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"Do you really believe that?" He searched her gaze, hoping that behind the purple lenses that shielded her eyes' true color - lenses that muted her seer's gift - Mira knew she was the only one he'd ever imagined would stand at his side as his blood-bonded mate.
But even that hope was a cruelty on his part, because whether he wanted her for his own or not, fate, apparently, had other ideas.
Kellan had seen it for himself, on another morning like this, when he'd held Mira naked in his arms, their bodies intimately joined, pleasured and exhausted, just as they were now.
He leaned down and placed a tender kiss on each of her eyelids, apology or absolution, he wasn't quite sure. "It would've been you, Mira. If I could believe we have some kind of future together - any kind of future that won't end with me hurting you deeply - then it would be you. But I can't give in to something irrevocable, something that would be eternal and binding, when I know there's no good to come from it."
The sadness and confusion that had been in her gaze a moment ago turned a little flinty now. She blew out a scoff, her mouth twisting into a look he'd seen often enough when they were growing up together. "Part of me wants to call you a first-class asshole for saying that while you're still inside me. But that wouldn't be fair, would it? Because I wanted to fuck you as much as you evidently wanted it too. Not that any good will come of this either."
Kellan winced. "This wasn't just a fuck, for crissake."
"What was it, then?"
He gave a shake of his head, his mind filled with a thousand adjectives that wouldn't even come close to describing what he was feeling, lying there with Mira, growing hard within her all over again.
He gave a slow thrust of his hips, moaned when she met him with an arch of her spine that took him even deeper. "God, I wish you didn't feel so good. I wish you didn't feel so right. I'm not ready to leave you yet." He lowered his head and kissed her, a long, passionate joining of their mouths. When he finally broke away from her lips, his breath was sawing out of his lungs, rasping through his elongated fangs. "Ah, fuck . . . this was a mistake. Now that I have you under me, I'm not sure how I'm going to let you out of my bed."
Mira braced her hands on his bare chest and pushed him onto his back. She went with him, keeping him nestled inside her as she came up astride him. "Now you're under me, and maybe I'll have something to say about whether or not we get out of this bed."
She rolled her pelvis, seating him as deep as he could go. Then she began to ride him slowly, drawing out each stroke to agonizing lengths. She closed her eyes as she moved atop him, her lithe warrior's body arching and flexing with a dancer's grace as she held him inside her, rocked him toward a swiftly building climax. Her small breasts bobbed as she found her tempo, and it was all Kellan could do not to come in a rush as he watched his thick cock disappear into her cleft with each bouncing stride.
God, she was sexy. The hottest thing he'd ever known. Tough and stubborn and courageous, tenacious in everything she'd ever taken on in life, including him.
No male - Breed or human alike - could ever hope for a better woman to call his mate. And for one crazy moment, Kellan let himself imagine that she was, in fact, his. That everything was different, and he didn't have to let her go.
That he hadn't looked into her naked eyes eight years ago and glimpsed a future that would tear them apart. One that would brand him a traitor to everyone he'd ever loved.
The vision came back to him in ruthless detail.
Kellan arrested by Lucan and the Order, accused of conspiracy and murder, high treason. All of the charges indefensible. All of his crimes carrying capital punishments.
And Mira, standing before Lucan and the Global Nations Council in a cavernous meeting chamber, begging them for mercy.
Dissolving in grief a moment later, when the judgment was handed down.
Death.
Kellan didn't realize he'd gone still beneath her until Mira's hands stroked his face. "Are you all right? Where did you go just now?"
He shook his head, tried to purge the vision and the heavy regret that had become lodged in the pit of his stomach. "I'm right here," he said, reaching up to caress the worry from the downward twist of her mouth. "I'm good. Right now, everything is good."
She smiled, turning a kiss into his palm. She started moving on top of him again, sighing as she found her rhythm once more and rode him with beautiful abandon.
When she was moaning with arousal, arcing above him in the throes of another orgasm, Kellan tumbled her down beneath him and took her pleasure higher. He wanted to give her nothing but joy in that moment, enough to last.
Enough to last them both.
Chapter Twelve
MIRA WOKE UP SOMETIME LATER THAT MORNING, NESTLED into the crook of Kellan's strong arm. His warmth surrounded her, a cocoon of peace and contentment she hadn't known for a very long time.
Not since the morning eight years before, when she'd awakened in a similar pose, in a similar state of blissful exhaustion.
That day had ended in a nightmare of fire and ash and tears. Today she felt renewed. Hopeful. She felt happy, and that scared her more than anything. Especially when her happiness had come in the arms of Kellan Archer. Not the teenage boy she'd adored as a child. Not even the young Breed warrior who'd trained alongside her with the Order and had become her dearest, most trusted friend and confidant.
No, her happiness had been delivered by the leader of an outlaw band of rebels, who'd not only abducted an innocent civilian but defied Lucan Thorne and the entire Order by disrupting an operation and taking one of its members hostage.
A hostage who had very willingly tumbled into bed to sleep with the enemy.
