‘‘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.
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
