Chapter 12

CHAPTERTWELVE

She told him where her home was, and that she couldn’t wait to take a shower. When he portaled her there, they emerged in her gravel driveway.

“So Reapers must have a factory-installed internal GPS, just like Guardians do,” she observed, arms still locked around his shoulders. Despite the light tone, Silas could tell how much was weighing on her mind. He was also pretty sure what topped the list. It was bothering her, what she’d seen during that ritual about her previous lives. And his.

“We have an intuitive sense of direction,” he confirmed. “Otherwise, no telling how many times I’d be late for a Reaping because I went to the wrong Smith Street in the wrong Washington. There are about ninety towns called Washington in your country.” He gazed at her. “Ramona…”

“Raina has a spell on her driveway. Whenever someone who believes Sweet Dreams is an actual B&B tries to find it, they end up at one of the other three actual B&Bs in the area. She says they should give her a commission.” Ramona dipped her head forward. “It’s far easier to find my place.”

It looked like many of the ramshackle farmhouses he’d seen in rural Southern areas, a mix of wood and stone put together at the early part of the twentieth centry. The creativity that came from a lack of cash meant that repairs and maintenance over the decades had been done with mismatched materials, function over aesthetics.

Though it looked disordered, inconsistent, the end result was sturdy. Patches to the tin roof made a lightning pattern. Ivy covered two outside walls. She had raised bed vegetable gardens, wind chimes and fluttering garden flags holding court among them. Statuary, much of it headless, one armed or halfway crumbling, existed amid a thicket of wildflowers and vines surrounding the house.

A thicket infused with protective magics, which gave the place a welcome feeling, the sense that safety existed here. Respite. Telling him why she’d wanted to come home.

She looked up at him with haunted eyes. He put her down, but kept his hand on her. He wanted to touch her more than that, but the ache he felt from her was too much.

He’d wrestled with whether he should leave her after he took her home. Honora had nixed that, ordering him to stay with Ramona. Nothing had changed. The bulk of what they knew about the mark thus far had come through its interaction with her magic.

“So I honor a brave woman by putting her at greater risk.”

“There are bigger things at stake, Sylvanus.”

He’d said something he’d never thought he’d say to his Wake commander. But she’d simply given him an even look and portaled off to update the others.

Protecting the woman engaging his desires had always aligned with who he was. The way she held him when he carried her, conveying that need to be vulnerable under his control, only reinforced it. Resolving that conflict was shredding him worse than the mark.

After that meet with Honora, he recalled how the Guardians had flanked him, during the Confluence. The three stood together, watching their women. “I know where your head is,” Derek said. “Shit isn’t right inside you, and you’re doubting your instincts. Which makes you all the more determined not to pull her any deeper into this.”

He crossed his arms over his chest, dragonskin boots braced so he could rock on his heels in a contemplative pose. “Mikhael and I are going to track this son of a bitch down. Honora’s right. You’re her second-in-command. Having your headspace right for when and if the shit really hits the fan, taking time to get that balance, is important.” Derek nodded toward Ramona. “So’s she. She waited a long time for your return. Give her a day.”

Mikhael shot him a sidelong glance. “He has selfish motives. If you don’t take that time, we’ll have to listen to our mates verbally eviscerate you for taking off on her again. And blame us, because we’re male.”

Derek’s blue eyes glinted in agreement. “A woman’s disappointment can make a man’s life miserable. Death doesn’t offer an immortal male the same escape hatch as men with far shorter lives.”

Yes, it was possible being here with her now would serve a purpose as important as any other effort. Their reinforcement of that helped. However, he doubted either Mikhael or Derek would have found the decision any easier to make than he did, if it were their women in the crossfire.

But all of it be damned, he would still ask the woman in question her mind on it. “Do you wish me to go, Ramona?”

She turned to gaze at him. There were crickets chirping in her garden, several loud frogs warbling. The night had a warmth to it. She stepped close to him. He’d changed into street clothes, and she slipped the buttons of the shirt, spreading it open to place her palms on his chest, on the light layer of coarse hair. He studied her, not sure of her intent.

Then her fingers curved in, pressed down with a sudden, stabbing violence, nails embedding themselves in his flesh, letting him feel the rough pain. He didn’t stop her, his hands gripping her waist.

As the throbbing increased, she rose on her toes, leaning her weight into him, increasing that penetration. He cupped the back of her skull, fingers diving into the thickness of her loose hair, wrapping it over his grip as their mouths met. Her lips were already parted, her hips pressing up against his, a seeking. He growled into her mouth, and she responded with an urgent noise.

When she drew back, her lips wet, eyes hot, he was clear on her message. She didn’t want space.

Her gaze dropped to his chest, to what lurked beneath his skin. “Fuck you,” she said clearly, a threat, a challenge to that symbol and whoever was behind it. Then her eyes became slumberous, a siren’s, and she was back on her toes, brushing her mouth over his.

“Fuck you…” she whispered. She kissed the corner of his mouth, his jaw. He had a tight grip on her hair, her waist. Her mouth curved, an invitation. “Language is a lovely piece of Chaos. It can mean entirely different things, with just a change of tone.”

She slipped from his grasp, moved to her front door. When she reached it, she turned around, looked at him. “Will you come into my house, my lord?”

Her choice of when to use the formal address was effective. He came to her, braced his hand against the doorframe and brushed his fingers along her face. When he did, the siren’s attitude dissolved and he saw the starkness in her gaze again, felt the tremor in her body under his touch. “We will need to talk about what happened in the darkness,” he said quietly. “Not what we’re fighting out there. But what happened between you and me.”

“Does it need to be now?”

Her gaze lowered to his throat, his shoulder. She waited for him, telling him she would honor his decision. Her choice of when to defer to him was powerful as well, drawing on the desires between them, how they wanted to shape and declare themselves.

A woman’s submission was something he’d explored in a thousand ways, but she’d just given him a gift he’d never experienced before. When a Master was struggling with powerlessness, she could hand him back power with her trust, her faith in his control.

Remind him to live up to it.

“Show me your home.”

She pushed the door inward. No lock. A foyer opened into her living room. It had mismatched furniture, the sofa and easy chairs upholstered in multiple colors that seemed to harmonize, rather than creating a dizzying clash. No glass knickknacks or glassware of any kind.

A shoebox-sized lion made of concrete, more garden statuary, slept in a pet bed by the door to a hallway. A bag of yarn and unfinished knitting project were tucked next to his silver-gray body. In the center of her living room, a dancing nymph fountain gurgled and splashed. No electronics. The house had much of its original wood flooring and trim, giving it the aroma of long past history.

“When was your first Reaping?” she asked, an unexpected segue. She’d gone to her kitchen, and he followed her there. She gestured him to a metal-framed ice cream parlor chair with a red vinyl seat. It was next to a rectangular table surfaced with white tile. The tiles were covered with doodles, magical symbols, as if she’d been transcribing spellcraft inspiration on the closest thing to hand. The erasable crayons she’d used were stacked there; a rhyme scribbled next to them.

How silly to use all the colors in the box,

Merely to find one pair of missing socks.

As she moved to a tea kettle, he answered her. “My first solo Reaping was in the mid-1600s. New Reapers train with an existing one. Mostly it’s learning how to manage the emotions, your reactions and understanding, letting go to trust the Fates.”

She turned. “How specific is the information the Fates send you?”

“They provide us the when and where part.” He nodded. “My mind is where yours is. Somehow, the intent of the mark connects to the whole process. The Fates, the marking to influence Reapers, the rage at something he couldn’t change, a loss he can’t get over.”

“Stating a problem is usually simple.” She polished a spot on the tea kettle with a washcloth. “Handling it is the complicated part. I can grow food to eat. Simple. Now put it into practice, and see just how ‘simple’ it is to prepare soil, deal with bugs and blight, make sure your plants have the right conditions to grow…”

She shook her head. “He’s put together something that perhaps has never been done before. He’s taken it one careful step at a time, spent twenty years building it. It’s not going to be easy to derail it, because he’s considered it from all angles.”

She stared at the tea kettle. Its heat was starting to build, telling him she was using her own abilities rather than lighting the woodstove. The lid began to quiver, a prelude to the steam whistling from it. She put her hand over that opening, cupped it.

“What are you doing?”

He was up out of the chair and to her, pulling her hand away as the steam emitted its first curling blast, a faint train whistle sound.

“Do you know what else I can do, my lord?” She freed her hand to stroke her fingers down his chest. He’d left the shirt open, so her hands passed over the hidden mark, moved out wide, stroking along his pectorals, then down to his abdomen. Her hand was hot, as if she’d drawn the temperature of the water into it before he pulled it away. A tingling sensation followed her touch. He sensed that not-entirely-centered focus when she was channeling her magic.

Her gaze slid up to his, then flicked away, a teasing shyness as her fingers descended. She played over his length, hard against the jeans, and his hands flexed on her as whatever magic she had in those fingers jolted through him, but not with pain.

Pleasure rocketed right to his root, to his balls, his upper thighs, even between his buttocks. If she kept those waves going, he would release in no time. Except the way her fingers twisted over him, the lavender of her eyes becoming deeper as that in a predawn sky, told him she had ways of prolonging that feeling indefinitely. She could hold back the final denouement until she’d given a male the most unforgettable sexual experience of his life.

The sensation spiraled up his arm, tingling through his throat, nipples, every nerve ending or erogenous zone he’d never even realized he had.

A solitary experience, because she was showing him something. Not sharing it with him. His gaze snapped back to her face. She took pleasure in his reaction, but she didn’t feel a part of it. Pleasure could be a one-way trip to the destruction of the soul.

“Ramona. Stop it. Now.”

Delivered with force, it was nevertheless a controlled command. It brought her up short. She dialed back the energy, though the lingering vibrations through him were strong enough to let him know what he was missing.

“Do you not like it?” Her voice was a throaty purr, but her eyes were uncertain. “The males I’ve been with found it—”

She sucked in a breath as his grip on her wrist tightened. He made sure she felt the cool ripple cut through the electricity, ground it as surely as the earth itself.

“Ramona,” he said with deliberate care, “did they give you pleasure in return? Did you take that journey together?”

* * *

His reaction yanked her out of her head. She knew she’d gone to the wrong place with him, but she was drowning, and she’d reached for the familiar.

“Not their fault. I couldn’t. Not and be sure they’d be safe. I learned how to do this, became skilled enough they would never…”

Suddenly, under his passive regard, she was blinking back tears. He finished the thought for her.

“So they would feel so much pleasure from it they would never realize they’d left you out in the cold while you were doing it. They did nothing for you.”

“They would hold me afterward.” Sometimes, she’d have to pick up a limp arm, the man overcome from the force of the climax she’d given him. She’d wrap it around herself, hold it there until he found the strength, and remember he had an obligation to care for her. “It was all right. I was never left uncomforted. I figured out other ways.”

He muttered an oath. She crossed her arms over herself. “Maybe…you were right. Maybe you should go and do…”

“Which hand?”

“What?”

“Which hand do you most often use to…comfort yourself? You don’t appear to have a dominant one.”

He’d noticed she was ambidextrous. He noticed so much, it made things hurt worse. She’d started this. Why was she deliberately challenging him, pushing him? She’d never relied on a male to pull her out of such a dark place in her head. Maybe she was testing him, seeing if he could meet the challenge. Which was wrong, too.

None of this should matter when they were facing so many more important things, but she’d done it to herself. She’d come back to the quiet haven she’d built here, and it was mocking her, an undeserved gift. Not so many years ago, she’d believed her magic and isolation were a punishment. She’d gotten beyond that. Now she was facing that mirror again, and breaking it didn’t make it go away. It multiplied the image, taunting her for trying to look at it any other way.

When she’d said she found other ways to comfort herself, self-pleasuring wasn’t what she’d meant. However, under the unsettling directness of his gaze, she raised her left hand. Just the gesture brought the act to mind, making her body quiver. He closed his hand on her wrist. Brought himself closer, so her backside was pressed against the stove as he put her fingers to his mouth.

“Ramona, I was there with you,” he said. “I saw what you saw. So if you believe who I was in those memories, hear what I’m saying now and believe it. It’s too close. There’s too much. Leave it for now, what’s in your mind. Let it go, so you can look at it later, with an easier heart, a clearer mind. Trust who you are now. What I am now. What you want me to be to you. What I demand to be to you.”

He paused. “Not because you owe me that, or it changes anything. But because everything is what it is at a soul’s birth, before it chooses its first life, as well as what it grows to be through all of them. You can’t live backwards without tying yourself into knots that harden with the salt of your tears, and stop you from living your life as it was meant to be lived.”

She was trembling harder. His gaze held hers, relentless, until she managed a little nod. Then his tone changed, smooth. A command. “Good. Stroke me the way you would stroke yourself.”

He drew two of her fingers into his mouth, played his tongue over them, until she figured out his meaning and began to move them.

She’d never imagined it could be sexy, having her fingers in a man’s mouth and pretending the heated, wet strength of his tongue was her clit, but as she did, it ignited fire down her center. She lost her focus and coordination.

He took over, his tongue working in between her fingers, summoning the idea of that same part of him stroking between and around her labia. Slightly sucking, nipping lightly with his teeth. Her dampening cunt and the heated wetness of his mouth became the same, making her sway into his embrace, her knees weak again.

When he let her hand slide free, she arched against him, a cry breaking from her as he dropped his hand and pressed it between her legs. She still wore her ritual dress, the embroidered fabric a thin barrier that absorbed her response. He manipulated his fingers, a firm pressure that showed how different his touch was from hers, demanding so much more.

He stopped, keeping his hand there. She was clinging to him. He gripped her hair, tipping her head back to look up into his eyes. “You said you wanted a shower. Go do that. Right now. Keep your mind clear.” He pressed his fingers against her core, bent and brought his lips to her neck. She gasped as he bit her, held her firmly by those two clamps. “Do you understand me?”

She answered him the only way her aching need would allow. “Yes, sir.”

Green flame bathed her in heat. Her body was humming like a neon sign that said fuck me now, but she moved toward the stairs in the hallway. At the bottom one, she looked back. There was too much knowledge in his gaze. While she knew there was no joy in escaping a truth that was going to face her eventually, he’d told her it could wait. She’d choose to believe him.

“Um…help yourself to anything in the kitchen. There’s a guest bathroom if you want to clean up, too.”

“Go, Ramona.”

Her second-floor bedroom had been built around a large tree at the corner of the house. The trunk twisted up through the floor and disappeared through another hole in the upper right corner of the adjacent wall. Vines wound around the trunk, some of them trained into the slats of her picket fence headboard. Among the white fragrant flowers that bloomed, she’d hung ornaments.

As she shed her clothes, her gaze passed over her pictures, covering almost every available inch of space on the walls. Magazine shots, framed art, photographs. A montage of the world. None of the photographs were of her or her friends, her sisters. She had a half dozen of those on a table by the bed. Her, Raina and Ruby standing by a body of water. They were watching something offshore, their hands linked. She’d been in the center.

Ruby and Derek’s wedding picture, Ruby lovely in a blue lace dress, wearing a topaz and pearl necklace Derek had given her as a wedding gift. Next to that were the two of them holding Jem, just after he was born in a room at Sweet Dreams, Isabella and Matilda serving as co-midwives.

She lingered on it, closed her eyes. The word uncomforted came back to her mind and made her fists clench. But then she followed his direction. She thought of his possessive hand between her legs, his mouth on her throat. He was entirely aware of her. Present. Here for her and with her.

There was a comfort to that, and she grabbed for it. Trust what you want me to be. What I demand to be.

She went to the shower. She did need one, if they were going to be intimate, and she wanted that. No matter the aftermath, she wasn’t strong enough to resist her desire. And if both of them were wrong, the shower was where she found her ‘comfort.’ Letting him believe the word related to masturbation was less embarrassing to her than the truth.

She stepped into the heat of the spray. The pressurized water closed around her.

Every woman knew not to bring up other lovers, even indirectly, in the presence of the current one. What had she been thinking? But Silas was different. She couldn’t find her usual impulse control.

She let out a little sigh, turned. Once, twice, and she felt the water start sculpting itself to fit her need, getting more solid. That shape became an embrace, a strong male she leaned into, his head bent over hers, arms around her as she cuddled against him, was cuddled by him, held close. As if she mattered, as if they could become truly intimate, not just the false or temporary state found through sex.

Her magic gave this to her, a comforting, translucent illusion made of an element, the heat and pressure providing a form for it. But she wanted it to be Silas. She’d never felt such a strong pull toward a male, a need to be with him, bond with him, surrender to him.

She agreed with him. There was no payoff for protecting yourself from living the journey you were given, from living it fully. Death was not a payoff for that. It was simply the end of any chances for that life. But the more complicated revelations in the circle called that into question. How could she draw any comfort from the things she’d thought mattered the most?

She squeezed her eyes shut, pressed into that watery embrace. Let it go. The steam swirled around her, enclosing her further. She could stand here until she pruned, but a small noise came out of her throat as he touched her, as the arms grew stronger, more encompassing. As the head that bent over hers became even more substantive. Real.

Silas pressed his lips to her temple, his bare body firmly against the side of hers, from shoulder to hip to thigh.

It wasn’t fantasy. It was him. One arm slid under her breasts, the other around her back, his mouth against the drops rolling over her face, sipping at them, at her.

“Forgive me,” he murmured. “I misunderstood, though I shouldn’t have. For a woman, comfort is a well that sex alone cannot fill. Without it, the aftermath will strip the pleasure away, leave you at the bottom of that empty well by yourself.”

When she swallowed a sob, his arms tightened around her. “I’ll take my pleasure with you, but I’ll never take without giving you that. I’ll never leave you alone.”

“Silas.” She pressed her face to his shoulder, her forehead against his chest as he held her even closer.

“There is no obligation to this. It’s a gift. You’re a gift. And now, Chaos witch, let me show you everything a Reaper can do for you.”

Turning her to face him, he lifted her up against the wall of the shower, her back against the slick, heated tile. As he held her with strong hands, he lifted her even higher, guiding her legs over his shoulders, holding her where her head rested against the painted sheet rock above the shower.

Sensation roared through her. The lights flickered and the water sprayed in an arc that painted the ceiling, splashing against her breasts and throat. She grasped at the energy, and he helped. Their energy tangled the same as their laced hands, pressed against her thighs.

“Oh…” She jumped at the tingling electricity, remembered how she’d channeled that through her hands, letting him feel what she could do with it. Same as he’d done to her before, and now it was back under his control, his magic, delivered from his mouth to her tender flesh.

“Silas…” She gasped his name again. He pinned her wrists to her thighs. Those inked bands came to life, only this time they didn’t offer only heat. They acted like actual bonds, locking her wrists to her thighs, pulling them wide and holding her open. She remembered the way his mouth had felt on her fingers as his tongue now slid over the petals of her sex, leisurely stroked and thrust into her. When he closed his mouth over her clit and suckled, she arched and groaned out a deeper need.

He shifted her legs off his shoulders, controlling her descent to adjust her thighs high on his torso, crossed heels resting on the upper rise of his ass. He cradled her breasts, nuzzling them, teasing them. Treating them gently until he suckled her nipples with that electric-infused pressure that had her writhing, body lifting and falling back against tile.

He was unleashing a level of power he hadn’t shown her before, overwhelming her. When his gaze moved to her face, gauging her reaction, she saw a man in control of every cell of her body. In control of her life, her breath, her pleasure. Her comfort. He would care for her, not allowing her responsibility for anything until he was damn well ready.

She hadn’t really understood what the word Master meant until this very second. It was far more than a fantasy with him. It could become as much her reality as the heartbeat that kept her alive.

“Silas.” It was a plea, a fear, and a need.

“I’m here,” he told her, sliding her down so that now her hips were locked over his. His erection pressed against her, her body shaking so hard he cradled her face, pushed the rest of his body against her to steady her.

“I’m not afraid to dance in the storm with you. Let’s dance. When it’s done, I’ll still be with you, Ramona. Holding you. Your pleasure is what will drive my every act. Don’t ever do what you tried to do downstairs again. I will never settle for giving you less than you deserve.”

She wasn’t dealing with the ancient Reaper, the immortal. She was dealing with a man who had very decided views on treating her like a woman. “If you fail to remember that,” he added, his expression becoming something that made her quake, “I’ll think of ways to ram the ill-advised nature of that strategy entirely from your thinking.”

He punctuated the verb with a meaningful push of his hips against her core that had her sucking on her bottom lip. His eyes went to it, and then his mouth did, replacing her teeth with his own, biting, scraping, making her moan and wrap her arms around his wet shoulders.

“I’m afraid of wanting this so much,” she whispered. “That something terrible will happen. I’m so afraid it will all be the same. And now I’m afraid there’s a reason for that, a truth I’ve never had to face. I know you told me not to think about it now, but everything is open inside of me, so I can’t help not thinking about it.”

He touched her face, turned her head so their noses brushed. He tasted the water on her lips. “Have you ever had a Reaper in your bed?” When she shook her head, he nodded. “Then you already know one thing is different.”

He paused. “Did you know I can take a soul from a body, even before its time?”

The rush of the shower water didn’t blur the words, their meaning, and the hardness of his green eyes told her he wanted her to hear him, isolate the words, their significance. “It’s less difficult than having the thought. Think about the power of that, what it requires in terms of discipline, of knowing my own soul and the shape of my powers, down to the very last cell of my being. The confidence and faith vested in me, in my judgment.”

He caressed the side of her throat. “Your magic may be able to change mine at other times, but when they tangle together for joining our bodies, I can feel the shape of it. I can wrap it around me, like the ribbons of power around your wrists. You’re safe, bound to me, able to surrender whatever you wish. It’s a shelter with a wide-open sky and endless worlds to explore. A haven. All right?”

She closed her eyes. “Okay.” She was too afraid to say anything more, and hoped he understood.

He did. But apparently it wasn’t going to change how much he would demand from her, to ensure she understood.

* * *

Her tiny, terrified act of trust intensified what he felt for her. She was courageous, strong. He wouldn’t tolerate anything taking that from her. That included present fears or past sins.

Unclothed, he saw inked symbols over her breasts, her upper thighs and above her mons. Preparation for the ritual they’d just done. The henna had an earthy flavor to it, and he’d sucked on those symbols the same as he had the sensitive flesh below them.

He put his hand back between her legs, let her feel the strength, the pressure of his fingers against her cunt again, the lips of her sex. " What does that feel like?"

"The touch of the man I belong to. The one I want to belong to. The one I want to belong to me." It was a monumental admission, reinforced by the shudder that rocked through her, the desire to flee her feelings and the vulnerability it placed upon her.

"The one you do belong to. The one that belongs to you."

Her gaze flickered, that vivid silver hue reflecting her feelings. Satisfied, he went back to what he was doing—proving they weren’t exchanging lust-fueled empty promises. He’d just demanded her faith in an oath he was offering to her. He didn’t give a damn about soulmates, what defined them. He knew what he would be giving this woman.

He kept her pressed to the wall as he returned to enjoying her breasts, exploring and taunting them with mouth and fingers. Small but perfect, like milky pearls. When she rocked against his touch, her response building past anything that she could make sense of, he kept driving her.

When she was begging for mercy, he finally put her back on her feet. But only to turn her around and bring his erection against the seam of her buttocks. Gripping her wrists, he pushed her forward and guided her palms so they were flat against the tile. “Don’t you move,” he whispered into her ear, the water adding to the rushing sound. “Or I’ll give your cunt a spanking with my hand.”

She jolted, a little mewl coming from her. He dropped to a knee and put his mouth between her legs again, this time from behind. She had a sweet taste, mixed with the earth-rich scent of the water drawn from the well on her property. Each time he bit her, she’d jump, but she’d immediately still, trying so hard to obey him. What more could a Master want?

Everything. Her body surrendered, her heart handed over. He would break her open down to the darkest corners of her soul, and it would come into his hands, belong to him forever. A soul he’d never have to let go.

When he gripped her slim buttocks and used his thumbs to play with her rim, she went to her toes. Her fingers scraped the wet surface of the tile wall as she pleaded, driving him to greater savagery.

“Silas, please…need you…”

He understood the raw note in her voice, because he felt it, too. Everything they’d dealt with, the mark, the uncertainty of the future, that moment in the circle when her arm had aligned with his scythe and their power drove back the night…they had to defy it this way, too.

Rising, he turned her to face him. She was shaking so hard, his beautiful Chaos witch. She didn’t seem to realize how much of her magic he was channeling, feeding back into this moment. It was a tornado in the room, but he had it wrapped, locked to him, directed into the power he was putting into her pleasure, into their coming together, into the earth beneath them and the sky above.

It was the first time he’d succeeded in getting her to let go. To trust him fully, not even aware she was doing it. He smoothed her wet flaxen hair back, clearing water from her eyes, her face. Her hands hooked over his forearms as she watched him commit the tender act among his more ruthless ones.

He put the lightest of kisses on her mouth. His cock was aching, her body was wet and ready for him, but he took the moment. A male who reached this point, breaking open a woman so she was giving him everything, who didn’t acknowledge it as a sacred gift, was a fool.

He shut off the shower, leaning past her. Her arms went around him, holding on. It made it easy to adjust, bend and scoop her up. So small and light. She was his bird. “In your bed,” he told her. “I want to be inside you, you under me, your arms and legs locked around me. Close as we can get.”

She pressed her face to his wet throat, and then they were there, lying amid a nest of blankets, the haunting scent of the white flowers twined in the headboard cloaking them.

When the rumble of thunder shook the house, her eyes went wide, her hands clutching his shoulders. He smiled, a painful, fierce joy to it. “It’s a thunderstorm,” he told her. “A normal one. Smell the rain coming.”

She had her windows open, so he saw her nostrils flare. He tightened his grip on her. “You stay with me, Ramona. Focus on me.”

She was used to protecting everyone from her magic. He’d told her he needed her trust, and she understood just how hard relinquishing that control was. She’d known it when she’d asked for it from him, during the ritual. He saw that memory there, as he made the same request of her now, only he made it a demand, because that was what he would be to her. The Master she could trust to understand who she was, what she was. And demand more from her than she was used to being able to give.

He slid into her, and she rose to him, deepening the lock. She wrapped her limbs around him, and as he thrust into her, her body rising and falling with his, going toward that edge together, the magic of it twined with what was swirling around them, passing through them, holding them.

When it was over, he would hold her in his arms, give her that, too, so she didn’t have to find it with a water mirage in her shower. He wouldn’t soon forget that, seeing her seek comfort through the manipulation of her own magic, because she didn’t believe she could ask for that from him.

The savagery increased, a male’s need to prove to a female she could count on him for the things that mattered.

When she climaxed, the victory was equal to any gift from heaven. But in the way that love did, the nature of her cry tore a jagged wound in his heart. A release from yearning pain, a million lonely nights, fearful moments, a yell into the darkness that had curtained despair, arousal, crazed desperation. A declaration.

I am no longer alone.

No, you’re not. Never again.

* * *

He’d taken them straight from the shower, so the sheets were wet. He withdrew slowly, pressing a kiss to her mouth, her chest, abdomen, mons, thighs. Her hands drifted over his back, the Reaper brand, to his shoulders, his damp hair. He found several towels in the bathroom and returned, setting them aside to shift her to the far side of the bed.

She curled on her side, watching him as he spread the towels out over the wet areas and moved her back into place. Her fingers had been opening and closing on the mattress. When he wrapped himself around her, putting a leg over hers, bringing her fully into the cocoon of his embrace, they went to his chest, did that movement there.

A little sigh. “It’s really just raining?”

He nodded against her hair. The rain was falling more gently now, a soak her vegetable gardens would appreciate. He looked at the pictures by her bed. “Derek married Ruby according to mortal ritual. Is that what she wanted?”

“She said he insisted. Derek wanted her to know he saw himself as hers as long as they both should live. She always adds ‘well, as long as I live,’ but he corrects her. He says, ‘For as long as I live. I’ll find you, lifetime after lifetime.’”

A smile against his throat. “It’s surprisingly sexy to see him wear the ring. That evidence that he belongs to a woman, gives himself to her.”

He stroked her bare back. “You said he insisted. Did she not want marriage?”

Ramona paused, suggesting she was choosing her words to respect her friend’s privacy. “Her life was very difficult growing up. Plus she suffered a terrible loss.”

“A child.”

“Yes. Even now, she has a hard time with too much seriousness, what it makes her feel. So when he says things like that, she usually says something like, ‘Nope. I’m only putting up with you for one lifetime. Then I’m done.’ Even though we all know the truth. They’ve been fated for one another since the beginning of time. True soulmates.”

In the shower, he’d said to hell with it and meant it, so the word shouldn’t be able to punch him in the chest the way it did. When her breath hitched over the word, he thought she’d realized the word might be troublesome to them both, but then he realized her distress wasn’t that. What had plagued her since the circle finally refused to be ignored.

“It’s all right,” he said quietly. “It’s time to talk about it, Ramona.”

Her fingers constricted in his chest hair. “What we saw, that previous life, where our paths crossed. At first…I thought it was you who had done the awful things…to me. To others. Which makes me feel even worse, because that’s some fucked-up denial crap, putting it off on others. But…”

“It’s all right. The mind deals with trauma in strange ways.” He stroked her hair, but she took her hand away from him, closing it into a fist against her breast, her knuckles pressing into his side.

“No, it’s not all right. Because it was me. Wasn’t it?”

“I don’t have the power to see what former lives held, not for a soul whose body is still living. I can feel its age, how many lives it has lived, but not the specifics.”

“Don’t.” She sat up, her long hair draped over her breasts, her eyes troubled. “That may be generally true for souls, but this is about our souls. You saw what I saw, Silas. Always be honest with me. Even if it hurts me. Promise.”

“Hurting you isn’t something I would ever do easily.”

She drew back as he reached for her. “It’s a gateway drug. You lie to be kind. Then for other reasons. To protect yourself, to keep things okay between us, to…”

“Stop.” He rose, came around the side of the bed and sat next to her. He pinned her with a firm gaze. “Do not confuse me with past lovers. Remember?”

When her shoulders slumped, her spine’s curve was prominent against her pale skin. He skimmed a hand down the scattering of freckles. “Yes,” he said. “I saw it, that life that’s troubling you. But Ramona, I do not know how many lives I had before becoming a Reaper. Before that, I may have been a groom to a Templar knight, a child soldier in Nigeria. A guard at a concentration camp.” He met her gaze. “Or a witch strangled and burned. You know as I do that enlightenment is a road with many experiences, good and bad, awful and miraculous. Mundane and exquisite.”

“Nothing exquisite about being an Inquisitor who sentenced a witch to burn.” She rubbed her arms, the hairs that raised there. “I watched them draw the garrote around your throat, felt my sureness of how right I was… That was the most terrifying thing. Because I felt it so strongly, I knew I was reliving one of my own lives, not watching someone else’s. To have no doubt when doing something like that… I hated being in my own skin, couldn’t bear the feeling—”

Revulsion captured her expression. The wardrobe doors burst open, their quick rattle his only warning. He saw the flash of silver as energy lashed around her like rope, jerking her to her feet. Her eyes had slammed closed, her face rigid, arms thrown open by a force inside her taking control.

He shoved them both to the bed, himself over her. He grunted as the athame struck, but didn’t let it stop him from balancing the volatile energy trying to get to her.

“No.” The sharp one-word command was directed to the magic, to what took control of her, her flailing conscience, her sickened soul. He drew a line in the sand and drove it back behind it, settling it, pushing it out to every corner. “No.”

She was fighting him, so the second admonition was for her. She had her arms wrapped around her head, her body hunched in against itself and rocking, even lying beneath him. “No, I can’t bear it. I can’t.”

“Stop. Ramona, stop.” He pulled her arms from her face, made her look at him. “Healer, cease. I’m bleeding.”

“What do…what?” As he’d intended, she snapped out of it. Rising up slightly so he didn’t lose full contact with her, he twisted so he could gesture to her athame, buried in the left side of his back, just below his rib cage. “I’m going to pull it out, but you might want to grab that towel so I can keep from bleeding on your bed linens.”

“Holy Goddess.” She scrambled up as he gingerly moved to his knees, putting one foot on the floor. She grabbed the towel. “I’m so sorry. What was going on inside me, I couldn’t…” Her expression cleared. “It would have been aiming for me. Why did you…”

“Do you really want to finish that statement?” He gave her an even look. “It’s a good thing you said you don’t oppose spankings. Though I expect when you experience the kind I want to give you at this moment, you may feel differently.”

“If you can make my toes curl with that look and tone, it must not have hit anything immortal-life-threatening.”

He was glad she was sounding more like herself. Though she looked shaky, the energy in the room stayed settled like fallen snow, leaving a weighted silence. She wrapped the towel around the blade and drew it out herself, then had him grasp the terry cloth to put pressure on the wound.

“It requires nothing further,” he told her. “You’ve seen how I heal.”

“If I’d given you time, you could have gone full Ghost Rider and it would have just scraped a rib bone. You’d look really sexy riding a motorcycle in the cloak, by the way.”

“Until it caught in the engine and wheels and I became a heap of shattered bones.” He made her set the ritual knife aside, sit next to him. “Does that happen often? Your magic harming you when you are upset with yourself?"

"Not since I was a teenager. I learned to deal with self-destructive mood swings early.” She shook her head. “It’s been a long time since it’s broken free like that. But it’s not every day I face historical verification that I’m a monster.”

“You are not a monster. No more than any of us.” He touched her jaw, made her meet his gaze. “None of us escape it. We all have to commit crimes against one another, cause pain, to understand who and what we are. To love one another fully. All our darkness and light.”

“Easy to say. But to feel the weight of something you did like that… Even thinking about it… You go along, thinking you’re trying to be the best person possible, then find out you did something heinous in previous lives.” A shudder went through her. “Now it makes sense that the Reaper saw what he was in previous lives and went batshit.”

“Possible. Though there are intelligent reasons we are blocked from our previous lives, typically it is assumed a Reaper’s nature can handle it.”

“But every rule has an exception,” she pointed out. “And maybe that’s why the mark was able to unlock the former life we shared during our circle. Maybe it’s designed to create mayhem like that. It could have driven us apart.” She stared at the wardrobe, the athame, her expression stark. “How is anything like that forgivable?”

“For the reasons I just said.” Silas gripped her hand. “You wish proof? I was your victim and yet I am here, in this lifetime, hundreds of years later, other lives lived, and we are together again. Wanting to be together. Perhaps I had to endure being burned at the stake because of lives I harmed in another cycle. Perhaps one of them was you.”

She sighed, rubbed her forehead. “I know this crap. Everything we know spiritually is a spiral. But to actually see its truths…it’s terrible, Silas.”

“Yes, it is. But you live a life where there is day and night. Those two parts make the whole. No matter how horrifying that might seem close to it, from the heavens it makes sense.”

“Maybe the heavens need better eyeglasses.”

He let a smile cross his face. Not because he felt like smiling, but because she needed to see it, to be reminded that she was not in that terrible past life. Past being the important point.

“I think there’s a reason Chaos magic users walk so much closer to the Loom, to the Underworld and Dark Soul magic. Because you know.” He wrapped her hair around his knuckles, gently tugged. “It showed itself to you, thinking to knock you off your axis, but you understand it. Find your balance, Chaos witch. It is there, waiting for you.”

She dipped her head again, staring at the floor. He could sense when she started to pull away from the turmoil that had gripped her. As she gathered her energies, separated them out, wove them into a balance again, he drew back enough to give her the space to do it. While he didn’t touch her physically, he watched, felt the marvelous shape of that process on the periphery, learning more about her. About how she did what she did.

He wasn’t going to let his mind dwell on what would have happened if the blade had found her. She seemed far more upset by stabbing his immortal flesh than a threat against her own life, which suggested how often she’d dealt with a teenager’s self-directed volatile mood swings.

At length, she sighed. “Well, this has shattered my notion that I was the queen of a Polynesian tribe during the Dark Ages in Europe.”

"The bulk of lives never make the history books. But all that matters is they are a strand on the Fates’ Loom.”

Her gaze rose. “When I die and my soul rises, my Reaper might see the Inquisitor that burned you as a witch. Especially if you’re my Reaper.”

He didn’t like the thought of her death, no matter who was in charge of taking her to The Gate. He tapped her wrist, giving her an appraising look. “I doubt that would be the incarnation you feel closest to. I think this one is. You’ve had hundreds of years to go through redemption, heal, forgive, find a better path. Some of those you helped may be the souls of those you’ve harmed.”

“Like how I’m trying to help you now,” she said slowly. “That makes me feel better, but I’m not sure I deserve to feel better.”

“You have committed no such crime in this life. And if you want proof that your soul has evolved, you have it. Your horror over what you might have done in the past life was so great you tried to stab yourself.”

“I wouldn’t have died,” she assured him. “It was seeking to inflict pain, not death. If there’d been time, and I hadn’t been half out of my mind, I would have told you that.”

“And you think that means I would have stepped out of the way?” He shot a glance at her open wardrobe. “There’s a belt hanging in there I am about to put to good use.”

On one side were her ritual supplies. Crystals, candles, a goblet, a flame douser. A folded velvet cloth, which was where the athame had rested. On the other side were clothes and useful accessories. Like the belt.

Her uncertain look said she wasn’t sure if he was serious. He was, especially when he noted reluctant intrigue behind her reaction. He’d follow up on that when strapping her with the belt was for their mutual pleasure, rather than his desire to give her hell for scaring him.

She sobered, squared her shoulders. Her gaze was full of emotions, a witch’s knowledge, as she faced what was in her mind, made herself recognize and accept what was past, what was present, and all that might link the two.

“All right. Okay. But since I don’t know if my soul has ever said it to your soul, I’ll say it now. I’m so sorry, Silas. To the very depths of my heart. And I am going to help you figure this mark out. Help you in whatever way I can.” She lifted her fingers to his mouth. “And before you do the stern, ‘Don’t help me because you feel you owe it to me,’ I’m doing it because I want to.”

He gave her a look. “Because you find me insanely attractive and can’t get enough of me.”

“That goes without saying.” But then she bit her lip. Her eyes brimmed with the emotions of the witch he knew.

And was falling in love with.

“I need to cry about it a little while, though,” she said. “Cry for you, cry for all of us.”

“I need to hold you while you do that.”

“Okay.”