Page 90 of Shadow Spell

He still tasted of it, that exotic flavor of magick—potent, seductive, edging toward the dark. She felt the ripples of it still working in him, not yet tamped down.

And wanted that, wanted him, wanted all.

His hands weren’t patient now, but greedy and rough and quick. She wanted that as well, craved being touched and taken as if his life depended on it.

It felt as if hers did.

He whipped her around, forced her back to the door. She had an instant to look into his eyes—fierce and feral—before he drove into her.

She’d thought she’d go mad if he didn’t take her, and now, being taken, went mad.

Her hips jackhammered, challenging him to match her ferocious pace. Her nails bit into him—back, shoulders—her teeth gnawed and scraped. Little pains, quick and hot, that fired into a crazed pleasure that enslaved him. His blood beat hammer strikes under the skin, so he thrust into her harder, faster, deeper in a brutal, breathless rhythm.

She cried out, a sound that joined shock and greed. And again, this time his name with a kind of wonder. When he gripped her hips, lifted her, she locked her legs around his waist.

He ravaged her throat, filled himself with the taste of her as he filled her with his lust until the last frayed tether snapped.

He broke, swore he felt the very air shatter like glass as she tightened around him, as her final cry died off into a shuddering sigh.

Limp, they slid down to the floor in a sweaty tangle of limbs.

“God. My sweet God.” She drew in air like a drowning woman surfacing.

Struggling for breath, he managed a grunt, then flopped off her to lie on his back with his eyes closed and his chest heaving.

“Is the floor shaking?”

“I don’t think so.” He opened his eyes, stared at the ceiling. “Maybe. No,” he decided. “I think we are—or more what you could call vibrating. There are bound to be aftershocks after an earthquake, I’m told.”

He reached out blindly to pat her, and his hand landed on her breast. A fine place. “Are you all right then?”

“I’m not all right. I’m amazing and amazed. I feel like I’ve gone flying again. It was the way you looked—like you’d been lit up from the inside, and your hair flying around in the wind you’d made, and the power of it all beating like tribal drums. I couldn’t help it. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t control myself.”

“You’re forgiven. I’m a forgiving sort of man.”

She sighed out a laugh, laid a hand over his. “And now here we are, naked and spent on your floor—and your room’s a disaster of a mess as always.”

He turned his head, glanced around. Not a disaster, exactly, he calculated. True enough there were shoes and boots and clothes and books scattered around. And he’d never seen the point—a severe and sharp bone of contention between him and his sister—on making a bed when you were only going to get back in it again.

To please her, he waved a hand, had the shoes and boots and clothes and books—and whatever else lay on the floor—pile up in a corner. He’d deal with it all—at some point.

But for now he waved his hand again, had rose petals raining down. She laughed, grabbed a handful from the air, then scattered them over his hair.

“You’re a foolish romantic, Connor.”

“There’s not a thing foolish about romance.” He drew her over, pillowed her head on his shoulder. “There, that’s altogether better.”

She couldn’t argue, and yet. “We should go down. They’ll be wondering what we’re up to.”

“Oh, I’ll wager they know perfectly well what we’re up to. So we’ll take a little time.”

A little, she decided. “I’ll need my clothes again—from wherever you sent them.”

“I’ll get them back to you. But not quite yet.”

She let herself be content with her head pillowed on his shoulder, and the air full of rose petals.

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