Thief of Hearts (Elders and Welders Chronicles Book 3) (23 page)

He’d have to sort through the consequences to his heart later.

He sucked in a deep breath and reached for her.

HEX WAS AWARE
of an animal heat and the clean scent of new sweat and springtime rain. Feverish breath hit her brow, each puff sending a frisson of intense pleasure over her body. She held her own breath for what seemed an endless moment, until finally,
finally
she could feel him give into her, the tension of his body releasing into even more heat, more pleasure between them.

She remembered that first kiss on the docks, how overwhelming it had seemed, and wanted to laugh. Their kisses now, their closeness, eclipsed that moment a thousand fold, and they’d scarcely even started.

Hands, large and warm, slid from her shoulders and down, down to the swell of her breasts. Palms cupped beneath, and thumbs rose, stroking the peaks through the rough linen, until her nipples were hard and erect and…and aching. Aching as she'd never ached before, not even with Edgar.

His amber eyes, bright with desire, watched her carefully, a bit warily. He'd fought himself for taking what she so freely offered, the noble idiot, but he’d finally capitulated. She didn’t know why he’d balked in the first place. She could tell he wanted her—wanted her as fiercely as she wanted him. The struggle against the Swede and his frankly terrifying associates had knocked something loose that had been between them since their first meeting.

Unlike him, she didn't want to question it, just knew she wanted to be touched, to be kissed, to be
possessed
by Rowan, before she went mad. She just wanted to feel alive in the midst of so much terror and death.

And after all he’d been through, surely he needed the same.

She tried to kiss him again, recapture the wild heat that came from the connection between their mouths, but he held her away once more. Fingers gripped her shirt and in one effortless motion, he'd torn it down the front, baring her breasts, her belly.

She gasped.

Well, he was certainly getting into the spirit of things.

His arm went around her back, pulling her into him, closing the distance between their bodies. Before she could think to breathe, his too-clever fingers found the peak of a breast once more and caressed it until overwhelming sensation skirted down her spine. She made an odd, whimpering sound in her throat that would have embarrassed her on any other day.

He thrust his trouser-clad hips against hers, anchoring her in place, and stared down at her with desire-darkened eyes. “Shall I stop?” he murmured.

She shook her head, because she was beyond words.

His hand slid down to her belly, then lower still.

All though fled as his hand touched the silken-curled mound at the apex of her thighs. His fingers nudged the peak above her cleft, sending bolts of electricity down her legs. A ragged breath caught in her throat, her senses fractured, and her knees weakened. Something warm and luxurious began to spread from her center, and almost involuntarily, she arched her back and shuddered as she felt his finger stroking her just right. Warmth turned into searing heat, and her mind reeled. She felt his onslaught all the way to her toes.

He pulled her even tighter to him as she squirmed with feeling. She'd known her body had craved him—had craved him since she’d first seen him, naked in that tomb—but she'd not wanted to admit it to herself. She’d wanted nothing to do with the opposite sex in years, convinced that the only pleasure to be had was on their side.

Edgar and his perfunctory rutting had a lot to answer for.

The feeling Rowan elicited in her just from a few caresses was far beyond anything she could have predicted. It left her breathless, panting. Something was building inside of her, between her legs, just itching for release. Something that left her baffled and a little scared…and thoroughly powerless to stop it.

She sank her fingers into his thick hair and arched closer to him, moaning helplessly.

He broke away from his occupation, his strong hands encircling her waist, his head thrown back against the wall, watching her, measuring her responses. She groaned with frustration. She had been near to shattering with feeling, and she wanted desperately for him to return to touching her
there
, that magic spot he’d found then so cruelly abandoned.

But before she could complain, his hands were on her backside, lifting her high against him and spinning her around effortlessly, pinning her to the door. Smooth, cool wood touched her back, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, feeling his hips collide against her own and his fingers flex hungrily against her thighs.

Now her lips were level with his own, and he seized them in a ruthless kiss, his hands pressing her hips closer so that their bodies locked together. She worked the buttons on his shirt until his naked chest touched her naked, swollen breasts, the warm, damp connection startling in its intensity. She reached up to his nape and pulled his head closer, fingers tangling in damp, dark curls, then passed her bare forearms lower, down the front of his chest, feeling the hard, burning planes of his body with her own skin.

Her bare flesh—that most sensitive place between her legs—felt the rasp of his coarse uniform trousers, felt the hard length trapped beneath, straining toward her. Instinctively, she rocked once, her backside caressing him, making him gasp and curse. He immediately retaliated, his tongue, hot and moist, tracing the lobe of her ear, moving down by slow increments along the edge of her jaw. A strangled cry caught in her throat at the damp, delicate heat passing over her skin.

His hips pressed into her again, and something warm and dizzying flooded over her. She gave another helpless moan as one of his hands found its way back to her center, and she arched into him on instinct. This seemed to please him, and he murmured incoherent, gentle words against the juncture of her neck and shoulder. His fingers stroked her hidden folds, damp, warm and swollen from his attention, pushing her toward the edge. She pulled her head back and stared at him, wide-eyed, barely repressing a curse. It was almost too much.

A small, secret smile curved his lips, the infuriating man. He knew exactly what he was doing, as bafflingly adept at this act as he had been at combat. She met his smoldering eyes, not knowing exactly what she wanted, but wanting it, and soon. Needing it. Needing him inside of her.

"Please, please..." she murmured, gripping his shoulders, and just those few, pleading words finally seemed to make the last vestiges of his control fracture. A low groan broke across his lips, and, as if he couldn't bear it another moment, he reached down to his trousers and unbuttoned them hastily, pushing them down his narrow hips just enough to release himself.

She glanced down, unable to help herself, and groaned. He was stiff with arousal, bigger and longer than she had imagined.

He saw her look, and his breathing grew even more ragged, his amber eyes blazed. "Touch me," he murmured, taking her hand in his own. He fitted her palm around his cock and braced his arms on either side of her head, watching her touch him. She caressed him tentatively at first, down to her wrist so that she could truly feel him, skin to skin. He was warm and smooth and pulsing, like velvet come alive.

Edgar had never let her touch him like this. It had been “too unseemly” he’d said, though she’d known he’d just been disgusted by her Welding hands. But Rowan certainly didn’t seem to mind. He grew even harder beneath her fingers, and he groaned against her ear, all the muscles of his body tensing, encouraging her to press harder, faster.

He finally pushed her hand away. “Enough,” he growled.

His hands moved beneath her hips, lifting her higher against the wall. Then he was easing her down, his length filling her up, all the way to her very core. She was undone immediately, her body shuddering at how good it felt to have him inside. She turned her head away, overcome, but he caught her by the chin, held her tight and unmoving until she reluctantly met his eyes.

“See me,” he whispered. “Tell me you see me.”

She didn’t understand what he wanted from her, but she kept her attention on him, willing him to move. He didn’t, yet that strange and novel heat low in her belly began to rise again, and her heart thrummed against her ribs in anticipation. The unlikely gentleness in his hot, hard embrace, the feel of him filling her up—even just the scent of him—was overwhelmingly perfect. This was lust, she decided.

Lust, yes. But something else too—something that connected her to him that wasn't in their joined lips or tangled bodies, something that wasn’t physical at all. Something that felt in suspicious proximity to her heart. She didn’t know what to call it, and she didn’t know if she liked it, but she certainly couldn't resist it. Not at the moment, at least.

“Rowan…” she breathed.

He took a stuttering breath, as if he’d waited eons for his name on her lips. Then he kissed her, kissed her,
kissed her,
until she forgot how to breathe. With slow precision, he withdrew and thrust back inside of her, just as she wanted. He moved slowly at first, with a thoroughness that left them both breathless even after he’d released her lips. But his control soon slipped, and his body began pounding into hers, searing her, leaving her wanting even more of him. And though her body shook with ecstasy, it never seemed to be enough.

"Open to me," he urged, sensing her frustration, because it was his own.

"How..."

He brought his forearms under her thighs, lifted them higher so her knees straddled his elbows, spreading her wide so that she was completely exposed to him. Her injured shoulder scraped against the door, but the pain was incidental in the face of her—their— monumental need.

He moved his hips just right and groaned. "There..."

"Yes," she said, clutching him, her inner muscles seizing around him. "Yes," she said again as he lunged in and out of her, a slow burn beginning low inside of her, spreading over her body like sunglow. She cried out as he slowly but thoroughly filled her up. Slowly but thoroughly wound her up, taking her higher, higher than she'd ever been with a man, higher than she'd ever thought possible without shattering.

He cried out, the muscles of his abdomen contracting, the breath punching out of him, and the length of him inside of her growing thicker, harder. He thrust deep, and the sunglow turned into a sear of crippling pleasure as her release washed over her. He moved his hips one last time, spilling himself in a hot molten rush inside, his body shaking with his own release, his voice crying out her name against her lips.

She was lost to the world after that, her climax having drained her so completely that nothing but exhausted satisfaction remained. She slumped against him, too spent to hold herself up, and he caught her easily. After what seemed like an eternity of simply leaning against him, soaking in his heat, and catching her breath, she felt his arms lift her up and carry her over to her bed. He set her down on the sheets and covered her with something soft and warm.

He didn’t join her.

Not that she cared. She’d not asked him to, and she wouldn’t. It had just been lust, after all, regardless of that moment of madness when she’d felt…more.

But she didn’t
want
more. Not with a man who barely even knew his own name, who was just as likely to disappear from her life as abruptly as he’d entered it. Only foolish girls equated sexual congress with love, and she wasn’t a fool. Not anymore.

The haze in her mind began to clear, and the warm contentment of a few moments ago faded as reality began to assert itself once more. Why hadn’t she sent him on his way? Why had she allowed her body to overrule her good sense? What the hell was wrong with her?

She felt the fleeting press of his fingers against her forehead. Or perhaps it was his lips. She couldn’t be sure which one, because she refused to open her eyes. She didn’t want to look at him. She didn’t want to risk succumbing to her weakness for him again. It was hard enough to resist the scent of him, the heat of him. The touch of him.

God, the
touch
of him.

“Thanks, Rowan,” she murmured, for she needed to say something, didn’t she? She cringed inwardly, for she knew she was being a coward. But she didn’t want any small intimacies from him, now that they’d both slaked their appetites. That would just further confuse things between them.

There was a weighted pause, and his hand retracted. She could almost feel the tension surge back into his body and the sunglow retreat from the room entirely, leaving her cold. He didn’t respond, and a moment later she heard the cabin door open and close behind him.

She turned on her side and blindly stared out the porthole window, stubbornly ignoring the sinking feeling in her gut.

GABRIEL HARKER, DUKE
of Brightlingsea, stood on the top of the petrified dune and surveyed the desert before him. The storm kept a careful distance from the tomb, coming up against an invisible, circular wall about half a mile from where he stood, mountains of sand churning outward in billowing waves. Even the sky above him was a perfect circle of pristine blue, untouched by the reddish haze engulfing the rest of the desert.

The sandstorm’s widening radius from the tomb, where it had begun, was concerning. Time was definitely running out.

After five years of waiting, his pocket watch, programmed to match the passage of time on the other side, had finally counted down to the noon hour just two days after Rowan’s departure with Miss Bartholomew. The portal had opened shortly thereafter, instigating the endless sandstorm and splitting the earth and sky above the tomb with a blinding seam of light. Now the seam appeared as just a small incongruity, a mere trick of the eye, bisecting the air over the center of the tomb. It was literally a crack in time, and it was pushing the storm outward and filling the void left behind with what he suspected was energy from the future.

Two moments in time existing side by side in a single reality. The wrongness of it all made his skin crawl, even as the scientist in him was utterly fascinated. And it would only grow worse until he and Rowan crossed back over.

The ground beneath his feet hummed from the concentrated energy trapped inside the tomb, a shallow layer of sand shifting and buzzing like millions of tiny insects on top of the fulgurite’s shiny surface. It was dangerous to leave the portal open for so long, and at some point, the four hearts powering the device’s engine would finally fail, leaving them both stranded.

But by his calculations, he had a little bit of time left—the only reason he’d let Rowan go with Miss Bartholomew in the first place. It had been a grave risk to do so, but how could he not? He’d arrived too early—again—and unintentionally jeopardized the future—again. He should have arrived
after
Rowan had crossed over,
after
Rowan and Miss Bartholomew had their chance to…well, do whatever it was that had led to conceiving their children.

And those children had to exist for so many reasons—
Hector
had to exist. Without the boy, the device would have never functioned in the first place, and history—or the future, depending on how one looked at it—would have been entirely changed.

Perhaps Rowan would have never been thrown back in time at all, and Gabriel wouldn’t have had to come back to find him. But in 1897 those things
had
happened, and it seemed to him that they must happen again. The Cairo Earthquake, the sandstorm, Janus and Netherfield. He didn’t understand enough to risk tampering with what had already passed. Neither did he want to. He just wanted to make sure the universe
had
a future…and if possible, give Rowan’s back to him.

Gabriel had had five more years—interminable, bloody hot years—to figure out how to do so, for it hadn’t been just a misplaced decimal point that had sent him careening off course the first time. It had been Hector. Ehrengard and Leo would have never been able to make the device functional without the boy’s genius. But there had been an anomaly hidden in the complex algorithms Hector had programmed into the temporal compass—an anomaly for which Gabriel was forever grateful, now that he’d worked out its purpose.

What was perhaps even more baffling than the calculations the nine-year-old had made was Hector’s existence full-stop. The boy had essentially been born out of time. His mind had been as well, and perhaps it still half-existed on some other plane, affected in a way that his sister’s had not been.

It was fascinating and something completely unprecedented, and after five years of contemplation, even Gabriel could admit that he still didn’t understand the biology or the physics of it.

The only certain conclusion he could draw was that Hector’s existence was essential. Even without reviewing the calculations Hector had made, he was fairly certain that he would have blown the entire universe to kingdom come had Hector not manipulated the temporal compass.

Gabriel had been hasty both times he’d gone back for Rowan. He’d not paused for long enough to wonder why his long-abandoned prototype, which had never once worked for him, had suddenly become functional at all. He’d been too intent on getting Rowan back before the engine gave out. But he’d known something was…off.

Without the failsafe the boy had programmed into the device, Gabriel would have jumped back nearly simultaneously with Rowan the second time around. And it would have been too close.

He could see now after five years of reflection that it would have quite possibly torn the universe apart there and then. Hector’s “glitch” had automatically bumped him just far enough away in time from Rowan’s jump to avoid catastrophe.

How the boy could have predicted these things was unfathomable, and he doubted he would ever have an answer. If they returned to their correct place in time—and it was looking like a big
if
at this point—he knew he would be kept from Hector. Even if Rowan forgave him—something he highly doubted—he’d never let Gabriel anywhere near his son.

And Gabriel would deserve it. His curiosity was what had damned him and Rowan in 1500. It was only fitting that Rowan would damn his curiosity in return.

Gabriel’s conscience was penitent to millions, but it was always first and foremost penitent to Rowan, who had never approved of Gabriel’s experiments with Leo. Rowan had never wanted immortality and had only reluctantly agreed to the operation on the promise of ensuring the lives of his children.

That promise had never been realized, of course. Gabriel had never thought much of Anne, but her denunciation of Rowan, the way she had poisoned their children’s minds against him, had just confirmed his low opinion.

It had thus not taken Gabriel long to regret persuading Rowan into the Da Vinci heart, for he could see that kernel of misery deep in Rowan’s eyes that had not been there before. They didn’t talk about it, of course, but as the centuries had passed, they had drifted apart in small, infinitesimal ways that had broken Gabriel’s own heart bit by bit.

The Crimean War had nearly destroyed their relationship entirely, and Gabriel didn’t blame Rowan at all for the nearly insurmountable distance between them afterward. As much as Rowan had wanted to help him after the war, all Gabriel had done was push and push him away, his obsession to fix the past all-consuming.

Now his obsession had backfired, injuring the one person left on the planet that Gabriel cared about. Once Rowan regained his memories and realized the role Gabriel had played in this whole damnable farce, what Gabriel’s machinations had caused—
will
cause—him to lose, Rowan would hate him forever.

Even if by some miracle Rowan got past it all, Rowan would inevitably demand that he give up on the device.

And Gabriel would inevitably refuse.

The past fifty years spent out of time had humbled him. His carelessness and hubris had put the world at risk yet again, and the price he would pay would be high. But he didn’t think he could stop trying to make the device work, even if it cost him Rowan’s friendship. He had a million other debts to pay, after all.

At the moment, however, he was uncertain he would have a chance to pay back any of them. For though their past had already been written, there was no guarantee for the future.

He didn’t know if he and Rowan would ever even make it back to 1897, because it hadn’t happened yet, and perhaps it never would. If Rowan didn’t return to the tomb before the hearts failed, their chance to cross back over would be lost forever. Even if he could build another device in this timeline, it could never heal the damage this current prototype had already done. The only way to do that was to go back precisely the way they had come. And if that wasn’t possible…

Well, it didn’t bear thinking about. Rowan would understand when he explained it to him, and he would do what had to be done, just as Gabriel would. They’d lived for over four hundred years, and that was much too long anyway.

Wasn’t it?