sensitive skin, hitching her breath, making her shiver with need, with an all-consuming desire.
He suckled her and she held his head to her breast. Her fingers slid through his hair and he felt each of her fingertips as he would have a match flame against his skin. Burning into him, searing him with the fires they created together. He drew and pulled at her nipple until he felt her body quiver in his grasp. Only then did he release her long enough to grab her at the waist and swing her atop him.
She tugged at the hem of her long white skirt until it was up past her thighs. She wore nothing beneath the traditional robe and Torin reached to stroke her center. Rubbing his thumb across her core in a circular motion, he watched as she knelt over him, rocking her hips in a rhythm he set.
“Take me inside you, Shea,” he ordered, his voice thick with the need pressing down on him, strangling him.
Smiling down at him, she did just that, lowering herself, inch by tantalizing inch, to sheathe him inside her body. Damp heat surrounded him and his mind blanked out. All he could do was feel the sensations she aroused in him. Lightning arced between them, sizzling in the air, charging them both with magic, as rich and pure as anything he had ever felt before.
Making love here in Haven, where centuries of magic had lived and thrived, seemed to magnify what lay between them. As they joined, power sang in the air. He looked up at Shea, her branded breast bare, her head thrown back, her long, silky hair lifting in the rush of magic. Her arms swung wide as if accepting a gift being handed to her.
She rode him, rocking her hips to his, engulfing him, taking all that he was inside her—and when her first release crashed down on her, he experienced that torrent of sensation right along with her. Her sheath fisted around him, holding him tight, squeezing him until at last Torin gave himself over to the undeniable force of the last stages of the mating ritual.
The next few days passed in a blur of awakened memories and gathering magics. Shea worked with her aunt, practicing the ancient rituals, reacquainting herself with the witch she had once been. But it was more than magic and the ability to wield it. She fought to become a warrior witch, training with both Torin and Damyn. Her aunt’s Eternal was strong and patient and between him and Torin, they managed to give Shea the rudiments of self-defense in an extremely short amount of time.
And through it all, Shea grew and expanded. Her mind, her heart, her soul, all responded to being within Haven’s walls again. It was as if she was reconnecting, not only with her former self but with her sister witches. The women who had gone on before her.
Etched into the passageway walls that snaked throughout Haven in a dizzying maze of corridors and rooms were images of long-dead witches. Their features carved into stone and outlined in silver, they seemed to look out on the present from the mists of the past. Their gazes were fixed and compassionate. When she recognized her own features from past incarnations carved into the wall, Shea felt a sense of continuity. She had been here before and now she had returned. This time, she thought as she looked into those faces of the past, the coven would redeem itself. This time, the memories they made would be of pride and fulfillment.
There was safety here in Haven, she thought, sitting near the fire in the chamber she shared with her lover—her mate. Tradition. There was a peace that called to Shea even as she prepared to leave to complete her quest. And there was Torin.
Above and beyond all else she was feeling, there was her connection to her Eternal. This man for whom she would risk anything. This man from whom she was hiding her darkest fears.
“Shea,” Torin whispered in the firelit darkness, “you should be sleeping.”
“My dreams woke me up,” she said, not adding that it was the dark thrill that had called to her soul, had shot her from a dream-filled sleep into a guilt-induced terror.
He left the bed, came to her and knelt at her side. “A dream? Tell me.”
Shea reached for his hand and clung to the hard, solid strength of him. Her fears ratcheted in her chest until drawing a simple