Moonshadow (Moonshadow #1)(93)

Her breath came in quiet sobs. He put a shaking hand over her mouth. Hush, he said fiercely. This is just ours. Just yours and mine.

Blocking everyone else out. Nothing else mattered. Pride, hurt feelings, expectations, they all burned away until only they were left.

Male. Female.

Nikolas. Sophie.

He thrust into her until he reached a hard, driving rhythm, and she rode him as best she could. Reaching between their bodies, he stroked her gently at the place where they were joined. When he found her clitoris with the ball of his thumb, she was so primed to come it punched through her like a storm with gale force winds.

Shaking all over, she whimpered into his muffling hand as she climaxed until the peak came at such a height, she couldn’t take any more of it, and she jerked his thumb away.

They held together, joined at the groin, in the great room’s chill silence. The only sound she could hear was the quiet seesaw of their ragged breathing.

Then he sat up, wrapped his arms around her, and flipped their positions so that she lay underneath him again. He clamped tight around her, one arm around her hip, the other at the base of her neck, holding her clenched against the entire length of his body. It was a taut, uncomfortable pose. She could barely move. All she could do was grip him around the hips with her legs and wrap her arms around his torso.

He was still inside her, still hard and big, and now she was so sensitized every slight movement sent shock waves through her body.

Then he began to move again, hard, quick jabs that rocked her to the core. She really, truly didn’t think she could take any more, but then she took it, still in that extreme silence until tears welled and flowed out the corners of her eyes.

She came again two more times before he was finally through. Toward the end, all she could do was hide her face in his neck and cling while the storm of his own making shuddered through them.

The Wyr mating urge might not force him to stay with her. He might still be able to walk away. But no matter how she tried to lie to herself, she was no longer certain she had that ability.

This isn’t a cold, she thought. This isn’t the flu. This is a soul-destroying illness that will tear me to pieces before it kills me.

Afterward, he gathered her against his chest, turning his head so that his cheek lay against the crown of her head. Resting against his shoulder, she fell into another black pit, only this one was without dreams. He had taken the scorched earth approach and blasted everything else out of her mind, leaving only him.

She slept long and hard, and when she woke up, she was alone in the bed. Her bladder was full and her stomach uncomfortably empty. Filtered sunlight from the iron-framed, antique glass windows at one end of the great hall cast an indirect, thin light over the top of the crates and boxes and created deep shadows in her tiny bedroom.

Sighing, she curled on her side and hugged a pillow to her chest. He could have stayed long enough to kiss her good-bye in the morning. They both might know what this is, but there were courtesies.

Finally her physical discomfort grew so much she was forced to dress. She dragged on the same jeans and sweater she had put on after the stormy battle last night and tried to fingercomb the tangles out of her hair. The curls sprang out everywhere in a mad, chaotic halo, but she felt too disheartened to dig for her comb and hair bands to force it into more order.

She had a feeling she looked like something a cat might have dragged down an alley before abandoning it, deeming it too pathetic for its attention.

There was an unfortunate metaphor in that.

As she sat on the bed to pull on her Doc Martens, she saw a bottle of nail polish sitting on the bedside table. Nikolas had returned what was left to her. Picking the bottle up, she shook it. As she had feared, very little remained in the bottle.

She still had the spells she had painted on her arms from yesterday afternoon, minus the one confusion spell she had used on the Hound, but those would peel off and degrade. After that, she might be able to cast one more spell, maybe two, and then her little made-up arsenal would be depleted.

Sighing, she tucked the bottle into the bedside table’s shallow drawer, lifted the privacy curtain, and stepped out into the communal area. Several of the men sat at the table, drinking tea and talking. The smell of bacon hung in the air.

As she appeared, they turned to look at her. There was a moment of silence.

Then Rowan said, “I mean this in an entirely platonic way, but that crazy hair of yours has got to be one of the sexiest things I’ve ever seen.”

“Do you have a death wish, mate?” Cael said to him.

Rowan lifted his hands. “I said I meant it platonically!”

Warmth washed over her cheeks. Nikolas stood with Braden and Ashe, over by the windows between the Mini and the Harley, looking out. He didn’t turn at the exchange.

She said telepathically to Gawain, I’m about to start tap dancing here. I know you’ve promised that either you or Nikolas would stay with me at all times, but you’re all here in the great hall. I think I’m perfectly safe to go to the bathroom by myself.

He frowned. That will probably do for now.

She told the group, “Privacy alert. I’m going to take a few necessary moments in the courtyard, so I’d appreciate it if everybody stayed here until I got back.”

There. Now that she drew attention to it, everybody would be obligated to stay in the great hall.

Gawain told her, “There’s soap and a bucket of water on the bench. It’ll be cold, but you can have a bit of a wash too, if you like. We have a couple of solar showers—black bags with sprinkler nozzles that heat up in the sunlight—so later in the afternoon there’ll be warmer water for showers.”