“For this world.”
“For me.” Leandras brushed his fingers against her cheek, then trailed his hand lightly down her neck, across her shoulder, and down her arm, barely making contact like he thought she’d break beneath his touch.
How he could think that now was beyond her.
“I realize I’ve been less than forthcoming about my intentions with everything else,” he muttered. “That stops here.”
“Good.”
If that was all he could possibly say, it wouldn’t be convincing enough.
He seemed to realize that himself and pulled her against him again, tilting his head as he studied every inch of her face like he could pull out her thoughts just by his own willpower alone.
“I don’t want the Guardian,” Leandras whispered. “I want Jessica Northwood.”
His eyes pulsed with a brighter light, and Jessica bit her lip.
There it was. The truth.
“And it would seem for the first time in my experience that what I want may or may not be entirely irrelevant if you don’t hold the same—”
Jessica shut him up by grabbing the back of his neck and kissing him so forcefully, she could already feel the bruising.
He inhaled sharply through his nose and for a moment didn’t move.
Which was weird.
She pulled away and stared at his lips. “I guess that was—”
“Exactly what I needed.” Leandras grabbed her face with both hands and kissed her back, his breath seeping out of him in a rush.
It was almost the same way he’d kissed her outside the forest, when he’d been desperate to convince her of his feelings and had picked the wrong fucking time to do so. The way he clutched at her now was desperate too, but not nearly as infuriating.
At least Jessica understood a hell of a lot more now about the fae man, what he’d been trying to do before she’d ever come into the picture, and how closely intertwined they were now that they had to finish all this together. Maybe that was why this didn’t feel anywhere near as wrong as that first kiss.
Or maybe it was all the darkwine and the dancing.
Or maybe Jessica just hadn’t gotten laid in almost two years.
For the first time since they’d crossed through the Gateway, she was actually glad the bank wasn’t here with them. It would have been one non-stop one-liner after the other, followed by constant I-told-you-so’s.
Despite Leandras’ fingers in her air and his lips moving against hers, the thought made Jessica pull away from him because she couldn’t believe she was about to laugh.
Apparently, she hadn’t hidden the urge very well at all.
“What?” His lips parted slowly, and stared at her. “I assumed—”
“Don’t. It’s not...”
What was she supposed to say? “It’s not you, it’s me”? That the bank’s voice she couldn’t get out of her head had followed her here to Xahar’áhsh and still tried to worm its way into a seriously private moment?
“Jessica,” Leandras whispered, his breath ragged as he clearly tried to restrain himself enough so he could talk instead of throwing caution to the wind like he always had. “If this isn’t what you want, I would appreciate being told so before I risk another one of your fists to my face.”
Well, shit. Now that he’d gotten her going, he wanted a confession out of her too, huh?
“No, I’m done talking.”
“Are you—”
“Leandras, I swear...” She pressed herself again him and looked up into his silver eyes, trying not to throw herself at him again because apparently, he needed to hear something more first. “The last thing I wanna do is talk right now.”
A smile lifted the corner of his mouth. “Agreed.”
He pulled her forcefully against him for another kiss, and his previously infuriating scent of ozone, fresh rain, and sunbaked stone overwhelmed her. For the first time, Jessica was done fighting it. She lost herself completely in his hands trailing up the back of her shirt and the warmth of him pressed against her. Her fingers slid up into his dark, silky hair, and she tightened her fist around it, making Leandras hiss against her lips.
She could barely breathe, and fuck did it feel good to touch someone again without worrying about how much she might hurt them—physically or otherwise.
They stumbled across the tent, their slow caution completely gone as they clawed as each other, pulling at hair and clothes. A damn table got in the way and momentarily stopped them, sending two heavy books and some other meaningless trinkets clattering onto the rug at their feet. Leandras lifted her in one arm and spun around before setting her none-too-gently on the table. Jessica sucked in a sharp breath and grinned before he kissed her again and jerked up the hem of her shirt.
She whipped it off over her head and tossed it aside, where it landed on a cushion with a thump, the illusion of the thin string-tied tunic completely gone now to reveal just a regular long-sleeved shirt from Earth that belonged here just as much as Jessica did. It broke the rest of the fae’s illusion on her, but what did it matter? No one else was coming in.
They sure as hell better not.
Leandras’ shirt was off just as quickly, then his fingers dug forcefully into her ribs as he wrapped one arm around her and pulled her closer, his other hand working at the top button of her jeans. His lips left hers to leave a desperate trail of kisses and flaring heat down the side of her neck. Jessica threw her head back and buried another fist in his hair.
If he kept driving her crazy like this on a goddamn table, she’d lose it.
Her neck. Shit.
“Wait.”
“Jessica.” Leandras brought his lips to her ear, nibbled her earlobe, and whispered, “Please don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind.”
“No, the—” His fingers slipped beneath the waistline of her jeans, and her body responded accordingly despite one tiny detail that would turn this into something completely different if they didn’t address it now. Jessica slapped a hand down on the table and blurted, “Leandras, the rune.”
The fae pulled slightly away and studied her neck. “Yes.”
“If that thing goes off and I...”
“You haven’t lost any time so far.” Leandras pressed his lips to her neck again, where just a few days ago he’d slapped that run to her flesh in a last-ditch attempt to keep them both from dying. “I suggest we don’t waste any more.”
His tongue flickered across her skin, and he peeled the edge of her jeans farther down over her hips.
Looked like the rune was done sucking away lost time in the blink of an eye. So now everything was fair game.
Jessica grabbed his face and kissed him harshly again before shoving him away from the table. The fae man’s eyes flashed silver, and he spread his arms in surprise. “What are you doing?”
“Not wasting time on a fucking table.” She hopped down and reached for his belt-buckle.
Smirking, Leandras eyed the massive pile of cushions at the far end of the tent and didn’t let Jessica get anywhere close to finishing what she’d started. He jerked her hands away and pressed his lips to hers before grabbing her hips and lifting her completely to carry her toward the cushions. His fingers dug into her thighs, she wrapped her legs around him, and she only briefly hoped there wasn’t any other goddamn furniture in the way as she gripped his hair and bit down on his bottom lip.
With a groan, Leandras knelt and lowered her down onto what served for a bed in the Laenmúr tents. Then he hovered over her, fumbling with his own belt buckle now while Jessica stripped out of her jeans and spent more time than anyone should have to spend kicking off her shoes and pulling the rest of her damn clothes over her hips.
Four seconds felt like an eternity.
By the time they’d gotten rid of the last few items in their way, Jessica’s head swam with that oncoming-rain smell and the darkwine and the hot, aching need flaring through her. Leandras crawled up onto the cushions toward her, his eyes flashing one
more time with silver light. He held her gaze as he kissed the jutting curve of her hip and his fingers slid up along her inner thigh.
Jesus Christ. For a fae who took whatever he wanted, he was sure taking his sweet goddamn time with this.
Jessica sat up and pulled him in for another fierce kiss. Whether Leandras knew what she wanted and was still just toying with her or he was so clueless he couldn’t figure it out, she finally got him onto his back and straddled the fae man right there on a giant heap of someone else’s cushions.
Fuck, it had been way too long.
He tried to reach for her again, but Jessica caught his wrists with a low growl and forced them down onto the cushions by his head. The fire of her need rippled across every inch of her flesh, burning intensely and drawing out everything she was to join her in this moment.
Leandras’ eyes widened when tongues of flaming black smoke burst across her skin, and he sucked in a sharp breath.
She released his wrists, and he didn’t try to move them as she straightened over him and pressed her hands against his chest. The black smoke flickering along her skin lapped at the lines of the fae man’s own self-inflicted runes on one side of his chest, curving over the top of his shoulder, nestling in that perfect V of his hips beneath hers.
Jessica knew full well what he saw now. She’d seen it herself more times than she could count—an uninhibited vestrohím, consumed by her own magic in maybe the only way that didn’t lash out at everything around her.
“Well this is new,” Leandras whispered.
With a tiny smile, she stared into his silver-glowing eyes and forced herself not to keep moving with his body the way her own screamed out for her to do. “Are you scared I’m gonna hurt you?”
Even barely above a whisper, Jessica’s voice was more than just her own, rising from her throat in a multitude of echoing tones as her magic rippled across her skin and licked at Leandras’. She had no more control of it than her desire for the fae man beneath her, but she’d been with enough magicals to know this was the moment they either scrambled away from her to disappear forever or threw all their reservations aside to dive right in.
“No.” Leandras bit his lip as he trailed his gaze up and down her body. The black flicker of her magic reflected in the silver glow of his eyes. “I do look forward to seeing you try.”
He smacked her thighs with both hands and pulled her down, bringing himself into her and making Jessica lose the rest of herself completely.
Her breath froze. Her nails raked at his chest. She threw her head back, and her magic burst away from her flesh to strike at whatever it could find that wasn’t the fae man with his fingers digging into her hip bones as she rocked on top of him.
A lantern hanging from the tent’s ceiling shattered behind them, peppering the rug with glass and making the crimson light flicker before casting them into even further darkness. The table they’d almost used as a prop splintered into three pieces and went flying across the tent. Glasses and bottles trembled on the shelves. Jessica thought she heard a piece of the thick tent fabric ripping away beneath the chaos of her need and of her magic.
None of it mattered.
Whatever happened after this, she’d deal with it later.
Even if they’d wanted to, there was no fucking stopping her now.
Chapter 10
Jessica didn’t remember falling asleep.
She never did.
But when she opened her eyes and found Leandras lying motionlessly beside her on the bed of cushions, the first thought racing through her mind was that she’d finally gone too far.
After everything they’d seen of each other in Ahárra, after what Jessica had begrudgingly come to accept about her own magic and its inherent implications—new power over life and death or not—she’d assumed her ability to heal him had changed things.
She’d assumed she could let herself go without holding anything back and he’d be fine.
Fuck, if she’d been wrong about that too...
“Leandras,” she whispered.
The fae man didn’t stir.
Jessica reached slowly toward his upper back lined with the curve of a glowing purple rune and scars she’d seen once before but didn’t know. The dread of finding cold dead flesh beneath her fingers made her hesitate. A heaving sigh of relief escaped her when his skin was in fact warm. Alive. Still there with her.
Christ, how many magicals had she shared a bed with only to wake up and find them and all their things gone?
Too many to count, which had fueled her decision years ago to stop bringing anyone over so she could be the one who was gone in the morning. Until Mel and Rufus, anyway.
And now Leandras.
A low, raspy chuckle escaped the fae man. “After all that, I wouldn’t have expected you to tickle me awake.”
Jessica rolled over onto her back with a snort and stared at the tent’s ceiling. Or at least it used to be the tent’s ceiling. Now it was just a few flaps of shredded fabric peeling away from each other to expose the endless twilight sky of the Laenmúr forest, where a muted green light from a perpetually roiling storm seeped through whatever barrier had kept them here for millennia. “Just making sure you’re still alive.”
He drew his arm out from beneath him and turned on the cushions, propping his head up in one hand before looking her up and down. “That would have required a lot more effort on your part.”
“Oh, yeah?” She huffed out a laugh. “I didn’t put in enough effort for you?”
“On the contrary. That was...” The fae man sucked in a long breath through his teeth. “I have to say, that was quite unlike anything else I might describe.”
“Please don’t.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it now.”
Jessica turned her head to look at him and found his gaze still trailing across her body. That self-satisfied smirk returned to his lips, but it was nothing like the expression she’d wanted to slap off his face for months. It was something else—the proof of some secret thought spinning through the fae’s mind.
“What?” she asked flatly.
“You.” Leandras leaned closer and met her gaze. “You constantly surprise me.”
“Ha. I’m pretty sure I surprised us both.”
“No need to be humble about it.”
Huffing out a laugh, Jessica looked up at the shredded canvas ceiling again, then pushed herself up onto her elbows to scan the rest of the tent.
The place was a wreck. Not the usual kind of wreck with clothes and empty wine bottles and glasses strewn about, though they’d hit one out of three on that one. In her enjoyment of the Laen’aroth, Jessica had practically destroyed the place—charred rips in the fabric, the broken table, far more glass peppering the rug than she remembered breaking. The cushions in the center of the tent had been obliterated, their feather stuffing lying in a tattered heap and scattered in a blast-site circle across the rug.
“Whose tent is this?”
“Honestly?” Leandras looked around and chuckled. “I have no idea.”
“Great. So we’ll just add one more thing to the list of Why Magicals Want to Kill Leandras Vilafor.”
His smile widened, and he reached up to turn her face toward him before pulling her in for one long, slow, languid kiss that was the complete opposite of how they’d started out the night before.
But it wasn’t really the night before, was it? It was the same night, stretching out forever into eternity within this clearing while the rest of the world and all concept of real time ceased to exist.
They could stay here forever, if they wanted. No Gateway. No Dalu’Rázj. No worlds to get back to or save or lead into either victory or complete destruction.
Jessica ran her fingers through Leandras’ hair, shifting closer just to feel him against her, and let that kiss last as long as it would. Once they stopped, it was back to the constant chaos and close brushes with death.
That was a hell of a reason not to leave in and of itself.
But it wasn’t an option.
Finally, Leandras broke away from her and let out a heavy sigh. “As much as I hate to admit it, Jessica, I believe it’s time we—”
“Hit the road again.” She bit her lip and nodded. “Yeah. I know.”
“Yes.” He studied her face with another one of those knowing smiles. “I would have preferred for some things to be different. But when we’re finished with our task, I do hope you’ll remain open to the possibilities.”
The possibilities? What, that the Guardian and the Laen’aroth could settle down and play house in a magical bank protecting a portal between worlds?
Jessica snorted and brushed his dark, disheveled hair away from his face. “Let’s just try not to die first, okay?”
“Speaking from personal experience, I can say it’s actually not as bad as one might imagine.”
He was clearly trying to make light of the situation, but it only highlighted one very essential fact in the whole “dead isn’t really dead” thing.
If Jessica died, there was no one to bring her back. Which was a serious problem if they didn’t get everything they needed to make sure that didn’t happen.
AFTER COLLECTING THEIR strewn clothing—which required dusting out the broken glass and burnt feathers before they could safely be worn again—Leandras performed a much more thorough illusion on Jessica’s appearance, this time leaving out the cloak.
How sweet.
Then they exited the destroyed tent together and found a very different clearing on the other side than the one they’d left.
The drummers had stopped their raucous pounding on the giant leather drums around the bonfire, which had died into a low, multi-colored glow. Pockets of passed-out magicals dotted the clearing, peppered with most likely empty gourds of darkwine. A few resilient stragglers walked around, talking in low voices and eating from the communal baskets of food that seemed to never run low.
“Hell of a party,” Jessica muttered as she stepped over the outstretched arm of a changeling lying in the dirt.
The Spellcast Gate (Accessory to Magic Book 5) Page 10
