Dawnkeepers

She cracked her eyes to find amber torchlight reflecting off carved stone walls, and Nate sprawled across her, motionless. For a second she thought she was dreaming again. Then she saw that the chamber was curved rather than rectangular, and the dripping noise came from droplets of water trickling from one stone to the next, rather than from an underground pool. More important, she wasn’t alone in her skull. There was a tiny kernel at the back of her brain, warm and sparkling with colors. When she focused her attention on it, though, it dimmed and grew distant.

Come back! she thought, quick panic sparking her fully awake. But it hadn’t gone away, she realized after a moment; it’d moved lower, the warmth shifting and the sparkles dispersing until she thought she could feel each nerve ending as a separate entity, an individual thought. Even as she reveled in the sensation, another came to her, the feel of Nate shifting against and atop her. He was sprawled facedown with his cheek on her belly, his arms loosely encircling her hips, and his big body more or less centered between her legs. The realization of their intimate positioning sparked the warmth to a blaze, and when he turned to look up at her, dragging the faintly roughened skin of his jaw across the sensitive skin above her navel, she saw the same heat reflected in his eyes.

“It’s the magic,” she said, her voice cracking around the edges. “The god.”

But Nate shook his head. “If I’d seen you in Newport, I would’ve wanted you long before I’d ever heard the word Nightkeeper.”

She would’ve argued, would’ve demanded an explanation, but he surprised her by casting a mild shield spell, one that pressed against her, held her pinned. The magic caressed her skin, sending ripples of excitement and power rolling through her, the pleasure holding her captive as much as the spell itself. Then, before she knew what he’d intended, he moved down her body, somehow taking her combat pants to her knees as he put his lips to her, his clever tongue delving deep and slicking her sensitive folds, which were already swollen and ready for him.

Alexis cried out and arched against him, or would have, but the shield kept her flat, binding her to the stone floor of the sacred chamber hard enough to excite but not hurt her. They had played with restraints once or twice before, but not like this, not so she could feel his magic. The power was brutally erotic, as were the touch of his tongue and hands as he simultaneously drove her up and held her down.

The kernel of colored light within her expanded, reaching outward and straining toward a distant, unseen goal. She writhed as pleasure suffused her, sent her outside herself, hurtling through time and space to a world of hue. The spectrum surrounded her, light and color combining into tangible shapes and audible sounds. On one level she was aware of Nate’s mouth leaving her, and his big body moving up to cover hers. Another part of her, though, was caught, spinning out in a world of blue and gold, with ribbons of color twining around her, trailing from her in all directions.

She was in the sacred chamber with Nate; but she was in the sky too, in the realm of the gods. She saw them, impossibly beautiful, impossibly colorful. She was one of them, yet not, just as she was herself, yet not.

Then the shield spell was gone and she was free to move. She didn’t go far, though, only enough to roll with Nate and rise above him. He was naked now, and so was she, their sodden clothing piled off to the side. The earth and sky combined within her for a second, letting her see his face, letting her see his reservations and his needs. Her heart cracked and bled at the knowledge that he didn’t want this, that he was sacrificing himself for a cause he didn’t fully embrace, compelled by the magic rather than choice.

Perhaps he saw her sadness, maybe just saw her hesitate; either way, he reached up, rising up to meet her, to cup her face in his hands and look into her eyes. “It’s okay, princess,” he said, and for the first time in many months, maybe ever, the term didn’t sound like an insult coming from him. It sounded like an endearment. Like a love word. “We’ll make it work.”

“Yes.” Somehow they would, she knew. There was no other option.

Letting herself sink into that promise, she touched her lips to his and let him guide her down, let his hard length fill her, stretch her until he was seated to the hilt. The feel of him inside set off a chain reaction of pleasure, each pulse showing a different color behind her eyelids as she let them drift shut.

“Lexie,” he said, his voice ragged on the syllables, his palms bracketing her hips, his fingertips digging into her skin.

“Yes,” she said again, because there didn’t seem to be anything more to say as she leaned over him, shifting so the sensitive tips of her breasts brushed against the hard contours of his chest and her lips aligned with his as she began to move against him.

He countered the rhythm with his hands and hips, bringing new pleasure, new colors that wrung a moan from her as the ribbons of light spiraled inward, contracting around her body in a swirl of heat and power, pleasure and madness.

It was as though she were hovering above them, locked in a prism, looking down on them both, locked together in sex and madness. But she was also within herself looking out, seeing Nate’s eyes hard and hot on hers, feeling the clench of his hands, the thrust of his body. Then the world spun as he grabbed her and rolled them both and rose above her to quicken the pace, pis-toning against her as his eyes went distant and glazed.

Can you see the colors? she wanted to ask, but didn’t, because it was all she could do to hang on and lock her legs around him and rise up to meet him halfway, driving the pleasure higher, and higher still.

The orgasm grabbed her and held her poised at the precipice for a long moment. Blue and green flashed through her, and orange-red. Then Nate’s eyes sharpened and locked on hers, and it wasn’t about the colors anymore, wasn’t about the god-power that flowed through her, at least not entirely. It was about the two of them, about the connection they’d always found through the sex, if nowhere else.

He thrust fully into her and stayed there, pressing against her inside and out, and sending her over the edge.

She arched and cried his name as the throbbing pulses swept her up, tightening her around him and drawing him in, holding him fast. There were no more colors, no more god; there were only the two of them and the feel of his hard, slick flesh and the tight bands of his arm as he held her, pressed his cheek against hers, and cut loose with a low, rattling groan that didn’t sound like her name.

They held on to each other, shuddering and bucking, gripped by a force that simultaneously anchored them and sent them beyond themselves.

Eventually the pulses slowed, then faded to echoes, to rainbow tremors that floated through her, warning her that everything had changed. The kernel of power was gone from the back of her brain. In its place was a hum of connection, not to the barrier, but someplace beyond, some one beyond.

Gods, she thought, then corrected herself. Goddess. Because there was no doubt in her mind that she was connected to a female entity, one that was lush and bountiful, a goddess of the sky, the light, and all the colors of the rainbow. Ixchel, she thought, the name a soft sigh in itself.

As if aware of her thoughts, Nate levered himself away from her, rolling onto his side and propping himself on one elbow, gloriously male, gloriously naked and unashamed. His medallion glinted in the firelight as he took her right hand and turned it palm up in his own, baring the place where her sacrificial scar had already closed, the healing impelled by the magic. “Show me,” he said softly.

She didn’t know where the word came from, or how he knew to ask, but she said, “Kawak.”

Rainbow. And a glimmering colored light appeared in her hand.

The magic didn’t rise in her, but rather flowed from the sky to her outstretched fingers, through the conduit connection at the back of her brain, kindling a glow that started as a firefly pinprick and quickly expanded to the size of a softball, then flickered from white through each of the colors of the rainbow, slowly at first, then cycling faster and faster until the hues melded together once again, going blue-white.

“It’s beautiful.” He closed his fingers over hers, folding her hand shut and extinguishing the magic.

“But not very practical,” she said, starting to get a trapped, panicky feeling at knowing Strike had wanted a war god. “Pretty lights won’t do much against the Banol Kax.”

“Don’t,” he said, tightening his grip. “Not yet. For right now, just enjoy it.” He shifted and touched his lips to hers, murmuring, “Let’s enjoy this.”