Jessica Andersen - Nightkeepers

‘‘I don’t know.’’ He shifted so he could look into her eyes. ‘‘Which would be easier to hear?’’

She exhaled. Nodded. ‘‘Yeah. Doesn’t really matter, does it? It’s just . . . I can’t help thinking that if I’d gotten the darkness I could’ve handled it better. I was older and stronger; I should’ve—’’

‘‘Hush.’’ He pressed his lips to her forehead. ‘‘What’s done is done. We go on from here.’’

She said, ‘‘I don’t suppose any of the trainees got time travel as a talent last night.’’ It was both a wistful thought and an offer to change the subject.

He gave a rumble of sad amusement. ‘‘Unfortunately that’s not in our skill set. As of last night, I have one fire starter, one invisible, a seer, a spell caster, and seven warriors. Sven got a talent mark nobody’s ever seen before, and I’m the local teleport.’’

‘‘And the guy in the apartment?’’

‘‘Red-Boar got him fixed and wiped his memories.’’ He paused. ‘‘Anna came back with me. I don’t know how long she’ll stay, but she’s here now.’’

‘‘I’m happy for you,’’ Leah said, feeling a catch in her throat. ‘‘Brothers and sisters should stick together.’’ Then, knowing they couldn’t stay curled up in the royal suite forever—tempting though that might be on many levels—she said, ‘‘What happens now?’’

He was silent for a moment, then said, ‘‘I need to talk to Anna, and see where her head is at. She got her mark on the way through the barrier, but an itza’at ’s sight can be a tricky talent. If she’s not committed to the magic, it won’t work.’’ He paused. ‘‘Then I need to sit down with her, Jox, and Red-Boar and lay out your situation. ’’

‘‘My ‘situation,’ ’’ she repeated. ‘‘Is that what we’re calling it?’’ Acid burned at the back of her throat. ‘‘I suppose it does sound better than, ‘We’ve got two options: Option one, I die before the equinox and the god goes free, or option two, the god and I both die during the equinox and take the skyroad with us, meaning that there will be no Godkeepers ever, and pretty much ensuring the end of the world as we know it.’ ’’

He tightened his arms around her. ‘‘You’re not alone in this, okay? We’re going to find a way.’’ He sounded angry, but not with her, she knew. With the situation. The whole miserable, sucky situation they’d found themselves in.

She pushed away and levered herself up on her elbows, so she was braced above him looking down. ‘‘And if we can’t?’’

‘‘We will,’’ he said, and there was such certainty in his voice that she was tempted to believe him.

But saying something didn’t make it the truth, even if the guy saying it was magic.

‘‘Your duty is to the gods first,’’ she said, ‘‘then your people and mankind. I’m pretty far down on that list.’’

‘‘Trust me, I know what the king’s writ says.’’ He reached up and cupped her jaw in his palm, and she could feel the ridges of the sacrificial scars from the night before, rough against her skin. ‘‘But you said it yourself— this is a new day, with modern men and women playing the role of Nightkeeper. Some of the old ways simply don’t apply now. Maybe it’s time to make up a few new rules.’’

Tightening his grip, he urged her down, his eyes darkening with sensual intent.

Heat speared through her. Lust and frustration, her constant companions since she’d come to Skywatch, rose to the surface and her skin prickled with awareness, with anticipation.

But she stilled as the reality crashed in on her, chilling her to her soul. ‘‘You’re in bed with me because you think there’s no point in our staying away from each other, that you’re going to have to—’’

‘‘No,’’ he interrupted, tightening his fingers on her jaw before she could pull away. His eyes went dark, his voice rough. ‘‘No, I don’t think that. I won’t think that. But last night when the ajaw-makol went after you, I realized that it doesn’t matter whether we’re lovers or not. You’re already too important to me. Losing you wouldn’t just be the greatest sacrifice; it’s simply not an option.’’

‘‘Oh,’’ Leah said, the word coming out on a long, shuddering breath. Just ‘‘oh,’’ because what else was there to say? Longing coalesced inside her, a bone-deep desire to be the woman who could love him. Scrambling to find distance and reason, she said, ‘‘It’s the god. Kulkulkan. He’s trying to reunite himself on earth by bringing the Godkeeper of his light half together with her Nightkeeper mate.’’

‘‘Maybe, maybe not. But more than that, this is us.’’ He shifted and sat up so they were eye-to-eye when he said, ‘‘It’s just you and me right now, Blondie. What do you say?’’

There was a ton left to say, she knew, a whole list of reasons why their being together complicated far more things than it simplified.

But in that moment, alone with him in the glassed-in solarium with the late-summer sun splashing down around them through privacy-tinted panels, it didn’t seem to matter that a future looked damn near impossible. What mattered was the two of them together. And the question that hung in the air between them. What do you say? he’d asked, and she had no answer for that, because ‘‘yes’’ was too simple a word for what was between them.

So she leaned in. And touched her lips to his.

The kiss detonated something inside her. The first touch of tongues brought heat screaming, and need.

And rationality was lost. There was only desire.

They’d kissed before. She already knew his taste and the feel of him against her. But it was different this time—there was an edge of desperation when he slid his hand up to fist in her hair.

Heat flared, ripe and dangerous, and need was sharpened with the knowledge that their days were numbered.

Suddenly the sun was too bright, the room too open, the sparse furnishings too modern. Leah’s heart beat with the rhythm of wooden drums, and that golden place inside her where the dying god lived had her rising to her feet and stretching out a hand to him. ‘‘Come with me.’’

He stood without a word and followed her to the private temple.

The torches flared as they stepped inside, reflecting their images from the black stone mirror—Leah tousled and bed-ready in a T-shirt that hit the tops of her thighs, Strike looking dark and forbidding and dead sexy in all black.

Then she turned and hiked herself up on the altar as she had done before. Only this time when he moved up against her, so her knees bracketed her hips and they were eye-to-eye, there was no thought of holding back or turning back. There was only the heat spiraling up toward madness as they kissed, straining together.

Leah moaned, the small, vulnerable sound escaping before she could call it back.

‘‘That’s it,’’ he said thickly, nipping lightly at the side of her neck. ‘‘Tell me where and how and I’m there for you, Blondie.’’

He rocked his hips against her, creating torturous friction. She arched into him, offering herself to him even as she tugged at the hem of his T. ‘‘Hope you weren’t too fond of this.’’ She grabbed a corner of the fabric between her teeth, bit down, and used her hands to yank the material apart.

The shirt tore neatly up the middle, all the way to the reinforced collar, which she parted with a quick jerk, leaving the fabric hanging off him on either side, baring his heavily muscled torso and the faint line of masculine hair that ran down the center of his ripped abdomen and disappeared beneath the waistband of his jeans.

When their eyes met, she grinned. ‘‘Sorry about the shirt.’’