pumped off him in waves while she kissed him openmouthed and touched him along the lines of his sides, the dips at his hips and flanks. Groaning, he pressed into her, tormenting her with his thick length and the barrier of her clothing, cupping her ass and pressing at the juncture, rubbing through the heavy cloth to make her moan and pant into his mouth.
Unable to stand the torture, she surged up and over, rolling them so he was on his back. He yanked off her shirt, then her bra, and she rolled away to deal with her too-heavy combat pants, boots, socks, all of it, so when she came back to him they were skin on skin, bare to bare, her legs wrapping around one of his, holding them both in place.
He cupped her breast, making the room spin as he kissed her. He surrounded her, took her under, drowning her in layers of sensation as he stroked her body, cupped her naked ass, slipped a finger beneath and groaned at the back of his throat. Sensations blasting through her, she skimmed a shaking hand across the hard bud of a masculine nipple, enjoying the indrawn hiss of his breath, the way his hands went still for a second. Then he shuddered as she caressed his taut belly, made a wide, teasing detour, and then trailed her fingers across the faint wrinkles surrounding his prodigious sac, which was drawn tightly up in excitement and seemed to come alive beneath her touch.
“Yes,” he hissed against her mouth, gripping her hip, her shoulder, then digging his fingers into her hair to drag her mouth up to his for a fierce, wild kiss that tasted of sage and made her head spin. “Gods, yes.”
He was hugely thick where she wrapped her hand around him, long from base to tip, where he was wide and blunt, and pressed eagerly into her hand. She curved her fingers around him, felt a thrill when she couldn’t completely enclose him, another when he groaned and met her stroke with a jerky, desperate thrust.
There was slick wetness on her fingers, on her skin, between her legs where she gripped his thigh, rode it. She was feverish, her heart pounding with the desperation to take him inside her. There was no need for a condom; the magi used sterilization spells and didn’t carry disease. And, despite the faint pinch beneath her heart, there was no need to wait, no reason to go slow.
At his urging she parted for him, arched into his touch as he cupped her, his hand gliding across where she, too, was sleekly bare. He pressed his forehead to her, his breath an excited rasp. “Fuck, that’s sexy.”
Then he slid a finger inside her, worked her with his thumb and sent her cartwheeling. Light flared behind her eyelids as a hard, hot orgasm barreled through her, paralyzing her for a moment with its raging intensity. She bowed up into him and rode out the pleasure that washed through her as he kissed her, held her, worked her, the whole time whispering dark, earthy curses that became love words in his rasping voice.
Every inch of her was sensitized to the fluid slide of skin on skin as she rose over him. She spread her legs wide to straddle him, the move changing the sensations and sending new urgency licking through her. Then she leaned in so they were nose to nose as she reached down to touch him, stroke him, center him at the entrance to her body. He let her have the moment, his hands gently kneading her hips, his eyes steady on hers, warm in the afternoon sunlight, then clouding as she eased him inside. The blunt head of his cock stretched and filled her, setting off chain reactions that began at her wet clasp and flared outward. The tightness eased as she moved down his shaft, then returned when he was fully seated within her.
They fit together tightly, with a seamlessness that brought a prickle of tears, a churn of emotion that she fought back. This was real. It was magic.
She closed her eyes and let her head fall back, then began to move her hips gently, experimentally. Heat flared through her, ramping higher as he slid his hands to her waist, up to her breasts. A long breath shuddered out of her and she rocked against him.
“Fuuuck.” As if unable to stay still any longer, he jackknifed up, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her hard and hot as he slid them, still intimately connected, to the edge of the mattress. He got one leg down, curled the other around behind her, and surged into her, his strong grip counterpointing the thrust. And again.
Heat detonated, wringing a moan from her. She floundered for a few seconds, awash in pleasure. They were face-to-face, belly-to-belly, locked in a kiss as he set a hard, fast pace that caught her up, swept her along, and left her no choice but to dig in and meet him stroke for stroke. She got a foot on the floor and used the leverage to buck against him, then cried out when he slid his hands down to cup her ass and exert a dark and dangerous pressure. Bucking against him, she whimpered against his mouth.
He rasped her name, his body shuddering, losing rhythm and then regaining it as he pounded into her, with her, taking them beyond the slap of flesh to a whiplash of pure energy that filled her mind and tightened her chest. Then he hit a sweet spot deep inside her, bringing a wave of searing pleasure, a gut-wrenching oh, holy shit of sensation. She dug her fingers into the heavy muscles of his shoulders and poured herself into a kiss as he found the spot a second time, then a third. And then she was coming in great, fluid waves of pleasure that crashed over her, rolled through her.
She cried his name on a long, guttural moan that should have belonged to another woman—someone who loved, and was loved. Then her orgasm coalesced and notched higher, wringing her boneless as he locked himself against her and came, shuddering against her, around her, inside her. “Reese,” he said. “Jesus gods, Reese.”
She turned her face into his, seeking his lips. They kissed for a long time, stayed locked together for even longer until, finally, his strung-tight body eased against hers and he pulled her down so they were wrapped together on the bed with her back to his front. He took an impossibly deep breath and let it out on a long, satisfied sigh. Then he wrapped his arms around her, and simply held her as the silence wrapped around them, bringing the smell of sage and black cohosh and the dragging fatigue of drugged sleep.
He was still holding her like that when she awoke the next morning, stone sober, with a single thought ringing in her too-clear head: Oh, crap.
CHAPTER NINE
Moving quietly, heart thudding as she prayed he would stay asleep a few minutes longer, Reese slipped out of Dez’s bed and did the clothes-grope thing in the muddy light of predawn.
She had her hand on the doorknob when he said, “Sneaking out?” His voice was clear and cool, fully awake.
She froze for a moment, then flattened her hand on the door. “I thought it would be easier to hash this out later, over coffee and some work.”
“Probably would be.”
She turned back to find him sitting up in the bed, cross-legged, with the sheet pooled in his lap. The morning cast him in light and shadow, picking out the heavy ridges of muscle across his chest and abdomen. The edges of his pale irises had gone shadowy, intensifying his gaze and bringing a quiver of nerves, along with the realization that her instincts were silent on this one. “So let it be easy,” she said softly. “Let me go.”
“That was the one thing I never could do.” He hesitated, then said, “Yesterday, when you came in I was dreaming that we were fighting the makol together as a mated couple. When I woke up, there you were.”
Her throat tightened, but she forced a smile. “Turns out the antidote was also an aphrodisiac. I think we should chalk it up as: It happened. It was fun. It won’t happen again.” Please let’s just leave it at that.
His eyes darkened. “Is that all it was?”
“It was . . .” She swallowed hard as mental doors she’d long ago soldered shut threatened to reopen. “What else could it have been?”
He rose and started pulling on yesterday’s clothes. Without looking at her, he said, “It was what I would have given anything for a decade ago.”
A slow churn in her stomach said yes. “And now?”
Sending her a sidelong look, he said, “If I asked you to, would you go back to Denver and wait for me to call when it’s safe?”
The heat—and even some of the vulnerability—faded as she realized she didn’t know whether he wanted her back in Denver for her own good, or his own. Probably both.
“I’m not trying to stay safe,” she said. “I want to make a difference.” Which was the truth even outside of their reunion—the Nightkeepers and their war were too important for her to walk away.
