Dimly, she was aware that she was doing exactly what she had sworn not to do, but she didn’t care. She was a freelancer, an independent who didn’t answer to anybody.
“Dez?” This time his name was little more than a whisper.
Finally, he opened his eyes, which were pale and luminous. “Reese.” The word was a low rumble that seemed to come from the depths of the sensual storm raging inside her. “You’re really here.”
Relief had her smile going crooked. “Yeah. I’m here.”
He searched her face. “Is it now or then?”
Not sure how to answer that, she eased over him, pressed the cup to his lower lip. “Drink this. It’ll help bring you back the rest of the way.”
He drank and she stared, transfixed by the rhythmic working of his jaw and throat, the bunch and flow of the muscles in his arm when he steadied the cup, the striking contrast of the black glyphs and dark blue-green cuffs against his smooth, golden skin. Then the cup was gone, thudding on the rug as he let it fall so he could wrap his hand around her neck and draw her closer.
His eyes were locked on hers, his expression open and heartbreakingly vulnerable. But instead of speaking, he closed the last breath of distance between them. And kissed her.
Oh, God. He kissed her.
He tasted of the syrup, rich and intoxicating. His lips were firm, sleek, and devastating as they moved over hers, his tongue a fascinating slide of heat and texture. His body felt like sin incarnate, all hard muscles and that smooth, warm skin sliding against her as he curled an arm around her and caught her up against his body. His very naked, very aroused body. The kiss was deep and carnal, a full-on press of lips and tongue, heat and madness. The sensations blanked out everything but the taste and feel of him, the rippling shocks unleashed by the press of his lips and the slide of his tongue.
She didn’t trust his motives, didn’t trust
him
. But she wanted him more than she wanted her next breath.
Run!
said the practical, straitlaced,
boring
Reese Montana who had spent the past year wearing matchy-matchy suits and finding people for clients who probably could have managed the job with twenty bucks and a couple of Google searches. But the other side of her, the side that had just spent a month’s rent on black leather, knew damn well they were both drunk and didn’t give a shit, so she stayed put.
And kissed him back.
Dez was entirely aware that he wasn’t dreaming anymore. He was really holding now-Reese, really kissing her and sliding a hand beneath her shirt to find the warm curve of a breast, the peak of a nipple. All that was happening in the here and now, in a hotel room somewhere in northern New Mex. But the dream stayed with him, sending sex magic to race through his body and charge the air around them.
The dream and the magic bore the touch of the gods; the woman in his arms felt like an angel and tasted like a prayer. She filled the emptiness inside him, the hollow ache of having been alone for so long. She wasn’t the woman he’d dreamed of, the one he’d never hurt or betrayed. Yet somehow she
was
that woman—she had come after him and fought at his side, and now was right there in his bed, trying to heal him, to fix him.
Tightening his arms around her, he deepened the kiss, trying to tell her what that meant to him when he wasn’t really sure himself. Logic said that if he truly cared for her he would turn her loose. Because if he couldn’t take out Keban and the artifacts before the solstice, he would have to deal with the prophecy he’d spent half a lifetime running away from. Desire, though, didn’t give a shit about logic when lightning raced in his veins and a woman—
the
woman, the only one there had ever been for him—arched in his arms, pressing against him and kissing him back with wild abandon. A decade ago, he had been able to make himself stay away from her until the time was right, only it never had been. Now, he didn’t give a shit about the timing or whether it was right or wrong. He wanted her, here and now.
His honor was gone, his self-control out the window. She filled up the emptiness, sharpened the world around him, made him crazy. He wanted her, wanted to fill her, possess her, make her his own. Take her.
Take
her.
His blood thudded heavily in his veins as he kissed up alongside her jaw to her ear, then took her mouth again. She moaned, bit his chin, his jaw, then found his mouth again as she curled her calf around the back of his knee and moved her hips in a long, sinuous roll that left him bucking and shuddering against her.
The power of her response filled him, consumed him, had him rearing up and over her, and covering her body with his. Lightning arced as they met openmouthed in a hot clash of lips, tongue, and teeth that flashed heat to need, and from there to an absolute requirement: He had to have her like he had to have his next breath, the next beat of his heart.
And deep in his soul, a soft voice whispered:
Mine.
Reese was out of her mind, out of control, and she didn’t care. It felt so good to let go. Her better sense was long gone, her body turning to flames as she willingly lost herself. Dez was a furnace, an inferno; heat pumped off him in waves while she kissed him openmouthed and touched him along the lines of his sides, the dips at his hips and flanks. Groaning, he pressed into her, tormenting her with his thick length and the barrier of her clothing, cupping her ass and pressing at the juncture, rubbing through the heavy cloth to make her moan and pant into his mouth.
Unable to stand the torture, she surged up and over, rolling them so he was on his back. He yanked off her shirt, then her bra, and she rolled away to deal with her too-heavy combat pants, boots, socks, all of it, so when she came back to him they were skin on skin, bare to bare, her legs wrapping around one of his, holding them both in place.
He cupped her breast, making the room spin as he kissed her. He surrounded her, took her under, drowning her in layers of sensation as he stroked her body, cupped her naked ass, slipped a finger beneath and groaned at the back of his throat. Sensations blasting through her, she skimmed a shaking hand across the hard bud of a masculine nipple, enjoying the indrawn hiss of his breath, the way his hands went still for a second. Then he shuddered as she caressed his taut belly, made a wide, teasing detour, and then trailed her fingers across the faint wrinkles surrounding his prodigious sac, which was drawn tightly up in excitement and seemed to come alive beneath her touch.
“Yes,” he hissed against her mouth, gripping her hip, her shoulder, then digging his fingers into her hair to drag her mouth up to his for a fierce, wild kiss that tasted of sage and made her head spin. “Gods, yes.”
He was hugely thick where she wrapped her hand around him, long from base to tip, where he was wide and blunt, and pressed eagerly into her hand. She curved her fingers around him, felt a thrill when she couldn’t completely enclose him, another when he groaned and met her stroke with a jerky, desperate thrust.
There was slick wetness on her fingers, on her skin, between her legs where she gripped his thigh, rode it. She was feverish, her heart pounding with the desperation to take him inside her. There was no need for a condom; the magi used sterilization spells and didn’t carry disease. And, despite the faint pinch beneath her heart, there was no need to wait, no reason to go slow.
At his urging she parted for him, arched into his touch as he cupped her, his hand gliding across where she, too, was sleekly bare. He pressed his forehead to her, his breath an excited rasp. “Fuck, that’s sexy.”
Then he slid a finger inside her, worked her with his thumb and sent her cartwheeling. Light flared behind her eyelids as a hard, hot orgasm barreled through her, paralyzing her for a moment with its raging intensity. She bowed up into him and rode out the pleasure that washed through her as he kissed her, held her, worked her, the whole time whispering dark, earthy curses that became love words in his rasping voice.
Every inch of her was sensitized to the fluid slide of skin on skin as she rose over him. She spread her legs wide to straddle him, the move changing the sensations and sending new urgency licking through her. Then she leaned in so they were nose to nose as she reached down to touch him, stroke him, center him at the entrance to her body. He let her have the moment, his hands gently kneading her hips, his eyes steady on hers, warm in the afternoon sunlight, then clouding as she eased him inside. The blunt head of his cock stretched and filled her, setting off chain reactions that began at her wet clasp and flared outward. The tightness eased as she moved down his shaft, then returned when he was fully seated within her.
They fit together tightly, with a seamlessness that brought a prickle of tears, a churn of emotion that she fought back. This was real. It was magic.
She closed her eyes and let her head fall back, then began to move her hips gently, experimentally. Heat flared through her, ramping higher as he slid his hands to her waist, up to her breasts. A long breath shuddered out of her and she rocked against him.
“Fuuuck.”
As if unable to stay still any longer, he jackknifed up, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her hard and hot as he slid them, still intimately connected, to the edge of the mattress. He got one leg down, curled the other around behind her, and surged into her, his strong grip counterpointing the thrust. And again.
Heat detonated, wringing a moan from her. She floundered for a few seconds, awash in pleasure. They were face-to-face, belly-to-belly, locked in a kiss as he set a hard, fast pace that caught her up, swept her along, and left her no choice but to dig in and meet him stroke for stroke. She got a foot on the floor and used the leverage to buck against him, then cried out when he slid his hands down to cup her ass and exert a dark and dangerous pressure. Bucking against him, she whimpered against his mouth.
He rasped her name, his body shuddering, losing rhythm and then regaining it as he pounded into her, with her, taking them beyond the slap of flesh to a whiplash of pure energy that filled her mind and tightened her chest. Then he hit a sweet spot deep inside her, bringing a wave of searing pleasure, a gut-wrenching
oh, holy shit
of sensation. She dug her fingers into the heavy muscles of his shoulders and poured herself into a kiss as he found the spot a second time, then a third. And then she was coming in great, fluid waves of pleasure that crashed over her, rolled through her.
She cried his name on a long, guttural moan that should have belonged to another woman—someone who loved, and was loved. Then her orgasm coalesced and notched higher, wringing her boneless as he locked himself against her and came, shuddering against her, around her, inside her. “Reese,” he said. “Jesus gods, Reese.”
She turned her face into his, seeking his lips. They kissed for a long time, stayed locked together for even longer until, finally, his strung-tight body eased against hers and he pulled her down so they were wrapped together on the bed with her back to his front. He took an impossibly deep breath and let it out on a long, satisfied sigh. Then he wrapped his arms around her, and simply held her as the silence wrapped around them, bringing the smell of sage and black cohosh and the dragging fatigue of drugged sleep.
He was still holding her like that when she awoke the next morning, stone sober, with a single thought ringing in her too-clear head:
Oh, crap.
CHAPTER NINE
Moving quietly, heart thudding as she prayed he would stay asleep a few minutes longer, Reese slipped out of Dez’s bed and did the clothes-grope thing in the muddy light of predawn.
She had her hand on the doorknob when he said, “Sneaking out?” His voice was clear and cool, fully awake.
She froze for a moment, then flattened her hand on the door. “I thought it would be easier to hash this out later, over coffee and some work.”
“Probably would be.”
She turned back to find him sitting up in the bed, cross-legged, with the sheet pooled in his lap. The morning cast him in light and shadow, picking out the heavy ridges of muscle across his chest and abdomen. The edges of his pale irises had gone shadowy, intensifying his gaze and bringing a quiver of nerves, along with the realization that her instincts were silent on this one. “So let it be easy,” she said softly. “Let me go.”
“That was the one thing I never could do.” He hesitated, then said, “Yesterday, when you came in I was dreaming that we were fighting the
makol
together as a mated couple. When I woke up, there you were.”
Her throat tightened, but she forced a smile. “Turns out the antidote was also an aphrodisiac. I think we should chalk it up as: It happened. It was fun. It won’t happen again.”
Please let’s just leave it at that.
His eyes darkened. “Is that all it was?”
“It was . . .
”
She swallowed hard as mental doors she’d long ago soldered shut threatened to reopen. “What else could it have been?”
He rose and started pulling on yesterday’s clothes. Without looking at her, he said, “It was what I would have given anything for a decade ago.”
A slow churn in her stomach said
yes
. “And now?”
Sending her a sidelong look, he said, “If I asked you to, would you go back to Denver and wait for me to call when it’s safe?”
The heat—and even some of the vulnerability—faded as she realized she didn’t know whether he wanted her back in Denver for her own good, or his own. Probably both.
“I’m not trying to stay safe,” she said. “I want to make a difference.” Which was the truth even outside of their reunion—the Nightkeepers and their war were too important for her to walk away.
Still, though, saying the words sent an ache through her. She didn’t want to fight with him; she wanted . . . hell, she didn’t know what she wanted anymore. To find herself dropped into another lifetime, maybe, where things had been different all along. Which was about as likely as her suddenly developing magical powers of her own—as in, not very.