Nightkeepers

ahead.’’

As he dealt with the protection, he touched his lips to hers and whispered, ‘‘I have faith.’’

Ignoring the faint twinge that statement brought, Leah leaned into his kiss, into the heat, and murmured her pleasure when he shifted against her and poised himself for entrance. Her body ached with need, lending a sharpness to the desire as she looped one leg around his hips, urging him home.

Yet still he paused, holding himself away from her.

Frowning, she opened her eyes and found herself caught in his.

‘‘There,’’ he murmured. ‘‘That’s better.’’

The connection stripped her bare. Claustrophobia threatened, fluttering panic at the edges of her consciousness. She scrambled for a joke, for a snippy comment that would reduce the moment to what it should have been—sex between two consenting adults who liked and respected each other, who desired each other, who had common goals.

‘‘Don’t.’’ He touched her lips. ‘‘Don’t try to make this less than it is.’’

Don’t try to make it more, she would have said, but he moved before she could, sliding into her and disrupting all rationality with the feel of him. The reality of him. His hard, thick length filled her, stretched her, set off neural detonations within her that took away speech, took away thought, and tunneled her vision so all she could see was the fierce love in his eyes when he took her. Claimed her. Made her his own.

Her inner muscles clamped onto his invading length, stroking him as he thrust and withdrew, thrust and withdrew, each time seating himself deeper and deeper still until— Yes, there.

Her breath whistled through her teeth on a hiss of pleasure, and she changed the angle, drawing him deeper and watching his eyes go hot with the new sensations.

He growled low in his throat and increased the tempo of his thrusts, sliding in and out of her, simultaneously touching her core and her clit with each drive home, coiling the long-denied orgasm so tightly her body became a vibrating knot of tension. The sensation built, then faded into the hot, tingling numbness her body hid behind in the final few seconds before implosion.

Her mind blanked. Her senses spun with the awe of it, with the hugeness of sensation as everything inside her paused for one. Breathless. Moment.

And then it came, she came, the rush of pleasure starting in her fingers and toes and all the places where they touched, where they strained together. The shimmer coalesced inward, rushing to the point inside where she gripped his cock with the first long, drawn-out pulse.

She said something, maybe his name, maybe something more dangerous, but she was beyond knowing, beyond caring, crying out as the inner contractions sped up, playing him, taunting him. He grew impossibly thick, impossibly hard, and his whole body went tight as he bellowed and came with her, within her. His orgasm caught the tail end of hers, kicking it back into the stratosphere, cramping her, wringing her with wave after wave of pleasure that held her paralyzed. Helpless.

Fulfilled.

When it was over, Strike muttered something and dropped his forehead to her shoulder. They leaned into each other as the torches continued to heat the air around them. A high, golden hum touched Leah’s soul for a moment, then was gone, leaving her feeling strangely empty and unsettled.

‘‘You’re not in this alone, Blondie,’’ he murmured against her neck, stroking a hand along her back in a gesture that was simultaneously reassuring and possessive. ‘‘You’re mine now.’’

But instead of making her feel better, his words gave her pause, warning her that none of this was simple. Nerves tightened in her belly, bringing the sense that what they’d just done had gone too far, that it’d shifted something that shouldn’t have been moved. ‘‘Being your lover doesn’t make me a Nightkeeper.’’

‘‘Maybe not, but being consort to the son of the king has to count for something.’’

It took a moment for that to sink in. Then, chilled, she leaned away from him, waited until he looked at her. ‘‘You made love to me for my own protection?’’

Dark anger flashed in his eyes. ‘‘I made love to you because I couldn’t damn well not make love to you anymore. Don’t turn it into more than that.’’ He cursed. ‘‘That didn’t come out right. I meant that you shouldn’t read ulterior motives where there aren’t any. I wanted you; you wanted me. End of story. What happens next is completely separate from this.’’

Only it wasn’t, and they both damn well knew it. It’d never been that simple between them and wasn’t about to start.

She got it now. He thought that if they were lovers, the others might not force him to go through with the sacrifice, knowing that a mated Nightkeeper was stronger with his mate than alone, stronger still with a god-bound mate. But that didn’t even begin to address the fact that they apparently had a creator god stuck halfway between the planes, and the thirteenth prophecy loomed large.

Strike, like his father before him, was trying to bend the traditions to save someone he cared for. And if his strategy failed, as it had done for his father before him, the results could be catastrophic.

‘‘Don’t go up against Jox and Red-Boar for me,’’ she said quietly. ‘‘Not without a backup plan.’’

‘‘And don’t you tell me how to do my job.’’ He turned away and started pulling on his pants with quick, irritated efficiency, and she could feel the darkness simmering very close to the surface. She could sense the anger that rode him, the frustration, and knew that what they’d just done had, if anything, made it worse.

Knowing he needed an assurance that she couldn’t give, she dropped down from the altar and pulled her shirt and panties back on. The two of them were close together in the small space, but the gap separating them suddenly seemed wider than ever.

She touched his arm, where his marks stood out in stark relief against his skin in the firelight. ‘‘I’m just one person, Strike. Like it or not, you’ve got a way bigger responsibility than that.’’

‘‘Tell me something I don’t know,’’ he grated out. He sounded angry, but when he spun to face her, she saw grief on his face. ‘‘Do you want to die?’’