Night Broken (Mercy Thompson #8)(94)

“That’s enough,” said Adam. “If Ariana has more magic when she has dealt with us, then I will call for more volunteers.”

Because of her fear of the wolves, Ariana worked with them one at a time, in the kitchen. I thought Samuel was going to go with her, but he came and sat next to me instead.

“We don’t have any idea on how to kill this thing,” Samuel said. “Ariana tells me that as far as she knows, the only way to kill a primitive elemental like Guayota would be to destroy his volcano, and even then, he would not die for centuries.”

“El Teide is the third highest volcano in the world,” I told him, pressing my cheekbone into my knees. The burn reminded me that turning to my other cheek would have been smarter. “I think it’s a little beyond our capabilities. Killing the tibicenas, his two giant dogs, might do it. But you can only kill their mortal forms, when they look like mostly normal dogs instead of polar-bear-sized monsters. I suspect they are not going to be fighting werewolves in their mortal forms.”

“Ariana would come with us,” he told me, “but she doesn’t have the power she once had, not even a tenth of it. And fire-dogs are too close to her nightmares; there is no guarantee that she wouldn’t do as much damage to us as she would to Guayota and his beasts.”

“I’d come with you,” I said, “but Adam doesn’t want me to die, and for some reason, he seems to think that’s his decision to make.”

Samuel hugged me. “Don’t mourn us until we’re dead,” he said.

“I’ll spit on your graves,” I told him, and he laughed, the bastard.

“Nice,” said Adam, crouching in front of me. “I had to watch you go up against the river devil.”

“That sucked, too,” I told him without looking up from my knees. “But we had a plan that we thought might work.”

“Based on a story,” he said roughly. “It wasn’t a plan; it was a suicide mission.”

I looked up and met his eyes. I didn’t say, So is this. He knew it; it was in his eyes.

“Honey has made her suite available to us,” he said. “Will you come?”

I unlocked my fingers from around my legs and rose out of Samuel’s embrace and went into Adam’s.

“Yes, please,” I whispered.

No one in the room spoke, but they watched us leave, knowing where we were going, and I didn’t care.

Honey’s suite was a bedroom, office, and bathroom, all done in shades of cool gray. It surprised me until I remembered that this had been Peter’s room, too. The gray suited the man he’d been.

We didn’t speak. All of the words had already been said. When he stripped my clothes off me, I noticed that Honey kept her house a little cooler than ours because I was cold—or maybe that was just fear.

Naked, I took off Adam’s clothes and folded them as I set them down, as if taking care with his clothing might show him how much I longed to take care of him. Unusually, his body was slow to awaken, and so was mine—but that was okay because this was about saying good-bye. About impregnating my skin with his scent so that I would have him with me after he was gone. About remembering exactly—exactly—what the soft skin just to the side of his hip bone felt like under my fingertips and under my lips. It was about love and loss and the unbearable knowledge that this could be the last time. Was probably the last time.

I could feel Ariana’s magic on him, and I hoped that it would be enough to keep him safe.

He lay on his back on Honey’s bed and pulled me on top of him as he’d done the first time we’d made love. He let me touch him until his body was shuddering, and sweat rose on his forehead. He pulled my face up to his and kissed me tenderly despite the speed of his pulse.

“My turn,” he whispered. I nodded, and he rolled me beneath him and returned the favor, seeking out his favorite places and the ones where I was most sensitive. He brought me to climax, then lay with his head on my stomach, his arms around me, catching his breath before he started to build the pace again.

We ended as we’d begun, with me on him, watching his face as I moved on him and he in me. The expressions he wore told me to speed up or slow down until his bright yellow eyes opened wide, and he grabbed my hips and helped me take us both where we were going.

I lay down on him and put my face in his neck, and if I cried, I didn’t show him my tears. He ran his hands up and down my back until I could pretend I hadn’t been crying.

“I suck at this,” I told him. “I suck at words when they count.”

He smiled at me. “I know.”

“I understand,” I told him. “I understand why you have to go and why I have to stay. I think that you are doing the right thing, the only thing you can do. I wish…” My stomach hurt and it would have been kindness to put me out of my misery, but I wasn’t going to share that with Adam.

I know, he said.

“You weren’t supposed to get that,” I told him.

“I know that, too,” he said, his voice tender. “You should know that you can’t hide things from me.”

“Good,” I said, my voice fierce. “Good. Then you know, you know I love you.”

We showered the sweat off our bodies in Honey’s shower, wordless. His hands were warm, and he was patient with my need to touch and touch. I wished futilely that this time would last forever, but eventually he turned off the water and we dressed.