“Not exactly what you were expecting when you volunteered for sex-magic duty, was it?” he asked, his eyes going hooded in intimate challenge.
Heat touched the air between them, thickening her breath in her lungs.
“I . . .” She trailed off. What was wrong with her? Where had her words gone? She was the one with the answers, the cool-blooded harvester who didn’t get rattled. But right now her body was saying one thing, her spinning brain another, and her verbal skills had gotten lost in the cross fire.
His not-quite-familiar mouth curved in a humorless smile. “That’s about what I figured. I wish they had warned you.”
That, at least, she could respond to. “They tried. I wasn’t listening. But . . . you could’ve called me, or e-mailed.” She’d posted her contact info in the mansion’s kitchen, just in case. “I hate thinking of you going through all this alone.”
“I haven’t been in the mood for company.”
It was easier not to look at him as she said, “What are you in the mood for?”
“That, dear Jade, is entirely up to you.”
The way he said her name reminded her of the man who had been her friend. But the unease that coiled through her warned that he wasn’t the man she’d known, wasn’t the man she’d volunteered to be with. He was suddenly so much more. “I . . . don’t know what to say.”
“That’s a first.” There was a little sting in his words, though. How could there be?
She wouldn’t have, couldn’t have known to brace herself for this. Anna had said he’d gained weight, that he’d been working out, but this bulk hadn’t come from protein shakes and free weights. “Magic.”
The word escaped her on a sigh.
Lucius spread hands that seemed wider than they had been before, their tapering fingers stronger.
“That’s the current theory, that either I retained something of the makol, or I’ve gotten something of the Prophet. Either way, I’m a new man.”
Not only that, she realized, he’d become the man his family had expected him to be, the one he’d always wanted to be. Satisfaction gleamed in his eyes as he took in her response, the heat of attraction she didn’t bother trying to mask. But also the nerves. “I don’t . . .” She trailed off, blew out a breath.
“I’m rattled. When I imagined how this was going to go, we were always in your suite in the main house, and you were, well, you.” She’d known what to expect, or so she’d thought.
He covered the last half step separating them, so the tips of her outstretched fingers brushed the taut fabric of his tee. The foxfire that still glowed in her hand lit the shirt’s logo silver-blue. “Tell me what else you imagined,” he ordered, the words thrumming with sensual meaning.
Feeling the small magic begin to drain her shallow power reserves, she let the foxfire go out, plunging them back into a darkness that shouldn’t have been as much of a relief as it was. But she didn’t drop her hand as the light faded. Instead, she flattened her palm against his torso, feeling the faint hollow beneath his sternum, along with firm flesh and a thick layer of muscle that hadn’t been there before. Heat traveled up her arm and across her body; her nipples tightened and her core was washed with a sudden tingling anticipation, like the moment before an orgasm. He was warm and solid, and the strong, steady beat of his heart pulsed beneath her fingertips. She was acutely aware of the press of her clothing against her skin, and the warmth of him, the scent of him, more potent than before, more masculine. “What I pictured was nothing like this,” she whispered, as much to herself as to him.
“I imagined how it would be too, each day the makol held me trapped in the in-between. I imagined what I would say to you if I ever made it back, what I would do to you, with you.”
The humid air went suddenly thin in Jade’s lungs, even though she had imagined the same things, only to have the reality fall far short, as it always did. “It’s only natural to lock onto some sort of goal,” she said, falling back into quasi-therapist mode when all her other options were too complicated, too revealing. “You needed to feel like you had something to come back to, something more personal than the war and the magi.”
“Maybe.” Something hard and hot flashed in his eyes. “And you don’t need to worry about me getting clingy this time. I know this isn’t about a relationship, or love, or anything beyond expediency.”
“It’s not . . .” she began, but then trailed off as he leaned in and her brain shut down: click, gone.
One heartbeat she was thinking, and then the next, cognition disappeared and she became a creature of pure sensation. She felt the steady thud of his heartbeat beneath her scarred palm, along with the warm strength of his chest and the play of strong muscle, and she suddenly wanted, with a pure intensity of being that she didn’t remember ever experiencing before. She wanted his body against hers, wanted them both naked and straining together, finding the power of flesh and fire. And in that moment, what had started as duty morphed to pure desire.
His words feathered across her lips as he said, “Expediency or not, there’s no reason we can’t enjoy ourselves. Which brings me back to those fantasies I was talking about. They all started something like this.”
He closed the last few inches separating them. And kissed her.
Jade was dimly aware that a small sound escaped her, part surprise, part invitation. Whereas the old Lucius might have paused a moment, as if questioning whether it was really what she wanted, this new version of him bypassed the niceties and went in deep, long and wet, kicking the heat inside her even higher and sparking an inner moment of holy shit as she was assaulted by a barrage of sensations, both familiar and unfamiliar.
A stranger’s muscular arms banded around her, pressing her to a stranger’s wide, hard chest. But although the angles and pressures were different, and the smell and very energy of him were more potently masculine than before, she recognized the man she’d known in the earnestness of his kiss, his sense of focus. For a fleeting second, she thought this was what it must be like to kiss a first lover years later, after he’d matured. It was as if the old Lucius had been her high school sweetheart, not yet grown into his body, whereas the man who slid his hand up to her nape, gathered a handful of her hair, and used it to change the angle of their kiss, bringing it deeper and wetter—that man was the fully grown version of him, the fulfillment of the young man’s promise. Except that the Lucius she had known had been a man already, full-grown and genius-smart. Which meant . . . what? Who was holding her now?
That thought brought a kick of nervous heat. Or maybe—probably—the heat came from the way his lips slanted across hers, the way his tongue touched hers, stroking, bringing sensations that were familiar, yet not. His bulk and strength both excited and intimidated her as he caught her up against his body, their clothing creating crazy-hot friction as he lifted her to her toes, letting her feel every muscled inch of him. She felt the hard ridge of his erection straining behind the fly of his jeans, and a spurt of hot, heady desire pounded through her at the thought of straddling that place, riding it, taking him within her. This was about the two of them now, about the pleasure they could give each other without expectations, hurt feelings, or recriminations. Heat flared in her bloodstream; she poured herself into the kiss as energy coursed through her—maybe magic, maybe pure lust; she wasn’t sure she knew the difference anymore, wasn’t sure she cared.