The paint colors ranged from pale mauve through rusty red to charcoal black. The earthy hues reflected on Jade’s face as she frowned at the text, trying to parse out the glyphs.
Lucius shook his head. “Don’t bother; the writing doesn’t make any sense. The current theory is that the artist was illiterate, and just copied a bunch of cool-looking glyphs off nearby inscriptions or whatever else he had on hand. It’s just gibberish.” He didn’t say why he’d been studying the painting, why it was important to him.
Under other circumstances, with another woman, talking translation would’ve spoiled the mood.
With Jade, though, it served only to heighten the sense of intimacy provided by the small, quiet cottage and the rust red light. They shared a love of language, and although he couldn’t honestly say he was more attracted to her brains than her body, the two together had made a hell of an impression when he’d first met her. Or rather, once he’d gotten past her habitual reserve, which came across as shyness, but he’d learned was her way of hiding in plain sight. He’d long ago realized that they each suffered from their own cultural conditioning, though hers had come from a too-demanding winikin and a set of writs rather than family dysfunction.
“There’s something . . .” She trailed off, still frowning at the glyphs, but then she shook her head and turned back to him, her expression going from intrigue to warmth with a hint of nerves. “Never mind. That’s not what we’re here for.”
“True enough,” Lucius agreed, trying to keep it casual, because she’d made it clear that was what she wanted. But at the same time this wasn’t just about sex for either of them. There was a far larger goal, one that hung over them, weighing on him as it had for nearly half a year now, though now edged with a sharp sense of anticipation. Determination. He was getting his ass into the library, whatever it took. And if that meant that the Nightkeepers’ needs and his own desire to be part of things wound up getting mixed together with the desire he felt for Jade—had felt for her from the first day they’d worked together—then that was part of the Nightkeepers’ culture, wasn’t it? Sex was magic, magic was power, and power could save the world.
Reaching out to Jade, he recaptured her hand. Satisfaction kicked through him as his fingers enfolded hers, locking on with easy strength. Rather than growing awkward as his body had increased in size and mass, he’d lost the sprawling clumsiness that had plagued him his entire life. It was as though his brain and synapses had been designed all along for this larger body, and hadn’t known how to tone it down for the scrawny, too-tall beanpole he’d been. Tightening his fingers on hers, he tipped his head toward the other side of the TV room, where a short hallway branched off. “The bedroom’s this way.”
But she tugged him back toward her, lips curving when their bodies bumped. “Let’s stay right here.”
She nodded to the screen. “I want it to be like it was before, only better.”
In a flash, he remembered being with her in the inner, most secure room of the three- room archive buried deep within the mansion. He remembered kissing her almost desperately, thrusting into her against the backdrop of the ancient writs, which were displayed in flat cases on three sides of the tiny room, with their elaborate glyphwork and painted illuminations highlighted by museum- quality lighting. Back then, he’d been fighting time, fighting the lure of the makol and the song of dark magic in the air. Now he was fighting to gain the power that was his by right of spell and sacrifice. In that, he realized, the ancient backdrop was a fitting one. “Right here,” he agreed, drawing her into him.
She looped her arms around his neck, using the leverage to draw herself up his body, onto her tiptoes. “Right now,” she whispered against his mouth.
He kissed her, feeling the play of lips and tongues in a way he never had before, as though his neurons had changed along with the rest of him, becoming more sensitive, more ready to fire the signals of sex. Heat arced across the point of contact with an almost physical force, jolting through him, lighting him up. He’d been hard since before they’d even kissed out by the training hall, but now he filled to bursting, straining uncomfortably in his jeans. He slid his arms around her, caught her up against his body, and was acutely aware that she might be tall, but she was delicate and fine boned, and so much smaller than he’d become. Fierce protectiveness welled up inside him, an unexpected surge of emotion he squelched before it could begin, reminding himself of the rules she’d set before, the ones he needed now.
Jade broke the kiss, breathing lightly, her body seeming to vibrate against his. “Do you feel that?
Do you feel the magic?”
“Maybe.” He wasn’t sure he’d recognize Nightkeeper power if it ran him over doing eighty-five in a forty zone. He’d heard the thoughts of the demon that had possessed him, the one he’d named Cizin.
Flatulent one. The makol’s foul, angry temper had echoed inside him, becoming his own. Marking him. He knew he would instantly recognize the awful pressure of possession if the Banol Kax ever sought him again. But he wasn’t sure he’d ever felt true magic, not the way the Nightkeepers meant it.
Even when he had lain on the floor of Iago’s giant volcanic cave, bleeding out onto the stone while the Nightkeepers crowded around him and enacted the Prophet’s spell, he couldn’t say he’d felt the magic.
He’d felt inner chaos and the soul-deep agony of Cizin being ripped out of him, but he couldn’t have pointed to any part of the spell casting and said, That’s magic. He was only human, after all.
“There’s magic here,” Jade whispered against his lips. “Trust me.”
In answer, he kissed her again. He didn’t want to think about trust or power, not really; he wanted to think about the woman in his arms, who would be his first lover in this new body. He wanted to touch her, shape her with hands that spread wider than they had before, registering the soft curves with fingers that seemed to have gotten exponentially more sensitive as the other parts of him had grown and changed. He kissed her, caressed her, learning her body and letting her get used to his, even as he was getting used to the newly acute bite of heat, the powerful thunder of the blood surging through his veins, impelled by the beat of a heart he instinctively knew was stronger than before.
Murmuring appreciation, Jade slipped her delicately capable hands beneath his tee and ran them up his back, skin-on-skin with an inciting scrape of fingernail. He groaned as an answering avalanche of lust swept into his system, bringing an unexpected and unwanted slash of raw aggression. In the next instant, nothing existed but his need to take her, to wrap her around him, to put her up against the nearest wall and pound into her, lose himself in her. Mine, the heat said, branding the possessive howl across his consciousness.