Bound by Flame (42 page)

“If you do that again, honey…”

She glanced at Nick, at his heavy-lidded, hungry expression, his bare muscled chest.

So handsome.

And naked.

How did she get this lucky?

I am Irish. And it
is
St. Patrick’s Day.

With a grin, she did that again.

Her whole body trembled as Nick dropped the cloth on the pallet. He pushed her hands to the side, straddled her in one fluid movement, and leaned forward, pressing his erection into her belly.

Heart skipping, she slipped her hands into his hair and pulled him to meet her. When he kissed her, she wanted more, had to have more,
now
.

Her sensitive nipples rubbed his hard chest as he slid his tongue into her mouth, answering her like he read her mind.

Then his lips moved down her jaw to her chin, then to her neck and ear.

Smoke billowed around the tiny room, playing in the sunlight, swirling past them in curls and puffs. Cynda breathed it in, smelling Nick’s salty ocean musk, and sage, and the faint touch of whiskey still in her own breath.

Braced on his knees and one powerful arm, he found her breast with his free hand and took up where her own fingers had left off, squeezing and teasing until her center pulsed with raw need.

When his fingers flicked across her hard nipple, she arched her back, moaning. “Don’t make me wait, Nick. Not this time. I need you too much.”

“Beautiful,” he murmured, pinching first one nipple, then the other, sending hot flashes of fire down Cynda’s thighs, straight to the spot where she wanted him most. “You mean everything to me.”

He kissed her.

Cynda forced her hands down, shoving past his chest, positioning his throbbing cock between her thighs. She ached to feel him inside her, tensing, waiting, wanting it so much she thought she might fry into nothing but sparkles and ash.

“Please now,” she said into his mouth, digging her nails across his rock-hard ass as flames danced over the ceiling above them. “Please.”

Nick shifted his weight, let go of her breast, and stared at her as he moved himself into position.

The feel of his eyes on her face, her body, the soft touch of his cock at her sensitive center—too much. She shook from the force of her own heat.

“Please,” she whispered again.

Nick rocked forward and buried himself inside her.

Hot. Deep.

His dark eyes gazed at her like he wanted nothing else in the universe but this, but her.

Yes.

He stretched her as wide as she could go, filled her, exactly right. Her knees jerked upward and her chin snapped back, stretching her neck as she took him, held him, squeezed her channel around him with all her strength. The sensation of flesh on flesh drove her straight to the total agony of wanting more, and more, and still more.

He found her mouth with his and pumped his cock, keeping his lips firm on hers.

Cynda held him tight. She rocked to meet him and the fire raging through her threatened to burn them both to pieces.

Nick’s skin glowed as he sucked in her flames and kept driving himself harder, building speed, just like she wanted.

Her body vibrated with every thrust. The slick, fast sound of their joining seemed to echo off the stone walls, and the fire in the hearth roared along with the blood in her veins.

I’m alive.

He’s alive.

Cynda tore her lips from his and bit his ear. She wrapped her arms around his neck, lifted her knees higher, and held on, whispering, “I love you.”

Orange light filled the space. Fire seemed to burst out of both of them. She felt so close to Nick. Consumed by him. And she wanted it that way.

“More.” She tugged at his hair. “I can’t get enough.”

Balanced on his strong arms, he drove into her. The muscles in his neck and shoulders bulged from the force. With each sweeping plunge, Nick seemed even more a part of her.

Tears slipped down her cheeks as she blazed everywhere, throwing fire, swirling it around the room until it wrapped them both in a hot orange haze.

“Cynda.” His rough whisper joined with the crackle of flames, sweeter than any music.

She crushed herself against him, letting him inside her soul as her body seemed to split wide open.

Her hips bucked.

She moaned loud and low as sparks danced across the insides of her lids. Sheets of flame washed up and back, up and back as she clamped on Nick’s cock, drawing out every second of that perfect ecstasy.

His body tensed, and he let out a growl as he spent himself inside her. She loved the way his eyes closed, the way his jaw locked.
She
gave him that pleasure. He was hers, right now, and always.

“I love you,” she said again as she went limp on the pallet, jerking each time he moved inside her, finishing, bringing them both back to earth with a soft, soft landing.

He stayed inside her and she kept him there, never intending to release him.

His lips brushed her chin, her cheeks, her nose and eyes.

The last thing she heard before she fell back into deep, endless sleep was “I love you, too, firebird.”

28

On the third morning after the battle to save the Sibyls, while Cynda was out working with her triad, the adepts, and the initiates to rebuild the castle, the Irish Mothers came for Nick.

He knew who it was when the knock sounded on the arched door of the small stone room he had been sharing with Cynda.

Instinct. And that surge of elemental power always present when the Mothers were around.

The strange thing was, he had been expecting the Mothers to visit him ever since he kissed Cynda goodbye and sent her on her way this morning.

No sense wasting time.

He got up from his meditations, did a last gut-check with Gideon, walked to his door, and opened it.

Outside, Mother Keara was waiting for him, along with Mother Eileen and the two Nick hadn’t met except to carry them to the crypt during the big fight. They had on their green robes, and each woman had her white hair fastened behind her head. Mother Yana from Russia was also present, and Mother Anemone from Greece, wearing the colors of their order.

Elemental power hovered around them, so thick and strong it made the air shimmer. The scent of spice and smoke, ocean and oils, ice and forests, and even wolf musk mingled together, piquing Nick’s senses, bringing to mind ancient chants and secret rituals, hidden scrolls and stones carved with runes no one could read. Knowledge older than time. Somehow
outside
of time, separate from it and protected in ways he might never understand.

All six women greeted him with a polite nod, showing respect even as they came to take his freedom.

He appreciated that much, at least.

They stepped aside to let him out, and Nick went quietly, making no protest when they led him deep inside the castle—or when they closed him into an elementally locked stone cell with a stone slab for a bed.

They left him alone without so much as an apology or explanation, but that didn’t bother him, either.

He had been expecting that, too.

If Nick had learned nothing else through his love for Cynda, he had grasped the fact that, right or wrong, fire Sibyls never backed down from their chosen course of action.

Now more than ever, with their ranks decimated and their stronghold breached and broken, they needed to protect their own.

In their shoes, he might have made the same choice.

Then again, maybe not.

Nick sat cross-legged on the stone bed and sighed. His heart felt heavy in his chest, and his gut tightened at what he soon would have to do.

In a short time, the women of Motherhouse Ireland had become as much his family as Creed and Jake. He’d still die for them, without any complaints.

He could only hope that in the end, they would feel the same way about him.

Nick also hoped that when it came time to make his choice, Cynda would forgive him.

29

Fire roared like an orange cyclone around Cynda, blurring her view of the Mothers.

She couldn’t believe it. She could
not
believe they wanted to take her to the meditation rooms and lock her away from her triad for a day.

Bullshit.

She stood by the big arched windows at the back of the castle’s highest chamber and blew flames directly out of her arms and shoulders. Her clothes were already ash, and she didn’t give a single hot damn.

Beside Cynda, Riana raised one hand. The stone floor rattled and shook.

On Cynda’s other side, Merilee narrowed her eyes. Wind howled into the mix, throwing dust and clattering stones around the meeting chamber they had just finished clearing and repairing.

The adepts who had been helping Cynda’s triad fled, trailing smoke as they went and slamming the big chamber door behind them. To their credit, the youngest initiates had taken off the second the six Mothers had filed into the room.

Smart girls.

Mother Yana approached the triad first, heading directly for Riana, her balance oddly undisturbed by the rattling stone floor. She reached Riana and took her hands.

Through the growl of her fire and the low rumble of Merilee’s wind, Cynda heard the oldest Russian Mother’s words.

“Ve cannot interfere in this, child. Come. Stand aside. Ve’ll stay to support your pestle, but you must let her Mothers do as they see fit.”

Riana’s look said,
Go to hell
. The chamber rattled again. Several stones on the floor split down the middle with a sound like rifle cracks.

Cynda had no doubt that if Riana had been armed, she would have pulled her daggers, even on the Mother who had raised her.

Her chest tightened with pride, with resolve.

My triad. My family. They will
not
separate us, especially not now.

“Bring Nick here.” Riana’s tone matched the dark depths of the earth energy boiling off her body in solid, almost tangible waves. She directed her comments to the Irish Mothers. “Bring him now. And don’t you dare put a hand on Cynda. There will be no ‘cooling-off period’ or contemplation time.”

Cynda’s fire flared in agreement. No friggin’ meditation and thinking and calming down.

Let’s get this done.

Mother Anemone made an attempt to move toward Merilee, but wind kicked at the statuesque woman so hard the chamber door behind her smashed open against the outer wall, wrenched off its hinges, and slammed to the floor. The windows behind Merilee exploded outward. Bits of glass and wood rained to the stone floor behind the triad.

Blond hair sticking straight up from the force and pressure of her elemental outburst, Merilee kept her cold blue gaze on her eldest Mother, and the Irish Mothers, too. “We’re not playing this, ladies. Don’t even think it. If you want to have a
cruinniú,
if you want to conclave, then we’re doing it right here, right now, today. Cynda’s not going anywhere with any of you.”

Mother Anemone’s blue eyes narrowed in response. She looked half-furious, half-impressed as she glanced from Merilee to Mother Yana and Riana, and then to the Irish Mothers. She didn’t speak.

She also didn’t take another step toward Merilee.

Mother Keara moved away from Mother Anemone, and her sharp eyes focused on Cynda.

Blazing green orbs, wide and wild and full of fire and power.

Cynda didn’t flinch or surrender even a spark of her protective fire. If they wanted her, let them come and get her. She’d like to see
that
happen. Heat surged through her, barely bridled. When she was a child, Mother Keara’s glares had broken through her temper every single time, but this wasn’t about temper. It was about truth and choices, and about Cynda’s right to decide on the people she loved.

I’m not backing down.

Mother Eileen and the other Irish Mothers shifted into position behind Mother Keara, facing Cynda. One put a hand on Mother Keara’s shoulder.

Mother Keara shrugged off the contact and came forward a few steps, braving the edges of Cynda’s firestorm.

The old woman’s huge power slammed into Cynda, tugging at the cyclone, jerking at the flames, trying to draw off some of the fire. Cynda ground her teeth. Pushed back with her own heat. Shoved.

Hard. Harder.

Sweat broke across her forehead.

Cynda raised both fists and let her fire fly into the roaring cyclone.

She couldn’t win this fight, but by God she wouldn’t lose, either. Not if she had to give up her last breath to her fire energy and drop dead right where she stood. After charging out on that battlefield with Nick, expecting to lose him and everything else, this felt like child’s play.

To Cynda’s surprise, Mother Keara blinked first.

She eased out of the cyclone and stopped trying to control it.

Was that a smile? I
swear
she smiled.

“I’m takin’ this to mean,
a chroí,
that you’re in agreement with your triad,” Mother Keara shouted over the fire’s angry snarl. “If we’re to have our
cruinniú,
you’d rather it be now instead of tomorrow.”

“Yes,” Cynda shouted back, still pissed beyond measure. “That’s what I want. Now go get Nick.”

Another few seconds went by. Then Mother Keara lifted both hands, palm out, and said, “Done.
Cruinniú
now.”

Stomach tight, muscles throbbing from the heat spent on her fire, Cynda let go of her elemental energy.

Flames bounced against the ceiling and floor, then drew back into her body.

She shook even after Riana quit rattling the floor and Merilee let the wind die away to a soft breeze.

So this was it.

Her fate would be decided in minutes.

Her service to the Motherhouse, Nick’s service, none of that mattered.

Mother Keara still wouldn’t approve their union.