She reached up and laid her fingers against the warm, carved edge of his lips. For someone who could look so brutal, his mouth had a severe elegance, stamped as it was with both temper and sensuality. “I thought you might have gone back to New York,” she said. “I missed you so much already.”

He opened his mouth and took her forefinger between his teeth. He nipped at her with such sensual enjoyment it sent pleasure rippling down her body. “I already told you once.” His voice had darkened, turned gravelly. “I’m not leaving.”

He said the lie with such conviction her truthsense tried to convince her to believe him. She closed her eyes and explored his face with her fingers, reading the strong, heavy frame of his bone structure like Braille. His lips moved feather-soft against her palm. She felt like someone was dropping stones, one by one, on her chest, in a slow-building pressure. It was getting hard to breathe. Soon the weight would become intolerable and crush her ribs.

In the main room somebody finally got the music back up. It roared back on with a suddenness that made her eyes pop open. She looked so surprised as she tottered on her four-inch heels that Tiago laughed and yanked her against his chest. The Black Eyed Peas came over the speakers and rocked it out. The walls of the building vibrated as lyrics careened headlong through the air.

Still laughing, he picked her up, turned and put her against a wall. He held her up at a height where they were face-to-face. He made it look effortless, with one arm under her hips to brace her. With his face alight and his black eyes sparkling, he had such a barbaric beauty it took her breath away.

Then his Power mantled over her, and she felt a need for him that was so terrible it drew her knees up and sank into her DNA, and she knew in that moment she would never be free of it, or him. He was carving himself into the deepest, most secret places inside of her, and she felt herself reforming in response. She was Galatea, made of stone, coming to life as he fashioned her.

He nudged his hips between her knees and took hold of one of her ankles to draw her leg around his waist. She wrapped her other leg around him and locked her ankles behind him. She ran her hands across his broad-muscled shoulders. My God, she had to take an anatomy class. Every single one of those muscles had its own name.

She wound her arms around his neck and watched as that sparkle of laughter in his eyes turned dark with a different kind of savagery. He widened his legs and pushed his pelvis against her. Her head fell back as she felt the thick arch of his c**k through the fabric of their clothes. She rubbed herself against him, whimpering, and he hid his face in her neck as he swore under his breath. The massive weight of his body as he pressed her into the wall was exquisite, as excruciating as everything else was between them. He wouldn’t fit easily, she knew. He was too big, and it had been too long since she had last taken a lover. They would have to work to get him in, and it would burn so good as her muscles stretched tight to accommodate him, and then—and then—

She ground harder against him, aching for the burn. Gasping, he bucked his hips in response. He ran his free hand under the short hem of her dress, searching for and finding the thong she wore. He muttered something unintelligible as he shredded it, his hot breath blasting her cheek. He reached farther, curving his arm under her ass as he probed her plump, slick labia with gentle shaking fingers. She reached between them as well, arching her back against the cold concrete wall as she dug to locate the zipper of his fatigues.

He bit her neck, her ear, in sharp, stinging nips. He gasped, “You deserve slow, but oh f**k, I don’t think I have it in me.”

They couldn’t do slow. Time was too precious, each irrecoverable moment arrowing into the past. They couldn’t waste a single one.

“Just do it,” she groaned in his ear. The lyrics of the song echoed her, eerily. Do it do it do it . . . He slipped the tip of one finger inside her, and it sent every one of her nerve endings into frenzy. She bucked and lost her grip on his zipper.

Niniane, I need to talk to you.

The sharp mental voice guillotined through the sexual haze that clouded her mind. She shook her head, disoriented. Who the hell was in her head? She managed to articulate, What, now?

Right now.

The mental signature of the speaker finally came to her. It was Rune. He sounded harsher and more commanding than she could remember ever hearing him.

Honey, you’re killing him, Rune said. You have to stop this. Shut it down. You’re the only one who can.

TWELVE

You’re killing him.

The words were melodramatic, ridiculous. They made no sense. If they had come from anybody else, she would have lost her temper at the interruption.

But the words came from Rune, and they sent dread flashing through her system. She put her head back against the concrete wall and sucked in air. Her gaze darted around the room as she looked for danger. She found none. For the first time she took note of where they were. They were in a back storeroom of the bar.

Tiago angled his head to kiss her, his features flushed dark with sensuality, knifelike with need.

She jerked her face to the side. Somehow she managed to yank out the words. “We have to stop.”

He froze and looked stricken. He sank down to his knees, and she slid down the wall with him. The friction tore sequins off the back of her dress. They scattered on the floor around them, winking like fallen stars. He let her body weight settle on his lap, braced both forearms on the wall over her head and put his forehead against hers. He ground out, “Don’t do this, faerie. Not this time.”

Rune had better have one compelling goddamn reason for this, or she was going to skin him alive.

She whimpered, “I’m sorry.”

He threw back his head and shouted in silence as he drove his fists into the concrete wall on either side of her head. The concrete cracked, showering gray dust down on their carpet of stars. The breath left her as she stared at his agonized face. She was appalled at what she had done. She rocked forward and threw her arms around his neck. His head came back down. He laid his cheek against hers to nuzzle her even as he hissed at her, his face contorted. His fists were still planted in the scars he had made on the wall. She sat on his thighs, legs splayed wide and felt surrounded, eclipsed by his tremendous body.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered again in his ear. She stroked his hair. He shuddered and remained silent as he struggled for control.

She couldn’t see Rune, but he had to be somewhere close by to reach her with telepathy, probably just down the hall. She growled at him, I just did a cruel thing to the both of us, so you start talking, and it better be good.

Rune said, Niniane, nobody will be sorrier than me if I’m wrong. But I’ve just spent the last few hours in Tiago’s company. He behaved like I’ve never seen him behave before. He lost control more than once, and lost it bad.

She listened to Rune’s rapid words, her body clenched as tight as Tiago’s. She cupped the back of his head protectively with both hands. He was breathing deep and hard and slow, like a runner in the middle of a marathon, his skin damp.

Nobody could blame you if you’re looking for an affair, Rune said. If you wanted some kind of comfort, something to hold on to for a little while before you assume the throne, and normally I would cheer you on. But I think Tiago is starting to mate with you, and you know what happens to Wyr when they mate. I hope to hell he hasn’t gone too far already.

She stopped breathing. Tiago, mating? With me?

How gorgeous, miraculous. How impossible and horrific.

Oh gods how I want it, and him.

I can’t, shouldn’t.

Several days ago the shocks had started coming. It had started with her uncle’s death. Over the years, the thought of Urien dying had gradually become something like a fantasy, a vengeful daydream of what might happen sometime in a nebulous future.

When Dragos killed Urien, it catapulted her into a different reality. Every time she thought the shocks might slow down or stop, another one came along and smacked her upside the head. She was beginning to feel buffeted, incredulous, like she had gone swimming at high tide and the waves had caught hold of her. They were tumbling her head over heels, and she only just realized she might be drowning.

She did know what happened to Wyr when they mate. Wyr mated for life. Living in Dragos’s Court, she had watched it happen more than once. The mating came from a complex combination of choice, sex, instinct, actions and emotion. All had to occur at the right intensity and time. Nobody fully understood when the mating became irrevocable. More deep than falling in love, it was a dangerous, often violent time. It was a rare occurrence for those long-lived Wyr known as the immortals. It was even rarer when a Wyr mated with someone who was not Wyr. All too often those pairings could have tragic consequences.

Pia’s mother had mated with a human. When he had died, she had managed to hold on to life long enough to see Pia raised, and then she had faded away. Niniane remembered another time, around 1835, when a Wyr had mated with a Vampyre. They had been together until the American Civil War when differing loyalties had torn them apart. The Wyr had starved to death when the Vampyre left him.

I love him, she confessed to Rune in a small voice. As she did so, she admitted it for the first time to herself. Her arms and legs clenched on Tiago, and she held on to him with all her strength. She started to shake. She felt like she was coming apart at the seams.

Tiago swore, wrapped his arms around her and held her in a tight, bruising hold. “Okay,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Don’t shake like that, damn it. It’s okay. Just tell me what happened. What went wrong?”

I just wanted a little time.

Rune’s harsh mental voice gentled. If you love him, then let him go, honey. You can’t live his life, and the Dark Fae will never let a Wyr share your throne.

She nodded but couldn’t trust herself to speak for a few moments.

Tiago’s head moved under her hands, his face turning toward her. “Faerie?”

Let him go, honey.

She dug deep inside, grabbed hold of her spine and straightened it. She forced her arms and legs to unlock. “Let me up.”

He pulled back and frowned at her. She looked pallid to his sharp gaze, the layered black ends of her hair disheveled. Moments before she had looked rosy, flushed with desire. Now she looked like she was grieving. Those lovely enormous eyes of hers were dilated and depthless. He said in a quiet voice, “I don’t think I should do that.”

She looked at him steadily. “Please let me stand up now, Tiago.”

His face clenched. He picked her up as he stood then let her slide down his torso, deliberately letting her feel the hard bulge of his erection, until her feet touched the floor. He watched the graceful slim line of her throat as she swallowed hard. She tried to pull away, but he took her by the elbows and held her to him. Every time he let her go something bad happened. He wasn’t making that mistake again in a hurry. “Now,” he said. “Explain what’s wrong.”

She put her hands on his chest and spread her fingers. There was not a spare ounce of flesh on him. He was all muscle, tendon and bone, his body carved out of an unimaginably long life spent fighting. She looked at her hands because it was easier than looking at his tight, concerned face.

She realized something that she had been picking up subliminally for a while. Dance music still pounded through the walls, but she heard nothing underneath it, no footsteps, clinking glasses, shouts of laughter, or any other sounds that normally filled a crowded bar. Aryal and Rune must have promised compensation to the bar owner and cleared the building, which was a measure of their sharp concern. The other sentinels would take watch and wait, guarding them and keeping everyone else away, because if Tiago was mating with her, right now he could be a danger to anyone else but her.

She wanted to say so many things to him.

Starting with I love you. Don’t say it.

“You said you’re not leaving,” she said.

He stood unmoving under her hands, as steady and adamant as bedrock. “I’m not.”

I need you. Bite it back.

“But you will,” she told his chest. “You have to. You won’t be able to help it.”

“I’ll stay,” said the thunderbird as lightning flared outside. “And no Power on Earth can change that.”

The intolerable pressure was building back in her chest. It goaded her on. “Dragos will call you,” she said, her voice brittle. “And you’ll fly back to him like a hawk to his wrist. Or another conflict will start somewhere in the world, and you’ll take off to go to war. That’s what you do, Tiago. You always take off. That’s who you are.”

He looked at her, breathing heavily, and said nothing. Pain blinded her.

She had not meant to tell him, but that pressure shoved the words out of her. “I am going to have to marry.” The words blazed like meteorites between them. “I need to start looking for a husband right away.”

His eyes flashed completely white. He enunciated, “Like hell.”

Her stomach roiled. She had known this was going to be hard. It was so much harder than she imagined. “He has to be.” She had to stop for air because he hadn’t moved an inch but his tremendous body clenched into a weapon and his Power turned violent and heavy, a pressing weight in the storeroom. He looked murderous. “He’s got to be Powerful and have influence—”

He moved faster than thought. He picked her up, whirled and slammed her back against the wall. She froze in shock. He shouted at her, “Like hell!”

She hit him. She couldn’t help herself. She punched him in the chest. “And he’s got to want the throne but not be able to get it by himself—”

Fury rampaged over his face. He sounded like a mortally wounded animal as he roared at her. “Nobody else can have you because you’re mine!”