Total eclipse of the moo.., p.15
Total Eclipse of the Moon, page 15
"No. You’re not… I won’t do that." He transformed back to his more human shape, but the effort of concentration had him shaking.
"Make me come. Now." On a gasp she added, "Please."
He reached between them to press her clit and move in circles. Moving faster, harder.
She pressed on him to roll him over to his back. Then she was in control of the pace. He smoothed his hands down her to pull her to take him in all the way, intensifying the connection.
That’s all it took. One more thrust and she was done.
Every last ounce of pleasure collected, coiled, and detonated in the center of her body, ripping her into a million pieces. She wasn’t sure what kind of energy came out of her as her body fell apart on top of him.
"Bloody hell," he muttered as he drove harder and harder. His body stiffened and heat ripped down his spine. Euphoria hit hard and he forgot everything as he came deep inside her. A cataclysm far beyond climax tore through him. It blinded him internally and externally with white light.
Literal. Freaking. Fireworks. Of white light.
Afterward, he felt high, as if he’d both smoked weed and eaten hallucinogenic mushrooms at the same time, which he’d done once long ago to try to dull Baku. He didn’t recommend it since he'd drunk walked off the edge of a dock.
She collapsed on top of him. Their foreheads connected and they finally opened their eyes, gazes meeting. They both stared, dazed.
"What was that?" he asked.
"The healing light. That’s pure white magic. I’ve never achieved anything like that before. Takes an authentic connection to create it. I think it confirms this isn’t a spell."
He caught her lips, feeling happy. Happier than he’d felt in forever.
Until reality descended.
To say that had been unlike anything he’d ever experienced during sex in the past was an understatement. It’d been six times more intense. A zillion times more passionate. He wanted it again.
Fight an evil creature and have healing sex afterward to cleanse residual evil? On board with that. Oh, heck yes.
His brain tried to work through the angles to make the two of them work. How to make this happen again?
Her joy vanished. "I’m so sorry. Was I too much? I’ve been told… My husband used to tell me to tone it down. That I tend to get carried away. I’m sorry. You were in control but then I got lost in the feelings, kind of took over, and—"
"What? No." Had he been frowning or something? "You were perfect. I was wishing we had more time to enjoy this and do it again. Anyone who tells you to tone that down is an idiot. Don’t ever do that. That was… I don’t think there are words for it. I’ve never thought there could be actual magic involved with sex. I was just thinking about other things right now."
"Don’t," she whispered. "Whatever’s going on inside your head is what gets us into trouble."
He touched her chin. "We’re way beyond trouble right now, beautiful. And you know it."
"True. But you’re getting caught up in the worries and what ifs. It’ll make you feel regret. We needed this for many reasons. It was something for this moment, not the future. The two of us have been on a collision course with that release. This was only about right now. Not tomorrow or two months from now." She played with the two talismans around his neck. "When’s the last time you came that hard?"
Never. As in truly never ever.
When he didn’t answer she said, "That was a first for me. That was incredible."
"Me too." He couldn’t look at her as his mind churned in overtime.
She forced him to meet her gaze. "We stole nothing from each other. It healed me. It cleansed you of a lot of bad juju. Years of filth." She moved his hand to her stomach, now smooth with no evidence it’d ever been scratched.
Her eyelids closed as she drew in a shaky breath. "For both of us, this was once. Has to be only once. I might be a witch, which means I’m a victim of my passions and driven to express emotion through intense sensations like this, but this was different. This was a first. I haven’t been with anyone in forever. Until you. Something about you… I can’t get enough of it. It surprised me at the bar. Shocks me every moment I’m around you." She ran a hand from his face down his neck and along a shoulder. "I can’t stop touching and wanting you, only you, to have your hands on me. It’s crazy. I’ve never had this kind of attraction with anyone. The complication rests in who we are and what’s coming."
He blew out a long breath and tilted his head backward to rest on the end of the sofa. "I wish things were different."
"I wish there wasn’t an impenetrable roadblock the fates are forcing between us."
"Would you want this to be more?" he asked, desperation lacing his words.
"No good can come from answering that."
"You’re probably right." He let out a pent-up breath. "It’s once." Once in a lifetime.
Chapter Sixteen
The search for workable clothes at the borrowed house resulted in a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt for Shane. She had spare underwear in her backpack but borrowed an oversized shirt. They left a nice note and money for the house owner, not that it’d help the guy’s sense of invasion or ease their mutual guilt over using his place. Yet they did save his world—not that he’d ever know.
Shane looked both rumpled and powerful. The borrowed clothes didn't change the last part. It was a bad look for her peace of mind on the long, mostly silent drive back to the airport and the private plane she'd learned was owned by the Alliance.
She didn’t have a handle on what just happened. Something beyond using sex as healing energy had blown her mind. It hadn’t simply been about getting the sexual crisis between them out of their systems either. This something, an emotion she needed to work to disregard, filled her with a sense of dread and a nervous energy she didn’t know what to do with.
He wasn’t helping the situation by the way he kept looking at her on the drive to the airport. The looks had her chest tightening and body screaming for a repeat that shouldn’t happen.
As if he sensed her mind was stuck on him, he paused his march to the airplane, shifting his vampire-in-a-blanket on his shoulder to glance down, eyebrows raised in question. Midday sun blazed down and the vampire remained locked in day sleep. They hadn’t tried to wake him. She wondered if he could be roused. Vampire biology remained a mystery to her.
She avoided the questions in his gaze by rushing up the stairs while holding down the bottom of the button-down shirt she’d found at the house to keep the wind from catching it. The shirt came to her mid-thigh, but she felt exposed without underwear. On the plane she announced, "We should strip Antonio and leave his clothes here. The necromancer mess might not affect him, but it could affect us."
"I’m changing first. Don’t like wearing another man’s clothes." Shane walked stiffly toward the restroom at the back of the plane. Minutes later he returned in a dark T-shirt and khaki cargo pants.
"You didn’t undress him?" he asked.
She stared at the Antonio bundle still on the floor. "I’m not getting near him. Even asleep I don’t trust him."
"One of us should." His shoulders slumped while he stared at the blanket-wrapped vampire as if everything about the task represented the muck of his life.
She moved toward Shane, pulled by forces she couldn’t control. Once close enough, she looped her hands around his neck and over his shoulders to play with his hair. He banded his arm around her to hold her closer.
She gave him a hug.
"Maddy?"
That nickname was absurdly beautiful when he said it.
"I didn’t know I was looking for this. That I needed this," he whispered as he rested his head against the top of hers.
Don’t listen. Don’t get sucked in. But his hands were hot on her skin. She didn’t want to hear what he was saying. She couldn’t think because if she did, she knew she’d convince herself to stop. She looked up when he lifted off her head, knowing she'd made a huge mistake starting this.
He kissed her hard. His hands unbuttoned her borrowed shirt to move all over her skin. She was losing herself to the feelings again. She had to stop this, not for herself, but for him. Someone had to save his soul. He’d never survive if she didn’t put an end to this, not with her death on the horizon. Shane didn’t seem like the kind of person to go into something like this without involving his whole soul.
Neither of us will survive if I don’t end this.
"Have you ever thought I’m only fucking you so there’s no way you’d let your brothers hurt me or let me reverse this curse since there’s a high risk doing so might hurt me?" The lie tasted bitter and cruel, but she needed to see the wounded look on his face. She needed to stop this before the option to stop was no longer there. Before stronger feelings took hold and they were wrapped tight in the insanity that would decimate one of them when the other died. Death of one of them was inevitable. Her. She thought he understood this.
"You’re not like that," he said. "You said so yourself. Neither of us are users."
Damn her and her honest words. She had trouble lying to Shane.
"How can you be sure?" She cocked her head. "I’m a witch. We’re notorious deceivers, right? You don’t really know me. You just think you do."
"I see you," he said in a tone that caused her more anguish than she ever thought possible. It was the kindness and empathy that undid her. It was the mercy despite everything that happened in their past.
"This is good that we got the attraction out of our systems," she forced out.
His eyes turned turbulent. "One time. Like you said."
After a quick nod she said, "Anything more is a mistake."
"It wasn’t a mistake." But he stepped away from her and reached into an overhead compartment. He patted around, emerging with a T-shirt and latex gloves. He handed her the shirt. "It’s for you. It's clean. Figured you’d want to get out of that. It reeks of that human."
She crushed the shirt to her chest while Shane stripped the vampire to his underwear.
"I'm not…" He shook his head. "Nope. That's as far as I go. I'm kind of surprised he's wearing briefs at all." He rewrapped Antonio in the blanket.
"Do we have to wait for him to wake up in order to pilot this plane?"
"I can pilot. I'll be a minute to dump his clothes outside. Then we'll get out of here."
"Where are we going?"
"An island in the Mediterranean that my mother owns. We'll meet my brothers there."
She changed into the new shirt and sat in a window seat to stare out into the gray day.
Shane paused at the top of the stairs when he re-entered. She sensed he watched her. But she didn’t look up. If she did, he’d know how much she wanted him. This was the way it had to be. Them denying their lust. The potential for them to grow anything stronger needed to be removed and shoved into the impossible category.
I can’t feel this for him. I won’t. It was sex and only that.
Her mind laughed at the lie.
When he disappeared into the cockpit of the private plane without saying a word her gaze went bleary. The thought of never touching or kissing him again crushed her.
She had several hours to pull herself together before they landed somewhere in the Mediterranean to face Shane's mother and the brothers she cursed. That was a lot of hate about to come her way. And a lot of people who couldn't know how much she felt for Shane.
Be tough. Be tough. Be tough.
Pull yourself together.
Easy to say. Hard to do.
Chapter Seventeen
Madeline held an umbrella pointed at an angle in front of her against the wind as she exited the powerboat onto the dock. The private island where they were to meet the rest of the Lanzo clan was located between Athens and Crete. Only a few dwellings stood at the top of a long line of steps up a steep hill. Much of the island remained natural. Yet security cameras were everywhere.
Wind whipped around her and pushed rain under the umbrella. She caught the nylon fabric before it blew backward.
The clouds and rain made it gray to almost dark outside, even though the sun wouldn’t officially go down for another half hour.
"Rains all the time down here this time of year." Shane led from the dock up the winding stairs. "Stay near me when we go inside."
"As if I have anywhere else to be," she muttered. Louder she asked, "You sure Antonio will be safe in the little storage area of the boat in the storm?"
Shane had stuffed him in there wrapped in a blanket. "I think he was coherent when I woke him up and told him where he was."
"He’s practically naked and alone."
"He’s going to be mad we burned his shirt. He loved that one. But I think what I found for him at the tourist shop will make him happy. He’s not completely naked."
She hadn’t seen how he dressed the vampire, but based on his tone, Antonio wasn’t going to be thrilled with his choice.
She rushed to keep up with him as they navigated the slippery stone stairs. At the main entryway, underneath a pergola, she brushed off water that had gotten past the umbrella. She was decently happy with her choice of jeans and the dark sweater she found at a store, but their only shoe options had been beach sandals. Shane tried to get her to go with a gaudy sweatshirt with a bedazzled Parthenon, which was a no in her book. There were moments in your life when you got judged based off appearance, and this was about to be one.
He gave her a soft, reassuring smile before he knocked on the door. Her chest squeezed.
The main house had a contemporary minimalist design with floor-to-ceiling glass windows.
He pointed toward the back of the house. "There’s a swimming pool out there and six or seven bungalows in the woods for staff and guests who want privacy."
"Is this truly your mother’s place or did she borrow it from some rich human?"
"It’s hers. She’s got a lot of places like this. She collects properties that are private and off the beaten path, but extravagant. I don’t know if she’ll be here. We usually have a family dinner on full moon nights." He glanced through the windows, distracted. "I haven’t seen her in a long time."
The last thing she wanted was to meet the mother of the sons she’d cursed. Don’t be here. Don’t be here. "Super bad plan for me to meet her, don't you think?"
"Probably so." He paused at the front door. "I don’t know what to expect, but I’ll keep you safe."
"I know you will." She took his hand and squeezed.
He closed his hand tight around hers.
The front door opened. He dropped her hand.
A lycan with curly, dark hair and a manicured beard dressed in a dove gray blazer over a dark shirt and jeans met them with a sour glare.
"Efrem," Shane said neutrally.
"We were expecting you alone. Not with her." Efrem’s lips thinned as he stared at her without inviting them inside. "We thought you would secure her somewhere before arriving here."
"That’s not what I discussed with Roman."
Had he discussed anything about her with Roman? She thought she’d been with Shane pretty much the entire time and recalled no discussion about her via cell phone.
"I despise surprises." Efrem released a long exhale, dropped his head, and massaged his forehead. Quickly, he glanced back up. "I need your word she won’t cause problems. Should she misbehave, we will eliminate her. She understands this?"
"I’m right here," she said. "Treating me like I’m an idiot or deaf makes me irritable. Then I get unpredictable."
"Not helpful," Shane said through the side of his mouth. "Efrem, this is Madeline Edney. Madeline, this is my mother’s right hand. Kind of a bodyguard, chef du cabinet, and body burier all wrapped into one."
A conceited smirk tweaked Efrem’s lips for an instant.
She whispered back to Shane, "He’s being rude when I’m here of my own accord to try to resolve the situation. Tell him to stop being a jerk."
Efrem cocked his head, waiting for Shane to confirm he understood his request.
"I vouch for her," Shane said.
Efrem nodded. "Follow me, please."
They trekked behind Efrem to the back of the villa in silence.
The house was light and airy, and decorated in neutral tones that emitted an aura of peace. Something had been done to remove negative energy in here. She didn’t smell sage or other burnt herbs. Her eye caught on a few reiki candles she recognized by brand. A light sniff as they walked by and she identified them as the ones for "love" energy.
Efrem cast an evaluating glare her way every few feet as if expecting her to attack.
Three colossal lycan males greeted them in silence from where they stood around a dining table, shooting a truckload of hate in her direction. She recognized each of them not because they’d been introduced but because she’d monitored them over the years. The one with the dark, short-cut hair and glower she recognized at Roman, the eldest and designated leader. He had an earnest, yet deadly, aura that engendered leadership. Next to him, in a ball cap with a sucker in his mouth, was Flynn, the tech and hacker guru, and the one she’d spoken with on the phone earlier. He had piercings across each eyebrow, a nose ring, and several earrings in each ear. That, plus the visible tattoos, gave him a pirate-surfer vibe. The blond with shaggy hair and an edgy, distrustful stare next to Flynn crossed his arms, but she didn’t miss the serrated blade fisted in his right hand. That was Ky, the weapons specialist.
She knew all about them. Studying them from afar had become a hobby. Know thy enemy and all that jazz.
"Why’s she walking free without her hands bound behind her back so she can’t throw a spell on all of us?" Roman crossed his arms and glared at her.
"Would it make you feel better?" She put her hands behind her back and looked up at Shane, expecting him to cuff her with something.
Shane shook his head.
Roman growled, "Shane…"
"She's not going to do anything stupid," Shane said.
Her bracelet glowed.
