Nightkeepers (46 page)

‘‘I don’t know.’’ He shifted so he could look into her eyes. ‘‘Which would be easier to hear?’’

She exhaled. Nodded. ‘‘Yeah. Doesn’t really matter, does it? It’s just . . . I can’t help thinking that if I’d gotten the darkness I could’ve handled it better. I was older and stronger; I should’ve—’’

‘‘Hush.’’ He pressed his lips to her forehead. ‘‘What’s done is done. We go on from here.’’

She said, ‘‘I don’t suppose any of the trainees got time travel as a talent last night.’’ It was both a wistful thought and an offer to change the subject.

He gave a rumble of sad amusement. ‘‘Unfortunately that’s not in our skill set. As of last night, I have one fire starter, one invisible, a seer, a spell caster, and seven warriors. Sven got a talent mark nobody’s ever seen before, and I’m the local teleport.’’

‘‘And the guy in the apartment?’’

‘‘Red-Boar got him fixed and wiped his memories.’’ He paused. ‘‘Anna came back with me. I don’t know how long she’ll stay, but she’s here now.’’

‘‘I’m happy for you,’’ Leah said, feeling a catch in her throat. ‘‘Brothers and sisters should stick together.’’ Then, knowing they couldn’t stay curled up in the royal suite forever—tempting though that might be on many levels—she said, ‘‘What happens now?’’

He was silent for a moment, then said, ‘‘I need to talk to Anna, and see where her head is at. She got her mark on the way through the barrier, but an
itza’at
’s sight can be a tricky talent. If she’s not committed to the magic, it won’t work.’’ He paused. ‘‘Then I need to sit down with her, Jox, and Red-Boar and lay out your situation. ’’

‘‘My ‘situation,’ ’’ she repeated. ‘‘Is that what we’re calling it?’’ Acid burned at the back of her throat. ‘‘I suppose it does sound better than, ‘We’ve got two options: Option one, I die before the equinox and the god goes free, or option two, the god and I both die during the equinox and take the skyroad with us, meaning that there will be no Godkeepers ever, and pretty much ensuring the end of the world as we know it.’ ’’

He tightened his arms around her. ‘‘You’re not alone in this, okay? We’re going to find a way.’’ He sounded angry, but not with her, she knew. With the situation. The whole miserable, sucky situation they’d found themselves in.

She pushed away and levered herself up on her elbows, so she was braced above him looking down. ‘‘And if we can’t?’’

‘‘We will,’’ he said, and there was such certainty in his voice that she was tempted to believe him.

But saying something didn’t make it the truth, even if the guy saying it was magic.

‘‘Your duty is to the gods first,’’ she said, ‘‘then your people and mankind. I’m pretty far down on that list.’’

‘‘Trust me, I know what the king’s writ says.’’ He reached up and cupped her jaw in his palm, and she could feel the ridges of the sacrificial scars from the night before, rough against her skin. ‘‘But you said it yourself— this is a new day, with modern men and women playing the role of Nightkeeper. Some of the old ways simply don’t apply now. Maybe it’s time to make up a few new rules.’’

Tightening his grip, he urged her down, his eyes darkening with sensual intent.

Heat speared through her. Lust and frustration, her constant companions since she’d come to Skywatch, rose to the surface and her skin prickled with awareness, with anticipation.

But she stilled as the reality crashed in on her, chilling her to her soul. ‘‘You’re in bed with me because you think there’s no point in our staying away from each other, that you’re going to have to—’’

‘‘No,’’
he interrupted, tightening his fingers on her jaw before she could pull away. His eyes went dark, his voice rough. ‘‘No, I don’t think that. I
won’t
think that. But last night when the
ajaw-makol
went after you, I realized that it doesn’t matter whether we’re lovers or not. You’re already too important to me. Losing you wouldn’t just be the greatest sacrifice; it’s simply not an option.’’

‘‘Oh,’’ Leah said, the word coming out on a long, shuddering breath. Just ‘‘oh,’’ because what else was there to say? Longing coalesced inside her, a bone-deep desire to be the woman who could love him. Scrambling to find distance and reason, she said, ‘‘It’s the god. Kulkulkan. He’s trying to reunite himself on earth by bringing the Godkeeper of his light half together with her Nightkeeper mate.’’

‘‘Maybe, maybe not. But more than that, this is us.’’ He shifted and sat up so they were eye-to-eye when he said, ‘‘It’s just you and me right now, Blondie. What do you say?’’

There was a ton left to say, she knew, a whole list of reasons why their being together complicated far more things than it simplified.

But in that moment, alone with him in the glassed-in solarium with the late-summer sun splashing down around them through privacy-tinted panels, it didn’t seem to matter that a future looked damn near impossible. What mattered was the two of them together. And the question that hung in the air between them.
What do you say?
he’d asked, and she had no answer for that, because ‘‘yes’’ was too simple a word for what was between them.

So she leaned in. And touched her lips to his.

The kiss detonated something inside her. The first touch of tongues brought heat screaming, and need.

And rationality was lost. There was only desire.

They’d kissed before. She already knew his taste and the feel of him against her. But it was different this time—there was an edge of desperation when he slid his hand up to fist in her hair.

Heat flared, ripe and dangerous, and need was sharpened with the knowledge that their days were numbered.

Suddenly the sun was too bright, the room too open, the sparse furnishings too modern. Leah’s heart beat with the rhythm of wooden drums, and that golden place inside her where the dying god lived had her rising to her feet and stretching out a hand to him. ‘‘Come with me.’’

He stood without a word and followed her to the private temple.

The torches flared as they stepped inside, reflecting their images from the black stone mirror—Leah tousled and bed-ready in a T-shirt that hit the tops of her thighs, Strike looking dark and forbidding and dead sexy in all black.

Then she turned and hiked herself up on the altar as she had done before. Only this time when he moved up against her, so her knees bracketed her hips and they were eye-to-eye, there was no thought of holding back or turning back. There was only the heat spiraling up toward madness as they kissed, straining together.

Leah moaned, the small, vulnerable sound escaping before she could call it back.

‘‘That’s it,’’ he said thickly, nipping lightly at the side of her neck. ‘‘Tell me where and how and I’m there for you, Blondie.’’

He rocked his hips against her, creating torturous friction. She arched into him, offering herself to him even as she tugged at the hem of his T. ‘‘Hope you weren’t too fond of this.’’ She grabbed a corner of the fabric between her teeth, bit down, and used her hands to yank the material apart.

The shirt tore neatly up the middle, all the way to the reinforced collar, which she parted with a quick jerk, leaving the fabric hanging off him on either side, baring his heavily muscled torso and the faint line of masculine hair that ran down the center of his ripped abdomen and disappeared beneath the waistband of his jeans.

When their eyes met, she grinned. ‘‘Sorry about the shirt.’’

‘‘Screw the shirt; that was hot.’’ He got a couple of handfuls of her shirt and drew it up and off over her head while she nipped at the strong line of his throat and jaw.

Glorying in the feel of him, the reality of him, she suckled his skin, reveling in the harsh rattle of his breathing and the stroke of his hands as he caressed her hips and sides, then traced inward to touch her aching breasts with a soft skim of pressure, a rough hitch of pleasure. Her nipples tightened harder still beneath his touch and she rocked against him, moaning deep in the back of her throat, though she didn’t let the sound free.

‘‘Did you dream of this?’’ he demanded, rearing up so they were pressed chest-to-chest, staring into each other’s eyes. ‘‘Did you dream of me?’’

‘‘You know I did.’’ She kissed him, wet and hot and openmouthed, stroking the bare skin of his shoulders and back beneath the ruined shirt, which he shrugged off and tossed aside. ‘‘I dreamed of us beneath the stars.’’

‘‘Tell me,’’ he whispered, his breath hot against her throat as he stripped off his jeans, then her underwear.

‘‘I slept in the attic,’’ she said between kisses. ‘‘Under a skylight. I touched myself and thought of you.’’

‘‘Show me.’’ His voice was harsh, his excitement vibrating to her core.

At any other time, with any other man, she would’ve told him he was dreaming. But because it was here and now, with the man she knew better than anyone, yet not at all, she took his other hand in hers. ‘‘Like this.’’

She guided him to her breasts, showed him whispered touches and long, slow strokes. She was aware of the firelight and magic around them, and the warrior who stood against her, watching with fierce intensity when she spread her legs wider, opening the place where she was already wet and wanting. She guided him there, guided him until he was touching her the way she’d touched herself up in the attic, the way she’d dreamed of him caressing her so many times before.

Soon light and lingering wasn’t enough, and she pushed his hand against herself harder, quickening the tempo. Sounds broke free—a gasp, a moan—and needs coiled tighter within, and she whispered, ‘‘Condom?’’ They’d had unprotected sex once before, and their blood had mingled, but there was no sense being stupid about the pregnancy thing, especially under the circumstances.

He grinned. ‘‘Great minds and all that.’’ Heat coursed through her as he pinned her with his body, reached across to his discarded pants, and retrieved the flat square of a wrapped condom. When he withdrew it from his pocket, there were multiple crinkles, and three others fell out.

Leah found a grin amid the heat, amid the deadly seriousness of it all. ‘‘That’s optimistic. I guess you planned ahead.’’

As he dealt with the protection, he touched his lips to hers and whispered, ‘‘I have faith.’’

Ignoring the faint twinge that statement brought, Leah leaned into his kiss, into the heat, and murmured her pleasure when he shifted against her and poised himself for entrance. Her body ached with need, lending a sharpness to the desire as she looped one leg around his hips, urging him home.

Yet still he paused, holding himself away from her.

Frowning, she opened her eyes and found herself caught in his.

‘‘There,’’ he murmured. ‘‘That’s better.’’

The connection stripped her bare. Claustrophobia threatened, fluttering panic at the edges of her consciousness. She scrambled for a joke, for a snippy comment that would reduce the moment to what it should have been—sex between two consenting adults who liked and respected each other, who desired each other, who had common goals.

‘‘Don’t.’’ He touched her lips. ‘‘Don’t try to make this less than it is.’’

Don’t try to make it more,
she would have said, but he moved before she could, sliding into her and disrupting all rationality with the feel of him. The reality of him. His hard, thick length filled her, stretched her, set off neural detonations within her that took away speech, took away thought, and tunneled her vision so all she could see was the fierce love in his eyes when he took her. Claimed her. Made her his own.

Her inner muscles clamped onto his invading length, stroking him as he thrust and withdrew, thrust and withdrew, each time seating himself deeper and deeper still until—
Yes, there
.

Her breath whistled through her teeth on a hiss of pleasure, and she changed the angle, drawing him deeper and watching his eyes go hot with the new sensations.

He growled low in his throat and increased the tempo of his thrusts, sliding in and out of her, simultaneously touching her core and her clit with each drive home, coiling the long-denied orgasm so tightly her body became a vibrating knot of tension. The sensation built, then faded into the hot, tingling numbness her body hid behind in the final few seconds before implosion.

Her mind blanked. Her senses spun with the awe of it, with the hugeness of sensation as everything inside her paused for one. Breathless. Moment.

And then it came, she came, the rush of pleasure starting in her fingers and toes and all the places where they touched, where they strained together. The shimmer coalesced inward, rushing to the point inside where she gripped his cock with the first long, drawn-out pulse.

She said something, maybe his name, maybe something more dangerous, but she was beyond knowing, beyond caring, crying out as the inner contractions sped up, playing him, taunting him. He grew impossibly thick, impossibly hard, and his whole body went tight as he bellowed and came with her, within her. His orgasm caught the tail end of hers, kicking it back into the stratosphere, cramping her, wringing her with wave after wave of pleasure that held her paralyzed. Helpless.

Fulfilled.

When it was over, Strike muttered something and dropped his forehead to her shoulder. They leaned into each other as the torches continued to heat the air around them. A high, golden hum touched Leah’s soul for a moment, then was gone, leaving her feeling strangely empty and unsettled.

‘‘You’re not in this alone, Blondie,’’ he murmured against her neck, stroking a hand along her back in a gesture that was simultaneously reassuring and possessive. ‘‘You’re mine now.’’

But instead of making her feel better, his words gave her pause, warning her that none of this was simple. Nerves tightened in her belly, bringing the sense that what they’d just done had gone too far, that it’d shifted something that shouldn’t have been moved. ‘‘Being your lover doesn’t make me a Nightkeeper.’’