Jessica Andersen - Magic Unchained

Equinox

In the dark blue of early predawn, Cara could just make out Sven’s silhouette at the window. She didn’t know what had awakened her—maybe him getting out of bed, maybe her sleeping self feeling the empty spot beside her—but she knew the tense line of his body as he stood alone, and how the sight brought a clutch inside her.

“Sorry.” His voice came out of the darkness as he turned toward her. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I don’t know how you do that.” And it wasn’t just that he knew when she was awake, either. Over the past few days, as they had worked nearly around the clock to get the winikin ready to defend Che’en Yaaxil—teaching them to use the shield stones and fire-tipped projectiles that together gave them almost warrior-class armaments—he had seemed wholly attuned to her moods and fears too. He knew instinctively when to soothe, growl, or give her room. She couldn’t say the same, though; there were times with him when he got quiet and faraway, and she didn’t know what to do to help, or even whether she should try.

Like now.

Logic said he was a grown man and would ask for help if he needed it. More, for a man who had spent most of his life alone, she imagined it was a shock to suddenly find himself in charge of a small army, with all the demands that went with it. So she was trying to give him room. But at the same time, something—maybe her instincts, maybe the bond between them—kept telling her that he needed her when he got like this, quiet and withdrawn.

“It’s magic,” he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. But there was strain there too, and as he stepped toward her and his face came clear in the faint illumination from the bathroom night-light, she saw a silent plea for her to believe the smile and ignore the other.

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask what was wrong, but she didn’t. She wasn’t sure she wanted the answer, not today of all days, when their partnership needed to be its strongest.

Instead, she smiled back and, when he got into bed beside her, she let the dip and pull of the mattress draw her into him, so bare skin slid and heated. “No,” she murmured, “this is the magic.”

“Ah, Cara,” he whispered into her hair, but said nothing more.

Instead of asking, she tipped her face up to his for a kiss, and drew her hand down his body in a long, slow caress that made him tense and groan. This was what he needed right now. It was what they both needed.

Seeming to agree, he wrapped himself around her and took her under with a kiss that wiped everything else from her mind. Gone were her doubts and fears—about him, the winikin, the coming battle—leaving only sensation behind.

Her perceptions coalesced to the press of his lips on hers and to the good, solid strength of his body. She caught her breath when he skimmed his lips down along her throat and across the upswell of one breast to capture her nipple in his mouth and suck, hot and wet and mimicking the act of love.

Moaning, she clasped him tightly, urged him on. They kissed and clung, touched and teased, until the blood sang in her veins and her heartbeat trip-hammered with a rhythm of: more-more, more-more, more-more.

She might have said it aloud, must have, because he rasped her name, along with hot praise and dark promises as he rolled atop her, poised to enter her. She dug her fingers into his hips and arched against him, waiting, waiting, wait— Ah! She cried out as he thrust home, filling and stretching her, and making her see starbursts behind her closed lids.

Then he was moving, setting a hard, urgent rhythm that slapped her body from zero to sixty in no time flat, and from there to overdrive. She held on to him, bowed beneath him, and buried her face in his sweat-slicked neck, where she whispered his name, a moan, a litany of, Yes-yes-there-more-oh-there, as her body tightened around him.

Her breath stilled as her senses rushed inward and then pushed her up, up toward a huge-seeming goal, and then over. The orgasm flared through her, locking her muscles and leaving her helpless to do more than cling and cry Sven’s name as he thrust into her again and again, prolonging her pleasure and wringing out his own until, with a rattling groan, he plunged into her and held tight, body jerking as he came.

Then he held tight a few minutes longer, as they both shuddered in the aftermath and breathed each other in.

“Sweet Cara.” He kissed her cheeks, her lips, her forehead, then rolled to his side, parting from her body but taking her with him, so they were curled together. “Sweet, sweet Cara.” His words were drowsy, his breathing soft.

“Sleep,” she said, kissing him. “Turn it off for a while.”

He said something more, but it was lost in a sigh as, with a final nuzzle, he complied and let himself go lax. Within moments his breathing deepened and he was out. But although she badly wished she had the same option, her mind wouldn’t let her sleep. She kept coming back to his silhouette at the window, as he stared out toward the open mesas and the world beyond.

Don’t think about it, she told herself. Not today. She would talk to him about things after the equinox… or maybe not. He was giving her everything he had promised her, after all—he was protecting her, helping her, being there for her. How fair was it, really, to push him for more than that when he’d been honest from the start? She knew what she was getting into. And maybe—probably—she needed to find a way to let this be enough.

Somehow.

You must not let her destroy the gateway!

Rabbit lunged awake with his heart pounding, his ears ringing with his mother’s voice, and the power of the equinox coursing through him.

He was disoriented for a few seconds, but then the spins turned into panic, because not only was Myrinne’s side of the bed empty and cool, but there was another void, this one inside him.

Understanding stabbed like the sharpest knife. The eccentrics!

In an instant, he flashed back on last night, when Myrinne had met him at the door wearing nothing but a strand of obsidian beads. She had kissed him and led him to the bedroom, and they’d made love like they hadn’t done in months. In the aftermath, all loose limbed, stupid, and so damned tired of being inside his own head, he’d asked her where she went at night, and had somehow wound up telling her everything—about the eccentrics, his mother, and even her suspicions. It had all come gushing out, a vomit of emotions and self-pity that had damn near wrung him dry. And through it all, Myrinne had kissed him, held him, told him that she loved him and it was all going to be okay, and he’d believed her, believed in her.

Only now she and the stones were gone.

“No!” He threw on clothes, left his armband on the table, and raced out the door, sticking his old man’s knife in his belt as he hauled ass. He could just barely sense the stones, but it would be enough to track them. And her.

Traitor. Seducer. Betrayer. He wasn’t sure if the whisper was his own or not, but it fit all too well with the evidence. His chest hurt and his head was spinning.

There were Jeeps by the training hall, keys tucked neatly into the visors. He launched himself into one, fired it up, and sped across the compound in a spray of dirt and gravel. He said the quick spell to drop the blood-ward, used telekinesis to open the wrought-iron gates, and then restored both once he was through. His magic was running high, his temper and sense of betrayal higher as he figured out where she had taken the stones.

“Son of a bitch.” Nausea surged. He hadn’t been able to escape the dream after all. She was in the coyote cave, where he’d last envisioned her death. “Is this what you want?” he asked the gods that didn’t seem to be in the sky or the underworld anymore, but rather inside him. He tasted salt and for a second thought he was bleeding, but then realized it was tears.