Chapter Twenty-Two #2
“Yes, I have been sleeping in your shirt, because I missed you. Because I love you. Yes, I’ve been going to bed every night wishing you were beside me.
” Her voice trembled just a little. “But I will not play by your rules any more. So, time to decide. Stay with me now and make good on that mark you left on me, and stay for real this time. Not for a few nights between jobs or whenever it suits you or when you judge it safe enough. I want one night after another and then another, not for weeks or months, but for decades.” She took a deep breath.
“The other option is backing out and letting your mark fade. Forever. Is that clear?”
Wow. This really was a new Mina.
And she wasn’t done yet.
She stuck a finger at my chest. “You marked me. Well, consider this my mark on you. One that says, this man is mine, and everyone else needs to stay the hell away.”
My dragon glowed, nodding yes to every statement.
She punctuated each word with a fierce tap. “But you have to do your part — and I don’t mean protecting me. I mean, you commit to making this work, or you leave.” She gulped for air. “There. Your turn to talk.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it. What the hell to say?
Say yes. To her. To us. To forever, my dragon grumbled.
She softened slightly. “What does your heart say?”
“Stay. Forever,” I said without the slightest hesitation.
“So how does this even require deliberation?”
“It shouldn’t. But I don’t want to see you hurt.”
She rolled her eyes. “That again.”
That was her life. Did she not know that?
She took my hands. “I think you’re looking at this from the wrong perspective.”
I frowned. There was another perspective?
Her eye roll said, Stupid dragon.
“Picture us back at the chateau. Picture a nice, normal life. No Gordon, no secret missions, no bad guys,” she started. “Just you and me fixing up the chateau and running a business.”
Yes, please, I wanted to yell.
“Do you want that or don’t you?” she demanded.
I dipped my chin. “Yes.” Then I corrected myself. “No.” Mina looked ready to punch me, so I hurried to clarify. “I mean, that would be nice, but all I really want is you. Everything else is a bonus.”
Her eyes warmed, and her clenched fists loosened. “That’s what I want too. You. So, the question is, how do we get there?”
Hunt down each of my enemies and kill them didn’t seem like the appropriate answer, but it was all I had. I scoured my mind for something better.
“We…uh…get this deal closed for Gordon,” I tried.
She nodded. “Then what?”
I scratched my chin. “Then we figure out who sent that picture and why.”
Bingo, her eyes said.
“And then what?” she prompted.
“Well, it depends on who. Why. Where…”
She squeezed my hands. “That’s what I’m saying. One step at a time. But we do it together. You don’t get to make secret decisions for both of us.”
Now that she put it that way…
“This is where you tell me yes, you love me, you need me, you want me,” she whispered after a few tongue-tied seconds ticked by. “Where you say I’m in or I’m out of here.”
“I’m in.”
Her eyes lit up. “Really?”
My brain caught up with my heart, and I nodded. “Really.” I took her hands and kissed them.
She didn’t just grin — she basked in the moment. “Oh. Really really?”
I nodded. “Really really.”
Her grin grew, then faded. “Well, then. All we have to do now is finish this deal for Gordon, solve whatever problems are sure to arise at the last moment, vanquish any lurking enemies, and we’re done.”
I nodded slowly. Now she was seeing things from my perspective.
Which, now that I considered it, was a pretty gloomy perspective.
“One step at a time,” I whispered, dropping down beside her.
She rolled to her side, looking at me, then spooned up next to me. I wrapped my arms around her and closed my eyes, telling myself to live in the moment.
Which wasn’t all that hard to do with her rose-and-lilac scent filling my soul with carefree butterflies or with the heat radiating from her body. Heat that said, Come to me, my mate.
Slowly, I moved my hands over her sleep shirt. It was mine after all.
She hummed and snuggled closer.
I kissed her shoulder, then pulled off her scarf. And, wow. Her skin radiated in the darkness.
“Now, suppose I wanted to leave a moonlight mark on you,” she whispered as I nuzzled her skin. “How would I do that?”
I thought it over, then shrugged. “Let destiny guide you.”
She lay quietly, then wiggled her rear against my crotch. “Destiny says, you need to lose those layers.”
A smile curled over my lips. “Yes, ma’am. Or do I say yes to destiny?”
“Yes, ma’am will do,” she said primly.
I laughed and did as I was told, stripping out of everything. Then I cuddled up again, my chest to her back.
I exhaled. God, that felt good.
Maybe she was right. Maybe I had been making things too complicated.
“Oh.” She tensed suddenly. “What if there’s no moonlight to mark you by?”
I kissed the curve of her shoulder. “Then we make our own.”
She chuckled, twisting around to come face-to-face. “And how do you suggest we do that?”
I snuck a hand along her ribs. “Let me show you.”
Her breath caught, and she arched, making space for me to kiss…touch…explore. Everywhere.
“Oh…” she murmured as I worked my way down her body.
My hands roved, as did my lips, eliciting happy sounds from her. From me, too.
We touched until we were breathless, until the weight of the world slipped away and there was only the hush of the city outside the window and her warmth beneath me.
She tugged me closer and wrapped her legs around my waist. I followed her cue and slid inside with a low groan of need.
Slowly. Quietly. A little spitefully too, with Gordon next door.
We moved in a slow dance, not wild or frantic this time, but sure and steady, weaving a vow words never could. Every sigh of hers, every growl of mine, was a declaration of love and defiance.
“Yes…” she hummed, clutching my back as I rocked deeper and deeper.
The more we moved, the more the glow of my mark intensified, filling the space between our bodies. It tickled over our shoulders, creating a faint halo.
Claim, a voice in my mind chanted quietly. Claim your mate.
At first, I put that down to my dragon. But it wasn’t. It was coming from Mina.
Her eyes glowed as she bucked to meet me intently, that chant echoing in her mind.
My back heated as her nails scraped my skin, and magic swirled around us.
My breath caught, and it was all I could do to keep up my steady rhythm.
Mina was doing what I’d done that night in Paris — marking me by moonlight.
But in this case, she drew upon her inner glow to provide the moonlight, or at least, a reflection of the moonlight that had stayed with her since that night.
“Tell me you want this,” she rasped between breaths, giving me the choice I’d never given her.
I’d never felt so guilty — or so blessed with something precious.
“I want this,” I assured her, over and over.
As we built to a crescendo, the words slurred together, and it was all I could do not to shout them. Then she cried out in ecstasy, clamping down around me. I exploded a moment later, and we catapulted through time and space.
I saw us our first time together. I saw that night by the canal in Paris. I even caught a glimpse of the future, but that view was a little hazy. Hazy enough to hint that destiny still had some tricks up its sleeve.
I collapsed over Mina and held her tightly, daring destiny to try delivering anything but a happy ending.
Gradually, our pants slowed to deep breaths, and Mina curled up comfortably in my arms.
“So good…” she murmured. Then she turned in my arms and touched my neck.
I chuckled at the ticklish sensation. “What are you doing?”
Her eyebrows knitted together. “Looking for my mark. Tell me I didn’t screw that up.”
Only Mina would worry that a high this good could somehow be a failure.
I shook my head.
“But there’s no glow. No mark…” she fretted.
I wrapped my hand around hers, then held both against my chest. A faint glow appeared around our interwoven fingers.
“Oh,” Mina breathed.
“I guess it manifests itself differently when a shifter mark mixes with magic,” I whispered as the glow spread up our arms and connected with the shimmer around her neck.
“Wow,” Mina breathed, looking down.
When I lifted our hands away from my chest, the glow faded. But when I pressed them down again, the glow illuminated the space between us like candlelight, and my blood heated. So much, we found ourselves slipping into another round of slow, hungry lovemaking.
At some point, when we were spent, Mina lay curled against me, absently running her fingers over my forearm.
“Do you think tomorrow will go smoothly?” she whispered.
I would have loved to say yes, but that would have been a lie.
“Guaranteed not to,” I murmured, holding her closer.
She thought it over, then kissed me. “Well, a good thing that’s not until tomorrow. Until then, I guess all we can do is get some rest.”
Rest, not sleep. A critical difference.
I nuzzled her shoulder, then started working my way lower. At some point, we would sleep. But we were too keyed up for that yet, and there was only one antidote to that.
“Mmm,” Mina murmured, wrapping her legs around me.