Brave the Tempest (Cassie Palme) - Karen Chance Page 0,199

world, and instead had ended up saving it.

Because the power we’d generated that night from the incubus feedback loop had been so great that neither of us could contain it. Pritkin’s incubus had been so starved, and thus so empty, that it had been able to hold far more of the Pythian power than it normally could. And had therefore been able to send back so much more, after its nature magnified what I’d given, that it had almost torn me apart. But instead, it had torn the fabric between worlds, when I used it to let the ghost of Apollo loose onto the battlefield.

But that had only been possible because Pritkin had gone without sex for a century. I didn’t think we’d make nearly so much power this time, but I didn’t care if we did. I didn’t care about anything but filling that terrible ache inside me, the one I finally recognized not as cold but as hunger. I was starving, and he was the only one who could give me what I needed.

But he didn’t want to.

I didn’t understand why, but it was in the set of his shoulders and biceps, rock hard and resisting my attempts to pull him closer. It was in the white-knuckled grip of his fingers on the side of the tub, in the protruding tendons of his neck, in the stubborn set of his jaw. I knew Pritkin; I knew he didn’t want this for some reason I didn’t understand.

But someone else did.

He finished turning back around, and his head dipped down, to find the cheek I’d just turned to him, because I didn’t understand this. I just knew Pritkin didn’t want it, so neither did I—right up until his mouth touched my skin. Since I’d turned my head, it was nothing more than a chaste kiss on the cheek, the kind you’d give a friend or a relative, just nothing at all. But it didn’t feel that way.

His lips were chapped and a little cold. There was melted snow on his face, and the scent of winter—cold air, coal fires, and damp wool—hung about him. His hair was hard and scratchy, like inverted icicles, spearing up everywhere. But it was the eyes—it was always the eyes—that gripped me when I turned into the kiss. So close, so very close, and so alien—

Only not. Because the creature gazing out at me was part of Pritkin, too, no matter how much he hated his demon side. Clear green eyes stared back into mine, not like emeralds this time but like glass, as if I could look through and see his soul. And maybe I could, but if so, his soul wanted the same thing I did. He was hungry.

When our lips touched, it was as if a firework exploded, only that’s too tame. It was more like a bomb went off. There was none of the playful teasing of the mountaintop, none of the normal human hunger of our night at Dante’s. This was a desperate coming together of two aching souls that could only find aid and comfort in each other.

And comfort there was. Pritkin shed his clothes while we tried to eat each other alive, and the next moment he was crawling into the tub alongside me. And that changed everything.

Suddenly, the water wasn’t hot, it was scalding. Suddenly, I wasn’t starving, I was ravenous. Suddenly, the room was alight with magic, maybe his, maybe mine, I didn’t know. But I could see it everywhere.

The lamplight felt solid and real, like the beams were caressing my skin. The water sloshing about me was silk, sliding sensuously along my body. Even the dust motes in the air had power, hovering around us like sparks off a bonfire—

And then I was back there again, in that tent on the battlefield, because yes, he knew; yes, he remembered. That other part of Pritkin knew what we’d done together, knew what we could do again. And he was grateful—God, so grateful. I saw it in his eyes, felt it in his kiss when his lips caught mine again. Felt all those long years of waiting, the desperate need to fulfill his true potential but always denied, denied, denied.

The little sips of power he’d obtained through the years, from this or that random encounter, had barely been enough to sustain him. And most of that he’d given back in service of his master, boosting his power, sharpening his senses, widening his focus. But it had never