Jessica Andersen - Dawnkeepers

She was in the sacred chamber with Nate; but she was in the sky too, in the realm of the gods. She saw them, impossibly beautiful, impossibly colorful. She was one of them, yet not, just as she was herself, yet not.

Then the shield spell was gone and she was free to move. She didn’t go far, though, only enough to roll with Nate and rise above him. He was naked now, and so was she, their sodden clothing piled off to the side. The earth and sky combined within her for a second, letting her see his face, letting her see his reservations and his needs. Her heart cracked and bled at the knowledge that he didn’t want this, that he was sacrificing himself for a cause he didn’t fully embrace, compelled by the magic rather than choice.

Perhaps he saw her sadness, maybe just saw her hesitate; either way, he reached up, rising up to meet her, to cup her face in his hands and look into her eyes. “It’s okay, princess,” he said, and for the first time in many months, maybe ever, the term didn’t sound like an insult coming from him. It sounded like an endearment. Like a love word. “We’ll make it work.”

“Yes.” Somehow they would, she knew. There was no other option.

Letting herself sink into that promise, she touched her lips to his and let him guide her down, let his hard length fill her, stretch her until he was seated to the hilt. The feel of him inside set off a chain reaction of pleasure, each pulse showing a different color behind her eyelids as she let them drift shut.

“Lexie,” he said, his voice ragged on the syllables, his palms bracketing her hips, his fingertips digging into her skin.

“Yes,” she said again, because there didn’t seem to be anything more to say as she leaned over him, shifting so the sensitive tips of her breasts brushed against the hard contours of his chest and her lips aligned with his as she began to move against him.

He countered the rhythm with his hands and hips, bringing new pleasure, new colors that wrung a moan from her as the ribbons of light spiraled inward, contracting around her body in a swirl of heat and power, pleasure and madness.

It was as though she were hovering above them, locked in a prism, looking down on them both, locked together in sex and madness. But she was also within herself looking out, seeing Nate’s eyes hard and hot on hers, feeling the clench of his hands, the thrust of his body. Then the world spun as he grabbed her and rolled them both and rose above her to quicken the pace, pis-toning against her as his eyes went distant and glazed.

Can you see the colors? she wanted to ask, but didn’t, because it was all she could do to hang on and lock her legs around him and rise up to meet him halfway, driving the pleasure higher, and higher still.

The orgasm grabbed her and held her poised at the precipice for a long moment. Blue and green flashed through her, and orange-red. Then Nate’s eyes sharpened and locked on hers, and it wasn’t about the colors anymore, wasn’t about the god-power that flowed through her, at least not entirely. It was about the two of them, about the connection they’d always found through the sex, if nowhere else.

He thrust fully into her and stayed there, pressing against her inside and out, and sending her over the edge.

She arched and cried his name as the throbbing pulses swept her up, tightening her around him and drawing him in, holding him fast. There were no more colors, no more god; there were only the two of them and the feel of his hard, slick flesh and the tight bands of his arm as he held her, pressed his cheek against hers, and cut loose with a low, rattling groan that didn’t sound like her name.

They held on to each other, shuddering and bucking, gripped by a force that simultaneously anchored them and sent them beyond themselves.

Eventually the pulses slowed, then faded to echoes, to rainbow tremors that floated through her, warning her that everything had changed. The kernel of power was gone from the back of her brain. In its place was a hum of connection, not to the barrier, but someplace beyond, some one beyond.

Gods, she thought, then corrected herself. Goddess. Because there was no doubt in her mind that she was connected to a female entity, one that was lush and bountiful, a goddess of the sky, the light, and all the colors of the rainbow. Ixchel, she thought, the name a soft sigh in itself.

As if aware of her thoughts, Nate levered himself away from her, rolling onto his side and propping himself on one elbow, gloriously male, gloriously naked and unashamed. His medallion glinted in the firelight as he took her right hand and turned it palm up in his own, baring the place where her sacrificial scar had already closed, the healing impelled by the magic. “Show me,” he said softly.

She didn’t know where the word came from, or how he knew to ask, but she said, “Kawak.”

Rainbow. And a glimmering colored light appeared in her hand.

The magic didn’t rise in her, but rather flowed from the sky to her outstretched fingers, through the conduit connection at the back of her brain, kindling a glow that started as a firefly pinprick and quickly expanded to the size of a softball, then flickered from white through each of the colors of the rainbow, slowly at first, then cycling faster and faster until the hues melded together once again, going blue-white.

“It’s beautiful.” He closed his fingers over hers, folding her hand shut and extinguishing the magic.

“But not very practical,” she said, starting to get a trapped, panicky feeling at knowing Strike had wanted a war god. “Pretty lights won’t do much against the Banol Kax .”

“Don’t,” he said, tightening his grip. “Not yet. For right now, just enjoy it.” He shifted and touched his lips to hers, murmuring, “Let’s enjoy this.”

“We can’t.” She held him off, though she was strongly tempted to give in to the heat, to the one thing that had always been easy and right between them. “We have to go back.”

She didn’t question whether they could return to the others, or how. She could feel the power inside; it would undoubtedly decrease some as the barrier thickened with the passing of the eclipse and the skyroad was once again separated from the earth. But for now, for this moment of magic, she had no limits.

She and Nate pulled on their soggy clothes, putting themselves back together as best they could. She tried not to think about the others seeing them, and knowing what had just happened. But sacrifice and sex were the cornerstones of the magic, particularly the Godkeeper ritual. There was no shame in it.

Even as those thoughts swirled in Alexis’s brain, she felt the presence of the goddess, her quiet reassurance, not in words but in a wash of love that told her she could do this, she could. Knowing it, believing it, she turned and touched her lips to Nate’s. And the gods, feeling them together, sent them back to the antechamber to be reunited with the Nightkeepers . . . bringing the rainbow goddess, Ixchel, with them.

Nate told himself he was braced for the stares, told himself it didn’t matter what the others knew, or thought they knew. What was important was what’d just happened to—and between—him and Alexis, and how they went on from there. But when the gods zapped the two of them back to the antechamber and all eyes snapped to them, he realized he wasn’t really braced for the attention . . . and he didn’t have a frickin’ clue where he and Alexis were headed.

A glance at his forearm showed that he’d been tagged with a new glyph he had to assume was the goddess’s mark. There was no jun tan , though. No sign that they were officially mated, which was a relief.

The power—shimmering gold and rainbows—cut out when they landed, leaving him and Alexis swaying on their feet. He looped an arm around her waist so she wouldn’t stumble and fall, and felt the familiar kick of heat that always came when he touched her. Only the heat was subtly different, stronger and richer, and laced with undertones of color and temptation.