Cassandra's Dilemma (26 page)

“I love you.” She whispered the words. “I love you both, so much. Please don’t make me choose.”

Jacob closed his eyes. His silence stretched out between them, dense with all the darkness and pain of a past she couldn’t begin to understand. But she wanted to. She wanted to understand it.

She wanted to heal it.

Instead of answering her, he pushed her back on the bed, his mouth sealing over hers in a scalding assault that she welcomed. His lips tasted, his tongue explored, and his teeth nipped. She drew her knees up, spreading herself wide as he drove his cock inside her balls deep. She stretched to accommodate him, rising up to meet his tempestuous thrusts but giving him all the control.

She kept her eyes open, her hand stroking over his biceps to his shoulders and then raking down his back. Jacob’s hands cupped her ass, and he lifted her up for a better angle, driving his cock in with powerful thrusts that shook the bed. Her pelvis tilted to the ceiling, taking every mad drive until his thumb stroked over her clit and the world expanded and exploded with wild pleasure.

Cassie writhed, her pussy clenching like a fist on his swelling cock as he shouted his own release and filled her with hot jets of cum.

They lay in a tangle of legs and arms, his cock still buried deep within her. His heart thumped in time with hers, and the heat of his breath on her neck tickled. Jacob wasn’t a light man, but she loved the weight of him bearing down on her. He covered every inch of her body, and she couldn’t stop her fingers from trailing up and down his spine.

“A few minutes,” Jacob murmured into her throat. “Just give me a few minutes.”

Cassie laughed, her pussy flexing around him, and Jacob jerked up with a growl, his eyes sparkling with passion. Cassie loved the sight of it, the gold glinting in the depths of his eyes. They swirled and glittered like sunlight splashed on them, even in the curtained false darkness of the room.

His laughter fled as he gazed at her with such intensity. He adjusted himself up onto his elbows and caught her face when she would have turned it away. “What happened to your eyes?”

“I was blind, remember?”

“I do.” Jacob seemed to be picking his words carefully, but the hardness of his gaze sent a wave of unease through her. “Did you wear contacts before?”

“No. I’ve never needed them.”

“So you weren’t wearing colored contacts when I met you?”

“No. Why?”

Jacob hissed out an oath, sitting up and pulling her with him. He turned her face toward the mirror over the dresser across the room. She could see them both, arms and legs intertwined, Cassie astraddle his lap and her breasts crushing up against the wall of his chest.

But it was Jacob’s grim expression and Cassie’s eyes that arrested her. They weren’t just gold anymore.

They were glowing.

“Oh shit.”

“Oh shit, indeed,” Jacob agreed.

Chapter Sixteen

“What does it mean?” Cassie’s fingers dug into Jacob’s biceps. She couldn’t pull her gaze away from the mirror or the pair of golden orbs flaming back at her. Nothing about her eyes looked human.

Nothing.

“I don’t know.” Jacob’s words were not what she wanted to hear. She wanted him to come up with some great magical explanation, like the blindness spell or the Feth Felen, something, anything.

“What do you mean you don’t know?” The tinny note of hysteria that crept into her voice understated the matter, as far as Cassie was concerned. She dragged herself away from Jacob, rolled off the bed and onto her feet. Her legs went rubbery as she stumbled toward the mirror.

The glittering eyes glowing back at her didn’t change as she approached. Rapid blinking didn’t disperse their shine nor did tugging down one corner of her eye. Jacob’s shadow loomed up behind her in the mirror and his concerned gaze met hers.

“Let me see.” His hand was a light caress on her bare back, comforting her panic and stoking her desire in one simple motion. Her stomach twisted with need, and she sucked in a deep breath to steel herself. She needed answers, not seduction. Braced for the licks of fire that would leap up to kindle inside her, she let Jacob turn her around. He slipped his hands under her arms and hoisted her up until she sat on the cool faux wood of the dresser.

Jacob nudged her legs apart and closed the distance between them, his breath fanning against her lips and tasting of forbidden promises, but his eyes were all business. The gold flecks glinted in the rich-brown eyes. She loved to look at them.

His eyes were polished amber, filled with mystery, warmth, and haunted by gold flecks like hidden treasures just waiting to be mined for discovery. The gold flecks brightened closer to her as he stared into her eyes. His hands cupped her cheeks, gently urging her to turn her face to the left and then to the right.

“Well?” The word burst forth when she couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

“I really don’t know. I’m sorry.” The apology was the closest thing to a kind word he’d uttered. Cassie’s shoulders slumped.

“It’s not the blindness spell? The snaky one? Something else?”

He hesitated, but only briefly, before shaking his head. “No. This isn’t a spell affecting you, at least not an obvious one, and I’ve never heard of one that makes a person’s eyes glow. I’ve never seen anyone’s eyes glow like that.”

“Yours do.”

His eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. His gaze flickered past her face to the mirror as though assessing her comment. “My eyes aren’t glowing.”

“The gold flecks in them do. I noticed it earlier. They gleam, catch the light, and then seem to glow of their own accord. They’re really quite beautiful.” She could have swallowed her tongue when that description slipped free. The corner of his very masculine mouth turned upward.

“Beautiful, huh? Not really a word I would associate with my eyes.”

Cassie shrugged, feigning a nonchalance she certainly wasn’t experiencing sitting atop the dresser, naked, with Jacob pressed up between her legs, his mouth just centimeters from her own. What was it about the man that turned her mind to mush? She’d known him less than three days, and yet every touch sent her senses reeling.

Helcyon’s attraction, she got that. He was kind, chivalrous, and secure. A year’s acquaintance also offered a safety net, whether he was Fae or not. Jacob didn’t offer her kindness, chivalry, or security. Instead, it was all hot passion, brusque words, and searing looks.

Searing looks that turned her inside out and shut off her capacity for rational thought. Those looks were more addictive than any other vice. So totally different. But she loved them both. Her heart pinged. If only Helcyon were here right now so she could tell him. So they could settle this between the three of them. It would be perfect.

A nudge against her cheek brought her gaze back to the questioning look in Jacob’s eyes.

“Messing with the Fae can mess with your head. Does the world look different?”

“You mean are things glowing?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “Different. Unusual. Out of the ordinary.”

Cassie frowned, studying first Jacob then the room around them. The candles, burned down into puddles of wax on their holders, the cross-stitch circle that still occupied the floor, and the upturned bed next to the wall, and finally the bed they’d just shared with its disheveled sheets.

“No.” She shook her head slowly. Nothing looked strange or stranger than it was, considering the circumstances. His bag, tucked by the nightstand, carelessly forgotten in the aftermath of breaking the tracking spell and their subsequent lovemaking. Her gaze flickered back to the rumpled sheets, and blood rushed to her cheeks.

She could see them, twined together as Jacob urged her backward. It played out like a stop-motion film, bled of all its color, leaving only the gray bodies tugging at each other’s clothing. She’d torn at the belt holding up his pants. Her hands were everywhere, caressing, stroking, and grabbing.

Desire edged with embarrassment pooled in her belly. Voyeurism wasn’t usually a turn-on for her, but was it voyeurism when she was watching herself? Correction, when she was watching the muscles on Jacob’s back ripple as he fondled, caressed, and stroked her body. Her body stirred at the memory of what those hands could do.

“Cassie?” Jacob’s voice tugged her back from the precipice as his phantom body plunged into her. Ripples of pleasure rolled through her. Fingers bit into her cheeks. She resisted the urge to look away as her breath came in short bursting gasps, tingling on the knife edge of release. Blinking only accelerated the action.

Her mouth fell open, and Jacob’s face swamped her vision. His mouth took possession, plundering, nipping, and biting. The bite slapped away the images of their bodies throbbing together on the bed. She jerked back, gasping for air. Heat flooded her face, but Jacob held her still, not letting her look away.

“What did you see?”

Cassie fought the urge to put her hands up over her face. Her body trembled with need. Need kindled from witnessing their frenetic lovemaking. “I don’t understand.”

“Come on, Cassie-baby, talk to me. What did you see?” Whether it was the endearment or the tenderness stroking his words, Cassie flushed with guilt.

“I saw—” She choked back the words. How did she describe what she saw? It was impossible, right?

Oh, if I only had a dollar for every impossible thing I’ve seen the last few months. Is it really impossible?

The man did magic. She’d seen the snake coming out of her own chest. She’d seen the Feth Felen, the flickering bag, and the crazy SUV that wasn’t an SUV. She’d gone Underhill and been treated by a Teddy Ruxpin-like Brownie and dined with the Danae of the Fae. What the hell defined impossible now?

“You saw?” Jacob tapped her nose. “Cassie, focus on me. What did you see?”

“I saw us.” Those three awkward little words were embarrassing.

“Us?” Jacob twisted, his sharp gaze cataloging the room. “Was someone else in here?”

“No. I saw us. You and me.” She punctuated the words by touching a hand to her chest and then flattening her palm against his bare chest. His heart thumped under her palm, as though a puppy eager for the contact. She should have pulled her hand away, but she loved the feeling of his warm flesh and heartbeat beneath her hand.

It settled the frantic panic that wound her chest up tight. It grounded her.

“You saw us what?” Jacob slid one hand away from her cheek to cover the hand on his chest. She thought he would pull it away, but he simply cradled her hand, holding it more firmly to him. Her own heart ached at the simple tenderness in the gesture.

“I saw us making love, only it was like watching us in a black-and-white movie, all stop-motions, slowing and speeding up. Why am I seeing that?”

“You weren’t just picturing us together? Remembering?”

“No. I mean, it was like experiencing the memory.”

Jacob’s gaze dropped from her eyes to her nipples, which had pebbled as though in agreement. Her heart jumped, and a quiver of desire speared her. His gaze was like his hands, hot and roaming, leaving her aching in response.

“Could you feel me on your skin?” His voice turned husky, lowering an octave. His hands slipped away from her cheek and came to rest on either side of her hips, flattened against the cool wood.

“Yes.” Cassie swallowed. She could still feel him, gentle and demanding by turn.

Jacob exhaled slowly, the muscles in his arms bunching as though physically holding himself away from her. His forehead rested lightly against hers. She drank in the closeness, the strong spice of sandalwood and cloves tickling her nostrils.