“Admit it, sunshine,” he growled. “You want another bargain too.”

She yawned a little and scratched at her ear.

Wasn’t anything straightforward with her? The reason why it didn’t matter that he knew she was trying to rile him? Because it was working.

His gaze focused on her fabulous mouth. The image of her sucking on him flared in his mind, as searing as a flash fire. Those lips, closed over the thick rigidity of his cock, her throat working to take him in.

His entire body pulsed with urgency. He pulled her the last of the way toward him and fastened his mouth over hers, succumbing to the urge to ravish and take.

She met him halfway, and they ate at each other. She gripped his hips, and he ground his heavy erection against her as he circled her neck with one hand. She felt as if she had a fever, she was so hot. As he lifted his head to look down at her, a violent tremor shook through her body.

He could not keep his lips off of her. He ran them along her cheek, amazed at how soft her skin felt, and sucked the tender lobe of her ear into his mouth. He told her telepathically, I want to put a collar on you.

A leather collar, with a buckle. It would show darkly against her light skin. And her hands chained behind her back. She wouldn’t be able to shapeshift in that position. Her wings would have no room to materialize. All that wildness, that fierce freedom, claimed and owned by him.

Mine. Mine.

Her answer was a telepathic snarl. Dream on, motherfucker.

Where’s your spirit of negotiation, sunshine? He hadn’t even gotten the chance to feel her wetness last night. The lack disturbed him greatly. He pulled the hand from her throat and ran it down the front of her body to cup her between her legs.

She hissed and arched her hips, rubbing against his palm. She said, I don’t even know what you would have to give up in order to make that happen. Maybe your soul for all eternity.

He laughed, the sound rough in the early morning air.

I wasn’t joking, she told him. Her telepathic voice had turned uneven.

Of all the things they should be doing, this was not on the list. His hand slid upward to the fastening of her jeans. He didn’t know why she had chosen to wear jeans on the trip instead of her usual fighting leathers, but he didn’t pause to ask.

She growled at him in warning, but he was beginning to read her nuances and could tell it didn’t have much heart.

He unbuttoned the jeans, unzipped the fly, then whispered in her ear, “Take off your backpack.”

She shook her head jerkily. Both of them were panting as though they had been racing a long time. “We should keep going.”

Going and going and going, hurtling forward down that dark, unknown road.

But that wasn’t what she had meant. “We won’t stop long. Take it off.” He licked the shell of her ear. She tasted like every addictive drug ever named. “Consider this a little something to sweeten the pot on our next deal.”

“We haven’t made a deal.” But her hands moved. She unbuckled the strap at her waist, and shrugged out of her backpack. It fell to the snowy ground.

He pressed his mouth to her pulse. It beat a rapid tempo at the side of her throat. She felt it too, this hectic, crazy rush.

Then he straightened, spun her around and pulled her back against him. He moved so fast that she cried out, and reached over her head. She tried to get a hold on him by gripping him at the back of the neck too, but he jerked his head to one side. She grabbed the collar of his jacket instead and held on so tightly the tendons in her wrist stood out.

He pulled her hips back so that his c**k was nestled between the cheeks of her ass. Then he pushed her hair to one side and bit her at the nape of the neck. They both stood frozen like that for a long moment.

He took one hand and slid it from her hip to the open fastening of her jeans. And inside. Underneath her underpants into a tangle of her damp, warm hair.

Do you know what I imagined the first time I consciously thought of you in a sexual way? he asked telepathically. He held her in place with an arm clamped around her ribs, and his teeth at her neck.

Her ragged breathing sawed at the chill air. “What?”

I thought of taking you in the ass too. Pinning you and taking you. Clearly we have been thinking along the same vein.

“It’s a dominant thing,” she whispered.

It’s a sexy thing. He probed deeper, wiggling into the tight space, and his fingers plunged into silken, wet flesh. Holy gods. They both groaned.

He stroked her, a slick slide along a small, stiff nubbin of flesh, while he bit her hard. She shuddered and cried out a second time.

Now her lean, strong body was arched back against him. He put his head on her shoulder, stroking her with a hard, steady rhythm. “My cut healed,” he said into her neck. “I hated it when you marked me. I was so pissed at you I almost kicked you in the face. Now, it’s strange. All I can do is think about how it’s gone. Half an hour each, sunshine. You can’t be done. Admit you want it too. Agree to it. Do it.”

“Yes, goddammit!”

He stroked her hard, and she clamped both hands over his to hold him in place as she sobbed for breath. He felt the quivering of her soft, private flesh, the rhythmic arching of her pelvis as she pushed against his fingers.

There was his climax, the one he should have claimed from her last night.

It wasn’t enough. He needed to climax again, himself. He wanted and needed to be buried inside of her when she came.

But it was enough for now.

When she was finished, her fingers loosened. He pulled his hand out and let her go. She staggered but caught herself before she could fall. He strode away without looking back.

As he walked, he licked his fingers.

They tasted like her; warm, wet and wild.

Quentin was a bastard, but she already knew that. Honestly, it was part of why she was beginning to like him in spite of herself.

Her thigh muscles were shaking so that she could barely stand upright. She watched as he walked away. Was he licking his fingers? Even though she had just climaxed, the thought made her pulse.

She had come into existence at the beginning of the world. Maybe she hadn’t been one of the most analytical of creatures for a while—like most of the truly ancient Wyr, the original harpies had lived as instinctively as animals, and had learned language and culture some time much later—but she did remember that bright, new beginning.

And the point was that she was old. She’d had sex in every imaginable position and variation. She was experienced, and she knew what she liked. A lot. And being dominated was not part of that mix.

So why did she find that bastard’s moves and his dirty talk so sexy?

He had really wanted that half hour bargain. She smiled. She wanted it herself. She was looking forward to that date. A half an hour of owning him, tasting him, teasing him and making him come. The thought made her dizzy.

But for now, they had other things they needed to concentrate on. She zipped up her jeans, grabbed her backpack and hurried after him. When she was close enough, she threw her pack so that it hit him in the back.

He whirled around. “What the hell?”

“That was for walking away,” she said. “I carried yours yesterday. You carry mine.”

His eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“I’m going to scout around. We’re getting close.”

He bent to pick up the pack. “Fine, but don’t go too far, and don’t engage if you see the guards, okay?”

“Yes, I already know that,” she said impatiently. “I’ll be back in a few.”

She shifted, crouched and—what was he smiling about? Was he smiling at her? Nah, that couldn’t be right. He scowled at her, he didn’t smile. After a blinking pause, she sprang into the air.

Rolling foothills hugged the ridge they followed, and the landscape looked different with the light covering of snow. She navigated by the landmarks that she had marked mentally the day before, and wasn’t fooled by a little dusting of snow.

Since they were close to the passageway, she didn’t bother to climb too high in altitude. She studied the landscape carefully, her sharp gaze noting minute details.

One thing about a snowfall was that it made tracking footsteps and finding recently used trails paint-by-numbers easy.

There were no footsteps anywhere, no trails. No subtle hint of wood smoke in the sharp, clear air. No flash of movement from anything but the occasional glimpse of spooked wildlife that sensed the nearness of a dangerous predator and bolted to hide.

Convinced, she wheeled around and headed back to Quentin. From a distance, his Elven heritage seemed pronounced in the leggy, graceful build of his body. It was only as she grew closer that the anomalies of his mixed heritage, such as his broader shoulders and more muscled torso, became clear.

He was keeping an eye out for her and paused as she descended. She landed in front of him, and when she saw the question in his eyes, she shook her head. “They’re not there,” she told him levelly. “I’m sure of it.”

He took a deep breath and rubbed his face as he thought. He hadn’t taken the time to shave that morning, and the light golden bristles were more pronounced on his lean cheeks and jaw. They had felt soft and tickling at the back of her neck. A shiver ran down her spine as she remembered, along with another pulse of arousal.

He met her gaze. The blue of his eyes was startlingly sharp against the wintery background. “I have a favor to ask of you,” he said abruptly. “It just occurred to me that they might have had some reason to travel to the other passageway. I can’t think what could have happened to make them do that, but I think we should know before we actually cross over to Numenlaur and try to look for them. Will you fly out there and scout for them while I take a look around here?”

She nodded. “Makes sense. If we’re thorough now, we won’t have to double back on ourselves later. See you soon.”

She launched again and this time she did climb high. The day was warming up, and the rising temperatures were melting the snow, which covered the vista in a haze that sparkled slightly where the sunshine hit it directly. The scene was stunning, and one part of her gloried in the landscape that was unbroken by any signs of habitation.

However, most of her attention was focused on the hunt. She flew hard, due south, and after a couple of miles’ distance, the magic of the first passageway stopped overwhelming her senses so that she began to feel the first faint tickle from the second one.

Adjusting her direction accordingly, she flew straight for it, studying the land below as she went. Sure, Elves blended with their surrounding and walked lightly on the land, yadda yadda yadda, and if they were really trying to hide, she might find the hunt more challenging. But as Quentin had already pointed out, this party didn’t know they were coming and had no reason to hide anyway.

At least, no reason that she could figure out.

Her normal flight speed was almost twice that of an eagle’s. She could fly up to a hundred miles an hour when she really pushed it, and this time she pushed it. She reached the second passageway in short order and passed around it several times, moving in circles of increasing size with each pass.

Where were those pesky Elves?

Nowhere that she could see.

Finally she shook her head and shot north, flying hard.

Quentin was easy to locate. He wasn’t trying to hide either. He had stashed the packs somewhere, changed into the black panther and loped along the edges of a very large meadow that lay a quarter of a mile or so in front of the Numenlaur passageway. He poured over the land, sleek and rippling with fluid muscles moving under the shining black coat. She plummeted to wheel around his head.

The panther glanced up at her. Quentin said in her head, Find anything?

She answered aloud. “No.”

The panther changed direction and headed back toward the Numenlaur passageway. I’ve covered all quarters of the surrounding area. The land carries no scent of them.

She wasn’t surprised. They hadn’t been in the area recently, and the melting snow would have washed away any scent that might have lingered.

When he stopped and changed near a large pine, she landed and changed too. She watched as he ducked under the pine’s low-hanging branches. He emerged a moment later with his jacket and the packs. He handed her pack to her, and she shrugged it on, while he shouldered his as well.

His face was hard, the planes and angles set, but she thought she was beginning to read him pretty well, and she knew his worry had spiked.

“Did you see anything up close that seemed unusual in any way?” she asked.

“No. No signs of any damage, no dissipating magic, nothing.” His voice was flat. “Did you?”

“Everything looked normal.”

“Okay,” he said. “Ready?”

She nodded. They had already discussed it all. There was nothing left to say.

Together they turned and walked to the passageway.

The Elven passageway in Lirithriel Wood, in South Carolina, had been intricately carved from end to end. This passageway looked entirely natural, the entrance to the canyon just another part of the landscape. But the land magic that poured off of it told a different tale. It was a very strong passageway and the only entrance that led into a fabled land.

She wasn’t glad that the Elves were missing, but she had to admit, she was thrilled that they gave her and Quentin a reason to make this crossover.

Quietly, side by side, they started the journey into Numenlaur.

ELEVEN

As they walked the rocky, uneven passageway, she craned her neck, trying to look everywhere at once. She saw out of the corner of her eye that Quentin did the same thing.

The canyon walls that rose high on either side of them obstructed their vision of any surrounding landscape, but halfway through the passage, the snow disappeared, along with the pale wintery sky that had canopied the Bohemian Forest. The temperature grew much hotter, so much so that they had to pause to shrug out of their jackets and sweaters before they continued. The overhead sky turned a brilliant, deep blue crowned with the intense yellow gold of a summer sun.