Nora Roberts's Circle Trilogy

by Nora Roberts

  “Why is it up to me to fix things?”

  “You might as well because you’ll just be sulking and brooding instead of sleeping until you do. And before you get to the sulking and brooding, I’ll be badgering you about it until your head’s aching.”

  “All right, all right. You’re a true pain in the arse, Moira.”

  “I know.” She touched his cheek. “It’s because I love you. Go on now.”

  “I’m going, aren’t I?”

  He used his irritation with Moira to carry him out of the room and down to Blair’s. He knocked, but didn’t wait for an invitation. He opened the door, saw her sitting at the desk at the little computer thing.

  He shut the door firm behind him.

  “I’ll have a word with you.”

  Chapter 10

  She knew that tone—when I want to have a word with you really meant I want to have a fight with you. And that was fine, that was great. She was in the perfect mood for a quick, nasty brawl.

  But that didn’t mean she’d make it easy for him.

  She kept her seat. “Obviously, you’ve missed the fact I’m busy.”

  “Obviously, you’ve missed the fact I don’t give a bleeding damn.”

  “My room,” she said coolly, “my choice.”

  “Toss me out then, why don’t you?”

  She swiveled toward him, stretched out her legs casually in what she knew was an insulting gesture. “Think I couldn’t?”

  “I think you’d have considerable trouble with it right at the moment.”

  “From the look of you, you came looking for trouble. Fine.” She crossed her feet at the ankles—just a little more insulting body language, she thought. Idly, she picked up a bottle of water to gesture with. “Have your word, then get out.”

  “From the sound of you, cara, you’ve been expecting trouble.”

  “I know you’ve got a problem with me. You made that clear enough. So spit it out, Larkin. We haven’t got time, and I haven’t got the patience for petty grievances.”

  “Is it petty to talk so callously of destroying people’s homes, their life’s work, everything they’ve built and sweated for?”

  “It’s a legitimate, and proven, strategy in wartime.”

  “I’d expect to hear that from Cian. He is what he is, and can’t help it. But not from you, Blair. And it wasn’t just the strategy, but the way it was spoken, and how you talked of those who would defend those homes—rebel as you put it—as a nuisance.”

  “They would be, creating a liability we couldn’t afford.”

  “But otherwise, you could afford to burn them out.”

  She knew, too well, the look and sound of angry revulsion on a man. All she could do was harden herself against it. “Better to lose brick and wood than flesh and blood.”

  “A home’s more than brick and wood.”

  “I wouldn’t know, I never had one. But that’s not the point. In any case, it’s moot. It’s not being done. So if that’s it—”

  “What do you mean you never had a home?”

  “We’ll say I never developed an emotional attachment to the roof over my head. But if I had, I’d rather see it go than me, or anyone I cared about.” The muscles in the back of her neck had tightened like wire, shooting a headache straight up into her skull. “And this is a ridiculous discussion because we’re not burning down anything.”

  “No, because we’re not the monsters here.”

  She lost her color at that. He could see it just sink out of her face. “Meaning you’re not, Hoyt’s not, but Cian and I are another matter. Fine. It’s not the first time I’ve been compared to a vampire.”

  “That’s not what I’m doing.”

  “You expect it from him, but not from me,” she repeated. “Well, expect it. No, strike that, don’t expect anything. Now, get out.”

  “I’m not finished.”

  “I am.” She rose, started for the door. When he stepped in front of her, took her arm, she yanked free. “Move, or I make you move.”

  “Is that your solution? Threaten, push, shove?”

  “Not always.”

  She hit him. Her fist came up, connected, before the thought of doing it clicked in her brain. It knocked him down, and left her stunned, shocked and shamed. Losing control with another person, physically harming another person, was simply not allowed.

  “I’m not going to apologize because you asked for it. But that was crossing the line. The fact that I did means I’m already over the line, and this conversation has got to be over. Here, get up.”

  She offered a hand.

  She didn’t see it coming, another mistake, the yank on her hand, the sweep of his leg knocking her feet out from under her. When she hit the floor, he rolled on top of her before she countered.

  She had an instant to think he’d been training very well.

  “Is that how you win arguments?” he demanded. “A fist to the face?”

  “I was done arguing. That was punctuation. You’re going to want to get off me, Larkin, and fast. I’ve got a slippery hold right now.”

  “Bugger that.”

  “Bugger you.” She flipped him off, then sprang to a crouch to block anything he might throw at her. “I won’t be played like this. It’s all so easy when it’s walks in the sunshine, and talking about picnics, but when things get hard, when I have to be hard, then you’re revolted. I’m a fucking monster.”

  “I never called you that, and I’m not revolted. I’m sodding mad is what I am.” He dived at her, and they hit the floor again, rolled. Their bodies rammed into a table, tipping it over so the blown glass bowl on it shattered.

  “If you’d stop trying to bruise and bloody me for five bloody seconds we could finish this.”

  “If I wanted you bloody, you’d be pumping from an artery. I don’t need you passing judgment on me, or giving me the big chill because I’ve shocked your sensibilities. I don’t need this bullshit from you or—”

  “What you need is to shut the hell up.”

  He crushed his mouth to hers in an angry, frustrated kiss even as her elbow found its way into his gut. He had to lift his head to wheeze back in the air she stole.

  “Don’t tell me to shut up.” She grabbed his hair with both hands, yanked his mouth back down to hers.

  Just as angry, just as frustrated. Just as needy. The hell with it, she thought. The hell with right and wrong, with sense, with safety. Screw control.

  There were times you just took, and let yourself be taken.

  Didn’t mean anything, she told herself as she dragged at his shirt. It was only flesh, it was only heat. She wanted to weep and rage as much as she wanted to consume.

  She shoved him over, straddled him as she pulled her shirt over her head. But he reared up, clamping his arms around her as his mouth found her breast. So she held on, letting her head fall back, letting him plunder.

  Now he was riding the dragon, he thought, flying on the power of it. She was like trying to hold flame, so the sheer burn of her made him delirious. He used teeth and tongue, gorging himself as her fingers dug into his shoulders, his back, his sides. Then she was under him again, her hips grinding up while their mouths clashed.

  He pulled the loose pants she wore down her hips, and there was nothing beneath them but woman, hot and wet. Hotter and wetter when his hand found her. Her harsh, throaty moan seared across his lips.

  When the orgasm ripped through her, she could only think, God, thank God. But the greed whipped back, spun through like a cyclone that had her biting, scratching, tearing. She would give no quarter here, and ask none, but only clamped strong legs around him. Held on to that exquisite shock when he plunged into her.

  And drove her like a mad thing, thrust upon urgent thrust, until they were both burned out.

  What had she done? She’d just had crazed, kick-your-ass sex without a single thought of self-preservation, of consequences, of…anything. No thought, none at all, just brutal, primal need.

&nbs
p; He was still inside her, and if felt as though their bodies had melted together in the heat. How would she separate herself again? How could she come out of this whole?

  She wasn’t supposed to feel like this. She wasn’t supposed to want something—someone—so much she forgot herself. Let herself be taken even as she took, and in blind, feral passion.

  She hadn’t stopped it. She hadn’t been able to stop it. And now she would pay.

  He murmured something; she couldn’t make it out. Then he nuzzled—a kind of nose in the neck like a puppy—before he rolled aside.

  The simple sweetness of the gesture after the ferocity all but broke her into pieces.

  “Crushing you.” He grabbed a couple of ragged breaths. “Well, that was fairly amazing, and not at all the way I’d had it all planned out. Are you all right then?”

  Careful, she warned herself. Careful and cool. “No problem.”

  She sat up, reached for her pants.

  “Hang on a minute.” He patted her arm. “My head’s still spinning here. And I barely took the time to look at you seeing as we were both in a rush.”

  “Got the job done.” She hitched on her pants. “That’s what counts.”

  He pushed himself up, reached her shirt before she did. “Look here at me, would you?”

  “I’m not big on postgame analysis, and I’ve got things to do.”

  “I don’t remember a game. A battle, perhaps. I thought we’d both come out on the winning side of it.”

  “Yeah, so like I said, no problem.” She would start to tremble in a minute, any minute. “I need my shirt.”

  He studied her face. “Where did you go? You have so many little hiding places.”

  “I don’t hide.” She ripped the shirt out of his hand.

  “Aye, you do. Someone gets too close, you go sliding off into one of your shadows.”

  “Okay, why do you want to piss me off?” She dragged on her shirt. “We had sex—really good sex. It’s been coming on for a while, and now it’s done. We can put the focus back where it belongs.”

  “I don’t think things are so very different here than in Geall that what we just had between us would be just sex.”

  “Look, cowboy, if you want romance—”

  He got to his feet, slowly. It was the look in his eyes that warned her his temper was back. That was fine, in fact, that was good. They’d swipe at each other, and he’d go.

  “There wasn’t anything romantic about it. I thought there would be the first time we came together, but things took a different turn, and no complaints. Now you’re trying to shove me away, knock me back, the way you did before with your fist. Let me say that the fist was more honest than this.”

  “You got what you were after.”

  “You know better. You know it wasn’t only this.”

  “What’s the point in anything else? What’s the goddamn point? It’s got nowhere to go.”

  “Have you been looking into Glenna’s crystal? You see tomorrow now, and the day after?”

  “I know things like this are doomed before they start. Cian’s not the only one who is what he is, Larkin.”

  “Ah, now we come to it.”

  “Just—” She lifted her hands, shoved at the air, turned away. “Let it go. If the occasional grope in the dark isn’t enough for you, look somewhere else.”

  So, he’d hurt her along the way, he realized. He was hardly the first, and couldn’t quite decide if he was sorry for his part of it as yet. “I don’t know what’s enough for me when it comes to you.” He scooped up his pants, yanked them on. “But I know I care for you. I know you matter.”

  “Oh please.” She grabbed the water from her desk, gulped some down. “You don’t even like me.”

  “Where does that fly from? Why would you say something so foolish and so false?”

  “You seem to have forgotten what started this whole thing, what you came in here for in the first place.”

  “I haven’t, but I don’t see what that has to do with how I feel about you.”

  “Well, for God’s sake, Larkin, how could you feel anything for someone when you’re standing on the other side of a basic line?”

  He considered his words now. He was, he knew, being compared to the Jeremy she’d spoken of before. Someone who’d been unable—or unwilling—to love and accept who she was.”

  “Blair, you’re a hardheaded woman, and I’ve my own streak of stubbornness. My own stands and thoughts and—what did you call it?—sensibilities. And so what?”

  “So. You, me.” She pointed to him, tapped her own chest, then swiped a finger between them. “Line.”

  “Oh, bollocks. You think I can’t disagree with you, and passionately, come to that, and care for you? Respect you, admire you, even knowing inside my heart you’re wrong about the thing we’re arguing over? The same, I wager as inside yours you believe I’m wrong. I’m not,” he said with the barest hint of a smile, “but that’s another matter. If everyone has to believe the same, if there’s never any passionate differences, how do people come together in your world?”

  “They don’t,” she said after a moment. “Not with me.”

  “Then you’re just stupid, aren’t you? And narrow in your thinking,” he added when she gaped at him. “Hard in the head as well, as I believe I’ve already mentioned.”

  She took another careful sip of water. “I’m not stupid.”

  “Just the rest of it then.” He nodded as he took a step toward her. “Blair, it’s not always where you end up, is it, that’s the most important thing? It’s the journey itself, and what you find, what you do along the way. Now I’ve found you, and that’s an important thing.”

  “Where we’re going matters.”

  “It does. But so does where we are. I have feelings for you, feelings I’ve never had for anyone. They don’t always fit comfortably inside me, but I have a way of shifting things around until I find the fit.”

  “You maybe. I’m not good at this.”

  “As I am, you’ll just have to follow my lead.”

  “How did you manage to turn this around on me?”

  He only smiled, then kissed her cheek, her brow, her other cheek. “I just managed to get you faced toward me. That’s the right direction.”

  She had to keep her mind focused on the job, the work. If she didn’t, Blair found it tended to wander in that direction Larkin had spoken of. Then she’d catch herself daydreaming, smiling for no reason, or remembering what it was like to wake up beside a man who looked at her in a way that made her feel so much like a woman.

  There was too much to do to take time indulging in fantasies.

  “You have to be practical, Glenna. We all do. Now.” Blair tapped Glenna’s storage chest with her foot. “What’s essential in here?”

  “All of it.”

  “Glenna.”

  “Blair.” Glenna folded her arms. “Are we or are we not going into battle against über evil?”

  “Yes, we are. Which means we go in lean, stripped down, mobile.”

  “No, which means we go in loaded. These are my weapons.” Glenna swept out a hand, a bit, Blair thought, like one of those game show models showing off fabulous prizes. “Are you leaving your weapons behind?”

  “No, but I can also carry mine on my back, which you can’t do with this two-ton chest.”

  “It doesn’t weigh two tons. Seventy-five pounds, tops.” Glenna’s lips trembled at Blair’s long, cool stare. “Okay, maybe eighty.”

  “The books alone—”

  “May make all the difference. Who’s to say? I’ll worry about the transport.”

  “This better be a damn big stone circle,” Blair muttered. “You know you’re taking more than the rest of us combined.”

  “What can I say? I’m a diva.”

  Blair rolled her eyes, stalked to the tower window to stare out into the rain.

  There was little time here left, she thought. Nearly moving day. And while she could sense—nearly
see—a few of Lilith’s forces in the trees, there’d be no movement toward the house. No attack.

  She’d expected something. After what Larkin had pulled off, the sheer balls of it, she’d expected a reprisal. It seemed impossible Lilith would take such an insult, such a loss, without slapping back.

  “Maybe she’s too busy gearing up for Geall, too.”

  “What?”

  “Lilith.” Blair turned back to Glenna. “Nothing out of her for days now. And Larkin’s infiltration had to sting. Jesus, when you think about it, one man—unarmed—not only getting in, but getting prisoners out. It’s a kick in the face.”

  Glenna’s eyes glinted. “I wish that was literal as well as figurative.”

  “Get in line. But anyway, maybe she’s too busy preparing to move her front to bother harassing us right now.”

  “Very likely.”

  “I’m going to head down to the war room. We need to work out the fine details of the traps we want to set.”

  “Will it make a difference?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it, all of it. What we’ve done, what they’ve done.” Glenna rubbed a hand over the top of her chest. “But the time and the place are set. Nothing we do will change that time, that place.”

  “No, Morrigan made that clear in our last little chat. But what we do, how we handle the time between now and then will set the tone for that time and place. She was saying that, too. Hey, pal, it’s okay to be nervous.”

  “Good.” With brisk efficiency, Glenna set vials she’d replenished back in her healing case. “I called my parents today. I told them I’d probably be out of touch for a few weeks. Told them what an incredible time I’m having. I couldn’t tell them about any of this, of course. I haven’t even told them about Hoyt yet because it’s too hard to explain.”

  She closed the case and turned. “It’s not that I’m not afraid to die. I am, of course—maybe more now than I was when this began. I have more to lose now.”

  “Hoyt, and happy ever.”

  “Exactly. But I’m prepared to die if that’s what it takes. Maybe more now than when this began, for those exact reasons.”