“I’m okay,” I assured her. “We all are.”
But she saw the shadow that crossed my face, saw the shadow that had permanently cast across my heart. “Who?”
“Buchra. Nabil’s wyvern.”
She searched the smoky sky, looking for her own wyvern. “Is he still—?”
“Alive but hurting.” I couldn’t stand the space between us any longer, small though it was.
“I lost Raheema,” she said in a shaky voice as I pulled her into my lap, wrapping her up tight in my arms. Her whole body shook against mine. “She’s gone.”
“She came to us in the Red Star.” I kissed her temple, scanning the sky above as a dark shadow passed overhead. Shula, guarding us. “She went to get help, dearling, and she’s here.”
Ameirah held me so tightly it pressed on my bruises and the old wounds I’d finally changed the dressing of under Aliah’s command. The pain made this real, made the reality of Ameirah being here, holding me, finally sink in.
“I thought you were dead,” she choked, gasped, the words like a sob themselves. “I thought you were dead.”
I caught her hand in mine, scattered kisses across her knuckles, but frowned at the blood.
“It’s not mine,” she breathed. “I’m not hurt.”
“Ameirah.” I danced my fingers around the gash in her leathers. “There’s blood all over you. We need to get you to Khalid.”
“Khalid.” A furrow cut between her brows.
“He’s a healer.”
“He is?” Her hand trembled as she raised it to my face, moulding her palm to my cheek, scanning my eyes over and over, a tremor in her fingertips.
“Can you stand? Mak’s close, and Raheema must be almost here; we’ll fly you to Khalid and get you healed—”
“No,” she said gutturally, her other hand finding my shoulder and gripping hard enough that I felt it through thick leathers. “I can’t let go of you yet.”
“But you’re bleeding—”
“I don’t care.”
My breath froze in my lungs when she kissed me, blood and the sharp tang of power exploding across my senses, hitting me like a shot of lightning. For weeks, I’d been sleepwalking and now I was finally awake. Distantly I knew we needed to move, to get to Mak and fly fast for the city limits, but my wife was here, safe, and kissing me, and no force in any world could get me to stop her.
I grasped her hip, careful of the wound that shed blood down her side, and dragged her closer, fitting my lips to hers over and over, imprinting the feel and warmth and taste of her onto my very soul. Never again. I would never send her away again. Never let her leave my damned side.
My eyes pricked with the beginning of tears when her thumb caressed my cheek, our kisses reverent and soft even if they were rapid and desperate. Needy, breathless kisses to reassureourselves, to settle the panic that had set up a permanent camp in my chest, to soothe the fear that made her tremble and clasp me so closely that not a scrap of air existed between our bodies.
It ceased to exist—the time and distance we’d spent away. Nothing existed except the soft sound that left her lips when chaste kisses deepened to something hot and urgent and charged with so much emotion, I couldfeelher relief, her desperation, her shaking need. The taste of blood and magic was replaced with the syrupy tang of honey I’d become obsessed with, craved for weeks, thought about without end. I could glut myself on the taste of her and never get enough.
“Mine.” The word tore itself from my bleeding chest, demanding it be spoken. “You aremine,Ameirah,” I said against her lips, her panting breaths tickling my lips. “My wife, my heart, my soul. I will never make you leave again. I vow it.”
Her eyes were hazy and dark, but they cleared when she blinked at me, and the dark flames licking at our knees seemed to bank. “Actually, about that…”
I waited for her to give me the dressing down of the century, but I should have known better than to assume anything of my dearling wife. Hot pain cracked through my cheek when her palm collided with my face, and I blinked in shock, then a staccato burst of laughter left my lips.
“I deserved that,” I admitted with a smile, falling into the dangerous gleam in her beautiful eyes. For hours, I’d feared I would never see that look again, never feel the warmth of her in my arms, the solid weight of her against me, and now I had all three. Lucky—so fucking lucky.
“That’s for sending me away,” she informed me, stroking the cheek she’d slapped, soothing the sting.
I was ready for another slap, but her hand slid into the knot of hair that had come loose on my head, and she blessed mewith a kiss so rough and possessive, all I could do was surrender everything I had to her control.
By the time her lips abandoned mine, I was both bereft and dizzy.
