"You've, ah, really got a knack for that," she managed when she could breathe again.
"I practice as often as possible." To prove it, he kissed her again. Slower this time. Deeper. Until he felt her quiver. "I just wanted you to add that to your equation."
"I was an art major. Math isn't my strong suit. Come back here a minute." She grabbed his shirt, yanked him to her, and let herself go.
Everything inside her sparked. Blood and bone and brain.
If this was what it meant to be herded, she thought dimly, she could be flexible about her direction.
When his hands clenched in her hair, she felt a stir of power and anxiety that was as potent as a drug.
"We really can't do this." But she was tugging his shirt out of his waistband, desperate to get her hands on flesh.
"I know. Can't." He fumbled with the buckle of her seat belt. "We'll stop in a minute."
"Okay, but first…" She brought his hand to her breast, then moaned as her heart seemed to tip into his palm.
He shifted her, cursed when he rapped his elbow on the steering wheel. And Moe, delighted with the prospect of a wrestling match, squeezed his head between the seats and slathered both of them with sloppy kisses.
"Oh, God!" Torn between laughter and shock, Malory scrubbed at her mouth. "I really, really hope that was your tongue."
"Ditto." Struggling to get his breath back, Flynn stared down at her. Her hair was sexily tousled, her face flushed, her mouth just a little swollen from the assault of his.
With the flat of his hand, he shoved Moe's face away and snapped out a curt order to sit. The dog flopped back on his seat and whined as if he'd been beaten with a club.
"I wasn't planning on moving this fast."
Malory shook her head. "I wasn't planning on moving at all. And I've always got a plan."
"Been a while since I tried this in a car parked on the side of the road."
"Me, too." She slid her gaze toward the pathetic sounds coming from the backseat. "Under the circumstances…"
"Yeah. Better not. I want to make love with you." He drew her up. "To touch you. To feel you move under my hands. I want that, Malory."
"I need to think. Everything about this is complicated, so I have to think about it." She certainly had to think about the fact that she'd nearly torn the man's clothes off in the front seat of a car, on the side of a public road, in broad daylight.
"My life's a mess, Flynn." The thought depressed her enough to have her pulse calming again. "Whatever the equation, I've screwed things up, and I have to get back on track. I don't do well with messy situations. So, let's slow this down a little."
He hooked a finger in the V of her blouse. "How much is a little?"
"I don't know yet. Oh, I can't stand it." She scooted around, leaned over the seat. "Don't cry, you big baby." She ruffled the fur between Moe's ears. "Nobody's mad at you."
"Speak for yourself," Flynn grumbled.
Chapter Seven
I feel the sun, warm and somehow fluid like a quiet waterfall gliding from a golden river. It pours over me in a kind of baptism. I smell roses, and lilies, and some spicier flower that cuts the sweetness. I hear water, a playful trickle and plop as it rises up, then falls back into itself.
All these things slide over me, or I slide into them, but I see nothing but a dense white. Like a curtain I can't part.
Why am I not afraid?
Laughter floats toward me. Bright and easy and female. There's a youthful cheer in it that makes me smile, that brings a tickle of laughter to my own throat. I want to find the source of that laughter and join in.
Voices now, that quick bird-chatter that is again youth and female.
The sounds come and go, ebb and flow. Am I drifting toward it or away?
Slowly, slowly, the curtain thins. Only a mist now, soft as silken rain with sunlight sparkling through it. And through it, I see color. Such bold, rich color it sears through that thinning mist and stuns my eyes.
Tiles are gleaming silver and explode with sunlight in blinding flashes where the thick green leaves and hot-pink blossoms of trees don't shade or shelter. Flowers swim in pools or dance in swirling beds.
There are three women, girls, really, gathered around the fountain that plays its happy tune. It's their laughter I hear. One has a small harp in her lap, and the other a quill. But they're laughing at the wriggling puppy the third holds in her arms.
They're so lovely. There is about them a touching innocence that's so perfectly suited to the garden where they spend this bright afternoon. Then I see the sword sheathed at one's hip.
Innocent perhaps, but strong. There is power here; I can feel the tingle of it now sparking on the air.
And still I'm not afraid.
They call the puppy Diarmait, and set it down so it can romp around the fountain. Its excited yaps ring like bells. I see one girl slide her arm around the waist of another, and the third rest her head on the second's shoulder. There, they become a unit. A kind of triad. A whole of three parts that chatter about their new puppy, and laugh as he rolls gleefully in the flowers.
I hear them say names I know, somehow know, and look as they look. In the distance, in the shade of a tree that drips down with graceful branches heavy with jeweled fruit, are a couple caught in a passionate embrace.
He's tall and dark, and there's a strength to him I can sense might be terrible if roused. She's beautiful, and very slender. But there is about her, too, a sense of more.
They're desperately in love. I can feel that need, that heat inside me, throbbing like a wound.
Is love so painful?
The girls sigh over it. And they wish. Someday, they hope. Someday they will love like that— desire and romance, fear and joy all tied into one consuming entity. They will know the taste of a lover's lips, the thrill of a lover's touch.
Someday.
We are, all of us, caught in that urgent embrace, absorbed with our envy and our dreams. The sky darkens. The colors dim. I feel the wind now. Cold, cold as it spins around and around. The sudden roar of it screams in my ears. Blossoms tear from branches, petals fly like bright bullets.
Now I'm afraid. Now I'm terrified even before I see the sly black shape of the snake slither over those silver tiles, before I see the shadow slink out of the trees and lift high the glass box it holds in its black arms.
Words boom out. Though I press my hands to my ears to block them, I hear them inside my head.
Mark this time and mark this hour when I wield my awful power. Mortal souls of daughters three forever will belong to me. Their bodies lie in eternal sleep, their souls imprisoned in this glass. The spell will hold sure and deep unless these things come to pass. Three keys to find, to fit, only by mortal hands to turn. Three thousand years in which to learn. An instant more and souls will burn.
This test, this quest, to prove a mortal's worthiness. With these words I wind them, and with my art I bind them. These locks I seal and forge these keys, and here hurl them to the hand of destiny.
The wind dies, and the air goes still. There on those sun-washed tiles, the three girls lie, their eyes closed as if in sleep, their hands clasped. Three parts of one whole.
Beside them is a glass box, its clear panels leaded at the seams, its trio of locks glinting gold. Warm blue lights dance frantically inside it, seem to beat against the glass walls like trapped wings.
Three keys lie scattered around it. And seeing them, I weep. Malory was still shaky when she opened the door to Zoe.
"I got here as soon as I could. I had to get Simon off to school. You sounded so upset on the phone. What—"
"Dana's not here yet. I'd rather just go through this once. I made coffee."
"Great." Zoe put a hand on Malory's shoulder and simply lowered her into a chair. "I'll get it. You look like you still need to catch your breath. Kitchen that way?"