When she turned, her backside growing hot so near the fireplace, she was surprised to see him still standing by the door.
“I thought you wanted to make love?”
He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out until after he’d cleared his throat. “You are…beautiful.”
She attempted a smile, afraid her jaded attitude might have turned the genuine curve into more of a smirk. “You say that as if you’ve never seen a naked woman before.”
“It has been centuries,” he admitted.
Mariah brushed aside the weight of his confession. “But you haven’t forgotten how this works, have you?”
His stride made the cabin seem instantly minuscule. He took her hands and, as he dropped to his knees, tugged her to the ground with him. “I have not forgotten?”
She glanced down at his pants and boots. “You sure?”
An instant later, they were gone. She had only a split second to register the aroused length of him when his mouth descended on hers. The magic seemed to fire his lust, and as her mind swirled with the intense pleasure of his lips on hers, she decided the aftereffect was a definite perk.
His hands played across her flesh with a gentle urgency that reminded Mariah how long it had been since she’d had a lover. That was, she surmised, the reason she’d given in so easily. Never one to guard her sexuality, she indulged her needs whenever the mood struck her. And damn, but the vibes were slapping her hard now.
She learned his body with her palms and fingers, marveling at the power in the musculature of a man who claimed to be a ghost. And he was responsive to her touch, groaning with pleasure as she ran her fingers down his spine, rounded them over his strong backside and teased the crevice between his buttocks. He responded in kind, though he tugged her forward so that his full erection pressed against her belly.
Her sex quivered and wept with anticipation. When he skimmed around her belly and then stretched his thumbs upward to tease her breasts, she nearly cried out.
“You are…” he started, but he dropped his lips to her neck, and whatever words he’d begun to say died as his mouth found more delicious pursuits.
“I am hot to feel your mouth all over me,” she said, filling in the blanks for him.
He stopped long enough to look her in the eye.
“All over?” he asked.
She licked her lips. “English hasn’t changed that much over two hundred years, has it?”
“No,” he said with a grin, “but women have.”
“It’s all for the better,” she assured him.
“Undeniably.”
Locking her hands around his neck, she tugged him down so that her back was nestled in the warmth of the furry bearskin and her chest was pressed against his. She speared her fingers into his hair as he restarted his downward exploration. He ran his tongue along her collarbone, nipping at her shoulders with just enough pressure to spawn a raging wildfire of gooseflesh across her skin. When he swiped his tongue across her nipple, she felt sure she’d combust from the inside out.
“Yes,” she goaded. “Right there. Just like—”
He needed no more instruction, plying her sensitive flesh with lips and tongue and teeth until she nearly came undone. As he stroked and laved and teased, he murmured foreign words against her skin that fired her further. By the time he licked around the edge of her belly button, she was convinced she was losing her mind.
When his breath teased the soft curls at the base of her thighs, she tensed, anticipating the feel of his tongue parting her pulsing flesh. But he stopped.
She pushed hungrily against his cheeks. “Please, Rafe.”
He dipped his nose against her and inhaled deeply. “The temptation is great.”
She chuckled, not so subtly scooting beneath him so that his mouth was closer to her sex. “Then why stop?”
His eyes darkened, not from the magic, she was certain, but from what she wanted him to do. Had he never? She racked her desire-fuddled brain for some explanation, but remembered that he’d been married in his past. Surely he and his wife had explored all manner of sensual pleasures.
“Try it,” she encouraged. “I’ll like it.”
He shifted lower. She widened her legs. He did not move.
“Give me your hand,” she instructed.
He did so. She took his fingers in hers and guided him around her vulva, smearing the natural moisture of her arousal against his hand. She pointed him to her clit, cooing when he found the tiny trigger to her orgasm. “Do that with your hand,” she told him. “With your tongue. It’s a pleasure you’ve never—”
His mouth stopped whatever thoughts she might have had after that. He took her at her word and feasted on her until she orgasmed. But even then, he did not stop. He’d developed a taste for her, and he continued to lap and suckle until she teetered again on the edge between desire and utter madness. She held on to the side of his face, unsure whether she could stand any more.
He took the choice from her, kissing a hot and desperate path up her body. The minute his mouth met hers, the flavor of her need clinging to his lips, he pressed inside her.
The thickness of his arousal stretched her to glorious limits. Unable to stem the tide he’d so skillfully stirred, she wrapped her legs around his waist and let him ride her to the brink. He pushed up on one arm, and the muscles in his biceps strained under his weight. She wanted to ply her teeth to the rigid tendons, but he increased his tempo until she could think of nothing more than following him to complete ecstasy.
Once spent, he collapsed atop her. She slid her hands into his dark locks and suddenly remembered how much she loved men who wore their hair past their shoulders. She explored the angles and curves of his shoulders while he pulled in great gulps of air, attempting to regain his ability to breathe.
“So,” she asked, wanting to break what was becoming an odd silence. “How do you find sex in the twenty-first century?”
He pulled back and looked surprised to find her smiling. “Confusing. And wonderful. And intriguing. And—”
She placed two fingers across his lips. “Enough adjectives. Suffice it to say you’re feeling better?”
He scooted away from her, stopping only when she wrapped her hand around his wrist.
“I took advantage of you,” he said.
“Yes,” she agreed. “But believe me, I got something out of the deal, too.”
His smile barely curved his lips. “I am glad you experienced pleasure, Mariah, but I must make one thing clear.” Any trace of humor disappeared. “I cannot use Rogan’s magic ever again.”
“That could be a problem,” she replied.
Ten
Rafe had never met a more confounding woman, though considering the circumstances, he shouldn’t have been surprised. Centuries of time had wrought many changes to the world, and he’d only begun to scratch the surface of the differences between his time and hers.
But they’d found common ground in their lovemaking. His body still thrummed from the aftereffects. So many times, he’d wondered about the flavor of a woman, about the pleasurable effects of exploring every crevice and sweet, soft curve of his wife’s body, but his traditions waylaid him. Perhaps if they’d had more time? He and Irika had experienced great joy in their marriage bed, but he’d never fully delved into his deep, instinctual needs as he had with this woman he hardly knew and surely did not love. Irika had been shy about what pleased her and timid about discovering what pleased him. Mariah, on the other hand, had shown him precisely what to do.
In the deluge of such sexual elation, the repercussions of using Rogan’s magic had ebbed completely. Rafe was himself again. He had no more excuses for wanting Mariah, for using her body to sate his needs. And yet, the familiar thrum of arousal sizzled over and through his skin.
“I see no problem,” Rafe insisted, ignoring how his nostrils flared in search of her scent. “Your world already contains flying machines and nameless torches. The magic imposed on me may bring fleeting comfort, but the price is steep. You need not this evil thing that lives within me.”
“How do you know it’s evil?”
He pulled himself into a sitting position, which she did as well. With the firelight dancing across her skin and dappling her burnished brown hair with sparks of ruby fire, he was nearly too overwhelmed by her easy sensuality to form a response. She’d folded herself into a position that shielded her naked body, but her modesty did little to slake his desire. Her curves evoked fantasies he had no business entertaining when they’d just indulged in such sweet reality. He wanted Mariah again. Not because of unbidden lust brought on by Rogan’s curse, but for himself.
“Lord Rogan was evil,” he explained, denying his selfish instincts. “This magic that brought us together is his.”
“Maybe,” she said, somewhat doubtfully. “But the magic is in you now. You aren’t evil. Or were you? Back then? When Rogan trapped you?”
Rafe possessed a fair amount of shortcomings, but wickedness had not been his sin. Not until tonight.
“I was but a simple Romani man hoping to find happiness and peace for my family.”
“Tell me about them. Tell me about her.” She laid her cheek against her knee, and Rafe was struck by the gentility of her voice.
He stood, and though he risked reawakening the intense consequences of utilizing Rogan’s magic, he conjured clean, dry clothes. She
tsk
ed in disappointment.
“The past no longer matters,” he said, unwilling to dredge up the memories. He’d been plagued by flashes of bloody images from his last night among the living since his reawakening. To share the details of his previous life now would result in more darkness for his soul than Rogan could ever have forced on him.
Mariah frowned. “The past might be the key to freeing you from the stone.”
“I am free,” he insisted.
“Only during the night, right?” She patted the rug beside her. He considered the risk of sitting beside her while she remained unclothed and scented with their lovemaking and decided instead to sit upon the couch.
“Yes,” he concurred. “During the daylight hours, I am naught but a spirit.”
“A phantom,” she decided.
“A what?”
She sat up and twisted so that her bare breasts taunted him mercilessly. “A phantom. It’s a being…”
Rafe closed his eyes and wished Mariah did not torture him so. When she yelped, he opened his eyes. She was now swathed in a pale silk robe.
“Hey!” she protested.
“You could catch your death,” he warned.
She smirked, but thrust herself to her feet and joined him on the sofa. “Is it safe for me to sit beside you now that I’m not naked?”
“Safe enough,” he replied, though he wondered. The storm within him had abated just as the squall had outside, and yet, the sexual connection he shared with Mariah had strengthened. Now that he knew the intensity of making love to her, he could not imagine denying himself the experience again, should the chance arise. He supposed he’d simply have to ensure that the opportunity did not present itself.
He scooted a few inches to the side.
She rolled her eyes. “Whatever,” she said. “Back to phantoms. Thanks to my mother, I know a great deal about the legends and lore of the magical and paranormal.”
“Your mother?”
Mariah leaned forward, eyeing the wine Rafe had conjured earlier. Rafe took the hint and poured a goblet for each of them, and delivered the bowl of fruit, which she cradled in her lap. “She’s a curator at a museum.”
“A curator?. Of a…?”
She pressed her lips together, thinking hard before she explained. “A curator is someone who catalogs and researches the items that museums put in their collections for the public to see. That rock, for instance.”
She nodded toward her dilly bag. “A museum that specializes in Romani history would probably pay a lot of money to have that stone. If museums that specialized in Romani history had a lot of money, which they generally don’t.”
He nodded, but he had no idea what she was talking about. She seemed to intuit this, because she patted his knee encouragingly. “Don’t worry. You’ll catch on soon enough. Suffice it to say that in her line of work, my mother encounters many items of mysterious, even magical origin. She reads and hears lots, too. When I was a teenager, I went to live with her, so I heard the stories, as well.”
“You did not live with your mother previously?”
“I don’t want to spit the dummy,” she said, taking a long sip of wine.
He arched an eyebrow.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’ve lived in the States for a decade, but I forget sometimes and revert to Aussie slang. Means I don’t want to lose my temper, so let’s pick another topic—unless you have another two hundred years for me to adequately explain the weirdness that was my childhood.”
Rafe suspected he did not have another two centuries for discourse, but he found that he wanted to know more about Mariah and what circumstances had pushed her to the life she now led. She was, at the core, a thief—one who cared little for ownership and more for survival. He’d known her for only a few days, but he’d gathered that she followed a nomadic existence not unlike that of his people, and not unlike the life he might have lived if not for the accident of his paternity.
He loved his father, but they’d had nothing in common. As much as the earl claimed to love the Gypsies, he had done little to plead for his people’s release from the king’s banishment. His father had argued that colonization was the best solution and that the Gypsies in Valoren were honest artisans with always enough to eat, but Rafe never could abide his imperialist attitude.
He shifted so that his back leaned against the armrest. “And a phantom?”
She mirrored his position, but pulled her legs onto the cushions, crossing them as one might when sitting around the village fire. He was thankful when she adjusted her robe modestly. “Well, there are lots of stories about them, but there’s no definitive definition. Some cultures equate phantoms with ghosts. Others view them as spirits of people sent to the other realms before their time, but who long to return to the earthly plane.”
Rafe nodded. “Sounds accurate.”
“But it doesn’t really matter what you’re called,” Mariah said, popping a grape into her mouth, chewing and then chasing the fruit with the wine. “The facts are thus: You possess magic, and I need some if I’m going to find those missing coins and get my arse out of Hector Velez’s sling.”