You ditched me, she said with her next kiss. You didn’t want me enough to work out whatever got stuck in your head. She didn’t know what had happened, or how she could’ve changed the outcome.
And really, it didn’t matter now, because now wasn’t real. Still, she wanted to punish him for the pain, wanted to dig into him for hiding the truth, for hiding himself. But the other woman inside her, the one who’d never been clumsy, never been embarrassed, that woman turned the punishment into pleasure, skimming her hands and lips over his body, using the sensitive spots Alexis had found and taking them further, dancing her fingernails on his skin and testing them with her teeth.
Heat spiraled higher, flared hotter, as she and Nate strained together, locked in a combative sort of lovemaking. The air warmed around them and the water heated—or maybe that was their bodies, and the heat they made together as they brought each other to the place where joining became as necessary as breathing.
He entered her, sliding into her on a wash of wetness and a clench of pleasure. His hollow groan echoed deep in his chest, counterpointing her soft cry. Then they were moving together and apart, one against the other, push and pull, push and pull. Alexis braced herself against the rocky spires, feeling the slide of stone without, the slide of his hard flesh within, and around it all the soft wetness of the water and moist air, and the good press of his arms around her as they clung and shuddered.
Then he gripped her hips in his big hands, holding her in place as he began to piston, setting a pace of ruthless masculine pleasure.
“Gods,” Alexis whispered, going numb to everything but the sensations that rolled through her.
She’d forgotten this, somehow forgotten about the moment when the sex took him over, when he went beyond the civilized veneer to a feral, animal place beyond, where he existed only for his pleasure—
and hers.
He drove into her, held her, pinned her, stripping away her defenses and contracting her universe until the only things that existed were the two of them, the points at which their bodies connected, and the thundering pace of his sex.
He held her, loved her, took her over. The orgasm slapped at her, unexpected in its ferocity, which gave her no option, bowing her back and wringing a cry from deep in her throat. Her inner muscles clamped around him, feeling stronger than before, needier. She pumped him, clenched around him, and he cut loose with a roar. The pulse of his flesh within her heightened her response, prolonging the orgasm, drawing it out until she was nothing more than a bundle of neurons coalesced together, throbbing in pleasure. She hung on to the only solid objects nearby, lest she be swept away.
Then the waves passed, fading to an echo, then a fearsome memory.
Alexis clung to him with her face turned from his, her cheek pressed into his shoulder. She didn’t dare pull away and look at him, didn’t want to see how much the sex had—or hadn’t—meant to him.
And as much as she tried to tell herself that none of it was real, it’d sure as hell felt real, and the tug at her heart was real.
“Lexie,” he said, his voice cracking on the endearment. “I—” The world lurched, interrupting. The water started to swirl, and a hard, hot wind whipped through the stone chamber, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.
Alexis heard him shout, and screamed as they were torn apart and sucked down, as everything went to flame and then gray-green, spinning and moving and howling as though they’d insulted the gods themselves. Her heart pounded in her chest, panic slicing through her as she grabbed for something, anything she could hold on to, and found nothing but air. Wind screamed around her, howling, sounding almost like words.
All of a sudden there were words, a multitonal voice shouting, “The Volatile must be found!” Then, out of nowhere, a strong hand gripped Alexis’s wrist and yanked.
And she was back at Skywatch.
Her consciousness dropped into her body with a jarring thud. She went limp and slid sideways, saved only when Nate jammed his hip against her shoulder and shoved her back into her chair. He was still hanging on to her wrist. Somehow he’d gotten out and dragged her with him.
“Oh, gods.” Alexis sagged against him, clung to him, her fingers digging into the heavy muscles of his forearm, over the stark black of his marks. “Oh, holy hell.” She looked up at him. “What did you
—” She broke off, seeing in his eyes all of his usual intensity, along with the irritation she alone seemed to bring out. But that was it. She saw nothing of what they’d just done together.
He detached himself from her and stepped away. “What did I . . . what?” he prompted.
Izzy shouldered him aside and started fussing, checking Alexis’s color, her pulse, making Alexis acutely aware that they weren’t alone, that the other Nightkeepers and their winikin were still there in the great room, gathered around her and Nate and the suitcase containing the statuette of Ixchel. There was no temple, no torchlight. No lovemaking.
She swallowed hard. “What did you see?” Which wasn’t even close to what she’d been about to say before. “You were in there with me, right? You were there the whole time?”
He frowned. “What whole time?” He looked at Strike. “It was only a few seconds, right?”
The king nodded, but said, “Doesn’t mean she didn’t experience something that seemed longer, though. Time acts funny in the barrier.” He cut his eyes to Alexis. “That was where you wound up, right? In the barrier?”
Her defenses snapped up, born of the insecurities that had ruled too much of her life, and she nodded quickly. “Right. The barrier.”
Strike glanced at Nate, who’d jammed his hands in his pockets and was staring over her head, as though determined to distance himself from the convo. “You, too?”
“Maybe for a few seconds,” Nate allowed. “Then I got kicked back here, and she followed. Nothing complicated.”
Only it was very, very complicated, Alexis thought, staring down at the statuette, sure now that the woman’s face was buried in her hands because she was weeping with heartache . . . and the gut-
punching frustration of dealing with magic and men. The artifact had taken her to the barrier, yes, but it’d also taken her someplace else, someplace where she’d met and made love to a man who’d looked and acted like Nate, had made love like Nate, yet somehow wasn’t him.
Her hair was dry, and she was wearing the jeans and loose shirt she’d put on before the meeting, not combat gear or wet skin. Yet her body echoed with the effects of having made love. More important, it echoed with having made love with him. As much as she’d wanted to hate him in the aftermath of their belly flop of a relationship, she’d been unable to forget that with him sex felt different, echoed different.
Yet it’d either really, truly been a dream that belonged only to her . . . or for some reason he’d blocked it from his conscious mind. He wouldn’t lie about something that important. Hell, she was pretty sure he didn’t lie about anything; he was scrupulously honest, even when she hated hearing what he had to say.
Which explained absolutely nothing.
“What did you see?” Strike pressed her. “Did you speak with a nahwal?”