There would be time enough later to figure out what their next move was. For right now, he wanted her and he could hardly concentrate on anything beyond the needs of his own dick.
“Stop thinking,” he whispered, snatching her attention back from wherever it had gone. “Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it. Later.”
“Later.” She nodded, took a deep breath and swiveled her hips, grinding her pelvis against his and the twisting friction that started up had him hissing in a breath between clenched teeth.
“That was amazing,” Deidre said. “I had no idea the Mating would be like that.”
In the morning light, her hair looked like spun gold lying across her shoulders. Her skin was practically glowing and her blue eyes, now clear of whatever had been plaguing her moments ago, looked dazzled by what they’d just shared.
He felt the same. Shaken right down to his battered soul. Even now, his body was stirring inside hers as fresh hunger took him over. If he had a heartbeat it would be crashing against his rib cage right about now.
But she had to know . . . “That wasn’t the Mating.”
Her eyes widened. “Seriously? That was just sex?”
Finn slid his hands over her thighs, up to her waist and smiled when she sucked in a gulp of air. “I wouldn’t say that, either. No, even without the Mating vows, sex magic between us is explosive.”
“Good word for it,” she agreed and twisted her hips atop him and sighed a little at the movement inside. “But I feel stronger,” she said softly. “Just like you said I would when we started the Mating.”
“You are stronger and so am I.” Finn lifted both hands to cover those gorgeous breasts and thumbed her nipples lazily, enjoying seeing her eyes glaze over and her lips part on another sigh. “Between destined couples, sex magic is powerful on its own. Our powers will grow.”
She fought for focus and asked, “Then why bother with the Mating at all?”
“Because there’s more with a Mating. New powers awaken inside each of us. And, as I told you, Mating creates an unbreakable bond between us. Links us, body, mind and soul. Makes you immortal. Gives me a heartbeat.”
“And what do we have to do to earn all of that?”
He dropped his hands from her breasts and laid them on her thighs as he met her gaze steadily. “We join hands and repeat the Mating words to each other. When we’ve finished, we each feel the heat of the Mating brand burning itself into our bodies.”
“Brand?”
He shrugged. “Think of it as a tattoo. It’s born of your power and it etches itself onto both of us, showing the world we’re a Mated pair. At the end of thirty days, if our quest is successful, the brand becomes permanent.” He looked into her eyes and felt the compulsion to Mate with her as he’d never felt it before and Finn fought against the urge. “Mating is much more than sex, Deidre. Basically, we take a vow of loyalty to each other. To trust each other. To let go of the past and accept the future.”
She sat atop him, perfectly still. His words hung in the room like a damn banner that neither of them wanted to notice.
“Well, that’s the problem isn’t it?” she asked and he couldn’t help noticing that they were in a weird kind of situation to be having this conversation. “We don’t trust each other.”
He didn’t say anything because what could he say? Finn knew she didn’t trust him and why the hell should she? Her memories were too new to make him anything more than a semistranger who’d introduced her into a world that mostly wanted her dead.
And when her memories did return in full, he told himself, she’d have reason not to trust him. Even he didn’t want to remember why. Because he’d spent more than eight hundred years trying to expunge that memory from his mind—and had failed.
She was still looking at him and a part of Finn wanted nothing more than to Mate with her now. To take the ancient vows. To feel the burn of her witch tattoo embedding itself in his chest. To be able to stand beside his brothers and their Mates. For him and Deidre to take their rightful place in Haven.
But Haven wasn’t in their future. He wasn’t going to offer her everything only to have her turn her back on him. Again.
In their shared past, Deidre had never let him all the way in. She’d held a part of herself back from him. Always. As if allowing herself to need him would somehow make her smaller. Then, the one night she really had needed him . . .
No. He wouldn’t let her in that deep again. Her loss had left him hollowed out and empty for too many centuries to endure it once more. He would never be that vulnerable to someone again.
She rocked her hips on his and his dick jerked inside her. If she had been trying to get his attention, that move managed it.
“New powers,” she mused, trailing one fingertip across his abdomen. The heat of her touch seemed to sear his skin. “What kind?”
He managed a shrug. “Differs for everyone. Though my Mated brothers tell me there’s a mental link between them and their Mates.”
“Reading minds?”
He shook his head. “Catching thoughts. Which we could probably do if we tried.”
“Okay . . . what else?”
“What does it matter?” he countered.
“Good point.” She leaned forward, resting her palms on his chest. Her breasts swayed with the movement and damn near hypnotized Finn. Deidre had always had that affect on him. She was talking though, so he made sure to listen.
“So, would the sex magic alone make us strong enough to be able to finish this mission you keep talking about?”
He frowned, but tore his gaze away from those delectable breasts long enough to think about it. Nowhere was it written they must Mate. The point was to open her memories, grow her magic and find the damned Artifact. Mating would help with that, but if they could manage without it . . .
Eyes narrowed on her, he said, “Sex magic will open your powers and yeah, make us stronger. We’d have to work harder to open your memories—”
“Not looking forward to that.”
“And sex magic alone won’t make you immortal. You need the Mating for that.”
She shrugged, and slid her hands down across his abs. “Or your heartbeat?”
His hands tightened on her hips, holding her still when she began rocking again. “Don’t need one. Told you that.”
“So basically,” she said, “neither one of us wants to do the Mate thing, right? So if we don’t need it, why do it?”
It went against everything they had been striving toward for centuries. His instinctive urge to claim her as Mate was scorching his insides, but he knew how to fight. He could conquer those compulsions. The others would never understand, but Finn didn’t really care what they thought of him anyway. This was between him and Deidre. The woman he had waited eons for. And whatever decision they made would be their choice and no one else’s.
“Works for me.” But then he would have agreed to anything when his witch was grinding against him, driving his dick higher and higher inside her.
The heat. The slick, tight feel of her surrounding him. Every cell in his body responded to her on so many different levels he couldn’t measure them all. His magic kindled inside him and as she began to ride him, he called on the flames that were his soul, the heart of him, letting it engulf both him and Deidre.
She yelped, startled, and he felt the clench of her muscles. He grinned up at her. “Surprise.”
Deidre frantically watched the flames as they danced across her skin, swarming up and down over their bodies like a living cloak. “We’re on fire.”
“And it can’t hurt you,” he said, smiling as she relaxed into the flames, raising her arms to watch the fire writhe sensuously on her skin. “It will only . . . enhance our magic.”
She shook her head, staring from him to the flames, blue, red, orang
e and green, dancing across their joined bodies, delivering heat and a wicked licking sensation. “It’s . . .” She sighed a little, then gasped as the flames danced lower, caressing the spot where their bodies were locked together. “Oh, that’s really good . . .”
He shut off the flames in a wink and before she could show her surprise again, he flipped her onto the mattress. Pulling free of her body briefly, he rolled her over until she was facedown on the bed. She pushed herself up onto her elbows and looked back at him through a curtain of silky hair. “Finn?”
“My turn.” He knelt behind her, and lifted her hips, his big hands kneading the soft flesh of her behind until she was practically humming in anticipation and pure pleasure.
She wiggled her butt into his touch and gasped when he dropped one hand to her center. His fingers stroked her damp heat, wrenching a moan from her throat as she dropped her head to the mattress. Spreading her legs farther apart, Finn took a long moment to look his fill of her. His erection throbbed with need as his gaze moved over her luscious butt and the hot, sweet core of her.
“Finn, please . . .”
“Oh, yeah, Dee.” He drove himself into her heat with one long thrust that seated him to the hilt inside her. The glory of it tore a deep, rumbling groan from him. This was what he wanted. What they both wanted and needed. Nothing beyond this moment. Fuck the Mating. They would make do with what they already shared. They would relish it. Revel in it. Take each other as many times as necessary to accomplish what they must.
And sex magic, he knew, would only get better and better every time they came together.
Deidre moaned again and pushed back into him, taking him even deeper than she had before. Finn felt the rush of magic and sensation that erupted. It was like nothing he’d ever experienced before. Hell, he’d been with Deidre many times over the eons, but now was different.
Now was their time. Even without making the Mating vows, the power charging through them was unmistakable.
His hands came down on her hips, holding her steady as he continued to plunder her body. Her soft moans and sighs accompanied the slap of flesh on flesh. Sunlight lay across the bed and them like a blessing as he felt her climax roar through her. Her inner muscles clamped down around him, squeezing, driving him higher and higher as she made that inevitable climb that would end with an explosion of sensation. She shrieked his name, grabbed fistfuls of the red duvet beneath her and rocked her hips to match the frantic rhythm pulsing between them.
In a blinding flash, Finn’s release claimed him. He held nothing back. Gave himself over completely to what exploded inside him. The shattering jolt of the orgasm shot from the base of his spine straight up to practically blow off the top of his head.
When it was at last over, he slipped free of her body and lowered her to the bed, where she groaned again, then stretched languorously, making happy little sounds in the back of her throat. “That was . . .”
“Yeah,” he agreed, stretching out alongside her, his body, for the moment, content. “Makes you wonder how much better the Mating sex is.”
She turned her head to look at him. “Guess we won’t find that out.”
“No, guess not.” His gaze moved over her, her silky skin luminescent in the sunlight, her blond hair tangled and lying across her shoulders and breasts like a soft, golden curtain.
And a part of him wondered if they were making a mistake.
Chapter 22
Dante Dimenticato stared up at Deidre Sterling’s apartment building and wondered, for the hundredth time in the last few days, just where in the hell she was. He’d searched every inch of this block several times. He’d hunted for clues, talked to everyone in every damn building on the street and there was simply no trace of her.
She had never returned home from her friend Shauna Jackson’s apartment the night she went missing. Which meant she’d either willingly gone somewhere else, leaving behind everything she owned—or she’d been taken.
As a Secret Service agent, his main purpose in life was to protect the president and the first family. Deidre was the first family and her going missing on his watch was turning out to be a damn nightmare.
An old woman passed him on the sidewalk and gave him a wide berth as she went. Her rheumy gaze locked on him warily and he took a step back, further distancing himself from her to ease the fear he felt coming from her.
He knew what the woman saw when she looked at him. Short black hair, dark sunglasses. With a hard jaw and broad shoulders, he stood just under six feet four and knew that in his suit and long, black overcoat, he looked damned intimidating. That was the point, though he didn’t enjoy scaring old ladies.
Dante glanced over his shoulder at the small park that sat opposite Deidre’s town house in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. The grass was brown, the trees nearly naked and the whole area looked as grim as it possibly could on a cold November morning. None of the usual homeless was around and he made a mental note to hunt for them later. Maybe one of them had seen something.
The mic in his ear bristled briefly with static and he reached up to touch it. “This is Dante. What’ve you got?”
“Squat.” Tim Hogan’s voice came through loud and clear. “Dante, how long are we gonna search the same four-block radius? Snowflake’s gone. Nobody saw her leave. Nobody’s seen her since. We’re finding nothing.”
Irritation sparked. “Then we keep looking till we do,” he said, his voice a low throb of barely restrained anger. He wasn’t going back to the White House to report another day’s failure. Somewhere, there was someone who had seen something. And Dante would find them.
“I’m making another pass through the apartment.”
“Good,” Tim said snidely. “’Cuz the first three times we might have missed a clue.”
Dante ignored that. “You head over to the Starbucks where Snowflake’s friend worked again. Ask questions. Get people to talk. When I leave here, I’m heading for Shauna’s apartment to give it another look, too.”
“Right. Fine.” A pause and then Tim asked, “What do you think of the rumors?”
“What rumors?”
An icy wind scuttled across the park, rattling tree limbs as it headed straight for Dante. The sky was clear and the sun was doing all it could to beat the November cold into submission, but it was a losing battle as winter stealthily crept up on the city.
“You know what rumors. People are starting to wonder if Snowflake’s a—you know.”
Witch. At least Hogan was smart enough not to use that word over an open com-channel. There were plenty of people out there skilled enough to tap into any supposedly secure communication system.
“Forget the damn rumors,” he said sharply, wanting to cut short all talk like that. “We’ve got a job to do and we do it. Simple. Understood?”
“Got it. Out.”
When the mic went silent, he shifted his gaze back to Deidre’s building and headed for the entrance.
The doorman didn’t even look at his ID anymore, which was both good and bad. He hated like hell wasting time proving his identity to the same man over and over, but he didn’t like seeing security get lax, either. Still, not a problem to address this morning. He headed for the bank of elevators, then stepped into one and rode it to Deidre’s floor.
Dante had a key to her town house. Because he was head of her security team, it was imperative that he be able to get to her in case of an emergency. Which, he told himself as he unlocked the door and stepped inside, pretty much described what was happening now.
He stepped inside, his gaze going first to the large white tiled hearth that stood cold and empty. The air had that stale feeling a room took on when no one had been around to stir it. Desolation rang inside the neat, completely feminine space. A faint hint of cinnamon hung in the stillness and outside, the wind sighed against the windowpanes,
sounding almost mournful.
Great. He didn’t need to get poetic. What he needed was to get some answers.
“Where the hell are you, Deidre?” Dante muttered aloud, hoping to dispel the sense of abandonment in the place.
He stalked across the room, a big man in a too-small space, and stopped at the window. There, he peeled back the curtains and looked down on a stark landscape.
Dante ground his teeth together in frustration. He had wanted to give Snowflake a break. Give her a little room. So he had backed off the night she went to Shauna’s place—to give the two women a chance to talk. To get out from under the constant glare of Deidre’s security team.
A finger of concern jabbed at his heart. He dropped the curtains into place again, then turned to face the empty room. Wherever she was, he hoped to hell Deidre was safe. Because if she wasn’t, it would be all his fault.
“I’ve never had the chance to beat the crap out of a president’s daughter.”
“Then today’s your lucky day,” Deidre said, smiling. She circled her opponent, keeping her gaze fixed to his every movement. Corey Davis was fast, smooth and all too eager to prove to Finn that Deidre didn’t belong in their happy little band of guerrilla fighters.
A week since the kidnapping. They’d been back in the tunnels for a couple of days now and the cabin in Maine was nothing more than a hazy memory. She almost laughed as that thought skittered through her mind. After all, she had way too many memories to deal with already. Did she really need to be making new ones?
Corey took a swing and Deidre ducked, his right fist plowing past the spot where her head had been. It was close. She felt the fan of the breeze slide past her face.
“Lucky,” he said.
And magic, she thought but didn’t bother saying. Just as Finn had told her, the sex magic was affecting her. She was stronger, faster and power bubbled in her veins. She felt it constantly, a just-under-the-skin buzz that had become as second nature to her as the color of her own eyes.
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