A Ride of Peril (A Shade of Vampire #46)(11)

I heard Bijarki groan before he pulled himself away, clutching my shoulders as my arms fell to my sides.

I was breathless and unable to formulate a single coherent thought. I felt my eyes droop as his steely gaze found mine, his lips swollen and glistening from our kiss. His skin glowed peculiarly, and I wasn’t sure whether it was the sunlight or something else. He seemed to light up from the inside.

His breath was ragged as he looked at me. “I’m… I’m sorry, Vita… I can’t control my nature when you go and do crazy things like that.” His voice was husky and incredibly seductive.

I felt the tingle dissipate from my limbs, but nothing else changed. I was hot and in serious need of him. He tasted like heaven, and I felt the absence of his lips profoundly. That was all me. I knew it.

He seemed to struggle to keep himself under control. I could feel the power emanating from him in scattered pulses as he took deep breaths and closed his eyes for a moment, trying to regain his composure.

“Crazy things like what? Like this?” I said and kissed him again.

I hadn’t exhausted my courage. Clearly there was more where the first round had come from.

He groaned and responded, his tongue touching mine as we dissolved into each other.

And I felt it again, enveloping me like sheer bliss, this mindless need for him buzzing through my veins.

He cupped my face with his hands and forced himself to a halt, breaking our kiss to take another look at me. His eyes were two pools of dark silver, hooded and laced with desire. He breathed heavily and stifled his incubus nature once more.

“Yes,” he gasped. “You are shaking me to the core, Vita. I’m forgetting who I am and what I’m doing here.”

We stared at each other, until I realized that it didn’t matter whether his incubus nature was on or off. All it did was amplify what I already felt to a ridiculously superb level, rocking every inch of flesh and every flicker of soul that made me who I was.

The touch of his skin was my cure for everything. I smiled and leaned into his right hand.

He looked at me, his gaze settling on my lips before it found my eyes. My heart ached for more of him, and I welcomed the feeling. The freedom it offered me was priceless, as opposed to the doubts I’d been struggling with over the past few days.

I placed my palm on his chest, feeling the muscle beneath his shirt as it flexed and hardened even more under my touch.

“I’ve stopped fighting this,” I replied, my voice barely audible. “Maybe it’s time for you to stop fighting it as well. Maybe you should stop worrying and simply be yourself. I like it.”

He stilled, his breath stuck somewhere in his throat. His eyes were wide, watching me as I threw him a lazy smile and left the room. I closed the door behind me and nearly collapsed, shocked and exhilarated by my decision to take our relationship to another level.

My heart throbbed, violent butterflies wrestled in my stomach, and my lips were tender. I could still taste him, and I smiled as I realized it had all been worth it. I would do it again. He would crumble, and I would melt into him. We would forget about the world for a minute.





Serena





After searching through a couple of bedrooms with no luck, Draven and I started looking through his study. The fire was out, and I was thankful to not be boiling while rummaging through shelves and drawers of Draven’s most precious belongings. This was his safe space, his haven when everything else was dark or dismal around him.

On many levels, my presence there felt as intimate as being in his bedroom, in his bed, sleeping in each other’s arms. I found myself treating each object I touched with absolute reverence, out of respect for him and his Druid craft. Draven sifted through one bookshelf, while I took the other one, our backs to each other.

We’d been at it for a couple of hours.

Talking through things with Draven had yielded results in the past, and it often gave me the resolve I needed to keep fighting the possible future described in Vita’s visions. While he wasn’t exactly the most optimistic creature I’d ever met, talking to him did help me find solutions to problems that were critical for our survival in Eritopia that I would have missed otherwise.

“So, once we find the third book, what do we do next?” I asked.

“We put the three together and decrypt their pages. They’re broken in three, hence there’s a high probability that we’ll have to do a little mix and match between them,” he replied, moving his attention to another shelf.

“Do you think that will be enough?”

“I don’t, actually, but it’s a good place to start. The swamp witches were known to walk through fire without ever getting burned, along with other equally stunning accomplishments. Finding that spell and figuring out how it works is the only way for us to reach Mount Zur, the volcano closest to Azazel’s dungeon. You know, since we’re not made of lava and limestone like the Dearghs.”

I found his sarcasm endearing. I looked over my shoulder to find him smirking at me and gave him a brief eye-roll in response before I resumed my search. We had a way of saying more to each other without words, sometimes.

“And once we make it that far, what next?”

“There’s approximately one mile of jungle and hills up to Azazel’s castle from there,” Draven replied. “We’ll have to sneak through and infiltrate the dungeon. But there are spies and hostile elements all over that stretch of land. It will be extremely dangerous.”