“You like what you see?”

Her gaze drifted back up his abs and chest to settle once more on his face. Oh, yeah.

Good. Aloud, he said, “Okay, so … what do you want me to do.”

She nodded slowly. “I want you to pop the cadroen. I need your hair free. I need my hands in it.”

He reached behind his head, moving slowly, which had the wonderful effect of flexing a whole lot of muscles up and down his arms and across his pecs. Even his abs tensed.

But his hair was still wet. “You showered? When did you have time?”

He chuckled. “I’m fast. And I have connections.”

“You mean you had Jeannie order the wings.”

“Well, yeah. Had to get back to you. Now, what did you have in mind?”

A knee came up. His cock moved.

Oh, God.

Yet even as she looked down at his beautiful nakedness, even as anxious as she was to start tasting all this maleness, her vision of him began to alter, swirling through her mind. He seemed to be shrouded in an iridescent light, like something out of Mount Olympus. Even his wings had shifted to a beautiful silvery white shade.

And there was power. A lot of power. As well as a sense that destiny was moving through him in a new way, a commanding way, altering his life and his path.

That she was part of his path seemed to be a given, seemed preordained.

She had gone with him to the Convent, returning to a place she hated, because she’d believed she was necessary, and so she had been. She had kept Leto from killing Casimir. She had kept Casimir from taking Grace to his lair.

She was necessary.

She closed her eyes and lifted her face skyward. She held her hands out, palms-up, and the future was simply there: Thorne was on a promontory, and she was beside him. This was new, having the future arrive like this, without even picking up a ribbon of light. Her heart swelled as she looked at him, his long hair swept away from his face and flowing behind him. He looked different, made new, stronger as he stared toward the horizon. The western sun cast a fiery glow over his face.

How much she loved him.

She felt pressure on her fingers, and the vision dissipated. She opened her eyes and looked down. Thorne had hold of her hand.

He shook his head. “Not now,” he said. “You may look into the future later. Now belongs to me.”

With these words, the silvery white light around her god-like man also faded away. She blinked. What remained was the ache in her chest because she did love Thorne, so very much, despite her drive to be free. He was a silvery white light that lived in her heart.

The breath she drew was ragged and it took her a few more seconds to shake off the effects of the vision and to come back to this moment with him. It helped, of course, that his body was laid out before her.

As her gaze roved him once more, she slid the straps off the long, red gown, letting the whole thing fall all the way to the pavers. She was barefoot and she’d gone commando.

He didn’t say anything but his gaze drifted over her breasts, down her abdomen, and low to the juncture of her thighs. He sighed, and the air once more grew spicy with his male tobacco scent as he leaned back on the chaise once more. Her legs quivered and she couldn’t exactly breathe. Cherry tobacco had a sweet scent, something she had always enjoyed smelling, and now here it was combined with Thorne.

He started to rise up again, but she lifted a hand and shook her head. He eased back down.

Had she ever really seen this man before?

She approached the side of the chaise and smoothed her hand over the thick pads of his pecs, to the well-defined abs and the strong lines of his lower abdomen. His cock reached his navel. She drifted her fingers down his thick stalk, then over his legs, which had a fine dusting of hair.

She climbed onto the chaise next to him so that she was on her knees. She put her hand on his upper left thigh and stroked down to his ankle. His shinbone was sharp, his muscles lean and toughened from battle.

She moved back up the other leg.

So this was Thorne, the man who had made love to her for a century in the confines of that small, dark, pathetic cell. She glided her hand up the heavy muscles of his thigh, using her fingers to define each one. She leaned down and kissed his left thigh and licked him, up and up.

But when she reached his groin, she pulled back and looked at him, at his strong erection and at the heavy sack that made him all man. He was breathing heavily. She wanted to take him in her mouth, but she needed more from right now, even though she didn’t quite understand why.

She felt so different with him tonight. She felt in some mysterious way that she was seeing him for the first time. He wasn’t just her early-morning, after-battle lay. He was Thorne. Thorne. Leader of the Warriors of the Blood and her breh, her bonded mate.

And she needed him tonight as she hadn’t needed him before. He was the anchor that had first helped her keep the vision at bay then who had pierced and released her obsidian flame power.

She put her hands on his abs, leaned up, and pressed.

He flexed for her so that she was pushing against a hard plane of muscle.

She met his gaze. You’re so strong.

He nodded. His eyes had a strange expression, a kind of glow. He looked right now the way he often did in front of his troops, fully in command even though he lay beneath her hands.

She pushed upward until she had her hands over his pecs and his nipples. He flexed these for her as well and she squeezed, her fingertips digging in just a little. She glided her hand up around his neck and stroked the veins on each side.

Her mouth watered. She wanted so much tonight. God help her, she wanted everything.

When she reached his mouth, she didn’t use her fingers, she slid to stretch out over him and kissed him as she dipped her left hand beneath his nape, deep into his damp hair.

His tongue pushed back until he entered her and rhythmically drove into her mouth. She eased her body down onto him until the tip of him touched all her wetness and readiness.

He groaned, his arms surrounding her and caressing her, his fingers gliding down her back.

Your wing-locks are soaked.

The minute he said the words, she knew what she wanted. She lifted up and met his gaze. “I want you to enter me and then I want to mount my wings. We could never do that in the Convent and I always wanted to. I wanted to be in flight when you came.”

His body tightened head-to-foot as his cock found her opening and he pushed inside her. He held her in a powerful embrace as his fingers played over her wing-locks until she was crying out.

“You’re thickening,” he said, rocking into her slowly, drawing back, pushing in again.

“Yes.” She could hardly breathe. Pleasure gripped her down low and her back was almost spasming.

He dipped to reach her ear and split his resonance, whispering, “Just let them go. There’s enough room on this chaise and with the surrounding plants. You can mount your wings. Just let them go.”

His presence deep in the well of her body, and the hard erection along with his slow thrusts, kept her right on the cusp. Oh, what would this feel like to mount her wings while he was inside her. Oh. God.

She breathed hard focusing on her wing-locks. At the convent, all the devotiates were encouraged to mount their wings once a week, just for overall health. But wing-mounting was always done in private. Each time, she’d been wild with desire, and she often fantasized what it would be like if she was joined to Thorne while it happened.

Now the time had come and he was with her, so with her. She was almost hyperventilating as she held on to the moment. And then, as he pumped into her, a little faster now, they came, a swift glide, an intense pleasure that had her arching away from him. She screamed as her wings released into full-mount. She would have flown away had he not secured her with his hands around her waist, pinning her against him and holding his cock firmly in place.

Still, he pumped into her. He knew her body so well.

Still, the pleasure came.

Once more, she cried out.

He pumped hard and fast now, bringing her close to the brink again. She arched and screamed into the night air, her hips rocking and meeting his thrusts. She came and came. She gripped his arms, holding on tightly because her wings were enormous and all the movement had set them to wafting, trying to take her into the air.

Thorne groaned. “Oh, God, Marguerite. You’re so tight.”

She met his gaze. “Can you hold on? Can you get into position, still inside me, and mount your wings? I want you to feel this. We could never do this in the Convent and I wanted to. Oh, God, Thorne, I wanted to so much and I want you to have this experience right now.” She was gasping for air.

“I need something more, first. Something to give me strength.” When his gaze fell to her throat, she gave a cry and put her vein against his mouth. He sucked and licked so hard she nearly came again. She slung her arms around his neck.

Do it.

He struck and her blood began to flow.

That did it. Her body tugged on him, the size of him working her internal muscles so that this next set of orgasms was better than the first, more intense, sharper. He held her hard against his mouth so that her hips were free to pump.

Oh, God, Marguerite, you feel so good. Your blood is a rose fire down my throat. When her body had sort of calmed down, he shifted so that he sat on the edge of the lounge and she wrapped her legs around his waist.

* * *

Thorne didn’t know how he was lasting. Of course two millennia of practice helped, but damn, sex had never been like this between them. The more of her blood he drank, the more the muscles all along his shoulders and down his arms tightened and strengthened. This, however, was the same, that her blood gave him strength. No other woman’s blood had ever powered him. But hers did, and maybe she was helping him last.

The events of the past few hours had changed Marguerite. He could feel it in his bones and he approved. Some threshold had been crossed, some terrible barrier busted open. She was more present with him than she’d ever been.

Would she stay? Well, that was the question, but not one that would be answered right away.

He released her throat and drew back. He smoothed her short white-blond hair with his hands and kissed her.