He groaned encouragement and cupped her ass, his fingers splaying wide beneath the lace of her panties as he urged her toward him, rolled partway over her, pinning her with his good, solid weight.
Their legs wrapped together, threading in a four-way braid. Her feet rubbed against the strong, lean muscles of his calves, and she thrilled to the strength of every part of him.
Whispering his approval against her mouth, he dragged a hand up from her hip to her ribs, then higher, to shape the outside of one breast. Then he popped the clasp of her bra, freeing her to his touch. Arching into his hand, she grabbed the hem of his tee and pulled it up, rucking it high between their bodies, and then off over his head, so they were skin-to-skin.
“Lucius,” she said, his name a sigh. Then, so she couldn’t say anything more, she nipped his lower lip and slid into his kiss, moaning when it went suddenly dark and wild, matching what she’d felt before when she’d called her magic. She sensed the power hovering nearby, felt it flowing through her and reverberating with the burn of heat as he hooked a hand around the crook of her knee and drew her leg high against his hip. He surged against her, setting a rhythm that thrummed through her body and made her neurons sing, Yes, oh, yes. Or maybe those were her words, urging him on as they kissed and rocked together, rolling so he was fully above her, wholly pressing into her, holding her nearly helpless beneath his big bulk. He kissed her deeply, demanding a raw, primal response that she felt with her entire body.
He pulled away and looked down at her, his eyes dark and nearly wild. “You’re so godsdamned beautiful,” he rasped. It was the first time he’d said something like that to her, and the small compliment brought star-bursts to her bloodstream. Before she could say anything in return, though, he shifted to cup a breast in his wide, scarred palm and lowered his head to taste her, taking the tight, sensitive tip in his mouth. He worked one breast and then the other, concentrating on each action separately, with the intensity he brought to the things he deemed important.
Helpless to do otherwise, Jade arched into him, her mouth opening on a silent cry. She buried her hands in his hair, holding him there for a long, glorious moment. A faint warning sounded at the back of her consciousness, a spark of panic that kindled as heat and want flared through her and she lost track of herself. Her whole world concentrated itself down to Lucius, and the ways he was touching her, the things he was making her feel.
Was this, then, what other women found with their lovers? Was this the path to madness? If so, she needed to back off, gear down, let things level. But even as she was aware of the fear and the thought, both were lost to the pressure growing within her, the need to have her hands and mouth on every part of him, to make him feel the same obsessive need that gripped her. Before she could make the move, though, he moved to kiss his way down her body, leaving her no choice but to caress whatever part of him she could reach, and absorb the feelings detonating within. Pleasure slammed into her, through her, great waves of it building and growing, holding her hostage to each new sensation. Then he moved back up her body and she was surprised to realize that he was naked now, that they both were.
The glide of skin against skin was viciously erotic as he slid up her body to kiss her mouth once again. She tasted the faint salt from her own skin, the sharp tang of his arousal, and the combination of the two. Sinking into him, letting the rest of the world fall away, she gave herself over to the gossamer pleasure he’d brought her, and the sharp need to have him inside her. Wrapping her legs around him, she opened to him, shifting until they were almost, but not quite, joined male to female, hard to soft.
He went still above her, in her arms. But he didn’t thrust home. Instead he stayed there, poised and unmoving.
Jade opened her eyes to find him staring down at her, his hazel eyes hot and borderline wild. But when their gazes met, his expression eased. He touched her face, drawing a finger down her cheek to her chin, then tipping her mouth up to meet his in a kiss. When the kiss ended, he whispered, “There you are.”
Then, before she could respond—if she’d even known how to respond—he shifted, aligning their bodies more surely, leaned in to kiss her long and deep . . . and slid into her. And as he did so, she understood what he’d been waiting for. Not for her to give in or give up, but for her to return to him and be in the moment, with him. With them.
No longer lost in the layers of pleasure, she acutely felt his penetration, felt her inner channel stretching to accept him, tightening around him in a squeeze of welcome that wrung a groan from deep within his chest. The sound of it vibrated through her, making her neurons hum and spark, and making her intensely aware of his size within and without, and the carefully leashed strength that pulsed through him as he hooked his arms behind her, loosely gripped her shoulders, and used the leverage to hold her in place when he began to move.
She should protest, she knew, should assert herself as a partner in their sex, giving back equally rather than allowing herself to be dominated, pinned down, taken. And she would protest, she assured herself. In a minute. But one minute turned to several, then to time untold as he moved over her, inside her, giving her pleasure and taking it in return. Sweat slicked his spine and sides, causing her hands to slip as she touched him, stroked him, her hips pistoning in aching counterpoint to his strokes as heat built to a roar. His tempo increased; she clung to him, buried her face in the crook of his neck, and took. She wasn’t giving anymore, wasn’t thinking about his pleasure; she was beyond that, gone past herself to a mindless place that beat with an ungrammatical chant of, “More, harder, yes, oh, yes, there!” Gods. She didn’t know her own name, didn’t care about anything happening beyond the hard grasp of his arms and the expanding sphere of her own pleasure, which had gone sharp, growing teeth, needs, and demands. “Yes, like that. Please.”
She was begging and didn’t care. He was saying things too, but she could barely hear him over the hammering pounding of the blood in her veins and his body into hers, and the broken gasps of pleasure that streamed from her. Ohyesohyesohyes! Clinging to him, hanging on to him with the knowledge that she’d be lost if she let go, she cried out as the first orgasmic contraction seized her, making her whole body rigid and vising her inner muscles around his thick, heavy length.
He gave a guttural roar that brought her even higher as he thrust and thrust again. Then he seated himself to the hilt within her, pressing hard against her most sensitive spots within and without, bowed his head, and let himself go. His muscles locked rigor-tight as he bowed into her, held her against him, and shuddered his release. Hips flexing, he pressed himself into her harder still, once and again, in an automatic reflex that protracted the echoes of her pleasure.
They stayed locked together, holding hard on to each other, for a long, long time.
Eventually, though, the heat faded to languor and reality returned. And that reality had Jade’s hands staying locked onto his shoulders, and her face remaining pressed against his throat . . . because she didn’t have a clue what to do next, what to say. She would’ve liked to keep things light and playful, as she’d meant to in the very beginning, but somewhere between desire and domination, things had turned serious.
Lucius let out a long, satisfied breath, muttered something about crushing her, and sort of flopped off to one side. Part of her would’ve been relieved if he’d landed facedown and fallen immediately unconscious, as one of her unlamented exes had habitually done after far more lukewarm sex than the room rocking that had just occurred. Lucius, though, propped himself up on one elbow and gazed at her, his expression far more intense than she would’ve preferred. She wasn’t sure what he read there; his expression was guarded and his voice gave away nothing of his inner thoughts when he said, “You okay?”
It was the sort of thing lovers said to each other when they didn’t know what else to say. In this case, though, she knew he meant it, that he truly wanted to know where her head was at in the aftermath of . . . well, in the aftermath. But she did
n’t know where her head was at, wasn’t really sure if she was okay or not. The sex had been . . . amazing. They’d connected, pleased each other. But whereas her magic had kindled, flowing within her, his magic hadn’t. There had been no hint of the whirling, tugging sensation she’d experienced right before their transition to Xibalba, and again when she’d been swept into the barrier in his wake. He’d given no sign of sensing anything beyond very, very good sex. Which means that was all it was for him, she thought on a long, slow twist of disappointment.
“I’m—” She broke off, gut icing at what sounded like a cry of pain from outside. “Did you hear that?”
Seconds later it came again, and this time there was no mistaking the sound of a woman’s scream. It was muffled by distance, but carried terror and pain. Adrenaline jolted through Jade. She was moving even before the motion sensors guarding their perimeter went off with a loud whoop of alarm.
“Shit!” Lucius scrambled off the bed and hit the floor hard, yanking on his clothes as he ran. He grabbed her folded clothes from a chair and chucked the shirt and jeans in her direction. “Hurry.” He disappeared into the sitting room; moments later, she heard the snick of the lockbox latches and the metallic clicks of clips being slapped home into autopistols.
Dragging on her jeans first, Jade pulled the panic button out of her pocket and activated it as she shoved her feet into her sneakers. She dropped the handheld unit in the process of jerking her shirt on over her head. Just as she bent to retrieve it, the French doors exploded inward and the chatter of machine-gun fire split the night. The bullets cut through the air where she’d just been, slicing the white canopy swags to tatters and pulping plaster to dust as she threw herself flat behind the bed.
“Jade!” Lucius appeared in the doorway, carrying a double-barreled shotgun with deadly menace.
He was wearing black body armor over his T-shirt and a black utility belt slung low across his hips over his jeans. The belt was loaded with spare clips and guns, and a military-style combat knife hung where the magi wore their bloodline blades. The combination of warrior’s gear and human casual should have jarred. Instead, it made him look deadly and capable.
“I’m here! I’m okay.” She scrabbled partway up, grabbed the skull effigy off the bedside table, and then lunged toward him while he laid down cover fire with double loads of jadeshot, spraying the night outside the ruined glass doors. The booms of the shotgun were deafening in the close quarters, but it was viscerally satisfying when they cut through the higher-toned chatter of automatic fire. It was even better when the guns outside went silent. She wasn’t willing to bet that would last for long, though.
“Hurry.” He was right behind her. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“No shit.” She yanked on the body armor Jox had found for her, and grabbed the second shotgun while Lucius loaded up on grenades. Her heartbeat drummed loudly in her ears, and she was shaking with a combination of nerves and adrenaline, but her head was clear; she was thinking, not just reacting. And she hadn’t frozen. Not yet, anyway. Not this time, she told herself. Which reminded her of the magic: not the spells, but the ice. “I could—” Something flashed outside, luminous green. “Down!” Lucius shouted, and lunged for her. He hit her with his shoulder and knocked her off her feet and into the sofa, but somehow managed to get his arms around her and turn himself so he partway shielded her from the impact.
They tumbled to the floor as the sitting room windows shattered inward under a hail of gunfire.
Cursing, Lucius rolled them to the sofa, flipped it over atop them, and held her so tightly she could barely breathe. The furniture was scant protection against the heavy-caliber weapons; the bullets had wasted the window glass and the curtains, and were doing a damned good job of chewing through the walls themselves, coming from all directions at once.
“We’re surrounded,” she yelled into Lucius’s broad chest, barely able to hear herself over the thump of gunfire and destruction.
“Did you hit the panic button?”
She nodded into his chest. “They’re on their way.” She’d left the device in the bedroom, but if Strike couldn’t get a good ’port fix off the images from the built-in camera, there was a similar unit mounted atop the Jeep. More important, the magi could use the view from the Jeep to assess the situation, and figure out the safest place to materialize.
“We can’t wait for them here.” His voice rumbled against her cheek, carrying a grim sort of finality. “Whoever’s out there might decide to just fuck it and crater the cottage. We’re safer out in the open than pinned down here.” Though not by much, was the unspoken end to that statement.
“Use the grenades to get their heads down,” Jade ordered. “Then we run. I’ll shield us.”
“You’ve got shield magic?”
“No, but I’ve got ice. It’ll have to be enough.”
He nodded, his jaw tight, his expression set in lines of concentration. “It will be. I believe in you.”
Leaning in, he kissed her hard and fast, and when he pulled back, there was something new in his eyes, something that made her heart lurch in her chest. “I’ll cover you.”
For a crazy moment, those three words rearranged themselves in her head to become something else entirely. So she merely gaped when he heaved against her, overturning the sofa and in the same motion yanking the pins from three jade-loaded grenades. He counted, “One . . . two . . .” On “three” he heaved the grenades through the blown-out windows. They landed on “four.”
On “five,” there was a rending, tearing explosion outside, followed by screams of agony as jade shrapnel tore into their attackers.
“Come on!” Lucius grabbed her and dragged her up, and then they were running for the door. As they ran, Jade yanked the combat knife from his belt, used it to nick her palm, and called the ice magic. Power formed around her, coalescing to include Lucius in a circular swirl of cold air convecting with hot. She had originally intended to put an actual shield of ice around them, but saw the better option immediately. Instead of casting the iceball magic, she built it around them. Ahead of them it was clear. Everywhere else around them, sleet whipped in a twenty- foot whirl, obscuring them as Lucius flung open the cottage door and they ran out into the night.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Lucius’s heart rattled in his ears, sounding like machine-gun fire, but that was the only rat-tat-tat he heard as they fled through where he thought the enemy lines had been laid. The grenades had done their work. In the low-lying solar lights planted on either side of the pathway, he saw a hand, a foot, a dark smear he thought was blood, and his gorge rose at the knowledge that he had done that. Not Cizin this time. Him.
But he’d do all that and more if that was what it took to keep Jade safe. Dull rage pounded through him, hatred for the bastards that had come after them, and— Not now, he told himself. He couldn’t think about that right now, just as he couldn’t think about the crazy intensity of their lovemaking, or the clutch of his heart when the first salvo of bullets had ripped through the French doors and he’d seen her go down.
Without warning, a machine gun chattered from nearby, sweeping a wide arc that glanced off the icy shield. The bullets passed through the sleet. Jade gasped and the magic winked out.
“Jade!” Lucius grabbed her and dragged her into the lee of the next cottage over. “Are you hurt?”
“I couldn’t hold it any longer.” Her face was bloodless; she was shaking. But she hadn’t been shot.
Yet.
They needed to buy more time. But how? Between the dim illumination from the solar walkway lights and the bright, welcoming porch lights up at the main house, he could see back to the shattered windows of what had been their cottage, and in the other direction to the cottage where the road-
tripping family was—had been?—staying. Everywhere he looked there were dark, slinking shadows and the flash of luminous green eyes. “Makol,” he hissed, the word coming out as a curse.
A fe
w of the figures came clear; he saw a pudgy guy in a cheap suit, another in coveralls, a third in insignia-less fatigues. Their eyes were pure makol but their motions were jerky and uncoordinated.
Trying to look in every direction at once, Lucius nudged her in the direction of the parking area.
“We’ve got to keep moving. Head for the Jeep. Strike and the others should be—” A whistle split the air and their cottage exploded.
“Go!” Lucius put himself between her and the blast, feeling shrapnel ping off the body armor. He shoved her toward the Jeep, then jerked her back when the next missile—RPG? fireball?—hit the ground in front of them. Shitshitshit. He pushed her back into their scant shelter, trying to think of a way out, trying not to think about what would happen if they couldn’t escape.
Adrenaline and denial roared through him. He wouldn’t let them have her, wouldn’t let her become what he had been. His body flared hot and cold; his head spun; his vision narrowed to pinpoint focus as six makol stepped into the light. He took out the first with a blast from his shotgun, nailed the second before the first had finished falling, then ducked a spray of gunfire that chewed up the corner of their hiding spot. He locked onto the third, finger tightening on the trigger—
And the bastard burst into flame. As did the makol next to him, and the next, the fire leaping one to the next in a mad, destructive dance. In an instant, the night was lit day-bright with flames that gouted twenty feet into the air.
Lucius stared, transfixed with horror as the makol screamed in agony, reeling and pinwheeling, trying to douse the inexorable flames, which burned their clothes away, melted their skin and flesh.
They were still linked in a napalm chain; he followed it back into the shadows, just in time to see a man step into the light.
The newcomer was tall and built, his hair trimmed into a military brush cut. Sharp featured, looking to be somewhere in his twenties, he was wearing ass-hanging, ripped-up jeans and a tight wife-beater, and bore the hellmark on his inner forearm along with three Nightkeeper glyphs in black: the peccary, the warrior, and the pyrokine.
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