He soaped up a clean section of cloth. Apology was clear in his tone. “This is going to sting.”

She hardly felt a thing. As long as she kept her focus on the man, the pain of what he was doing was distant and completely drowned out by the shimmering pleasure his touch gave her.

Cool, clean water trickled over her skin as he rinsed the soap away. He looked up from where he knelt between her thighs. “You okay?” he asked.

A fluttering feeling spread out from her stomach. She nodded, not trusting her voice to remain steady.

His fingers settled on her cheek. “You’re flushed. There’s not some kind of poison in that tree bark, is there?”

She shook her head.

“Would you even tell me if there was? Or would you be more worried about us completing our mission?”

A little spurt of anger burned off some of the dreamy haze he’d given her. “I’m fine. We should go back and get those crystals.”

“Did you see them?”

“Inside the black stones. Those pulsing lights? I’m sure those are the crystals we’re after.”

Torr went back to where the Mason had fallen. He picked up its heavy hammer. “Guess we’re going to need this, then.”

The tool was huge. The handle was made from some kind of pale pink wood she’d never seen before. The metal head gleamed bright, its intricate carvings flickering with reflected sunlight. There wasn’t a scratch or nick anywhere, making her wonder just how hard the metal was. Each of the carvings was perfectly formed, reminding her of the runes carved into the Sentinel Stone in the village. As she watched, a faint blue strand of light snaked across the surface, connecting the runes with tiny shards of lightning.

The muscles in Torr’s forearm bulged as he balanced the hammer on his shoulder. The sight shouldn’t have done anything to Grace, but she was a mess right now. Weak. She couldn’t stop the little spike of desire that sliced through her.

“Do you want to stay here and wait for me?” he asked.

Grace stood and tested the thin layer of cloth bandages he’d tied around her thighs. The fabric held as she walked toward the crater. “What do you think?”

Chapter 18

It had taken every bit of self-control Torr could summon to bandage Grace’s wounds. All he’d wanted to do was press her thighs open wide and kiss her all better—kiss her until the last thing on her mind was pain.

Thanks to her dip in the frozen stream and the need to get her warm, he had now solved the mystery of what she wore under that tunic—a thin strip of cloth that wove around her waist and over her sex, covering less than it revealed. One single tug and the whole thing would have unraveled, exposing her to his fingers and his mouth.

For a second, he had been convinced that she would have let him pleasure her. But then he’d questioned her honesty, and all that languid, womanly heat had evaporated from her expression. Her thighs had clamped shut, and he knew he’d lost his chance at heaven.

It was for the best. He tried to remind himself of that. They were exposed out here. She was wounded. They had a job to do, and every hour they took doing it was one more hour that the women Brenya protected would be in danger.

Taking a break to explore Grace’s body would be as selfish as it was foolish. Still, a man could dream.

By the time they reached the rim of the black crater, he’d gotten his libido under control and his head back in the game.

Grace was about to break the plane of the summit when he stopped her. “What are you doing?”

“Going to get the crystals.”

“We don’t know if enemy reinforcements have arrived. We need to be careful.”

She nodded and eased to the ground. She might have been wearing a brave face, but he could tell that her wounds were painful by the way she moved.

As soon as they got back to the village, he was going to demand that Brenya heal her. He didn’t know if she operated like the Sanguinar, taking payment in blood for their services, but whatever she required of him, he would pay the price. He couldn’t stand letting Grace hurt when there was something he could do to make it stop.

He scanned the area below, watching long enough to satisfy himself that no more enemies had arrived and that the Mason in the crater hadn’t yet had time to rebuild itself.

He whispered to Grace, “I’ll run down there and bust out some of those crystals. You stay here and keep watch.”

“You just want me out of the way.”

“That assumes you were ever in the way, and I can assure you that’s not true. I couldn’t have found this place without you.” And while that was true, he wished like hell there had been any other way.

“Fine. I’ll keep watch over you. What do you want me to do if I see trouble?”

“Yell a warning and then take off toward the cave we were in last night. I’ll meet you there.”

She let out a long-suffering sigh. “You don’t catch on very fast, do you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. Just go do what you need to do. I’ll do the same.”

The longer they stayed here talking, the more likely it was they would be found. Before that could happen, Torr picked up his pack from where he’d left it and ran down the slope. He found the glossy boulder that seemed to have the easiest crystals to extract, picked up one of the Mason’s chisels, and went to work with his hammer.

Cold permeated this whole area, sucking the heat from his skin. He was slamming the hammer down hard, working as fast as he could, but not a single drop of sweat had survived the chill.

The closer he got to the crystals, the more aware he became that the light they gave off had a strange effect on him. It made him feel heavy, almost sluggish. He did the best he could to keep his eyes averted, but when he was only a few inches away from the target, that became nearly impossible.

Finally, he closed his eyes, checking every few blows to make sure he was still on track.

The hammer and chisel broke through the final layer of black rock. In the center was a cluster of pulsing crystals each about the size of one of Grace’s slender fingers. They sat in a hollow core, attached by a thin filament of whatever this transparent black rock was.

Torr took out the heavy box that Brenya had sent with them to house the crystals, opened it and set it on the ground. He didn’t dare touch the black stone, afraid his fingers would freeze and snap off. Instead, he pulled off the tattered remains of his shirt and folded it until it was several layers thick. A quick twist of his wrist and the thin finger of glasslike rock snapped, freeing the mass of crystals.