Blood Spells

She tightened around him, her body taking over the volition. It seemed that each muscle fiber sent a starburst of warm anticipation when it contracted, building a new layer of heat atop the desperate pleasure within her. She dug her fingers into his shoulders, finding purchase at the base of his neck and hanging on for dear life.

“Yes,” someone said. “Yes, there!” She wasn’t sure if the words had come from him or her, or if they were entirely internal, a cry of pleasure shared along the jun tan bond. She buried her face against his throat, reveling in the slick skin, the heat, the feeling of being there, with him. Not alone.

He must have quickened his pace and lengthened his strokes an iota at a time, because they weren’t locked together anymore, weren’t pulsing together, touching along every possible inch of skin.

Instead, he was fully moving within her, thrusting an inch at first, then more, both speed and swing increasing faster and faster, as though he’d fallen off the edge of self-control.

Her blood burned in her veins and her body undulated in opposition to his building thrusts, creating crazy-hot pressure with the liquid slide of skin and sex. The cave fantasy disappeared and the room around them ceased to exist as her entire universe contracted to the sum of her body and his, and the energy they created together. He groaned her name and wrapped his arms around her, enfolding her in an embrace that made her feel simultaneously protected and vulnerable.

Her strung-tight muscles reached the warm, breathless numbness that presaged climax, leaving her almost helpless in the throes, with her mouth pressed to his throat, open in a silent scream. His body was rigid, hot, and sweat-slicked; their mingled scents ripened the air with an earthy, primal musk that seemed to connect her, not just to him, but to the earth itself, and all its inhabitants. Then that preternatural flash disappeared as the tingling numbness contracted suddenly, centering itself on her moisture-slicked channel and the hooded flesh just outside it, and the slap and slide of his body into hers.

“Gods,” she whispered.

He responded with a groan that might have been her name, might have been a denial of the gods themselves. Then even those thoughts were lost as he thrust deep and held himself there, pressed against her inside and out, his cock throbbing within her.

The world went still; she was wrapped around him, pierced by him, and filled with the red-gold energy of the jun tan. She hovered there for three heartbeats. Then she tipped over in a screaming rush of pleasure. Her gut wrenched on an orgasm so powerful it was almost terrifying. She cried out on a shuddering breath and clutched at him, vising her legs around his hips and digging her fingers into his back as he bucked against her, groaning her name.

He pushed against her, counterpointing the rhythmic pulses of her inner flesh, which sent ecstasy radiating outward, washing the world behind her eyelids red-gold. His pleasure rushed through her, and hers transmitted to him in return, echoing between them through the Nightkeepers’ mating magic, as they clung shuddering together, her face buried in the crook of his neck, his cheek pressed to the crown of her head.

Pulse led to pulse in a magic-amplified climax that echoed long past human-normal, long past the point where it ceased being just sex and became far too important.

Eventually, though, the waves of sensation leveled off and subsided, the jun tan bond faded to background, and they became nothing more than a man and a woman wrapped around each other, their bodies cooling together in the aftermath.

Only they weren’t just a man and a woman. And as the seconds ticked by in silence, Patience’s postcoital bliss gave way to the knowledge that they couldn’t stay like that much longer.

And didn’t that just suck?

She didn’t want to go back to their real lives . . . and she really didn’t want to talk about what had just happened. The sex had gotten way too intense, made too many new memories. And she ran the risk of wanting to burrow in and cling, which hadn’t been part of the deal.

They had gone into each other’s arms with the unspoken agreement that they were acting on the vision magic, burning off the impulse she’d created by channeling herself into the jun tan bond.

The closer she stuck to that truce, the better it would be. They couldn’t afford to add more complications, not now.

So she took a deep breath, channeled her warrior self as best she could, given that she was lying naked in Brandt’s arms, and said, “Okay, here’s the deal according to my nahwal. You can still become the Triad mage, but only if I help you settle some debt and make peace with your ancestors.

And we’ve got four days to do it.”

CHAPTER SIX

“I have to . . . Wait— what?” Brandt stared at Patience.

In the aftermath of their lovemaking, her face was soft, her lips kiss-stung, her eyes the blue of a Caribbean lagoon. But rather than looking well loved and dreamy, she looked . . . businesslike.

Not that he could blame her, given what she’d just hit him with. His thoughts churned. What debt?

What peace with his ancestors?

But on a far more primal level, he was aware of the warm tingle at his wrist, the tangle of their bodies, the fading echoes of the sex they had just shared, and the hint of vulnerability beneath her outer calm. She had come into the magic after him, risking herself to save his sorry ass. He wanted to reach for her, wanted to kiss her and put himself back into the jun tan connection, the one place where they still synced up perfectly.

Before the impulse could fully form, though, his warrior’s talent came online.

He gritted his teeth and tried to stop the shift, but the fighting magic ran so strong in the eagle bloodline— along with arrogance and egotism, at least according to Woody—that he damn well couldn’t stop the change. Which pissed him off. The other magi had found ways to balance the needs of their magic and their mates . . . so why the hell couldn’t he? Why didn’t—

Pain lanced through his skull. Shit, he thought, pressing his fingers against his closed eyelids. The headaches had come with the talent . . . or, rather, they came whenever he thought about going against his warrior’s mandate.

Frustration roughened his tone. “Tell me everything.”

“The message came from your nahwal via mine . . . because apparently you and yours have a communication problem.”

“‘A communication problem,’” he repeated. “That sounds like something you would say, not a nahwal.”

She stilled against him. Then she pulled away from their postsex tangle and climbed from the bed.

Her shoulders were tight as she collected her clothes and started pulling them on.

He cursed himself thoroughly. “I’m sorry. That was an asshole comment. I’m . . . shit. I’m sorry.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Headache.”

She nodded without looking at him. “Your head’s been through a lot in the past twelve hours or so.”

Twelve hours. He glanced to the other side of the bed and saw his reflection in the glossy black bottom of a tipped-over pot. Magic. “You found a spell that could bring me back.”

“With help from Lucius.” Her expression took on a glint of defiance. “And the oracle.”

He stifled the instinctive wince, not wanting to get into another back-and-forth about her wasting time on a pointless hobby when they had more important things to worry about. “Thanks. I owe you one.”

It sounded pitifully inadequate, but what the hell else could he say?

“Nobody’s keeping score. So here goes with the ‘while you were sleeping’ recap . . .” She leaned up against the bureau with her arms crossed, in a semi-casual pose that made her look like a guest in the bedroom they had once shared, as she took him through the events of the past twelve hours.