Free.
Time stuttered, then started up again, in the strange way of dreams. And then he found himself lying beside Katerina on yet another icy stone floor, one of his palms resting against her cheek. The air smelled different here: sage and wormwood, mugwort and garlic. Outside the cell’s bars, water flowed, cradling bowls of burning herbs.
Katerina stirred, blinking at him as if he’d woken her. Her face was smudged with dirt, her hair tangled, but he didn’t care about any of that. All he saw was her.
“Niko?” she said, her voice hoarse. “But how?—”
He threaded his hands into her hair and pressed his lips to hers. “I thought I lost you.” The words were a broken whisper. “I thought I might never see you again.”
His Dimi held him tight, and that horrible sense of disconnection began to fade, replaced by an ease he only felt when he was with her. He was where he belonged. They were together, now, and somehow everything would be all right.
“I’m here,” she promised. “I’ve missed you so much. I thought maybe they tortured you for answers…that it would be too much, after everything you went through?—”
He gave a rough laugh, torn from his chest. “They tried.”
Katerina cupped his face in both hands. “If you’re really here,” she said, her dark eyes boring into his gray ones, “then kiss me.”
Inside Niko, doubt stirred. But why? It was only a dream, after all. “Your wish is my command,” he said, and lowered his mouth to hers.
She smiled against his lips. And then he was kissing her, moving against her, somehow everywhere at once: stroking her breasts, nipping at her neck, running his hands over her skin. He was cold, so cold, and she was heat, she was fire, she was what he needed.
He didn’t make either of them wait, terrified that the dream would slip from his grasp, that he’d wake to find himself cold and alone once more. Instead, he slid a hand beneath her waistband and stroked her, sinking two fingers deep. She moaned into his mouth, eager, and his cock swelled against her belly, desperate to be inside her.
“Katya,” he muttered, wanting to tell her so, but she pulled back, sliding downward, taking him in her mouth, and it was—Saints, it was too much, it was everything. The sweet suction of her mouth, the way she took all of him, swallowing around him?—
He pulled back, urging her upward. “Don’t tease me,” he warned her when she tried to linger. “Not tonight.”
Relenting, she let him pull her on top of him, tracing the lines of his body as she went, with something approaching reverence. It was wrong for her to touch him that way, as if she worshipped him, as if he mattered, because?—
Fool, Elena’s voice whispered, but he refused to listen. All that mattered was Katerina, kissing him, digging her fingernails into his shoulders, telling him to stay here, to stay with her.
“Always,” he told her, even though it wasn’t a promise he could keep.
Somehow, her pants slid off—had he done that? But no, his hands were buried in her hair. She must have done it herself, somehow, even though she’d been touching him the whole time. But it didn’t matter, because this was a dream, and in dreams, there were no rules. And God, when she sank down onto him, already clenching around him, when she started to move, he thought he might die and die happy.
There was some reason he shouldn’t be doing this, beyond all of the usual reasons that they should absolutely not be doing this, but for the life of him, he couldn’t think of what it was. All he could do was thrust into her heat, telling her how gorgeous she was, how he would never want anyone else, how he had loved her all his life.
He waited for her magic to flow over his skin, the way it usually did, touching him everywhere that her hands could not, driving him wild. But it never came. Instead, she bent over him, seeking his mouth. The tips of her breasts brushed his chest as he gave her what she wanted, sucking on her tongue, one of his hands gripping her hip while the other slipped between them, driving her higher.
And Saints, everything he gave her, she gave back a hundredfold. She was writhing on top of him now, begging him, trembling all around him, on the edge. He slid his hand lower, to the place where they were joined, then took hold of both of her hips and lifted her, let her fall, lifted her again…
And then she was crying his name, gripping him so tight he couldn’t breathe, and he was following her over the edge, coming so hard he felt the pulse of it everywhere. The Darkness that had dogged him for weeks was gone, replaced with a pure explosion of Light that healed him, made him whole. He buried his face in Katerina’s hair, breathing her in, whispering words of gratitude, and she clutched him back just as tightly.
“I love you,” he told her. “Come whatever storms.”
Then, as if his words had summoned it, the same wave that had swept him down into sleep took hold of him again, ripping him from Katerina’s arms. It caught him up, buoying him, carrying him away from her. She was answering him, calling for him, but her voice grew smaller and smaller, until finally he couldn’t hear it anymore, at all.
He came back to consciousness with a jolt, eyes blinking open to the gloom of his cell, aftershocks still shuddering through his body. His release pooled on his belly, proof of his pleasure. Saints, had he cried out?
He strained to hear, but nothing stirred in the darkness. And then he saw them: shades streaming through the space between the bars, distinguishable from the cell’s gloom by their impenetrable, ink-black tendrils, like currents moving along the surface of a river. They flowed toward him, as unerring as metal shavings drawn toward a magnet, and sank beneath his skin, into that ever-widening vein of dark ore. He felt them settle, satisfied, for all the world like his black dog curling in front of a fire.
By all the Saints and demons, what had he done? He’d fallen asleep craving Katerina, wanting the comfort of her presence. Had the shades that lurked inside him crept outward while he slept, slipping through the bars of the cell and moving through the corridors of the prison until they’d found his Dimi? When he’d dreamed of touching Katerina, kissing her, moving inside her…had it been a dream, after all, or had he truly been with her in some other form? And if he had—had she given her consent?
The thought sent a horrified shudder rippling through him. He had to believe he would never force himself on Katerina. Anything else was unthinkable. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself. But still?—
He wrapped his arms around his knees, breath coming hard. Was that why he’d seemed to be touching Katerina in so many places at once…because it hadn’t been his hands, but his shades, which had no such limitations? Had she known, and understood? Or had she thought it was a dream, as he had, and yielded to him?
Niko shuddered, fighting back the anxiety that threatened to consume him. Beneath it lurked a tantalizing possibility, flickering to life like a fanned flame.
