I let my tongue swish around the underside for a bit before looking up. “Now that I have your attention . . .”
His head snapped up from where it had lolled back onto the pillow. “You’re stopping?”
“I just wanted to wake you up enough to talk,” I said, resting my hand on his thighs.
He glared at me. “There’s a word for what you’re doing, you know, and it’s not very nice.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t going to finish; I just wanted to talk to you before I do, because if the speed with which you fell asleep a short while ago is anything to go by, you’re not going to want to talk to me after I finish up with you.”
I could see he wanted to protest the point, but he knew he hadn’t a leg to stand on. Grudgingly, he said, “What is so important you have to stop?”
“Two things, really,” I said, tapping the fingers of one hand on his thigh. “The first is something that bothered me a bit at the time, but I couldn’t tell why. Allie put a special emphasis on the fact that Christian was not going to authorize the release of Mattias and Kristjana, and yet she went out of her way to tell me where they were.”
He snorted and flopped back onto the pillows, his eyes closed again. “I don’t see what’s confusing about that. Christian made himself quite clear.”
“Clear that he wasn’t going to release the two reapers?”
A slow frown creased the spot between his silky brown eyebrows. “No. Clear that his hands were tied, but he fully expected us to use our own resources to achieve the goal.”
I gawked at him a minute. He opened his eyes enough to give first his penis, then me a pointed look. “You’re not going to continue?”
“Not until I’m through being flabbergasted. Are you trying to tell me that Christian . . . what, he mind-talked to you? Told you to go ahead and take Mattias and Kristjana?”
“We don’t have that sort of a mental link.”
“Then how . . . ?”
“It was clear that what he wasn’t saying was what he wanted us to do.”
“It wasn’t at all clear to me. I thought Allie was telling me to break them out, not Christian.”
He grunted and looked rather hopefully at his privates.
I patted his penis, still distracted by this new avenue of thought.“OK, I get that Christian wants us to take Mattias and make a break for it. And presumably then go to Iceland and do the same for Kristjana, which is fine, because I have to go there for Ulfur anyway. But why does Christian want that? He said himself that if I weren’t a Zorya, I wouldn’t be able to pump the Brotherhood for information about Alec.”
Kristoff was silent for a moment. “There is a traitor amongst Dark Ones, someone working for the council who is betraying our interests to the reapers. We have known about this for a year. Christian clearly expects us to uncover who this mole is in the process of discovering Alec’s whereabouts.”
“You think the two things are connected?” I asked, gently stroking his thighs.
“Possibly,” Kristoff admitted, his eyes darkening. “Although, as you pointed out to the council, it wouldn’t necessarily have to be a Dark One who set me up. But they no doubt believe it is the same person.”
“So we take Mattias and Kristjana, and what? Use them as something to barter for Alec?”
“That thought had crossed my mind,” Kristoff said, his breathing quickening as I dragged my nails gently up his thighs. “There’s no real other use for the two of them.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Mattias might know something. If nothing else, I can play the wife card. That seems to hold a lot of meaning for him.”
Kristoff’s body tensed. He glared down the length of it to me. “You are not his wife.”
I sighed. “We went over this that night in Iceland. In order to receive the powers of a Zorya, I have to be married to a sacristan. Mattias is the sacristan. I have powers. Thus our marriage, the one between you and me, such as it was, was obviously not the legal one.”
His jaw worked for a moment.
“Trust me, I don’t like it any more than you do, but obviously Mattias places a lot of value on the whole marriage, so we might as well use that to our advantage.”
He ground his teeth. His hands fisted into the sheets.
“Oh, stop acting like a big, scary, pointy-toothed, jealous baby, and start thinking up an escape plan.”
“I am not jealous,” he growled, his eyes lighting from within. He grabbed my hips and hoisted me upward until my breasts were smashed against his face. He took one nipple in his mouth and flicked his tongue across the tip. And he is not your husband .
I clutched his shoulders, my entire body suddenly turning into one gigantic erogenous zone. My mistake. Would you please . . . Oh, yes.
His hands slid down my hips, around my backside, and down into depths that he had so recently plumbed. I bucked against his hands, trying desperately to hold on to my thoughts.
Do not fight your passion. Embrace it; don’t deny it, he murmured into my head.
I can’t help it. I know where this is going to end-more mind-blowingly fabulous sex, and given my jet lag and your insistence that you’re the same as any other male, we’ll both fall asleep afterward. We have to think of a plan, Kristoff. We have to think of a way out of here.
His mouth was hot and wet as he licked a path over to my other breast. I curled my fingers into his hair, nibbling his neck, sucking on his earlobe, my mind giving up the battle as the desire he stirred within me swelled upward.
I have a plan, he answered, opening his mind to me. I bit gently on a cord in his neck, the feeling of which drove me-drove him-nearly past the breaking point.
I slid backward, down his body, kissing a line down his belly. His muscles contracted tightly as I moved downward, soft little groans of pleasure filling my head. I paused for a moment when I got to his penis, smiling to myself at the sensations he was sharing.
Your plan involves a blow job. I meant we need to have a plan for escaping here with Mattias, finding Kristjana, and rescuing Ulfur.
Blow job first, then escape , he answered, a note of hopefulness lingering in the back of his mind.
I laughed at him, dipping my head down to take him into my mouth. I’ll give it a shot, but I don’t know if I’m any good at it.
His body stiffened for a moment, every muscle as hard as steel, and then suddenly I was lifted high over him, my knees straddling his hips, his penis poised to pierce me.
You’re good.
Kristoff, wait! I yelled, desperately trying to squirm my hips away from the ecstasy that I knew stood one thrust away.
Hunger had burst into being hot and deep in him, rising until it threatened to snap the thin shred of control he held.
I won’t drink from you, he said, a note of desperation evident in his thoughts.
No, it’s not that. I’m a big girl; I have lots of blood-you’re welcome to it.
Then why in the name of the saints are you stopping me when I know you want this as much as I do?
I almost sobbed, so desperate was I to feel the completion that I knew awaited me. “The plan! We can’t wait until morning to figure out what to do. We have to do something tonight, while people are asleep.”
He snarled a mental oath, then thought at me, images of us climbing down from the second-story window with Mattias, of guards distracted by Magda and Raymond, of us using the money he was supposed to have stolen to charter a plane to take us to California.
“No, we have to get Kristjana and Ulfur first. We’ll have to go to Iceland.”
The image altered to that of a fjord.
“And what about Magda and Raymond? I can’t leave them here by themselves to face Christian and Sebastian-”
Hurriedly, he shoved Magda and Ray in front of the fjord.
“What about-”
With a wordless roar he plunged me downward. All my protests vanished instantly, as I knew they would. Every fiber of my body was focused on his pleasure, my own driving it as he urged me on faster. He sat up, teeth flashing for a second before they pierced the skin of my shoulder, my blood flowing down his throat like the sweetest nectar, soaking into parched cells that had too long been starved. My fingers curled into the thick muscles
