CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Cara gave herself up to the kiss and the moment, not stopping to care what would happen next. She had been lost in the fog, would have stayed there forever if he hadn’t come for her. And there, in that endless gray world, she’d had a moment of sudden clarity: She didn’t want to die with regrets.
If that had been the end of it, she would have hated leaving the earth plane without getting back at Zane and Lora and wresting them from the winikin before they did any more damage. She would have wished she had done things differently with her father. And she would have deeply regretted giving up her chance at fireworks. Now, though, it seemed that she was being given a second chance. There was magic in the air and a man—the man—was holding her, kissing her. And he wasn’t pulling back this time. Instead, he slanted kisses across her mouth, along her jaw, and up to the sensitive lobe of her ear. He urged her closer in the soft, shifting sand, and when their bodies pressed together, she felt his arousal, his need.
No regrets, she thought. Free to touch him, finally, she was bold with her lips, and with hands that no longer stung from the cuts on her palms, which had healed to scars already. Magic, she thought as the heat raced through her, making every sensation ten times more acute. More, it was sex magic and she, a winikin, could feel it, which should have been impossible. Right then, though, she didn’t care what it meant; she only gloried in the burn of desire.
He shuddered and pulled away a few inches, so his eyes were very close as they searched hers. Then he surprised her by skimming his fingertips along her jaw and up to her temple, then to touch the place where her hair went from dark to light. Growing up, he had teased her about it so fiercely she had tried to dye it dark, but had succeeded only in staining the bathroom wallpaper and earning a month of double chores. Now, though, he rubbed a few of the white strands—coarse and heavy in comparison—between his fingers in a move that said that he knew who she was—not a vision or a casual hookup, but her.
“Cara,” he began on a sigh.
“Shut it.” She pressed a silencing finger to his lips. “Don’t make this more complicated than it needs to be. We want each other. More, we know this won’t work in the long run, but that hasn’t stopped us from wondering. Who knows? Maybe this is the gods’ gift the nahwal mentioned. Maybe they’re giving us this one time together to get it out of our systems, so we can move on.” That could explain why she felt the magic too, and why the cave hadn’t opened back up even though the water had drained away.
His breath feathered across her hand; his eyes bored into hers. From behind her restraining fingers, he said, “There’s only one thing I want more than this, and that’s to not hurt you ever again.”
A small sliver of pain jabbed below her heart, because while she knew he meant it utterly, she also knew that was impossible. No regrets, she reminded herself, and said, “Sorry, I can’t promise that.” Nerves buzzed through her, but beneath them was a heady stir of courage. She almost never told the full truth, instead editing to keep the peace and bottling up the rest inside. Not this time, though. “It hurts to see you around Skywatch and not be able to touch you or even talk to you. It hurts to know that you and Mac are going to take off at some point, or that if you don’t and we make it through the war, I’m going to be the one leaving. But the thing is, none of those things will hurt extra if we do this. If anything, it’ll hurt worse if I miss this chance, because then I’ll have regrets. That much I really can promise.” She dropped her hand and replaced her silencing touch with a kiss that started soft but quickly turned hot and needy. When it ended, she pulled away and whispered between heavy breaths, “When it’s all over, let’s not have regrets. At least not about this.”
He stared at her for a heartbeat, his face etched with intensity as he weighed her promise. “Be sure,” he rasped. “Be really fucking sure.”
“I am.”
His eyes changed, kindling with a new and potent fire. She could almost hear his noble intentions shatter, but he said only, “Thank Christ.” Then, groaning a dark and delicious curse, he rolled suddenly, pressing his big, hard body fully atop hers as he kissed her, tasted her, touched her, rose over her, and took.
And, yes, thank Christ, because this was what she wanted. More, it was what she needed in this moment and this place, with this man. She was finally—oh, gods, yes, finally—telling the world to go screw itself, at least for an hour or two. Gods, did that feel good.
Her heart thundered as she grappled to touch him, taste him, then bowed back on a hiss as his fingers brushed the edges of her breasts, the lines of her waist and hips. He cupped her ass and then slid his touch inward to brush the sensitized flesh. Heat gripped her, ground at her, and she sagged against him with a low cry. She was hot, wet, and needy, her clothing a barrier that had to go.
She tugged at his stretchy, formfitting shirt, got it up and off, and purred when she was able to play her fingers along the muscles beneath. The purr turned to a gasp, though, when he slid a hand under her shirt, cupped a breast, and then dragged a thumb across one nipple in a move that sent sparks shooting through her system.
“Oh, gods.” She bowed against him, curled around him, her mouth an “O” of pleasure.
“Off,” he growled. “All of it.”
Their clothing made a nest in the soft, yielding sand at the edge of the pool, and his magic heated the air as they twined together, kissing, licking, sucking—it was all fair game when sex magic burned in the blood.
Murmuring something low and reverent against her lips, he slid a finger along the crease between her legs, easing forward, forward, and then finding her. His low groan echoed her pleasure and she let her breath hiss out as he teased the opening, his touch an erotic shock to her system.
His erection was sandwiched between their bodies, pressing hard and insistent against her mound. As her blood burned higher and hotter, driven by the rhythm he set with his fingers, she slid a hand between their bodies and rubbed her palm across his testicles and up along the heavy, distended vein that lined the bottom of his hard, upthrust cock. He groaned, then shuddered when she closed her fingers around him.
There was no hesitation in her, no second thoughts. She wanted this, wanted him, and had for years and years.
His cock was thick and long, with a bullet head that pearled moisture when she ran her thumb across the engorged slit. He groaned and intensified the rhythm.
An early orgasm slapped through her without warning, bright, brittle, and glittering with the pleasure that vised her muscles and left her shaking. She cried out and clutched at him, wordless and needy as her body pulsed around his fingers.
“Fuck, that’s hot,” he rasped against her lips. Then, his voice going commanding, he said, “Do it again.”
“I…” she began, but then trailed off when he eased away to scatter kisses down her throat. Then he moved lower, bending and kneeling in front of her.
He stroked his hands down her legs, first the outsides and then the insides, urging them apart and angling her body so her spine pressed against the smooth curve of the cave wall. With a smooth and unexpected move, he hooked one of her legs over his shoulder, opening her, laying her vulnerable.
“Wait.” She tried to pull away. “Let me…” The protest died on her lips as he turned his head and pressed his lips to her inner thigh.
“No, let me,” he said against her skin. “Just let me.” And he kissed her again, brushing his lips up her inner thigh and then inward to draw his tongue along the center of her in a long, heated lick that had a moan rolling from her, had her head falling back against the stone and her body going limp in sudden, unfamiliar submission.
Oh, gods, yes, she thought as he bent his head. He kissed her more deeply, more intimately, and slipped his hands around her once more, questing until his fingers found her, entered her again.
There was pressure and pleasure, a fullness that seemed somehow so much more intense than it did when she was alone. Helpless to do otherwise, driven by her body’s needs now, she arched into his mouth, rocked against his fingers, and cried out. As he drove her up toward the next peak, she started shaking. Not just because of arousal, though that was part of it, but because she didn’t know what was coming next, or what any of it meant. She was lost in the moment, unable to care about anything other than the orgasm that gathered within her and the lover who was bowed down before her.
She held his head against her, worked herself against his mouth, totally taken within the maelstrom of sensations. And as the inner knots tightened around his fingers and tongue, all she could think was, Thank the
