Turbulent Sea (50 page)

"I understood perfectly."

He felt her lips curve against his neck and knew she was smiling. He laid her back, careful of her smaller body as he blanketed her, holding her close to him, unable to break away yet. He wanted to feel the beat of her heart, hear her soft breath, feel the silk of her hair and the satin of her skin against his. She was soft, all woman; she was—everything.

"Listen to that, Ilya," she said softly.

"What am I listening to?" He was listening to her song, almost purring like a contented kitten. He would never hear that song enough.

"The sea. Earlier, before you were here, the waves were wild and crazy. I could hear the roaring and crashing against the rocks." She pressed a hand to her stomach. "Inside I felt the same way, moody and stormy and all on edge. And then you came home. The sea is at peace." And so was she. Deep inside, everything had become calm and still and at peace.

He looked at her instead of the inky water. Her heart leapt. His eyes, his beautiful eyes, often so like the turbulent sea in the midst of a wild coastal storm, were as serene as the clear skies after a storm passes. She could see his colors; the dark shadow was still there—and it probably would always be second nature to Ilya to hide who he was—but she could see the colors swirling beneath the darkness, light and happy and tranquil. His music was soft and sensuous, a blend of notes that made her heart melt and her world right.

"You make everything in me still and relaxed, Joley. You make my body and heart sing. I swear, when I saw you coming toward me, the rest of the world fell away and I knew I was home. It didn't matter where, just as long as I was with you."

Joley smiled and kissed him again, a long, lingering kiss that stole his breath. "Look at the sea, Ilya. The ocean is so enormous and beautiful. Especially at night, it just sweeps everything bad in your life under those pounding waves and takes it out to somewhere in the middle of all that vast space, leaving life good."

His smile was slow and heart-stopping. She got another kiss, and then he braced himself above her to look out the window at the continually moving water. "It is beautiful, Joley," he agreed. "I had hoped we could buy the property next to Jonas. There's twenty acres for sale, a huge home with enough bedrooms for our sons, but we're not on the ocean. You have to look over the tops of the trees to see it in the distance."

There was a small silence. "You were looking at property? When? How?"

"Jonas sent me a link on the Internet. I had to do something while I was traveling, so I went through my e-mail. It sounded perfect, but now that I can hear the sea, maybe we should be closer." He lowered his body over hers again, bending his head to kiss her. It was difficult resisting her, the shape and texture of her curves when she melted the way she did each time he sank into her.

"I hadn't thought that far ahead," she admitted, running her hands up and down his arms. It was necessary to touch him, to feel every inch of his skin. "But I'd love to live close to Hannah."

"Our children can play together." He rolled over to lie beside her, one hand massaging her stomach.

"There you go with the children again. Get over it already. We're not having children for a long, long time." But she was already a
little
enticed by the prospect of letting him see a real childhood by watching their son grow up in a loving home.

"Really?" He bent his head and kissed her stomach, his dark hair falling across her skin and tickling her. "I don't know that I'd call eight months a long time, but I guess by the end of it, most women think it's a very long time."

Joley couldn't help but immerse her fingers into that wealth of silky hair as he pressed his ear to her stomach and then rubbed another caress over her. "You are so insane. I told you, I'm on birth control."

"Does birth control work for Elle?"

She frowned and, with her fingers curled into his thick hair, yanked to bring his head up. "I am
not
Elle."

He flashed a small grin. "No, but I am—well—the masculine version of her, and I'm feeling life here in your womb. I felt it the first time I ever made love to you."

Joley gaped at him. It wasn't true. A baby? She put her hands on her belly. Could she be pregnant with a baby?
His
baby? That little boy with dark curls who would never hide in a corner trying to make himself small? She imagined Ilya carrying the child on his shoulders, laughing. Ilya needed to laugh; he needed to see a childhood the way it was meant to be. Secretly, she thought she might like the motherhood thing—with
one
child—but there would be no admitting it to him.

"You'd better be wrong. That would be like a fate worse than death. I'm not having seven children. Do you know how many times I'd have to be in labor?"

He nuzzled her stomach. "Not if we did it two at a time."

She sat up, pushing his head away from her. "Did I say I missed you, because if I did, I was sadly mistaken." She pointed across the room. "Go over there and sit down."

He grinned at her, unrepentant. "I think we should have at least one girl, too. I want to find her trying to get out of windows when she's been naughty at school."

Joley groaned. "Don't wish that on us!" She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him back to her. "Seven sons, for real? You'd better be really good at the daddy role."

"I'll do my best," he promised, nuzzling her neck, "but I intend to be dynamite at the husband role." He kissed her several times, unable to stay away from her soft mouth. "And thank you for the way you lit up the house when I returned, the fire in the fireplace, the candles—it was so beautiful and made me feel unlike anything I've ever felt. It was perfect."

Joley's hands smoothed through his hair lovingly. "I didn't do that," she whispered, knowing the truth. "The house recognized you and welcomed you home."

Turn the page for a special preview of

DARK CURSE

by Christine Feehan

Available in September 2008

from Berkley Books!

"LARA, let's get out of here," Terry Vale said. "It's getting dark and there's nothing here. Look below us. There's caves crisscrossing the entire mountain. Take your pick."

Lara Calladine didn't bother looking away from where she was scanning the mountainside for the smallest crack that might signal the presence of a cave. She wasn't wrong—not this time. Power surged and crackled the moment she set foot on the upper slopes of the mountain. She took a deep breath and pressed a hand over her pounding heart. This was
it
. This was the place she had spent her life searching for. She would recognize that flow of energy anywhere. She knew every weave, every spell, her body absorbing the gathering power so that veins sizzled and her nerve endings burned with the electrical current building inside of her.

"I've got to go with Terry on this," Gerald French agreed. "This place gives me the creeps. We've been on a lot of mountains, but this one doesn't like us." He gave a nervous laugh. "It's getting dicey up here."

"No one says 'dicey,' " Lara murmured, running her hand along the face of the rock about an inch from the surface, looking for threads of power.

"Whatever," Gerald snapped. "It's getting dark and there's nothing here but mist. The fog is creepy, Lara. We've got to get out of here."

Lara spared the two men an impatient glance and then surveyed the countryside around them. Ice and snow glittered, coating the surrounding mountains with what appeared to be sparkling gems. Far below she could see castles, farms and churches in the distance despite the gathering dusk. Sheep dotted the meadows and she could see the river running, filled to capacity. Birds cried overhead, filling the sky and dive-bombing toward her, only to break off abruptly and circle again. The wind shifted continuously, biting at her face and at every bit of exposed skin, tugging at her long thick braid, moaning and wailing all the while. Occasionally a rock fell down the slope and bounced off the ledge to the hillside below. A trickle of snow and dirt slid near her feet.

Her gaze swept the wild countryside. Gorges and ravines cut through the snowcapped mountains, plants clung to the sides of the rocks and shivered naked along the plateaus. She could see the entrances to several caves and felt the strong pull toward them as if they were tempting her to leave where she was to explore. Water filled the deeper depressions below, forming a dark peat bog and beds of moss, which were a vivid green in stark contrast to the browns surrounding them. But she needed to be here—in this spot, this place. She had studied the geography carefully and knew that deep within the earth, a massive series of ice caves had formed.

The higher she climbed, the smaller everything below her looked and the thicker the white mist surrounding her became. With each step, the ground shifted subtly and the birds overhead shrieked a little louder. Ordinary things, yes, but the subtle sense of uneasiness, the continual voice whispering, warning her to leave before it was too late, told her this was a place of power. Although the wind continued to shriek and blow, the mist remained a thick veil that shrouded the upper slope.

"Come on, Lara," Terry tried again. "It took us forever to get the permits, we can't waste time on the wrong area. You can see nothing's here."

It had taken considerable effort this time to get the permits for her study, but she had managed the usual way—using her gifts to persuade those who disagreed with her that, with the universal global warming, the fate of the ice caves was unknown and needed immediate attention. More than that, microbes—extremophiles—not only survived within the caves, but thrived in extreme conditions. The hope was that the microorganisms that lived and reproduced far from sunlight and traditional nutrients could aid medical science in the fight against cancer or even produce an antibiotic capable of wiping out the newer superbugs emerging.

Her research project was fully funded and, although she was considered young at the age of twenty-seven, she was acknowledged as the leading expert in the field of ice-cave study and preservation. She'd logged more hours exploring, mapping and studying the ice caves around the world than most other researchers twice her age. She'd also discovered more superbugs than any other caver. NASA, one of the leading researchers of the extremophiles, was one of her biggest supporters.

"Didn't it strike you as odd that no one wanted us in this particular region? They were fine giving us permits to look virtually anywhere else," she pointed out. Part of the reason she'd persisted when no caves had been mapped in the area was because the department head had been so strange—strange and rather vague when they went over the map. After studying the area, the natural geographical deduction was that a vast network of ice caves lay beneath the mountain, yet the entire region seemed to have been overlooked.

Terry and Gerald had exhibited exactly the same behavior, as if they didn't notice the odd structure of the mountain, and both men were superb at finding ice caves from the geographical surface. Persuasion had been difficult, but all of that work was for this moment, this cave, this find.

"It's here," she said with absolute confidence.

Her heart continued to pound with excitement, not at the find, but because walking had become such a chore, her body not wanting to continue forward. She breathed away the compulsion to leave and pressed through the safeguards, following the trail of power, judging how close she was to the entrance by how strong her need to run away was.

Voices rose in the wind, swirled in the mists, telling her to go back, to leave while she could. Strangely, she heard the voices in several languages, the warning much stronger and insistent as she made her way along the slope searching for a crack, for anything at all that might signal an entrance to the caves she knew were there. All the while she kept her senses alert to the possibility that monsters might lurk beneath the earth. But she had to enter—to find the place of her nightmares, the place of her childhood. She had to find the two dragons she dreamt of nightly.

"Lara!" This time Terry's voice was sharp with protest. "We have to get out of here."

Barely sparing him a second glance, Lara stood still for a long moment, studying the outcropping that jutted out from smoother rock. Thick snow covered most of it, but there was an oddity about it that kept drawing her gaze back to the rock. She approached cautiously. Several small rocks lay at the foot of the larger boulders, and strangely, not a single snowflake stuck to them. She didn't touch them, but studied them from every angle, carefully observing the way they were arranged in a pattern at the foot of the outcropping.

"Something out of place," she murmured aloud.

Instantly the wind wailed, the sound rising to a shriek as it rushed toward her, blowing debris into the air so that it shot at her like small missiles.

"It's the rocks. See, they should be arranged differently." Lara leaned down and pushed the small pile of rocks into a different pattern.

At once the ground shifted beneath them. The mountain creaked in protest. Bats took the air, pouring out of some unseen hole a short distance from them, filling the sky until it was nearly black. The dark crack along the outcropping split wider. The mountain shuddered and shook and groaned as if alive, as if it were coming awake.

"We shouldn't be here," Terry nearly sobbed.

Lara took a deep breath and held her palm to the narrow slit in the mountainside, the only entrance to this particular cave. Power blasted out at her, and all around she could feel the safeguards, thick and ominous, protecting the entrance.

"You're right, Terry," she agreed. "We shouldn't" She backed away from the outcropping and gestured toward the trail. "Let's go. And hurry." For the first time she was really aware of the hour, the sun setting, the gathering darkness spreading like a stain across the sky.

She would be coming back early morning—without her two companions. She had no idea what was left in the elaborate ice caverns below, but she wasn't about to expose two of her closest friends to danger. The safeguards in place would confuse them, so they wouldn't remember the location of the cave, but she knew each weave, each spell, and how to reverse it so that the guards wouldn't affect her.