Karen Chance: Embrace the Night

His fingertips brushed against my scars with a deep inner thrill (mine, mine) before dropping to my hip, caressing the soft roundness. His hand was on my breast, and I felt my own shivery skin through his fingertips, knew the sensation of my shudder passing down another's spine, felt his joy as my muscles quivered and then relaxed, surrendering completely.

Orgasm was both heavenly and painful when it finally came. It felt like we were breaking through a barrier into each other, falling deep, tearing loose from the last pretense of control. He thrust again and again—no finesse, no thought, just this, the rapture of it. Every touch burned through me, the pleasure that burst inside my veins echoed in his. I couldn't tell which one of us gave that raw, stuttering cry: mine, mine, mine.

Without warning, everything came apart. The sensations, color, heat, pleasure, were so intense that I worried I might never be able to put myself together again, intense enough to hurt and make me beg him to stop, beg him to never stop. It went on and on, waves of pleasure in time with Mircea's unsteady thrusts, sparked harder by the wild shocks that emanated from me, from him, from me, until I couldn't remember how to breathe anymore.

He suddenly stopped, and there was an odd look in his eyes, surprised and a little broken, but mostly amazed. I was pretty amazed too, because I'd never made anyone look like that before. He stayed there for a long moment, staring at me, before rolling off, and pulling me back against him, his chest rising and falling harshly as he breathed.

He pulled the coverlet up over both of us, making a warm little cocoon. It was easy to just lie there, watching the nearest candle gutter and wax dribble over the holder. It finally went out, leaving the room dim, shadowed and strangely cozy. And it was while we lay there in a tangle of limbs, unsure quite where one body left off and the other began, that I felt it. Nothing dramatic, nothing extreme, just a small snap. But suddenly I was entirely back in my own skin again.

The geis was gone.

"Dulceata?" Mircea breathed. And I felt it as soon as he said my name, an even, soft hum of something that recognized me and welcomed me like it had known me forever. But it wasn't a spell. It was the way I'd always felt around him, something that had been masked by the geis and its constant low, stirring heat, its hunger and desperation and pain. This was less overpowering but deeper, more persistent and sweet. I kissed him softly and it tasted amazing, warm and familiar and home.

"Are you all right?" I asked, but I knew the answer even before he smiled slightly and opened his eyes. Long lashes dipped over too-sharp cheekbones, but I felt the same weightless flutter in my stomach as always when that gaze met mine.

"I will be."

Compared to all my problems, saving the life of one man didn't seem like much of an accomplishment. So why was I suddenly grinning like an idiot? Maybe because, somewhere along the line, I'd learned to take my triumphs where I could get them. Tomorrow there would be trouble and danger and pain, and I didn't know if I would be smart enough or strong enough or capable enough to handle it all, especially now that I understood what I was up against. But I knew one thing: today, finally, something had gone right.

"The other you will be back soon," I said, hoping he was lucid enough to understand. "And I told him too much. He can't be allowed to keep those memories."

"No one can erase a master's mind," he said hoarsely. "I doubt even the Consul herself could do it."

"But if you remember, you'll try to change things—"

"I did. I searched for the mage, but never found him, and returned here only to discover that you were also gone. Afterwards, I reconsidered what you had said, and tried to break the geis before it had a chance to be doubled, but the war intervened. And once it did, there was nothing to be done but see this through to the end."

I stared at him in disbelief. "But you didn't know what happened after you left! You didn't know we succeeded!"

"I knew you. I could not believe that you would leave without completing your mission. I had to trust that you'd found a way to break it."

"That's why you sent me away," I said, my head reeling. "Why you wouldn't let Rafe bring me to you."

"I did not want to change this future," he agreed. "When he went to you despite my orders, and you came to me…For a brief moment, I thought it was over. But then I remembered: I had not yet been imprisoned, your clothes were wrong, and there was no snare on the bedside table. It was too soon. It was the closest I came to breaking."

I couldn't imagine it, that solitary, agonizing wait, not even knowing for certain that we would win in the end, that it wouldn't all be for nothing. I didn't think I could have done it. I didn't understand how he had.

Before I could say anything, the door burst open and Pritkin dashed in. His coat was missing, half his potions were gone and he had a gun in each hand. I wondered how he'd managed to get the door open. He kicked it shut behind him. "Did it work?" he demanded.

"Yes, no thanks to you!"

"No thanks to me? How else would you have gotten that creature out of here?"

"You planned this?"

"Of course!"

"But…what if I'd listened to you? What if I hadn't dared—"

Pritkin gave me his old impatient look. "You never listen to me!"

"That's not the point!"

Someone put a fist through five inches of Romanian oak and almost grabbed him before he could skip away. "We can discuss this later," he said quickly. "Get us the hell out of here!"

I gazed at Mircea, still feeling stunned. "You might have hoped I'd be successful," I said, "but you couldn't have known—"

"I knew you," he repeated. "Therefore I knew how it ends."

I grabbed both their hands, just as the door exploded off its hinges. "How it begins!" I said, and shifted.