And if on some level he knew that by holding back those mating urges he was trying to prove to her that there was more to them than just magic and circumstances, more than the gods’ intentions, he tried to let that go for now.
After all, he had known from the moment he kissed her in the coyote cave that neither of them was going to walk away from this unscathed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
They went through the door into the bedroom together, kissing and dragging at clothing with reckless abandon.
Sven slapped the switch near the door and the room came to life, with light fracturing from a central chandelier and a series of wall sconces. Cara got a glimpse of gilt, and a huge, crimson-covered bed overwhelming the small shipboard space. Then he slammed the door and spun her back against it, lifting her and then pinning her there. And instead of, Am I really doing this? all she could think was, Oh, gods, yes.
She didn’t need to think any further than that—she’d gotten her sign in the nahwal’s message, and even without it, she knew that this was right for her, here and now. She would lead the winikin but she wouldn’t live her life in fear of them. If the future was only a few short months, she wanted to live those months with all the pleasure and magic she could find. And if “after” went beyond that, she would have fully experienced passion for the first time in her life, giving her a benchmark for her next lover to meet and exceed.
Not that she wanted to think about that next lover now.
Instead, she found Sven’s mouth with hers and poured herself into the kiss, taking it dark and wicked with her palms and tongue. He groaned in answer and ran his hands up her legs to push the dress high, and she stretched to wrap her legs around him, arch into him, and ride the hard ridge of his erection. The move wrung a growl from deep within his chest, and he lifted her higher to feast on her throat while she wrapped her arms around his neck, needing to hold him, touch him, be close to him. Closer still.
His kisses were ardent, his breathing fast and furious, his body a solid, immovable wall that brought nerves and the breathless weight of panic flashing through her as one part of her knew it was trapped, but another said, Yes, please, more.
She gave herself up to it, gloried in the way he held her off the ground without effort, pinning her with his lower body so his hands were free to touch and take. The dress was bunched at her waist now, his mouth at her breasts as she remained trapped between the flat press of the door and the yielding hardness of her lover.
Her lover. Yes. Sven was about to become her lover for real. Gods.
She buried her fingers in his hair and tugged back his head. His eyes were wild and glazed, his focus entirely on her, and when she drove her lips onto his, he met her stroke for stroke, with a rattling groan that echoed from him to her and back again, seeming caught in the heat and the magic that thrummed just beyond her senses.
“Not here. Not this time.” He spun them away from the door, cupping her ass so she rode him, as he carried her to the bed, kissing her, needing her. His hands raced over her, nearly violent in their speed, yet gentle when they connected. She leaned away, unfastened her dress, and skimmed it up over her head to fling it wonderfully free, so she was wearing only stockings, panties, and heels, and was wanton with it.
He lowered her to the bed but kept his weight off her as he kissed her and then drew away to stand over her, strip off his jacket, and reach for the buttons of his shirt. Then he went suddenly still, his eyes darkening as he looked down at her.
She lay deliciously sprawled, letting him look his fill while the blood pumped through her, making every inch of her tingle.
“Gods,” he said, his voice raspy, the word seeming to come from deep down inside him. “Cara.”
“Yes,” she said. Yes to all of it: to having him, taking him and being taken. This mattered; the rest of the world didn’t, not now. She rose to her knees and reached for the studs of his shirt, nudging his hands away. “Let me.” She opened his shirt and trailed kisses along his center line as it was revealed, undid his cuffs and slid the material back to kiss his marks, because they were a part of him. Then she unfastened his belt and the placket of his pants, and tugged them down in a slippery slide of expensive material to bare the flesh beneath. The sight of him straining against the fabric of his boxers quickened her breath, gripping her with frantic desire.
His boxers were a quick yank and gone, his shaft hard and pulsing with the beat of his heart, his testicles a warm, yielding weight that she could trail kisses across while she stroked his thighs, his buttocks, the cleft between. He shuddered and slapped for a bedpost, clutching it as his legs and body went rigid. He caught her shoulder, tried to urge her up his body, but didn’t try very hard.
“Let me,” she whispered against his inner thighs, thrilling to the way he swayed against her, hissing out a breath as she moved higher to lick along his stomach, then kiss a sweet path up the underside of his thick, pulsing shaft. And where before she had been in awe of his power, now she was the one who felt powerful.
His breathing went ragged, his muscles corded where he gripped the bedpost, his hands viciously gentle as he touched the back of her head, her nape, fingers dragging along her skin as if he was reassuring himself that she was really there, that this wasn’t one of the figments he had used to keep himself sane down in the war zone.
He had thought of her, fought for her. Knowing it, and that he cared for her deeply in his own way, unlocked something inside her. Murmuring his name, she opened her mouth and took him deep. He jolted against her and groaned a short, earthy curse, then went still as she slid her lips around him, encompassing him, taking as much of him as she could.
His breathing hitched and fine tremors raced along his muscles. He wasn’t a mage right now, wasn’t a spy or a warrior; he was a man desperate for what she could give him. Not sparks now, but flames. Pleasure. Acceptance. Affection. And a hell of a blow job.
She worked him, laved him, gloried in the surge of his body and the slick heat his excitement generated in hers as she brought him up to the pinnacle and—
He grated her name as he pulled away and bore her back onto the bed, stripping away her nylons and panties as he came down atop her. One shoe clunked to the floor; the other he took off and winged at the light switch by the door, plunging the room into a warm darkness lit by a glow from the bathroom and the blaze of security lights outside.
The night wrapped them in an intimacy she didn’t trust, but then he covered her with his body and nothing mattered but the press of his weight, his hot breath on her skin, and his kisses. Oh, his kisses. Their lips caught and held; their tongues slid; their breathing shuddered and hitched. And through it all, she burned for him, throbbed for him, reveled in knowing he needed her as much as she needed him.
He got a hand between their bodies and touched her core, murmuring dark praise at her wetness. He worked her, caressed her until she felt slick and swollen. Pleasure shivered through her at each slide of his hand, and then again as he shifted against her, intertwining them in a full-body embrace that had his hard, swollen cock sliding between her thighs. She rode the pleasure, rocking her hips against him, finding the perfect combination of pressure and friction almost immediately, and rocketing herself to the quick, bright slap of an orgasm.
She cried out as it gripped her, consumed her, raced through her, and then passed on, leaving her body vibrating at a higher level of sensation, driving her onward rather than leaving her wrung out.
Sven reared up over her and his face caught the light. His eyes were fierce, his hair a wild corona, his face set in concentration. The sight of him sent new shivers racing through her like lightning. His bloodline wildness was there in the elegant arc of his body, the lethal grace of muscle and sinew. She wanted this, wanted him, but not in any civilized way.
Heart pounding, she levered herself up to kiss him, seeking his taste, his strength, the quickening of his breath, and the groan that rumbled deep in his chest. Then she turned beneath him, pressed her bottom up against his pelvis, and offered herself, not just to Sven the man, but to the mage as well, the Nightkeeper who embodied his bloodline more than any other.
His breath shuddered out of him on a harsh groan of, “Christ, Cara,” and he caught her waist hard, holding her there, pressed up against him as he throbbed. And then, with no more than a shift of his body, his hard shaft
