Blood Spells

she imagined what it might have been like to be with him in that cave.

But although the fantasy came quickly, vividly, the man who slid his legs alongside hers was very real. Almost too real. So she held on to the fantasy, using it as a buffer when emotion threatened to break through the heat and make her think when all she wanted to do was feel.

Chasing sensation, she trailed her mouth down the strong column of his neck, pressing lightly with her teeth as she worked inward, headed for the spot just above where his collarbones joined, where a kiss could make him shudder. Before her lips reached that destination, though, he tunneled his fingers through her hair and gripped, anchoring her as he brought their mouths together for a hard kiss that was more heat than finesse, more demand than request.

The move put her off balance, with a sense of “Wait. That’s not what comes next!” But that realization warned her she was falling into a pattern she hadn’t been entirely aware of, one that had grown up in their years together, as she had figured out what he liked and how to give it to him.

This was different, though— he was different. His hands were fast and borderline rough as he cupped her breasts, kneading them and dragging his thumbs across her nipples, making her arch against him, her fingers fluttering against his shoulders as she lost herself momentarily in the pleasure. His mouth shaped hers and she came alive to the scrape of teeth and the slide of tongue when he mimicked the act of love, in and out, until her body throbbed in time with his thrusts.

Her breath went thin; her head spun with knife-edge arousal and she had the feeling of being at the lip of a precipice, balanced between safety and free fall. She didn’t know this lover. Or rather, she suspected she had known him at one time, but they had lost each other along the way. She didn’t know what came next, didn’t quite know where to put her hands or how to move her body as old patterns gave way to nerves and the thrill of experimentation.

Refusing to let herself be taken without leaving her mark on him first, she twined herself around him, seeking the upper hand. He yielded, lying back with a growl that turned to a harsh, rattling groan when she dragged her teeth lightly across his ribs and down, trailing kisses and nips along his torso.

The salt on his skin made her think of the ocean-fed lagoon; the hammer of his pulse reminded her of the heavy thud of fireworks.

He lay still, his muscles locking as she tasted the points of his hip bones and the taut skin between, but when she shifted to move lower, he uncoiled lightning fast; in a blink, she was beneath him once again, trapped under his superior strength and bulk as he looked down at her, his chest heaving, his eyes wild.

She expected him to slow things down. Instead, he grated, “More.” Then he proceeded to give her more, taking it for himself in the process. He kissed her long and deep as he ran one hand down to hook her knee up alongside his hip, so his body settled tighter against hers while his hips moved in a slow, tantalizing rhythm.

Whimper-moaning with mingled need and satisfaction, she dug her fingers into the strong muscles of his back, and lower down, where the long muscles of his quads blended into the hard handfuls of his ass. There, she felt the same near gauntness she’d noticed earlier in his face. He’d lost weight—his muscle mass was the same, but what little fat he’d carried had burned away, distilling his body to its essence. And although he’d been far from soft before, she thrilled to his new hardness, and the fact that he was using his bulk to pin her in place and make her writhe with pleasure.

He rubbed his hard cock against her, bringing her to another precipice, not one of free fall this time, but of an orgasm that sparkled behind her eyelids, equal parts magic and sensation. The skin of her inner wrist warmed and pulsed as their jun tan connection cracked open and let a trickle of arousal flow from her to him and back again.

“Yes,” she said with her heart, mind, and voice. “Yes, now.” Her mouth found his and she poured herself into a kiss.

He went utterly still against her, save for the throb of his hard shaft against her center. Then he exhaled a pent-up breath on a whisper that she thought was her name. Shifting, he nudged the wide head of his cock against the initial resistance at the entrance to her body. She was wet and wanting, but tight because of how long it had been since they had given up the pretense of sleeping in the same bed.

The pressure wrung a growl from deep within his chest as he thrust home on a strong surge.

He invaded her, stretched her, filled her. And when he was seated to the hilt, pressing up against the end of her channel and making her breath go thin with the intensity of it all, he went still once more.

For a long moment, they lay joined and motionless as the counterpoint beat of their hearts echoed in the throb of his hard flesh, the pulse of her inner muscles. Unable to stay safe in the darkness behind her eyelids, she opened her eyes and looked up at him.

His gold-flecked brown eyes were entirely focused on her, on the moment. He wasn’t the twentysomething grad student who had glimpsed her across a crowded playa and chased her down, but in that moment he wasn’t the hard, remote Nightkeeper mage she’d been coexisting with for more than a year either. In his eyes she glimpsed the man who’d carried her over the threshold of their starter house and made love to her in every single room, including the laundry nook during the spin-

dry cycle.

Her eyes prickled at the memory, warning that she’d fallen out of the safe refuge of fantasy and magic. The heat and need, though, hadn’t dissipated. The jun tan sent incandescent energy through them both; he hardened further within her, stretching her and setting off chain reactions of inner fireworks. She focused on those bursts and slid back into the fantasy, remembering how her younger self had felt when she turned and found him watching her, how it had felt to lead him into the cave, to kiss him.

For a second, she could’ve sworn that the cool blue bedroom walls around them darkened and aged, turning to stone. Wishful thinking or not, it was enough to push away the tears and put her back in the moment, in the fantasy. Locking her inner muscles around him in a liquid squeeze, she said, as he had done earlier, “More.”

His expression turned inward, went glazed, and his teeth flashed on a purely masculine grin that held an edge of violence. “Hell, yeah, there’s more.” His voice dropped to a husky rasp that sent frissons of anticipation coursing through her body. “Hang on to me and I’ll show you just how much.”

He pressed her flat with his body, stilling her small, inciting movements. Then, although she would’ve sworn he was seated as deeply as he could be, he rolled his hips and went farther, startling a low moan out of her as he hit her sweet spots inside and out. When he withdrew fractionally, she moaned again, this time in protest at the loss of that delicious pressure.

“Hang on,” he repeated. “Let me take us there.” He pushed forward again, then eased back. Forward.

Back. And as pleasure vised her, locking her muscles around him, beneath him, she did as he’d demanded, clutching his wide shoulders, which became her anchor.

He was pulsing more than thrusting, his movements on the scope of fractions of an inch, but her body lit as hard and hot as if he’d been pistoning into her, driving them both beyond reason. What was more, the deep, subtle thrusts left them almost entirely joined throughout. He was inside her, almost becoming part of her. His pleasure echoed through the jun tan connection; she felt the satisfaction of each thrust from his perspective, then felt it from hers and sent the sensation echoing back to him. The feedback loop joined them even more deeply than his flesh within her, uniting them.

Nerves quivered, but she focused on the moment, on the man, turning her face into his neck and pressing her lips to the hollow dip at his collarbone. He shuddered against her but didn’t change his stroke or tempo, flexing his hips and withdrawing, flexing and withdrawing, bringing her pleasure inside and out, until the sum total threatened to overwhelm her.

Tears stung again, but she was beyond processing where they came from, or why. She could only feel what she hadn’t felt in so long, if ever. Her orgasm hovered close at hand, as if waiting for some signal from him, under his spell just as surely as she was. But although he was in charge of their lovemaking, she held power of her own. She exerted it now, contracting her inner muscles to counterpoint his pulsing thrusts, beginning to work him as he was working her.

His breath hissed out and his fingers flexed on her hips, where he held her against his relentless thrusts. That might have been his only outward response, but she felt a surge in the jun tan connection.

Pressure and aching, impossible arousal echoed along the bond, sparking red-gold behind her eyelids as orgasm drew near. His. Hers. Theirs.