“Look,” she cooed, pointing to a puff of aquamarine. He blinked up, following her finger. The sky was a color he’d only seen on the scales of a fish, translucent and opaque at the same time.
“Magical,” she said, smiling.
“You’re magical,” he said, and he scooped her into his arms.
He desired her—he never stopped desiring her—but in that moment, he wanted nothing more than to confirm that she was with him, safe and unharmed. His hands moved searchingly: waist, ribs, shoulders, throat. He felt her back, her bottom—so perfectly available in the snug buckskins—the sides of her thighs. She was perfect, and whole, and strumming with life. He buried his face in her hair and breathed in, memorizing the smell of her.
He dragged his face across her neck and cheek, scraping her with his emerging beard. He felt her shiver, felt her turn her face to catch his jaw with her lips. Lustand longing roared to the surface; he was immediately hard, and he bit down on the inside of his mouth. She’d said no, she couldn’t risk—
She kissed him.
She grabbed his face with both hands and pulled him to her.
In the same moment, she leapt up, jumping into his arms. He made a wordless sound of pleasure and relief, barely managing to catch her bottom with both hands.
She wrapped her legs around his hips and hooked her boots around his back. She feasted on his mouth. They were, at once, a staggering tangle of lips and tongue, hands and breath. He widened his stance, kneading her bottom, kissing her like he was suffocating and she was air.
He opened his eyes in wild, quick blinks, catching snatches of her hair, her cheek, and the mystical, heavenly light.
“Jason,” she panted, and he growled at the sound of his given name. Finally.
“S’bell,” he panted back.
“Make love to me.”
He groaned. She would tear him apart.
“Please.Jason.”
“Isobel,” he said again, devouring her with a kiss.
“Why should we not?” she breathed, speaking to herself, or to him, or to the lights in the sky.
“Please don’t make me think,” he said.
He forced himself to raise his head and look around. While she kissed his neck, he scanned the canyon for a smooth rock or a tuft of moss . . . grass . . . anywhere to drop to one knee. She weighed nothing, but desiresapped the strength in his legs. He needed to be down, she needed to be beneath him; he needed something hard and unmoving to leverage his granite erection—
“There,” she panted, pointing to a murky hollow cloaked in steam.
“Where?”
“It’s a pool,” she said. “See the steam? It’s a heated pool. Like the river, but deeper. We can bathe. Float. Swim.”
“Now we’re swimming?” he managed.
She squirmed from his grasp and slid down his body. Catching his hand, she led him to the mystical haze hovering over the pool of fizzing water.
“This country is enchanted,” he mumbled, staring into the rising steam.
She bit off a glove and went down on one knee, testing the water. “Ahhh,” she moaned. “Heavenly.” She bit off another glove. “And the air is freezing. I’m cold, Jason—aren’t you cold?” She began tugging at the laces of her boots.
“No,” he said. He was incinerating.
By the strange green light above, he watched her remove her boots and stockings and then—in perhaps the most sensual act he’d ever witnessed—peel the buckskins from her legs. Next, she shucked the linen shirt. Within moments, she stood before him in only a thin shift and loose drawers. He stood gaping, his brain struggling to absorb her sensual beauty. She winked at him—winked!—and then dropped to sit at the edge of the pool. She sank her feet into the dark water with a sigh. Steam rose around her. She took up her hair and tied it in a loose knot on the top of her head. Her shift dissolved into damp translucence.
Jason had never been more aroused in his life.
“Remember when you first came to Everland Travel,” she asked, “and you wanted passage to Iceland?”
