upward. I evaded, not letting him find purchase.
“I’d heal you before you died,” I said against his lips, kissing him hard, moving my body around him. Anticipation built.
“My shield,” he said, pushing his chin up, inviting me in again.
I raked my teeth along his throat as I sat down hard, moaning with the sensation. He crushed me to his chest, control fleeing in an instant. He pumped upward, spearing me deliciously, and I pushed against him, getting him deep.
He sat up, his arms around me, helping me bob atop him, kissing my neck and my lips. And again I was lost to it, unable to think beyond the feel of our bodies intertwined, the heat within me, the feel of him.
I groaned, gyrating, winding tighter, pleasure bearing down on me from all sides, almost unbearable in its intensity.
An orgasm ripped his name from my lips, filling the room. Sensation filled my world. He shuddered below me, and I clung to him, breathing heavily. But he kept moving, going for one more and getting it a moment later. He pulled my hair with his release, and I smiled harder than I ever had as yet another wave of bliss washed through me, cracking me apart and piecing me together again.
I wilted over him in the aftermath, completely spent. So full of warmth and light.
Still holding me to him, he lay back, cradling me above him.
“Sex has never felt this good before,” he said, his breathing starting to even out. “It’s so easy with you. I barely have to try, and I’m always ready. Always. I’m never sated. I’m almost at the point of asking my brother if it’s a medical condition, or part of the mating, or what.”
“If it’s a medical condition, I hope there is no cure,” I said, my eyelids drooping. I felt the rest of the team in the house, having come back sometime during our lovemaking.
He stroked my hair. “We should probably go down to them and discuss what happened.”
“We should. Sebastian doesn’t think that mage is going anywhere.”
Austin was silent for a moment, softly stroking my hair. “Do you think he has access to better forces?”
“Sebastian has reason to believe that he could, and would, buy mercenaries.”
He nodded but didn’t say anything. Instead, he pressed his hands against my lower back and swung upward, hard again.
I put my worries out of my mind and lost myself again in Austin. There’d be plenty of time to worry tomorrow.
Thirty-Two
Two days later, we all sat or stood around a circular white table in the backyard, the sun bright, the grass green, and the apology invitation open on the table, completely unbelievable.
Kinsella was sorry. He hadn’t meant to offend me. He wanted to make it up to me with dinner and dancing at the banquet hall in O’Briens. I could bring my “friends.”
He’d probably sneered as he wrote that word.
My rage was a hurricane inside of me.
“Why are we doing this outside?” Hollace asked, his glass of champagne almost empty.
“Because it’s a nice day.” Cyra’s champagne was boiling, steam rising from the glass. She could transfer heat to anything with a simple touch. She apparently didn’t much care for champagne.
“Yes.” Mr. Tom slid a plate of melon slices wrapped in prosciutto onto the table. “Easter was so nice, I thought we might do something similar. I did not hide any eggs, though. I didn’t want to offend God.”
“That’s not…” I shook my head, letting it go.
“This is a trap,” Austin said, in jeans and a T-shirt, his hair rumpled and a spot of blood on his neck. A grizzly bear shifter had challenged him earlier in the day. He was happy to have acquired the shifter for his pack, but the sight of his gashes and seeping wounds had not made me happy. In the future, I intended to be at hand for challenges like that. I didn’t give a crap how shifters did things—I would not allow someone to kill Austin.
“Traps are good. We get to flex our muscles,” Cyra said.
“It takes a lot of the risk out of it when you come back from the dead.” Ulric scanned the ground even though Mr. Tom had said he hadn’t hidden any eggs.
“Yes, but dying still hurts,” she replied. Little flames replaced the steam at the top of her glass. “Dying at the hand of the alpha was not pleasant.”
Sebastian stood a few feet away in the sun, watching the basajaun eat flowers near the tree line. He’d come to