“Drew, Drew, honey, what’s wrong?” Michael’s arms were around her, holding her. She couldn’t talk. She could only stare, imprisoned in a world of glimpsed scenes. They started to slow. She saw an angelic-looking young man in a long robe, like a monk. He looked serene.
“Breathe,” Michael’s voice ordered. “You’re okay. Just breathe.”
She saw Michael on a beach, laughing with a woman whose back was turned. She was silhouetted against the sun. He looked incredibly happy.
The vision faded.
Drew blinked. All she saw was Michael in the darkness of her bedroom. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she tried to push back the panic.
“What’s wrong?” he asked gently, his arm around her shoulders. He was sitting on the bed, one leg on the floor, the other drawn up. He had gathered her into his lap. She was naked. So was he. Her breasts brushed his chest. Her hip was pressed into his groin. Slowly, she realized what she felt was evidence that he wanted her too, at least physically. She laid her head on his smooth, brown chest, breathed in, sighed out. She felt his heart thump against her cheek. He smelled like soap, and underneath that, man. She remembered his scent from the last night in the Keys together. She’d know his scent anywhere until her dying day. This was the second time he’d comforted her after she’d had a vision. Or visions in this case. A lot of visions.
“I couldn’t control them,” she whispered. “They came faster and faster, like an attack.”
“Gone?” His voice was gruff.
“For now.”
He laid his head against her wet hair. “Good.”
“I may turn out to be a crazy person.”
She felt his chuckle in his chest. “You are the least crazy person I know.”
She sat back, putting unwanted inches between their skins. “What if I can’t control them?” She searched his face, as though he held the clue to sanity.
“You did control them just now. You’ll learn how. It’s a new thing for you.” He was smoothing a damp strand back from her face. His hair was wet too, she noticed. “You just have to give it a chance.”
Well, here was the admission. “I … I think it’s getting stronger. The magic, I mean.”
He swallowed, but he didn’t take his eyes off hers. “Mine is definitely getting stronger.”
What did that mean? Drew, always in charge of her life, didn’t have the courage to ask.
But she did muster the courage to hope. There it was, the light in his eyes Tris had had earlier. Michael might not ever love her. She had a pretty bad track record at wishful thinking. Maybe her hope was just wishful thinking. But he wanted her. Right now, that was enough.
She reached up, kissed him gently, and was rewarded with a throbbing at her hip.
He closed his eyes. “I told Rhiannon about your power,” he said. “But only to make you valuable to her. She was going to kill you. I couldn’t let that happen.”
Really? Suddenly, it was she who felt guilty. “I spoiled your chance to get Alice back.”
“No.” His voice was heavy. “It wasn’t meant to happen.”
So things hadn’t changed. But then he lifted up her chin and kissed her, deep and penetrating. She didn’t care if he still loved Alice. This night might be all she had of him and she was going to take it. She kissed him back, pressing her breasts against his chest. Her need was shrieking at her. He held her as though his life depended on it. Maybe he needed an hour in which he could forget that he’d never have Alice. So she pushed him back on the bed. His expression was intense and unreadable, his erection impressive. It throbbed along his belly. She straddled his hips, leaking her juices onto his groin.
“You sure you want this?” he asked, his voice a hoarse, grating sound.
“Oh, yeah. I want this.” She lifted herself up on her knees and grabbed his cock, positioning it, then lowered herself down, slowly and deliberately, until she was filled with him. Nothing had ever felt so good. He groaned and took her hips with his big hands. She ground herself down onto him, getting every last bit of penetration.
Sucking in breath, she looked down at him, feeling the glow of desire in her eyes reflected in his. She put both palms on his chest and began to move. He lifted her, matching her rhythm, and arched under her to increase contact.
Words were impossible. What would they say? He was grunting and she was gasping with their passion. This wasn’t going to take long.
He tried to stretch it out for her, slowing the pace.
“Don’t you dare, Michelangelo Redmond,” she panted. She lifted, lowered, twisted. And then her orgasm overwhelmed her. Dimly she realized she’d arched her back and was giving little shrieks as the sensation ebbed and flowed over her. Michael stilled for a moment as his body arched with his own orgasm. She felt him spurt into her core. That sent her ebbing and flowing yet again. He moved inside her. Could it go on forever? She didn’t want it to stop. Because when it stopped, this moment would be over.
******
Michael lay in Drew’s bed, cradling her in his arms. She might be asleep. It didn’t matter. He just wanted to keep this moment from ending. There were no questions, no accusations, no rejections, just Drew and him, her soft, white skin on his. She was safe.
So funny. All his confusion had drained away. He was fortunate enough, for some reason, to have been allowed to love two women in his life. He loved Drew. How had he ever doubted that? Loved her enough to try to explain himself, and wipe away what she must feel about him. He hadn’t bothered to explain himself since Alice died.
Alice. She hadn’t come to him in a vision since that night when he realized she didn’t want to come back to life, even if she could. She’d closed that chapter of her existence.
It occurred to him that she’d never come to him because she wanted to see him, but to urge him to move on too. They’d had wonderful, magical times together (literally, as he now knew). It was no less a tragedy that her life had been cut short. Not by him, but by that horrible disease. He’d granted her peace and since her death she’d been trying to do the same for him.
He’d never forget her. How could he? She was part of him. But life went on after someone you loved died. It had almost happened twice. He softly kissed Drew’s hair, almost dry now, an ebony fan across his shoulder and the pillow. He would keep her safe if it killed him.
It was Alice who’d saved Drew’s life last night though, not him. One last whisper, telling him where Drew was, so he could get her out of that burning penthouse hell. One word to let him know that in the blown out kitchen lay safety. Alice had made one last attempt to help him move on with his life.
Thank you, he thought. But he didn’t expect an answer this time.
*****
Drew lay in Michael’s arms, her thoughts making lazy circles. She wanted this minute to last forever. But time was one thing she couldn’t control. One of many, as it turned out. She wanted Michael to love her. Maybe he would someday. The fact that his power was getting stronger might mean he was meant for her as much as she was meant for him. But it wasn’t something she could “fix” about him. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t do whatever she could to be with him. If that brought her pain, so be it. She chose pain with Michael over pain without Michael. So she’d face it head on.
“A penny for your thoughts,” she whispered.
“I was thinking about Alice,” he said.
Drew sucked in a breath, let it out. Peace evaporated. What else had she expected?
“She always said it would get easier. It has.”
Face it head on. “She used to come to you in dreams, didn’t she?”
“Yeah.” He gave her a little grin. “My visions were crazier than yours.”
“Hey, they helped you give up drinking.”
“You did that as much as Alice.” He moved his arm and settled her more firmly against his body. “She won’t come again.”
His voice had a whisper of tristesse in it. How did he know she wouldn’t?
He answered the questions she couldn’t ask. “She only came because I couldn’t move on. And now I have.” He looked down at her tenderly. Her own eyes filled. Then she saw an anxious look sit in his expression and she began to worry again. “Do … do you think you can forgive me for leaving you and losing the sword to Morgan?” he asked.
“Rhiannon promised you something you wanted more than anything.”
“Did I though?” He frowned. “I knew somewhere inside it wasn’t right. Maybe even then I’d started to get over Alice’s death. I said I wanted her back just because I’d always wanted her back.” He looked down at Drew. “But you can’t do that. Go back, I mean.”
“If Morgan really can bring people back to life.…” Drew sighed. Was she a masochist?
“They’d be changed, somehow. Or you would have changed in the meantime. Life goes on. You can’t control that.” He cleared his throat. “So … uh … can you?”
“Can I what?”
“Forgive me.” Now he looked really anxious. That was so poignant that Drew’s eyes just spilled over of their own accord.
“Already have,” she managed around a full throat.
“Because I love you. Have for a while. Don’t know exactly when it happened. I mean I know I’m no prize. But something your father said…that I raised your magic… what does that mean?”
She cleared her throat. The admission that he loved her startled her. All she could do was answer his question with the information that made her most vulnerable to him. “The one who raises your magic is your destined lover. Like Alice raised yours. You love them all your life.”
He nodded, digesting that. She saw him swallow. “Rhiannon told me I was lucky enough to have it happen twice. So I guess that means… I mean, I wonder…”
“Don’t wonder,” she said. She found herself nodding, over and over again, convulsively. “I love you so damned much it hurts.”
“Let’s don’t let it hurt.” He crushed her in an embrace that should have crushed ribs, but she had never felt so right. After all her fighting for control over her life, when she let things happen, what she wanted most had just come to fruition. She couldn’t change the fact that he loved Alice. But he could love her too. Not that she couldn’t push for what she wanted. She did. She seemed to be in balance for the first time. You pushed, you guided, but you had to just go with the flow. Like Devin, riding a wave. Their powers, the flow of time, the swell of life, all felt like a wave.
After a long moment, he held her away from him. He got that wicked grin. “Let’s relieve your father’s mind, what do you say?”
Laughter bubbled out of her throat. “Some proposal. But I say yes.”
The room went wavery at the edges. A vision flashed into place. It was Michael again, on the beach, happy, with the silhouetted girl. This time the vision played a moment longer. The girl turned, laughing, and the girl was Drew.
She smiled. The beach faded. But it would be back as her vision came true. She knew it.
“You okay?” Michael asked, worried.
“Yeah.” She couldn’t help the smile. “I’m okay.”
“Me too,” he said, and held her close again. “For the first time in a long time.”
“Are you going to ask my father for my hand?”
“You think I need to?” Now that was a nervous man. “He was hell-bent on tying us up. Maybe I don’t need to actually ask him.”
She pursed her lips and raised her brows apologetically. “He’s pretty traditional.”
Michael took a big breath. “Oh well, sure. Let’s let them get some sleep and I’ll do the deed when everybody’s up and awake.”
Drew started to laugh. “We were pretty noisy. Want to bet they’re all down in the kitchen waiting right now?”
He looked appalled.
“Welcome to the family.” And she kissed him.
#####
About Susan Squires
Susan Squires is a New York Times bestselling author known for breaking the rules of romance writing. She has published five novels with Dorchester Publishing and nine with St. Martin’s Press, along with three novellas in anthologies. Whatever her time period or subject, some element of the paranormal always creeps in. She has won multiple contests for published novels and reviewer’s choice awards. Publisher’s Weekly named Body Electric one of the most influential mass market books of 2003 and One with the Shadows, the fifth in her vampire Companion Series, a Best Book of 2007. Time for Eternity, the first in her DaVinci time travel series, received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly.
Susan has a Masters in English literature from UCLA and once toiled as an executive for a Fortune 500 company. Now she lives at the beach in Southern California with her husband, Harry, a writer of supernatural thrillers, and three very active Belgian Sheepdogs, who like to help her write by putting their chins on the keyboarddddddddddddddddddddddd.
Visit Susan on Facebook, follow her on Twitter, or check out her website at http://www.susansquires.com.
Watch for the next Children of Merlin novel, NIGHT MAGIC, coming soon.
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