Skykeepers (45 page)

So she softened against him, trailing her hands down his body and up again to toy with the hair at his nape. They were aligned hard to soft; she cradled his erection between her legs, held him there by wrapping her legs around his waist as they kissed, again and again. She tugged his shirt free and ran her hands beneath, her blood firing at finally—finally—being able to touch him like this, and trust that he wasn’t going to pull back this time.

Then he did pull back, but only far enough to break the kiss and say against her lips, “I applaud the idea of the kitchen, but would the chef mind transferring this to her bed?” He was smiling, but his forest green eyes were intent on hers, making the question far more serious than it seemed.

She got it, then. Twice before when they’d been together, and he’d been fighting the Other and the silver magic, they’d grappled with lust, with him standing, her pinned up against a wall. Warmth shimmered through her at the knowledge that he wanted this to be different, that
he
wanted to be different.

Smiling, she slipped off the counter, pressing full-bodied against him as she did so. Then she took his hand, feeling the ridges of their palm scars rubbing with sensual friction, and she led him to her bedroom.

There, gauzy curtains darkened the room, which was dominated by a big bed covered with a verdant green bedspread and a small army of pillows.

When they reached the bed, she turned to face him, and they stood there, staring at each other for a moment that spun out into temptation. Then, as though finally catching up with himself, he exhaled a long, slow breath that did little to release the tension gripping his powerful body. His hands came up to bracket her face; his lips softened beneath hers in a gentle, achingly tender kiss. Within moments, though, their kiss hardened to a demand and his arms came around her as his mouth fused with hers. And all she could think was,
Thank the gods
.

Heat leaped within her as he gathered her against him, then bore her down to the bed, so they were wrapped together, straining together, trying to get closer and closer still, despite the tactile barrier of their clothes. His taste exploded across her senses; his scent filled her. She caressed him, dragging her fingers through his hair, clutching at his wide shoulders.

His sleeveless shirt was slick to the touch, molding to his muscles, making her very aware of his leashed power. She sensed his desire and felt the sharp excitement of his sex magic as they boosted each other. There was no hint of the foreign silver magic, adding to her bone-deep certainty that this was right. Call it hormones or magic, or maybe something more—she needed to feel alive, to take something for herself after so long. More, she needed to take him, and knew he needed her. She’d seen the emptiness inside him as he’d looked into a future and seen only impossible choices.

She might not be able to make those choices for him, but she could ease him in the interim. They could ease each other, having each spent far too long alone.

He pinned her, pressed into her. She felt the hardness of his chest, his arms, his thighs, and the long length of him. Hooking a leg around his hips, she opened to him with no thought of subtlety or mystery. She wanted him; he wanted her. They didn’t need to make it any more complicated than that. It was a freeing thought.

The mattress yielded at her back. He covered her with his body, pressing her into the bedding, kissing her the whole time, moving from her lips to her cheek to the line of her jaw, then the soft, sensitive spot behind her ear. She arched against him as heat roared, and behind it, the saber rattle of a military march that she now knew wasn’t his theme song; it was hers. The warrior’s march with the softness of strings. Awash in sensation, in the flow of
ch’ul
and life, she slid her hands down and tugged his shirt free of his waistband, and ran her hands beneath, this time without the constraints of body armor. His skin was soft and slick in places, roughened by masculine hair in others, and everywhere it covered the bunch and flow of muscles, the hardness of bone.

They twined together—touching, seeking, tasting—with a rawness she hadn’t expected, a primal possessiveness. When he kissed her, she felt consumed. When he ran his hands beneath her shirt, and up to touch the sides of her breasts, then inward to cup them, tease them, she felt branded, owned. And when he shifted to come down atop her, then held her face in his hands and looked deep into her eyes, she felt his hands tremble, and saw a question in his eyes.

She caught his wrists, felt his pulse thrum beneath her thumbs, and was conscious that she was touching his marks, the stone and the warrior. “What is it?” she asked.

“Nothing.” He leaned in and touched his lips to hers, softly. “This is where I want to be right now.”

It wasn’t a vow of forever, not even a hint of something beyond tonight. But somehow it was as romantic as the most fervent promise.

Keep it simple
, she told herself, and forced her lips to curve in a smile. “This is where I want to be too.”

And then it
was
simple. Her body knew what it wanted, what felt good. Their magic knew pleasure, and how to seek it. The music added rather than distracting, an inner sound track that she suspected was hers alone. She eased his shirt up and off, and gloried in the feel of his masculine skin beneath her fingers, beneath her lips. They shifted together, then eased apart so she could slip out of her T-shirt and pants. Sasha moaned at the arousing contrast of the cool material of his pants against the sensitized skin of her inner thighs. They rolled across the wide expanse of mattress, feasting on each other, drawing ruthless pleasure.

Gentle turned inciting; tender turned demanding, and it became all about the heat and the flash, and the flare of magic. He moved down her body, nipping and touching, caressing and teasing. She moaned and arched against him, tried to touch him, but he shifted away. “Let me,” he said, his voice a rasp of passion as he moved between her legs. “Just let me.”

She would’ve argued, but then his tongue found her, and speech was lost to a low moan of surrender.

He gripped her thighs and spread them wide, then ran his hands up to cup her buttocks, lifting her, opening her to his mouth. He feasted, stroked, tasted, touched, all with a raw, carnal skill that brought incredible pleasure. She clutched his hair; she wasn’t sure whether she meant to hold him still or draw him up her body. Then there was no more plan, no more thought, nothing but the coil of pleasure that drew tighter and tighter still within her.

He worked her ruthlessly, artfully with his hands and mouth, his clever fingers and precise knowledge of the female form, stringing the wire tighter and tighter still within her. The humming within her became a melody. Then she was crying out and shattering, pulsing against him, around his thrusting fingers and low, exultant cry.

The orgasm went on and on, gripping her, keeping her splayed out in pleasure. He moved away from her, out of her, shimmying up her body and letting her feel his hardness, his desire. He drew his lips along her breasts, the underside of her jaw, the sensitive spot behind her ear, and then her mouth.

She poured herself into the kiss, putting into it her pleasure and desire, the need to have him within her. His breath rasping in his wide chest, his flesh tight and hard all over, he rose above her and paused there, the blunt head of his shaft nudging at her opening. “Open your eyes,” he ordered harshly. She did, though part of her had wanted to hide in the darkness behind her eyelids.

Their gazes caught and held, and a dangerous, treacherous warmth kindled in her chest, warning her that this wasn’t just sex, couldn’t be, at least not for her. And a piece of her had to believe it wasn’t just sex for him, either. The look in his eyes, the open pride in his face, his total focus on her—that had to be more, had to be the same sort of connection she’d felt that first time, that she felt now.

Then he thrust within her and she arched on a cry of pleasure, of completion. The orgasm echoes that had left her flesh soft and pleased now reversed themselves and drew inward, coiling tight around the point where he invaded her, possessed her, drove her up and over another wave of orgasm, then followed her over the crest with a cry that might’ve been her name, might’ve been something else.

They came together, wrapped in each other, hearts hammering in unison, bodies shuddering. Sasha pressed her face against his hot throat, feeling his pulse against her cheek, feeling him throb within her. The humming melody became a song, familiar and lovely, but she didn’t need the music or the magic to know that this was it for her, that he was what she’d been meant to find, that despite—or perhaps because of—their mismatches, they were a match. It was fate, she thought, riding high on the buzz of pleasure and the magic she was only just beginning to touch. Destiny. And if that was the case, she thought, she was in deep shit, because she had a feeling Michael didn’t want to be anybody’s destiny. Not even his own.

Don’t
, she told herself, derailing the negative thought train before it could fully form.
Don’t make this more—or less—than it is. For once in your life, just enjoy the moment
.

So she did. She enjoyed the moment that he eased away and kissed her again, enjoyed the moment when those kisses became more, when casual caresses gained purpose, when postcoital bliss morphed to foreplay almost without transition. And she enjoyed the moment he came deep inside her, not just because she was locked in the throes of her own long, shuddering orgasm, but because this time she was sure he called her name.

Later, much later that night, after they’d turned to each other a third time and were wrung limp with pleasure, she said softly, “Promise me one thing?”

“What?” To her surprise, he sounded more curious than wary.

“Promise me you won’t go into the scorpion spell alone. Promise you’ll tell me, or if you can’t tell me for some reason, you’ll tell Strike. Or Jox. One of the three of us.”

He nodded. “Yeah. Okay, yeah. I promise.” Then he leaned in and kissed her again, and again. Then he loved her again. And in that moment, she felt that she’d come home, at least for a while.

In the week leading up to the winter solstice, the magi prepared for their singular purpose: get the library scroll from the First Father’s tomb and call the Prophet.

Rabbit did his damnedest to talk Strike into letting him try the scorpion spell too, but the plan was vetoed when the royal council decided it would be far better to wait until after the Nightkeepers secured the library. Gods willing, there would be a better option contained within it.

Rabbit was pissed, but as far as Michael could tell, that had as much to do with Myrinne’s deciding to stay on campus a few extra days past the beginning of the holiday break as it did with the king’s decision regarding the spell. There seemed to be more trouble in paradise, but when Michael had asked after her, he’d gotten his head bitten off. He hadn’t followed up, figuring Rabbit deserved his privacy if that was what he wanted. Besides, he didn’t think the younger mage would appreciate his opinion of Myrinne, which started with, “She’s not,” and ended with, “that into you.”

Michael and Sasha, on the other hand, were very into each other. It was the perfect setup, as far as he was concerned; they took each day as it came, enjoying each other without reservation, but also without expectation. Each morning, though, he awoke determined to have another day with her. And then another. He thought she was coming to trust him, reveled when she let down her guard and let herself hold onto him an extra moment, or lean on him for power or help.

When they weren’t in bed together, they worked together, along with the others, working out what plans they could for the solstice. The three-year countdown was bearing down on them freight-train fast. The only thing they knew for certain was that Iago wanted him and Sasha at Paxil Mountain. The question was: Which was the better option, using them as bait to lure him into a trap, or sequestering them safely away at Skywatch? As far as Michael was concerned, the answer was obvious: she stayed at Skywatch and he went to the temple in case there was a fight. Splitting them up would make it harder for Iago to grab them both.

“Or you could stay here and I could go to the temple,” Sasha had pointed out. “I know the site better than you do.”

In the end, it was decided that they would both go to the temple, not the least because the
winikin
didn’t want him left behind if the other magi were out in the field. A storeroom wasn’t going to be able to hold him if the Other used the power of the solstice to break through. With that decision made, they turned their attention to planning for the actual solstice ceremony. In going over what Ambrose had told Sasha, Jade locked onto the word “conduit.” Ambrose had said the scroll would summon the Prophet, but that the solstice was required for the formation of some kind of conduit. The original assumption was that the Prophet was a sort of guiding spirit, and the spell would open some sort of portal leading to the library, maybe because it had been hidden within the barrier, much as Skywatch had been for so many years. That, however, wasn’t quite right, according to the archivist’s research.

“We were correct in guessing that the library was tucked into the barrier,” Jade said during one of the daily planning sessions Strike had instituted. “But this spell isn’t reversible like the one that hid Skywatch, or that we believe Iago has used to hide his hellmouth. There’s no way to bring the library back to earth. Instead, we need to . . . deputize someone as a go-between, I guess you could say. This person, the Prophet, becomes a conduit capable of channeling the necessary information.” Which sounded simple enough, but Michael heard the reservation in her voice.

“What’s the catch?” he asked.

“It’s a soul spell. As in, it requires the soul of a magic user to be destroyed; the magic animates the shell, using it as a golem of sorts. That golem is the Prophet.” Jade paused. “It’s the only Nightkeeper spell I’ve come across that requires an actual human sacrifice. More, the victim’s soul doesn’t go to Xibalba, the sky, or even Mictlan. It’s destroyed. There’s no afterlife, no nothing. In the case of a Nightkeeper, the person’s experiences aren’t even added to the bloodline
nahwal
’s collected wisdom. They quite simply
end
.”