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With a grunt, she rolled the hunter over the edge and into the foaming sea. The barge lurched massively just then, and she nearly pitched in after it.
“Nic!” Gabriel shouted, hoarse and desperate. She flung herself backward and, deciding she was better off on all fours, crawled on hands and knees back to Gabriel. “Cut me loose already,” he snarled at her.
“Keep your pants on,” she snapped back, searching said pants for another knife. The man kept enough blades on his person. She cast a glance at the two boiled hunters, but they weren’t showing signs of life. They actually looked more like hairy stew with chunks of bone, which was an image she needed to immediately erase from her mind. The stench of steamed meat and singed hair didn’t help.
She sawed at the ropes around Gabriel’s ankles first, letting him kick the coil free once she got one strand undone. Then she went to work on the rope binding his muscular thighs to the post. The wet leather molded to their long length, leaving little to the imagination. She mostly managed to ignore the enticing bulge near her face, until his cock visibly hardened. As the rope came free, she glanced up to find Gabriel watching her with an intent expression, lust in the set of his lips.
She pointed the dagger at him. “You’d better not be indulging in some sexual fantasy of me kneeling here at your feet.”
His face cleared—going both guilty and studiously blank at once. “I’m not,” he protested, much too strongly. “I’m concentrating on keeping the barge off the rocks.”
“Likely story,” she muttered, grabbing ahold of his belt to clamber to her feet, the barge pitching beneath her. The barge jolted, an ominous grinding sound shuddering through the boat. “Concentrate harder,” she advised, sawing at the rope holding his arms to his sides.
“I’m nearly drained,” he admitted, lurching as he came free of the post. He did look gray, his skin sunken against the bones of his face, a haunt of a death mask in his visage. No, she didn’t want him to die.
And they were bound together, chained to each other by chance or destiny, it didn’t matter which. His fate was hers.
“Use me.” She held out her hand.
He stared at it like it was a snake. “What?”
“Use my magic.” She flapped her hand at him. It hurt, and she looked down, realizing it was covered in blood from the hunter’s bite. She shoved the aching appendage into her pocket and held out her uninjured hand instead. “That’s what I’m good for.” Theonlything she was good for, she didn’t say.
His lip curled in revulsion, black gaze snapping up to hers. “I won’t use you that way.”
“I don’t want to drown. Think of it as saving me.”
Hesitating, he gazed at her proffered hand. “What do I do?”
“What comes naturally, wizard,” she replied. “Take my magic and make it yours.”
~14~
Hating himself forit—though Nic had gauged him perfectly, prodding him with the lever of saving her life—Gabriel took her hand and drank of her wine-red, rose-suffused magic.
Her fire filled him with blazing heat, thawing his aching muscles, and stirring his thready magic into new life. Drawing her close, he folded his arms around her in a fierce embrace. She wrapped her arms around his waist in return, holding on tightly, cheek pressed against his chest. Her magic roared into him, along with the wave of overwhelming lust ignited by the press of her lush body against his. So many times over the last weeks he’d imagined her embracing him, just like this.
No, not just like this, because she was only touching him out of fear for her life. Yielding up her very essence to wield as his own. And he was very aware that he was taking it from her, his still sometimes unfamiliar wizard senses acting intuitively to seize and devour the magic he so desperately needed.Take my magic and make it yours.He grappled with the sheer potency of her magic, enormous and nearly beyond him. It was like riding a wild stallion—and trying to direct that galloping power while using all his strength just to hang on.
The sea wasn’t easy to manipulate either. These weren’t obedient currents easily coaxed into a purpose very like what they’d been doing anyway. So close to this bend of the coastline, the surf hurled itself against the rocky headland with the enormous weight of an ocean behind it. It resisted the suggestion to go in any other direction. Every time his magic tried to encompass the enormity of it, the vastness of the water slipped from his hold. The water magic immediately sieved through his splayed hands.
“It’s too much,” he ground out, exhaustion darkening the edges of his vision.
A small hand gripped his jaw, and he looked down to see Nic staring at him in fierce demand. With her black hair slicked back, skin misted with rain, her sharp cheekbones and high forehead stood out as if etched with vivid life against the gray mist. Her eyes, blazing green with flecks of gold fire, dominated her face. Droplets clung to her lush black lashes, brows drawn to a point as she glared at him, the tips winging high.
“Stop being so heavy handed,” she ordered, and he cringed with guilt. He’d been trying to be gentle with her, to coax her along, but—she exhaled in exasperation. “The magic. Don’t try to control the whole sea. Scale it down. Turn the water touching the barge. Don’t fight the current, go sideways. Perpendicular to the current.”
Feeling as if he could drown in those green eyes, he reached out with his magic, aware of her accompanying the thrust of it this time. Her magic intertwined with his, as it had that night, when they’d lost themselves in that sensual commingling. It aroused and fueled him, making him feel as powerful as never before. Drawing on her seemingly endless well of magic, it flowed into him like the thrumming from her body, and he followed her terse instructions, working the water that cupped the barge, moving them in a scraping transect across the current instead of against.
Wood and metal wailed, but he kept them moving. Nic, green gaze locked with his, lost some of her fierce expression. Gradually her face smoothed, lips unfurling from their tense press, the scent of roses and the heady feel of red wine swirling through his senses. As it had when they’d made love, their magic intertwined, filling the spaces in the other’s. Sexual heat, already alight in his belly, billowed and unfurled, craving more and more of her.
Then they were loose, the barge floating free of the rocks.
“Stay with it,” Nic murmured.
It almost felt as if she guided his mental hands, showing him where to be more precise, altering his grip on the current to move them at an angle from the coast. The barge moved ahead, stabilizing as it cut assertively through the waves, carried by a measured, precisely controlled current.
Nic’s full mouth curved into an actual smile, her grip on his jaw relaxing. She caressed his cheek, dragging her nails over the smooth skin he’d finally shaved that morning. “Well done,” she said, eyes glowing with… affection? No—probably relief and pride. Her gaze dropped to his mouth, her own lips parting invitingly.
