On the one hand, she felt an inexplicable reluctance, but on the other, the property was now so damaged it bore none of the charms she had first enjoyed about it. Instead of having a viable living space, if she didn’t sell, she would be facing renovation bills she didn’t have the liquid resources to pay. And besides, the Dark Court had a legitimate claim and a very real need.
“You don’t have to say a thing,” Paul told her. “Just take a few hours to absorb the news and come on into the office. We can go over the details. I’ll take you to lunch and buy you champagne.”
“Well… Okay, thank you. Of course I’ll listen to the details,” she told him. “For ten million pounds, how can I not?”
“Exactly. See you soon.”
In a daze, she set the receiver on the cradle.
What did the madman have to say? Did he want to yell at her, now that she’d had some coffee? Was he trying to close the deal?
After dressing in jeans, the Doc Martens, a black, long-sleeved sweater, and a denim jacket, she braided her hair, checked her Glock and tucked it into her purse. Then she opened the door.
Nikolas stood outside, dressed in black, carrying so much Power he felt like a bolt of lightning barely sheathed in the form of a man. The planes and angles of his face, so sharp they appeared cut from an immortal blade, were clenched, and his dark eyes glittered.
The impact of his forceful presence hit her so hard she fell back a step.
He advanced. She retreated more. She only realized they had stepped fully back into the suite when he shot out a hand to slam the door shut.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
He said between his teeth, “Chasing after you.”
She stared at him, breathing hard. After a moment, she said, “I’m not going to fight with you.”
“I’m not here to fight.” He turned away and ran his fingers through his hair. Then with quick, vicious movements, he shrugged out of his sword harness and threw it across the room. In a quiet, raw voice, he said, “You left. You just left.”
“Yes, I did,” she said softly.
“You left without a goddamn word. You just drove off.”
“Not true,” she said. “I had a word with Rowan.”
She could hear his breath sawing in his throat, a ragged, telltale sound. “You left without a goddamn word to me.”
She whispered, “Maybe I’m done talking to you.”
“Well, I’m not done talking to you.” He turned to face her. “I’m sorry.”
She was so braced for a fight anyway at first the words didn’t make sense. “What?”
“I said I’m sorry.” He strode over and took her by the shoulders. “Rowan told me what you said, about drawing a line in the sand. I didn’t realize I had pushed you so far.”
“You had a lot on your plate yesterday. Anyway, it doesn’t matter anymore.” She pulled away from him, shrugged out of her jacket, set her purse aside, and went to sit on the sofa. Leaning forward, she rested her elbows on her knees. “We accomplished what you needed. You’re reunited with your people, and you have access to your home. I’m done.”
“You can’t be done.” Striding over, he crouched in front of her. “Come back.”
“No,” she said.
He braced one hand on the edge of the couch by her thigh and leaned closer. “Sophie, come back.”
“No, Nikolas.” She had cried so long and hard her well was dry, but her chest felt like a giant bruise. She focused on the floor between her feet to avoid looking at him.
There was a long silence. Then he asked, “Why not?”
Staring at the floor didn’t give her enough distance from him. She buried her face in her hands. “What do you mean, why not? You know why not. There’s no point to any of this fighting or apologizing, because we’re not partners. We’re not in this together—we’re not in anything together. I’m not coming back, because as soon as you get me out of your system, you’re gone, and I’m not going to hang around for that experience. Because I love too much and too hard, for too long. If I go back with you, I’ll invest even more of myself in you, when you have told me repeatedly you don’t have anything to give a lover, and you will break me even harder—”
Realizing where she was headed with the last of that sentence, she stopped abruptly, but the unsaid words still hung in the room.
You will break me even harder than you have already.
Gently he curled fingers around one of her hands and coaxed it down. Then he took hold of her other hand and coaxed that down too. He held her hands to his lips and said quietly against her fingers, “We’ve said some pretty awful things to each other at times, haven’t we?”
Her throat closed. She nodded.
He kissed her fingers. “There are different levels of truth, my Sophie. On the one hand, there is this—as soon as I get you out of my system, I’m gone. That was a defense mechanism, said in the heat of the moment when you told me you were making love to me for the last time. But on the other hand, there is also this—I will never get you out of my system. Never. Can you hear the truth in that?”
She could, and her heart started to pound.
“Then,” he said, even more quietly, “there are truths that change. Before I met you, I was adamant about not investing in a relationship. I was constantly on the run, my life in danger, and that is a terrible thing to take to a woman’s bed. And I met you. You’re stubborn, infuriating, courageous, inventive, generous, and kind. You make me laugh. You make me crazy. You make me rediscover things inside myself that I thought were dead forever. You make me hard as a rock until all I can think about is tearing off your clothes. How long have we known each other?”
“Maybe four days, or maybe seventeen.” At a loss, she shook her head. “Who the hell knows anymore?”
He gave her a crooked smile. “No matter how you calculate it, or how many time slippages we’ve gone through, it hasn’t been very long.”
“No,” she whispered. “It hasn’t.”
He paused. “Tell me you don’t love me.”
“I don’t love you,” she told him.
The falsehood lingered in the air between them. He smiled. “Tell me you don’t want me.”
She looked him in the eyes and said, “I don’t want you.”
Oh, that one. That was laughably false.
His smile died. “When you went to Raven’s Craig, I asked Braden how he and his wife made the kind of commitment they had, when we live such dangerous lives. He said, the love has got to be bigger than everything else. The isolation, the separation, the danger. When the love is bigger than all that—you just do it. You pay the price in uncertainty and sometimes bereavement, because every moment you’re together is worth the cost.”
“What a beautiful thing to say,” she whispered.
His grip tightened on her hands. “I can’t lie. Part of me is still struggling, because if I let you into my life I feel like I’m putting you in danger. Also over the last week, my life has changed somewhat. We have reinforcements now, which means we can create pockets of safety, but there’ll still be violence and danger. We didn’t kill Morgan. Isabeau still hates us. Oberon is still unconscious. Yet in spite of all that, I need to ask you. Can we make love bigger than everything else?”
With all his responsibilities, he had still left old friends and comrades, and the command of his army, to come this morning and ask her this. Well, and to bitch at her a little bit too, but she would get over that.
Leaning forward, she wrapped her arms around his neck, and he pulled her down on the floor to hold her. It felt so good to be back in his arms. Closing her eyes, she concentrated fiercely on soaking every moment of it in.
She told him, “Yes, we can. I can handle everything, as long as you don’t push me away—and Nik, I mean it. You’ve got to fight that instinct, because rejection hurts almost more than anything else in the world, and I won’t put up with it. You’ve got to go all in.”
“I’m all in,
” he whispered.
“Oh God, we’re going to fight, aren’t we?” She turned her face into his hair.
“It’s going to be ugly.” He rocked her. “You make me so crazy.”
She laughed unsteadily. “Your autocratic nonsense drives me batty.” She lowered her voice and said gruffly, “I’m going to issue orders now, because it never occurs to me that somebody might have a mind of her own.”
“Shut up.” He sank his fists into her hair. “Shut up.”
She opened her eyes very wide. “See? You just issued an ord—”
Growling, he covered her mouth with his. He told her telepathically, There’s really only one way I know of to shut you up.
Well, sure, she said sarcastically. “OUT LOUD. There’s really only one way to truly, truly shut me up.
He lifted his head. His expression had caught fire. He growled, “Orgasms.”
Caught by surprise, her mouth hung open. She said, “I was about to say, you’d have to knock me out, but your idea sounds much more fun.”
“I think so too.” Standing, he scooped her into his arms and walked with her into the bedroom.
Oh dear Lord, he carried her into the bedroom. It was such a quintessentially Nikolas thing to do, she was nearly beside herself with exasperated glee. She stuck out one leg and regarded with bemusement the sturdy Doc Martens boot at the end of it.
He was never going to learn.
Never.
Chapter Twenty-Two
In the shadowed bedroom, Nikolas set Sophie down. Before her feet touched the floor, he was kissing her, plundering that soft, generous mouth. He yanked the tie out of her hair and pulled the braid out, sinking his fists into the fragrant, curling mass.
It had been such a long, difficult night, he had no patience. Dealing with the needs of his army, talking strategy with Annwyn in bursts as they found time. Looking for Sophie whenever he had a moment until he finally ran into Rowan, who had given him his ring, told him what she had said, and that she had left for Shrewsbury.
The news had been a kick to the gut. She had gone, just gone. No word of explanation. No information about where she was staying.
This is how people die, he thought. You expect them to be there, and then suddenly they aren’t.
Well after midnight, when he felt like he could finally leave, he had taken Gawain’s Harley to go look for her. She didn’t answer her phone. Her stupid solicitor didn’t know a goddamn thing. He had to resort to going from hotel to hotel until finally he recognized the Mini parked in the street.
The experience had scared him and made him angry. Not that he had truly believed she might die. She had been right when she had said to Rowan that it was the perfect time for her to go.
It had scared him and made him angry, because she had left him.
Facing that possibility burned everything else away, and he understood what Braden had been saying. While they collected the bodies of their fallen troops and prepared them to be transported back across the passageway for burial at home, he confronted what his life would be like if Sophie was truly out of his life, and he realized he would have done anything to spend as much time with her as he possibly could.
Pushing the night into the past where it belonged, he focused on the here and now. Sophie stood in front of him, healthy and whole. She spread her hands over his chest, and her touch soothed the last of the rawness away.
Need took control of his actions. He yanked her shirt over her head, and as her arms came free, she scrambled out of her bra. His skin was on fire, and the restriction of his clothes felt intolerable. He tore them off while she wriggled out of the rest of her things.
Then they came together, flesh to flesh, with nothing between them. It felt so necessary and right he paused with his mouth resting on the pulse at the base of her neck, breathing her in, taking her into every darkened, solitary corner in his soul so she could light him up with her presence.
She seemed to understand he needed that moment; as she rubbed his arms, her head tilted back to expose the slender curve of her vulnerable throat.
“I’m still going to try to protect you,” he whispered.
She stroked his hair. “I’m still going to try to protect you too, and I’m never going to sit in a tower and learn how to knit.”
“We have so much war ahead of us.”
“I know, Nik,” she said, gently steady. “I accept all that. I will try to learn how to be the best partner I can be, for you.”
“As I will, for you.” He kissed her while he let his fingers stroke along the underside of her breasts. With the last of his rational thought, he murmured, “We work well together, even when we’re fighting and driving each other insane.”
“We do, don’t we?” She nuzzled him. “We work well in other ways too.”
The fire in his veins took over, and he pulled her onto the bed. Time broke apart as they traversed their own crossover passage, passing from uncertainty, fear, and anger into acceptance, optimism, and passion. Her taste drove him wild. He licked and bit her everywhere, leaving marks, while she twisted and gasped underneath him.
She incited him to more, scraping her fingernails along his sensitized skin, sinking her teeth into his lower lip, rubbing herself along the length of his body with such evident pleasure, he almost spurted against her hip.
Finally he couldn’t tease her any longer. As she lay back against the pillows, he rose and pushed between her legs. She welcomed him, her expression flushed and sensual, reaching between them to caress his cock and guide him to her entrance.
Thrusting in, he rocked gently, working his way into her with care while she made the most delicious sound, a shaking, needy moan, and arched her torso up to him.
Then he slipped all the way in, pushed as hard against her flesh as he could while he kissed her with the force of all the fierce emotions raging inside. He drank in the sight of her, the velvet, excruciating sensation of her inner muscles gripping him as tight as a fist. He drank all of her up.
When he saw tears glittering in her eyes, he paused, breathing hard. “My Sophie,” he whispered. He loved saying that every chance he could, biting into the possessiveness like eating a ripe, succulent peach. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I am.” She stroked his back, and then a mischievous smile broke over her face. She said with genuine delight, “Thanks for asking, asshole.”
He burst out laughing and kissed her extra hard as punishment. He was almost certain it was punishment. To be sure, he kissed her again and again as he started to move inside her. She caught the rhythm and moved with him.
“I love you,” she whispered against his mouth.
Pleasure spiraled high on brilliant wings. He thrust harder, deeper, watching as her lips parted in a gasp. “I love you too,” he gritted. “You’re mine now, Sophie. Do you understand that?”
She nodded, touching his hair, his face. “You’re mine too. I don’t know what on earth I’m going to do with you—what we’re going to do with each other—but you are mine.”
“We’re going to make love bigger than anything else,” he said.
Words fell away as he lost himself in movement and fire. He took her with him, working her with just the right caress until she gasped and shuddered underneath him. Her inner muscles pulsed with her climax, which hurtled him over the edge.
Then he took her there again, and again, playing her body like a musician while he found his home inside, until the only thing left in the room was something shining, new, and pure.
Afterward, he wrapped her in his arms, and she rested her head on his chest. They dozed for a while, then suddenly Sophie swore and sat up. “Damn it, I forgot. I was going to meet Paul for lunch. I’d better give him a call.”
Nikolas settled back against the pillows, enjoying the shapely lines of her back. “Clearly something came up,” he drawled, letting his fingers walk down her spine.
She gave him a laughing glance over her shoulder. “Oh, snicker.”
&n
bsp; He grinned. “You’d better make that call quick while you can. I think something is coming up again.”
* * *
After spending the night in Shrewsbury and meeting Paul for breakfast, they headed back to Westmarch and the manor house.
Their battle over who would drive the Mini was brief and idiotic. Finally he accused, “You don’t even want to drive. You said yourself you don’t like driving on the wrong side of the road.”
“Well… yeah.” She scowled. “You just held out your hand for my keys in that preemptory way, and then I had to argue on principle.”
He sighed. He was truly mystified by how happy she made him. “Get in the car, Sophie.”
She gave him an arch look. “I’m getting in the car because I choose to get into the car. Not because you told me to.”
He barked out a laugh.
Happiness. The emotion felt foreign, breakable. On the way back he reached over and laced his fingers through hers and drove one-handed.
Turning onto the property, he saw the troops had started to clear away the cottage rubble and the downed trees. When he switched off the engine, they looked over the land. An army camp had been erected. The doors to the manor house had been taken down, and there were two visible cracks in the outer structure.
“Ten million pounds is so much money,” she said doubtfully.
“You are the world’s worst negotiator,” he told her. “As serious as our problems are, Lyonesse’s treasury is rich. Now that we have a viable crossover passage, we need to have access to it. Take the deal.”
“Well, I don’t really have a choice.” She waved a hand at the mess in front of them. “I don’t have the means to fix this, and you deserve to have the property. I’m just a little sad about it. I had been planning on living here.”
“The land can be healed,” he said. “It’ll be green again. We’ll plant trees and restore the lake. We want to make this our permanent headquarters so you and I can build a house here. We’ll need to build several structures to house a permanent fighting force to protect this place. That tunnel is our only viable crossover passageway, at least for now. I think even the manor house can be repaired, at least enough to make the structure safe again, although Annwyn wants to tear it down. She says the very fact of it is offensive to her.”