Page 160 of Caelum

My cock hardened the instant she let the words out, but my head told me to be cautious. “Are you okay?” I rasped, even as I moved to the side so she could climb in next to me—sure, she could have rounded the bed and climbed in there, but she hadn’t done that. She’d moved toward me, and the prospect of her lying on sheets that were warm from my body made everything inside me clench and release in an endless surge of emotion that was as ceaseless as the tide itself.

“No, I’m not,” she whispered as she clambered into bed beside me.

My body still ached, but I didn’t need help moving now so that was something. Shifting across the bed hadn’t hurt too badly, either, and the very lack of pain was not helping me focus when Eve was here, in bed with me. Her words helped, of course. Like a dash of cold water on my face in winter.

“What’s wrong?” I inquired, hating the uncertainty in her voice.

“I’m aching and sore and thinking about today’s classes.”

Surprised by the list, I murmured, “When you work out tomorrow, some of the aches will go away.”

She grumbled, “Well, that doesn’t help me now, does it?”

My lips curved. “No. Sorry.” A huff escaped her which had me grinning into the darkness. “What did you learn in class?” My breath caught in my chest as she turned into me then wiggled closer, so much so that I could feel her heat against my side.

Jesus.

“That in 1974, Ghouls tried to take over a town in Wales.”

“The Ystwyth Massacre.” I hummed under my breath. “Damn shame.Small village wiped out, and the human authorities never even knew it. We got there too late.”

“Hard to believe the nest is still there.”

“Yeah. It is.” We monitored nests which had been established that way, nests that earned the title of ‘colony.’ That was what Juliet McAllister’s intent had been in Aboh. To establish another colony in Nigeria. “What else did you learn?”

“Stuff about Ghouls. It made me wonder how a creature connected with me enough to realize I was there. The compound…it was a backwater settlement. I don’t understand how anyone could have found me.”

“Let’s be grateful they did,” I said with a sigh, loving how she nestled into me, even as it fucking hurt. Not just my aching body, but my dick too.

I took it as a good sign that I was getting better, but still, it sucked.

“Yeah. You’re right.” She fell silent. “Nestor?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s June twenty-first.”

Whatever I’d expected to hear, it wasn’t that. I’d expected her to be concerned about the fact she’d done the impossible, that she was somehow capable of granting wishes. Nope, her worries weren’t grounded in that, but on the date?

Would I ever understand this woman?

“Yes, it is. Summer solstice,” I conceded.

She curled onto her side, and the fact mygouillecould see as well in the dark as it could in the light meant that I saw the plump surge of her tits as they bunched together, and the way she rubbed her thighs as she pulled them up to her chest.

Dear lord.

“I didn’t know that before I came here, but that day is important to us. I mean, it was important to the compound.”

“It was?” Some days, talking to Eve was like wading throughdoce de leite, a type of caramel.

“Yes. June twenty-first and December twenty-first were special feast days.”

Ironic that the uber-Christian place, where Eve had been reared, relied upon Pagan dates of worship. I barely refrained from rolling my eyes at the hypocrisy.

“Why were they special?” I prompted gently.

“It was when we celebrated our birthdays.”

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