Then he released the tension on a sigh, and she felt his body flow back into its normal lines. He stroked her hair, threading his fingers through the loose, tangled strands. He said roughly, “You all right?”
She gave him a jerky nod. It was almost a complete lie. Need still pulsed low in her pelvis, a sharp, empty pain that was shocking in its intensity. She didn’t recognize herself in the untamed creature that had launched at Rune.
He said, “I’ll be damned if I apologize for any of that.”
She stirred and managed to find her voice. “What would you apologize for?”
“Throwing my own shit fit. Yelling at Rhoswen.”
“I’ll make a pact with you,” she whispered. “If you don’t apologize, I won’t either.”
“It’s a deal.” He kissed her temple. Then, after a pause, he said, “She interrupted us deliberately, you know.”
“I know.” Carling sighed. Rhoswen hadn’t been caught by surprise. She would have heard them before she ever reached the cottage door. “She was completely inappropriate.”
Rhoswen had achieved her objective, however; she had destroyed the raw out-of-control moment Carling and Rune had been engaged in.
Rune settled his weight back on his heels as he released her. Full night had descended, and the only illumination in the cottage came from the moon that had risen. Even though it had begun to wane, it held tremendous Power, spilling through the windows and limning the edges of their bodies with a delicate lattice of silver. For a long moment she sat still and let him look at her, the fluted wings of her collarbones, the full ripe globes of her bare breasts with their plump jutting nipples and the shadowed indentation of her narrow rib cage underneath.
He crouched over her like the giant cat that he was, looking as if he were about to pounce, unblinking intensity in his moon-silvered gaze, his wide shoulders bowed as he leaned on one fist he had planted on the floor beside her hip. An aftershock of urgency rolled out of him and into her, but their earlier frenzy had splintered with such a crash, it left her feeling slightly sick.
She looked down to pull her ruined caftan up her torso, and he helped her to find edges of the material to knot together to cover her temporarily, his long-fingered hands so gentle that the alien, traitorous tears filled her eyes again.
For so long she had treated her own body like a weapon, and yet he treated it like it was a temple. It made her feel ludicrously fragile, as though she might shatter into pieces without his high regard, and she wrapped her arms around herself.
“We need to get to the city,” he said quietly. “And get a move on all the things we talked about.”
Wariness touched her. Reluctant to start the whole ridiculous argument again, she just nodded and kept her tone noncommittal. “Yes.”
He watched her closely. “I was jealous.”
She froze, and her eyes widened. “You were—what?”
He leaned over to whisper in her ear, his warm breath caressing her cheek. “You heard me. I said I was jealous. I am not apologizing. I am explaining.”
Then as she turned her head to stare at him, he did pounce. His hands snaked up to grip her by the head as he brought his mouth down to hers. He hovered there, deliberately brushing his taut lips against hers as he breathed, “I was jealous of the Demonkind, your Djinn, whom you’ve known for so god-damn long and bargained with every appearance of goddamn amicability, who needed you and you were there for him in such a meaningful, Powerful way he bargained away three goddamn favors, and you don’t have to say anything because I already know how stupid that sounds. So I acted like an ass. A stupid, crazy, illogical, senseless, rampantly jealous ass.”
She gripped his wrists and started to shake again. “Rune.”
“And I was jealous,” said the gryphon, speaking from the back of his throat as he made his words into a burning caress, “because I want you so bad, it’s messing with my thinking. It’s a hook in my gut I can’t pull out. I’ve wanted you ever since that evening on the Adriyel River. I dream about taking you. And in my dream, you take me too. Just like what nearly happened here on the floor.”
Her unsteadiness increased, until her mouth trembled under his. His wrists felt iron-hard and rock-steady under her shaking fingers. “That’s enough now, stop. We—we need to go.”
“All right,” he murmured easily. “I just wanted us to be clear about what almost happened here. This was not a fluke. I am going to come after you again.”
She sucked in air. She whispered, “This—thing between us—”
“This isn’t a ‘thing.’ ” He pressed a quick kiss onto her mouth. “It’s attraction.”
She shook all over. “It’s totally inappropriate.”
“I know.”
“It can’t last. It’s got nowhere to go.”
“I get that.” He bit her lower lip and held her with such careful tension she wanted to claw the last of his clothes off of him. “But think about how good it will be until it ends. Because it will happen, Carling.”
Will happen, he said. Not could happen. Because he was going to come after her again, sometime, somewhere, and the thought of him on the prowl made her groan. Then his hands opened and he let her go. Just like that.
Just like that? Her hands clung to his wrists as his hands fell from her head; she found herself leaning forward, reaching for his mouth with hers as he pulled away, her gaze falling along the clean lines of his face that was shadowed gray and black, and limned with the faintest touch of shining silver, as if he were gilded with the moon’s eldritch blessings that were just barely visible to the naked eye.
“Rune,” she murmured again, and the previous shock in her voice turned throaty.
“Darling Carling,” he said very low. He paused and shuddered, and something like pain caused his face to spasm. “Just fucking say it.”
Desire is vulnerability. But they were all alone, just them and the moonlight, and the moon never told the secrets of what she saw. So Carling took hold of every scrap of her courage and said it.
“I want you too.”
The moon opened wide its invisible sails and soared through the starred sky over the island’s redwood forest. It was already night again. Carling struggled against a sense of disorientation. When she had lost the ability to sleep, time had increased in velocity. Meditation helped but only to a certain extent. There were no longer any breaks in her experience, just the relentless cascade of events, until she felt like she was being shoved into the future by a gigantic unseen force, faster and faster until she approached the speed of light.
She walked into the trees. Far overhead the moonlight filtering through branches was a study in ivory and black. At ground level the forest was so shadowed, only her sharp Vampyric vision allowed her to pick her way along the path. She paused to listen to the tiny night sounds. Once there would have been total silence when she walked through this wood, but the creatures that lived here had long since grown accustomed to her presence.
Rune agreed to wait for her on the beach. He wanted to come with her, but she needed to be alone to do this one last thing before she left the island. He said he would give her a half hour. If she had not returned by then, he was going to assume she had gone into a fade and come looking for her. Carling didn’t argue with him. There was nothing here that would hurt her, but even so she didn’t like the idea of sitting helpless and unaware, alone in the forest.
She tucked her research journals into a worn leather bag, along with the papyrus sketches and a few other odds and ends from the cottage, and she gave it to Rune to take with him. When he had left, she dug through a cupboard for another clean, intact caftan, which she donned after throwing the ruined one away. So he hated her caftans, did he? She snorted. How many had she ruined in the last couple of days? There was a reason she wore them so much. They were easy on, easy off. She tended to be very hard on clothing, especially when she was engaged in matters of magic.