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Otherwise, he filled every hidden cache of her memories. Rapture once more approached, spearing her deep between her legs where he had taken possession of her body, where his c**k thrust. The sensation of intense pleasure spread upward through her torso, engaged her heart, swept into her head and cast fireworks around until she screamed the orgasm over and over and over. The resulting roll of power took him into the air, her hips with him since he refused to lose the connection. Landing back on the bed, he spun her out, thrust, retreated, thrust harder, rolled his hips, and sucked on her neck.
Come for me, she sent as her own orgasm barreled down on her once more. Now. I need all of you.
She cried out as pleasure took hold of her, a great fire in the well of her body. As the sensation increased, she cried out over and over, another wave of power punching at him.
He shouted, groaned, cursed, then with a final cry spent himself hard into her, thrusting until completely sated.
At last, he lowered himself back onto her.
Now her arms could move … well, a little. She wrapped them around his broad shoulders and drew in a ragged breath.
“Awesome,” she murmured. “Let’s do it all over again in about fifteen minutes.”
He laughed, bouncing on her chest. “I love you, Alison. I’m so in love with you. There, I’ve said it. I love you.”
Alison’s heart swelled. To hear him speak of love—! And yet there was something in his tone, an edge of desperation that caused her a ripple of concern. She had been inside his head. She had seen his grief after Helena and the children died, she had felt the impact of two hundred years of keeping his vows so he wouldn’t be a threat to another woman ever again.
She breathed in and out, struggling to find the right words, but nothing came to her, no gentle ease-into phrasing, just four words and she said them aloud now: “Tell me what happened.”
* * *
Kerrick lifted up and looked at her. He knew exactly what she meant, what she wanted to know.
Christ. He drew out of her, breaking the erotic connection. He slid his hips to the edge of the mattress, his legs following. When she turned on her side away from him, he stroked the back of her neck. Right now he wanted to bolt, to leap out of bed, to run hard, away from the house, away from her, away from the subject. He didn’t want to talk about Helena or his children, not with Alison, especially not Alison, because this was his failure, his greatest failure.
He had let her inside his mind, let her romp around, and he’d loved it but it also meant she had seen his past, especially the nature of his grief. She was also a therapist so of course she would want him to talk. This far down the road, he saw no point in trying to evade the subject.
He summoned a breath then another. He let the words flow. “I was fighting. It wasn’t very late, maybe eight o’clock. I was at the north end of the White Tank Mountains on Second. That night Greaves hammered us with pretty-boys at every Borderland, which was unusual at the time.
“Thorne suspected something big was going down. We all did. We just couldn’t imagine what, which meant we didn’t know what to prepare for.
“Helena wasn’t powerful like you although she had a few fully developed gifts. Her telepathy was perfect. If she had been more powerful, if she had been able to sense something was coming, if she’d had even a small piece of the clairvoyance I know you have she could have summoned me and together we could have done something. At least, I think we could have. I don’t know because I wasn’t there when it happened. Maybe I would have misread the situation as well.” He paused. He didn’t want to speak the words.
To her credit, she remained silent, letting him find his way.
“Helena and I engaged in full communion—body, blood, mind—so we were very close, as close at two ascenders can be just short of the breh-hedden, but it wasn’t enough to help us that night.”
She put a hand on his shoulder. “What was the difference, then? I mean why wasn’t your full communion with Helena the same as the breh-hedden? I don’t understand.”
He frowned. Shit, this hurt because it went to the central issue, the reason he should never have married Helena in the first place. “Because of the difference between telepathy and mind-engagement. Helena didn’t have your power. I couldn’t be in her mind the way I can be in yours, because I would have hurt her. Nor could Helena be in my mind, because she didn’t have the capacity. We were able to communicate telepathically, but that is still very different from mind-engagement.
“All ascenders can take part in some level of full communion by making use of telepathy, but most ascenders can’t get into the head of another. Some believe mind-diving is more a Third Earth ability than a Second Earth power, which is why the breh-hedden is extremely rare and occurs only among the Warriors of the Blood … and powerful women.” His throat felt choked and raw. “Helena just wasn’t advanced, not like you. Other than Endelle, there is no one like you in our world.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself to breathe. His chest was tight and his heart pounded at the memories. He took another deep breath and continued. “As for Helena and what happened that night, because of her telepathic abilities and because there had been a lull in the battle, we were talking back and forth within our minds. It was wonderful. She and the children had just come back from town. They’d unhitched the horses. She was very big on making sure our kids learned those kinds of skills early. Kerr and Christine always complained, of course, but at nine and seven those two knew how to care for any of the horses we had on the property and how to keep the wagons and carriages in good shape even if they couldn’t yet do the work themselves.
“God, I was proud of them, all of them. Helena was a wonderful mother, patient, kind.” A new weight descended on his chest and his throat grew tight, the memory pulling hard now. “So, she was in my head, telepathically telling me about some fabric she had just purchased, a recent import from Mortal France, a very fine silk, when the communication was suddenly disrupted.” He remembered the moment as though it were yesterday. “I was standing and before I knew what had happened I was sitting, my head in my hands, tears rushing out of my eyes for no apparent reason … except I knew, I knew they were gone, all of them.
“The stable had been rigged with enough gunpowder to blow a hole through a mountain. The Commander wasn’t leaving anything to chance. In addition to my family, two of the servants died as well. They’d been in the stable helping out, as they always did.”
