Page 123 of Gemini Queen
I scramble up the twisting stairs and burst into the belfry with an apology already forming on my lips. “So sorry to be late, Master Aries. I, uh, had to take care of something…”
The strong wind up here sucks the words right out of my mouth and blows them away across the snow-covered rooftops.
But that’s not why I fall silent.
Lucius is standing on the low stone wall that guards the drop, legs spread wide, head tipped back, arms spread out to embrace the elements, the black folds of his caped greatcoat open and billowing in the breeze. The wind’s unraveled his chestnut hair and it’s blowing loose around his face.
He’s basically one step away from plunging to a messy death on the cobblestone piazza far below. A danger that makes my heart pound. But he’s so wild and so primitive and so exhilarated up there, every line of his body blazing with savage joy, that he lights me up like an electric current.
I freeze under the peaked roof in the open-sided bell chamber, the massive bells hanging still and silent beside me, and breathe, “Lucius.”
Again the wind snatches the word away.
But this time, his wolf hears me.
His head whips around to find me, untamed hair flying free around his face, eyes flaming red, huge-ass fangs fully extended. His wolf’s on the prowl and very close to the surface. Despite the cold and the snow gathering in his hair, his stern Vlad the Impaler features are flushed with heat.
“Zara,” he rumbles, thick and guttural. His wolf lurks in his voice. “It’s time to summon the lightning.”
“Shit,” I whisper.
I don’t know how I know. My power’s been surging and growing in weird unpredictable spikes ever since I got here. It’s like being close to the four of them, these four warlocks, is setting me off somehow.
Maybe my Gemini DNA really does want me to claim them.
Because I don’t know how else I’d suddenly feel so certain—like telepath certain—that the reason Lucius is flaming with heat and half-delirious in a snowstorm is because he’s in heat.
Do purebred shifters even go into heat? Unless they’re, you know, bitten?
And clearly I’m projecting again, because some of the crazy recedes from his eyes.
“We really must do something,” he says through his fangs, “about your appalling ignorance of the arcane races. Theonlytime a shifter goes into heat, Ms. Gemini, is when he’s been bitten and bonded by a mate. After that, a shifter’s heat is a monthly occurrence, following the cycle of the moon.”
Well, okay. I guess that means he’s been bitten. But Ronin’s not a shifter and he doesn’t bite. I could bite, maybe, I’m kind of a baby shifter, but Ididn’t. Then who in the fuckinghell…?
As I gaze up at my teacher, my thoughts spin away. I’m completely flat-out mesmerized. He’s still in there, my Lucius, standing one misstep away from death and giving me a fucking lecture. It’s just he’s sharing that space inside his head, like that space inside his body, with someone else.
With his wolf.
He stares down at me from the wall, wind licking his greatcoat like black flames, tie unknotted and shirt unbuttoned. Sweat glitters on his brow and the powerful contours of his chest. His sweat-slicked naked abs are so taut they make me feral. And underneath all that buttoned-tight propriety he’s shedding with his clothes, there’s a glimmer of antique gold on a chain, nestled in the hollow of his corded neck.
Sweet Jesus. He’s actually wearing a crucifix. He’s wearing a crucifix like Van Helsing.
Lust coils low and tight in my core and makes my pussy clench. I drag in a breath that’s heavy and sweet with my own mating scent.
He hasn’t even touched me, and I’m scenting.
His nostrils flare and his chest rumbles with a growl.
“Summon the lightning,” he snarls, but it’s his wolf, his wolf who’s winning the war for dominance that’s raging in his body. “Claim your power.”
“Not like this.” I don’t even know who’s talking, but the words are coming out of my mouth. And I’ve never felt so sure about anything in my entire life. “You want me doing what you need? Then I want you doing whatIneed. Get down here.”
He flings back his head and bays with laughter, but that’s not my cautious prof. That’s his wolf howling.
And it’s his wolf and his wolf’s primitive instincts I need to lure.
Holding his flaming gaze, I unbutton my peacoat until it falls at my feet. I’m standing under the belfry roof, which shields me from the snow, while the massive bells hanging behind me block the worst of the wind. And there’s so much heat pouring through my body that the cold doesn’t even bother me.
