by Cathy Clamp
“It does now … hurt.” She’d felt heat rise to her face as she said this out loud, especially because her brother was standing right there. Bojan had listened intently to the conversation, likely gathering information for his own situation. “I cannot get him out of my mind. Literally. I can hear his thoughts, feel his feelings. I can’t not hear what’s happening to him. Even now, I can feel the sensation of him wriggling through rock. It makes my skin crawl.
“He’s a snake and he lied to me, but I fear for him, and worry, and want him.” She’d let out an exasperated breath. “Tuli, I only just met him. Just two days ago. I was just nearly killed, the killer could be lurking nearby even now, and Tristan might be crushed by rocks any second. It makes no sense to think of sex right now. But I can’t seem to help it!”
The other woman had sighed, as though she’d felt the same thing. “That’s mating for you. It makes no sense. High emotion makes it stronger, so dangerous situations are actually when you think about sex more.”
Anica closed the door to the bathroom but didn’t lock it. It was a pretty space, decorated in silver and gray. The items on the small counter matched the fluffy towels, from the toothbrush holder to the soap dish and even the covered cotton ball container. Turning on the water, she made it as hot as possible to cut through the sweat and soot. A glance in the mirror made her wonder why Tristan felt any desire at all. She was filthy, grimy … her hair stringy and hanging in clumps. Yuck.
After undressing, she stepped under the water. She felt him move closer to the door, inhale the steam that carried her scent around the doorframe. His desire to touch her overwhelmed her, making her nearly stagger. As she scrubbed her hair and soaped her skin with fragrant citrus soap and a poofy white sponge, it was as though his hands were smoothing the lather along her body. Her own hunger began to rise as she scrubbed the day off. She wanted him to open the door and join her under the pounding water. But he didn’t, even as she intentionally touched her nipples and then between her legs. Her desire grew, but still he held back. The battle inside him pushed against her own mind and made her want him even more. Magic began to fill the air like a sparkling cloud of blue-white glitter in the steam.
Once she was clean, she brushed the knots out of her hair and wrapped one of the massive bath sheets around herself, nearly twice, before tucking the end in to hold it closed. Tristan was concentrating on each tiny act she was doing, even to brushing her teeth, so he didn’t think about the nude body under the towel. Every action she did was echoed in her mind, the mundane motions turned into a reverse striptease that was making him crazy. Yet still he fought opening the door to claim her.
So she did it for him. But the sight of him when she did made her stop and reconsider. He was hanging on to his control by teeth and toenails, his eyes wide and bright with magic, his breath coming in tiny gasps from desperate need. Even his hands were clenched into tight fists, the knuckles white from effort. So, instead of dropping the towel and inviting him to take her, she stepped past him. “Your turn.” He nodded gratefully and nearly leaped into the room before shutting the door.
She waited … until the water started and she could hear, smell the soap. Then Anica opened the door and stepped inside.
He froze behind the shower curtain. “You need to leave. Before—”
She removed her towel and carefully hung it on the rack. “No. You needed to prove to yourself that you could defeat desire. You did. You wanted to protect me from something you did not believe you could control. You did. Now, it is my choice and your choice. Not a requirement, but a wish, between two adults, two humans, not just their animals.”
He paused, so close she could reach forward and touch him except for the thin plastic sheet. The glitter was in the air again, even more powerful this close, and her body was tight with need. “I don’t think you understand who I really am.”
That was true. “Then show me. Open this curtain and show me the real you. I wish to have you now, to feel you inside me and give you pleasure. But only whoever you are in truth.”
The shadow of his body behind the curtain changed, so quickly that it might have been her imagination. But she didn’t imagine that the hand that reached out to grasp the edge of the shower curtain was different—the skin darker, the hand smaller, more slender.
When he pulled back the curtain, she didn’t gasp. She’d seen him before, in Tristan’s mind. His hair was jet-black and wavy, his eyes the dark gray of a stormy sea lit with intense blue fire. The lines at the edges of his eyes and mouth told her he had smiled more often in his life than frowned. She reached out, touched the creases in his face, and felt his power surge through her, quicken her body. Her skin vibrated with electricity that made her shiver and her nipples harden instantly.
His cock did too. She moved from his face to grasp it and he moaned, nearly falling back against the wall. He reached for her, pulled her into the shower, and kissed her. It was a frantic, desperate kiss that poured all of his desire down her throat. Feeling his muscles envelop her made her wet, swollen with need, so that when he reached between them and began to slide himself inside her she lifted one leg, putting her foot on the edge of the tub, and leaned back against the wall, to ease his way. She was a little afraid she’d slip, but he braced one foot back against the front of the small enclosure, not as much a bathtub as a shower stall, keeping them solidly balanced.
It was an awkward first joining, but it felt completely right—to be under water for their first time. The hot water pounded down on her head as he cupped her butt cheeks and slammed into her. He filled her completely, to nearly overflowing, and her muscles contracted around him so tight she wanted to scream. But she could only whimper as his mouth found her neck, sucking and licking at the same speed as his hands clutched at her ass, while his constantly moving chest made her breasts so swollen and heavy that she couldn’t help herself as she exploded into climax. There were too many sensations, too soon, and while she didn’t scream out her ecstasy, it was only because his mouth suddenly moved to cover hers, his tongue in the way of any sound escaping.
One hand moved, slipped between them to quickly rub her clitoris while she climaxed, taking her even higher, to where firefly sparkles appeared in her vision. Her heart was beating so fast she was afraid it would leap out of her chest.
Yet he kept up the same pace, moving in and out of her in something approaching a frenzy, unrelenting, intensifying the sight-stealing sensations that gripped her, plunged her into a place she’d never been before. She began to push her hips against him just as hard, until his breathing grew ragged. She pulled her mouth away from his to whisper, “Your turn.”
He shook his head. “Not here.” He pulled himself out of her and let the water pour down on them while he toyed with her breasts, feeling the weight of them and teasing the nipples until her insides began to clench again.
Tristan stepped out of the tub and pulled her along until they were standing in front of the sink. “I want you to see your eyes as you go over again.” He spread her legs and entered her from behind and the different angle in the already-swollen passage made her gasp and clutch the edge of the counter from the sheer pleasure. She could see her expression in the mirror and the glow of magic that made her eyes look like opals in the sunlight.
Once again, he reached his hands around, this time squeezing her breast with one hand while the other returned to rub her clit. His mouth moved to her neck and she couldn’t seem to shut her eyes while she watched the entire scene. Her chest began to heave for air. Then, like moments before, her insides began to clench around the length and width of his cock as he moved in and out of her, faster and faster with each second. The smells of sex and magic, combined with Tristan’s exotic spices, nearly made her pass out.
When she climaxed again, she understood why he wanted her to watch. Her eyes looked like captive stars. The sight should have terrified her, but it didn’t, because his eyes were the same, glowing with an inner fire that joined them,
and when he finally let go and allowed his climax to claim him even their skin was glowing with white light. The door in her mind became a chasm that pulled her into the fire. It gripped her body and mind in something that “climax” couldn’t begin to describe. She was open to him, and he to her, and she didn’t know that the door could ever be closed again.
“Dear Gods,” was all he could whisper before he pulled himself out of her. She felt the heat as he spilled himself onto her back. Then he collapsed onto her, pushing her forward so abruptly that she nearly hit her head on the mirror.
While they both remembered how to breathe, he let out a gasping sort of chuckle. “I think we’re going to need another shower.”
CHAPTER 22
Anica slid out from underneath Tristan’s arm, the weight of it telling her he was in deep slumber. After yet another session of lovemaking once they’d made it to the bedroom, she wasn’t surprised.
She padded to the bathroom and saw the mess they’d left behind, and sensed the smells that even now pulled at her. When she returned to the bed after using the toilet, she intended to lie back down. But she was fully awake and he looked so peaceful sleeping. Her mind still struggled to grasp that the dark hair and deeply tanned skin on the white pillow were of the same man she’d seen for the past two days. Should she still think of him as Tristan? No. He is Ris. I like him better this way. It is the honest him.
He rolled over then, into the spot where she’d lain, revealing the tattoo of ocean waves that was the only reminder of the blond-haired, blue-eyed Tristan. But he still felt the same in her head. The sensation was quiet now, a light pressure like hair or jewelry that was there but not noticed unless she thought about it.
She was beginning to learn to shield. Another lesson from Tuli that she’d sorely needed. Bojan too had learned while waiting for word from their mates inside the mountain.
“Shielding will help,” Tuli had told her. “Has anyone taught you how?”
She’d glanced at Bojan, who pursed his lips and shook his head. “No,” Anica replied for them both. If he was mated to Scott, as she was starting to believe, then this might help him too.
“Concentrate very hard. Think about Ris. Then use your finger to point to the spot on your head where you can feel him strongest. Tell me when you have that spot.”
Anica had closed her eyes and thought, really thought. It took only seconds to feel the slithering sensation all along her body and for her mind to see the black and blue bands of his snake form in her head. When she opened her eyes, her finger was pointed just behind her left ear.
It was still where she felt him in her mind.
“Behind my left ear,” she’d told the snake mate of Ahmad. “Does that mean something?”
“No. It doesn’t matter where it is. You just need to know. Now, imagine a whole row of doors. Different kinds of doors, like you are standing in a store trying to decide which kind to buy. There are wooden ones and metal ones in different colors and doors like bank vaults and others with screens. Can you seem them all?”
She could. Her mind flashed on every door she’d ever seen. The steel door where she lived now with tiny panes of thick, beveled glass set higher than her eyes could see out, and the home where she’d grown up, painted white, and the black steel door, painted with scrolls and flowers, with the heavy crank lock at the bank. “Yes. I can see many doors.”
“Now, choose the one you want to hide behind. For danger, choose steel. When you want the attachment to him, pick a screen door or a Dutch door, where half opens.”
“Now is danger. Tristan is in danger, but it’s not danger I can fix or help with. I’m scared and it makes it worse that I can feel everything.”
“Then steel. Put the door on top of the spot in your head. That hole in your head is a doorway. Imagine a frame around it where you can replace the doors at will.” Tuli’s voice was like a lifeline to grab on to for both her and Bojan. If her brother was feeling Scott’s situation like she was feeling Tristan’s, then he was feeling the pain of his arm trapped in the rock and the panic of the darkness. When she looked at her brother’s face, she knew … just knew that he was.
“Put the door in your hand and put your hand on the spot on your head where you feel that attachment. Then push the door closed. It will be difficult to shut the first time, as though the hinges are rusty. You will have to push very hard to move the door. But keep trying. Work the hinges back and forth by pressing and releasing the pressure of your hand.” She paused. “Close your eyes and shut the door now. Hard.”
Anica had done as she was instructed, and so had Bojan. Their hands were in different spots. Hers was behind her left ear. Bojan’s was on his forehead. When she closed her eyes and pushed on the spot, it had felt much like Tuli had said. Rusty … but even more like there was air pressure behind it keeping the door from closing. She kept pushing and releasing her hand on her ear until finally something similar to a bubble of air popped in her ear and the door closed. “I closed it!” She blinked her eyes.
Opening it, fully, while they’d made love, had been the most amazing experience of her life.
She swallowed at the memory, and realized her mouth was dry, her throat still raw from the smoke. But the rest of her felt healed, loose, and limber—even though she knew she should be sore everywhere. This, the healing and the mind joining, is part of mating I will not mind. But what about the rest? She wasn’t sure how she felt about Ris. While her body wanted him, even now desiring to turn him over and straddle him—to feel him fill her and take her to that place again—her mind slipped back to a conversation with Mama, years ago, when she was positive she was in love with a boy at school. She’d been only fifteen and Mikhail had paid much attention to her. He brought her flowers to school, and carried her books and bought her lunch. He’d been funny and sweet, and she’d gushed to Mama about him.
“What do you know about him?” Mama had asked it while holding her hands and smiling.
Anica remembered she’d told her everything she knew, which wasn’t much. Everything she knew was appearance … how he dressed, what his classes were, who his family was. The deepest thing she knew, once Mama had started to press, was that they liked the same bands and both hated the taste of coffee.
“Love,” Mama had told her, “includes those things. You are on the right path. But love is so much more. It is knowing their pain and their hopes. It is wanting them to succeed, but helping them soothe their failures.” She went on to tell Anica how she’d known the moment she realized she was in love with Papa. Their marriage had been arranged by the families and she’d only seen him at a distance. They’d never even met.
He had snuck out of his house the day before the wedding to talk to her. She’d crawled out her window and they’d run down to sit on a bench by the small pond, where he’d laid bare his soul. He’d told her of his hopes and dreams and beliefs for hours. And he told her of raspberries. “By the time he was done telling me about raspberries,” Mama had said, “each tiny seed, the reason for the little hairs, why the baskets had holes, they were no longer just a tasty fruit to me. They were his world … To be surrounded by tall, healthy bushes in the perfect soil that he could sell to the world was his greatest dream. And he wanted to share that dream with another dreamer.” Mama had smiled. “When I saw that look, I knew. It was as though a big bell in my chest I didn’t know was there had finally been rung, and it changed me—in minutes.”
Anica remembered thinking that Mikhail was nice and sweet, but she felt no such bell for the boy. She’d waited, and dated him, but no bell ever rang.
When she’d come home crying, finally giving up on her first love, Mama had hugged her and patted her and said, “It doesn’t always happen quickly. But remember, you must either share a dream or be willing to follow the other person’s. I had no big dreams before Papa. I didn’t want to change the world like he did. But I wanted it for him. I wanted to be part of his dream and I could be happy.”
They ha
d been happy, for many years. Anica wasn’t sure if the family could recover from Mama’s betrayal, but she knew Papa wanted to because he still talked of raspberries and every time he spoke of the farm, of his precious raspberry dream, he still said “we.”
Could there be a we for her and Ris?
“I don’t know,” came his voice from the bed. “Tell me your dreams.”
She started, not even realizing he’d woken up. “You heard all that … in my head?” He nodded lightly and patted the bed.
She sat down cross-legged on the covers, facing him in the darkness, and he sat up under the sheet and blanket, poofing the pillows behind him for a backrest. While she would have liked to turn on the light, they needed to be sure that nobody realized they were there. The bathroom had been safe because there were no windows. His voice was soft and quiet to match the darkness.
“Just so you know, I wasn’t listening intentionally. It’s like overhearing something said in the kitchen when you’re in the living room. You’ve never had to shield your mind, so you still have to think about it. The shields will slip at first. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to have that luxury. Too many years of being on the defense. But it’s difficult for me to shield from you now.”
“Have you always had to be defensive? Have you always been a hunter?”
He shook his head. “Telling you about my life would make me wallow in the pain again. I’d rather hear what you dream of. Happy things. Like your mother, I have no big dreams. Maybe I can be part of yours.”
“What I dream of now isn’t what I used to dream of.” She waggled her head. “Well, in a way, it is. When I was little, and human, and after I wanted to be Nancy Drew, I wanted to grow up and work for the United Nations, finding ways for people not to fight. There has always been fighting in my country, since I was born, and I wanted to help bring peace. There’s so much tension, always barricades and troops. But then I was taken, tortured, turned, and my dreams changed.”