Page 94 of The Seven Rings
“I know the idea of bringing the air gun upset you.”
“It more took me by surprise. I never thought of anything like that. It doesn’t upset me as much as it makes me nervous. I’ve seen the movie,” she added, trying to keep it light. “You could put your eye out with that.”
He smiled, stroked her cheek. “Which is why you practice, use all the safety precautions. But start with the rock in your pocket.”
“Rocks don’t make me nervous.” She studied him as she took off her shirt. “You’re worried about me, but you should remember just what you said before dinner. Jones got a piece of her, I hurt her, Pye hurt her big, scary bird.”
“Which is one of the reasons I worry. You said it pisses her off we’re here—you’re here—adding things. Basically, living your life. If that pisses her off, Sonya, how much more does it that you hurt her?”
“Point taken.” When he pulled off his shirt, she moved to him, pressed her hands to his chest. Spread her fingers. “I think, honestly think, we’re getting closer to the answers. I don’t think she can know or understand that. She doesn’t believe her curse can be broken. She’s too full of herself to believe that. So I’m still an annoyance, a nuisance. I haven’t graduated to competitor or enemy. Yet.”
“You think you will.”
“I don’t know.” She laid her head on his shoulder. “I think about it. What’s the sense of time for her? How long have I been here, in her sense? She jumps to her death every night. Does that start the clock again, for her?”
“That’s a theory.”
“Yet she remembers, doesn’t she, what came before she jumped, what came after? If for no other reason she has the rings on her hands to remind her.”
“Maybe that’s part of their purpose for her.”
Sonya eased back. “And now that’s a theory—they help her remember as well as add to her power. It starts to hurt the head trying to make sense of it.”
“That’s when you push it to the back of your brain and let it simmer there on its own.”
“Is that what you do when you have a problem you can’t solve?”
“It usually works.”
Careful and deliberate, she thought, and eased back enough to link her arms around his neck.
“I do the same with work problems, so I’ll try it with this. But Ineed something in the front of my brain. You could help me with that.”
“That was my next idea.”
“You have such good ones,” she murmured as his mouth came down to hers.
It felt right, being with him. It felt right, loving him even without the word spoken. She embraced it, embraced him, and let herself be where the problems and puzzles and need for answers couldn’t reach.
While the dogs slept, and the sea rolled, they undressed each other. Slipped into bed together. With the lights low, the breeze through the open windows stirring the air, she looked in his eyes.
And he reached for her.
While worries slept, her body awakened. Aroused by the touch of his hands, the seeking glide of them, she rolled with him to answer his needs with her own. Lips sought lips, hungrily now as passions broke through the quiet, and those rising needs heated the blood.
How quickly he could excite her, send her pulses throbbing and that sweet ache, that sweet and desperate ache, spreading through her.
And when his body, so surprisingly tough and strong, pressed to hers, she could only sigh his name. The hard planes, the seductive ripple of muscle formed such an enticing contrast to his smooth and steady nature.
Here, a man she knew she could rely on no matter what came. And here, a man who could stir her needs with a single touch.
“I want you.” She grazed her teeth over his jaw as her hands gripped hard at his hips. “I want you inside me.”
“Not yet.” He captured her mouth again, stilling her words. “Not yet.”
Instead, he took more, gave more.
His lips roamed down, down her throat, over her breasts while his hands stroked her toward madness.
