The muscles in her legs strained as she clung to him, rode him as fast as she could. He growled deep in his throat and plunged into her, his cock, his finger, taking al of her. She screamed into his mouth, her back bowing as she came. Her nerves convulsed, her sex pulsing around him as pleasure rocketed through her.
His pleasure, her pleasure. It became one, dark and hot and greedy, consuming them. His come flooded her pussy, and she flexed around his cock, milking him until they both cried out. She tried to pul her mouth from his, tried to sob, but his free hand wrapped in her hair, holding her to him, plunging his tongue between her lips. Arching helplessly, she fisted around his thrusting cock again and again, moaning against his mouth, her sex so sensitized she came each time he entered her.
She col apsed in his arms, boneless. If he hadn’t tightened his hold on her, she’d have gone under. He gathered her close, kissed her forehead, and carried her up to the shore. Sagging to his knees as they cleared the water, he groaned, the sound of a man barely conscious.
“Can you think?” she gasped.
“Nope.” He chuckled. “Do you remember your name?”
“Nuh-uh.” She sighed, shivering as a stiff breeze chil ed her. Pushing out of his embrace, she went to their discarded clothing to get something to cover herself. Twitching her fingers, she warmed the air, sent it in a swift flow to encase Merek as wel .
“Nice,” he said.
Joining her at their tangled pile of clothes, he bent and scooped up two items, reaching over to hand her one of them.
She blinked down at what he’d given her, then shot him a grin. “Two towels? You knew you were coming in before you even—”
“Yeah, so?” He rubbed the terry cloth over himself swiftly, then reached for his shorts.
Fol owing his lead, she scrubbed the water from her skin, then wrapped the towel around her wet hair.
“Why’d you tel me to get out, then?”
“Because it’s freezing in there, and it wasn’t until I hit the water that I thought to use a heating spel . Before that I was hoping I wouldn’t have to come in after you, but this is you we’re talking about.”
She grinned, shook the sand from her clothes, stuffed herself into them and her shoes, and hurried for the fire. The apprehension she’d never quite rid herself of came back with sudden force without the distraction of sex. She tossed another log on the fire, using magic to speed the burn, and soon golden light poured over their campsite.
“Where’s the big lantern?” She plopped down on a tree stump on one side of the blaze while Merek sat opposite her on a giant log.
“I took it into the tepee so I could get the towels.”
“Ah.” After that, a companionable silence stretched between them, punctuated only by the pop and crackle of the sputtering flames.
He sighed, lifted his gaze to the sky, and smiled. “They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”
Squinting upward, she didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. “The stars?”
“Yeah, you don’t see them this clearly in the city. Too much light.”
She craved al that light with a suddenness that made her shake. An ocean of streetlamps and tail ights and glowing windows. People. Thousands of people around her, and lots of lights. Electricity and al the other conveniences right down the block. Restaurants that delivered. Cel phones and e-mail and al kinds of ways to get in touch with people.
“I’l take the city any day, thanks.” She tried to keep her voice teasing, but knew he saw too much, as usual.
When she met his gaze, his expression had sobered. “Wil you tel me about it?”
Because the question was gentle rather than accusing, she found she couldn’t pretend to misunderstand him. She closed her eyes and tugged the towel away from her hair. “What do you want to know, exactly?”
“Everything.”
She flinched a little. Everything. No one real y wanted everything. She had way too much baggage to ever dump it al on any one person. A soft breeze stirred, and it chil ed her damp hair. She’d been wet that day, too. And cold. So damn cold.
“I know something bad happened, sweetheart.”
Of course. Why else would a grown woman be scared enough of the dark, she stil needed a night-light?
Hot tears of shame pricked her eyes, and she blinked them back. She’d come to terms with her fears and what she could and couldn’t deal with years ago. This trip stomped on al her shiny red buttons, but that didn’t change anything.
A sigh eased passed her lips. “I was seven years old.... No, wait. You’re going to need some family history. You know I’m half-Normal, and that my grandfather disowned my dad for marrying my mom, but you don’t know that they had to run away to escape from Grandfather Standish’s vengeance. He tried to ruin Dad’s career so he’d come begging for family handouts. Dad was a doctor, you know.”
“Like you.” His voice was low; obviously he wasn’t intending to rush her. She had a feeling he’d sit there and listen for as long as she wanted to talk. It was as sweet as it was scary.
She shook her head. “No, he was a practicing physician. A country doctor. He and Mom escaped to Montana, out in the middle of nowhere, like fifteen miles from the nearest town.” Magickals either lost themselves in the anonymity of a sprawling metropolis, where anything odd a stranger did would be written off and dismissed, or they lived in the boonies, where they didn’t interact with people often enough for them to notice anything odd. “The people in town thought he was just into homeopathic medicine with his herbal remedies, but he could make them better, and they didn’t ask questions besides that.” A faint smile curved her lips. “He used to let me help grind the herbs and mix them.”
“Potions.”
“Yeah, I inherited the knack from him.” Her smile widened, then faded just as quickly. “He passed away when I was five. He got hit by a drunk driver going around a blind curve at over a hundred miles an hour.
Magic can’t always save you, you know?”
“Yeah. My parents died in a car crash, too. They were gone before anything could save them.”
She nodded. “They said Dad died instantly. I hope so.”
He swore softly, leaning toward her, but not leaving his seat, as though he understood she’d never get through this story without breaking down if he held her in his arms and comforted her. “I’m sorry, Chloe.”
“I . . . felt it when he passed away. That was the first time my precognition presented itself.” Her voice went almost clinical, a doctor diagnosing. She swal owed, feeling like anything but a level-headed scientist.
“My little voices warning of bad things coming.”
“Sweetheart . . .”
She shook her head, staring into the fire as she started the worst of it. Her hands bal ed into knots to hide the way they started to tremble. “They didn’t warn me the day my mom died. Or, if they did, I don’t remember it. Maybe I didn’t pay attention. I didn’t know anything about magic, then. Not real y. By the time I was seven, my dad was already sort of . . . fuzzy . . . in my head. The stories Mom told about him sounded like fairy tales from the books she read to me at night.” She held her hands out toward the flames, wishing the warmth could seep inside her, but she felt the ice freezing her very soul. “I think maybe Mom thought I was Normal like her because I hadn’t done anything like my dad could do.”