He watched as another bolt of lightning shot from her fingertips. Drops of rain began to pelt him, and the wind cut through his shirt. He began to run. Over the aged stones. Across the graves of the ancients. Across time itself to become part of her tempest.
He pulled himself up next to her on the wall. The wind was making too much noise for her to hear his approach, but only mortals were caught unprepared, and she didn’t jump when she realized she was no longer alone. She simply lowered her arms and turned to him.
He yearned to touch her, to calm those furious wisps of hair that flew about her head, to draw her into his arms and kiss her and love her, but something had changed forever, and his blood ran cold at the thought that it might be her love for him.
Another bolt of lightning shattered the skies. She had no concern for her safety, but he did, and he pulled the statue from her stiff fingers. He began to toss it to the ground where it could no longer serve as a lightning rod. Instead, he found himself staring at it in his hand, feeling its power vibrating through him. She wasn’t the only one who could make a covenant, he understood. It was time for him to make one of his own, a covenant that went against every male instinct he possessed.
He turned as she had, faced outward, and lifted the statue back to the sky. First she belonged to God-he understood that. Next she belonged to herself, no doubt about that. Only afterward did she belong to him. This was the nature of the woman he’d fallen in love with. So be it.
He lowered the statue and turned back to her. She watched him, but her expression was unreadable. He didn’t know what to do. He had vast experience with mortal women, but goddesses were another matter, and he’d angered this particular deity beyond reason.
Her dress whipped the legs of his trousers, and the raindrops had turned into angry warheads. A terrible frenzy gripped him. Touching her would be the biggest risk of his life, but no power on earth could hold him back. If he didn’t act, he would lose her forever.
Before his courage deserted him, he pulled her hard against him. She didn’t turn to ash as he’d feared. Instead, she met his kiss with a punishing fire. Peace and love, he somehow understood, were currently the province of her tamer sisters. This goddess was driven by conquest, and her sharp teeth sank into his bottom lip. He’d never felt so close to death or life. With the wind and rain raging around them, he used his strength to pull her down from the wall and set her against the stones.
She could have resisted, she could have fought him-he expected her to-but she didn’t. Her fingers pulled at his clothes. He was the mortal she’d chosen to service her.
He pushed her skirt to her waist and ripped away her panties. The part of him that could still think wondered at the fate of one who tried to claim a goddess, but he no longer had a choice. Not even the threat of death could hold him back.
The stones bit into his arms and the backs of her legs, but she opened her thighs for him anyway. She was wet. Wet and fierce beneath his fingers. He spread her legs wider, and then he drove deep.
She tilted her face to the rain as he worked inside her. He kissed her neck, the column of her throat. She set her legs around his hips and drew his power deeper, using him as he was using her.
They struggled together, climbed together. The storm lashed their bodies, urged on by the ghosts of the ancients who themselves had once made love within these walls. I love you, he shouted, but he kept the words inside his head, because they were too small to express the immensity of what he felt.
She gripped him tighter and whispered against his hair: “Chaos.”
He waited until the very end, the last moment before they lost themselves, that sliver of time that separated them from eternity. Then he closed his hand around the statue and pulled it hard against her side.
A bolt of lightning split the sky, and they flung themselves into the fury of the storm.
She didn’t speak afterward. They moved away from the wall into the shelter of the trees. He straightened his clothes. They began walking through the ruins toward the trail. Not touching.
“The rain stopped.” His voice was hoarse with emotion. He had the statue in his hands.
“I thought too big,” she finally said.
“Did you, now?” He had no idea what she was talking about. He swallowed the lump in his throat. If he didn’t get this right the first time, there was no guarantee of a retake. “I love you. You know that, don’t you?”
She didn’t respond-didn’t even look at him. It was too little too late, exactly what he’d feared.
They made their way down the trail accompanied by the steady drip of rainwater from the trees. At the end Ren saw Bernardo standing by the Maserati. He’d gotten it out of the ruts, and he came forward, looking unhappy but determined. “Signora Favor, I regret to tell to you that you are under arrest.”
“Surely that’s not necessary,” Ren said.
“She has damaged property.”
“Hardly anything,” he pointed out. “I’ll take care of it.”
“But how do you take care of the lives she has endangered with her reckless driving?”
“This is Italy,” he said. “Everybody drives recklessly.”
But Bernardo knew his duty. “I do not make the laws. Signora, if you would come with me.”
If this had been a film, she would have clung to Ren’s arm, quivering in fear, but this was Isabel, and she merely nodded. “Of course.”
“Isabel-”
She slid into the backseat of Bernardo’s Renault without acknowledging Ren. He stood alone and watched them disappear.
He gazed at his Maserati. The side mirror was gone, the fender dented, a scrape marred the black paint on one side, but he couldn’t bring himself to care about anything except the knowledge that he was the one who had pushed her to such dangerous recklessness.
He stuffed his hands in his pockets. He probably shouldn’t have bribed Bernardo with the promise of a top-of-the-line computer for the police station if he arrested her, but what else could he do to make sure she didn’t get away before he’d had a chance to set things right? With his heart in his throat, he made his way to the car.
The only light in the cell came from a flickering fluorescent fixture set inside a wire cage. It was past nine o’clock, and Isabel hadn’t seen anyone since shortly after her arrival, when Harry had appeared with some dry clothes that Tracy had gathered up. She heard footsteps approaching, and she looked up to see the door swing open.
Ren came in. His presence filled the small cell. Even here he managed to take center stage. She didn’t try to read his expression. He was an actor, and he could show whatever emotion he wanted.
The door closed behind him, and the lock clicked. “I’ve been frantic,” he said.
He didn’t look frantic. He looked purposeful but tense. She set aside the pad of paper she’d propped on her knees, the one she’d made Bernardo give her. “That must be why it took you three hours to get here.”
“I had to make some phone calls.”
“Well, that explains it.”
He came closer and studied her, looking uneasy. “That insanity on top of the mountain… It got a little rough up there. Are you all right?”
“I’m pretty tough. Why, did I hurt you?”
His lips thinned. Smile or grimace, she wasn’t sure which. He slipped a hand in his pocket, then immediately withdrew it. “What did you mean when you said you thought too big?”
She knew her place in the world now, and there was no reason not to explain. “My life. I’ve always told people to think big, but I finally realized that sometimes we can think too big.” She moved to sit on the edge of the cot.
“I don’t know what you mean.”