Serpent's Kiss (Elder Races #3)(92)

“The purring?” He threaded his fingers through her short hair.

“No, the growling. I will not be chastised by you growling at me every time you think I might have done something wrong.”

“Then I will definitely be purring from now on even when I’m growling.” He captured her hand before she had the chance to smack him, and he brought her fingers up to his mouth to press a kiss on her knuckles.

She refused to laugh again. She clenched her jaw against it until the impulse eased. Then she cleared her throat. “About what just happened.”

“What about it?” He sounded calm, his purring steady and quiet. It was remarkably soothing.

She looked out the French doors at the wrought-iron balcony they would most likely be too busy to enjoy. The sun had almost set, and the red and gold streaks across the sky were starting to fade. Dr. Telemar would be arriving at SFO soon.

“It was—more than I expected.” As old as she was and as much as she had seen, she found herself unexpectedly at a loss for words.

“You mean when we mated.”

That was what they had done. They were mating. He was mating with her. She had taken him into her body as she had taken him into her soul, and he had wrung her inside out. Everything ached, pleasantly, although that would fade soon enough as she healed with Vampyric speed. “I didn’t know it would be so intense,” she said softly. “How could you trust me like that?”

He was silent for so long, at first she thought he wasn’t going to answer her. Then he stirred and said, “It just happened. The more I learned about you, the more I cared, and the more I trusted you. Your research, your dog, the way you looked at me and said you took responsibility for how we might change things. You think I don’t know you said that to make things easier for me, when I might have been the only one to remember what happened? Then this last time when I went back, I looked at you and panicked at the thought of losing you. I know I told you too much, but I couldn’t stop myself. And so you knew all this time that I would come to you some day, and you said nothing, did nothing.”

She buried her face in him. “I had a lot of time to think,” she whispered. “I thought about time looping back on itself, and about how you said you were from the future and how every time you came back, you changed things in the past. You said it was incredibly dangerous, and I believed you. When I finally met you again and realized who you were, I thought about getting in touch and telling you what had happened. Then I realized that if I did, I might change you too so that you never came back in time to see me. And I didn’t want to risk losing those memories, so I waited to see what would happen at Adriyel River, and beyond.”

He pushed her onto her back and came on top of her, covering her with his body while he held her tight, pressing his lean cheek against hers. “You thought it through and held steady,” he said. “You closed the time loop we created. You held your ground when I don’t know of anyone else who would have. Then after all of that, you tried to send me away this afternoon, and it was so goddamn loving and extravagantly stupid, how could I not want to mate with you? Of course I trust you. I knew if you laid claim to me, you would hold on no matter what.”

“No matter what.” She swallowed hard, gripping him as tightly as he held her. They were wrapped around each other, torso to torso, skin to skin, Power entwined with Power, so that she was not sure where one ended and the other began. “I think I can see what my life must have been like before you went back, and everything feels truer now.”

He nuzzled her neck. “All the pieces interlock. The thought keeps running through my head that it’s like a keystroke password to an unbreakable code. It opens a vault door to a strange new country, and even though it is strange and new, it is all still familiar. All the colors are brighter and more fierce, the song notes more piercing.”

She kissed his temple and ran her fingers through his hair. The weight of his body sent his purr vibrating through her chest, and she felt a sudden rush of adoration for him so intense it made her feel drunk, insane. “It’s a more beautiful, deadlier world because there’s so much more to lose,” she said. “Rune, you can’t go back anymore. We have to protect what we have.”

“There’s no reason for me to go back now,” he murmured. He kissed her collarbone. “I think I can hold my own and not get caught up in the episodes when they happen. We’ve warned your younger self to take care, and I also think we’ve learned everything we can. The most important thing now is to guard you and keep you safe when you’re caught in them, while we figure out how to get them to stop.”

“You sound so optimistic,” she said.

“Are you still the glass-half-empty kind of girl?” he said. “You know, the more things change, the more they really do stay the same.”

She shook her head and exhaled a silent laugh. She loved how he could make her laugh.

The more things change. A sudden wave of fear had her clutching him tighter again. She had embraced the changes that had happened to her long ago, but what if something else changed in the world because of what they had done? She would never know, but Rune would. He said he remembered everything. What if they had done something wrong and had somehow destroyed something that should have existed? What if she had decided to do something she shouldn’t have, something that she hadn’t done originally?