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Kellan kept his fevered eyes on her, drinking in every nuance of her release. She was so beautiful. So damn sexy. So hot and wet and greedy, her tiny muscles milking him as he thrust at a frenzied tempo, his cock pistoning in and out of her slick sheath.
His orgasm rolled up on him like a freight train, fierce and uncontainable.
He came on a roar, hips bucking wildly, unable to stop even after the last of his seed had poured out of him. Spent but far from sated, he dropped his head to the curve of her shoulder and simply rocked into her, savoring the feel of her body pressed to his, the hot, wet haven of her sex holding him inside.
"You stayed," he murmured, mouth moving over the side of her neck, where her pulse throbbed in time with his.
Her softly whispered answer sifted into his hair where her lips rested against the top of his head. "You didn't let go."
Chapter Fifteen
THEY MADE LOVE AGAIN, SLOWLY, THEN TOOK TURNS washing each other under the warm spray of the shower.
A few minutes later, Mira was in Kellan's quarters, getting dressed with him in a comfortable silence. She could almost imagine that they were a couple in truth, sharing this space as bonded mates. Sharing the bed as lovers, which shouldn't have been as tempting to her, considering the number of times he'd just made her come.
Mira watched Kellan move as he put on fresh clothes, a black T-shirt that clung to his muscled chest and shoulders, short sleeves tight around his glyph-adorned biceps. His long, firm thighs disappeared into dark jeans that hugged his fine ass and rode at just the right level on his sharply cut hips.
He was gorgeous, and a few minutes ago she had tasted every divine inch of him. She allowed herself to savor that memory for a moment, standing near the foot of the bed in just her bra and panties.
It was so easy to feel normal around him. To feel whole. She wasn't ready to give that up. She'd never be ready for that, no matter what her damned vision had shown him.
Kellan shot her an appraising glance over his shoulder as he buttoned the fly of his jeans. "Good as you look like that, you'd better put something on before I jump you again." He lifted his chin, indicating his clothing trunk at her feet. "You'll find more shirts in there. Take your pick."
The black jeans she'd had on the day she and Jeremy Ackmeyer were brought to the rebel base were still in decent shape, a bit worse for wear, but doable. Her shirt had been toast, ripped up in the scuffle and ruined with blood and grime. Mira hunkered down on folded legs in front of Kellan's clothing locker and sifted through the dozen or so Ts and jerseys stacked neatly inside.
Her hand bumped against something cold and metallic, tucked between a few of the articles. She pulled it out to see what it was. A hand mirror, elegant and feminine, the back of it fashioned of polished silver, inlaid with delicate black onyx cut into the shape of a gracefully arched bow bearing a nocked arrow - the Archer family emblem.
"It belonged to my grandmother," Kellan said when Mira looked up at him in question.
"It's stunning." She ran her fingertip over the careful crafts-manship, admiring each flawless line. "How did you get this?"
When he disappeared years earlier, he'd taken nothing with him but the clothes on his back the night of the patrol that had gone so wrong.
Kellan strode over and gently took the mirror from her grasp. He turned it over in his hands, his mouth curving into a distant smile. "A couple years ago, I ran reconnaissance on a militia group I planned to shut down. They were dealing drugs and small arms out of Maine, north of Augusta. Realized when my intel gathering was over, I was only a few miles from my grandfather, Lazaro's, old place up there."
"The temporary compound the Order moved into after our headquarters in Boston was compromised." Mira recalled it well, even though she'd been just a girl at the time she and Kellan and the rest of the warriors and their mates had lived there.
After First Dawn, it was decided by Lucan and the other elders that the Order needed to spread its resources around the United States and Europe, to better combat uprisings and violence that occurred in the wake of the Breed's outing to mankind. Lazaro Archer, Kellan's grandfather, was now the leader of the Order's command center in Italy.
Mira thought about the many good times - and the handful of bad - that had taken place in that hidden Darkhaven compound nestled in the deep woods of northern Maine. Her first snowball fight, pitted against Kellan and Nathan. Her first Christmas tree, shared with Renata and Nikolai and the rest of her new family, all of the warriors and their mates. The presentation ceremony for Xander Raphael, Dante and Tess's son, who'd been born just days before the Order's emergency relocation from Boston.
So many memories, and she could see that Kellan was reliving them too.
"The place was vacant, or I never would've risked going near it," he said. "But there were a few things left behind. Furnishings, some clothing . . . and this." He touched the bow-and-arrow emblem with reverent fingers. "It was in my grandfather's quarters, on top of a dressing table he'd made for my grandmother out of the surrounding pines. The mirror was charred and blackened with soot and ash. I realized then and there that he must've gone back to our Boston Darkhaven after it had been razed. He must've crawled through the rubble to retrieve this, even though he'd vowed he would never go back to the scene of her death. Back to the house that took her and my parents - all of my kin, his kin - down in flames."
"Kellan," Mira whispered, her heart squeezing in her breast.
"I had no right to take it, but once it was in my hand, I couldn't leave it behind." He carefully replaced the mirror into the chest, setting it gingerly on top of the soft contents. "I have something else that I have no right keeping either."
He strode over to his bureau and opened the top drawer. Took out her treasured dagger and walked it back to her. She took it from his outstretched hand with a small, grateful smile.
She read the word that was carved onto each side of the precious blade. "Honor. Sacrifice." The other one, the other half of the pair, which she'd lost the day she was brought back into Kellan's life, bore another set of tenets she strove to live by: Faith. Courage. "It feels strange, just the one," she murmured. "Unbalanced. Not as strong without its mate. I never thought they'd be separated."
Kellan's eyes were tender on her, his expression sober, regretful. He clearly understood that she could as easily be speaking about the two of them. "I never wanted to take anything away from you, Mouse. Least of all your happiness. I didn't want to cost you anything, including the blade that I promised you'd have again, before everything went so wrong. Just another way I've let you down."
He reached out, gently lifted her to her feet. He stroked her face, his touch so careful and kind, she nearly choked on the sob building in her throat. "If I could go back in time, I'd change so much," he said. "I would do whatever it took to make sure you'd never be caught up in this with me in the first place."
"No," she replied, pulling herself together and giving a firm shake of her head. "No. I wouldn't trade a minute of what we just shared. Would you?"
