Brush of Darkness (41 page)

“You don’t mean that,” he said, his voice carefully braced on the edge of flight. “You can’t.”

“Of course I can. Would I be here otherwise?”

“It is your Heart that makes you so compassionate. Your need to fix what is broken.”

I laughed but there wasn’t any humor in the sound. “I can’t fix myself, Ion. What makes you think I could fix you?” I brushed the hair away from his forehead and placed my fingers at the base of his antlers. “I’ve missed you.”

One silver brow rose, the emotions flattening on the perfect beauty of his face. “Don’t you get it?” He whirled away from me, lowering his antlered head. I fought the urge to flinch from the glittering points. “You Dreamed me as someone who hurt you, ravished you,
cut
you. You’re a Dreamer. Your dreams can become reality, especially to one who . . . who is connected to you.”

“That makes no sense,” I snapped, shame pricking me like the point of a needle. A memory of teeth rippled across my skin, remembered fear making me harsher than I should have been. “You’re not connected to me at all.” I winced beneath his stare, regretting the words the instant they left my mouth.

“Perhaps I was mistaken, then. I will not trouble you further.” He skittered sideways, as though he might melt into the moonlight.

“Hold up there, bucko. You think because I dream of maggots pouring from my head it means it’s going to happen? You think that imagining someone I care about attacking me is something I intended?” He shuddered beneath the onslaught of my words, but I pressed forward. “Newsflash for you, incubus. I wasn’t aware of doing
anything
right then.” I wiped my hand over my face. “What is it you want me to do, Ion?”

“I don’t know.” He leaned against the side of a fallen elm, one arm holding on to a curved branch. “Why are you here? I lied to you, stole your faith, your friendship . . . your lust.” His eyes drifted partway shut, taunting me with a touch of his old arrogance.

“Yes. And I suspect that, had things not turned out the way they did, Moira would be looking to nail your ass in front of the Council. But they took into account the circumstances. I don’t think they’re completely happy with you, but there’s no ill will on the part of the Protectorate.” Sonja had seen to that matter almost immediately, pleading clemency for her brother far more eloquently before the Council than I ever could. Of course, I’d still been in my sleep-induced coma, so the point was completely moot.

He snorted. “I could give two shits about what the Protectorate thinks. Why are
you
here?”

My teeth ground together. Confession time. “You know, if you’re just going to play hide-and-seek with me all night, you could have just left me in that damn painting and saved us all the trouble. I’m a little short on mental floss, at the moment.” I exhaled sharply. “The more important question is why do you
think
I’m here?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, his face suspiciously devoid of emotion.

“Oh, of course not.” I moved closer to him, ticking off on my fingers. “Let me guess. You’re like a thousand years old, but you’ve never found love, right? Never found a single woman in
all
that time who made your loins quiver and completed your soul, or whatever bullshit you happen to need? Well, except one and you had to cheat on her.”

He blinked, dry amusement flickering across his countenance. “Actually,” he said slowly, “I’m only about thirty-five as far as your years go. Then again, I’m not really sure what you’re accusing me of. It’s a Contract you want then?”

“Don’t be such an ass.” I rolled my eyes and yanked hard on a lock of that perfect hair. “Come here,” I insisted, leaning up to kiss him.

His lips met mine for an instant, fierce and possessive, hands digging into my hips so that I slid against the hardened muscles of his torso. He uttered a low groan and it pulsed into my mouth even as the curved length of him brushed against my belly.

Brystion . . .

He thrust me away, ignoring my cry of protest. His eyes flashed feral and golden now, his chest rising and falling in painful counterpoint to the pounding of my heart.

“I cannot stay with you,” he said finally. “Not like this . . .”

“I don’t understand.” I swallowed against the tightness of my throat, his words pricking the edges of my heart.

“Just . . . this.” He gestured at me. “It’s all I can ever be to you, Abby. All I know is of the flesh, the hew and the thrust of pleasure. An incubus is not meant for more.”

“And if I don’t want more?”

His eyes narrowed. “You can’t lie to me—not here. Not for long anyway,” he snorted. “And when the moment is over . . . what then? When the ripples of gratification have faded away, the heat of passion cooled . . . when you realize that I will not grow old with you, or have children?” His expression turned rueful. “And however you might feel about these things now, I have tasted them in your dreams . . . and those do not lie.”

He captured my hand to rub it against his cheek. “And perhaps, in truth, it is I who want more,” he said. “More for you, anyway.”

The heat from his skin jolted down my arm in a warm flush that fluttered wildly between my thighs. He kissed one finger and then another, his grasp locked around my wrist.
“I don’t want you to be anything you’re not,” I whispered. “Ever.”

He groaned, harsh and guttural, as he leaned forward, his mouth trailing hot and wet over my ear. “I could give it up for you—what I am. You have the power, Dreamer.”

“I have nothing,” I insisted. “I have a wish, given to me by the daughter of the Queen of Elfland—and not one I can use for quite some time. Besides”—I kissed his collarbone with a sigh—“if you’re going to play Angel to my Buffy, you should know this type of stuff never works out once one person becomes ‘normal.’ Could you have rescued me if you were human? Could you have protected my dreams?”

“No,” he admitted. “But don’t you see? If you weren’t a Dreamer, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. I would have given you to Maurice the moment I could have reasonably done so.” He went still and stared at me. “And I would have left you to rot inside that painting without another thought.”

I exhaled painfully, the truth of it all the worse for the gentleness in his voice. “But you didn’t.”

“No. But I tried. I didn’t know about the paintings or Moira or the rest of it. I just knew Maurice had my sister. And he had agreed to release her in return for you.” His gaze locked into mine, cold and black. “I knew about the other daemons. I knew they were going to try to take you. I knew.”

“But . . . you brought us the assassins’ marks. You fought for me and Melanie in the shed.”

He raised a clawed finger to my lips. “Yes. By the time I discovered Maurice’s duplicity, I knew I couldn’t go through with my side of the bargain. But it was too late.”

The minutes ticked by, my heart hovering on the edge of disappointment and acceptance. “All right,” I said finally. “I’m not sure what you want me to say.”

“There is nothing. I cannot be what you want; I can only
be what I am.” His ears twitched in the darkness. “And that, I fear, will not be enough.”

I withdrew a pace, letting his words roll over me, even as I decided to let him go. “The Heart is a fickle thing, Ion,” I murmured. Our eyes met, a flicker of understanding crossing his face. “You’ll always have a place in mine.”

He touched me then, one awkward stroke of his hand against my cheek, and for a brief moment I felt as though I was exactly where I was supposed to be. I stepped forward into his arms despite myself, feeling them part before me and then encircle my waist. “Show me, Ion,” I whispered. “Show me what you are.”

The leaves crunched beneath me, dry and harsh, but it didn’t matter. My clothes had disappeared into the twilight of the Dreaming, my back was pressed into the soft loam of the earth. The fragrance of the woods, thick with spruce and hemlock, honeysuckle and mint, cocooned around us; still, it was the heady flush of Brystion’s scent that captured me most. I was wrapped in it, embraced by the masculine pulse of his desire, tasting it as he savagely nipped at my mouth. It was dark and shadowed, like drinking midnight wine made of lust and moonbeams, salt and ashes. It prickled over my flesh with the delicate brutality of thorns, delicious and sinful and utterly
him
.

He hovered over me, his teeth grazing the pulse of my neck, fingers roaming over my thighs, my hips, my belly, hot and possessive. I quivered, moaning as his hand captured a breast and rolled the nipple taut until I cried out and writhed beneath him. His grip was like iron, pinching me to stillness; his other hand pressed between my thighs, knuckles parting them wide to find me slick and ready. He growled as he slipped a finger inside, stroking, teasing me until the blood was singing in my ears.

He bit my shoulder again, harder this time, and I felt the fine brush of his furred hindquarters sliding gently against my skin. “Goddess save me to think Maurice was right,” he muttered hoarsely, “but I do love you, Abby.”

I froze, the words ringing true in the depths of the Dreaming, filling me with a terrible clarity.

“Brystion . . .” I stumbled over his name, squirming at the feel of his shaft rubbing against me in earnest.

A heartbeat. Another. The moment drew out, long and quiet, and it felt as though the entire forest had stopped moving, watching us.

“Abby.” His breath was hot in my ear, his voice stricken as he waited for me to continue, waited for . . . what?

Permission? Rejection?

His grip relaxed ever so slightly, and I took his face in my hands to meet those aching, beautiful eyes, my heart breaking into a thousand pieces. “No . . . regrets.”

His ears twitched in the darkness and I heard the jangle of the bells hanging from the tips, the sound pulling me back to that first morning, echoed in the way the door chimes had rung out as he stepped across the threshold.

He uttered a low cry, and I knew I’d shattered the illusion. The truth melted away the dream like snow beneath the brilliance of the sun. I kissed him fiercely, our tongues and moans mingling with the frictionless slap of flesh meeting flesh. The leaves beneath me became rose petals, crushed blossoms of pink and red, swirling about us in a riot of color. And then we were falling, fading away into the shadows . . .

We
rolled . . .

I was falling, snared in the web of dreams, twisting, turning, bound and slipping and then . . .

And then Brystion was there, tumbling into the warmth
of my bed, his arms wrapped around my waist. His shape had changed, back to his mortal semblance, porcelain and familiar.

“So sorry,” he murmured, his lips brushing over my face. “I’m so very sorry, Abby.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way to make it up to me,” I sighed, arching my back. His skin was hot, burning, as I slid against it. He was still inside me and I clamped down around him, the tremulous pulse of another wave of pleasure starting to crest. His hips jerked forward, a growl rumbling from his chest. I exhaled sharply, breath ragged in the stillness of the shadows, but I could hardly hear it from the blood pounding in my head. His fingers slid down past my ear and traced the line of my jaw, the tip of his thumb drifting over my lips as he turned my face to his.

Brystion’s eyes smoldered, alight with a dark desire that had nothing at all to do with being sorry.

“Yes,” he agreed, a flicker of impudent humor glimmering in the golden depths of his gaze, hued with an unfamiliar tenderness. One corner of his mouth kicked up into the beginning of a sad smile. “I’m sure I will.”

M
orning was peeking from beyond the shadows of dawn when the barest whisper of breath against my ear pulled me from a haze of slumber. “You’re leaving,” I murmured with a strange certainty, rolling over to see Brystion perched on the edge of the bed staring at me.

“I wish you could see what I see when I look at you,” he said finally, neatly avoiding my statement. He snagged the afghan off the floor to wrap around his waist. I eyed it with a raise of my brow, not really remembering how it got there.

“And what’s that? Besides a grumpy ex-dancer with a penchant for bacon?” I propped myself up on my elbows, poking him with my big toe.