.
What are you doing? a small voice asked. This isn’t you. This is crazy!
Perhaps, but she didn’t care about crazy. A beehive buzz hummed in her bones, gaining in pitch
as though something was coming, something was waiting for them at the end of ecstasy. She wanted the craziness, craved the madness.
And though it should have seemed entirely wrong, it was perfectly right when she reached up and touched her lips to his.
She was connected to the gods, yet not. Strike could sense the sky in her, could taste the golden power in her kiss and on her breath, and he could feel it when she slid her hands up his chest, into his hair, and locked on. She was human, yet she was somehow magic as well. The ritual her attacker had used to transform himself from a human into an emissary of the Banol Kax had started the process. Now it was up to him to finish it.
They kissed fiercely, passionately. Power spiked amber and crimson, blurring the line between dream and reality. Part of him knew she was driven by something she didn’t have the tools to understand, and that brought a pinch of guilt.
Then the torches flared higher, burning around him, within him, calling to him, telling him it was now or never, and never wasn’t an option if he wanted to honor the sacrifice of those who had gone before him. Knowing it’d been too late the moment he’d dreamed of her, he whispered, ‘‘Gods.’’
And returned her kiss.
She sensed the change in him, felt power in the moment his hands fisted in her shirt and he kissed her hard and hot and fast, and in the buzz of flame and excitement that followed. Connection arced, binding them together at a level deeper than she’d expected, deeper than she’d wanted. That small, panicked voice inside demanded that she slow down, think about what she was doing, think!
Instead, she leaned into him, opened herself up to him, and flowed into the moment as one kiss became many, deep and searching and almost painfully raw. He swept aside her ruined shirt and bra and peeled her out of her damp pants, leaving her clad in only her panties.
His nostrils flared on a sharply indrawn breath. He eased back, and she thought his hands trembled slightly when they went to the hem of his black T-shirt.
‘‘Wait,’’ she said. ‘‘Let me.’’ But instead of undressing him, she slipped off her panties, leaving her naked while he remained fully clothed.
Excitement spike, spearing outward from her center until she felt as though she were lit from within, pulsing gold and crimson with femininity.
‘‘Blondie,’’ he said, voice rasping on the word. ‘‘Gods.’’ Then he broke, moving fast as he swept her up in his arms and carried her to the stone altar.
In some dim recess of her mind, she thought the candles flared and the smoke went from gold to red, but those details were lost in a tidal rush of sensation and need. Hurry, a voice chanted inside her as he fastened his lips on her throat and cupped a hand around her breast, bringing a lightning bolt of heat from her core.
She tugged at his shirt, rushing now, needing to touch him as he was touching her. He rolled her nipple between his finger and thumb, wringing a cry from her, one that echoed strangely inside her skull, as though two voices had shouted, maybe more. She got his shirt off and gloried at the play of his hard muscles beneath the taut masculine skin. Touching her lips to the hollow beside his collarbone, then lower, she went to work on his cutoffs, where the material strained tight across a massive erection. He groaned when her fingertips brushed against his hard flesh, and he thrust against her hand, silently urging her onward.
She freed the buttons and zipper, and then his hands were there, helping strip off his shorts and sandals, until he was as naked as she and they were pressed together, hard against soft, need against need.
The air thickened around them, humming with waiting, with wanting. Then she was finished with waiting. She arched up and kissed him, claiming his mouth with hers and leaving no doubt as to her demand. She tasted his urgency and felt it in the bone-breakingly taut lines of his body, but his hands were gentle when he touched her, when he brushed the soft skin inside her knees, then higher, drawing his fingertips across the acutely sensitized skin of her inner thighs.
She whimpered when he feathered an intimate brush across her center, then nearly screamed when he repeated the touch more firmly, stroking a long, clean line that ended with his thumb atop the nub of her pleasure. ‘‘Come for me,’’ he whispered against her mouth. ‘‘Open up to me.’’
‘‘Let me touch you.’’ She reached for his straining member, but he angled his body away even as he kissed her.
He murmured something against her mouth, something that sounded like, ‘‘We don’t have time.’’ But that didn’t make any sense, she thought. Time for what? Then she couldn’t think at all, because he kissed her long and deep, and the heat rose up to sweep her away.
The hum in Leah’s brain intensified, and her body shook as a strange fracture split her in two. One fragment of her was aware of the press of the stone altar against her buttocks and upper thighs, conscious of the way her legs wrapped around him, pulling him into her, binding them together. A thought tried to break through— a warning—but the spinning in her head and the growing heat beat it back as her body bowed into his touch, welcoming him, demanding him.
‘‘Come for me,’’ he said again, as though her pleasure were the most important thing in his universe. He rotated his thumb and kept that pressure on her nub as he traced two fingers around her opening and then dipped inside in a smooth, liquid glide.
Suddenly, all the restless, shifting energy Leah had been carrying since the dreams first began collected itself at the point of their joining, fisting around his fingers and vibrating deep inside her at a raw, primal level. ‘‘Please!’’ she cried, not sure what she was asking for.
But he seemed to understand, because he withdrew his fingers and moved between her legs, so the blunt tip of his hard shaft rested at her opening. At the first nudge, she opened her eyes and found his face just above hers, his eyes staring into hers. Their cobalt blue depths were dark and intense, and she felt a momentary flicker of fear. But then he was sliding home in one long thrust that had her insides knotting and her eyes closing on a rush of pleasure. She gasped and gripped his shoulders, anchoring herself amidst a storm of sensation. Inhaling deeply, she filled her lungs with the scent of their lovemaking, part incense, part musk. Then she parted her legs wider, accommodating his mass, inviting him deeper, and deeper still.
He thrust once and again, dropping his forehead to hers, his breathing synchronized with hers, his very heartbeat seeming to come in time with hers. He thrust a third time as her body coiled tight around his hard flesh and the humming sound transformed to something sweeter, almost a melody.
Leah cried out as the first exhilarating rush of orgasm gripped her, stopping the breath in her lungs. He thrust deeply in a hard, ever-increasing tempo that matched the hammering in her ears, in her chest. Her consciousness expanded outward until she could feel the press of his mind on hers as surely as she could feel the surge of their bodies. Then everything contracted inward, an exquisite moment spent poised on the brink of explosion.
In that moment, in that breathless pause, she felt something shift, tearing deep within her, ripping away from her even as she convulsed in a hard fist of heat that spun out endlessly. His deep, masculine voice echoed her cries, and he thrust hard within her and cut loose, a groan wringing from deep within his chest—her name, perhaps, or a curse. A prayer.
The pressure in her brain disappeared, leaving only pleasure in its wake. Joy and exultation spun within her, spiraling outward in a rush that made her want to run and dance and leap for joy. But when she opened her eyes and smiled up at him, she saw none of that same joy in his face.
Instead, she saw despair.
CHAPTER THREE
Reality returned with a serious buzz kill. Goose bumps broke out everywhere Leah had skin—not just because he had that oh, shit, big mistake look on his face, but because that expression doused enough of the afterglow to ass-smack her with what she’d done.
Heart jolting, she scrambled out from underneath the guy—a total stranger, for crap’s sake—and backed away in
a defensive crouch. ‘‘What. The. Fuck. Just. Happened? ’’
‘‘Nothing,’’ he rasped. ‘‘Everything. I don’t know. Shit.’’ He sat up and dragged both hands through his dark hair, which had come free from its ponytail.
With his hair hanging to his shoulders and the close-clipped beard along his jawline, his body stunningly naked and ripped with a fighter’s muscles, and firelight flickering on the ancient carvings behind him, the whole scenario could’ve come from another age, when all this would’ve made way more sense.
Torchlight played over the long, lean lines of him as he stood and snagged his clothes. Naked, he was a statue. A fantasy. Even though they’d just had at each other and she didn’t even know his name, greedy need knotted Leah’s belly.
Then he pulled on his cutoffs and T-shirt and toed on his sandals, and he became a man again. One she was going to have to deal with, because, um, hello, they were in Mexico. And something very strange had just happened. Several somethings, in fact, starting with a botched human sacrifice and ending with an orgasm.
Brain churning, she turned away from him and got dressed while she tried to put her thoughts in order. Her pants were soaked but otherwise okay, while her shirt and bra were write-offs. Knotting the material as best she could at her midriff, she turned to face him and stuck out a hand. ‘‘Detective Leah Ann Daniels, Miami-Dade Narcotics.’’
Might as well start with the introductions. Then it’d be time for What the Christ is going on?
His wide, mobile lips twisted into something that wasn’t quite a smile. ‘‘Striking-Jaguar, last male of the Nightkeepers’ royal house. You can call me Strike.’’
And suddenly it made way too much sense. Anger and self-disgust fisted in her gut. ‘‘Oh, shit. You’re one of them.’’ She looked around. ‘‘Bastard. Where are the cameras?’’
He looked surprised. ‘‘Cameras?’’
She didn’t bother answering, instead making a wide circuit of the room, looking at the braziers, the carved skulls, trying to be a cop when the woman in her wanted to scream and start throwing things. ‘‘Of course. No sense in him staging something like this and not filming it for blackmail to get me off his back. Or, hell, he could just YouTube it and crash my career. I can see the title now: ‘MDPD detective gets down and dirty during Survivor 2012 ritual.’ What are you, one of his disciples? Nah,’’ she answered her own question. ‘‘None of them look as good as you. So, what . . . out-of-work actor?’’ Her voice climbed an octave. ‘‘Oh, bloody hell. Do not tell me I just had unprotected sex with a porn star.’’
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