As if he loved her.
Stunned, she couldn’t breathe. It actually took her a moment before she could even react enough to kiss him back. But when her brain began to work, she had to admit he was exceptional at this.
More than that, he set her on fire. It’d been far too long since anyone had kissed her in such a manner. Since any man had made her feel exceptional. While she hadn’t been chaste, she hadn’t been promiscuous either. Mostly because she’d avoided any emotional entanglement with another living being, other than her mother.
It didn’t matter how much time passed. Thoughts of her son and husband forever haunted her. Nothing could chase away the memory of their smiles. The warmth that she’d once taken for granted.
Fear of losing another had kept her heart locked in ice.
Apollites and Daimons were hunted creatures who often lived exceptionally brief lives. Even their strongest were often annihilated by Dark-Hunters, sooner rather than later. And that only compounded her fears to the point that she’d been incapable of opening herself up for more heartache.
But Falcyn wasn’t an Apollite.
He definitely wasn’t a Daimon.
And when he pulled back, she was left dazed and breathless by the taste of him. A gorgeous smile hovered at the edge of his lips as he stared down at her.
Without a word, he led her into the portal and kept her steady.…
Falcyn cursed the moment he felt the energy pulling at his body.
And then it sucked them into the stinging vortex.
He’d always hated stepping through one of these gates. Blaise was a lot more used to it than he was, since he held one of the keys that enabled him to travel to and from the veil world where Merlin had pulled Avalon and Camelot to so that she could protect the other worlds and realms from Morgen’s evil. After the death of King Arthur, it’d been the only way to secure the realm of man, and the other eight worlds from Morgen and her evil Circle. Otherwise, Morgen’s fey court would have enslaved them all.
But as for Falcyn, he liked to stay planted in one dimension. This kind of hopping through nether portals crap was not his forte.
And as the colors swirled and he lost his bearings and feared his lunch would follow, Falcyn definitely understood why he’d always felt that way. This shit sucked! Give him wings and flight or teleportation any day.
Especially when he went slamming hard into a dark, damp ground a few minutes later.
Gah! That was going to leave a mark.
Groaning, he lay on his back as everything spun around like a Tilt-A-Whirl. And he hadn’t even got a funnel cake or fried Twinkie out of it.
With a grimace, Falcyn rubbed at his eyes. “Blaise? You dead?”
“No.” He didn’t sound like he was in any better shape than Falcyn, though.
“Good. I want the pleasure of killing you myself, you bastard!”
Blaise snorted.
“Don’t scoff, dragon,” Urian said, his tone every bit as peeved. “Soon as I can move again, I intend to help with your murder and dismemberment.”
Falcyn turned his head to the right, where Medea lay a few feet away from his side, unmoving on the grass. “Medea?”
She finally lifted a hand to brush her hair from her face. “Not dead, either.”
That made him feel a bit better. “Brogan?”
“Just wishing I was.” Shifting her legs, she made no move to rise. Rather she seemed content to lie on her back, staring up at the dismally gray sky. “Is it always this miserable to travel in such a manner?”
Blaise sighed. “Pretty much. Least I didn’t slam into an invisible force field this time.”
Rolling over, Falcyn pushed himself into a sitting position, then scowled as he caught sight of the dark, twisted trees around him. Trees that lined an equally screwed-up, bleak landscape the likes of which he hadn’t thought to ever see again.
Oh, this can’t be right.
