Chapter Thirty-One

The Reveal

 

Rhys was no longer Rhys…not really.

“Don’t look at my body,” he said. “Not yet.”

He took off his clothes, and even as I stood, pitiful and shaking, my fingers too numb to take off my own clothes, he pulled them off me.

“The clothes will burn you,” he said, as I kept my gaze averted from his form.

The tall pole lights competed with the moon to shine the brightest upon his body, to tempt me to catch a glimpse of him, but I wouldn’t risk it.

“Trinity,” he whispered. “It will be beyond anything you’ve ever felt. Don’t be afraid.”

I tried to laugh, but it came out as a weak sob. Don’t be afraid? “Fuck you,” I said. “I’m going to be terrified.”

He threw his head back, and no matter what else was going on, he had his joy. It was time. His time.

After an eternity of restraint, it was time.

It was a night of change. For everyone.

He slammed his body against mine, and his hands at my back kept me from falling. He slanted his head and took my lips, and I wrapped my arms around his body, even as I began to burn from the extreme heat of him.

Then, everything changed.

His heat became ice. His breath became smoke. His muscles bunched, his voice rumbled deep inside his chest, and even as his fingers tightened painfully on my arms, the pain became something more.

The night lit up with an ancient magic, a primal power, an unspeakable knowledge. I felt pavement beneath my bare back, and then he was on top of me.

He had no time to ready me, but it didn’t matter. He was right.

I was ready.

So ready.

And in that instant of acceptance, he became everything to me.

I slid my hand down his body and wrapped my fingers around the stiff, iron-hard heat of him, and as I squeezed, he released something that wasn’t a cry, wasn’t a scream, but was something in between.

Release.

Freedom was so close.

He was no longer burning me.

He was just turning me on.

It didn’t come slowly, either. Lust roared over me and suddenly I was engulfed in it, like fire, like an unimaginable fire.

Maybe I’d be ashamed later, but right then there was no battle. There were no dying humans or supernaturals.

There was only Rhys Graver.

And whatever he was becoming.

He buried his mouth against my breast and plunged into me, and at first, it was like being impaled by something large, hot, and alien. Something not meant to be inside a person. But the sensation of it changed almost instantly into pleasure so extreme I wasn’t sure if it was better than the pain or not.

Rhys pumped his hips, and each thrust was deeper, harder, and hotter than the last. He moaned, once, and the sound slid into my ear, somehow vulnerable, just as he was.

The hulking, dark figure of a rifter loomed suddenly over his back but I couldn’t care. I was drowning in delight, floating in thick, sweet ecstasy, and there was no fear. Only sex.

I heard a roar, I thought, and caught a glimpse of the half-giant as he slammed his fist into the side of the rifter’s head.

They were gone as suddenly as they’d appeared, and it was like they’d never been there at all. The encounter was just a blip on my radar, there and gone, a sort of realization that couldn’t quite break through the walls of power Rhys was building.

I felt his curse begin to shatter.

He didn’t ease me toward an orgasm. The orgasm had begun the moment he’d plunged into me—I was climaxing, but there was no ending to it.

I planted my heels on the ground and met his thrusts, slamming into him, reaching for something even more, though more might kill me.

And then, something shifted. Something changed—not in me, but in him. I screamed as I felt his hot power, and then, I found the more I’d been reaching for.

As his curse shattered, so did I. There was a pause, a hesitation, as everything was suspended for one brief heartbeat, and then it, whatever it was, crashed over me like an enormous wave, carrying me into oblivion.

I would have screamed if I could have.

Not even with Amias had I felt so much power. Not ever had I felt so much power. It shouldn’t have existed. And perhaps it should never have touched me. But it did.

It spilled out of me, out of Rhys, and it overflowed into the streets like lava from a volcano, sweeping humans, rifters, and vampires along with it. For a moment, there was no fighting.

Rhys began to pull himself out of me, and the extraction seemed endless, the pleasure of the withdrawing as exquisite as the insertion had been.

I lay sprawled on the ground, unable to move, unable to think, very nearly, as wave after wave of pleasure raced through me.

I stared up at him, my fingers between my legs as the pleasure became more earthly, more comprehensible with his withdrawal. Extreme, oh yes, but it was more of a human’s lust and less of a mystical power’s influence.

Just…sex. Sex like he would give me, eventually.

As I watched, he morphed further into something huge and looming and dangerous, something that would surely crush me, kill me, burn me.

I didn’t try to run or hide or even close my legs. I continued to shudder with the effects of his body on mine. In mine. And not even his coming into his power could stop them.

He blotted out the moon as he continued to grow. To lengthen, broaden, expand. I still could not comprehend what I was seeing. What he was doing.

What he was becoming.

“God,” I screamed, and finally, I got my wits back. I tried to get up, slipped, tried again, and ended up just rolling my way across the ground because I had to get away from whatever it was Rhys had shifted into.

I couldn’t see. He was a huge, dark shape, growing larger by the second, his voice screeching like…like a fucking dinosaur. Rhys was no longer there.

And now I knew what Amias had meant. He hadn’t thought Rhys might kill me breaking his curse. He’d thought Rhys might kill me afterward, when he became his animal.

His beast.

He threw his head back, roared the sky, then shot half a mile of scarlet flames into the sky. And that lit up the night.

I saw him.

“Not possible,” I said. “Not possible.”

But he moved to the right, almost sluggishly, and the fence gave beneath his body. He gave another roar, and rifters and vampires alike began creeping toward him, looking on with as much shock as I was.

“What the fuck,” Angus said, sliding from the darkness, naked and bloody, “is that?”

“Angus,” I cried. “Get me out of here!”

He plucked me off the ground, his stare still on Rhys, and held me against his chest. “What the fuck is that?” he asked again.

“That’s Rhys,” I murmured. “Rhys is a…he’s a—”

“A dragon,” Angus said. “Rhys is a goddamn dragon.”