He hovered over her, giving her the sexiest smile she’d ever seen. “I feel so much better now,” he told her.
“You feel better?”
“Much. I love watching you come.”
He was still in need. She could feel that easily enough, in both his mind and his body, and yet he wasn’t rushing her as he had before. She wanted to ease that need and give him the kind of pleasure he’d just given her.
Nika felt slow and languid, but she had a seemingly endless source of power at her command, so she pulled some into herself and used a burst of magically enhanced strength to push Madoc to the bed.
“My turn,” she said, straddling him as she’d wanted to do earlier.
His mouth was drawn tight with lust, so she bent forward to kiss it. He gave her what she wanted, meeting each thrust of her tongue with one of his own. The slippery motion caused heat to pool in her belly. The hunger inside her that he’d so recently quenched began to grow again.
Nika needed to be filled with him. She needed to feel him inside her, stroking deep. It was the only thing that could sate her need.
She was a bit clumsy as she maneuvered them together, but Madoc was patient, letting her take her time. He was big, and even though she was slick, she still felt the wicked stretch as her body made room for him. Zingers of sensation raked along her spine, making her shake. She wanted to just slam down and take all of him, but his hands on her hips held her up, rocking her, making her go slowly.
“You’re killing me,” she told him.
“I refuse to hurt you again.”
“Then let me move.”
“Soon.” Sweat beaded up along his hairline, and the tendons in his neck stood out, telling her she wasn’t the only one suffering.
Rather than argue with him any further, she simply focused on the link between them and let everything she was feeling flood into him.
Madoc sucked in a breath. His fingers clenched on her hips and he pulled her down, seating her all the way.
Nika had never felt so full. She struggled to breathe, feeling her muscles clenching around him. It was an odd kind of completion, having him in her body and in her mind at the same time. She could feel everything he did, from the throbbing pressure in his erection to the faint shifting of his hair from the ceiling fan overhead.
He needed her to move. She could feel that now. So Nika moved.
The groan of pleasure Madoc let out was the sweetest thing she’d ever heard. He pulled her down against his chest, rolled her beneath him, and began a slow slide and retreat.
The first time had been nothing like this. There was no pain, no tension, only the slick glide of skin on skin and his hungry mouth on hers.
The pressure inside her built. She could feel it growing in both of them, too sharp and demanding to resist. His thoughts whispered inside hers, knitting them together in a way she hadn’t known existed.
His powerful body surged as their need increased. She felt that pleasure building inside him as he opened himself up to her. The connection between them swelled and pulsed with power.
Madoc lifted her hips with one hand, grinding her against him in a way that brought tears to her eyes and stole the air from her lungs. And then everything came crashing down. Madoc’s body tensed as he drove deep. He swelled inside her and the first hot jet of his release pulsed in her core, setting off her climax.
She cried out, holding him tight as his release filled her. The waves crashing over her throbbed in time with his, melding the sensations together into one continuous blur of perfect sensation. It seemed to go on forever, but once it was over, it was gone too soon.
They were both still breathing hard when Madoc flipped them and draped her over his chest. He was still hard inside her, still throbbing in time with their rapid heartbeats. Sweat cooled across her back, but her front was blissfully warm.
Madoc hadn’t shoved her away this time. He was still inside her mind as deeply as he was inside her body.
Which was why she could hear his thoughts. Not only had he been planning to give her away to another man; he was also still planning to keep her here when everyone else went to rescue Tori.
“I don’t care how good in bed you are,” she said, pushing herself up on his chest to look down at him. “There’s no way you’re convincing me to stay behind.”
He opened his mouth and said something, but Nika couldn’t understand a single word. All she heard was the sound of her name in a scream of pain that echoed inside her skull.
Tori. Tori was trying to reach her.
Nika opened herself up and pulled some of Madoc’s power into her so she could find where that contact had come from. As soon as she did, a wrenching pain shot through her body, making her jerk against Madoc. She’d never felt anything like it before. It cut off her breath and shrank her world down to a pinpoint of light. Everything else went gray.
She heard herself scream, felt Madoc’s hands on her body and his thoughts in her mind.
“Tori!”
I’m sorry, she heard her sister sob. I’m so sorry.
Chapter 21
Gilda had lifted her hand to knock when her daughter’s door opened. Sibyl looked up at her, her eyes the same pale blue as her father’s.
Angus. Gilda already missed him.
Sibyl’s blond ringlets were tangled, her dress wrinkled, which was not at all like her. Dark crescents hung below her eyes, dulling their normal sheen.
“I guess it’s that time,” said Sibyl.
Gilda was shocked at being spoken to after suffering her daughter’s silence for so long. “What time?”
“For you to die.”
“You’ve seen that?” Gilda hated it that her daughter was plagued by visions of the future, but she’d never considered she’d have to endure seeing her own mother’s death.
“I’ve seen many things. Too many.” Sibyl stepped back, allowing Gilda to step inside her suite. The frilly furnishings seemed wilted today, their normally bright pink dull and dingy.
Gilda settled on the dainty couch. “I won’t stay long. I know things are strained between us, but I felt compelled to see you again.”
“Nothing between us has changed,” said Sibyl. “I can’t suddenly forgive you because you’ve decided to kill yourself, can I?”
“I’m not asking for your forgiveness. I was just hoping that you’d . . . let me hold you one more time.”
“I’m not a child. You’ve trapped me inside this child’s body, but I’m not a child.”
“You’ll always be my child. Just as Maura is.”
“Maura won’t talk to me about you. She refuses.”
“You speak to Maura?”
“Sometimes. When she’s afraid.”
Gilda hated the idea of her little girl being afraid, but Maura had made her own decisions. She had to live with the consequences, just as Gilda did.
“Will you tell her I still love her?” asked Gilda.
“She won’t believe me. She doesn’t believe you can love someone who has no soul.”
“Of course she has a soul.”
“Maura doesn’t believe that. She says you ripped it from her when you tore us in half while still in your womb.”
“What I did to you was foolish. We needed more women to fill our ranks. I thought having twin girls would help us win the war.”
“Maura and I weren’t meant to be twins. You took the defenseless child growing inside your body and cut it in half. How could you have done something like that? How could you have ripped a tiny soul in two when you were the one charged with keeping it safe?”
“I didn’t mean for it to be like that. Twins are born all the time. I didn’t realize I was doing anything unnatural.”
“You didn’t realize. Just like you didn’t realize what you were doing the night Isaac died?”
Gilda shook her head. Grief for her son stormed inside her still, even after all these years. “It was another mistake. One of many. I’m so sorry that you and Maura were left to suffer because of my choices. I only meant to protect you.”
“You make it sound so reasonable, as though any mother would have done the same thing.”
“I didn’t know what would happen to you. I swear it.”
“How could you not have known? You came to us that night, woke us from a dead sleep for that sole purpose.”
“No. It wasn’t like that. I needed to hold you—to grasp onto my two living children and reassure myself you were okay.”
“That’s not the way I remember it. I remember you lurching into our room. I remember you were crying. The front of your dress was wet with tears. Maura and I were scared. We didn’t know what had happened and you were crying too hard to tell us. We hugged you, trying in our childish way to comfort you. We would have done anything to make you feel better, and you used that to wring from us a promise we didn’t understand.”
“I didn’t know what it would do.”
“How could you not have known? You looked us each in the eye and said, ‘Promise Mommy you’ll never grow up.’ You knew the power that promise would hold over us.”
“They were just words. I didn’t want you to grow up and join the fight. I didn’t want you to die like your brother had earlier that night.”
“We were eight years old. We didn’t understand what that promise would cost us. I remember giving it to you and feeling the breath being crushed from our lungs. I remember the panic that gripped us as that promise bored into our souls, caging us in these tiny bodies.”
“I’m so sorry, Sibyl. I never meant to hurt you.”
A hollow laugh rose up, too old for the body from which it came. “You did a fine job of it without even trying.”
“One day you’ll understand.”
“How?” demanded Sibyl. “When I grow up and have a child of my own? You’ve stolen that from me. You’ve taken from me everything I should have had, including driving Maura—the other half of myself—away.”
“No. I didn’t do that.”
“You did. She left because she couldn’t stand the sight of you. She couldn’t stand the reminder of what we should have had, what we should have become.”
“She chose to change sides.”
“No. She chose to run away, and the only place where she would be safe was with our enemy. It’s not as if she could have lived on her own.”
“She betrayed us,” said Gilda, knowing Maura had learned to do so from her.
“You betrayed us. Your actions set all of this in motion. I’m sure the damage you’ve done hasn’t even finished playing out yet—at least, not for me and Maura.”
“If I could take back what I’ve done, I would.”
“It’s too late for that. Your time is nearly up.”
“So you can see that—see my future.”
Sibyl nodded.
“And your father’s?”
“You’d have to ask Maura. It’s her turn.”
“I wish I could see her again before I die,” said Gilda.
“Don’t worry,” said Sibyl. “You will.”
