Stars of Fortune (The Guardians Trilogy, #1)(93)

“I think we wait for dark there. I can ease it back to the marina, but I don’t want to give people a heart attack. An hour’s good.” Sawyer got to his feet. “Since we’ve got time, let’s recharge a little. I need to let my family know the status. Maybe somebody’s got an idea how and where we go from here.”

“And when she comes?” Doyle demanded.

“I’ll bring the wrath of a thousand lights down on her,” Bran said. “From the high point. I can give her fear, and perhaps some pain. And give us time to go where we’re meant to go.”

“I’ll spend some time with the maps,” Sawyer said.

“I’ll make some calls.” Riley followed him out of the room.

As Sasha rose to clear, Annika nudged her aside. “No, I can do this. You could rest.”

“I could, thanks. It might help.”

“You should go with her,” Annika suggested to Bran when Sasha left. “She’s still upset. She stood for you. You should stand for her.”

On a sigh, Bran leaned down to kiss her cheek. “I think you may be the best of us.”

“Go ahead.” Once again, Doyle turned to the door. “I’ll stand watch.”

* * *

When he got upstairs, she stood at the open terrace doors, her back to the room.

“I don’t know why you’re angry with me. I can’t just snap my fingers and know the way you can snap yours.”

“I’m not angry. You’re mistaken.”

“I know what I feel.”

“Maybe it’s your own anger.”

She whirled around. “I can feel yours, and yes, it makes me mad. I’m doing the best I can, the best I can even after watching people I care about being slashed and bitten while you shield me so I barely get a scratch. I won’t be the weak link.”

“You’re the only one who thinks you are, and you’re wrong.”

“Then stop being pissed because I can’t pop out a vision at will. God.” She pressed her fingers to her eyes. “I’m tired of fighting.”

“Good, as fighting’s not at all what I had in mind.”

With a wave of his hand, he slammed the terrace doors, shuttered the glass. The sound was explosive enough to have her taking an instinctive step back as he strode to her.

He dragged her to him, pulling her head back by fisting a hand in her hair. Crushing his mouth to hers with such heat, such force it stole her breath.

“Does that feel angry?”

She pressed a hand on his shoulder as much to push him away as for balance. “Yes.”

Whatever sparked in his eyes seemed beyond fury to her.

“You don’t know the depths of it. I nearly let you drown.”

“Let me— You didn’t—”

“Didn’t I hold you in the dream, wake you from it? Then I set it aside as no more than just that. Then you were gone. Gone. And I couldn’t find you.”

She started to say his name, but he took her mouth again, plundered it. Anger, yes, there was anger in him, and guilt, and over it all a hot and reckless desire that left her reeling.

“Do you think it’s all duty then? All convenience?” He swept her toward the bed. “Know what I feel, what I want, and what, by the gods, I can make you want.”

Could she have stopped him? Was there enough of the man who’d touched her so tenderly in him still to stop the one who tore away her shirt, and ravaged?

She didn’t know. She didn’t care. She didn’t want to stop him.

His hands bruised her, and thrilled her, as he ripped her into the dark where desire was edged with panicky stabs of desperation.

Here was a storm unleashed, and she had no choice but to ride it.

He took, too unhinged to care how roughly. She cried out for him, and hearing the shocked pleasure in the sound only fed the rising hunger. He’d have all of her, and be damned the cost.

The room went to shadows, darkened by his needs. In them, under him, she trembled, she arched, she writhed.

When he plunged into her, he muffled her scream with his mouth. Drove and drove and drove, blind with greed, as helpless against the violence of it as she.

He felt the climax rip through her, felt it tear another cry from her throat, and felt like a savage at the feast.

He pushed for more, and more, until her breath was sobs, until her hands slid limp off his back, until at last that fire gathered like a fist and struck hard and full.

He collapsed on her, stripped raw, his heart pounding, his mind still whirling in the dark.

Then her arms came around him.

His mind began to clear as did the shadows that haunted the room.

He cursed himself, viciously, but struggled to keep his voice easy as he lifted his head. “I hurt you. I— Ah, God.”

Her eyes swam with tears as they stared into his.

“I had no right.” He started to push away, but her arms tightened around him.

“You didn’t hurt me. I’m not crying—or not like that. I didn’t know . . . I never knew anyone could want me like that. That it was possible to want like that. I didn’t think it was duty, Bran, but maybe I did think, at least a little, that part of it—of this—was convenience. I don’t think that now.”

He laid his forehead on hers. “You weren’t breathing. Things had to be done—that’s duty—but all the while, from that moment when I put my hand on your heart and you had no breath to this moment all I could think was I’d lost you. For duty. For a promise made before either of us existed.