Page 29 of Blood & Ice

I leaned my head back, unwilling to let him see the tears gathering in my eyes. He’d take them the wrong way. Assume he was the one who’d given me a complex. He really was a softie when you got past his defenses.

Maverick’s lips roved across my jaw before trailing moresearing kisses down my throat. I was ready to melt into the cushions. He paused when I spread my legs, just a little, angling our bodies closer. He was excited already, and we’d barely done anything. It was heady to know that just kissing me had this effect on him. It made me feel strong. Powerful. Beautiful.

“Tally...”

“I have protection in my purse,” I whispered. I couldn’t quite look him in the eye. I felt like a pot about to boil over. I wanted to do it with him inside me, making love to me, not keening in fear and grief on the floor.

To his credit, he didn’t argue with me. His weight vanished for a moment. I felt the absence like a toothache, dull and unpleasant. My heart beat a little faster when he didn’t return in seconds. He was back before my self-doubt could do more than nibble on me. I only caught a glimpse of something dark in his hands before he pressed something over my eyes.

The sudden plunge into blackness made me jerk in shock, and I couldn’t argue as he knotted something behind my head, fashioning a makeshift blindfold. The nimbleness of the maneuver spoke of experience. I wondered if I should be jealous of the prior women in his life but decided against it. He’d marriedme,not them.

“Mav,” I said when I could catch my breath. “What are you—”

“Shh,” he interrupted, lips grazing my throat again. Without the visual, the sensation was more intense. He had a five o’clock shadow that scraped deliciously against my skin when he talked. “Stay right there, Tally. Don’t move.”

It was mortifying how quickly the words heated my skin. I felt like a pulse point, hammering with excitement as he hovered just above me, tantalizingly close and yet so far away.

The image of pushing him to the ground, climbing astride him, and taking what I wanted was so visceral that I almostclimaxed then and there. He must have read the expression on my face, because his chuckle tickled my skin.

He pinned me easily, and I let him, luxuriating in the feeling of his lean body caging mine against the cushions. I wiggled impatiently beneath him, trying not to whine as he peeled articles of my clothing off one by one. I’d never thought I’d be wishing for the clothes unraveling spell again, and yet here we were. No matter how much skin he bared, it never felt like enough. I cried out when he pressed his fingers into me, effortlessly finding the spot that made me scream. Which meant the bastard had gagged me, too.

It was sweet relief when he finally plunged himself into me, working himself in and out, riding my bucking body like a wave. He didn’t seem to mind when I raked my nails down his back, trying to find purchase. He shuddered above me, groaning my name like a prayer.

“God, Tally. You’re so beautiful.”

Under his hands, Ifeltbeautiful.

I was glad he’d gagged me. Otherwise, I might have said the words aloud.

I love you, Maverick Depraysie. And that scares the shit out of me.

Chapter Fifteen

Maverick

I’d never thought of myself as a romantic until I met Tally.

Maybe meeting the right woman did that to you. Made you want to be better. To make more of yourself than the sorry condition you’d been in when she found you. Tally had offered me something no one else really had—she’d offered me friendship the day we met. I’d never be able to tell her just how much that had meant to me.

I stared down at her sleeping face, wishing I could paint her in soft pastels. I’d never been the artist that some of my family was. I could do passable stitchwork, enough to make up for Wanda’s lack of proficiency in potions, but I wasn’t a maestro in anything but magic. It wasn’t arrogance to say I was one of the best. I’d proved it over and over.

I wished I could bottle this moment. Let Tally feel how much it meant to me. My stupid mouth would only ever muck things up if I tried to explain with words, so I didn’t even try.

Tally cuddled closer to me, pressing her face against my chest. She’d drifted off to sleep not long after we’d finished. We’d donned our clothes and arranged ourselves in a more respectable position on the couch, just in case the boys rose early and needed something. Even having her curled like a kitten in my lap was a peace unlike anything I’d ever felt before.

“I love you,” I whispered against her hair.

She didn’t reply. I was too much of a coward to shake her awake and say it to her face.

It’s practice for the day when you finally pluck up the nerve,I reasoned.

Sure, I’d go with that.

I sucked in a deep breath and froze when the scent of ozone and copper pennies drifted to me on a nonexistent breeze. Itwisted in my seat so fast that I almost gave myself whiplash.

At first, it was hard to see where the source of the smell was coming from. It seemed to pour, sourceless, from the shadows. The darkness all around us bunched and roiled, splashing like ink where it shouldn’t. It seemed to creep forward, blotting out the glow of the nightlight and infomercials. The announcer’s speech had become a solid drone of sound. I could feel, but not see, time dragging around us like a rock in a stream. This moment was stuck in space, while the world around us carried on merrily.

Which should have been impossible. Time was a tricky concept, magically speaking. You mucked with it at your own peril. Only a few species could even attempt playing with time, and witches were among them. Blood witches, in particular. Or a bloodwarlock,as the case may have been. When I glanced down at Tally, she’d frozen as well. So, it was just me and whatever magical fuckery this was.

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