by J. L. Weil
He spun, taking me with. His body pressed me into the side of a tree, trapping me along the hard length of him. “Good,” he murmured. His breath mingled with mine. His lips smiled slowly. “You're a quick learner.”
I forgot to breathe, my eyes darting to his lips, and I cursed myself for the action. Forcing my eyes upward, I asked sweetly, “Are we finally done?”
“For today,” he relented. “You need to eat.”
I rolled my eyes, my chest heaving against his. Don’t think about it. Don’t look at his lips. Don’t imagine kissing him. And yet, my breasts tightened at the feel of his hard muscle. “I’m not a dog you need to feed.”
“Your well-being is my responsibility and that includes making sure you don’t pass out from hunger.”
Oh, I was starving all right, but not for food. I’d skip lunch and dinner to have Devyn’s lips on mine right now.
As if he could sense what wicked things were rolling around in my head, he stepped away, releasing my wrists. I tried not to sigh with disappointment from the loss of contact and trailed after him. “Are we staying here another night?” It was rare for us to spend more than two days in a motel.
“We need to keep moving. We’ll drive through the night. I know it’s hard,” he added, seeing my face fall. “But it won’t last forever.”
No, it wouldn’t. Just until I figured out how to gain all nine tails or a fae killed me.
It was still up in the air at this point. It was hard to say if the scales were tipped in my favor or the faes’—the ones trying to assassinate me and take what was rightfully mine: a throne I didn’t even want.
“Let’s say, hypothetically, I get my nine tails and become this supreme Kitsune you keep telling me about.”
His dark brows flicked up, a hint of amusement tugging at his mouth. “Supreme?”
“Whatever. Don’t get hung up on semantics. What happens next?”
“You breathe life back into Katsura,” he stated simply.
“Right. I got that part.” Well, as much as I could understand what that would entail. “Then what?”
His flat green eyes blinked. “We kill them.”
He talked about slaying my uncles as if we were talking about what we were going to have for dinner. “We can do that?”
“If we don’t, they will try to kill you. It doesn’t end with you on the throne. Not for them.”
I tucked the loose hair that had fallen out of my braid behind my ears. “They desire the throne that much?”
“For Ryker and Talin, it is more than just power, though that plays a large part in their crusade against you,” he said.
“It’s because I’m half mortal.”
He nodded. “They won’t take orders from someone they consider an outsider. In their eyes, you aren’t fit to run a kingdom, let alone a world of faes.”
“Bastards,” I hissed under my breath. A rumbling of thunder reverberated in the distance. “With my powers, would they be able to commune with the land?” I was attempting to piece together just how they planned to save the Second Moon. Could anyone steal my powers and use them?
“In theory,” he mused.
The wind picked up through the forest carrying the stirrings of a storm that was not of my doing. Branches and leaves rattled in a song of nature as another boom shook the skies—closer this time. “Are you telling me they are doing all of this based on a maybe? That by absorbing my soul they might not even be able to rid the world of the blight and restore the land?”
Devyn’s eyes went skyward to the dark clouds rolling in with a vengeance. “Although you share blood with Ryker and Talin, your powers are different. They are both shifters like you, but not the same kind. King Ryo, Braxston, and Maddox were brothers, each with a distinct form. King Ryo was a nine-tailed fox, Maddox a shadow wolf, and Braxston a phantom leopard.”
Wonderful. What chance did a fox have against a wolf and a leopard?
Devyn’s eyes flared. “Ryker and Talin inherited their father’s forms, but it isn’t only their shift that differs from yours. Their abilities are based on brute strength, battle tactics, and stealth. They are guardians meant to protect the land, not nurture it like you. It is no secret that Thornland and Orangeoland are harsh in comparison to Katsura, but you see, your grandfather understood that it was because the four regions worked together that the Second Moon could flourish. Without the guardians protecting the kingdoms and keeping order, the king wouldn’t be able to feed the earth with his power. And without the Kitsune, the guardians would have no land to protect.”
Regret I didn’t expect to feel for a grandfather I never met made my mouth go dry. “He sounded like a wise king.”
Devyn said quietly, “He was. You will be equally, if not a greater, queen.”
The woods had grown dark, all sunlight lost behind the ominous clouds now painting the sky gray. Lightning raced through the darkness, flashing a series of bright streaks.
I wished I had a shred of his confidence in me. “Why would they risk an entire world for their greed and prejudice against me and my mortal blood?”
Devyn scowled. “Because they are fools. Your grandfather knew you were our only hope.”
I wasn’t sure I had the stomach for killing family, even though they’d spent months trying to do the same to me.
“I’ll handle your uncles,” he added
I might have been a fox, but Devyn was every inch a wolf.
It didn’t feel right, the relief within me, but I couldn’t deny that was exactly what I felt.
“Are you doing this?” Devyn asked, his eyes flipping up to the black clouds rolling over our heads.
“And if I am?” The sky opened up, heavy droplets of rain splattering on our faces. The winds rose, thrashing the trees around us in a dangerous game of Mother Nature versus humanity.
His full lips split into a grin. “You don’t play fair.”
“I learned from the best.”
A gleam hit his eyes. “I’ll race you back!” Then he took off through the pouring rain.
Cheater!
Leave it to Devyn to turn a thunderstorm into a training session.
Chapter Six
We rounded the corner of the motel, and a pair of giggling girls were coming out of their room. They stopped to stare, but not at me—at the dripping wet male by my side. Each one gave Devyn a long appreciation once-over and the soaked T-shirt clinging to his chest. I couldn’t blame them for gawking. I was having a hard time keeping my eyes off him, but that didn’t mean I liked anyone else looking. A possessive growl rumbled at the back of my throat, low enough that only Devyn heard it. In a flash, I saw myself scoring their eyes with my claws, and then I blinked, the red dots of jealousy swirling at the sides of my vision.
I needed a cold shower before I did something stupid and hurt somebody.
Devyn’s dark brows rose in question. “What is it?”
He couldn’t be that oblivious, could he? “Oh, please,” I hissed after we’d passed by. I’d managed to keep myself from acting on the surge of possessiveness swimming in my veins, and I gave him a sidelong glance. “Are you so used to girls falling at your feet that you don’t even notice them?” I could still feel their eyes on us and the whispering. They were trying to decide if I was his sister or girlfriend.
I tossed my head over my shoulder and bared my teeth.
“What girls?”
I snorted and rolled my eyes, but I caught the hook of a small smirk on his lips. He knew very well the effect he had on the opposite sex. “You’re insufferable.”
He fished the motel key out of his gym shorts, dripping water all over the concrete. “Perhaps. Or could it be that I find it hard to see anyone else when I’m with you?”
Oh shit.
God, did he always have to say just the right thing?
My heart hammered in my chest, beating a thousand times faster than normal. He could do that to me with a simple smile or a kind word. Did he know what he did to me when h
e said things like that?
He held the door open for me, but all I seemed to be able to do was gawk at him. My self-control was hanging by a thread. Between the adrenaline of using my powers, the high of shifting, and my heightened senses, being close to him made it impossible to retain any common sense.
Devyn seemed to read what was going through my mind. His eyes flashed with an emotion that was almost feral, and in that second, I knew I was toast.
Fae laws be damned.
I stopped fighting what I was feeling and strolled over the threshold, grabbing a fistful of Devyn’s shirt as I passed by. Inside the room, I spun to face him, closing a bit of distance between us.
“We need to get out of these wet clothes,” I suggested, a glimmer of mischief dancing within me.
“You look like you could use some help,” he said gruffly, his fingers gripping the hem of my wet T-shirt.
He wasn’t going to get a protest from me. I lifted my hands over my head, challenging him with a partial grin.
Devyn was wicked fast. In a single breath, my shirt was on the floor and my body was pinned against the wall by his large frame. I flattened my palms against his chest as I gazed into his face, seeing a reflection of my own hunger staring back at me.
“My turn,” I murmured, trailing my fingers down his torso until I reached the end of his shirt. The material was thick and heavy with water. Using slow and deliberate movements, I inched the shirt up over his head, allowing my fingers to brush up against his flesh. The muscles there twitched as I kept my gaze ensnared by his.
I didn’t know what had come over me, where this brazen girl had come from, but with Devyn, I wasn’t nervous or unsure of myself. He made me feel every bit a woman instead of the scared little girl I was when we first met.
His fingers trailed down my shoulders to my arms, setting sparks of heat dancing over my damp skin. “Karina, we—”
I pressed a finger to his lips, halting the lecture I knew was coming. “I get things are different in the Second Moon and there are rules you have to obey, but we’re not there. I want you to kiss me before we have to leave and everything changes. I want to know what it is like to be with you as we are now.”
“Karina,” he sighed again against my finger—my name a curse and a prayer on his lips as he pressed his forehead to mine.
What I was asking for perhaps would be torture, knowing how it could be between us and having to give it up. And yet, I couldn’t stop myself from asking, nearly begging him to touch me. “Please.” My bottom lip quivered at the brush of his thumb. He dragged it over my lip, and I flicked my tongue out, needing to taste him.
A dark desire overcame him. “You’re going to be the end of me,” he whispered. “When it comes to you, I don’t seem to care about duty.” Then he was kissing me.
It wasn’t a sweet or slow kiss of exploration. No, it was full of repressed desire, desperation, and rawness—a kiss with a million emotions swimming between us. My fingers dove into the wet silky strands of his hair, and my mouth parted for him.
The first taste of his tongue sweeping against mine was intoxicating, nearly as much as the man himself. If I wasn’t already in love with him, I would have tumbled hard and fast, right here, right now.
He was warm—every inch of him. And I felt the depth of his kiss in my bones, my core, in my soul. So much more than lust, this was a bond that went deeper than anything I’d ever felt in my life.
His fingers grasped at my hips. His leg nestled between my legs. I let myself fall deeper and deeper into that kiss until I was drowning in the rawness of Devyn. A purr of complaint sounded as he separated our lips, but he didn’t stop kissing me, just moved where his lips sparked tingles of desire. His lips dragged along my jaw to my ear, nipping at the fleshy lobe. I pressed my face into the side of his neck, breathing in the scent of rain and woods that clung to his skin. My heart pounded all over the place. I was afraid that at any second he would pull away.
“If we don’t stop now,” he murmured in my ear, “I will be damning myself.”
“Then we will both be damned.” It might have been selfish, but I couldn’t prevent the words from tumbling out of my mouth. I meant what I said. If us being together caused problems when I finally came to claim my crown, I would go down with him, but I was seriously banking on being able to change the laws in my kingdom as royalty.
He brushed his nose against mine, his thumb creating small circles just above my waistline that caused my skin to flame. “That goes against everything I stand for, Kitten.”
“You and your impossible principles.” I blinked, batting my lashes. “Are you saying you don’t want me?”
“God, yes I want you,” he breathed.
“And I’m your queen, right?”
“Are you really pulling rank on me?”
I grinned, looping my arms around his neck and leading him to the rumpled bed that was calling our name. “Hell yes, I am.” I scooted onto the center of the bed, lying down.
Devyn watched my every move like a man teetering between two worlds. All he had to do was lean to one side. I held out my hand to him, asking him to choose me.
He looked at me as if I was something to be treasured, as if I was the only person in the world that mattered to him. That one look obliterated me.
His fingers twined with mine, causing my chest to rise and fall rapidly. The weight of his body closed over me, and I sighed, pressing mine up into his. I was making it very clear what I wanted from him. We might not get the chance to be together much longer, and stolen kisses and touches would never be enough. Not for me. I wanted just once to experience what it was like to be loved by the man I loved.
I closed my eyes and let myself wholly be encompassed by Devyn—by his scent, his touch, his aura. All of him blanketed me in love and warmth. My lips longed to say the words, to declare the emotions that were bursting within me, but I didn’t want to risk going too fast, too soon. I wasn’t about to spook the Shaman.
My body trembled with the fierce need that shook through me, and knowing he was willing to give up everything to be with me knocked me off my feet.
His lips were soft and hot, changing the tempo of the kiss from edgy and desperate to such a sweetness that it stole my breath away. He couldn’t throw me for a loop, not when my body was reeling.
Pressing my palm against his chest, I pushed him onto his back and straddled him. My hair fell in an obsidian curtain around us. His fingers reached up, fisting into my hair. “Are you sure?”
“I’ve never been surer of anything in my life,” I said with certainty, watching his eyes blaze with a hunger that matched my own.
He pulled my lips down to meet his.
More than anything, I wanted to claim him as mine.
Something inside me changed—shifted. A darkness of pure black burst behind my eyes and surrounded me, like all the stars had been vanquished from the sky.
Silence fell.
The room disappeared, and if it wasn’t for the strength of Devyn’s arms, I would have believed he had vanished too, for I could no longer feel his lips on mine. I could feel nothing for a moment, and it frightened me. Then I was soaring. A rush of cool wind kissed my face, my exposed skin. Tingles of magic sparked in my veins, filling them with a wintery darkness similar to a shift.
A flash of colors, an image, flickered once in my mind before the darkness became edged in gold. My eyes clung to the rim of light, afraid it would disappear and I’d never break free from the cocoon of black.
The golden glow grew, smothering the dark and . . .
My fingers dug into Devyn’s bare chest, our lips still locked in a kiss as if the whole blackout had never happened, except . . . something was wrong. The air tasted different. Devyn smelled even more delicious than before. His lips felt like silk against mine.
He broke off the kiss but not without hesitancy. My lips clung to his, not ready to give up the intensity he filled me with, but I forced my heavy eyes open and gasped. The S
haman’s eyes glittered up at me with an otherworldly green. “Karina,” he growled, not in a sensual way, though his voice was gruff. “What did you do?”
Chapter Seven
My mind swirled with confusion as I stared at Devyn. “How am I supposed to know?” One second our tongues were dancing in a very hot and sexy makeout session, and then suddenly, we were falling or flying. I didn’t know which.
I rolled off of him to my side on the bed to take in the room. I blinked. And blinked again. “Where in the fuck-topia are we?” The dull cranberry walls were now a dove gray. They had a sheen to them that wasn’t common, which drew my gaze to them or maybe my eyes were sharper, brighter. An unlit stone fireplace sat on the wall opposite of the plush bed we laid upon, which was so much softer than the one provided by the motel. To my left, three floor-to-ceiling, scalloped windows lined the wall, separated by elaborately sculpted columns of ivory.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was seeing the world for the first time—really seeing it.
“This is my bedroom,” Devyn said in a voice so low that I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly.
My nose wrinkled. “What? You mean like in Seaside Heights?” Even as the words left my mouth, I knew they were wrong. I’d been in Devyn’s room at his apartment, and it had looked nothing like this.
“I wish,” he muttered, forking a hand through his hair. I caught the look of worry that flashed in his eyes.
Plopping to my back, I gaped at the ceiling where a stained glass medallion hung over our heads, engraved with unusual symbols. I needed a second to process what I thought he was saying. It couldn’t be possible. How the hell? “We’re in the Second Moon?” I whispered.
“Afraid so,” he confirmed, neither of us moving a muscle.
My heart sunk. “How did this happen?”
Devyn propped himself up on an elbow, twisting onto his side to peer down into my face. He tucked a frazzled wave of hair behind my ear with gentleness. “I’m not certain, but I have a hunch.”