His mind jerked back but his body leaned in instead, inviting her maddening touch. Unnerved to be suddenly teetering at the edge of his hard-won control, he broke the kiss and smoothed his hands down her body and back up again, soothing himself more than her. Hold it together, he told himself. Don’t lose your shit. Before, he’d let himself be taken over, used. He didn’t intend to let that happen again, whether by makol, desire, or power. Not ever.
Needing a moment, he released her to turn and snag the quilt he’d left tossed over the back of the couch, having dragged it in from the bedroom one night when he’d been working on a series of translations, unable to sleep. Done in masculine shades of rust, brown, and cream, the quilt’s color scheme mimicked the hues on the TV screen. Shoving aside the coffee table with his foot, he spread the comforter on the thick carpeting and swept a bunch of pillows off the sofa onto the quilt, creating a layer softer even than the padded wall-to-wall carpeting beneath, a comfortable nest in the wide- open space of the floor rather than the close confines of a too-soft couch that occasionally made him feel trapped even when he was sitting there alone.
Unable to bear the constricting chafe of his tee, he shucked off his shirt over his head and tossed it aside. He was acutely aware of Jade watching him, taking in the sight of muscles where there hadn’t been any before. He was grateful that she didn’t seem to linger on the heavy, gnarled scar that ran across his stomach, just below his ribs. Maybe, like him, she didn’t care to remember the day he’d almost died . . . and had been reborn instead. He’d taken the pain and the smell of his own blood pumping from his slashed throat, the grotesque panic of seeing his heart on the outside of his chest cavity, connected to him by a few thin threads of vessel and fascia—and he’d locked those memories deep inside, away from the things that mattered. He hoped she could do the same, hoped she already had. And yes, he hoped she cared enough to need to lock those things away. Just because they were distilling sex to mutual pleasure didn’t mean he didn’t care deeply for her. It was just that he’d finally grown up—and out—to the point that he got what she’d been trying to explain before: that not every sexual relationship had to be aiming for more. Sometimes it was just about friendship and sex. And in this case, there were also the issues of their summoning sex magic and getting his ass into the library.
Gods willing.
Blood humming, feeling back in control, he toed off his sandals, dropped to the makeshift bed, and stretched out on his side, head propped up on one hand. Looking up at her, he patted the wide empty space beside him. “You want to at least get horizontal this time?”
He meant as opposed to their rushed coupling in the archive, when they’d stayed partially dressed and gone at it hard, starting up against the wall and finishing on one of the study tables in the inner sanctum. But they both knew that he was also saying, Last chance . . . you going to go through with this or not?
Jade stared at the bare skin of Lucius’s torso, where hard muscles glowed with burnished highlights in the reddish brown light. Shirtless and barefoot, wearing only his jeans and an I-dare-you gleam in his eyes, he looked like something out of the pages of Cosmo. His caption might have read, Ways to let him please you, or some such nonsense that implied the article was aimed at female self-actualization, but the subheading would’ve been a thin lipstick gloss over the simple fact that sex sells, the hotter, the better. Hell, yes, I’m going through with it, she thought, wetting her lips and seeing his eyes darken in the rusty light. Dipping into the pocket of her jeans, she touched the earpiece Strike had given her, partly to make sure it was toggled off, partly to reassure herself it was there, just in case. Because even if Lucius couldn’t feel the magic, it crowded thick and warm around her, seeming expectant, the calm before the storm.
Yes, there was magic in the air. She only hoped her reserves would be enough to jump-start the Prophet’s powers. But if Lucius could grow into the jock’s body he’d always wanted, then she should be able to grow into the power she craved. And if that wish bumped up against the knowledge that people didn’t really change, she ignored the disparity to focus on the moment, and the man watching her with an intensity that brought heat to her skin and tension coiling deep inside her.
Entirely conscious of his eyes on her, imagining herself silhouetted against the fiercely elegant painting projected on the big screen behind her, she caught the hem of her floaty green shirt in both hands, gave a little shimmy as she skimmed it up and over her head, then stretched sinuously to let the garment fall beside his discarded tee. Leaving her soft, lace-edged bra—the same jewel green as the shirt—in place because it made her feel wholly feminine, she toed off her sneakers and socks into a small pile. The cool air tightened her skin, though the blood pumping through her veins still sizzled with desire.
He was wholly focused on her, hot for her. The knowledge added an extra wiggle to her walk as she crossed the short distance to where he lay waiting for her. She lowered herself to the comforter, coming down on her knees with the thought of touching him, enticing him, letting the hum of magic lead the way. The moment she knelt, though, he reached out and snagged her wrist, overbalancing her and then rising up to cover her body with his own. She gasped, her senses revving to flash point as he pressed into her, the sensation of skin on skin heightened by the chafe of their remaining clothes. He caught her other wrist, bracketing her hands together in one of his, holding them captive above her head in the pillows. Nearly helpless in the face of the heat that speared to her core at the move, Jade gave herself up to his kiss.
She was peripherally aware that the bedding carried his scent, bringing some of the intimacy she’d hoped to avoid by keeping them out in the main room, with its glowing scene of ritual and magic as a pointed reminder of their goal. But she wasn’t thinking of ritual or magic as she dragged her fingernails lightly down his sides, then stroked his ass, his hips, and the long columns of the thighs that lay alongside hers, slightly bent to take some of his weight. As she did so, he shifted, moving the line of his kisses from her mouth to her jaw, her throat, all the while touching her breasts through the thin fabric of her bra, stroking her, bringing her nipples to twin peaks beneath the lace, then popping the clasp of the bra and tugging the wisp of fabric away, baring her breasts. She arched into him on a gasp when he touched her next; she wasn’t heavily endowed, but she was exquisitely sensitive there.
As though her soft cry had broken through whatever small restraint had kept him in check up to that point, he growled something in his new, rasping voice, and plunged into the next kiss, letting go of her wrists and dragging his hands down her body in a rough, inciting stroke. He used his tongue, teeth, and hands on her with ruthless intent and an edge of anger that demanded a response. Barely breaking the kiss, he stripped her out of the rest of her clothes with impatient movements, then came back to cover her naked body with his own, his jeans making an arousing contrast against her skin.
Lust slammed through Jade, revving her system from zero to holy shit in two seconds flat. Gods, she thought, latching her fingernails onto the solid muscle on either side of his spine as he rolled fully atop her and pressed her into the piled bedding, making her even more aware of the feel of him, the scent and taste of him, the fact of him. Moaning as the world went white-hot behind her eyelids, she clung, knowing that this was what she’d wanted, what she’d come back for. Not just the chance to make a difference, but to feel the burn of lust and chemical combustion she’d found with him before.