his arm, then trailing down to—
Bad idea. She pulled back, inhaling a shuddering breath that did nothing to calm the churn of heat and nerves. She should leave the syrup and go, get out while she could, clear her head. He could drink the damn stuff when he finally woke up. Except that Lucius didn’t know how long that would take; Keban was out there on the loose; another village had disappeared; the meteor shower was two days away, the solstice ten . . . and the Nightkeepers needed her help to get their Triad mage back and make sure he didn’t have a hidden agenda.
The heat amped a notch at the realization that she might be in over her head, out of her league, but she was doing something, damn it. She wasn’t just making phone calls and tracking down last knowns. The realization, like the leather jacket back in her room, made her feel more alive than she had since she stopped nabbing bail jumpers. Back then, she had been saving her own piece of the world; now she had a chance to help save the whole damn thing. The blood beat beneath her skin with a mix of nerves and euphoria, a cocktail she had once needed like a drug.
Warning signals went off in her brain, but they were drowned out by the knowledge that she was doing the right thing here. And that for a change—maybe for the first time ever—she had the ability to fix what ailed big, badass Snake Mendez.
“Okay, slick.” She stopped stroking him, shook him instead. “Time to wake up.”
No response. He was out cold.
After a couple of more tries, she hitched a hip onto the bed. Ignoring the way the room spun around her just as much as she was ignoring the little voice inside her that said this was a really bad idea, she leaned over him, touched a fingertip to the thick syrup, and stroked it onto his tongue. Then she rubbed his throat, which rippled beneath her touch—smoothly, sinuously—as he licked his lips.
She stared at his mouth, transfixed. His heat surrounded her, making her skin prickle, and she suddenly felt like a voyeur in her own body, watching her hands and his mouth as she repeated the process a second time. And a third. The fourth time, he swallowed on his own, and she thought he might have been breathing a little faster than before. She definitely was. The room wasn’t spinning anymore; it was throbbing. And she was in serious trouble. In some corner of her mind, two words whispered: sex magic.
She had read up on it back at Skywatch, had felt the way the air shifted around the mated couples when they shared a look, a touch. And now she felt it in the way the air vibrated, the fine tingles that ran along her skin, and how suddenly nothing mattered more than touching him. She wanted to run her hands over him, wanted him inside her with a ferociousness that couldn’t be anything but a magic-driven compulsion.
She told herself to leave.
She leaned closer instead.
“Dez.” When her voice cracked, she swallowed and tried again. “Dez, can you hear me?”
He groaned and shifted, rolling partway onto his back, closer to the center of the wide mattress. His thick erection was the center pole of an impressive tent; it drew her eyes, made her want to touch, taste. There was no thought process anymore, no real logic, only the magnetism that drew her onward, made her keep going. She got onto the mattress and knelt beside him, dipped two fingers into the syrup, and touched his lips. When he opened for her, the breath went thin in her lungs, and when he suckled, a hot wash of pleasure suffused her, leaving her tingling and wanting more.
Dimly, she was aware that she was doing exactly what she had sworn not to do, but she didn’t care. She was a freelancer, an independent who didn’t answer to anybody.
“Dez?” This time his name was little more than a whisper.
Finally, he opened his eyes, which were pale and luminous. “Reese.” The word was a low rumble that seemed to come from the depths of the sensual storm raging inside her. “You’re really here.”
Relief had her smile going crooked. “Yeah. I’m here.”
He searched her face. “Is it now or then?”
Not sure how to answer that, she eased over him, pressed the cup to his lower lip. “Drink this. It’ll help bring you back the rest of the way.”
He drank and she stared, transfixed by the rhythmic working of his jaw and throat, the bunch and flow of the muscles in his arm when he steadied the cup, the striking contrast of the black glyphs and dark blue-green cuffs against his smooth, golden skin. Then the cup was gone, thudding on the rug as he let it fall so he could wrap his hand around her neck and draw her closer.
His eyes were locked on hers, his expression open and heartbreakingly vulnerable. But instead of speaking, he closed the last breath of distance between them. And kissed her.
Oh, God. He kissed her.
He tasted of the syrup, rich and intoxicating. His lips were firm, sleek, and devastating as they moved over hers, his tongue a fascinating slide of heat and texture. His body felt like sin incarnate, all hard muscles and that smooth, warm skin sliding against her as he curled an arm around her and caught her up against his body. His very naked, very aroused body. The kiss was deep and carnal, a full-on press of lips and tongue, heat and madness. The sensations blanked out everything but the taste and feel of him, the rippling shocks unleashed by the press of his lips and the slide of his tongue.
She didn’t trust his motives, didn’t trust him. But she wanted him more than she wanted her next breath.
Run! said the practical, straitlaced, boring Reese Montana who had spent the past year wearing matchy- matchy suits and finding people for clients who probably could have managed the job with twenty bucks and a couple of Google searches. But the other side of her, the side that had just spent a month’s rent on black leather, knew damn well they were both drunk and didn’t give a shit, so she stayed put.
And kissed him back.
Dez was entirely aware that he wasn’t dreaming anymore. He was really holding now-Reese, really kissing her and sliding a hand beneath her shirt to find the warm curve of a breast, the peak of a nipple. All that was happening in the here and now, in a hotel room somewhere in northern New Mex. But the dream stayed with him, sending sex magic to race through his body and charge the air around them.
The dream and the magic bore the touch of the gods; the woman in his arms felt like an angel and tasted like a prayer. She filled the emptiness inside him, the hollow ache of having been alone for so long. She wasn’t the woman he’d dreamed of, the one he’d never hurt or betrayed. Yet somehow she was that woman—she had come after him and fought at his side, and now was right there in his bed, trying to heal him, to fix him.
Tightening his arms around her, he deepened the kiss, trying to tell her what that meant to him when he wasn’t really sure himself. Logic said that if he truly cared for her he would turn her loose. Because if he couldn’t take out Keban and the artifacts before the solstice, he would have to deal with the prophecy he’d spent half a lifetime running away from. Desire, though, didn’t give a shit about logic when lightning raced in his veins and a woman—the woman, the only one there had ever been for him—arched in his arms, pressing against him and kissing him back with wild abandon. A decade ago, he had been able to make himself stay away from her until the time was right, only it never had been. Now, he didn’t give a shit about the timing or whether it was right or wrong. He wanted her, here and now.
His honor was gone, his self-control out the window. She filled up the emptiness, sharpened the world around him, made him crazy. He wanted her, wanted to fill her, possess her, make her his own. Take her. Take her.
His blood thudded heavily in his veins as he kissed up alongside her jaw to her ear, then took her mouth again. She moaned, bit his chin, his jaw, then found his mouth again as she curled her calf around the back of his knee and moved her hips in a long, sinuous roll that left him bucking and shuddering against her.
The power of her response filled him, consumed him, had him rearing up and over her, and covering her body with his. Lightning arced as they met openmouthed in a hot clash of lips, tongue, and teeth that flashed heat to need, and from there to an absolute requirement: He had to have her like he had to have his next breath, the next beat of his heart.
And deep in his soul, a soft voice whispered: Mine.
Reese was out of her mind, out of control, and she didn’t care. It felt so good to let go. Her better sense was long gone, her body turning to flames as she willingly lost herself. Dez was a furnace, an inferno; heat
