Come to Me (30 page)

She waited a long moment, adjusting to the feel of him within her. Their eyes met. She felt the corners of her mouth curl in a smile of amazement. He smiled back, and then gave a short thrust upward, closing the last fraction of a gap she had not known was there, his manhood rubbing against some hidden place inside her that brought pleasure. Her eyes widened and she gasped.

With his hands on her hips, he guided her into a gentle rocking motion, the nub of her desire in passing contact with his body, tempting her to move with greater pressure, her movements quickening.

"Lean back," he said.

She obeyed, propping herself up with her hands on his legs, her body arched and her breasts on display. The change in position changed his movement inside her, and the hidden sensitive spot was now stroked with each thrust. She threw her head back and rode as he directed, her desire roaring back to life, the muscles of her body working at carrying her again to the pinnacle of passion.

He reached up and grasped her breasts, massaging as she rode, the extra sensation somehow doubling her pleasure, pushing her toward the edge. And then he lowered his hand to her sex, and with a few short brushes of his thumb she was tumbling over the precipice, her body contracting in waves around the solid shaft of his manhood.

He groaned and clasped her around the waist, pulling her forward and holding her still as he thrust a few final, hard times. She gazed wide-eyed into his eyes as his climax came upon him, his muscles tensing, his body shuddering with its release. "Samira," he said, her name a hoarse cry as if from his very soul.

And then he pulled her against his chest and she straightened her legs so that she was lying atop him, his manhood still inside her, their bodies as closely joined as two humans could be. She lay her cheek in the crook of his neck, his arms around her, and listened to the thump of his heart and her own. They beat in unison, just as their breath rose and fell together.

They dozed, and then in mutual, unspoken consent he slowly eased out of her, and she slid to the side so that she was lying against him, one thigh across his legs.

He nudged her shoulder with the hand that was loosely clasping it, cuddling her against his side. "Was it… ?" he asked.

"Hmm?" She looked up. "Was what, what?"

He seemed tongue-tied and worried. "Was it what you were expecting?"

She laughed softly, seeing his need for praise for a job well done. "It was more, Nicolae. More than I ever thought it could be."
And I love you
, she wanted to say, but the words stayed in her throat, caught by her fear of how they would be received. She kissed his flat nipple instead, and smiled at him. "Thank you."

His cheeks colored. "No. I should be thanking you, if thanks are at all appropriate, and I hardly think so." He brushed her hair back from her brow and looked at her. "This wasn't just lust, Samira. It wasn't an itch to be scratched, not for either of us, I think."

"No," she said softly, afraid to say more, and wanting to hear what he himself might confess. Might he say those magic words, that no dream demon had ever heard spoken to them outside the throes of passion? She pressed her lips against his chest, her fingers curled, her heart thumping.

"When I saw Theron, when I realized what he was doing to you—"

"Yes?"

"All I could think was that you were mine, not his."

She blinked at him.

He squeezed her shoulder, hugging her against him. "Does that make sense to you? I didn't want anyone else touching you."

She felt a small frown weighing down her brows. It was possessiveness that he felt? Nothing more? She'd seen inside enough male minds to know that they could be possessive of a woman for whom they had very little affection. All that mattered was that she was a piece of his territory, and she would be defended for that reason alone. "I understand," she said.

He nodded, as if that settled something. "I was hoping you would."

He settled back, apparently at peace with himself, his fingertips idly stroking her hair. It should have been a cozy and warm moment, but Samira's heart was sighing in disappointment, and she set her jaw against the infernal weepiness that threatened to once again spill water down her cheeks.

She tucked her face against his side, not wanting him to guess at her disappointment and fragile heart. Damn her tears, which came every other day. As a demon she'd thought they would be such a relief to shed, but as a human woman they were only reminders that she hurt where no bandage or ointment could heal her.

Nicolae's hand slowly stilled, and she held her breath, wondering if there was more he would say after all. His hand settled on her shoulder once again, and the angry suspicion that he had fallen asleep while she nursed her weeping heart made her raise her head.

He was wide awake, a line of concentration between his brows. "What was that Theron was saying, about Dragosh? Didn't he tell you something?"

The bolt of memory shot through her, and she sat straight up. "Goddess of the Night, Nicolae! How could I have forgotten for a moment? Vlad of Wallachia—Vlad Draco, as he's getting to be known—has taken control of the southern region of Moldavia, and Dragosh is gathering his army on the other side of the mountains, at Tihutsa Pass. He intends to come through here as he sweeps his way to Suceava. But your father thinks that Dragosh is in the south, with Vlad."

Nicolae sat up as well, his face tense. "How sure are you of this? Could Theron have lied to you?"

She shook her head.

"How can you be sure?"

"Because he wanted your help to—" She broke off, as she realized where the explanation would eventually lead. One question would lead to another, and another, and at the end of it all was she, Samira, sitting on Dragosh's chest and convincing him not to let his sister Lucia marry Nicolae.

"My help to what?"

Would he ever be able to love her, if he knew?

But it would be worse yet if he did fall in love with her and she hadn't ever told him the whole truth. She'd never be able to love him fully, not with the shadows of lies in her heart. She'd never be giving him all of herself.

Tears filled her eyes as she realized the truth of love: You gave all of yourself, and your only promised joy was from the giving. There was never any certainty that you would be loved back as much as your heart desired, or even that you would be loved back at all.

"Theron wanted your help in taking possession of Vlad's body. Six years ago, Theron and Vlad made a bargain…" Sitting beside Nicolae on the bed, the illusion of marble columns and sunlight fading away, her body as naked and exposed as her secrets, she confessed to Nicolae the whole story.

He sat rigid throughout, asking terse questions for clarification but otherwise refraining from comment.

"This is how you knew that Vlad—what did you say they are calling him now, Vlad Draco?—was the real threat, not Dragosh. Because you were Theron's tool, and he was Vlad's."

She nodded, and bit her lip to keep from trying to defend herself with pleas of ignorance.

"Moldavia is all but lost, my father a hairsbreadth from total defeat.

"Nyx will come fetch you in a week and a half," Nicolae went on. "At which time she'll ask you questions about humanity which you cannot answer."

"Do you know the answers?" Samira asked in a moment of wild hope.

He shook his head. "I would have said the same as you: a soul. So, after you fail to answer Nyx's questions, she'll probably tear you into a thousand tiny pieces, if you haven't already been murdered by Dragosh and his army. Is that right?" he asked flatly.

"Yes," she said in a small voice. Was it what he was hoping?

"Vlad is already in the house, while Dragosh prepares to sneak in the back window and murder us in our sleep."

He climbed out of bed, banishing the faint remnants of the illusions with a few muttered words. He wrapped a robe around his naked body and stood, a determination as strong as steel holding him tall and unapproachable. With hands on hips and jaw set, his gaze went to the table of books, to the window showing the first light of dawn, and then to Samira.

"Get dressed, and go fetch the men," he ordered.

She scrambled to obey, her heart curling up and hiding in a sheltered nook of her chest, glad only that he had not taken the time to kill it.

As she finished dressing and headed to the stairs, she heard him speaking as if to no one.

"The Dacian wolf will not die without a fight," he said with icy clarity.

A shudder of dread went through her for what was soon to come.

Samira wandered listlessly around the empty courtyard of the fortress. It was weirdly quiet without the men practicing their swordplay, and with no village women cleaning vegetables or washing the men's clothes.

Immediately after Theron's visit nine days earlier, Stephan and Grigore had been dispatched to warn Bogdan. Constantin and Petru had left the fortress six days later, heading west to check Dragosh's progress through Tihutsa Pass and the countryside, and barring capture or death would soon return to Nicolae with the information.

What Nicolae would do with that information, Samira did not know. He had renewed his study of the magic books with a fervor that was almost frightening. He was unaware when she entered the tower room, and equally as oblivious when she left it. A few times she had caught him staring at her with a strange glassy-eyed intensity that could have meant he was acutely aware of her, or that he did not see her at all. The moment she would part her lips to speak, his eyes would fall again to the pages of his tome, and he would be lost to her.

She had begun to live for each crumb of acknowledgment he dropped her way, even when those crumbs were accidentally spilled from his table, with no apparent intention to connect with her. She'd started spending more time outside, hoping that he would note her absence and come after her, but all she got was solitary wandering around the courtyard and island.

With a heavy sigh she sat on a rough wooden bench. With the toe of her shoe she dug at the stubby grass that grew up around the patch of smooth dirt under the bench. The afternoon sun was warm on the top of her head and her shoulders, and touched her forehead and cheeks. She could hear birds in the trees outside the crumbling walls, and the faint whispering of the breeze around corners and walls. It was a bright and lovely day, and she had never been more lonely.

Andrei emerged from a doorway in the wall and stopped when he saw her. She forced her lips into a brief smile of greeting that he failed to return. He looked, instead, as if he were contemplating dumping her down the well.

She tried not to care, even though he was the only prospect of a conversation there was. Whenever he was able, he had kept his distance from her during her entire stay at the fortress, and he seemed to endure her company with the same unhappy grace as a dog might be forced to endure the presence of his master's favorite cat.

She dropped her eyes to the clump of grass, kicking and digging.

A moment later the warm sun was blocked out. She looked up at Andrei, who was standing before her with a sickly false smile on his face.