by Sue Wilder
“An island. Part of One’s jurisdiction, and she controls who comes and goes.”
“You want to protect me.”
“I want you safe.”
Christan sat down in an upholstered chair and leaned forward until his elbows rested on his thighs. His hands were clasped between his knees as he tried to look relaxed. Everything told him he was about to make a wrong decision, but he no longer wanted to live with so many desperate emotions between them.
“It’s okay to be frightened,” he said. “To want to take control of your life and fight back.”
“And blood vengeance?” she challenged. “Is it okay to want that?”
“I won’t tell you no.”
“What will you tell me, Christan? That it’s something you’ll do to protect me? That I should sit back and let you handle it because I’m too human? The way you were handling Six in that ballroom?”
His tattoos twisted, burned with the fear she was feeling, and he knew this was a wound that would fester if he didn’t rip it open and let it bleed all over the floor.
“It wasn’t the first time I’ve had to fight for an audience,” he said. “And it wouldn’t have been the last.”
“Luca told me it wasn’t a fight for an audience. He said it was an execution, that you couldn’t stop until you were dead.”
“I wouldn’t have been the one stopping,” he said without emotion. “The last time Six tried his sport, it cost him eighteen men before the rest refused to fight.”
“So controlled, Christan. Do you know how utterly terrifying you are?”
“They were ready to kill me to get to you. They killed Luca and got you. I killed them to get you back. That’s how this world works.”
“And now it’s my world,” she said bitterly. “I know you think I’m too human.”
“You are.”
“No, dammit, do not make this about me.”
“It’s always been about you.”
“Liar,” she hissed. “It’s about us! It’s about what the blood bond is doing to both of us. You didn’t even ask what I felt when I confronted Six, but you knew, didn’t you? You knew it was more than that one word and how the longer we were together the more you would influence me.” She pressed a fist against her breastbone. “Do you think what I did in that cave was just you influencing me?”
“And do you hate it now, cara? Hate me for it?”
“Don’t.” She was shaking so hard he could see it from across the room.
“What do you want me to say?” Christan knew she was slipping way, and he forced himself to give her the choice whether to stay or go. “I should have told you months ago. I’m telling you now. When we made the bond in blood, the magic changed us and we can’t change back. Your blood is my blood and mine is yours.”
“What the hell does that mean, Christan?” She was standing with her back to the windows, glowing in fire from the blazing sun—a creature of myth.
“It means you are my mirror, reflecting my highest self. I am your anchor, giving you strength. You will feel the truth in my heart and mind as I feel the truth in yours. That truth binds us now.”
“Then why did you try to send me away? Tell me you couldn't protect me anymore, that it had to be Three?”
“To stop the progression,” he said. “I knew separation slowed down the change, and I thought if I sent you away I’d be protecting you. But I can’t stop it, cara, and that is what terrifies me.”
“Why?”
“Three told you she wanted a weapon, a man who could destroy with a human sense of justice and vengeance. What she didn’t tell you is that you are justice and I am vengeance. You are the extremity of heaven while I am the limits of hell. You are the lamentation for unjust death and I answer your call to war.”
He watched as she took a step back, and when he continued, his voice was rough.
“To the Etruscans we would be the Culsans, to the Romans, Janus. In the simplest terms, we are the two opposites bonded into one. This is what Two did when she created the blood bond. But we created the connection where the magic could unfurl. We did this, cara, through all the different lifetimes until this lifetime, when we made the bond complete.
“I have lived a very long life,” he continued. “I have done many things I regret. But never once have I regretted you. I thought I knew courage, but I was wrong. I thought I knew loyalty. But when you went to Cyrene because I asked, allowed Kace to hurt you because I asked, you brought me to my knees in shame and I am still there. When I saw that cave collapse and knew you were inside, I thought I was too late. My fucking heart stopped, cara, at the thought that I wasn’t there for you again.
“I have loved you in every lifetime, and not always well, but I love you more now than all those lives combined. You drag the air from my lungs every time I look at you. You changed me, taught me what it was to be human. When you came to me in Zurich I realized what you’d done, that you had used the one word, and I could have stopped it then, not touched you, not let the power into my veins. But I didn’t. I couldn’t, cara. I wanted you too much, any way that I could have you, and if that makes me something you hate then so be it. I have never surrendered, but I am surrendering now. I’m laying my heart at your feet, and it will stay there until you pick it up or grind it into dust.”
When he stood and walked from the stateroom, he heard her crying. He would not, he could not look back. There would only be the future.
And it had to be her choice.
✽✽✽
Lexi listened to him leave while shudders racked through her strong enough to stop her heart. You are justice, he said, and I am your vengeance. The lamentation, and a call to war. She thought of Luca, the words she sang that bared her soul, of Jago holding the knife to Kat’s throat, and the wild justice flooding uncontrolled as she slammed him into the sun. The vengeance Christan claimed in the heat and dust outside the cave.
They had wasted so much time caught in bitter words, running from emotions that hit too deep. He asked for forgiveness, as she asked for his, but what was forgiveness other than something to hide behind, afraid to take the risk?
Surrender was different. Surrender was lying flat on the floor because the pain was too intense. It was lungs that refused to breathe and hearts beating as if time were about to end. This was the man she ached for through endless nights, counting stars she knew were above the clouds, turning her face toward the restless sea and blaming the ocean breeze for her tears.
This was the man for whom life made its own rules and only the brave followed along. I won’t always be brave, Grandmother. But I shall always try.
Lexi struggled to regain her bearings as gravity let go. Then she walked outside and found him. He was leaning against the rail, arms braced, staring at the endless sea. She approached silently, slid her hands around his waist and up to his heart, holding tight; her cheek pressed against the muscles bunching in his back.
“You were so honest with me.” For a moment all she could do was breathe, take in the familiar scent of him, pressing her lips against his spine as she formed the words. “I can do no less for you. I don’t know who I am, but I am nothing without you. Never have I closed my eyes without finding you there, waiting in the darkness. You smile and I feel the sun shine. When you are in pain, my heart breaks.”
“Cara,” he said, “let me hold you.”
“No,” she whispered, pressing harder against his back. “I’m not done, and if you hold me, I’ll be too afraid to speak the truth.”
He shuddered, but she continued on. “This life is one I don’t recognize, and everything I believed went out the window months ago. But you, Christan, you are my reason for living, why I come back to you, lifetime after lifetime. It wouldn’t matter if angels came down from heaven, I’d never leave if you weren’t with me. My heart breaks now, because it may be too late, that we’ve pushed each other so far apart we can’t find our way back.”
“Can I turn around now?”
“No.”
“Are you afraid to look at me?”
“Yes.”
“Even to see the love in my eyes,” he said as he turned despite her efforts and cupped her wet face. “Even when I tell you again and again that I love you, that you are the twin flame of my heart, my greatest mirror?” His rough thumbs stroked across her cheeks. Her palms pressed against his heart and she felt the steady beat. “You come back to me lifetime after lifetime but I search for you eternally. Our souls know each other even when our minds do not.”
Lexi closed her eyes and held tight, falling deeper into the words whispered against her skin.
“I would never leave you,” he said, his mouth drifting over her eyelids, down the curve of her cheek. “You’re safe with me, cara. My heart will always beat next to yours.”
His fingers slid into her hair, stroked against her nape. Lexi needed to touch him, reinforce the connection, the sense of intimacy and belonging. She wanted to explore every part of him, allow the world beyond to fade away, and when his hands drifted to her shoulders, gentle and sacred, they inflamed a primal need.
He whispered in Italian and Lexi wished she had private, secret words for him. Her mind was a mass of sensation, and when he carried her to the stateroom and stood her on her feet, she found the buttons on his shirt. As the material fell from his shoulders, Christan tugged her blouse free until they were heart to heart, skin to skin.
And she knew, then, that she was touching magic when she touched him.
With a growl, he took her mouth. Lexi welcomed the mating. There was never enough to fill the spaces that opened inside, a sharp, clenching heat that drove her to her toes. Christan was dragging the dark linen from her legs and she kicked the material free, attacked the buttons confining him. He held stiff for only a moment before his hips pressed forward and the hard, thick erection jumped against her palm.
A soft hum of pleasure filled her throat. Together they fell. The bed became a tumble of legs and arms until the weight of Christan’s body stilled the frantic movements. He rose above her, shoulders blotting out the sky as his mouth turned aggressive and male. Lexi’s hands were on the flexing muscles in his back, her body rocking against him, her back arched as his broad palm caressed her hip. He hooked her leg and lifted it higher while soft cries caught in her throat.
Christan’s fingers skimmed but went no further. In frustration, Lexi nipped at his shoulder, his chest. When he fell to his back she moved and he hissed between his teeth when she found the tattoos with her tongue. She moved between his hard thighs and put her mouth on him, the way he loved until he was arching off the bed. She needed every part of him, the scents, the tastes, the urgency. This man who could stun the world was lost beneath her and when he rolled over and took, the pulse thundering through her veins increased until she was dizzy.
“What do you want, cara,” he whispered. “What do you need?”
“That.”
“Only that?”
One massive hand was holding her while the other lifted her higher and his mouth found the bundle of nerves. Electricity shot through her, moved across her skin. Lexi burned as an inner power began to rise, and the intimacy was so shattering her hands dug into his shoulders. His finger slid inside, slowly breaching, then withdrew. Her body clenched. He pushed in twice more before she bucked off the bed.
“Soon,” he murmured against her throat, then returned his mouth to her breast, suckling hard and she was so far gone she could barely say his name. He braced himself on one forearm, brushed the pale hair from her eyes, and she’d never been so vulnerable, so cherished.
“I’d give my life, cara, to always see you smile.”
Her breath caught, and as he entered her, Lexi wrapped trembling arms around him, the only man who existed for her now. Emotion burned deep in obsidian eyes, honesty given to no other woman in the world. Heat flared with each powerful thrust and there was only the movement, the intimate fullness and the pressure that hovered on the edge of exquisite pleasure. Lexi’s body seized. Christan was on the edge. He threw back his head, and with a savage hiss he dragged her with him and they fell, lost in the white-hot abyss with no end.
CHAPTER 25
Mythic story whispered of a God so powerful he came down to earth and swept the beautiful huntress up in arms full of love. He made a life with her, and she welcomed him even when his ways had been frightening and he reinvented her.
Slowly, Lexi traced the pattern that wove through her past lives, saw herself running like that huntress, afraid of the love that was offered. But what she felt for Christan now was profound… there was love that might last a decade. Love that could last a lifetime. But this love had survived centuries, had torn her apart in a crucible and put her back together. There would be no more surviving if she lost him now. No matter what happened, no matter where he went, she would follow. If she was the extremity of heaven, and he the depths of hell, she would find him.
Because he had reinvented her.
The intimacy they shared wrapped like a warm quilt. The sleek yacht crossed an ocean beneath a midnight sky filled with stars, and in the shadowed stateroom, Lexi stroked Christan’s face, following a journey of rediscovery. The curve of his brow, the corner of his eye and the soft crease that disappeared into the silky hair at his temple—she saw him, not as who he had been or who she believed him to be, but as he was now, in this instant. Everything and yet such a mystery.
“You can’t take it back,” Christan said, rousing and rolling over, shifting his thigh across her slim legs. “None of what you said, cara. You cannot take it back.”
Lexi laughed and peeked from behind the hair in her face. “I said a lot of things.”
“Then I will remind you.” In a move too fast to track he flipped her over and pressed his heavy body against her back, his mouth claiming her shoulder where it met the curve of her neck. His large hand caressed her hips as he lifted her, then widened her legs until she trembled and he had access to the still sensitive places he wanted to explore.
“Am I still influencing you?” he asked, dragging his hot mouth down the length of her spine. “Or is this your own need, cara? From your own body and your own mind?”
“Mine,” she barely managed as his fingers probed deeper.
“I am relieved, because there is something else you can now do.” He took her hands and braced them against the wall while she remained on her knees, then rolled to his back, sliding beneath her. When his mouth moved to where his fingers had been, the sensations were so carnal Lexi struggled to remain balanced. He pleasured her, pushed her beyond endurance while he held her hips, unable to evade him. “Have you remembered what you said?”
“No,” she choked, nearly incoherent, and heard him laugh. He spread her wider and increased the pressure of his tongue until she reached a high peak and remained there, a drop of dew at the edge of a petal that wouldn’t fall. She gloried in it, and when she’d gone beyond the limits of sensation, Christan dragged her down onto the bed and continued the assault with a ferocity that came from centuries of need. She was gasping when he finally moved over her boneless body.
“Your blood is my blood,” Lexi whispered as he entered her.
“And your blood is my blood,” he repeated. It carried the solemnity of a vow. His eyes glinted with obsidian light and he was more focused, moving harder, faster, until she cried out and held him close. Powerful muscles shook, and he pressed his lips against her neck. “Sei la mia vita, cuore mio.”
You are my life, my heart.
“Ti amo,” she whispered back against the pulse beating in his throat. “The other half of my soul.”
He rolled to his side, taking her with him, and she curled against the ferocious heat that still radiated from his body. She stroked her hands over his forearms, reveling in the rough abrasion of his skin and the freedom to touch him. After a long time, she managed to ask for more details about Marettimo.
“It’s a small island off the west coast of S
icily. Not much there but a village, the remains of Norman castle, a Byzantine chapel built by monks, and the stone houses of the Roman soldiers who thought it was the most godforsaken posting in the Empire.”
“Does your description come from personal experience?”
“I dropped in once or twice. Didn’t care for the monks that much.”
She was stroking his skin where the tattoos seemed to rise to her touch like a kitten wanting to be stroked. Then she realized there were new memory lines uncurling on her right hand. They vibrated in tune with his markings and the need began to build even after their lovemaking.
“So…” Lexi traced one of the more erotic tattoos. “How long before we get to this godforsaken outpost?”
“Maybe a day,” he said, grinning. “Why?”
“Those new abilities you said I had?”
“Yes, cara?”
“I should learn about them before we get to land.”
He laughed deep in his throat as he moved over her, and when she cupped her hands around his face, she thought he had never seemed so content and happy. When she nipped at his favorite tattoo he jerked, and then settled more powerfully against her.
“I love you,” he said against her heart, and spent the next hour showing her what that meant.
✽✽✽
The island of Marettimo was remote, less developed than its distant neighbors. Because tourism was limited to hikers, scuba divers and long-term visitors, transportation was scarce. The only way from Sicily was an hour-long trip by a hydrofoil that ran when the mood was right and remained in Trapani when the festivals were better. Private boats could make the crossing from the mainland but operated with the same disdain for time tables and love for festivals as the hydrofoil. The harbor was minimal. Stone steps angled down from the quay to the pebble beach. Small white boats were painted with red or green stripes and clustered in typical Mediterranean fashion above the low tide, waiting for the moon to exert its influence so the boats could float again.