“I should.” He tilted his head as if straining for control and said with that same aching deliberation, “I try very hard to be gentle with you.”
She knew that. A little less care, though, and she might learn something.
“I need to know you,” she said. And since each bit of revealed information was worse than the last, this must be a doozy. It wasn’t as if she had a lifetime for him to tell her either. Tomorrow she might fall down a flight of stairs, and that would be that.
He looked away from her, into the silent trees. “The fae prey on heedless fools like you.”
“I need to know,” she said. “Do you understand?”
He looked back at her, his gaze black and cold. “So be it.”
The low-lying mist whipped into a frenzy, and Layla flinched, covering herself again. The wind took with it all the jewel-toned leaves and all hint of living things in a dirty, stinging tornado of terrifying brevity. Bare trunks of trees amid a soil of ash were all that was left behind of Twilight. It was utter desolation. A holocaust of imagination. The death of all things.
Her heart clenched at the sight. What was she supposed to learn from this?
She sought Khan, who was suddenly behind her. He put a hand roughly to her cheek, to keep her sight fixed on the ruined tableau before her. What was he trying to tell her?
“Khan?” She trembled, fearing what was to come.
“Please tell me you want to turn back,” he said, low, in her ear. “I can still take you back.”
“I won’t go.” Her soul was ringing again with recognition. He was no stranger, yet she didn’t know him. She trusted absolutely but could recall no basis for her conviction. She wanted him, not the polite enigma who left her roses. Five minutes or fifty years . . . she wanted him. Opened for him.
“You’re a fool,” he said.
“Your fool,” she answered.
She felt a hand at the waistband of her jeans. A tug and the fabric fell to dust. She was abruptly naked, the powder an inch thick at her feet. Her skin flashed from hot to cold, nipples peaked, belly quivered.
His arm came around her waist, an unyielding band of black at the edge of her vision.
Her shakes redoubled, but she relied on the strength of his arm around her. At least he was close in this terrible place. A lonesome howl of wind lifted the ash, but she knew, strangely, that the sound came from him. He existed here, lost in this misery of gray, unchanging dearth.
She tried to turn, to comfort him, but he held her fast, and, with a hand to her cheek, turned her face back to the wasteland of Twilight. “Don’t look at me.”
She was cold and scared, her womb aching. All she wanted was him. The real him.
He braced his legs, sending the ash into powdery clouds. He cast a hand up her thigh. He tilted her hips.
She went liquid hot, throbbing in wait. Her breath halted. Her core and soul braced for an invasion.
“Forgive me.” And he thrust.
Her vision blanched winter white, the barren silhouettes of skeletal trees scraping an empty sky. Her senses were utterly overwhelmed, so that all she heard was the beat of her heart, all she smelled was the blood it pumped. He pulled back, then roughly reseated himself inside her. Again and again, she was filled with him, gasping for breath in the wake of his driving rhythm.
A feminine voice from the past broke through her memory into the present. Can you show me how to go? I don’t know. . . .
And Khan’s answering, with infinite gentleness. I don’t know either.
Kathleen had never known this side of him. Relentless, brutal, a being of staggering power. She’d never known the bleakness in his heart.
The wind carried a wail toward her. The warped voice had no gender—it could’ve been wrenched from his throat or hers.
Where their first coming together had been a fantasy of sensuality, this was need, a longing accumulated over incomprehensible time. His darkness was alive within her, circling her core, wrapping around her soul.
He could have preyed on her. Drawn from her essence. She understood that now, the danger of the fae. And she would have let him.
Here, take me. I’m yours.
The rhythm grew faster, harder, so deep she couldn’t breathe. Just clutched at his arm around her, trembling toward a rapturous brink. She gave him her weight, trusting him with everything she was. Arched against the broad wall of his chest.
His free hand circled to the juncture of her thighs. Stroked her there, hard and sure, and a little bit cruel.
Her belly went tight. Her womb clenched around him, Shadow, beast, monster, fae. The ground shook and he roared behind her.
She split, awed by an exquisite flowering within that thrilled every molecule of her incongruous body. The winter trees likewise bloomed before her dimming vision, crackling into blue and purple and green, the lushness of life and an ecstasy of color. The sky went violet, stars twirling overhead. Dizzy. Pulsing with magic. Or maybe that was her.
Her trembling gave way to tears, which coursed rapidly down her face. “Khan, please, just let me hold you.”
“No,” he said. “You’ve seen enough.”