Magic Unchained

by Jessica Andersen

  “We can handle it. The credit card won’t lead them anywhere if they try to trace you.”

  “Still. I’d rather stick it out.” Cara could use a few hours to process what had just happened. Hell, he needed the time too.

  “You think it’s safe?”

  “We can take care of ourselves,” Sven said, and clicked off. It wasn’t until he had tucked the communication device back in his pocket and was headed over to rejoin her that he realized he’d meant it—not just that he would take care of her, but that they would take care of each other.

  Holy shit. He missed a step at realizing that he was suddenly part of a “we.” How had that happened? His gut fisted. He might not have liked it when she said the winikin magic went only one way, but that was because it wasn’t fair to her that the gods and circumstances had conspired to take the choice away from her, not because he’d wanted a two-way magical bond with her—mated, familiar, or otherwise. Yet now the choice had been taken away from him too.

  Or had it? He had promised to watch her back, after all. And their new connection had given him the power to do it. That couldn’t be a bad thing.

  Right?

  “Hey.” She caught his hand as he reached the small crowd at the stairwell. “Did you get through to your parents and let them know that we were hit by a storm, but we’re fine?”

  “Yeah, I talked to them.” He slid an arm around her waist. To the two crewmen who had stayed behind, waiting to herd them to their stateroom, he said, “Did the boat take any damage? Are there more of those squalls coming?”

  “Everything’s fine, sir, but you really need to get under cover.”

  They joined the flow of humanity down below and headed for their stateroom in a silence that seemed out of place amid the babble that surrounded them, a mix of, “Did you see that lightning?” and, “It looked like something was on fire there for a few minutes!” and, “Are you sure we’re not sinking?”

  When they reached their room—an exterior cabin with an ornate door and a key-card slot designed to look like old ship’s brass—he swiped his card and held the door for her, and then stepped through and closed and bolted the door. Shutting out the din was a huge relief, but the pressure inside him skyrocketed again as he took a look around what proved to be the sitting area of the two-room stateroom.

  The place was decorated like a damn French bordello.

  There was gilt and red velvet practically everywhere he looked, and in the nearby bathroom, brass and marble picked up the theme and promised hot tub action and all the slippery bath salts and massage oils he could ask for. Come on in, get comfortable, and get busy, the decor practically screamed. Get naked. Get it on. Or maybe that was just him, he thought. But then Cara turned back from taking her own long look around, and he saw an answering heat in her eyes, along with a disquieting click of connection. It felt almost like he’d jacked into the barrier, but it was faint and far away, just a buzz of magic in his blood, a stir of echoes in his soul.

  Their bond—whatever it was, however it worked—didn’t just come when he called his magic, then. The realization brought a skim of disquiet, as did the way she linked her fingers together and stared down at them as if bracing herself.

  He crossed to her, didn’t let himself touch. He wanted to soothe, to fix things, but wasn’t sure if they were fixable, or if he should even try. “I’m sorry. I know this wasn’t what you wanted.”

  “No, it wasn’t.” She let out a slow breath, then looked up at him, and he was surprised by her calm. “Part of me is glad it happened, though. It makes things easier.” She paused. “After all, I did ask for a sign, didn’t I?”

  A buzz of fresh heat entered his bloodstream as he remembered. “Yeah, you did.” Along with the heat came a sense of inevitability. Join, the nahwal had said, or all is lost. She had wanted proof that their being together was part of the gods’ plan before she risked the winikin by becoming his lover for real. But… “I’m still the same guy, Cara. I can’t change who I am.”

  “There’s a newsflash.” Brief humor lightened her expression; then it softened to something he didn’t remember seeing from her before: peace. “I’m okay with that. More than okay, really. I didn’t ask for a sign that we were destined mates or meant to be together forever. That’s not what I want. I just needed to know that we weren’t talking ourselves into something that’s not real.”

  As much as he was dying to touch her, he held himself back. “The magic is real,” he said, the words coming from deep inside him. “The connection we made upstairs… that’s real, and it means something. But at the same time, the magic shouldn’t force you to do anything you don’t want.”

  “It’s not forcing me; it’s giving me permission.” Her lips curved, her eyes lit, and she held out her hand, palm up, to show a thin scar where a scab should have been. “Will you be my lover until the end of the age? Will you stand with me, fight with me, and help me lead my people beside yours?”

  Said that way, it somehow took on the weight of a spell. He hesitated, though not because of the magic. “What happens after?”

  “We say good-bye.” Her smile didn’t waver. “I’m not trying to trap you into anything, Sven, and I’m not letting the magic trap me. We’ll do our duties and, gods willing, save the world. And after that, we’ll go out there and live our lives knowing that each day after the twenty-first of December is a blessing. What could be better than that?”

  They were the right words but they somehow struck him wrong, making him want to argue the inarguable. Instead, he took her hand and cradled it for a moment in his, surprised anew that hers was so small in comparison, yet held such strength. “You’re sure? This is what you want?”

  She nodded, then looked up at him. “Yeah. You?”

  He let his body answer for him, leaning in and sliding his hand up her arm and down to her waist, skimming over the textures of the dress and the woman beneath. Her eyes darkened and her breath caught, and a primal response surged up from deep inside him. Suddenly he wanted to nip at her neck, herd her into the bedroom, cover her with his body, and thrust into her warmth, pounding hard and heavy. He could see it in that instant, not just through his eyes, but through her senses, as well. He could smell their mingled scents, hear her cries, feel the furious pleasure of taking her as his own.

  Do it, his overheated system chanted. Do it!

  Instead, he eased in and skimmed his lips over her cheek to the corner of her mouth, lingering there while her hand crept up his arm and her fingers curled around his shoulder. He waited until she softened against him, until her lashes fluttered shut and she murmured his name, and then he claimed her mouth in a deep and drugging kiss, one that said, I want you, and, I need you, and, We’re going to take our time and make this last. And if on some level he knew that by holding back those mating urges he was trying to prove to her that there was more to them than just magic and circumstances, more than the gods’ intentions, he tried to let that go for now.

  After all, he had known from the moment he kissed her in the coyote cave that neither of them was going to walk away from this unscathed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  They went through the door into the bedroom together, kissing and dragging at clothing with reckless abandon.

  Sven slapped the switch near the door and the room came to life, with light fracturing from a central chandelier and a series of wall sconces. Cara got a glimpse of gilt, and a huge, crimson-covered bed overwhelming the small shipboard space. Then he slammed the door and spun her back against it, lifting her and then pinning her there. And instead of, Am I really doing this? all she could think was, Oh, gods, yes.

  She didn’t need to think any further than that—she’d gotten her sign in the nahwal’s message, and even without it, she knew that this was right for her, here and now. She would lead the winikin but she wouldn’t live her life in fear of them. If the future was only a few short months, she wanted to live those months with all the pleasure and magic she
could find. And if “after” went beyond that, she would have fully experienced passion for the first time in her life, giving her a benchmark for her next lover to meet and exceed.

  Not that she wanted to think about that next lover now.

  Instead, she found Sven’s mouth with hers and poured herself into the kiss, taking it dark and wicked with her palms and tongue. He groaned in answer and ran his hands up her legs to push the dress high, and she stretched to wrap her legs around him, arch into him, and ride the hard ridge of his erection. The move wrung a growl from deep within his chest, and he lifted her higher to feast on her throat while she wrapped her arms around his neck, needing to hold him, touch him, be close to him. Closer still.

  His kisses were ardent, his breathing fast and furious, his body a solid, immovable wall that brought nerves and the breathless weight of panic flashing through her as one part of her knew it was trapped, but another said, Yes, please, more.

  She gave herself up to it, gloried in the way he held her off the ground without effort, pinning her with his lower body so his hands were free to touch and take. The dress was bunched at her waist now, his mouth at her breasts as she remained trapped between the flat press of the door and the yielding hardness of her lover.

  Her lover. Yes. Sven was about to become her lover for real. Gods.

  She buried her fingers in his hair and tugged back his head. His eyes were wild and glazed, his focus entirely on her, and when she drove her lips onto his, he met her stroke for stroke, with a rattling groan that echoed from him to her and back again, seeming caught in the heat and the magic that thrummed just beyond her senses.

  “Not here. Not this time.” He spun them away from the door, cupping her ass so she rode him, as he carried her to the bed, kissing her, needing her. His hands raced over her, nearly violent in their speed, yet gentle when they connected. She leaned away, unfastened her dress, and skimmed it up over her head to fling it wonderfully free, so she was wearing only stockings, panties, and heels, and was wanton with it.

  He lowered her to the bed but kept his weight off her as he kissed her and then drew away to stand over her, strip off his jacket, and reach for the buttons of his shirt. Then he went suddenly still, his eyes darkening as he looked down at her.

  She lay deliciously sprawled, letting him look his fill while the blood pumped through her, making every inch of her tingle.

  “Gods,” he said, his voice raspy, the word seeming to come from deep down inside him. “Cara.”

  “Yes,” she said. Yes to all of it: to having him, taking him and being taken. This mattered; the rest of the world didn’t, not now. She rose to her knees and reached for the studs of his shirt, nudging his hands away. “Let me.” She opened his shirt and trailed kisses along his center line as it was revealed, undid his cuffs and slid the material back to kiss his marks, because they were a part of him. Then she unfastened his belt and the placket of his pants, and tugged them down in a slippery slide of expensive material to bare the flesh beneath. The sight of him straining against the fabric of his boxers quickened her breath, gripping her with frantic desire.

  His boxers were a quick yank and gone, his shaft hard and pulsing with the beat of his heart, his testicles a warm, yielding weight that she could trail kisses across while she stroked his thighs, his buttocks, the cleft between. He shuddered and slapped for a bedpost, clutching it as his legs and body went rigid. He caught her shoulder, tried to urge her up his body, but didn’t try very hard.

  “Let me,” she whispered against his inner thighs, thrilling to the way he swayed against her, hissing out a breath as she moved higher to lick along his stomach, then kiss a sweet path up the underside of his thick, pulsing shaft. And where before she had been in awe of his power, now she was the one who felt powerful.

  His breathing went ragged, his muscles corded where he gripped the bedpost, his hands viciously gentle as he touched the back of her head, her nape, fingers dragging along her skin as if he was reassuring himself that she was really there, that this wasn’t one of the figments he had used to keep himself sane down in the war zone.

  He had thought of her, fought for her. Knowing it, and that he cared for her deeply in his own way, unlocked something inside her. Murmuring his name, she opened her mouth and took him deep. He jolted against her and groaned a short, earthy curse, then went still as she slid her lips around him, encompassing him, taking as much of him as she could.

  His breathing hitched and fine tremors raced along his muscles. He wasn’t a mage right now, wasn’t a spy or a warrior; he was a man desperate for what she could give him. Not sparks now, but flames. Pleasure. Acceptance. Affection. And a hell of a blow job.

  She worked him, laved him, gloried in the surge of his body and the slick heat his excitement generated in hers as she brought him up to the pinnacle and—

  He grated her name as he pulled away and bore her back onto the bed, stripping away her nylons and panties as he came down atop her. One shoe clunked to the floor; the other he took off and winged at the light switch by the door, plunging the room into a warm darkness lit by a glow from the bathroom and the blaze of security lights outside.

  The night wrapped them in an intimacy she didn’t trust, but then he covered her with his body and nothing mattered but the press of his weight, his hot breath on her skin, and his kisses. Oh, his kisses. Their lips caught and held; their tongues slid; their breathing shuddered and hitched. And through it all, she burned for him, throbbed for him, reveled in knowing he needed her as much as she needed him.

  He got a hand between their bodies and touched her core, murmuring dark praise at her wetness. He worked her, caressed her until she felt slick and swollen. Pleasure shivered through her at each slide of his hand, and then again as he shifted against her, intertwining them in a full-body embrace that had his hard, swollen cock sliding between her thighs. She rode the pleasure, rocking her hips against him, finding the perfect combination of pressure and friction almost immediately, and rocketing herself to the quick, bright slap of an orgasm.

  She cried out as it gripped her, consumed her, raced through her, and then passed on, leaving her body vibrating at a higher level of sensation, driving her onward rather than leaving her wrung out.

  Sven reared up over her and his face caught the light. His eyes were fierce, his hair a wild corona, his face set in concentration. The sight of him sent new shivers racing through her like lightning. His bloodline wildness was there in the elegant arc of his body, the lethal grace of muscle and sinew. She wanted this, wanted him, but not in any civilized way.

  Heart pounding, she levered herself up to kiss him, seeking his taste, his strength, the quickening of his breath, and the groan that rumbled deep in his chest. Then she turned beneath him, pressed her bottom up against his pelvis, and offered herself, not just to Sven the man, but to the mage as well, the Nightkeeper who embodied his bloodline more than any other.

  His breath shuddered out of him on a harsh groan of, “Christ, Cara,” and he caught her waist hard, holding her there, pressed up against him as he throbbed. And then, with no more than a shift of his body, his hard shaft found the entrance to hers. “Holy Christ,” he hissed, and then he drove into her from behind.

  Her lungs filled with a moan as he parted her, forged deep and deeper still. Her senses coalesced to the point of entry as her inner muscles clenched around him while he withdrew and surged into her again. His body was slick and strong as it arched over her. He surrounded her, filled her, kissed the back of her neck as he thrust into her again and again in a primal, atavistic rhythm that started fast and then went faster still.

  The resting heat of the orgasm she’d just had snapped tight in an instant as her body said, Yes, this and more. She wanted to give more, take more, take all of him.

  Widening her stance, so the outsides of her thighs slicked against the insides of his, she wrapped her arms around his braced forearms and arched her neck back to press her cheek to his jaw, feeling the heat
of the two of them together.

  “Cara,” he whispered, and it sounded like a prayer. Then he shifted his weight to one arm and freed the other to touch her breasts, her thighs, and the place where they were joined.

  At the first brush of his fingers to her sensitized flesh she jumped against him. At the second, she leaned in and purred, arching up against him as he moved. Pleasure coiled anew, raw and unfettered, and she swayed and might have collapsed entirely had it not been for his strong arms holding her, caging her. She convulsed in the throes of a second orgasm, this one coming so much stronger than the first, overwhelming her.

  “Ah, gods!” Sven gripped her and quickened his tempo, driving surer and deeper for three strokes, four, and then surging into her, and growling long and deep as he shuddered and cut loose.

  He held himself rigid while a groan drained from him, ending in her name. They stayed like that for an endless-seeming moment. Then, breathing like he’d just run the entire proving grounds with a demon at his heels, he collapsed against her, bringing them both to the bed on their sides, still joined by the flesh that stayed hard within her, pulsing.

  Wow, she thought. Oh, holy… wow. Or maybe she said it aloud; she wasn’t entirely sure, though he pressed his lips against the back of her neck as if in answer. But he too seemed to have lost the words.

  They lay there, locked together and unspeaking, for a long time. Long enough for their breathing to level off and for them to separate. Long enough for the air to feel cold and him to tug up the comforter over them. And long enough for her to know, as she slipped into a light doze and then deeper, that things between them would never be the same.

  Skywatch

  Rabbit crouched over Myrinne’s body, holding a stained knife that dripped blood onto her lifeless face and open, staring eyes, knowing he was in a dream.

  It wasn’t the same dream, though. It was day instead of night, and they were inside Sven’s coyote cave. But she was still dead; he was still standing over her, breathing heavily, his blood racing with a mix of grief and rage.