Moonshadow (Moonshadow #1)

She could, and her heart started to pound.

“Then,” he said, even more quietly, “there are truths that change. Before I met you, I was adamant about not investing in a relationship. I was constantly on the run, my life in danger, and that is a terrible thing to take to a woman’s bed. And I met you. You’re stubborn, infuriating, courageous, inventive, generous, and kind. You make me laugh. You make me crazy. You make me rediscover things inside myself that I thought were dead forever. You make me hard as a rock until all I can think about is tearing off your clothes. How long have we known each other?”

“Maybe four days, or maybe seventeen.” At a loss, she shook her head. “Who the hell knows anymore?”

He gave her a crooked smile. “No matter how you calculate it, or how many time slippages we’ve gone through, it hasn’t been very long.”

“No,” she whispered. “It hasn’t.”

He paused. “Tell me you don’t love me.”

“I don’t love you,” she told him.

The falsehood lingered in the air between them. He smiled. “Tell me you don’t want me.”

She looked him in the eyes and said, “I don’t want you.”

Oh, that one. That was laughably false.

His smile died. “When you went to Raven’s Craig, I asked Braden how he and his wife made the kind of commitment they had, when we live such dangerous lives. He said, the love has got to be bigger than everything else. The isolation, the separation, the danger. When the love is bigger than all that—you just do it. You pay the price in uncertainty and sometimes bereavement, because every moment you’re together is worth the cost.”

“What a beautiful thing to say,” she whispered.

His grip tightened on her hands. “I can’t lie. Part of me is still struggling, because if I let you into my life I feel like I’m putting you in danger. Also over the last week, my life has changed somewhat. We have reinforcements now, which means we can create pockets of safety, but there’ll still be violence and danger. We didn’t kill Morgan. Isabeau still hates us. Oberon is still unconscious. Yet in spite of all that, I need to ask you. Can we make love bigger than everything else?”

With all his responsibilities, he had still left old friends and comrades, and the command of his army, to come this morning and ask her this. Well, and to bitch at her a little bit too, but she would get over that.

Leaning forward, she wrapped her arms around his neck, and he pulled her down on the floor to hold her. It felt so good to be back in his arms. Closing her eyes, she concentrated fiercely on soaking every moment of it in.

She told him, “Yes, we can. I can handle everything, as long as you don’t push me away—and Nik, I mean it. You’ve got to fight that instinct, because rejection hurts almost more than anything else in the world, and I won’t put up with it. You’ve got to go all in.”

“I’m all in,” he whispered.

“Oh God, we’re going to fight, aren’t we?” She turned her face into his hair.

“It’s going to be ugly.” He rocked her. “You make me so crazy.”

She laughed unsteadily. “Your autocratic nonsense drives me batty.” She lowered her voice and said gruffly, “I’m going to issue orders now, because it never occurs to me that somebody might have a mind of her own.”

“Shut up.” He sank his fists into her hair. “Shut up.”

She opened her eyes very wide. “See? You just issued an ord—”

Growling, he covered her mouth with his. He told her telepathically, There’s really only one way I know of to shut you up.

Well, sure, she said sarcastically. “OUT LOUD. There’s really only one way to truly, truly shut me up.

He lifted his head. His expression had caught fire. He growled, “Orgasms.”

Caught by surprise, her mouth hung open. She said, “I was about to say, you’d have to knock me out, but your idea sounds much more fun.”

“I think so too.” Standing, he scooped her into his arms and walked with her into the bedroom.

Oh dear Lord, he carried her into the bedroom. It was such a quintessentially Nikolas thing to do, she was nearly beside herself with exasperated glee. She stuck out one leg and regarded with bemusement the sturdy Doc Martens boot at the end of it.

He was never going to learn.

Never.





Chapter Twenty-Two





In the shadowed bedroom, Nikolas set Sophie down. Before her feet touched the floor, he was kissing her, plundering that soft, generous mouth. He yanked the tie out of her hair and pulled the braid out, sinking his fists into the fragrant, curling mass.

It had been such a long, difficult night, he had no patience. Dealing with the needs of his army, talking strategy with Annwyn in bursts as they found time. Looking for Sophie whenever he had a moment until he finally ran into Rowan, who had given him his ring, told him what she had said, and that she had left for Shrewsbury.

The news had been a kick to the gut. She had gone, just gone. No word of explanation. No information about where she was staying.

This is how people die, he thought. You expect them to be there, and then suddenly they aren’t.

Well after midnight, when he felt like he could finally leave, he had taken Gawain’s Harley to go look for her. She didn’t answer her phone. Her stupid solicitor didn’t know a goddamn thing. He had to resort to going from hotel to hotel until finally he recognized the Mini parked in the street.

The experience had scared him and made him angry. Not that he had truly believed she might die. She had been right when she had said to Rowan that it was the perfect time for her to go.

It had scared him and made him angry, because she had left him.

Facing that possibility burned everything else away, and he understood what Braden had been saying. While they collected the bodies of their fallen troops and prepared them to be transported back across the passageway for burial at home, he confronted what his life would be like if Sophie was truly out of his life, and he realized he would have done anything to spend as much time with her as he possibly could.

Pushing the night into the past where it belonged, he focused on the here and now. Sophie stood in front of him, healthy and whole. She spread her hands over his chest, and her touch soothed the last of the rawness away.

Need took control of his actions. He yanked her shirt over her head, and as her arms came free, she scrambled out of her bra. His skin was on fire, and the restriction of his clothes felt intolerable. He tore them off while she wriggled out of the rest of her things.

Then they came together, flesh to flesh, with nothing between them. It felt so necessary and right he paused with his mouth resting on the pulse at the base of her neck, breathing her in, taking her into every darkened, solitary corner in his soul so she could light him up with her presence.

She seemed to understand he needed that moment; as she rubbed his arms, her head tilted back to expose the slender curve of her vulnerable throat.