by Nora Roberts
She shifted, kneeling to unbutton his shirt. Then her body bowed down as she pressed her lips to his heart. Lightly, her fingertips grazed down his sides as her mouth brushed, her tongue slicked along his skin. She felt his muscles quiver as she trailed those slow openmouthed kisses over his belly, as she flipped open the button of his jeans.
She wanted him to quiver.
She eased the zipper down, a slick hiss of sound in the dark, and drew denim down those narrow hips where the skin was warm. He groaned as she pleasured him.
She ruled his body. Her mouth and hands guided him slowly, inexorably into the rocking sea of heat until he was drenched in it. And when the blood began to burn under his skin, she shifted again. He heard the soft rustle as she undressed.
“I want to ask you for something.” She came toward him across the bed on her hands and knees and his mouth went dry as dust.
“If you want a favor, this is probably a good time to ask for it.”
Teasing, she lowered her lips to his, brushed, retreated. When he cupped the back of her head to bring her mouth to his again, she took it, brought it to her breast.
“When you touch me, when you make love with me, when you’re inside me, can you feel what I feel? Can I feel what you feel? I want that with you. I want to know what it’s like to be together that way, when we’re like this.”
A gift, he thought, of complete trust, on both sides. He sat up, looked into her eyes. “Open,” he murmured, and rubbed his lips to hers. “Just open.”
He felt her nerves, her needs, and the thoughts that came and went in her head like soft shimmers. To be wanted, to be touched. By him. When her hands ran up his back, he knew both her pleasure and her approval. He knew the press of their bodies, the beats of their hearts.
Then easing her down, he deepened the kiss. And opened himself to her.
At first it was like a sigh, through her body, through her mind. She thought: Lovely. It’s lovely. Anticipation built. She turned her head to give him the pulse in her throat when she felt his need to taste there.
Her breath caught, a quick little shock when his mouth took her breast. So much to feel, to know, she trembled with each new sensation that slipped and slid inside her, around her. His hands, her skin, his lips, her taste. Her needs tied, tangled with his on a free-falling leap.
Greed—was it hers or his that had her rolling over the bed with him, desperate for more, and the more only unleashed new, wild cravings. His hands used her, rougher than before, answering her unspoken demands. Take, take, take. Pleasure swelled, unfurled, then burst with shock after radiant shock.
Her nails bit, his teeth nipped. And when he drove into her she thought she’d go mad from the force of mingled power.
“Stay with me, stay with me.” Desperate, delirious, she wrapped her legs around him like chains when she sensed him start to close off. Pleasure, a two-edged sword, was brutally keen. She gripped it with him.
She held his body, his thoughts, his heart, until neither could hold any longer.
He sprawled facedown on the bed, head swimming, lungs laboring. He didn’t have the strength, as yet, to ask her if she was all right, much less to try to link to make sure for himself.
She’d taken him apart, and he wasn’t quite capable of putting himself back together. None of his thoughts would coalesce. He wasn’t quite sure if there weren’t still echoes of hers inside him.
Still, after a few minutes, he realized he might die of thirst if he didn’t crawl off for water.
“Water.” He croaked it out.
“God. Please.”
He started to roll, bumped her where she’d flung herself crossways on the bed. “Sorry.”
He only grunted as he got his feet on the floor, then stumbled his way to the kitchen. The light in the refrigerator branded his eyes like the blaze of the sun. With one hand pressed over them, Fox felt his way over the shelves for a bottle of water.
He drank half of it where he stood, naked in front of the open refrigerator, his eyes slammed shut against any source of light. Steadier, he opened his eyes to slits, grabbed a second bottle and took it into the bedroom.
She hadn’t moved a muscle.
“Are you all right? Did I—”
“Water.” Her hand flayed in the air. “Water.”
He opened the bottle, then slid an arm under her to prop her up. Leaning back against his arm she drank with the same urgent gusto as he had.
“Are your ears ringing?” she asked him. “My ears are ringing. And I think I may be blind.”
He hauled her around so she was propped against the pillows instead of his arm, then he switched on the bedside light.
She screamed and slapped a hand over her eyes. “Okay, I wasn’t blind, but now I may be.” Cautiously she peeked out between two spread fingers. “Have you ever . . .”
“No. That was the first.” Because his legs were still a little weak, he sat down beside her. Which was too bad, he mused, because he’d liked the full-length view. “Intense.”
“Intense is too mild a word. There isn’t a word. They need to invent one. I guess that’s not something we could handle every time.”
“Save it for special occasions.”
She smiled and stirred up the energy to sit up, rest her head on his shoulder. “Arbor Day’s coming up, I think. That’s pretty special.”
He laughed, turned his head to rub his cheek against her hair. I love you, he thought, but kept the words to himself this time.
SINCE FOX HAD OUTSIDE MEETINGS, LAYLA TOOK advantage of a slow afternoon to read over portions of Ann Hawkins’s third journal. There was not, as they’d hoped, a spell, a formula, step-by-step directions on how to kill a centuries-old demon. It led Layla to believe Giles Dent hadn’t told his lover the answers. Cybil’s take was more mystical, Layla supposed. If Ann knew, she also knew that whatever needed to be done to end Twisse would be diluted, even invalidated if the answers were simply handed over.
That seemed too cryptic and irritating to Layla, so she spent considerable time trying to read between the lines. And came away from it frustrated and headachy. Why couldn’t people just be straightforward. She liked step-by-step directions. And she was sure as hell going to record them, if they ever found them, used them, and were successful, on the off-chance some future generation had a similar problem.
“Why don’t you come back here?” Layla muttered. “Come on back and talk to me, Ann. Just spell it out. Then we’ll all go about our normal lives.”
Even as she said it, Layla heard the front door creak open. She bulleted to her feet. Brian O’Dell sauntered in.
“Hey, Layla. Sorry, did I startle you?”
“No. A little. I wasn’t expecting anyone. Fox is out of the office this afternoon.”
“Oh. Well.” Brian dipped his hands in his pockets, rocked back on his heels. “I was in town, thought I’d drop in.”
“He probably won’t be back until after six. If you want to leave a message—”
“No. No big. You know, since I’m here, maybe I’ll just go back.” He pulled a hand free to gesture with his thumb. “Fox is talking about new flooring in the kitchen, and a couple of things. I’ll just go measure. Want any coffee or anything?”
Layla tilted her head. “How are you going to measure without a measuring tape?”
“Right. Right. I’ll get one out of the truck.”
"Mr. O’Dell, did Fox ask you to come in this afternoon?”
“Ah. He’s not here.”
“Exactly.” Like the son, Layla thought, the father was a poor liar. “So he asked if you’d come in, check on me. Which I might not have copped to except that your wife dropped in about an hour ago, with a dozen eggs. Putting that together with this, I smell babysitters.”
Brian grinned, scratched his head. “Busted. He doesn’t like you being here alone. I can’t say I blame him.” He strolled over, dropped into one of the visitors’ chairs. “I hope you’re not going to give him a hard time about i
t.”
“No.” She sighed, sat herself. “I guess, one way or another, we all worry about each other. But I’ve got my cell in my pocket, and everyone I know on speed dial. Mr. O’Dell—”
“Brian.”
“Brian. How do you handle it? Knowing what’s happening, what may happen to Fox?”
“You know, I was nineteen when Sage was born.” In the language of a man settling in for a spell, he propped one work-booted foot on his knee. “Jo was eighteen. Couple of kids who thought we knew it all, had it all covered. Then, you have a kid of your own, and the whole world shifts. There’s a part of me that’s been worried for thirty-three years now.” He smiled as he said it. “I guess there’s just more parts of me worried when it comes to Fox. And truth? It pisses me off that he had his childhood, his innocence stolen from him. He came home that day, his tenth birthday, and he was never a little boy, not in the same way, again.”
“Did he tell you what happened? The morning he came back from the Pagan Stone?”
“I like to think we got a lot right with our kids, but one thing I know we got right. They know they can tell us anything. He’d spun that one about camping out in Cal’s backyard, but Jo and I saw through that.”
“You knew he was going to spend the night in the woods?”
“We knew he was taking an adventure, and we gave him the room. If we hadn’t, he’d’ve found a way around it. Birds have to fledge. You can’t stop it, no matter how much you want to keep them safe in the nest.”
He paused a moment, and Layla could see him looking back, wondered what it was like to look back over the course of another’s lifetime. Someone you loved.
“He had Gage with him when he came home,” Brian continued. “You could see, in both of them, something had changed. Then they told us, and everything changed. We talked about leaving. Jo and I talked about selling the farm and moving on. But he needed to be here. After the week was up, we all thought it was over. But more than that, we knew Fox needed to be here, with Cal and Gage.”
“You’ve seen him face this three times before, and now he’s facing it again. I think it must take tremendous courage to accept what he’s doing. Not to try to stop him.”
The smile was easy, the smile clear. “It’s not courage, it’s faith. I have complete faith in Fox. He’s the best man I know.”
Brian stayed until she closed the office, then insisted on driving her home. The best man I know, she mused as she walked in the house. Was there a higher tribute from father to son? She walked upstairs to take the journal back to the home office.
Quinn sat at her desk, scowling at her monitor.
“How’s it going?”
“Crappy. I’m on deadline with the article, and I can’t keep my head in the game.”
“Sorry. I’ll go down, give you the room.”
“No. Shit.” She shoved away. “I shouldn’t have said I’d write the stupid article except, hello, money. But we’ve been pushing on this idea of the blood ritual, and clever words to go with it, and Cybil’s snarly.”
“Where is she?”
“Working in her room because apparently I think too loud.” Quinn waved it away. “We get like this with each other if we work on a project for any serious length of time. Only she gets like this more. I wish I had a cookie.” Quinn propped her chin on her hand. “I wish I had a bag of Milanos. Crap.” She picked up the apple from the desk, bit in. “What are you smiling at, size freaking two?”
“Four, and I’m smiling because it’s reassuring to come home and find you in this lousy mood wishing for cookies, and Cybil holed up in her room. It’s so normal.”
With something between a grunt and a snort, Quinn took another bite of apple. “My mother sent a swatch for bridesmaids’ gowns. It’s fuchsia. How’s that for normal, Sunny Jane?”
“I could wear fuchsia if I had to. Please don’t make me.”
Blue eyes wickedly amused, Quinn chewed and smiled. “Cyb would look horrible in fuchsia. If she keeps crabbing at me, I’ll make her wear it. You know what? We need to get out of here for a while. All work, no play. We’re taking tomorrow off and shopping for my wedding dress.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“I thought you’d never ask. I’ve been dying to do this. Where—”
Layla turned as Cybil’s door opened. “We’re going shopping. For Quinn’s wedding gown.”
“Good, that’s good.” At the doorway, Cybil leaned on the jamb, studied both her friends. “That’s what we could call a ritual—a white one, a female one. Unless we want to take a closer look at the symbolism. White equals virginal, veil equals submission—”
“We don’t,” Quinn interrupted. “I will, without shame, toss my feminist principles to the wind for the perfect wedding dress. I’ll live with it.”
“Right. Well, anyway . . .” Absently, Cybil shoved back her mass of hair. “It’s still a female ritual. Maybe it’ll balance out what we’ll be doing in another two weeks. Blood magic.”
FOX DROVE STRAIGHT TO LAYLA’S AFTER HIS APPOINTMENTS. She opened the door as he started up the walk, her hair swinging, her lips curved in a welcoming smile. Could he help it if that was exactly what he hoped to come home to every night?
“Hey.” He leaned down to kiss her, leaned up and cocked his head at the absent response. “Why don’t we try that again?”
“Sorry. I’m distracted.” She took the lapels of his jacket in her hands, and put herself into the kiss.
“That’s what I’m talking about.” But he saw now there was no reflection of that smile of greeting in her eyes. “What’s the matter?”
“Did you get my voice mail?”
“Meeting here, as soon as I could make it. I made it.”
“We’re in the living room. It’s—Cybil thinks she’s nailed down the blood ritual.”
“Fun and games for all.” Concerned, he brushed his thumb over her cheekbone. “What’s the problem?”
“She— She’s waiting until you get here to explain it to the three of you.”
“Whatever she explained to you didn’t put roses in your cheeks.”
“Some of the variables on the potential outcome aren’t rosy.” She took his hand. “You’d better hear it for yourself. But before . . . I have to tell you something else.”
“Okay.”
“Fox . . .” Her fingers tightened on his, as if in comfort. “Can we just sit here a minute?”
They sat on the porch steps, looking out at the quiet street. Her hands clasped on her knee, one of her signs— Gage would call it a tell—of nerves. “How bad is it?” Fox asked her.
“I don’t know. I don’t know how you’ll feel about it.” She pressed her lips together once, hard. “I’m going to say it straight out, then you can take whatever time you need to, well, absorb it. Carly was connected. To this. She was a descendent of Hester Deale’s.”
It hit him, a hard, fast punch to the solar plexus. His thoughts spun, so he asked the first question that popped. “How do you know?”
“I asked Cybil—” She broke off, shifted to face him, started again. “It seemed that there had to be a reason for what happened, Fox, a reason she was infected so quickly, so . . . fatally. So I asked Cybil to look into it, and she has been.”
“Why didn’t you say anything to me?”
“I wasn’t sure, and if I’d been wrong, I’d have upset you for nothing. And . . . I should’ve told you,” she amended. “I’m sorry.”
“No.” The spinning stopped; the ache just under his heart eased. She’d wanted to shield him until supposition became fact and he’d have done exactly the same. “No, I get it. Cybil climbed Carly’s family tree?”
“Yes. Tonight she told me she’d found the connection. She has the details of the genealogy if you want to see them.”
When he only shook his head, she went on. “I don’t know if this makes it better for you, or worse, or if it changes nothing. But I thought you should know.”
“Twisse used that, and you, and her. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but nothing you did, nothing you didn’t do would have changed that.”
“I don’t know if that’s true, but there’s nothing I can do now to change it. Maybe we found each other, Carly and me, because of this. But then we made choices, both of us, that led to the end of it. Different choices, maybe a different result. No way to know.”
After a moment, he laid his hand over hers. “There’s always going to be guilt, and grief, when I think of her. But now, I know at least part of the why. I never understood why, Layla, and that twisted me up.”
“Twisse took her to hurt you. And was able to take her, the way he did, because she was of his bloodline. And because . . .”
“Keep going,” he told her when she trailed off.
“I think because she didn’t believe, not really. She didn’t believe enough to be afraid, or to fight, even to run. That’s just speculation, and I might be overstepping, but—”
“No.” He said it quietly. “No, you’re exactly right. She didn’t believe, even when she saw with her own eyes.” He lifted his free hand, studied the unmarred palm. “She told me what she thought I wanted to hear, promised to stay at the farm that night without ever intending to keep the promise. She was built skeptical, she couldn’t help it.”
He closed his hand into a loose fist, lowered it. And for the first time in nearly seven years, he let it go. “I never thought of a connection. That was smart. And you were right to tell me.” He lifted their hands, slid his fingers between hers. “Being up-front with each other, even when it’s hard, that’s the best choice for us.”
“I want to say this one thing more before we go in. If I promise you something—if you ask me to do something, or not to, and I give you my promise, I’ll keep it.”
Understanding, he brought their joined hands to his lips. “And I’ll believe what you tell me. Let’s go inside.”
He couldn’t change the past, Fox thought. He could only prepare for the future. But he could prize and hold the now. Layla was his now. The people in this house were his as well. They needed him, and he needed them. That was enough for any man.