Visions of Skyfire

Chapter 30

Rune looked up into Teresa’s eyes and felt something inside him fist around the heart that lay cold and still within his chest. For the first time in centuries, he felt alive. With the Mating begun, emotion was erupting inside him. Colors seemed brighter. Every breath was a feast.

It was more than the magic drawing them together. More than the power he felt shifting from her body to his and back again. It went deeper. It went to the heart of her. Who she had been. Who she was now. Who they were—and would be—together.

He still couldn’t bring himself to trust her, but damned if he didn’t admire her.

She was strong. Even in her vulnerability and pain, strength was what ruled her. She hadn’t panicked in that damn village. Instead, she had stood her ground and reached for the nebulous powers just blossoming inside her. She had believed in her magic and used what power she had to take a stand beside Rune. To help him in their fight. To claim all that she was and demand more from the very gods who had first breathed life into their kind.

And she had thrown herself into the Mating with a wild, sexy abandon that shredded Rune’s self-control into rags.

She moved on him, swiveling her hips, drawing his cock higher and deeper into her slick heat. She pulled at more than just his seed. She reached something inside him he hadn’t even been aware of.

A last remaining thin trickle of hope.

Hope that they might actually pull this off. Fix the past and face the future together.

He groaned and slid his hands from her waist to her hips. Holding on to her tightly, he moved her, quickening the lazy rhythm she had set. He wanted faster, harder. And one look at her told him she wanted the same. Fire burned in her eyes, as he knew it did in his. The flames of passion. The fire of a deep craving.

The hot water bubbled and frothed all around them, sending steam into the air and clouding their breath. It blurred his vision. But Rune saw her anyway. As she was now, as she had been then. Those snapping brown eyes of hers had remained the same through all the centuries. After haunting his dreams for hundreds of years, they were still powerful enough to pull him in even when he withheld his trust.

“Stop thinking,” she ordered sternly. “Be with me. Be here with me.”

So small, he thought, and yet she was so powerful. He felt her delicate body beneath his hands and shook his head, sending his long, wet hair back behind his shoulders. “I want you too badly. It’s taking everything I have to keep myself in check.”

“Then don’t,” she snapped, reaching for his hands and lifting them up to cover her breasts.

He groaned as her pebbled nipples rubbed against his palms. “If I lose control, I could hurt you.”

“I want you out of control,” she said, bracing her hands on his chest now, thumbing his flat nipples until new fire erupted inside him.

“You don’t,” he warned, fighting his own instincts.

“I do.” She reached up again and squeezed his hands on her own breasts, showing him that she was ready for whatever he could give her. That she wanted all he could give her.

Snarling, he kneaded her breasts, his fingers and thumbs tweaking and pulling at the sensitive, rigid, dark tips until her eyes rolled back in her head and she was moaning his name. She writhed atop him, twisting her hips against his, searching for an end to the torment and not finding it.

Rune’s instincts warred with caution and won.

He would have flashed her from the tub, but water mitigated the fires that made him. So he pulled free of her body, disregarding her protests, then holding on to her, leaped out of the tub and instantly called on his fire to flash them both to the wide, sumptuous bed in the other room.

There, he laid her on the silken coverlets like an ancient sacrifice. Breath heaved in and out of her lungs. Her eyes were wide as her gaze dropped to his thick erection. Then she smiled in invitation. Her legs splayed, she rocked her hips to him in welcome. He needed no further tempting.

Lifting her thighs, he draped her legs over his shoulders and took her. He shoved his body into hers with one long stroke. She gasped, arched her hips even higher and tipped her head back, baring the curve of her long, elegant neck. As he pistoned his hips against hers, taking her over and over again, he took her scent into his lungs.

The scent of his witch was earth, air and something that was purely Teresa. Solely hers. She filled him, taking him as he took her. As he felt the mating fire burn in his chest again, he pulled back to watch another splash of red branding claim her luscious coffee-and-cream-colored skin.

Mine.

He watched her shatter. Felt her body contract around his even as she screamed his name. Her fingers clutched at him as he sheathed himself so deeply inside her he wasn’t sure where his body ended and hers began. Teresa screamed again as another torrent of pleasure rocked her and in the next moment Rune surrendered to the inevitable and emptied himself into her.