by P. C. Cast
He looked around them, and his handsome face blazed with a triumphant smile. “I knew it! Makes me really glad I didn’t eviscerate those boys.”
“Colin, would you please explain to me what’s happened?”
“We’ve happened,” he said, still smiling. “This”—he swept his arm around them in a smooth motion—“is my home. Only it’s been changed. A woman’s touch has been added. You’ve been added to my home, Summer.”
Summer stared around her in amazement. “This is your home?”
“It is.”
“How did this happen?”
“The boy said that he was giving me a bright future. His spell, mixed with your magic, has gifted me with you.” Colin closed the space between them and took her in his arms, inhaling her scent and touch. “Let me show you how much we belong together.”
“Colin.” She spoke his name like a prayer and reached up to touch his face. The instant her hand met his cheek, the vampire gasped and jerked as if she’d zapped him with a jolt of electricity. Summer pulled back, afraid she’d hurt him, but what was reflected in his dark eyes wasn’t pain, but wonder.
“Touch me again, Summer.”
Before she could respond, Colin took her hand and pressed it back against his cheek, and this time Summer saw the glow of light that came from her hand and felt what was happening beneath her palm. The vampire’s cool flesh shivered and then flushed and warmed.
“What’s happened?” she whispered.
“You’re bringing light to me again, my darling. Only this time your magic is calling alive my flesh.” He turned his face so that his lips pressed against the palm of her hand. She felt a tingle of heat pass through her hand, and then his lips were on hers. They were warm and insistent and very much alive. Speaking only her name, Colin lifted her into his arms and strode from the living room up the stairs, kicking open the bedroom door and gently placing her on the bed.
When he bent to kiss her again, she pressed him gently away from her. “Wait, I have to see…I have to touch you and know…” she murmured.
Slowly, carefully, she unbuttoned his shirt, pulling it apart so his muscular chest was bared to her. Then she lifted her hands and, pressing her palms against his skin, began at his shoulders, sliding her hands down his chest in a slow, thorough caress that spread light down his body. Against her glowing skin his flesh warmed, and she watched in awe as his carved marble skin and muscles shivered and then, as long as she touched him, flushed with health and life. When her hand reached the place over his heart, Colin moaned—a sound part pain, part pleasure—and he pressed his hand over hers, stilling her caress.
“Ah, Goddess!” Colin said. “My heart beats again!”
“I can feel it. Oh, Colin! I can feel it beating.”
“Don’t stop touching me, Summer. Don’t ever stop touching me.”
Light-headed with the swirling emotions of passion and awe and desire, Summer looked into Colin’s dark eyes and saw love and life and her future there. And then she closed her eyes and bowed her head, breathing deeply while she tried to calm her turbulent emotions. I will not lose control and cause this to end! I will not!
10
“Summer, what is it?” Colin’s voice was filled with worry.
She opened her eyes and met his gaze. “I’ll never stop touching you, Colin. I promise, but you have to let me be with you on my own terms.”
His expression only became more confused, and mixed with that confusion Summer saw hurt and withdrawal. “I know that my being a vampire is hard for you. I understand you might not want to bind yourself to someone like me.”
“No, no I didn’t mean that,” she explained quickly. “It has to do with my magic. I have to maintain control of my emotions, because if they surge too much and I lose control, the spell will be broken and the messed-up magic, along with all of this, will end.”
“Sunshine, this isn’t as simple as a spell or magic. What’s happening between us is real.”
“I hope so,” she said. And then she drew her hand down his arm again, watching as the glow under her palm warmed his cool flesh. “But this is definitely magic, and I don’t want this to end for you.”
“As long as I have you, I’ll have sunlight—magic or no.”
“You have me, Colin,” she said, but still Summer controlled her breathing and kept a firm hold on her emotions as, never taking her hands from his skin, she undressed him. First she pushed off his shirt, skimming her hands down his arms until she threaded her fingers through his, staring into his eyes as her touch brought his skin alive.
“Summer,” he moaned her name. “I never imagined I could feel like this again.”
“How do you feel, Colin?” Summer asked breathlessly as her mouth moved down his naked chest.
“Like a man, Sunshine. You make me feel like a man again.”
His words sent a thrill through her body. Summer caressed Colin’s waist, reveling in her ability to give him such pleasure. She unzipped his jeans, and he stepped out of them. She stared at his naked body and imaged that she knew what Pygmalion felt as his sculpture of Galatea came to life.
Calm and slow, Summer reminded herself as she pulled him down beside her on the bed. Focus on giving him pleasure. When his eager hands reached for her, she allowed Colin to pull her into his arms. Her mouth met his as she pressed her body against his nakedness. Separated by only the thin cotton of her boxers and tank, it was an exquisite sensation to feel her heat warming him, her flesh bringing him alive.
His hardness pressed low and insistent against the softness of her stomach, and while their tongues met her hips shifted, bringing him fully against her core. He moaned against her mouth as she thrust against him, sliding him the length of her wetness.
When her head started to spin, she broke the kiss. Concentrating on controlling her breathing and trying to find calmness within her again, she rolled over on top of Colin and held his wrists, stilling his roving hands, which had been kneading her aching breasts. “Let me touch you,” she said, regaining her breath. When he started to protest, she stilled his words with a kiss, then whispered against his mouth, “I don’t want the magic to go away, Colin. Help me keep the magic.”
“Sunshine, I’ve been trying to tell you that you are the magic.” His voice was deep and rich with desire.
“Humor me,” Summer said with a smile and then began to move down his body, kissing and caressing. When she reached his cock, she took him in both of her hands, loving the textures of him, the hardness sheathed in such soft skin. Still stroking him, she glanced up and met his gaze. “You’re wrong, Colin. It’s you who’s magic.” And then she bent and let her tongue flick out around the engorged head of his cock. He moaned her name as she licked the length of his shaft, discovering how exciting it was to be able to bring him such intense pleasure so easily.
“Do you want me to take you in my mouth?” she asked huskily.
“Oh, Goddess, yes!” he gasped.
Summer swallowed him. He was too large for her to take all of him in her mouth, but she stroked his shaft with her hand, squeezing while she tasted him, loving how his cock heated and pulsed beneath her touch. She cupped his heavy testicles, and another moan was torn from his throat as his hips lifted to give her better access to him.
“Your body is so beautiful,” she murmured against his skin, teasing the head of his cock with her tongue. “I never knew a man’s body could be so beautiful.”
Then she swallowed him again. “Summer!” Colin gasped her name, his voice rough with barely controlled lust. “I can’t stand much more. If you don’t stop, I’m going to come in your mouth.”
Summer loved that she was evoking this response in him. She felt gorgeous and sexy and very much in control. “Then give in to it,” she purred, imagining for the first time in her life that she was the Marilyn Monroe type, the kind of woman men dreamed about. “Give in to me.” She laved his engorged head with her tongue while she ran her hands down his thighs, feeling his
muscles tremble and warm under her hands.
Summer heard a ripping sound as his hands gripped the thick comforter while he struggled to maintain control, and then he moved with a vampire’s preternatural swiftness, and suddenly his hands were lifting her, and she was on her back looking up at him.
“Colin, wait, I need to do this my way!”
“Sunshine, lovemaking is something best done together, rather than controlled by one. And I have to have my turn.” She started to protest again, but the dark intensity of his gaze caught her. “Trust me, Summer. Trust that I’m telling you the truth when I say that what’s happening between us is more than an accident of magic.”
“I trust you,” she said softly, but I’m still going to stay in control, she added silently to herself.
His smile had a sexy, feral glint as, with one flick of his powerful hands, he ripped the cotton tank off her. Colin cupped her breasts, running his thumb lightly over her already sensitized nipples. She gasped and bit her bottom lip.
“Since I saw these beautiful nipples, aroused and pressing against that sweet teacher’s blouse you had on yesterday, I’ve thought about doing this over and over again.” His head dipped down, and he took her nipple into his mouth, sucking and licking gently. She threaded her fingers through his thick, dark hair and pressed him more firmly against her. “Harder,” she whispered, and then all her breath left her body in a rush as he went from gentle to forceful, pulling on the nipple with his teeth while he lifted his hard thigh between her legs so that her hips could lift and grind against him.
Control…control… she reminded herself frantically. Summer breathed deeply, letting the pleasure wash in waves over her but not allowing herself to drown in it.
Colin shifted his attention to her other breast, and she closed her eyes, feeling the desire that was building inside of her but keeping it banked just enough that it didn’t engulf her.
Then his mouth followed the edge of her rib cage down to the soft indentation of her waist. He hooked his fingers in her shorts and quickly skimmed them down her body, leaving her naked before him. She felt a moment of embarrassment, but it passed when she saw the expression on his face and heard his husky, “Sunshine, you’re even more exquisite than I dreamed you would be.” He kissed her stomach reverently, gently, before letting his hands glide down her body to cup her buttocks. He positioned himself between her legs as he lifted her to his mouth.
Summer stopped breathing completely when his tongue parted her folds and dipped within.
“You taste just like you smell: like sunlight and honey,” he murmured against her intimately.
When his tongue found her clit, her hips buckled against him. She squeezed her eyes closed, fighting against the cascade of pleasure. She wanted too badly to let loose, to allow him to make her come against his mouth. But what would happen then? How could she bear it if she was suddenly transported, midorgasm, back to her cabin—alone?
“Colin, come here to me,” she said, reaching to pull him up to her. When he only intensified his caresses, she added, “I have to feel you inside me.”
That got through to him, and he raised himself over her. She took him in her hand again, lifting her hips so that she could position the throbbing head of his cock against her wet opening. Summer was already getting her breathing back under control, and she’d keep that control while he spent himself inside her—at least she hoped she could. That Colin could turn her on was abundantly apparent, but being turned on and actually orgasming were two very different things.
This would be for Colin. She’d bring him light and life and love. She’d let him bring her to completion another time, when she was sure her emotions wouldn’t cause their whole world to disappear. So her plan was to take him inside her and just maintain her sanity this once. She’d worry about next time the next time. Everything would work out in the future when she—
“Look at me, Summer.”
His voice brought her attention back to the present. She looked up into his expressive, dark eyes.
“I want to look into your eyes while I love you, while I make you mine,” he said. He thrust into her with one powerful plunge, filling her completely.
Summer gasped as the pleasure spiked through her. Her hips lifted to meet his as her legs wrapped around him. Colin braced himself on one arm, raising up so that he could continue to look into her eyes. The vampire impaled her. They moved together, slick and hot.
Summer felt her body gathering itself, and she fought against it, even though the pleasure was so intense that it bordered on pain. But she maintained control—she did it. Until Colin reached between them and began rubbing his thumb rhythmically against her swollen, slick clit.
“Colin!” she gasped. “Oh, Goddess, I can’t—”
“Shhh,” he whispered. “What we have is beyond magic. If you trust me, give yourself completely to me. I can prove it to you. Will you trust me?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “I trust you, Colin.”
“Then I make you mine, truly and completely.” He bent his head to her neck. Summer felt his lips, his tongue, and finally his teeth. At first they just grazed her, then she felt him gather himself, and Colin bit her, puncturing through the soft skin above her pulsing vein.
The pleasure she felt at his claiming was as sharp as the bite, and she couldn’t fight against her desire any longer. Summer felt the wave begin within her and knew it would utterly, completely overwhelm her. She grasped Colin’s shoulders and, for once in her life, completely gave up control to a man, body and soul. As her body shuddered in orgasm, and he joined her in release, she felt the familiar tingle of her magic becoming active. This time instead of running, or bracing herself against it, or fighting it, Summer released her magic, instead choosing to hold on to Colin and his promise that there was more between them than smoke and mirrors.
The flash of light against her closed lids had Summer opening her eyes in surprise. Colin jerked back from her neck as if her blood suddenly burned. And then he was burning as the light that had been focused in Summer’s hands surged from her into him.
“Colin!” Summer cried, trying to pull away from him, trying to stop the transfer of light.
“Trust me, Sunshine,” Colin ground the words out between teeth clenched in pain. “I accept any price I have to pay to be with you, and it will not separate us.” At his words the light intensified until it bowed his body. The vampire screamed, and then he was knocked from the bed. He landed on the floor, limp and unconscious.
Summer was sobbing when she rushed to him, touching his face, calling his name, praying to the Goddess to please let him wake up…please, she’d do anything…just please…please…
Colin drew a deep breath and then exhaled, coughing painfully. Summer helped him sit up. “Colin! Goddess, are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” His voice was raw, as if he hadn’t spoken in centuries. “I’m fine,” he repeated, after clearing his throat. He started to take her in his arms but suddenly froze. “Blessed Goddess!” He sounded utterly shocked.
“What is it? Maybe I should call someone. A vampire doctor?”
Then Colin completely surprised Summer by jumping to his feet, throwing back his head, and laughing with uninhibited joy.
Still on the floor, Summer looked up at him, utterly confused. “Colin?” Was he hysterical? Is this how vampires acted when they’d been mortally wounded?
“I don’t need a vampire doctor, Summer, my sunshine, my dream, my love. Somehow, someway, you and your magic have made me human again!”
She stared at him, this time really seeing him. He was still a tall, handsome man, but the marble cast of his skin was gone. It had been replaced by the healthy flush of a living, breathing man.
And she wasn’t touching him at all. He was truly alive.
“It’ll go away,” she whispered. “It won’t last.”
“I think you’re wrong, Sunshine,” he said, pulling her to her feet. “Have you ever given up t
rying to control your magic before tonight?”
“No,” she said slowly. “I’ve always fought it or run from it. And it’s not just my magic I gave up control of tonight, Colin. It’s my life. When I trusted you, I had to give up being in total control of myself.”
“I think there was something about your decision to trust me that drastically affected your magic.” Colin cupped her face. “All these years you’ve believed your magic was flawed, messed up. I don’t think it was. I think it was pure light—the pure energy of sunshine—and when you gave me your complete trust, when you relinquished control, you also gave your magic to me.”