Authors: Elaine Lowe
His face was again hovering over her, his fingers brushing her hair from her eyes. His own eyes were still filled with the hint of a question and she rolled her eyes and pushed at him, rolling them over until she could rear up over him. His hardened cock was trapped between them as she sat astride his hips, her hands planted firmly on his chest as she tried to catch her breath.
To convince him of her eagerness, actions spoke louder than words. As soon as she had the energy to wrinkle her nose at him and smile, she impaled herself on his cock, wincing slightly as he filled her completely. It was a good pain. Her head fell back as she relaxed all her muscles, letting his welcome invasion come as deeply inside as possible.
His hands came up to grip her hips and he lifted her up and thrust back inside her, making her let out a sharp scream. He slowed for a moment and she barked out a harsh, “No!” She gripped his bent knees behind her and circled her hips in forceful patterns meant to drive them both just a little bit mad. She stared at his face, still shadowed in the dim light, his teeth glowing white with his feral look of fierce concentration. His fingers dug into her hips just a little too hard and she liked it, loving the fact that he was approaching the edge.
He trusted her now. She wanted to take him over again, drive him past the point where he could fight the inevitable peak. But he felt too damn good inside her. He was just long enough and just wide enough as though he’d been molded exactly for her. At the end of each stroke, as she thrust down and he thrust up to match, he hit someplace that made her breath catch in little pants and stars flash in front of her eyes.
She clenched around him, wanting to feel every inch of him as she came closer and closer to falling over the edge, held on the brink by only the tiniest thread of sanity. Her knees were scratching against the tar of the roof and she should be blue with cold but she felt nothing but pleasure thrumming in her veins. The night was as bright as day from the power swirling between them. She couldn’t even close her eyes and escape this, even if she had wanted to.
He reared up off the ground, sucking one of her nipples into his mouth as his thumb found her clit at the same moment. She slammed down on top of him twice more and then shattered, biting her lip hard enough to draw blood as bliss poured hotly through her. She wrapped her hands around his neck and held on for dear life as spasms racked her body.
Blinded by the brilliance of her pleasure, she was completely disoriented when she was roughly flipped over, her back pressed against the cold tar roof and he reared above her once again. With a loud groan, Daron pulled out of her almost completely before thrusting back into her hard. “Oh, yes, oh God, yes!” she cried, not quite believing it was possible to have the pleasure build back up so quickly. She wrapped her legs around him and he pushed his hands under her hips, hauling her up against him as he knelt before her. Her internal muscles fluttered, gripping him firmly as he tried to withdraw for another stroke, unwilling to let him escape. But he would not be denied. He plunged into her again and again and she became locked into bright green eyes, watching him as he gave her pleasure and took his own.
For one long minute, it seemed like they were made of light, that they could fly around the world and never touch the ground. His arms tensed for a moment and he released her hips, falling forward onto his elbows he held himself above her, the change in angle being exactly what she needed to take off and soar. She wrapped her arms around him, dragged her nails down his back as his cock grew impossibly harder within her. With a shout in her ear, he came, taking her with him. The world was drowning in blistering light, silver and copper and every other color and shade. Light strong enough to invade all the dark places in her soul and banish her nightmares.
When they kissed, sharing their breathless awe, shudders still racked both of them, body and soul. The salty taste was more than their fluids, more than their sweat. The taste was of tears of joy.
Chapter Eleven
She still had her arms and legs wrapped around Daron, unwilling to let him go. Yes it was cold and yes, the damned roof was uncomfortable but she felt too good to care. Especially when he was blowing air across the edges of her ear and chuckling with that sexy voice of his.
“You are mine now, yes
ashavi
?” It wasn’t a question really but the tone was less proprietary than the last time he’d said something similar. Give the man points for learning.
“After that? You still doubt? Tsk tsk…do we need to have another go just to make sure you understand?” She was joking but when he gave her that wicked grin and began sucking on the sensitive spot right under her ear, one hand plucking softly at her tender nipples, she whimpered a bit in surrender.
“What am I supposed to call you then, huh? Are you
ashavi
to me?”
He chuckled again and even if he was soft inside her, she could feel that laugh in every inch of her body. “
Ashava
. I am your
ashava
. Your friend, your companion and your mate.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Well,
ashava
mine, if you are my fated mate, why don’t I remember a wedding ceremony then, eh?”
He smiled and she sucked in a quick breath at how handsome he looked in that moment, the soft swirls of residual energy from their fused passion rippling within his eyes. “I think perhaps we can think of something, yes?” He descended for a kiss and she was lost in the skillful thrust of his tongue and the texture of his lower lip between her teeth. That’s why she didn’t immediately notice the clatter of the trapdoor to the roof being thrown open.
“West! Where are you! Something’s happened to June and Hester!” Footsteps clomped forward a few feet before halting abruptly. Frozen in mortification, Sophia figured their naked bodies must shine like some kind of beacon on the dark surface of the roof.
“Jeepers creepers!” Alan squeaked before spinning around.
Sophia laughed. What else could she do? Only Alan could sound like a shocked fourteen-year-old girl in such a situation. It was curiously charming. She even felt Daron’s low chuckles as he pulled himself away from her, gallantly retrieving her coat from the pile of scattered clothes and covering her before searching for anything for himself. She was struck again how ridiculously lucky she was to have such a man want her as much as she wanted him.
She scrambled up from the ground, her body aching in wonderful ways, the skin of her knees and her back scratched from the unforgiving roof tiles. It had been worth it though. She felt as though she could run from here to Coney Island or win that dance marathon at the Savoy next weekend. She pulled on her bloomers, her camisole, the prim blouse and skirt with a slightly dazed happiness, before she finally woke up to the frantic undertones in which Alan and Daron were speaking.
“What’s happened?” she asked, watching the dark undertones of worry bleed from Alan to Daron and back again. Daron took her hand and squeezed it for a moment before walking purposefully toward the trapdoor. She turned to face Alan, hands on her hips. This had better be good.
Alan looked down at her bare feet, rather than at her face. He was still a bit red from embarrassment but the kind of situation that normally would have shut him up like a clam seemed to play second fiddle to whatever bee had stung him hard enough to get him up on the roof in the first pace. He took a deep breath. “I had come up to Harlem to visit June and Hester.” He paused half a moment and when he’d received no wry taunt went on to the rest of it, “I went to knock on their door, but the door wasn’t completely shut. I knocked anyway and opened it wider, only to see an empty room. They weren’t there, either of them. I thought June might still be working and Hester was being looked after by Missus Garcia or somebody else in the building. Maybe she’d just forgotten to lock up…but there was a chair overturned and all the jars in the pantry were dumped out on the floor. And, I just have a bad feeling about the whole thing, that’s all.”
Sophia’s stomach dropped. She’d been so close to June’s place, passing by the fifth floor on the way up to Daron, she’d even thought to stop by and say hello, trying to delay the inevitable confrontation that she thought was coming. For all the joy that she’d felt just a moment ago, now there was a nagging sense of guilt. If her Gift wasn’t capable of alerting her to foul play involving those she cared about, it was because of her own self-centered needs, not any limitations she knew of.
She raced after Daron, climbing down the ladder with foolhardy speed, slipping a few rungs and cursing as she almost blistered her hands. Alan came down after her and stooped to pick up her ancient clogs, smiling through his anxiety. “Hee, if I wasn’t so goddamn worried, I’d be able to come up with a suitably witty comment on how low you have fallen in your choice of footwear but I find I don’t really give a futz about it.”
Together they took the stairs fast, clattering into the apartment at the same time. Daron crouched on the floor, staring at the mingled remains of coffee grounds and flour and spilled black beans.
“There were three of them.” Daron looked like a bird of prey, examining with trampled tracks like the keenest of hunters. His cool detachment didn’t fool Sophia for a moment. She could see the sharp flare of his anger and feel the echo of his remorse in her gut. He stood, walking to the chair that had been flipped over in the middle of the floor. June was fastidious and the coarse fibers hanging from the arms of the chair were not something she would have tolerated in her household. Daron ripped one away, holding it up to the light of the weak bulb overhead. “Rope fiber. Somebody was tied to the chair. Probably June, tied and gagged to wait for Hester to come up from Ixchel’s.
Muladi bavel
!” He swore and began pacing across the floor with angry steps. His chest was bare, revealed by his unbuttoned shirt and his feet were as bare as hers. He radiated barely controlled power that seethed beneath the surface, waiting to be tapped into some kind of action.
She spoke, putting into words the inevitable conclusion and the companion question. “Somebody or somebodies took them, against their will. Who would take them and why?”
Alan butted in, his passion overwhelming attempts to reason out a course of actions, “Where the hell are they? Shouldn’t we call the cops or something! Why don’t we go after them!” He hovered near the door, as though not wanting to face the truth scattered across the floor.
Daron looked up at her, those green eyes clear as crystal. “I do not know all that haunted June from her past, only that it was a threat that kept her awake many a night. She had run many times to escape it and has often said in the last few months that she had stayed here too long.”
It was not really important. They were missing and no policeman was going to bother themselves coming up to Italian Harlem to look for a couple of missing persons based on an overturned chair and spilled coffee. Sophia had to try something else, something she was not certain she would be able to do in a city as crowded as New York. She stepped in front of Daron, stopping his pacing and taking his hand in hers, feeling the ensnared power there.
She stroked his palm with her thumb. “Will you give me this? I will need everything to try to search.”
He gave her a rueful smile. “You still need to ask me to give you anything? It is already yours,
ashavi
. Take all that you need.”
Alan cleared his throat. “Sorry to butt in to this fascinating conversation but what the seven hells are you jabbering about! We’ve got to do something!”
* * * * *
The last time Sophia had sat on the floor of this room she’d felt the undeniable pull of love. She hadn’t wanted to recognize that the bright searing bond she shared with Daron was love. She hadn’t wanted to acknowledge the feelings the were an almost painful fulfillment, as though her heart would burst if she let herself bask in the potential for bliss for too long.
She hadn’t known what to make of it. She’d never seen such a bright connection. Heck, she’d never seen more than a ghostly wisp of the connections she now saw in vivid detail, ever since she joined her powers to his.
Now they sat on the cold floor, legs folded in front of them, facing each other with bare feet just touching toe to toe. She held his hands in hers and she breathed slowly, trying to clear her mind as he had told her to do. Instead, she watched him through hooded eyes. Daron had practiced this kind of deep relaxation in the past, he had said. His father had trained him to understand his powers from a young age, apparently more thoroughly and completely than Grams had ever been able to teach her. Magic was something to keep hush about, something just a bit frightening. Sophia had finally left home after one of her mother’s blistering diatribes against witchcraft. Elinor Hunter had wanted to try to forget Grams ever existed and would try anything to drive the Gift out of Sophia if she could.