She lifted her chin. “Artists do not change their vision to suit picky patrons. I sensed a warm, sweetspirit that night, and that’s what I painted. You don’t like it, hang it back in the gallery. I could probably get double what you paid for that painting the way business was today.”
Matt pulled her more tightly against his chest. “I am not selling Moon Watchers.” He kissed her nose again. “And I am not sweet.”
She looked around their perfectly furnished living room, then brought her gaze back to his and lifted her brow. “I would say busting your butt to get us moved in today without using your magic makes you sweet.”
“It wasn’t sweetness motivating me, it was lust,” he said, lifting her shoulders to kiss her full on the mouth this time. “I worked my tail off to get us moved in here, so I can finally make you scream again without worrying about your father charging in on us with his sword.”
His wide-eyed little wife giggled and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Papa’s been living in this time over thirty-seven years, and he still sleeps with his sword by his bed.” She kissed the pulse on Matt’s neck, then grinned up at him. “I’ve noticed you’re in the habit of placing your fountain pen on the beside table. Maybe I should start sleeping with my pencil.”
Matt involuntarily shuddered. “Lord, lass, don’t do that. You’ll burn down our home and we’ll have to move back in with your parents.”
She ran her fingers through his loose hair, making him shudder again. “It was rather exciting trying to make love without making any noise,” she whispered. “Maybe even decadent. I liked doing it in the shower with the water running.”
Matt smiled sadly. “Too bad you’re so tired. I planned to try out the hot tub on the front porch tonight,” he said with a sigh as he leaned his head against the back of the couch.
But he quickly snapped forward with a surprised grunt when his suddenly wide-awake wife squealed in delight and scrambled off his lap. “We have a hot tub?” she cried. “Why didn’t I see it when I came home?”
Home. Matt decided he liked the sound of that, especially when Winter said it. “Because you came in through the back door,” he explained, leaning against the couch again and lifting one brow. “Get a second wind, did you?”
But he was talking to her back, as Winter ran out the front door. Matt got up with a rather tired sigh of his own. Moving an entire household in one day hadn’t been easy, especially considering that he’d only resorted to using his magic toward the end, when it had looked like he wouldn’t get done by the time Winter got home. He followed his wife onto the porch that overlooked the lake, and found her already stripped down to her bra and pants.
“Quick, get undressed,” she said as she kicked off her shoes, unfastened her pants, shoved them down her legs, and stepped out of them. She stopped in the process of unclipping her bra. “The tub is all warmed up, isn’t it?”
“It’s warm,” Matt said, unbuttoning his own shirt. “Wind up your braid so it won’t get wet.
The…ah, hot tub won’t hurt the baby, will it?”
“No,” she said, tossing her bra away and sliding her thumbs under the elastic of her panties. “As long as it’s not too hot, and I don’t stay in too long.”
Matt had a little more trouble unfastening his own suddenly tight pants, and had to sit down to unlace his boots—and hopefully get control of his lust before neither of them reached the tub. But he only ended up making knots in his laces instead of undoing them, when he spotted his naked wife with her arms raised to twine her hair on top of her head, bathed in the soft light coming through the huge front windows.
She was so stunningly beautiful, so vivaciously alive and filled with such innocent promise, that sometimes Matt found himself wondering if this was nothing more than a dream.
Or maybe it was hell. Maybe Providence was punishing his sins by giving him just a taste of Winter—offering him this one small glimpse of hope—before it all disappeared just as suddenly as the entrance to his cave had. Aye, maybe the energy he felt coming from inside the cliff was really an avenging angel, waiting for just the right time to deliver his deathblow.
If that was the case, then so be it. Matt had placed his future in Winter’s delicate hands, and he had four weeks left before he met his fate face on. He would damned well meet it with the courage of a warrior.
But in the meantime, he had every intention of basking in the warmth of Winter’s hopefulness, regretting none of his actions that had ultimately brought him to her. She would at least save his brother, Matt knew, and protect their child at all costs—even if it meant destroying him—because her strength of spirit would not allow her to do anything less.
As long as there was life there was hope, she’d told him in the cave the day after he’d claimed her, and at this single moment in time Matt felt more alive than he had in centuries.
“Oh, this is heavenly,” Winter breathed, sliding into the warm swirling water up to her neck.
“Run inside and turn out the lights so we can see the lake and the stars.”
Matt gave up and tore his laces free, finished stripping off his clothes, reached inside and hit the light switch beside the door, and quickly climbed in the tub.
“I’m so glad I was smart enough to marry a sweet man who’s enamored with modern technology,” she said, floating toward him until she was just barely straddling his thighs. Matt’s eyes had adjusted to the starlight enough that he could make out her smile when she asked, “How far are we from Tom’s cabin?”
“Almost a mile,” he told her, only to suck air through his teeth when her floating breasts bumped his chest.
“And will sound carry almost a mile?”
“It—It depends on the sound,” he rasped when she slid her hips forward along his thighs.
“Oh, say a scream, for instance,” she whispered, one of her hands dancing over his shoulders and into his hair. “Would a scream carry a mile down the shoreline?”
His shout of surprise sure as hell did, when his anything but compassionate little wife suddenly reached down and wrapped her other hand around his shaft.
She actually laughed. “I’ve been waiting five weeks to make you shout,” she said, guiding him inside her with painstaking slowness. “I can’t tell you how many times I was tempted to do this at Gù Brath,” she whispered as she nipped his neck just below his ear. “I think I’ll see if I can’t make bothof us scream tonight, husband.”
Oh, yes, Matt thought when he felt a sudden lurch very near where his heart used to be, capturing his sweet vixen fairy and kissing her deeply. As long as there was life, there truly must be hope.
Chapter Twenty-four
W inter stood insentient,unable to do more than stare in disbelief at her pine tree. Its bark was shriveled like mummified skin, its remaining branches drooping bonelessly, its needles turned brown and scattered over the pristine blanket of last night’s snowfall. Sometime between two days ago and this morning, somebody had dug a large, deep hole at the base of the pine, exposing its roots to the frigid air and ultimately delivering a fatal blow.
Winter had made a point of visiting her pine tree every few days since Gesader had brought her to it nine weeks ago, so she could sit and hug it and share enough of her energy to keep it alive. But this morning, eager to greet the dawn of the winter solstice in the company of her magical white pine, she had arrived at sunrise to find only death and destruction. And since first hearing Matt’s heartbreaking story of despair, Winter finally understood the chilling definition of hopelessness.
She’d lost. Without her tree of life she had no way to save mankind or help Kenzie. On the dawn of her twenty-fifth birthday, her gift to the world was its end, her having failed Providence miserably and completely. If she only could have mastered the magic she would have been able to help the men find and defeat the strange and destructive energy before it had rendered this mortal blow.