“We should get started.” He spoke quietly, glancing from Ariana to Lucca. “The sun will be up in an hour, and we need to hit the peak of the ritual at the transition from dusk to dawn. Lucca, you know your role; Ariana, we don’t have time to fill you in, so just follow my directions. I will conduct this orchestra, but both of you must participate fully to make sure both the magics of Light and Night balance Ariana as she needs them to. Lucca, any concerns?”
“A lot of them.” Lucca spoke with a hard flash in his blue eyes now as he watched Quinn in the night. “But if this is the only way to stabilize Ariana… we have to do it.”
“I will call the changes as we go.” Quinn spoke again, glancing at Ariana now. “Ariana. This ritual will be quite… demanding. But this is the one time I need you to open your powers and your limits as wide as they can go. Lucca and I must bond deeply into your magic – far deeper than a Master’s Kiss – and we cannot hold back.Youcannot hold back. Put aside all inhibitions and go where the energy takes you, and us. For if we do not, the power will break – and it is the recoil of that power breaking that causes damage, and death. Are we all in agreement?”
“I think so.” Ariana nodded, feeling frightened but also ready.
But it was Lucca who paused as Quinn looked at him. “Lucca?”
“I’ll do it.” Lucca spoke at last, though his gaze was intense upon Quinn. “I’ll see it through.”
Quinn didn’t say anything now, only nodded. But Ariana felt something pass between them then, like a slow roil of power in the night. She had felt it a few times now, as if both Lucca and Quinn’s energies twisted into each other and melded, becoming one in a way even she couldn’t quite describe. As Lucca caught his breath from that strange twisting of their magics, Quinn’s eyes blazed. They sat there, staring at each other as that uncanny power between them roared.
And then Lucca breathed out softly, letting that power fade away. Slipping his hand to Ariana’s neck as if sensing her bites from Quinn again, he stroked her skin. “So where do we start?”
“With blood.” Quinn spoke soberly now as he pushed to standing. “Come. Everyone strip away all trappings while I prepare the implements. And then we shall begin.”
Lucca lifted an eyebrow at Quinn’s statement, then gave a hard sigh as he stroked Ariana’s neck and stood, his long fingers moving to the silver-blue sash at his waist. “Why does everything with Vampires begin with getting naked?”
“Because unless you want to spoil your nice clothing with stains that are difficult to wash out,” Quinn spoke pragmatically now as he lifted an eyebrow at Lucca, “then you strip down.”
Quinn’s hands were already going to the hooks that held his men’s dressing-robe closed, undoing them in a fascinatingly accurate replay of his stripping earlier. As Ariana began untying her silk sash, she noted how neither man was watching her. As Lucca started on his shirt and Quinn opened his robe, exposing his glorious body, his skin glowing beneath the moon and stars, Ariana heard Lucca’s breath catch. Lucca’s hands halted on his shirt.
As he stared at Quinn in the night.
“We have no time to delay, Lucca.” Quinn spoke softly now as he laid his robe over a tomb, his dark eyes glorious as they pinned Lucca.
“Of course.” Lucca shivered, as his hands continued down his silk shirt. But Ariana was fascinated now as she watched Lucca’s gloriously mean, fighting-honed body come out. As he stripped his silk shirt from his shoulders, tossing it aside, she saw how beautifully golden-tan his skin was, and how viciously honed he was – similar to Quinn but more muscular.
Lean and tall, Lucca had a physique like a warrior as he shucked his boots and breeches without a hitch. Wearing no underwear, he was just suddenly bare as Ariana stared at him in the night. Turning, he showed a beautifully muscular ass, thighs, and calves as he tossed his boots and breeches aside, the perfect v-shape of his cut shoulders and torso tapering to a deliciously lean waist.
If Quinn was a marble god in the night, Lucca was Apollo, glowing with a sun-bright intensity beneath the stars and moon. Reaching up, he palmed both hands over his short ash-blond hair, currying it as he reveled in the touch of wind and starlight upon his skin. As he removed the golden torque around his neck and the bands from his wrists, then the rings from his fingers, Ariana saw an ornate tattoo of golden ink shimmer on his left shoulder. Tossing his men’s jewelry upon his clothes in the grass, Lucca glanced at Ariana as if feeling her regard, giving a sexily pleased smile that she was staring at him.
Before turning back to Quinn and staring him down in the night.
For his part, Quinn stared back. Ariana actually saw him blush as spots of color bloomed on his pale cheeks. His dark eyes were hungry as he took in Lucca, the ring of fire in them blazing. But Quinn mastered his ardor as he lifted a wrist now. Biting down into it with his fangs, he drew blood, lifting a silver bowl from a nearby tomb and tipping his wrist over it, squeezing his fist to make his blood flow.
“The ritual begins with an anointing.” Quinn spoke as he let his blood trickle into the bowl. “I will anoint Ariana, then she will do Lucca, and then Lucca will do me. Our power must be bound in a trio in order to continue. Are we ready?”
“Yes.” Ariana responded.
“Let’s do it.” Lucca spoke a little more softly.
“Then let us begin.”
Taking up something Ariana could not see from one tomb, Quinn moved across the grass to Ariana’s bier. As she shucked her silk lace robe, tossing it to the grass, she saw how both men’s gazes suddenly came to her. She still felt lightheaded and sat on the tomb rather than standing; but even so, both men’s gazes were like fire upon her as she felt them peruse her body.
Quinn’s regard was dark-bright as he came to her, and Lucca’s bright-dark as he moved across the grass as if compelled. As they arrived at the bier, Ariana gazed up at them, flooded by their need in the night. Because it wasn’t just her they needed as they arrived at the same time, staring at her.
It was each other they needed also – as Quinn’s dark gaze devoured Lucca and Lucca’s bright intensity speared Quinn back.
But Ariana felt hesitation between them, as Quinn set his bowl down upon the stone then dipped something in the blood. As he offered his free hand to help Ariana rise, she saw it was a fang in his hand, covered in beautiful sigil-work and capped with gold at one end and silver at the other.
Using the fang, Quinn began to draw ornate sigils upon Ariana’s naked body with the blood, starting at her chest and extending those sigils over her collarbones and heart. As his long white fingers moved like an artist in the night, painting her body with his strangely warm blood, Ariana shivered. Slow and deliberate, Quinn seared the pattern of sigils into her mind as he stared into her eyes.
So she could paint them upon Lucca next.
“What’s that fang you’re using?” Ariana asked quietly, feeling there was no particular reason to not talk right now as Quinn worked.
