no, she thought, and leaned harder into him. His armor felt unpleasantly hot against her bare skin, like a car hood on a baking summer day. She ignored the sting, brushing her mouth over his. Back and forth. Her tongue licked out, danced over his velvet lower lip. He tasted of smoke and blood and the ozone reek of magic. It was like trying to cuddle a thunderstorm, and the hair on her arms rose. But Helena was damned if she’d give up, so she hummed a seductive note, playing with a lock of his hair with one hand. And concentrated on the hot memory of making love to him -- but more, on the heat of his gaze, that moment of soul-deep connection.
His breath roughened against hers. His lips opened, mouth going yielding, his hands lifting to slide around her waist. He made a low, rumbling sound of hunger. “Who…” He moaned against her lips. “Helena?”
Oh, thank God… She pulled back just far enough to talk. “Yes, it’s me. I need you, Conal. I want you.” Armored hands tightened almost enough to bruise, and she bit back a hiss of pain as he shoved her back so hard, she almost fell on her ass.
His eyes flared wide. “No. No, you can’t. We’re not safe, we’ll hurt you…”
“No, you won’t,” she breathed, locking her gaze with his and stepping in again.
“Don’t…” He was breathing hard now, his gaze a little wild. And there was something in them she didn’t like at all. Something that wasn’t desire for her body. But it’s not going to overwhelm him, because he won’t let it. She stroked her fingertips over the hard line of his jaw, a little rough with stubble. “I’ve got nothing to fear from either of you.” And she pumped more of that werewolf magic into the air. Her body was aching despite the situation, nipples hard, pussy wet. Which said a lot about the strength of the Burning Moon, considering the menacing energy boiling around Conal.
Again, Helena stretched up to kiss him again, and this time she lingered. Her tongue traced the seam between his lips, tasted his breath. He smelled like ozone and dark energy. Nothing like Conal at all. Never mind that. The lips were the same, the body under the armor was the same. “Make love to me,” she whispered against his mouth. “I need you.”
“Helena,” he said in Liam’s voice. “Get away! We’re not… I’m not safe.”
She opened her eyes and looked up at her friend as he stared out of Conal’s eyes. “I don’t believe that for a minute. I’m your priestess, remember? The best priestess you’ve ever had.”
He shuddered at that. “Because you’re the only one I never killed.”
“And you’re not going to kill me now either. You don’t want to.”
* * *
Helena. The taste of her filled his mouth, pulling him back to himself through the raging storm of memory and madness that was the god of death. He knew that impossibly seductive scent, that delicious taste, despite the lingering reek of blood and smoke. But he could also feel Siobhan’s power just feet away. He could eliminate the threat she posed to Helena, his sisters, Beltane, and Maeve. End the bitch as Maeve should have done thirty years ago. They’d all be the safer for it. No one else would have to suffer at the bitch’s hands again.
He remembered the grinding pain, the helpless rage, the bite of her whip. Five years of humiliation. “If I don’t kill her now,” he told Helena in a voice that almost sounded like his own, “She’ll come after us again.”
If he killed her, she’d never threaten any of them again. No one would. He’d have the power to see to that. There’d be no more Times Square Massacres, no invasions by would-be Mageverse dictators.
And the power she’d give him! He knew how it would feel. That furious storm of magic would race through his blood, light up his brain and his heart in an electric surge like the lives of the Dark Ones he’d fed on more than a millennium ago. How those deaths had sung in his blood… there had been nothing sweeter.
I should do it, whispered a hungry, ancient voice. Do it now, before she can convince me to stop.
He remembered that voice. Remembered that hunger. The rage that could never be sated. How every Dark One he’d killed had plunged him deeper and deeper into madness. He’d killed too many of the