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“I already ate, and I have flowers upstairs,” I panted, ripping off the T-shirt.
“Then what can I do for you?”
“I can only think of a couple hundred things,” I said, and pounced.
And promptly found myself on my back, a war mage between my legs, sliding my panties down. “No,” he said, pointing a finger at me as I tried to move.
“What?”
“Stay there.”
“No, I can’t! I don’t need foreplay, damn it!”
“Well, that’s unfortunate,” the impossible man said. “Because I do.”
Liar, I thought, catching sight of a healthy bulge. At least somebody looked happy to see me. But it was covered by damned terry cloth and wasn’t getting any closer. In fact, the opposite was true, as Pritkin slid down my body.
Damn it, I was Pythia! Why did nobody do what I told them? Wasn’t I supposed to be in charge? Wasn’t I supposed to be—
Uhgnnn!
My brain broke, descending into garbled, incoherent thoughts, because Pritkin wasn’t as blasé as he seemed. Instead of kissing his way up my thighs, torturing me as I’d feared, he’d decided to torture me in another way. A far more direct one.
I almost came off the bed when his mouth closed over me, and I did arch up and make a sound that I probably would have been embarrassed about another time. Right then, I didn’t care. Right then, I just wanted him to—
Uhgnnn! “Yes, there. Right there!” Pritkin looked up at me and laughed, the bastard, the utter, utter bastard. “What are you doing?” I panted. “Go back to work. Go back!”
“I love an appreciative audience,” he said, letting me wait until I was throwing pillows at his head.
And then he went back to work.
And God, the man missed his calling, I thought. No way should he have been a war mage. No way in hell. He had a goddamned gift, and I was so ready anyway that every stroke felt like literal magic. They shuddered through me like a possession, like sparkling rivers of sensation, like bright fingers of sunlight illuminating the darkest corners of me, filling me up with—with—with—
UHGNNN!
Brilliance burst over me, through me, like a star suddenly going supernova, sending me shuddering and then thrashing and then screaming. And it just went on and on. It was like riding a rushing river that kept swelling and swelling. Whenever I thought it was done, that it had to be, it climbed higher still, until I wasn’t sure if I was going to come apart at the seams or just explode.
And then I did both.
The river ended in a waterfall of sensation, not the swift dive over the edge but the churning, crazy, jumbled-up stuff at the bottom of the falls, where everything seems to hit you at once. There was joy there, oh, yes, a sparkling world of it, and passion, and the warm, all-encompassing hug of a feeling that I’d started to label “love.” But there was pain, too, and the desperate fear of the chase, of almost losing him; there were the nights of exhaustion and crippling anxiety, when I cried myself to sleep, sure I’d never be enough, that I couldn’t do this; there was guilt and pain and fury over Mircea, because I loved him, too, I loved him still, but the betrayal cut so fucking deep; and there was worry over the future, of where this was going, of if it would just crash and burn, too.
I didn’t know where it was all coming from, or why it was coming out now. But it was, and suddenly I was sobbing gut-wrenching, body-shaking sobs in the arms of a man who was probably really fucking confused, but who was holding me anyway. Letting me get it out, letting my nails cut into him as I held him so tight, too tight, but I couldn’t seem to let go. Afraid that, if I did, he’d disappear on me again, and I couldn’t go through that, I couldn’t!
It finally stopped, the shaking reduced to slight shivers, my body exhausted and warm and safe in what felt like the first time in forever.
I yawned, right in his face, and was mortified, but he only laughed and kissed the top of my head. “Go to sleep, Cassie.”
“I can’t. I haven’t—we aren’t—don’t you want—”
“I want you to sleep. You’re exhausted.”
“’m not exhausted. That’s ridiculous,” I said, and then spoiled it by yawning again.
“Then let’s just lie here a moment,” he said, tucking my head against his chest. “All right?”
I nodded, because it felt so good. He pulled the covers up over us, and it was like being in a warm cocoon, one that smelled of soap and clean sweat and sex, which was not at all a bad combination. And him; it smelled like him, a scent I’d never thought I’d encounter again, like I’d never thought I’d have him so close, hard and warm and undeniably there.
There was this weird sensation in my chest as my breathing slowed down. I didn’t know what it was at first, but then I realized: it was lightness. The heavy ball of anxiety and dread I’d carried about for so long that it had become almost normal had just gone. Untangling and smoothing out somewhere in all that, until it just wasn’t there anymore.
