Spellfire (16 page)

Groaning, he took her mouth and stopped thinking, worrying, whatever-ing, and let himself just
feel
as he feasted on her lips, her throat, her breasts. Before, he’d often needed to rein in the magic when he made love to her, as sex tried to bring out the mage in him. Now, though, there was no need for that control, because their powers met and balanced off, ramping up the sizzle yet somehow still leaving it all about him and her, and the slide of flesh against flesh.

He suckled on a pink, peaked nipple and heard her moan, went to work on her hip-hugging jeans and felt her shudder when his fingers found the zipper and tugged it down. She was wearing a slick, soft excuse for underwear, one of the thongs he fucking loved. The feel of it made him hotter, harder, turned him damn near crazy.

He got her jeans down in no time flat, leaving them snagged on her boots, so she was open to him but bound at her ankles. He halfway expected her to hold him off until she’d gotten free; instead, she moaned as he came back up her body, kissing his way up her inner thighs to that thin triangle of satiny cloth, which was a deep, fiery red that seemed to glow in the candlelight, edged on either side by a neatly trimmed strip of hair.

His lips were flush with the taste of her and his senses filled with the scent of her arousal as he traced the tip of his tongue along the line of cloth.

“Oh!” She gasped and arched into him, then purred when he did it again, licking deeper this time, tasting her and using his hands to spread her wider, give him better access. She caught his head in her hands, urged him up. “Come here. I can—”

He kissed her deeply, thoroughly, tonguing her until she went still and silent, her body vibrating around his. “Let this first one be about you,” he growled against the soft skin of her lightly muscled thigh.

He’d never before thought of himself as a selfish lover, or an unselfish one—she’d been his teacher, after all, or maybe it was more that they’d learned together. But he was realizing now that while he’d figured out how to please her, it had always been while she took him with her mouth or her body, giving him everything he could think of and more. She’d never asked for anything that was hers alone. More, when he’d offered or tried, she’d always turned the tables, rising over him, taking him, making him come and come until he couldn’t fucking think.

Now, though, he wanted to give her that same care and attention. And if she didn’t want to take it, she was going to have to say it loud and clear, because he wasn’t going to let her shift gears on him this time.

She had come to him, after all. Now he was going to make her come, over and over again. He was going to make her his, if only for this one night, in this one way.

Things were going to be different this time, damn it.

“But don’t you want . . .” she began, then trailed off when he nipped her thigh in warning.

“I want this,” he said softly. “I want you. Like this.”
Forever
. The last was a whisper in his mind, an impossibility that belonged only in his dreams. But maybe this was a kind of a dream, he thought as he traced his tongue along the smooth, soft crease beside the moisture-darkened thong. It was a waking dream. And he never fucking wanted to come out of it.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Myr couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything but lie there, open to him and yet trapped there as well, having become a creature of pure sensation rather than logic or thought. He breathed against her and she moaned; he licked his way up her center and she shuddered; he sucked on the tight bud of her clit through the fabric of her thong and she nearly came.

I should . . . don’t you want
 . . . always before, she had maintained a thread of control so she could make sure she pleased him, kept him. Now, her thoughts scattered as the heat coiled within her, sharp and edgy, and almost there.
Yes
, she thought,
Oh, yes
. Maybe she had come to him for release, but she was getting so much more.

Someone moaned—she thought it was her, though she wasn’t aware of having made the sound. She was mindless, incoherent. It had been too long; she had been too alone, and all she could do was let her head fall back on the pillow. It was her pillow, she realized with glittering surprise, though she couldn’t think right then what it meant that he’d kept it, because he growled low in his throat and quickened the tempo. And when she cracked her lids to look down at the sight of him feasting on her, she found him staring up her body, eyes dark and intense.

The moment their gazes locked, the pleasure snapped tight within her, flaring bright and brilliant. She came in a crazy, unexpected rush that left her helpless to do anything but clamp herself around him—her legs around his torso, her inner muscles around his fingers—and cry out. It was a wordless sound, not his name, not the love words they’d once used. But the feelings were there without the words, as if the past three months—six months? more?—hadn’t happened. Or, more, as if they had happened differently. She was in tune with him, fixed on him, totally gone on him, as if they’d been hot and heavy all along. As if they hadn’t drifted, hadn’t blown up. And even back when things had been the best between them, he’d never taken her like this, never made her feel like this.

Her eyelids shuddered closed as he breathed her name and shifted to tongue the sensitive knot of flesh at the apex of her cleft, then intensified the strokes of his fingers to counterpoint the fading surge of her body. She gasped and arched into the strokes as intense pleasure overtook her in a second wave, one that spiraled up and up, amping beneath the relentless drive of his mouth and hands, and the sensation of being totally at his mercy. Totally connected to him. She came a second time, with a pressure and power that was shocking and unexpected.

Magical.

She felt invaded, taken, possessed. Always before, it had been give and take between them, and if she’d given more than she took—or allowed him to give in return—wasn’t that what guys wanted? This, though . . . this was different, unsettling. And so brutally erotic that she was left torn between holding him close and pushing him away as he kissed down her legs and stripped off her boots, jeans and panties. Then he reversed his course, nipping from her toes to her inner thighs, along her stomach and up to nuzzle at her breasts. He kept his full weight off her, but the bulk of his body dipped the mattress and pressed into her, against her, and the fullness of orgasm turned to an empty ache almost instantly.

Then he shifted, slid up on the bed, and sought her mouth with a kiss that felt suddenly familiar and welcome. She knew this part, this rhythm.

She purred against his mouth and curled her legs around his hips to rub herself against him in a cadence that was warm and wet, and promised wonderful things. She levered herself up, confident that now he would let her have her way with his body, with all that masculine skin and muscles, and with the huge, hard part of him that throbbed between her legs. “My turn,” she whispered into the kiss, and reached for him.

He evaded and rolled fully atop her, pressing her into the mattress as he grinned fiercely down at her. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? It’s all your turn, all for you.” And then he kissed her with aching tenderness, sending a sliver of new, wondrous warmth through her.

“But don’t you want—”

“This is what I want.” He shifted, positioning himself so the blunt head of his cock slipped between her slickened folds and pressed at the entrance to her body. “
You’re
what I want.”

Her body said “yes” before her mind could catch up—her legs parting and accepting him, curving so one heel slid up and crooked behind his knee. “I—” she began, but then broke off on a gasp when he thrust inside her in a single powerful surge, filling her and setting off a sparkling chain reaction of energy, power and pleasure.

As she shuddered against him, he held her close, held her down and thrust into her with a sharp, bright pleasure that stripped away thought and left only sensation behind. She moaned and clutched at him, would have moved to counterpoint his thrusts, but he didn’t give her the leeway, didn’t give her any choice but to take, and take more. And gods. Oh, gods.

Breathing became unimportant; self-preservation became unneeded, until the only thing that mattered was the pound of his body against hers, into hers. New pleasure gathered, surprising her. She would’ve thought she was done, spent—she’d come twice already, after all. But as another orgasm built, she arched up into his kiss, then pressed her cheek to his, her lips to his throat, and inhaled the scent of the two of them together.

This. This was what she needed, what she had come to him for.

“More,” she whispered against his throat.

“Hell, yeah.” His voice was a passionate rasp, his grip on her hips inexorable as he shifted, held her, and intensified the tempo.

Pleasure gathered within her, seeming suddenly huge and important, becoming the only thing she could think of, the only thing she could seek. She widened her legs, tipped her hips and—ahh,
there. Fuck, yeah. There
. She might’ve said the words aloud, because he growled low in his throat and slowed his thrusts, lingering at the point of contact, pressing into her within and without.

“Oh.” She dug her fingers into the strong cords of muscle beside his spine, and the scars beneath her fingertips added a sharp poignancy to the moment as her body coiled in that perfect, breathless pause that presaged orgasm.

She had almost lost him; they had almost lost each other.

Tears stung her eyes as she came.

The orgasm spiraled in and then flared out again, washing through her with a glorious, intense heat. She cried out—his name, a curse, a prayer, she didn’t have a clue what she was saying, only that it went on and on, almost blurring past pleasure to something stronger and more insane. He groaned long and low, gasped her name as he came. His hips pumped into her, his arms clamped around her, and he surged once, again and again.

Her inner muscles milked him, pulsing, pulsing . . . and then slowed.

Everything. Slowed. Stopped. And then it was over.

Only it was far from over, wasn’t it?

Oh, shit,
she thought as she turned her face away from him, grateful that he was collapsed against her, his heart thudding a heavy drumbeat. Ohhhh, shit.

That had been way more than she’d been expecting, way more than she’d been prepared for. She’d wanted sex, but she’d gotten . . . gods, she didn’t even know what to call that, what to make of it. Yes, she was strong. But she wasn’t sure she was strong enough for this.

“Rabbit,” she began, but then fell silent, because she didn’t have a clue what to say to him. Not after that.

“Later,” he rumbled thick-voiced, already fading into his familiar postcoital coma. “We can dissect things later. For now, let’s just fucking enjoy it. Deal?”

Yes. No. Shit. Don’t make this into more than it needs to be
. “Deal,” she whispered.

He was snoring almost before she’d gotten the word out, his big body going lax and warm around her. She couldn’t sleep, though. Not when . . .

Darkness
.
Warm and wonderful darkness.

Sometime later—more than an hour but less than the dawn—Myr startled herself by coming awake from a doze she hadn’t meant to slide into. She was tucked tightly against Rabbit’s warm bulk, with her arm partway across his chest and her hand on the steady beat of his heart. Their legs were woven together, their breaths coming in synch—at least they had been when she first opened her eyes. Now, though, her breathing quickened beneath a flood of heat, longing and disquiet.

Gods. The things he had done to her, the things he’d made her feel. She’d never done that before, with anyone, hadn’t ever wanted to.
And you enjoyed every minute of it,
said her better sense, which had been pretty damn quiet up to this point.
Question is, are you going to enjoy what comes next?

Holding her breath, she eased out from beneath the covers, and tried not to shiver as the cold air hit her skin and raised goose bumps. Her nipples pebbled, serving only to remind her of his lips on them, his hands. New tingles erupted—of want, of need—but instead of drawing her back to the bed, they spurred her away. Padding on bare feet, she found her jeans and shirt, her boots and one sock.

She slipped on the jeans and shirt, shoved the sock in her pocket and held the boots dangling in one hand as she looked back toward the bed.

Rabbit slept on, undisturbed and magnificent, looking like he’d been cast in gold thanks to the flickering light coming from the white candle. She wanted to crawl back beside him and kiss him awake. She wanted to give herself to him, lose herself in him.

Gods. What had she done?

“Stop freaking out,” she said under her breath. “You got what you wanted.” She was the one who’d made the booty call. So what if he’d changed things up some? It shouldn’t be a big deal that he’d gotten her off rhythm and out of their routine, shouldn’t even matter that he’d taken over. It did, though. And that left her feeling far shakier than she liked as she headed for the door, moving silently on her bare feet.

Behind her, Rabbit shifted and muttered something. She tensed but he didn’t wake up. He just rolled over onto his side and buried his face in her pillow.

As she slipped through the door, she heard him mutter, “No, Myr. Don’t.” Seeing that he was talking in his sleep, she didn’t answer him. Besides, it was long past time for her to go.

*    *    *

Summer solstice, 1984

Chichén Itzá

“The dreams said that I’m the key, that I can win the war right here, right now,” Jag said as he and Asia faced the
chac-mool
. Magic thrummed, coming from the shimmering air above the altar.

She took his hand. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

Gods, was there anything more terrifying than knowing that? He wanted to order her away, wanted to hide her, protect her, surround her in freaking bubble wrap and know she was going to be okay no matter what. Instead, he grated, “Stay behind me. You’re in charge of our shield.”

And then, facing the intersection, he tapped into the joined magic of his warriors, and began the second spell. Where the first had opened the portal connecting this world to the next, the second spell would break the barrier, then seal it forever.

He hoped.

Raising his hands, he summoned the magic and let it rip, pouring the energy into the intersection as—

Unexpectedly, horribly, red-orange light flared in the doorway behind him. And Asia screamed.

*    *    *

Rabbit jolted awake at the sound of a cry that wasn’t his own, yet echoed in his ears. The blue-gray of dawn was seeping in through the windows, and the other side of the bed was empty.

Myrinne was gone, and he was having visions. This couldn’t be good.