Page 75 of The Dryad Storm

She meets his gaze to find him giving her a knowing look as her thoughts lace with pain.

With someone I loved, she rages, not able to choke out the words to him.With someone I was fasted to. Someone I’m betraying.But then her thoughts tilt once more toward the Magedom’s horror, and a harsh tremor runs down her spine.

Someone who chose to be part of the monster.

She averts her eyes once more from Mavrik’s compelling golden gaze. Fights the sense ofrightnessin her pull to him. Because if this is right, why didn’t the Ancient One lead her to Mavrik instead?

“Let’s Seal this fasting,” she insists, battling against the fact that she’s falling in love with him. And battling against how much she wants this. How much she wantshim.

“Gwynn...” Mavrik says, concern in his eyes. “This is a pressured situation for us both...” He pauses, swallowing thickly, clearly thrown, as well. “But it doesn’t have to be bad.” His voice lowers to a more intimate register. “I can feel your magicconstantlyreaching for mine. I feel it now.”

His hand comes to her arm, and gooseflesh rises as the contact intensifies the breathless urge tofuse, her magic clamoring for his in a prismatic conflagration. “What would make this easier for you?”

Heart throbbing, Gwynn shakes her head, pulses of wanton color flashing in her vision and through their lines, her body growing warm from it.

“Nothing will make this easier,” she forces out.Because it’s wrong to love you and want you.

Mavrik stiffens, his expression gaining a stubborn edge even as his magic twines through hers with more wanton energy. “Gwynn, I cannot do this against your full will.”

Her own stubborn rebellion flares, scarlet sparks exploding as her magic ignites against his with bright force. She grabs hold of his tunic, pulls him close, and kisses him with sudden fervor, sending a shock of flaming red straight through him.

Mavrik grips her upper arms and firmly pushes her back, breaking the kiss, the gold of his eyes intensifying as his power heats around hers, growing crimson with desire as he looks deeply, relentlessly into her eyes, and Gwynn can feel him reading everything she can’t voice...

Ancient One help her, she knows he’s reading the truth of it.

She wants him.

She wants him in every way.

“Are yousure?” he demands as his power gains bright ground against hers, his breathing growing uneven, his face flushed with want.

Their chromatic draw surging to unbearable heights, Gwynn holds his gaze and gives a tight nod.

His mouth comes down on hers, every hue exploding through her vision as their power merges more intensely, her back arching against the sensation of falling into his magic.

She tries to hold back her hungry response to his open passion. Tries to tell herself she doesn’t truly desire it when he draws her down onto a bedroll and frantically undresses her, the two of them kissing each other brazenly, lost to the magic as he yanks off his weapons and clothing with an intensity bordering on desperation, his hands caressing hereverywhere.

And then, caressing her in a way that makes her feel as if she’s going to dissolve into a marbled puddle of color before they powerfully join.

Gwynn gasps, her eyes widening at the sensations of fullness and their magicamplifying through their merged lines, an exquisite pleasure coursing through her as every resplendant hue flashes through her body and vision. Giving in to the thrall, she wraps her legs tightly around his, driving his magic—drivinghim—deeper into her.

Mavrik groans, low and gutteral, their connection to each other strengthening in a flood of color and wild pleasure as he and his magic move within her, and Gwynn moans against his mouth, their bodies and fused magic burning as hot as a prismatic star.

She tries to hold back her cry of ecstasy as the chromatic pleasure builds with astonishing intensity, a gilded heat rising through her every line even as conflict rears and she resists her out-of-control desire.

Fights the building tide.

But then Mavrik growls into her shoulder and his magic and want detonate, the force of his release tipping her over into her own starbright explosion, pleasure and light flashing through her in a radiant blur.

And then his eyes meet hers through the bright haze of light... and Gwynn comes undone.

Thatlook...it steals her breath, the prismatic color suffusing his eyes like a molten rainbow that she wants to fall intoforever.

She’s unprepared. Unprepared for this much emotion toward him igniting inside her.

“Gwynnifer,” he says, his voice and magic full of such raw feeling that Gwynn’s heart clenches. He runs a hand down her arm, trailing shimmering sparks as he glances toward her fastlines. “Your hands... are you all right?”

“I... I think so,” she murmurs as she flexes her hands and looks at them, noting, with a jolt, that both her hands and wrists—and his—are markedonlyin glowing gold lines, the patterns on their wrists now identical to the fastline designs marking their hands.

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