Shock tightened her face. He was so masculine. He was at least thirty-five years old, and he had been that controlled, that cut off, his entire life? “You’ve never been with anyone? Ever?”
He shook his head, his gaze lowered as he watched his thumb stroke her lower lip. “My memory of you was so much stronger and brighter than anyone I met. Other women were pale shadows by comparison.”
Her eyes filled. Her mouth trembled, and so did her hands as she stroked his back, his cheek. “I didn’t know to wait,” she whispered. “I didn’t remember.”
“Of course you didn’t,” he murmured.
“I wish I had. None of them meant anything. Afterward, I always felt empty and more disconnected than ever, and I could never understand why.”
“Hush. Whoever you were with before—Justin or anyone else, it doesn’t matter.” He bent his head to lick the path along her lip that his thumb had taken. “This is what is real, not what happened in the past. This, right here and now.”
She stood on tiptoe, cupped his face and kissed him with everything she had. His arms clenched, his lips warm and responsive on hers. Urgency flared hot and bright between them, and he turned the kiss aggressive as his powerful body tightened.
They were flush against each other, torso to torso. She felt a heavy, thick length growing against her hip bone. Instead of feeling the usual revulsion that she’d always had to mask before, her body moistened in a sharp pulse of arousal.
As he grew harder, she softened, inviting him with her mouth and her body while she wrapped him in her energy. He slanted his lips over hers, driving his tongue deep into her mouth while he sank both fists into her hair. His breathing came hard, as if he had been running for miles. For uncounted years.
She slipped her hands under his shirt. They both groaned as her palms connected with his warm skin, and he arched with a gasp as she stroked the long, muscled length of his broad back.
She caught a glimpse of his expression. The bones and contours were the same, but he looked radically different, unleashed. The tiger that lived behind his face had finally escaped its confinement and leaped to freedom, and there was nothing at all human in those glittering, moonstone eyes.
The sight should have frightened her. If she had been sensible, sane or fully human herself, it might have.
Instead, she, who had shrank from every caress or gesture of affection from her gentle human partners, raked her fingernails down that tiger’s back and egged him on.
Something extreme flashed in his expression.
He tore her clothes off her body. Just ripped them to pieces, even the tough material of her new denim jeans, shredding it as if it were as thin and fragile as paper.
That he had that kind of inhuman strength shocked a sound out of her, the noise filled with incoherent amazement and need.
After she was naked, he tore his T-shirt off too. The heavy muscles of his chest and arms clenched and flexed as he flung the shreds of material aside. A scatter of dark hair sprinkled his chest from his flat, male nipples to the length of his taut, washboard abdomen.
She couldn’t take her eyes off him, even as she reached for the fastening of his own pair of jeans. She jerked open the top button and yanked down the zipper, and his large, erect penis spilled out of the opening, into her hands.
At last her gaze fell from his face. She looked down, from the broad head to the thick, veined shaft. Discovering such a private part of him made her feel delirious, intoxicated. The stretched skin over the hard, swollen flesh of his erection was soft as silk and hot to the touch. She stroked the length of him and rubbed the ball of her thumb over the thin slit at the tip.
He hissed and shuddered all over. He gripped her wrists, shackling her. Then he pulled her hands away from his erection. Before she had time to grow disappointed, he swung her into his arms. Moving swiftly, he carried her to the bed. The bicep muscles in his arms bunched as he threw her onto the bed.
Even as she hit the mattress, she was already twisting up to reach for him again. Urgency gripped her, and a kind of crazed greed. She could not remember having ever felt this way before . . .
. . . and then her mind opened again, and she could.
Snatches of images filled with the same need, echoing back and back throughout millennia, time out of mind.
The tangle of naked limbs. His fist in her hair. Screaming as she climaxed, as he took her again and again. He took her so far out of her body, she knew ecstasy like a pure, soaring note.
She knew him.
All the pieces, fitting together with such perfection. Journeying through life together. Not quite dancing the same dance every time. Infinitesimally shifting their path through the seasons, yet still completing a circle. Making a pattern.
Two interlocking pieces that sustained and balanced each other.
While she knelt frozen on the bed, he turned off the overhead light and yanked off his pants. The flames from the fire threw long, flickering strands of golden light across the room. The gold danced along his tall, nude body as he opened a foil packet and rolled a condom over his erect penis. When he turned to her, she opened her arms. He came over her as she lay back on the bed, and they settled their bodies together.
Stricken, she stared up at him, and this time she accepted the duality of her experience. They had never lain naked together, yet it was the most familiar, most necessary thing she had ever done. She stroked his cheek. He kissed her palm. And it was the same dance all over again, a very old dance, the oldest of all, yet now it was made new again.
He stroked and explored her, kissed her breasts and suckled at her nipples, while she explored and kissed him too. It all happened too fast, as urgency built into a cascade of need.
She ran her mouth along the heated skin of his chest, feeling the bulge and shift of iron muscle underneath his silken skin, while the sprinkle of hair on his legs rasped against her inner thighs. The urgency would not let her settle or slow down. She raged mutely against the condom, hating the necessity for even that small barrier, and soon at her urging he brought the tip of his erection to her moist, fluted opening, holding her gaze as he settled into place between her legs.
His eyes were a darkened stormy gray, stricken with vulnerability. Riveted by the expression, she cupped his face, nuzzling and murmuring at him as he eased his rigid thick length inside her softened, slick entrance. He was shaking. The long, hard shudders rippled through his tough frame. Her breath caught as he seated himself fully inside. He froze, leaning on his elbows so that he could search her face.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered, answering his unspoken question. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
The anxiety eased from his face, and pleasure transformed him. “You’re a miracle,” he said. “I didn’t think I knew how to feel anymore. I thought I was half dead.” He covered her mouth with his and whispered against her lips, “My miracle. My home.”
The words pierced through her as he began to move. He watched her as her eyelids grew heavy and her plump moistened mouth grew soft, and he was clever, so clever. He learned quickly the language of what pleased her through the catch of a sigh, a murmur of need.
He framed her face with his big hands as their bodies flexed and interlocked. She arched her torso up to him and worked her inner muscles, clasping him tightly as he slid in, and in, and in.
When he climaxed she looked deeply into his unshielded gaze. It brought her to climax along with him. She lost herself as her body shook, and once again, ecstasy sang that pure, soaring note. And she knew it didn’t matter where they traveled next, who they had to fight or what world they had left behind. She had come home.
Tears spilled out of the corners of her eyes. He held her tight against him with an arm hooked around the back of her neck. It was his turn to murmur as he kissed the tears away. She offered him her mouth. As he covered it with his, her lips shaped the words.
Home.
He went still, all breathing suspend
ed, and she knew that he focused everything on the movement of her mouth. Then he crushed her to him, kissing her so hard, she knew he had understood, although she had said no word out loud, nor had she made any sound.
Chapter Twenty-two
THE LITTLE DARK spirit outside the cabin was wretchedly disappointed and growing desperately hungry.
At first the pair inside had shown such rich, bountiful promise, but as time progressed they were actually healing and comforting each other. Raw, deep spiritual wounds closed, and they grew stronger and brighter.
In the meantime, the spirit had trapped itself with its own greed by following them to such a secluded place. It couldn’t sense any other prey around for miles. So it lingered in the deepest shadows of the clearing, hoping against hope to catch one or the other of the pair alone, vulnerable and in pain again. Whenever they came outside together, or the man stepped out by himself, it hid in the recesses of the car’s engine.
Then something else snagged its attention.
A call reverberated through the psychic realm. The voice was a familiar one, dark and seductive as a siren. The spirit wavered in indecision but, while the people in the cabin had been luscious and tempting in the midst of their struggle, they had grown into too robust a force for it to feed on unless they became injured to the point of dying.
Whereas the voice that called came from someone that led a life rich in all the dark paths. He birthed a fertile feeding ground of pain and suffering wherever he went, and he rewarded those that pleased him.
Detaching from the cabin window, the spirit drifted upward like a feather on the wind. It began to travel in lazy swirls in the direction of the voice.
Chapter Twenty-three
“WHEN DO WE have to leave?” Mary asked.
The sound of her soft voice vibrated in his ear as he rested his head on her flat stomach. He turned to press his lips against her skin.
She was unutterably gorgeous to him, her slender body perfect in every way. Small, high breasts, a narrow waist, the lightly rounded hips and calves and those long, delicately muscled thighs that could grip him with such surprising strength. Her wild, corkscrew curls spilled across the pillow, the tawny color glinting with threads of gold.
The physical details were delightful, but absolutely the most important thing was that she was here with him now after so very long, and her body was healthy and strong, a temple that housed her unique spirit.
He did not want to answer her question, but in spite of himself, his mind, ever pragmatic, turned to the subject. He calculated the hours they had taken against the risk of remaining in place.
The cabin was secluded, and he had walked the perimeter of the clearing several times. They had rested, stabilized and eaten good, nutritious food. Their survival needs had been met. And, as he had mentioned to Astra, he had also set sentinels to keep watch along the gravel roads that led to his property.
But information could be gleaned from the slightest of things. The fact was, the longer they stayed the greater the risk grew.
What if Mary’s picture had been circulated in the press? What if the attendant from the gas station saw it and recognized her? Or the server at the drive-thru where he had bought breakfast and coffee? Mary had been asleep but clearly visible. And when they had stopped at the Wolf Lake store, even though she had remained in the car, he could not guarantee that she hadn’t been seen.
They had so much they still needed to do. Her aptitude with a gun was almost nonexistent. She needed more target practice. He needed to show her basic defensive moves, and to see if he could coax her into learning knife work. Coupled with the element of surprise, just one or two moves could save her life.
He needed to pin her down and cover her so that nothing so cruel could ever happen to her again.
Finally he gave her the only reply that he could. “We need to go soon.”
They lay tumbled across the tangled bedcovers where they had last fallen. In the fireplace, the fire had begun to die down again. Darkness was rising, and the dancing golden illumination that had crowned them at the peak of their joining had now begun to fade into a pulsing red.
But the darkness had not yet taken them. The time that they had stolen for themselves was not yet done.
His mind drifted. As part of his wider education, Astra had set him to study many of the most ancient texts. A verse from Psalms came to him:
Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.
In the shadowed light, her skin looked like honey, and she tasted like manna from heaven. He had wandered through a godforsaken desert, starving for uncounted years. Now, even though they had flung all the passion they had at each other, and even though their bodies were replete, he could not stop kissing or tasting her.
Slender fingers stroked through his hair. Her torso moved as she heaved a resigned sigh, but she didn’t try to argue with him. She must feel it too, this gut instinct that said they could not stop moving for too long.
“So we leave in the morning?”
“Yes, first thing.”
He wanted so desperately to say no. To say that they could have more than a single day together. That they could have years of leisure and safety together.
But that old bastard time was winging away from them again. With every ounce of passion inside of him, he willed that everything would be different this time. But as much as he wished it to be otherwise, he could not lunge after the fleeting moment and capture it in both hands.
Her fingers trailed along his collarbone. She touched his cheek and tilted up his head. Even in the growing shadows, her gaze was brilliant, glittering like precious aquamarines.
“Oh good,” she said. “We still have hours and hours.”
“A veritable wealth of minutes,” he said.
She lifted her eyebrows and smiled. “A staggering fortune in seconds.”
The sound of his own laugh shocked him. He was still not used to hearing it. He reached for her hand and laced his fingers through hers.
Her expression turned vulnerable. “Do you have memories of us being together in other lives?”
“Some,” he said. “Do you?”
“Just flashes.” Her fingers tightened on his. “They keep hitting at random. So many memories. It’s like a floodgate has opened.”
“You’ve only just healed,” he said. “Maybe the images are like aftershocks. I went through a period when images would bubble up unexpectedly, but after a while it calmed down. I think it will for you too, after things have had a chance to settle into place.”
She was silent for a moment. Then she said, “They’re disconcerting, but I like them. Of course, it helps to know what they actually are.”
He thought about telling her of his first, best memory, of that time they had lived together in England just after the Norman Conquest.
See what I know? he wanted to say. Have you had memories of this time too? Are they the same for you?
Were you happy?
But he didn’t want to prompt her into any false memories. When he had been younger, Astra had been very careful to avoid prompting him too much, and he thought it best to emulate that example.
Besides, his memories of that lifetime meant too much to him to risk corrupting them. It would mean so much more if Mary recovered images from that time independently of him. If she could say, as he thought and hoped she might, that she had been as happy during that time as he had been.
Even though they had just made love twice, the hunger for her came back. It rode him hard and he succumbed to it. He slid down her body, coaxing her legs apart.
Her breath catching audibly, she opened readily to him. He nuzzled the soft tuft of private hair at the graceful arch of her pelvis, breathing her in. Her scent mingled with his, musky, rich and evocative. While she stroked the back of his head, he fingered the plump, moisture-slick petals of her sex. Her breathing deepened and turned
ragged, and her arousal drenched his fingers.
He was enchanted with every sensual detail.
As he had grown into maturity, abstinence had become just another part of his discipline. His knowledge and understanding about the sexual act, while detailed, remained purely clinical. Not only had every woman he met been a pale shadow in comparison to his memories, but in the end he had always found it so much easier and quicker to find his own release when his body had craved it. Being alone had been so much more preferable than looking with irritation into the uncomprehending expression of a strange woman he would never grow to care for, and would end up leaving soon enough.
Everything about this intimacy with Mary transcended both his memory and imagination. It enveloped him utterly.
The warmth of her body, the touch of her hands. The light, feminine scent rising off her soft skin.
His own powerful response to her. The primitive urges that overwhelmed him, to cover and take, and to penetrate, to discover a rhythm that his body already knew.
The rich texture of experience highlighted all over again how starved and sharp he had become.
He had already known that he was only half alive without her. Now he realized something else. Being with her brought him fully into the present, and fully immersed him in the experience of being human.
Gently he parted the exquisitely shaped folds of her sex, bent his head farther and licked her. Even against his sensitive tongue her private flesh felt incredibly soft, like velvet. Her pelvis arched up to him as she gasped.
Her response electrified him. Pausing for a moment to savor it, determination hardened in him. Those other lovers she had taken had meant nothing to her, and therefore they meant nothing to him. The decision to set all of that aside was an easy one for him to make, much easier, he suspected, than it was for her. After all, she was the one who had to live with the memory of those empty experiences.
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