By then his whole body flowed like molten fire under her touch. He felt like he was burning up. She worked him, and worked him, drawing him in entirely before pulling back to the tip, while he swore an endless telepathic litany of profanities.
She had nowhere to put the noises she needed to make. It all had to go into his head. She crooned and sometimes laughed at his inventive swearing and told him how wonderful he felt and tasted, and how much she wanted to take him inside.
He reached down to circle her throat with one hand while he pumped, fiercely silent, between her parted lips. Your mouth is like fire and silk. He warned, I don’t think I can hold back.
Delighted, hungry for him, she gasped. Do it. I want you to come in my mouth.
Gods damn—here. Here it is.
He slammed one fist into the mattress as he convulsed, and his cock began to pulse, jetting semen into her mouth. She milked at him and took all of it while she ran one flattened hand up the tense, shaking muscles of his abdomen. When his climax appeared to ease, she lifted her head and wiped her mouth.
Come here, he growled. I’m not done yet.
It was the Wyr mating urge. He gripped her hips and lifted her over his body until she straddled him. Then he took hold of his erection and rubbed it against her hypersensitive, private flesh, making sure she was ready for him before he pushed upward.
She was so empty she ached with it and shaking so hard she could barely keep herself propped up. He felt bigger and harder than ever as he entered her. As he pushed in, and in, she stretched to accommodate him, twisting at the piercing pleasure of his penetration.
Her breath came in quiet sobs. He put a shaking hand over her mouth. Hush, he said fiercely. This is just ours. Just yours and mine.
Blocking everyone else out. Nothing else mattered. Pride, hurt feelings, expectations, they all burned away until only they were left.
Male. Female.
Nikolas. Sophie.
He thrust into her until he reached a hard, driving rhythm, and she rode him as best she could. Reaching between their bodies, he stroked her gently at the place where they were joined. When he found her clitoris with the ball of his thumb, she was so primed to come it punched through her like a storm with gale force winds.
Shaking all over, she whimpered into his muffling hand as she climaxed until the peak came at such a height, she couldn’t take any more of it, and she jerked his thumb away.
They held together, joined at the groin, in the great room’s chill silence. The only sound she could hear was the quiet seesaw of their ragged breathing.
Then he sat up, wrapped his arms around her, and flipped their positions so that she lay underneath him again. He clamped tight around her, one arm around her hip, the other at the base of her neck, holding her clenched against the entire length of his body. It was a taut, uncomfortable pose. She could barely move. All she could do was grip him around the hips with her legs and wrap her arms around his torso.
He was still inside her, still hard and big, and now she was so sensitized every slight movement sent shock waves through her body.
Then he began to move again, hard, quick jabs that rocked her to the core. She really, truly didn’t think she could take any more, but then she took it, still in that extreme silence until tears welled and flowed out the corners of her eyes.
She came again two more times before he was finally through. Toward the end, all she could do was hide her face in his neck and cling while the storm of his own making shuddered through them.
The Wyr mating urge might not force him to stay with her. He might still be able to walk away. But no matter how she tried to lie to herself, she was no longer certain she had that ability.
This isn’t a cold, she thought. This isn’t the flu. This is a soul-destroying illness that will tear me to pieces before it kills me.
Afterward, he gathered her against his chest, turning his head so that his cheek lay against the crown of her head. Resting against his shoulder, she fell into another black pit, only this one was without dreams. He had taken the scorched earth approach and blasted everything else out of her mind, leaving only him.
She slept long and hard, and when she woke up, she was alone in the bed. Her bladder was full and her stomach uncomfortably empty. Filtered sunlight from the iron-framed, antique glass windows at one end of the great hall cast an indirect, thin light over the top of the crates and boxes and created deep shadows in her tiny bedroom.
Sighing, she curled on her side and hugged a pillow to her chest. He could have stayed long enough to kiss her good-bye in the morning. They both might know what this is, but there were courtesies.
Finally her physical discomfort grew so much she was forced to dress. She dragged on the same jeans and sweater she had put on after the stormy battle last night and tried to fingercomb the tangles out of her hair. The curls sprang out everywhere in a mad, chaotic halo, but she felt too disheartened to dig for her comb and hair bands to force it into more order.
She had a feeling she looked like something a cat might have dragged down an alley before abandoning it, deeming it too pathetic for its attention.
There was an unfortunate metaphor in that.
As she sat on the bed to pull on her Doc Martens, she saw a bottle of nail polish sitting on the bedside table. Nikolas had returned what was left to her. Picking the bottle up, she shook it. As she had feared, very little remained in the bottle.
She still had the spells she had painted on her arms from yesterday afternoon, minus the one confusion spell she had used on the Hound, but those would peel off and degrade. After that, she might be able to cast one more spell, maybe two, and then her little made-up arsenal would be depleted.
Sighing, she tucked the bottle into the bedside table’s shallow drawer, lifted the privacy curtain, and stepped out into the communal area. Several of the men sat at the table, drinking tea and talking. The smell of bacon hung in the air.
As she appeared, they turned to look at her. There was a moment of silence.
Then Rowan said, “I mean this in an entirely platonic way, but that crazy hair of yours has got to be one of the sexiest things I’ve ever seen.”
“Do you have a death wish, mate?” Cael said to him.
Rowan lifted his hands. “I said I meant it platonically!”
Warmth washed over her cheeks. Nikolas stood with Braden and Ashe, over by the windows between the Mini and the Harley, looking out. He didn’t turn at the exchange.
She said telepathically to Gawain, I’m about to start tap dancing here. I know you’ve promised that either you or Nikolas would stay with me at all times, but you’re all here in the great hall. I think I’m perfectly safe to go to the bathroom by myself.
He frowned. That will probably do for now.
She told the group, “Privacy alert. I’m going to take a few necessary moments in the courtyard, so I’d appreciate it if everybody stayed here until I got back.”
There. Now that she drew attention to it, everybody would be obligated to stay in the great hall.
Gawain told her, “There’s soap and a bucket of water on the bench. It’ll be cold, but you can have a bit of a wash too, if you like. We have a couple of solar showers—black bags with sprinkler nozzles that heat up in the sunlight—so later in the afternoon there’ll be warmer water for showers.”
“That sounds amazing,” she said with such heartfelt fervency, a couple of the men grinned.
She slipped into the courtyard to take care of business and wash up, and she took a few minutes to wrestle her hair into a long, thick braid that fell down her back. When she returned, Cael slipped a plate of bacon and eggs in front of her, along with a cup of black coffee. He said, “The eggs will be good for a few days, so we should enjoy them while we can.”
“Thank you so much.” She glanced again at Nikolas and the other two men by the window, then turned her attention to the hot meal.
As she ate, Cael slipped a couple of pieces of toast on her p
late. At first there was a lull in the conversation, but then, as the men grew used to her presence, the talk resumed.
They had a lot to say to one another after such a long, enforced solitude. From what she could glean, as she listened, they had only gathered at the solstices to raise the energies to contact home. Despite the danger of their situation and her own pessimistic outlook, they were relishing the chance to relax together, which made her smile.
As she finished the last of her breakfast, Nikolas stalked over. He was dressed in black again—she didn’t think he wore any other color—and while she couldn’t see his sword harness through the cloaking spell, she would bet good money he was wearing it. He looked leaner, darker, and harder than ever, and his dark eyes glittered with an expression she didn’t want to try to interpret.
He said, “Ready to get to work?”
Her jaw tightened. “Good morning to you,” she said. “How are you today, Sophie? I’m fine, thank you very much. I got a good night’s sleep. How are you, Nik? Oh, I’m suffering from a severe case of rudeness this morning, but other than that, I’m okay.”
Someone across the table made a strangled noise. She thought it might have been Gareth. Other than that, dead silence washed over the group. Nobody looked at Nikolas or at her although Rowan suddenly looked several shades redder than usual.
Nikolas gave her a dangerous smile. “Glad we have the pleasantries out of the way,” he said in a silken voice. “Are you ready to get to work? I packed supplies for us.”
Reaching close to the floor at one end of the table, he picked up two backpacks.
Oh God. She was going to have to spend the entire day with Mr. Sunshine. She glanced at Gawain for help, but he wasn’t looking at her either. With obvious reluctance, she said, “I guess so.”
“We’ve got a lot to do. Let’s go.”
She would not scowl. She would not give him the satisfaction of letting him know he got to her. Pushing back from the table, she said to Cael, “Thank you for breakfast.”
“You’re welcome,” he told her.
Nikolas said to the group, “We don’t know what’s going to happen when we encounter shifts. We’ll try to keep you posted, but don’t get too alarmed if we don’t show up in sync with the day as you know it. And set up a schedule of round-the-clock watches, two men for each shift.”
She joined him. “Watches?”
He told her grimly, “Morgan’s here.”
Her stomach clenched. “That’s why you were watching out the window?”
“Yes.”
She went over to the windows, murmuring, “Pardon me,” to Ashe, who moved to let her look out. The thick square windowpanes were small and dirty, and the view through the antique glass was wavery and distorted, but she could still see the familiar tall, broad-shouldered figure who stood on the lawn, about twenty yards away.
Morgan had his arms crossed, and he studied the house with his chin tucked down. On either side of him, both men and Hounds stretched as far as she could see. She didn’t have to see for herself to know they would have surrounded the entire house.
Ashe said, “He’s been out there like that since dawn. Trying to figure out a way in, I expect.”
Nikolas put a hand on her shoulder. Turning to him, she said, “I’m ready.”
He handed her a backpack. “Lead the way. Where do you want to start?”
Immediately she turned to walk down the hall where she had found the first shift. “We know this one is here. And we know of the one in the courtyard. Let’s get those marked first, then we’ll move on.” Telepathically she asked, Why did you set watches?
He said, The house might not be in alignment with the land outside, but once those front doors are open, anybody can pass through. They can either go in—or out. And anybody from the inside can open the doors. I tested it myself yesterday.
She frowned. You’re thinking the traitor might try to open them and let the enemy in—or get out?
I’d say that was a distinct possibility. As soon as that thought occurred to me, I got up and kept watch until the others woke up.
The heaviness that had weighed her down since waking lifted somewhat. I didn’t hear you leave.
Good. I didn’t want to disturb you. You needed the rest.
She was so focused on him she almost forgot to watch for the place where she had felt the shift until they had almost stepped over it.
“Wait!” she said, grabbing his arm. “We’re here.”
The hall looked the same in both directions. Nikolas frowned. “I can’t sense it.”
“Maybe this one is a smaller shift, and you’ll be able to sense a bigger one,” she said. She frowned. “How are we going to measure what happens on either side of a shift? We can see the hall clearly—just like we can see the house from outside—but there will be a difference once we step to the other side.”
“I think one of us needs to step over, while the other stays on this side,” Nikolas told her. “Then we each count to ten. We can practice how fast we count so that we’re keeping the same time. The first one who hit ten reaches for the other one. Since clocks don’t work, it’s not going to be an exact measurement, but it will give us an idea of what to expect.”
“Okay, let’s try it.”
They practiced the beat of the count a few times, then Nikolas told her, “See you on the other side.”
He stepped over the shift, and she started to count. When she hit seven, he reached for her hand and stepped to her side again. “That is so strange,” she muttered.
“What number did you hit?” he asked.
“Seven, and we couldn’t have been counting that far off from each other. So this means down the hall that way, time flows faster than it does over here and in the great hall.” Kneeling, she opened her pack and pulled out a small can of white paint and a brush. “They didn’t get colors.”
“I don’t think they understood what you wanted.”
She gave him a sidelong grin. “Doesn’t matter. We can just number the zones.”
Nikolas pulled out a pad of paper and sketched as she painted a line across the hall, then to one side by the wall, she painted 7:10. “The seven is on this side of the shift. The colon is the shift itself, and the ten is on the other side. Make sense?”
He nodded. “It does.” He pointed down the hall. “One thing—we don’t want to number that zone. We might go all the way around the house and come at this hall from the other side. If we label that ‘zone two’ right now and keep numbering zones as we find the shifts, this area might end up getting labeled ‘zone nine’ on the other side. To avoid confusion, I think the only zone we can label right now is the great hall.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” She sat back on her heels. “So the only things we should map right now are the floor plan and the shifts. We can label everything afterward.”
“Right.” He squatted beside her, leaned forward, and gave her a quick, hard kiss.
Hey. That wasn’t playing by any of the rules either one of them had set up. She scowled, disturbed, maybe a little angry, and maybe more than a little delighted. “Stop that.”
“I need to hear you say it.” Nikolas’s dark eyes were intense, heated, and far too close for her comfort. “Say, ‘Nikolas, I want you to stop that.’”
He wanted to hear the truth or falsehood in what she said. “No. I’m not going to play your games.”
“I’m not playing any games, remember?”
Tears pricked at the back of her eyes. Turning her face away, she stood as she asked, “Then what the hell are you doing?”
“I can’t leave you alone. I don’t want to.” He rose to stand beside her, still too close. “I heard the lie in your voice when you said last night was the last night.”
“Screw you, Nik.” She gave him a look filled with bitter hurt. “I heard the truth in yours, when you said as soon as you got me out of your system, you’re gone.”
His expression changed. As he reached out to her
, a low rumbling noise started and rose in volume until Sophie could feel it vibrating through her feet.
Dread bolted through her. “What is that? It sounds like an earthquake.”
“It’s Morgan,” Nikolas snarled. “He’s calling up the land magic.”
They raced back to the great hall and the front window, where the rest of the men had gathered, their expressions grim. Slowly the rumble died away. Nikolas shouldered his way to the window. There were too many men in the way for Sophie to follow him, so she climbed on the hood of the Mini to look out.
The low rumble began and rose in intensity. Rubbing a clear spot on the dirty window to peer through, she saw Morgan kneeling on the lawn, hands flattened, his pose similar to the one Nikolas had used when he had buried the Hounds. Morgan’s head and shoulders were bowed, and even from that distance, she could see the strain in his body. Behind him, a tree toppled over and crashed into the roof of the cottage.
Rage and fear hit in equal measures. “He’s destroying my property!”
Nikolas said harshly, “This must be how he broke the crossover passageways. He’s using land magic to try to break through to the house. Can he do it?”
She sank both hands into the hair at her temples and squeezed her eyes shut as she tried to think. Could Morgan do it? This piece of land wasn’t in alignment with that piece of land. Like Nikolas’s morningstar, any kind of missile wouldn’t make a direct hit.
But this wasn’t a missile. This was a kind of magic she had never encountered before, and if Nikolas could call upon the land magic to bury thirty Hounds, what could Morgan do?
Somehow he could call upon the land magic Powerfully enough to break entire crossover passageways.
Opening her eyes again, she confronted nine sets of eyes watching her intently. Reluctantly she told them, “He doesn’t carry Djinn magic, so he might not be able to get inside the house, but he might be able to bury the house with us in it.”
Chapter Nineteen