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Only his buddies weren’t here now. And he was hot and probably tired. And suddenly seemed a lot less interested in continuing the wild-goose chase than in . . .
Than in watching the show, I realized, my heart beginning to pound.
Pritkin’s hand abruptly clenched on my thigh.
His back was to the tree trunk; mine was to him. So I couldn’t see his face. But I didn’t need it.
I didn’t need it to know that he was giving me the choice.
The body behind me was tense, the arms flexed, prepared for a contest if it came to it. And for all I knew, Pritkin could take a single fey. My Pritkin could have.
But this wasn’t my Pritkin. And this one didn’t have hundreds of years of fighting experience. Or weapons. And after everything, his magic had to be redlining if it wasn’t already there.
And even if he managed it, even if he won, he might well lose, because this place was crawling with fey. If this one got off a single cry, we’d have another dozen down on us in a moment, and we couldn’t handle that. We couldn’t handle half of that.
I slowly reached up and put a hand behind Pritkin’s neck.
The fey picked up his canteen and leaned against a tree.
And another rush of sensation flooded over my body like a warm tidal wave.
A callused hand found my breast, and the breeze blowing across the water became a warm, dragging caress. It smoothed down my stomach, and the dappled light sifting through the treetops hit my skin like golden coins, holding warmth and weight. It dipped between my thighs, and the light burst apart into a thousand individual suns.
My hair was all in my face; the fey couldn’t have seen much of my expression. Which was just as well. Because I doubt stunned disbelief was the expected response when Pritkin began to explore, gently at first, questing, searching. And then becoming more assertive as he learned what made me shiver. And shudder. And arch back, a flood of goose bumps cascading up and down my body.
I cried out, and the forest shattered around us. Colors, already brilliant in the lead-up to sunset, exploded like strobes were behind them. They flooded into the air like mist; blues shimmered, greens were slick and wet, golds hurt. And they all sent spikes and waves of pleasure everywhere they touched, soaking into my skin, making the treetops whirl in a kaleidoscope of sensation and emotion and—
And it was too much. I cried out, writhing back against him, and would have fallen except for the hands on my body. Their grip tightened, holding me up when I would have drowned in sensation, drowned and not cared because God, and help, and please, and God.
And then a new hand gripped me, wrenching me away. Throwing me to the ground while my head was still spinning, my body was still shuddering, spell-induced euphoria making me laugh. Laugh even when I was kicked over onto my back, when my legs were pried apart, when a face I didn’t know hovered over mine—
And was suddenly jerked back.
By the staff in Pritkin’s hands, the one he’d slipped around the fey’s throat.
But the man—the fey—wasn’t trying to get away. He wasn’t attempting to throw Pritkin off. He wasn’t doing anything I’d have expected while his face reddened and his eyes popped and his tongue began to swell.
Because he was still coming for me.
And he continued to come, to reach, to claw, even as I sobered up, sobered up fast, and scrambled back out of reach, sweating and shivering and staring—
But not as much as when he suddenly blinked and stared around, disoriented, his hands coming up to grasp the stick. Which almost immediately began to move away from his neck because the fey were strong; they were so damned strong. And then I was back on my feet, breathing hard, unsure how to help, before scrambling for the fey’s discarded pack, hoping for a knife—
Which I didn’t get. Because another wave of incubus power hit, as Pritkin struggled to reestablish control. And this one was less like a fist than a freight train, sending me back to the ground, writhing under a wash of sensation too strong for pleasure, too euphoric for pain.
The next few seconds were a blur of contradictory images: The fey’s lust-filled face hovering over mine, once more focused and determined. The grass licking my skin, like a thousand tiny tongues. The sound of the carnage across the river, cries and screams and shouted commands. The smell of wood smoke, rich and pungent.
The crunch of neck bones, soft and subtle, but as loud as a gunshot in my ears.
I wasn’t sure—I was never sure—if Pritkin had done it. Or if the fey had done it himself by pushing against the restraint, still reaching out as he toppled over, the purple face still staring, the dead eyes still wide and fixed—
On me.
And even with the muffling effect of the spell, it was too much. I felt a scream building, felt it clawing its way up my throat, felt Pritkin pull me back against him, his hand over my mouth, his lips whispering something I couldn’t hear and wouldn’t have understood if I did, probably don’t scream, don’t scream, don’t scream in whatever language they spoke here.
But I was doing it anyway, almost soundlessly against the pressure of his palm, screaming and screaming and screaming, even as he dragged me away, deeper into the forest.
Only that didn’t work too well with the trees shaking all around me, like someone using a camcorder who doesn’t know how. But you can steady a camcorder, and I couldn’t seem to steady myself. Or to stop the sensory overload or whatever had me suddenly able to taste colors and smell sounds and touch light and shadow as if they were tangible things.
