down at their linked hands. “I’m not brave.”
“Being brave isn’t about being unafraid. It’s about functioning through the fear.”
“Like I said—not brave. I freeze. I don’t mean to, but things happen and I just…stand there.”
“If Candida knows the spell to unseal the standing stones, you don’t have to come with me. You can go home from here, your duty fulfilled.”
It was oh, so tempting. But at what cost? If this was all real, then so was the threat to his homeland and siblings…and to Dayn himself. And although rationality screeched at the thought, she was still drawn to him, even knowing he was a vampire. If there was a chance she could help him, she wanted to try. So she forced the words past logic and reason, saying, “Along the bottom of the picture was carved words that translated to ‘Here they can part, each to their own.’ Even my maman said it was an odd ending for the story, since the woodcutter and the girl go off together.”
He nodded slowly. “It wasn’t about them—it was about us. We both need to go there to get back—you to the human realm, me to the kingdoms.”
The thought shouldn’t have brought a twinge.
She nodded. “I should warn you, though. A good man—my partner, my friend—died a few months ago because I froze at the wrong time. You can’t trust a coward like me to have your back.”
If he had knee-jerked the “you’re not a coward” response, she wouldn’t have listened, just as she hadn’t to anyone else who had said the words. She knew what she was. But instead, eyes darkening, he brought up his free hand to touch her cheek, as if brushing away a tear she hadn’t shed. “Sweet Reda, you’ve had a time of it, haven’t you? Don’t worry about having my back. I can take care of us both.”
Her heart shuddered at the quiet promise, which was backed up by the implacable determination in his eyes. He had so much riding on him already, yet was stepping up to take more because she needed him to, which made him a better man—vampire or not—than the others in her life, save for the partner she had lost.
Dayn, too, was lost. But he was working to get himself found.
Did she make the move? Did he? She wasn’t sure of that, wasn’t sure of anything except that their lips were suddenly a breath apart.
This was the moment she should hesitate, she knew, the time when freezing in place would be the smarter, safer thing to do. Here, in this strange realm, in an almost-embrace with a man who was nothing like her, she should back down, back away. But the heat that raced through her made her feel suddenly alive, when she had been numb for so long that she had mistaken it for living. And they had their endpoint already: the Meriden Arch, forty-eight hours from now.
Two days, she thought. What’s the harm?
So she didn’t back down or away, but instead held her ground as he moved in hard and fast. And kissed the hell out of her.
Chapter 5
Soft warmth against his lips. Silky heat on his tongue. Spice and flowers. Curves. The sensations rocketed through Dayn. Gone was any hint of reserve or control, leaving him only able to act and react, not think or plan.
Growling low in his throat, he crowded her back against the tree until their bodies were aligned, pressed together, touching from knee to chest. He kept his hands on her face, willing them to stay there with the last threads of his control, knowing that if he touched her—really touched her, the way he was suddenly dying to do—that he would be truly lost. Although in that moment, he couldn’t remember why that was a bad thing.
It had been two decades since he had held a woman out of anything other than necessity, since he felt a burn that went beyond the physical to something more. But now, as their tongues touched and slid, as his body went tight, tense and hard, he wasn’t just kissing a woman. He was kissing a dream he hadn’t been aware of having.
She thought herself a coward, yet had a core of strength. She had lost someone close to her and blamed herself for it. And she didn’t—couldn’t—understand how much that hit home for him. He didn’t know if the grief and guilt in the kiss was hers or his, but those emotions eased as the heat rose