Jessica Andersen - Blood Spells

His taste was fresh and new once again, his touch wildly exciting as he dragged his hand down her body to the place where the hem of her long-sleeve tee had ridden up to bare the skin above her jeans, which were soft with wear and rode low on her waist. His big hand closed on her hip, his fingers digging in with the inciting pressure of a rough caress that was echoed in his ragged groan.

Her excitement flared higher at the sound. It had been rare for him to ease up on his vicious self-

control, rare for her to be able to push him past that point. If he was teetering now, it meant that she wasn’t alone in being caught partway between then and now, riding a wave of relief and sex magic.

She didn’t delude herself by pretending that the magic wasn’t part of what was happening between them. But at the same time, she couldn’t make herself care. She wanted sex. With him. Now.

When oxygen ran low, they ended the kiss and drew apart, both breathing hard and fast. She opened her eyes to find him staring at her with a hint of the wonder that was rocketing through her, along with the sense of “ there you are.” It felt like they had been looking for each other for months now, years.

She knew the intensity was an illusion of the sex magic, making the joining seem like so much more than it would otherwise, but she didn’t care. She wanted to lose herself in the moment and forget about all the rest. Most of all, she wanted to hold on to the warm glow of love and desire that lit his expression right now.

But even as she watched, the glow dimmed. “The Triad spell didn’t work,” he said in a low rasp.

“We know. The nahwal warned us.” She braced for his withdrawal, the return to business-first Brandt.

Instead, he reached up and brushed his knuckles across her cheek as he had done that night. Until she saw the wetness, she hadn’t realized there were tears.

“The vision . . . ,” he began, then trailed off. Something shifted in his eyes; they heated with molten gold, turning to those of his younger self. “I saw you in town that day. You were coming out of some bar with your friends, but I didn’t see them. I only saw you. I froze for a second, and it was too long—

you were gone. I spent the rest of the day searching—hotels, bars, whatever. By the time it got dark, I was pr—hoping to hell you’d be on the beach for the fireworks . . . and that you would feel what I was feeling.”

Oh, Brandt. New tears stung the corners of her eyes, but she willed them back. “I felt it too. It felt like this.” Knowing she was probably making a mistake, that this was going to hurt when things went wrong again, she leaned in and locked her lips to his.

She didn’t care. She wanted this, wanted him.

He kissed her back, openmouthed, in a blatantly carnal demand that she met and matched, her body vibrating with need and arousal. Heat slapped through her alongside wonder when she found that although it was morning and they were in their bedroom, the moment she closed her eyes, she was right back in the night-dark cave, being held in the arms of a stranger while fireworks lit the sky.

She kissed the stranger who was her husband, not letting herself think of yesterday or tomorrow, of marriage or magic. The only thing that mattered was that moment and the things they were making each other feel. She didn’t care that the feelings were coming from the mirror spell or a backlash of the magic she’d poured into their mated bond to bring him back. She cared only that he was alive, that they had recovered a piece of their shared past . . . and that it was a memory worth holding on to.

Although she didn’t know how their first kiss had ended, she imagined how it had gone from there, putting herself into the fantasy.

When Brandt reversed them in a smooth, powerful move, so he was above her, pressing into her, the yielding mattress at her back became the soft limestone sand at the edge of the subterranean pool.

When she dragged his T-shirt up and off, so she could stroke the hard-edged leanness of his chest and abs, following the feathery line of coarse, wiry hair from the wings of his collarbones to the yielding elastic of his bike shorts, the long, masculine groan she elicited from him echoed off water and stone.

And when they wrestled the remainder of their clothes off and shoved aside the bedding, leaving them twined together, fully naked and exposed, the excitement of skin on skin came with a hint of the forbidden when she imagined what it might have been like to be with him in that cave.

But although the fantasy came quickly, vividly, the man who slid his legs alongside hers was very real. Almost too real. So she held on to the fantasy, using it as a buffer when emotion threatened to break through the heat and make her think when all she wanted to do was feel .

Chasing sensation, she trailed her mouth down the strong column of his neck, pressing lightly with her teeth as she worked inward, headed for the spot just above where his collarbones joined, where a kiss could make him shudder. Before her lips reached that destination, though, he tunneled his fingers through her hair and gripped, anchoring her as he brought their mouths together for a hard kiss that was more heat than finesse, more demand than request.

The move put her off balance, with a sense of “Wait. That’s not what comes next!” But that realization warned her she was falling into a pattern she hadn’t been entirely aware of, one that had grown up in their years together, as she had figured out what he liked and how to give it to him.

This was different, though— he was different. His hands were fast and borderline rough as he cupped her breasts, kneading them and dragging his thumbs across her nipples, making her arch against him, her fingers fluttering against his shoulders as she lost herself momentarily in the pleasure. His mouth shaped hers and she came alive to the scrape of teeth and the slide of tongue when he mimicked the act of love, in and out, until her body throbbed in time with his thrusts.

Her breath went thin; her head spun with knife-edge arousal and she had the feeling of being at the lip of a precipice, balanced between safety and free fall. She didn’t know this lover. Or rather, she suspected she had known him at one time, but they had lost each other along the way. She didn’t know what came next, didn’t quite know where to put her hands or how to move her body as old patterns gave way to nerves and the thrill of experimentation.

Refusing to let herself be taken without leaving her mark on him first, she twined herself around him, seeking the upper hand. He yielded, lying back with a growl that turned to a harsh, rattling groan when she dragged her teeth lightly across his ribs and down, trailing kisses and nips along his torso.

The salt on his skin made her think of the ocean-fed lagoon; the hammer of his pulse reminded her of the heavy thud of fireworks.

He lay still, his muscles locking as she tasted the points of his hip bones and the taut skin between, but when she shifted to move lower, he uncoiled lightning fast; in a blink, she was beneath him once again, trapped under his superior strength and bulk as he looked down at her, his chest heaving, his eyes wild.

She expected him to slow things down. Instead, he grated, “More.” Then he proceeded to give her more, taking it for himself in the process. He kissed her long and deep as he ran one hand down to hook her knee up alongside his hip, so his body settled tighter against hers while his hips moved in a slow, tantalizing rhythm.

Whimper-moaning with mingled need and satisfaction, she dug her fingers into the strong muscles of his back, and lower down, where the long muscles of his quads blended into the hard handfuls of his ass. There, she felt the same near gauntness she’d noticed earlier in his face. He’d lost weight—his muscle mass was the same, but what little fat he’d carried had burned away, distilling his body to its essence. And although he’d been far from soft before, she thrilled to his new hardness, and the fact that he was using his bulk to pin her in place and make her writhe with pleasure.