The narrow hallway at the landing had doors off to each side, but Adam bet the one with the handwritten DO NOT DISTURB!!! sign was Talia’s. The three exclamation marks screamed Zoe.
He let himself quietly inside, shutting the door behind him, turned, and stopped in dumb shock.
The scene from the painting Sleeping Beauty shimmered in reality before his eyes. The artist had to have been a visionary like Abigail, but with the talent and technique to capture the sight on canvas.
Talia reclined on an old-fashioned divan. She wore a black satin robe, deeply parted to the thigh, a long, slender leg revealed to the hip. Her white-gold hair tumbled over the red velvet cushion on which she rested, fat curls gleaming. Her face was peaceful, lips parted just slightly.
Talia. Sleeping Beauty.
To match the painting perfectly, that robe needed to be parted, her body revealed entirely. Her eyes needed to be open, though still slumberous. And she needed to be looking at him with desire.
The thing to do, of course, would be to kiss her. To wake her like a princess in a fairy tale. To set the fantasy in motion.
But Adam couldn’t. There was no time left for fantasies and dreams. All the happily-ever-afters of the world were bankrupt.
He crossed soundlessly to a side table, took the flash drive out of his pocket, and placed it on top of a pad of paper. He paused over the note, but had no idea what to say. There were no words for how he felt. All of the ones that came to mind seemed too short, or too simple, or too overused to capture the knot in his chest.
For Talia~ It’s everything I have. Adam
The note was crap, but it’d have to do.
He straightened, brought his gaze back one more time to look at her, and took a deep breath to inhale the moment. To hold it within him where he was going.
Her eyes fluttered and opened, sleepy and sensual.
Adam froze, rooted to his spot.
He caught the moment consciousness flickered into her gaze. Awareness of her surroundings and awareness of him. And with it, damned desire. Desire was the last thing he needed, but the only thing he wanted.
Heat roared into his exhausted body; the room swayed slightly in his vision.
She slipped a finger into the knot at her waist and released the satin tie. The robe parted and completed the image from the painting.
EIGHTEEN
THE blur of sleep cleared from Talia’s eyes, but the dream remained.
Adam. Back.
Grizzled with stubble, stinking with exhaustion, gaze hooded, wary, and troubled—the weight of the war bearing down on him as he gazed at her.
But back.
Now: how to keep him here?
Talia brought a hand to her robe and pulled the tie apart. Gravity slid one side of the robe off her body; the other she brushed aside herself. Her heartbeat went from sluggish to surging, her nerves from idle to quivering and edgy. The exposure of her skin to the cool air of the room sent a wave of goose bumps racing up her legs, over her stomach, to peak at her breasts.
Adam groaned as he gazed at her, the sound wrenching from his gut, soul deep.
Talia’s throat ached with a soul-sound of her own, but she held it back. What she felt would probably come out as babbling nonsense anyway—worry running over stones of reproach, a deluge of fear seeking the solid banks of his strong arms, liquid desire flowing too fast toward a fall she’d never survive alone.
But how could she say any of that when she needed to remain silent to heal? She’d heal, then scream as if his life depended on it. No, she’d scream because his life depended on it.
Frustration clogged her heart as Adam stared at her—he looked half dead already. He was her center of gravity, her solid ground, the bedrock of this world, yet he swayed on his feet.
The man needed sleep, not sex. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. Talia sat up, uncertain.
What little willpower Adam had disintegrated with the upward shift of Talia’s bare body. Her breasts rounded, her legs parted slightly—a tantalizing triangle of darkness forming as her feet came to rest on the floor, her robe fanning out behind her, her hair a mess of curls over her shoulders. His sleeping beauty, now wide-awake.
His mouth went dry as his body betrayed his better judgment, hunger superseding willpower. There’s no getting out of here unseen now, his blood rumbled, escaping from jagged cliffs of his higher reason in a chaotic, mindless avalanche of craving.
He should leave. Use any pretense to buy a few hours. Leaving was the smart thing to do. The right thing to do. Talia didn’t need to be any more tangled up than he’d already made her. And neither did he.
But he fell to his knees with the downward force of his exhaustion and want, bracing his hands on each side of her. He gripped the cushioned bench with all his strength, fighting himself and trapping her at the same time. Chest heaving with effort, he dropped his head on her lap, her skin soft and cool against his hot cheek.
The knots in his neck released as another part of him tightened unbearably. Touching Talia was yet another mistake. His mistakes just kept piling up around him, stone on stone. So many things he should’ve done differently, should have figured out long ago. Resting his head on Talia’s lap had to be among the most boneheaded, because how could he be so close and not taste her?
He slid his hands along her sleek outer thighs until he came to the tight curve of her ass. He took hold, filling his palms with her, and pulled her to the edge of the seat. Her hands dropped to his head, fi ngers lacing his hair, sending a lightning bolt of desire through his system, washing him in wild fire.
He buried his face briefly in the hollow of her hips, just above the waves of her curls—she’d showered and smelled sweet, like spring rain. She’d be damp there, too.
“Just no fighting this,” he said against her skin, mouth searing a trail up her belly to her breast.
“Then don’t,” she whispered back, aching to feel his body on her, skin to skin.
Talia gripped the shoulders of his T-shirt and pulled it off him, his hands and arms lifting momentarily from his business of simultaneously removing his pants.
In one heat-slick movement, he was inside her.
Sudden shadow flooded out of Talia’s pleasure, seething between them like dark steam born of water and fire. For once she didn’t fight her instinctive response. She let the dark fill the room as Adam filled her, body and soul.
A wave of his lust burned her senses, a need so thick and insistent that her body arched in response. She wrapped her legs around him and drew him closer to her, to give him everything she was to slake his thirst.
He’d needed her like this before. That first kiss they’d shared at Segue had been ruled by it, and she’d run away. Now, she didn’t close herself off or pull away. He drove into her to obliterate himself, his cares, his worries, and she answered with her own need. Adam, only Adam could she trust to see her like this, her faery and human halves utterly undone. At last.
Adam pressed Talia back onto the cushions, covered her body with his, and submerged himself in her darkness with a kiss. His teeth grazed her bottom lip. His tongue tasted her mouth, her neck, her breast. The tight bliss of their connected bodies permitted no thought, no argument. Just him and her, rocking on waves of fire.
She was glowing again—her shadows revealed her as much as they concealed her—impossibly beautiful, magical, and a woman just the same. His woman.
He slid a hand around her hip, reaching deeply between her legs to open her more fully, and drove into her again. And again. The carnal friction was like a match on flint. They ignited.