Moonburn (26 page)

Red moved, his hands coming down to lift my right leg, changing the angle so he hit a place high up inside that blended pleasure and pain. I cried out, holding Red with all my strength as my orgasm flooded through me. A moment later, I felt him pulse inside me as the bones and muscles of our bodies shifted and changed.

“Hey, Doc?”

I opened my eyes. At some point, we had managed to roll off the bed, but Red had absorbed the shock of the
fall. We were human, which surprised me until I realized we were still partially dressed, Red in his torn jeans, me in the sweats and ripped flannel shirt. “What?”

His hand cupped the slight feminine curve of my belly. “Just thought I should tell you: I’m going to knock you up.”

I laughed, thinking he was joking. Red brought my hand to his penis, which was already beginning to stir. “What are you, a teenager?”

“I’m in heat.” He moved my hand up and down on his shaft, which instantly thickened. “So you don’t mind?” His sharp teeth found my ear.

“Mind what?” The scent of him was stronger now, intoxicating me. He came up on one elbow, tracing a delicate pattern over my breasts with his fingertips and making me shiver with renewed desire. I was dimly aware that there was something I should remember, some doubt or concern.

“Having my babies.” His pressed a kiss to the base of my throat, and whatever I had been trying to remember floated out of my consciousness. My body was very clear about its response to the idea of pregnancy; it contracted like a fist, as if it could pull the word into the core of me and keep it there.

“Nursing my babies.” Leaning down, Red pulled one nipple into his mouth and suckled it hard, sending another contraction of lust rippling through me. “Living with me as my mate.” Red turned his attention to the second breast, and as stupid as it was to let my body decide this, that appeared to be what I was doing.

Red closed his teeth gently on my nipple, and I moaned. “Hang on a sec.” Red gave me a last flick of his tongue. “There’s something I want to do first.” Red smiled, and I smiled back. Then he pulled up my sweatpants, lifted me in his arms, and carried me back to the bed.

“That was a good something.” I reached up my arms for him, but Red shook his head.

“That wasn’t it.”

I collapsed on the bedspread, spreading my arms and legs in surrender. “So do it, already.”

Red pressed his thumb to my lips. “First, tell me you want me.”

That was easy. “I want you.” I sucked his thumb into my mouth, and Red inhaled sharply. I pressed one foot against his erection, which was peeking out of his undone jeans. “Bad girl. Down.”

I reached for the buttons of his fly. “You want me down, I’ll go down.”

“Hold that thought a moment.” Red drew his switchblade from his back pocket and I blinked in surprise.

“What’s that for?”

Red wasn’t smiling. “Sounds like you don’t trust me, Doc.”

“I trust you,” I said, with as much certainty as I could muster.

“Good.” Red rolled away from me, and as I watched from the bed, he flicked a button in the bone handle, releasing the four-inch blade which had been pressed against Magda’s neck. The knife, an antique, was illegal in a bunch of states, but Red always carried it, the way other men carried Swiss Army knives. Up close, I could see the symbols carved in the blade as well as the handle. Red had once explained their meaning to me: the bear claw, the double diamond shape that some called the shaman’s eye, the geometric pattern known as coyote’s tracks, because you couldn’t tell its direction.

“Good, ’cause this would be dangerous if you didn’t have complete faith in me.” Red walked over to the fireplace and thrust the blade into the flames.

Oh, God, this was some kind of backwoods test of loyalty, like going out to the local tattoo shop to have
your lover’s name inked permanently into your flesh. I was guessing that Red had given up on my ever wearing his engagement ring, and had figured that nothing says “our love will never die” like an indelible mark of possession. Except that love still died, even when you had your sweetheart’s name branded on your skin. All that changed was the emotional scarring was made visible to the naked eye.

There was a creak of floorboards as Red walked back to me, the knife’s metal glowing red, then orange. Outside, the windows rattled with the force of the wind, and I found myself wishing that Red and I weren’t quite so alone. As I stared at the heated metal, I acknowledged to myself that behind all my practical excuses, there was another, more complicated reason why I hadn’t worn Red’s ring: I had been ambivalent about getting remarried so quickly. I’d made one mistake. I hadn’t wanted to make another.

And yes, I was still a little ambivalent. Maybe more than a little. Maybe that’s why you used to need a blood test to get a marriage license. If more marriages involved bloodletting, there would probably be far fewer divorces. “You know,” I said, hesitantly, “I’m not sure exactly what you have in mind here, but branding, tattoos—they’re really not my thing.”

I saw something flicker in Red’s eyes, as if he were doing a rapid calculation in his head. “You don’t need to receive the symbols, if you don’t want to. We could just draw a token amount of blood.”

I swallowed. “I don’t suppose we could just make love?”

Red shook his head. “This is a sacred rite.” His voice was oddly flat, as though he were disappointed in me. I realized that although Red had passed my test, I was failing his. In all the time I had been trying to decide
whether or not Red was right for me, I had never considered that he might decide I was not right for him.

“What are you going to do?”

“Marry you. The Limmikin way. We mingle our blood.” He stood there, self-contained, not attempting to convince me by word or touch, even though he must have known that either would have pushed me over the edge. I felt a wave of desire for him so strong that my arms ached to reach out for him, but I hesitated. My mother’s question came back to me: Is Red Mallin really the man you want to father your children?

My body’s answer was a resounding yes. The very thought of it made my womb contract in longing. And it was possible that we’d already made me pregnant. But as I’d told Hunter, above the neck was where I made decisions. In my head, I went through my mother’s objections:
That man would do anything to keep you. Lie, steal, cheat, kill
. On the other hand, my mother had been wrong about his primitive sense of loyalty: I had, indeed, given in to Hunter, and Red had forgiven me.

Unless this was a trick, and now Red intended to hurt or disfigure me as payback. I stared into his eyes, their heated gold shading into hazel as the blade cooled and I did not hold out my arm. He remained still a moment longer, and then folded the knife back into itself while his face closed down. “It’s all right, Doc,” he said, his voice a little hoarse. “I don’t blame you one little bit.”

An image came to me, then: Red, using that knife to whittle designs into a cradle while I sat in a rocking chair by the fire, my hands on the heavy moon of my belly.

“Red.”

He looked at me, his face resigned. “I don’t need to hear the explanation. I get it.”

I held out my left arm. “I want to do it. Marry me.”

Red’s eyed widened for a moment, and then he shook
his head. There were shadows under his eyes, and in them. “No, Doc, you don’t. You just don’t want to disappoint me, and that’s real sweet of you, but it’s not enough. If you do this with doubt in your heart, it won’t work.”

Whatever my earlier reservations had been, I was now overcome by the conviction that it was this man, soft-spoken and wry and capable, who should be the father of my children.

For a moment, I wondered whether I could trust
myself
. After all, I hadn’t just betrayed Red with Hunter, I’d betrayed myself. Maybe this choice, like that one, could be influenced by hormones that were clamoring for mating and breeding. But after looking at that possibility directly, I dismissed it. We can never know our own minds completely, but in all my life, I had never felt more certain of the course I should take. When I had taken my vows with Hunter, I had been half-delirious with happiness while Hunter had faced the officiating bureaucrat with a bemused smile. At the time, I had thought,
It doesn’t feel real
.

But this, this primitive, personal ceremony that required a drop of my blood, this did feel real.

I walked over to Red and knelt down at his feet. I knew that it was traditionally the man who did the kneeling, but hell, that was because traditionally, it was the man who had the power. In our relationship, however, I’d been the one holding all the cards. “There’s no doubt in me. I want this.”

Red looked down at me, and then reached out his hand to haul me up. “Abra, you can’t fake your way through this.” A muscle jumped in the side of his jaw. “If you’re not completely certain about this bond, it’s not just that it won’t work, it could be dangerous.”

I stayed where I was, at his feet, gazing up at him. “I am certain.”

“Abra, it took you five minutes to make up your mind.”

“And now it’s made up.”

“It’s all right, honey.” His hand stroked my hair. “We can still make love. It’s not all or nothing.”

“Why are you lying to me?”

That startled him. “I’m not—”

“Then you’re lying to yourself. If we stop here, we won’t just stay as we were. Okay, I admit it. Maybe there still is a fraction of a doubt somewhere inside of me. I’ve been burned before. But even if it won’t work this way, even if it’s dangerous, I want to take that chance.”

Red looked down at me a moment longer, then knelt down and embraced me, rocking me back and forth. “Oh, my girl. My beautiful girl.” Red kissed the inside of my wrist, then worked his way up to the crook of my elbow. “Take off your clothes.”

I did, but not as quickly as he did. Naked, I gave him my left arm.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “That was the key—you trusting me.”

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “So the blade … it’s symbolic?”

“Not exactly.” Red buttoned up his jeans, then drew his switchblade from his back pocket. I blinked in surprise. I felt a sharp pain and made a high-pitched sound as Red tightened his grip on my arm and made a neat, small slice on the inside of my elbow. As the blood welled up, my gaze flew up to meet Red’s. He had made a horizontal cut across the vein, but before I could say anything, the knife flashed as he made a vertical slice across the crease of his own elbow.

“Are you insane?” For a moment, all I felt was the astonishment that he had actually cut me. It occurred to me, belatedly, that this was payback.

Red shook his head, then pressed his mouth against the wound, drawing the blood to the surface. I saw his eyes go wolfish with the taste of me, and my animal nature responded with a warm rush of arousal. I was not thinking as a woman, but as a wolf when I brought my mouth to his arm, filling my nostrils with the scent. I ran my tongue over the blood slowly welling from his cut, and then planted my mouth more firmly on his flesh. Red gave a low grunt, pain or pleasure or both, and then we both broke away, panting hard.

I was vaguely surprised to realize that my arm burned a little, and that the room had grown hazy. I never grew faint at the sight of blood.

“What is this?”

“Magic.” With his knife, Red cut a strip from the bottom of the shirt I had been wearing and wrapped it around our arms, binding us together. Then, taking my face in his free hand, Red kissed me with such tenderness that I knew that with him, it was more than the pull of moon and scent and heat. This was intensely personal.

“I know it’s probably a little late to ask, but the danger … does the fact that I screamed out ‘are you insane’ mean my hand is going to fall off or something?”

I felt Red’s chuckle against the skin of my throat. “No.”

“Would I know if I were still in danger, or has it passed?”

“How do you know I meant you were the one in danger?” His lips dropped to the hollow of my throat.

Realization came over me in a cold wave. “You mean you’re the one who … I put you in danger and you never said …”

“Doc.” His lips claimed mine, and he kissed the breath out of me.

“What?” I came up, gasping for air.

“Shut up.” He kissed me again, his free hand tangled tightly in my hair, a welcome, anchoring pain.

“Please, please, please.” I pulled Red on top of me, trying to undo his jeans. With my left arm tied to his right, this was a little like participating in a carnal three-legged race.

“Easy, easy,” Red said, a hint of laughter in his voice.

“Fuck easy,” I snarled, too wound up to play nice.

Something flared in his amber gaze, turning his eyes golden. He entered me in one quick thrust, so roughly that it would have hurt both of us if I hadn’t still been moist from the last time. But I was ready for him, more than ready, and his almost violent movement sent off wild bursts of pleasure inside of me, the tensile strength of his wiry muscles as he worked himself in and out of me pushing me back along the floor with each heavy thrust. I was beyond pain, and as I crossed my ankles at the small of Red’s back, I lost myself in the rhythm of his pumping hips, in the heavy, slapping sound of flesh against flesh, and Red’s low, hoarse steady chant of curses or prayers. I planted my heels on the floor, rising to meet Red’s thrusts, trying to get him deeper, and then I felt something shift inside, and Red’s chant grew harsher. As the pleasure began to climb, I realized that whatever Red was saying, it wasn’t in English. My eyes flew open, and to my shock, I saw that as Red plunged in and out of me, we were blurring together, our outlines blending and fusing. I blinked, and it appeared as though we were composed of glowing points of color and light, as if the very molecules and atoms of our being had become visible, and for a moment I thought: Maybe we’re shifting. We had shifted during sex before—in fact, it was pretty usual for orgasm to trigger the change—but this felt very different. This was as though the very essence of our beings was mingling and combining
and recombining. I no longer knew where Red left off and I began.