“I am a gentleman. Gentlemen let their women dry them if said women are insistent on using up their turn in such a manner. Are you quite finished?” His voice sounded strained, but Gwen didn’t seem to notice.
“I guess,” she said, stepping back, a slightly disappointed look on her face.
“Towel.” She handed him the towel. He whipped it around her hips, backed her up to the bed, and pushed her down on its soft depths. “Then it is my turn again. And I choose to do this.”
“Merciful goddess,” she gasped as he knelt between her spread knees. She clutched his hair as he paid homage to her hidden parts, the ones that made her squirm with joy when he gave them their due attention. She writhed. She twitched. She moved restlessly, making soft little moans that filled him with pride in a job well done. And when she gasped and arched upward, he thought he might just burst with the pleasure he’d given her. “Glorious stars and moons and comets and . . . and . . . I can’t even think of any other astronomical things. That was amazing. Is that something your father taught you, too?”
He sent a quizzical look over her pubic mound.
“Not literally,” she said, her body giving more of those wonderful little aftershocks that so delighted him. “I meant more did he teach you to do the job properly and not give up before . . . never mind. There’s no way I can explain what I mean without it sounding weird. I blame the fact that my mind has shut down. Would you mind if I reciprocated?”
“Yes,” he said, moving up her body, pausing to kiss her belly, hips, rib cage, and both taut nipples before claiming her mouth. “You may reciprocate at another time. Right now, I intend to show you that my father did, indeed, teach me that a job worth doing is a job worth doing to the fullest of my abilities.”
He slid into her body, making her moan with pleasure. He himself was incapable of sound, incapable of anything except the knowledge that she was made for him with exquisite fineness. And when she bit his shoulder and demanded that he stop teasing her and finish the job, her body tightening around him in a way that had him seeing sparks, he knew with a finality that shook him to his core that she was his forever.
“We’re doing it again.” Gwen’s soft voice caressed his ear. He couldn’t so much as lift his head from where it lay cradled against her neck. He felt as boneless as a jellyfish.
“I’m fine with that,” he told her neck, “but you’ll have to give me a little bit of time to recover. Say a week. Possibly two months.”
She pinched his ass, right at the spot where her damned horse had bit him. “Not that. I don’t think I could again for a while. To be honest, I didn’t know I was multi-orgasmic until you proved I was. What I meant, Mr. Does the Job Right, was that we’re porraimosing again. Look.”
“I can’t look. I don’t have the energy to open my eyes. You have drained me of every last ounce. Besides, I don’t need to see the effect. I can feel it.”
Despite his words, he rolled off her, felt immediately bereft, and pulled her over to him until she lay draped atop him.
“It’s amazing that it doesn’t hurt,” she said, contemplating her hand, which was indeed alight with the short, snapping tendrils of electricity. “It just feels . . . tingly. Oh. It’s going away already.”
“It’ll be back,” he said drowsily, feeling extremely happy despite everything. He hadn’t the slightest idea how he was going to resolve the situation between the Watch and Gwen’s mothers, or how he could protect her from the reclamation agent, but he knew without a single doubt that he would find a way.
He had to. He didn’t think he could live without his Welsh temptress.
FOURTEEN
“Gwen.”
“Mmrph.”
“Gwen, you must wake up.”
“No.” I burrowed deeper into the Gregory-scented blankets on the (surprisingly comfortable) sleeping pallet, and refused all attempts by my brain to wake me up.
“It’s almost dawn, and I must leave before the guards can see me.”
I stuck a hand out of the warm cocoon of blankets and waved it vaguely in the direction of his voice. “Later, tater.”
Cold air brutally assaulted me when the blankets were ripped off my inert form. As if that wasn’t rude enough, Gregory swatted my bare behind, not hard enough to sting but enough that I shot upward and glared at him.
He smiled, the bastard.
“You hit me!”
“I did not. I gave you a tap on your derriere.”
“That, sir, is technically abusive behavior, and I will have none of it,” I said huffily, pulling the blankets up around my breasts.
He cocked an eyebrow and looked down on me. In the dim gray light of the coming dawn, I couldn’t help but notice that he was dressed, and wished wholeheartedly that he wasn’t. “Do you seriously believe I’m the abusive type?”
“No,” I admitted, trying to hold on to my huffiness but admitting to myself that he wasn’t that type of man at all. “I wouldn’t be with you if you were. What is so important that you had to wake me up? I’m not a morning person. I need a long time to wake up and be able to brain things.”
“Brain things?”
I pointed to my head. “You know, do that thing with your brain.”
“Think?”
“Yes, that. Mornings are evil.” I looked longingly back at the pillow next to me. It still bore the imprint of his head. I bet it smelled like him, too.
“No,” he said, snatching the pillow away as I started to dive for it. “Not until we’ve had a little talk.”
I sighed and scooted back so that I was leaning against the canvas of the tent. “All right, but in the future, you must supply me with coffee before you expect me to either brain or comprehend things.”
“Duly noted. Do you remember when I told you how I saved your life by taking the time I needed to stop that mortal from tossing you over the cliff?”
“Yes.” I frowned when he sat at my feet. I’d much rather he sat next to me so I could drape myself over his chest and doze off while he talked. “Do you want me to thank you for that again? I will, but I thought I already did.”
“You did, although it wasn’t at all necessary.” The light was too dim to make out the expression in his eyes, but his voice was filled with wariness that penetrated the dense fog of morning that always seemed to wrap itself around me. “The person who I took the time from was an immortal, of course.”
“Where are you going with this?” I asked, suddenly too impatient to give him a chance to tell me properly. “Does the person want his time back?”
“No.” He looked at me steadily for the count of eight. “She wants you.”
I snorted. “She can’t have me. We may not have a brilliant future ahead of us with you in the Watch and my moms being who they are, but I consider this a relationship until we both decide otherwise.” A sudden fear shook me. “You do too, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said gravely. “What we have together isn’t the point. This woman is a reclamation agent. When you died, she expected to gather your soul and take it to the afterlife of your choice. Perhaps even Anwyn. But she wasn’t able to do that because I manipulated time so you didn’t die in the first place.”
The horror grew until it crawled along my skin like ants. “My soul? This woman wanted my soul? What kind of person—merciful lord and lady! It’s Death, isn’t it?”
He nodded, placing his hand on my leg so that the warmth of his palm seeped through to my suddenly chilled flesh. “She works for Death, yes. Evidently she was tracking you in the mortal world. I ran into her in the park in Cardiff shortly after you ran off.”
I felt sick. “I don’t want her to take my soul. I like it. I think I need it, don’t I?”