He brought her palm to his lips, using his tongue to trace the mound at the base of her thumb. It brought back the memory of him doing the same, and much more, between her thighs, and she lifted her hips, rubbing herself against him with the same sensual languor. “Keep doing that and you’ll never get rid of me,” she teased.

His long fingers found and traced the outline of her mother’s cross under her shirt. “I will never leave you, Christian. From now until the end, whatever may come, we will face it together.”

She put her hand over his. “And when it’s my time to die?”

“There is nothing in this world for me if you are gone from it.” He touched his brow to hers. “You will have to take me with you.”

“No argument here.” She curled her arms around his neck. “We’ll never have to be alone again, here or in the next place.”

They slowly unwrapped each other from their clothes, giving gifts of kisses to the skin they exposed. She could touch him anywhere she wanted, with her lips and hands and tongue, and there was so much of him she wanted to learn and know and pleasure: the elegant stretch of his back, the long muscles of his thighs, the sexy dent of his navel.

Everything about her seemed to fascinate him, too. He kissed every inch of her breasts, tracing their contours with his tongue and lavishing suckling tugs of his mouth on the peaks. He rolled onto his back so he could stroke her from shoulders to bottom with his palms; she spread her thighs to do the same with her slick folds against his shaft.

She couldn’t keep her hands away from his penis; the velvety texture of his foreskin excited her as much as the length and hardness of his erection. Playing with him as he touched her made her feel powerful and dizzy; she could taste her racing heartbeat when she put her mouth to his.

They came together on their sides, face-to-face as he draped her thigh over his hip and she guided him to her. She wanted to feel every inch of him coming into her, and kept her fingers curled around him as he pressed deep. The sensation made her eyelids droop and her lips part; she’d never felt more a part of anything than this, than with him. It shook her, it completed her.

He looked at her with the same astonished relief. Now I know why it was you, why it was always you. This is where we belong.

Jamys moved, flexing and rubbing himself inside her as he tested this new symmetry they had discovered. The slick tightness of her body gloved every inch of him.

She could feel the nudge of his cockhead as he forged deeper, and the tiny, thrilling burst of sensation when he touched the mouth of her womb. Her clit pulsed as he drew out and the bulge of his shaft glanced it; his eyes burned into hers as he pulled her closer to work against it.

Chris felt her whole body tighten, and she clutched at him, rolling her hips as she tried to get more of him. “Jamys, please, please, I need . . .”

“What do you need?” he murmured as he splayed his hands over her bottom, and worked his cock in and out of her folds. “Tell me, my lovely one.”

Chris rolled over, dragging him with her, groaning as he held back. “I need you. Please. Give me more. Give me all of it.”

He pushed inside her in one long, slick motion, his hands easing her thighs back as he looked down at the junction of their bodies. “Look at how beautifully you take me.”

Chris glanced down, and the sight of his penis buried to the hilt in her pussy made her tremble on the verge of orgasm. “Oh, God, I’m going to come.”

“Yes, you are.” He put his thumb to her clit, circling it as he drew out, and then stroking it as he thrust back in. “Now you give it to me while I fuck you.”

Chris shattered around him, her body arching up from the mattress as the night became a soundless, endless whirlwind of sensation. She could hear him whispering into her hair, his hands playing over her as he plunged in and out of her, pushing her through the agonizing satisfaction to more hunger, more need.

She saw the narrow splinter of his pupils and the sharp glitter of his fangs before he turned his face away. He needed more than sex from her, and it felt completely natural to reach up to pull him to her throat.

“Take it,” she urged when he kept his mouth closed. “Show me how it feels. I want to know.”

Jamys muttered something before his lips parted and he struck, his fangs piercing her flesh as his mind opened to hers. She exploded with him, feeling the dark thrill of his satisfaction as he drank from her and filled her over and over with the cool rush of his semen.

Chris came back to herself to find her arms and legs entwined around him. “I don’t know about you, but I thought the grand tour of the stars was kind of unnecessary. I’d have been fine with orbiting the moon.”

“I did not think to consult you,” Jamys said gravely as he touched the curve of her throat. “We must try it again.”

“Okay, but I’m only giving you sixty or seventy years to get it right.” She tucked her chin in to see the two puncture wounds on the curve of her shoulder. “It doesn’t hurt. I thought it would.” She saw his frown, and added, “Oh, don’t. Honestly, I loved my first bite.”

“No Kyn has ever . . . ?” When she shook her head, he brought his thumb to his mouth, biting into it before pressing it to the marks he’d left on her. “We must take care, my beautiful girl. When I am inside you, I cannot think clearly. I cannot think at all.”

“Technically that’s my problem.” She offered him a prim smile. “According to proper protocol, when a tresora consents to provide her lord with intimate pleasures, she must first provide him with a sufficient quantity of stored blood so that the temptation of thrall and rapture may be avoided.”

He smiled a little. “That sounds like Burke.”

“You would not believe how red his face got while he was saying it.” She ran her hand down his arm, and linked her fingers with his. “So did I please you, my lord?”

“You know that you have already ruined me for all other females,” he chided.

“I know, I’m the most amazing chick in the universe, and you are so, so lucky to have me, and maybe one day I’ll even believe that.” And get over her need for constant reassurance, which had to be annoying. “Just tell me anyway.”

“I have no words for it. I have never felt such love.” Jamys brought her hand up to his heart to press her palm over the slow, steady beat. “You please me with but one look, and arouse me with but a single touch. Tonight I felt you in my very soul.” He bent his head to say the rest against her lips. “I love you, Christian.”

As he kissed her, Chris looked up to see the koi swirling through the water overhead, their brilliant white and orange scales flashing with their movements. The blue water shimmered, darkening to a haunting emerald green as a shadow stretched across the ceiling, and the fish darted away.

Jamys stiffened, rolling away from her to grab his head with his hands. Through clenched teeth he said, “No. You cannot. I will not.”

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Chris sat up and reached for him, only to feel him go limp under her hands. “Jamys?” He didn’t move, not even when she shook him.

She grabbed her clothes, pulling them on as she tried to think of what could have caused this. It wasn’t thrall; he hadn’t taken enough blood from her for that. He wasn’t injured, either.

“I don’t know what to do,” she told him, more terrified than she’d ever felt. “I’m going to see if there’s a phone and call Burke.”

A woman stepped into the bedroom. For a split second she looked like a frizzy-haired witch wearing a potato sack, and then she changed into Lucan.

She’s some kind of shape-shifter. Chris smelled a strange, sharp honey scent that wasn’t jasmine, and felt confused as she stepped backward. “Leave him alone.”

“He is not our concern.” Lucan smiled sadly as two men flanked him, both holding pistols and copper-clad knives. “We came to find you.”

Chapter 17

Lucan opened his eyes to his own face, and slowly turned his head to see the mirror-world around him. His form and features appeared in glass walls fashioned to resemble the interior of his stronghold: a silent army of himself. The only difference between them appeared to be the fact they all wore gloves while his own hands lay bare.

A frigid breath of air and a tinkling sound made him glance up. Overhead silk threads held suspended a thousand jagged crystal blades, each sharp edge clad in a honed ribbon of copper.

The nightlands were ever an enigma, but for once the message they delivered was quite plain: If he made one wrong move, if he lost his temper, he would be cut to pieces.

“But I am so easily persuaded to violence,” one of his images mentioned.

“Too many have died beneath my hand,” another said.

“Or it may be that I am dead already,” a third offered. “And this is my hell.”

“Hell indeed,” Lucan murmured, “if I must listen to myself prattle on for all eternity.”

A fourth twin offered him a benign smile. “For all your icy wit, cunning schemes, and razor tongue, my lord, you are a simple soul.” He gestured to one of the mirrors, where the image melted into Lucan as a boy, cowering before his mother, Gwynyth, in a rage. “Unwanted.” Gwynyth’s golden charms darkened into the remote beauty of Frances, the first mortal he had loved. “Unloved.” Frances grew younger and tougher, her gown shrinking into one of Samantha’s ugly suits. “Unworthy.”

Lucan saw a flash of light in front of his nose, and glanced down as the falling crystal dagger smashed between his feet. “And now, unbelievably bored. Is this pathetic hothouse truly the best you can do?”

Another shimmering blade fell, but before it could bury itself in Lucan’s arm, a towering figure dressed as a monk lifted a heavily scarred hand and caught it. “You will attend to me now, boy.”

Lucan laughed, and the sound sent a shock wave through the crystal hanging over them. “I am neither a boy nor your attendant.”