“Again,” he demanded. His voice was rough and ragged. “Give me another one.”
“I can’t.”
“You can.” He changed his angle, hit something inside me that made my vision blur. “You will.”
The second orgasm built faster than the first. A wave gathering strength, threatening to pull me under. I clung to him, fingernails digging into his shoulders, legs locked around his waist.
“Please.” I didn’t know what I was begging for. More. Less. Everything. “Please, Cador, I need...”
“I know what you need.”
He thrust harder. Faster. His thumb pressed down, and the wave crested, and I shattered around him with a sob that might have been his name.
He followed a moment later. I felt him pulse inside me, felt the flood of his release, felt his whole body shudder as he buried himself deep and let go.
For one shattered moment, I was alive. Truly, completely alive.
Then the wave receded.
I was cold again.
He finished moments later, his body shuddering against mine, his breath harsh and ragged in my ear.
For a long moment, neither of us moved. We stayed tangled together in the alcove, his forehead rested against my shoulder, my fingers still knotted in his sweat-damp hair.
“You’re cooling,” he said.
I closed my eyes.
“You were burning a moment ago. And now...” His hand rested flat against my chest, palm over my heart. Searching. Counting. “Your heartbeat is slowing.”
I said nothing.
“Eighty beats per minute.” His voice was strange. Thick. “Sixty. Forty.” A pause. “Twenty.”
The petal was dying in my blood. I could feel it, the stolen warmth draining away, the false pulse stuttering toward silence. In minutes, I would be cold and still and obviously, undeniably other.
“What are you?” he whispered.
The last of the warmth left me. My heart went still. My skin went cold. My lungs stopped their performance of breathing.
I opened my eyes. Looked at him, at this man I’d just let inside my body, this monster who was watching me with something I couldn’t name heating his gaze.
“Yours,” I whispered. “For now.”
Then a scream cut through the night.
OLWEN
The scream came from the courtyard.
High and sharp, it cut off too quickly, the sound of terror silenced mid-breath. It echoed off the stone walls, bounced down the corridor, filled the alcove where we still stood tangled together.
Cador’s head snapped up.
His body went rigid against mine. Not with desire anymore, but with something else. Something predatory.
His nostrils flared. His glare narrowed, and I watched the color drain from his skin. Not pale anymore. The smoke of storm clouds.
