Page 64 of Never the Roses

“I can do it both ways,” she answered thoughtfully. “To travel,yes, I can go physically, but I can also go with only my mind and leave my body behind.”

“To lie on this bier, amid the flowers, highlighted by sun and moonlight.”

She actually laughed, not heartily or musically, but not the dry huff of the bitter nonlaugh. “Vainglorious of me, I know, but… I have no one to mourn me. It’s up to me to create my own memorial.”

“Your animals would miss you.”

“At first, perhaps, but they had independent lives before they came to me and they’ll go on without me.”

“Iwould mourn you, Oneira,” he confessed quietly, partly a plea, the intensity of the moment vibrating through him.

She turned to face him. “Stearanos,” she said with gentle gravity, “you also have had an independent life before me and you will go on without me. We barely know each other.”

“I feel as if I’ve known you forever.” He faced her also, feeling inadequate to convince her of any of the things he needed her to understand. “What if I don’t want to go on without you?”

“Now who’s being dramatic? There’s only room for one on my bier,” she answered lightly, deliberately misunderstanding him. “Get your own.”

Following impulse, his own aching desire, he slipped a hand under her hair to the silken back of her neck, and kissed that tempting mouth. He caught her by surprise, her soft lips open and unresisting. He’d thought it to be a quick kiss, a demonstration of all he seemed inadequate to put into words, but she caught her breath, that quick hitching of instant desire, and kissed him back, fervently, with surprisingly honest and ardent passion. With a groan of utter raw need, he gathered her close against him, her slim body yielding, as soft as he was hard, winding hishands through her hair and pressing her to him. She opened her mouth, a heated gasp that entangled them further.

A fine tremor ran through her, and she placed flat palms against his chest. Though he braced for it, told himself he’d accept her refusal with grace, she didn’t push him away. Instead she dug her fingers into his chest, the thin shirt providing no barrier, so even her short nails scored him as deeply as Adsila’s small talons. He shuddered, wanting those deft and clever fingers over him everywhere. And yet…

“We shouldn’t,” he breathed, breaking the kiss, then belied his resolve by immediately diving in to sip once more of her sweetness, and again, and again.

“I’m tired of talking about death, of thinking about it. About war and famine and destruction,” she replied, evading his lips long enough to catch his gaze and hold it, her eyes a darker gray, serious and intent, her mouth deeper red from his rough kisses. She dragged those sharp, nimble fingers down his chest, those hands that grew roses and kneaded bread dough, tensile, drawing life from him and giving it back with shuddering passion. He wanted her like he’d never wanted another woman, with bone-rending desperation. As if she could make him whole again, draw out the rot and the bitter cynicism and make him, too, into something life-giving and good.

She opened his shirt and replaced her caressing fingers with her mouth, hot and sweetly wet, kitten teeth nipping his nipple so that he convulsed and vised his hands on her. “Wait,” he managed to say, “we haven’t talked about—”

“Enough of your talking, Em,” she murmured against his skin, biting into his pectoral harder so that he nearly yipped with startled pain—a sensation that transmuted immediately into frenzied arousal, as if she’d wrought an alchemical reaction in him, hisedges and control fraying, blurring. As if he’d been pulled into the Dream, where rules and boundaries no longer applied. He found himself bunching her white gown in his fists, pulling it up her long, slender thighs, over her gorgeously rounded hips. She was naked beneath and he groaned at his inability to do anything but savage her.

“Turn around,” he whispered, and she complied, bracing her hands on the bier. Drawing the gown up, he savored the sight of her nakedness, the fawn-colored skin a paler gold beneath, her bottom generously full, her waist narrowing above the sweet flare of her hips, spine a long, elegant arch. And she trembled under his hands as he traced those curves, her breath coming raggedly, skin twitching like a fly-stung horse as he touched the hollows and rounds of her. He pulled the gown over her head and tossed it aside, beyond tempted to kick her ankles apart and plunge into her. But he leashed his feral desire, gathering her hair to the side so he could enjoy an unobstructed view. She remained pliant beneath his hands, whimpering in encouragement now and then.

He pressed his throbbing groin against her perfect ass, laying himself over her and reaching beneath to gather her full, weighty breasts in his hands, her taut nipples poking hard into his palms. She hummed in desire and he kissed the side of her neck.

“Where is your bed?” he asked, throaty, nearly a demand.

“No. Here.” She turned in his arms, facing him in all her glory.

He lost himself in her stunningly sensual loveliness, her nipples bloodred as her lips, the crimson triangle at her crotch incredibly seductive. Then the sense of her words penetrated. “Here?” he echoed, as if he hadn’t heard her correctly. “On your bier?”

She laughed, throaty and musical, full of feminine mystique and power. “Yes. Perhaps thereisroom for more than one, if we align correctly.” Placing her hands behind her, she hopped up onto the hard surface, laying back so her crimson hair spilledover the sides and the sun from above gilded her flawless skin. Blossoms fell to the floor and the scent of crushed leaves spiraled through the air. She spread her legs, and held her arms out to him. “A bit of a wrangle, but I’m sure you can manage.”

He wanted nothing more than to take her up on the offer, and yet…

Narrowing her eyes in implicit command, Oneira wiggled her fingers, along with the rest of her, just in case he’d somehow failed to notice the blatant invitation. “Why do you hesitate? This is what you want.”

“But is it whatyouwant?” he ventured, kicking himself, but also wary. He wanted her for more than a moment, here and gone.

“Obviously,” she answered in a considerably cooled tone, edging toward displeased sorceress.

Perversely, that aroused him even more. And yet. “Oneira…” He said her name like a prayer, like an oath. “Why are we doing this?”

She dropped her outstretched arms and rolled her eyes to the skylight above, heaving out an exasperated groan. “I should have gone with Tristan. He wouldn’t have asked questions.”

Edging a hip onto the bier, he sat beside her, not so resolved that he resisted trailing fingers along the hollow beneath her rib cage and over the smooth round of her belly. She softened under the caress, but continued to watch him with suspicion. “You never bedded Tristan, then?”

“Not that it matters,” she replied testily.

“Not that it matters,” he agreed, though privately he thought it meant something that she hadn’t. Tracing the lines and curves of her, he found a pattern of freckles beneath her left breast that reminded him of one of the constellations in the northern skies. He raised his gaze to hers, finding she watched him curiously,less irritated and impatient. “You know I want you,” he said slowly, “more than I’ve ever wanted anyone else, but this feels less like wanting and more like avoiding.”

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