Page 146 of A Dance With Fire
“So, you’ll help us?” Valerio asked from behind them. And Shula heard it in his voice.
Hope.
“I’m not running away. Not anymore.”
Ryker’s fingers slipped through the hair at the back of her neck, angling her head back so he could look deep into her eyes. Her palms slid against his chest where she felt the rapid beating of his heart.
“Good.” The word rumbled through his chest and against her palms.
Then Ryker bent and he kissed her.
The collision of their lips set off an explosion of fireworks behind her eyelids. Magic built from somewhere deep inside her, Mana rising and settling in place. A bond tangled at the seams and shoved into a dark corner suddenly unraveled, threaded together, andsnappedinto place.
A shudder rippled through her body, leaving her gasping. Magic flowed between them, a joined feeling that had them pressing closer until no inch of space was left. Light flared brightly around them, the strings of their bonds pulling, enveloping.
It was everything Shula never knew she wanted, a desire hotter than her Mana-given gift.
Tongues tangled together, not in a fight but adance, an understanding. It healed raw, opened wounds and became something fresh and new.
It made them whole.
Shula’s hands lifted on instinct and wrapped around the back of his neck. Using all the strength she could muster, she pulled herself up against him, creating a friction at her core against the tight ridge pressed against his pants.
A throat cleared, shattering the moment between them. They came down together slowly, pulling apart, gazes holding, breaths mingling.
“I hate to interrupt, but we have to go.” Shula could hear the amusement in Clay’s voice, but she ignored it.
She could feel the air shimmering behind her as a portal was created. Then slowly, without taking his eyes off her, Ryker walked her backwards and into the pressurized surface of the portal.
For a moment, there was nothing but darkness and silence.
And Ryker’s arms wrapped tightly around her in reassurance.
That she was safe in his arms, joined by their bond and something more that had no name or face yet, but it made her feel, perhaps for the first time in a long time, what she’d only dreamt of at night.
Wanted.
48
A Dance With Fire
Ryker knew where the portal took them as soon as his feet touched the stony ground, and the warmth of the hearth enveloped their tightly clinging bodies.
He couldn’t let her go. He didn’t want to.
“My father will want to see us. He’ll want to know the safe houses were compromised.” Valerio’s footsteps echoed against the ground of Castle Aileach. The fluttering wings of Unseelie echoed across the vast ceiling above them, offering blankets, drinks, food.
But Ryker didn’t want any of that.
He didn’t want to waste another moment when desire was coiling low in his belly, ready to strike.
His eyes still hadn’t left Shula’s, and her golden-brown depths seemed to flare, like she knew what he was thinking, and a slow smile teased her lips.
It was Ryker’s undoing.
“Later,” he growled at the prince.
The sword he held to so tightly slipped from his grasp and clattered to the ground. He usually didn’t treat his weapons disrespectfully, but Shula was back. Here, in his arms, and everything he’d tried to convince himself to believe melted away like her magic melted iron.
