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~18~
Though her sexclenched at the command, her familiar nature rousing in eager welcome, her brain was still apparently jogging down the tunnel, perhaps locked outside with silver nails, because she was not catching up to Gabriel’s urgency. “Why?” she demanded.
He set his jaw, fulminating silver and steam. “Nowyou balk? All this time you’ve been wheedling and exhorting me to exert control over you, to take and have, and now, when we have no time to dither, you want to question me?”
“Dither?” She raised her brows, tempted to laugh, but he glowered at her. “I just want to know why we’re having arcanium sex when there are crises to address. Surely that answer won’t take long.”
With a growl of impatience, he spun her around and released the trigger on the gown, efficiently stripping it off of her. With a little thrill, she discovered she liked that, too. She might have to refuse to undress for him more often.
“We’re going to figure out how to transform you into your alternate form,” he explained with exaggerated patience. “How is that not obvious to you?”
Ten different replies leapt to her lips, none of them quite equal to the moment. Also, Gabriel pulled the gown off over her head just then, muffling any response she might give. He swiftly relieved her of her lingerie too, leaving her naked. She kicked off her slippers, glad she’d changed out of her muddy boots when they returned to the manse. “Gabriel—”
“Kneel,” he ordered, cutting her off.
Obeying without thought, she did, aroused excitement flooding her, which did not help to kick her brain into action. Quite the opposite. It would be so easy to yield, to let the eroticism of submitting to his control sweep her away, but that wouldn’t solve their very real problems.
“May I speak, wizard?” she asked pointedly, looking up at him. That didn’t help the thinking part of her either, as he was so dizzyingly gorgeous standing over her like that, his emotional storm intense and overwhelming.And in the arcanium at night, you can release all that pent-up fury and passion upon my helpless body. She’d only been half teasing when she said that. Less than that, because the prospect had her body singing in delight, longing for that very thing with every fiber of her being.
She couldn’t believe she was going to stop him.
“No,” he said. “We don’t have time to talk. Take your alternate form.”
Rolling her eyes, she stood. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“What do I have to do?” he demanded. Before she could answer, he strode across the domed room, seizing the silver bed and wheeling it to under the moon window. “Chain you to this?” he nearly shouted. “Whip you? Force you to submit to my will so we can prove to your precious Convocation that you belong with me? Because I’ll do it, Nic. I’ll hate myself for hurting you, but I’d rather that than turn you over tothem. Now get over here and get on this vile thing!” He finished on a near roar.
Oh, he was in a mood.
Taking her time, she sauntered over, shivering under the feral intensity of his wizard-black gaze raking her nakedness. His magic billowed around her, amplified by the arcanium, the silver struts glowing with brilliant moonlight, dispensing the gloom of the lake water under a rain-leaden sky. She paused by the silver bed and looked at it pointedly. “Still no mattress,” she noted.
His expression momentarily blanked, then he glared at the offending naked bed frame in betrayed fury. With a howl of rage, he kicked it, sending the thing spinning across the floor to bounce off one thick glass pane.
Nic watched it go with a raised brow, then turned back to her enraged wizard. “Feel any better?”
He glowered at her, fists clenched. “How can you be so calm?” he snarled. “Work with me here.”
“Oh,nowyou want me to work with you?” Moving slowly, she closed the distance between them, laying her palms against his muscled chest, his heart thundering beneath. Rigid with tension, he thrummed under her hands. A storm about to break. “Darling,” she said smoothly, “this isn’t something I ever thought I’d say to you, but you need to calm down. Take a few deep breaths.”
He fulminated under her touch, his magic so sharp, so boiling, as he glared daggers at her that for a moment she wasn’t sure what he’d do. Seizing her by the waist, he lifted her into the air, and she clutched at his ridged forearms, her feet dangling helplessly in the air. Her sex slick with anticipation, she’d welcome whatever he might do to her.Take. Have.She should just yield and let him—No.That wouldn’t solve their problems.
Maybe he sensed her newfound resolve. Or glimpsed something in her eyes, because sanity returned to his. Setting her carefully on her feet again, he dragged in a long, deep breath. Then another. On the third breath, his set expression crumpled. Very deliberately, he released his grip on her waist. Her body ached, missing him already, but only for a moment because he wrapped her in an embrace, pulling her hard against him as he buried his face against her neck.
“I can’t lose you,” he groaned, voice breaking, his words muffled against her skin.
“Oh, Gabriel…” Her heart turned over, wrung out, body throbbing with unfulfilled arousal, mind dizzy from being crowded with too many thoughts and feelings. “You won’t lose me.”
He stiffened, raising his head, fixing her with that wizard-black gaze that penetrated to the most intimate corners of her soul. “Can you promise that?”
“I—” She closed her mouth on the lie. She’d been determined to promise that, but in the face of his earnest vulnerability, she simply couldn’t. “Gabriel, I don’t know. There’s so much stacked against us. If only I hadn’t—”
He stopped her with a little shake. “Don’t you dare apologize for that again.”
“So commanding,” she purred, giving him a sultry smile, and he snarled in frustration. “Don’t snarl at me. I’m trying tothink, but it isn’t easy for me, being naked with you, here, with your hands on me and your magic coiling through me.”
With a curse, he pulled off his long coat and wrapped it around her—it was big enough on her to almost go around twice—then rubbed her arms briskly. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m notcold,” she chided him with a smile. “I just need to clear the erotic haze from my brain.”
