“After we brought Fiona and the rest of the blood slaves home, I’d been so puffed up in my new abilities that I’d missed the whole point—we’d brought them home as a unit.” She kissed him. “Do you see? My independence had become an excuse not to get close to anyone. That was why I fell for Rith’s deception—it never occurred to me to question what I was looking at, or to seek counsel from anyone else, or to even contact you mind-to-mind. It was just me, acting alone.”

She relaxed against him. “Now I’m here. With you. And there’s nowhere else I want to be.”

He put his hand on the back of her neck. “You still want to be a Militia Warrior?”

She shook her head. “Truth? I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s the right path for me or not.” Then she smiled. “I think I need to seek counsel on that one, you know, not make the decision all by myself.”

He laughed. He kissed her. “So you think you love me?” The question had just slipped out and his chest seized. What if she didn’t or wasn’t sure? Shit, he should have kept his trap shut.

But she stroked his cheek. “Oh, God. I’m sooo in love with you. I’m bewitched. If you weren’t a good vampire, I’d say you had enthralled me. I think about you all the time, I crave your body, and when I see you my heart aches. How is that even possible? Antony, I love you.”

Relief was another dam breaking and spilling. But he pressed on: “Will you complete the breh-hedden with me?”

She nodded. “Yes. Right here, right now.” She glanced down at her naked breasts and grimaced. “Is that mud?”

“Yes.” He laughed. “We made mud.”

“Why don’t we fire up the shower again and take care of business.”

Shivers rained down his body and his cock responded, hardening, twitching, seeking.

“Sage,” she murmured. She groaned and fell on him, kissing him as she once more forced her tongue into his mouth.

Her hips were connected low, just in the right place. If he shifted just a little, moved her up then down, he could impale her on him. If the tangerine scent flooding the room meant what it always had before, she’d be ready for him.

But like hell he was going to do this on the floor covered with mud.

He surrounded her with his arms, holding her against him, then with a good old-fashioned piece of levitation he rose up. With her feet dangling off the floor and her arms around his neck, he smiled down into her beautiful face and carried her into the shower.

He hit the lever and got all eight heads to blasting on them both. She took soap and worked over his body. He turned his back to her and had the pleasure of her hands soaping him from head to foot. It felt cleansing, even healing.

But when he turned to face her and she started lathering her own chest, he grabbed the bar of soap and growled, “My turn.”

She giggled but the resulting wave of tangerine told him exactly how happy she was about his possession of the soap.

Okay, he was a man, so sue him. He lathered up, let the soap drop to the floor, and put his hands on her extraordinary breasts. She arched her back and his mind spun. His gaze narrowed to the sight of the foamy bubbles drifting over the swell of her skin and parting at the peaked nipple to flow down either side. Oh, God. He pushed her back just a little so that one of the nozzles could aim over her chest and get rid of the soap and the mud and make her skin ready for his mouth.

Two seconds later he bent low, and with one hand supporting her behind her back, the other holding her very large breast, he took the peaked tip into his mouth and sucked.

***

Parisa cried out and clenched deep between her legs. Oh, God. She ached just about everywhere, all around her heart and chest, her nipple, her labia, and in the deep well of her. She hadn’t felt this way before with Medichi and she realized that the decision to let go of independence and embrace love had changed her body’s reactions to the man she’d chosen to be her breh … or was it the man the breh-hedden had chosen to be her breh. Somehow, none of it mattered, only that she belonged to this man with her entire body, heart, and soul.

For that reason, each sensation felt doubled, tripled in intensity. Her body cried out to be filled.

He cradled and suckled her breast and brought little gasps from her throat. She smoothed her hand over his head, the hair beneath her fingers fine and silky, if a little dusty still. He was a feast for her heart, her mind, her hands, her body. And she loved him.

“How about we get cleaned up and move to your bed. I want to be in your bed, Antony, when we go all the way.” He looked up at her, lips sliding away from her breast. A gasp caught in her throat at the sight of her flesh leaving his mouth.

“So, you want to go all the way?” he asked.

“Yeah.” She giggled. For a moment, they were like teenagers again. “But you have terra-cotta dust in your hair and I could use one more shampoo.”

Getting clean took a lot longer than it should have. Parisa kept getting lost in Antony’s arms, primarily because he couldn’t keep his hands off her.

She finally escaped him and left the shower. If he wanted her he’d have to get the crème rinse out of his hair.

She dried off, wrapped her hair in a towel, then moved to the bed. She practiced more of her folding as she worked to get the comforter peeled back to a thick bundle at the end of the bed. She almost broke a sweat. She wasn’t sure why this particular power was giving her grief. How the hell could she open a voyeur window, download shield-creation abilities, then destroy a shield, but not be able to fold a stupid comforter off a bed?

Whatever.

Just as she’d gotten the top sheet separated from the bottom sheet—even if it did hang over one of the bedposts—Antony came up behind her and encircled her in his arms. “I think you’re getting better.”

“Right,” she cried. But she turned in his arms and wrapped her arms around his waist. “So where were we?”

“Straight to the point. I like that about you.”

She looked down, down his chest and beautiful pecs, down the indentation of his belly button, down the erotic narrow line of hairs that drew her eye lower and lower. He was a hard ridge against her abdomen, and as she leaned back she could see the crown of his cock. Her lips tingled.

“See something you like?” His voice was once more at the bottom of the sea.

She drew back just enough to drift her hand up the length of him. He gasped and hissed.

Then he stepped away from her. “We’d better get down to business or my feet won’t have the power to move in about five more seconds.”

She pivoted on one foot then launched into the air, turning mid-flight so that when she landed on the mattress, she was on her back. Thank goodness she had been quick about it, because he was on top of her at vampire speed, pinning her flat to the bed before she could take a breath.

Time slowed and she took a moment to register everything, the cool of the sheet behind her back, the heat of his body ready to take her, his long wet hair dragging over her warm breasts, the smile that suffused his oh-so-handsome face with love and laughter.

Her heart tightened as she reached out to drag her fingers over his high, strong cheekbones. Was she truly going to do this? Was she going to seal her fate with a warrior-vampire?

“Are we really doing this, Antony?”

He nodded. “Scared?”

“A little but then I look at you and there’s nothing I want more. But what will happen to us? This will change us, won’t it?”

He shrugged as much as he could propped on his forearms. “I don’t know. Kerrick is the same, and so is Marcus, but they both seem better focused as men, as warriors. As for the women, maybe you can answer that better than I can. What I do know is that their powers are stronger and they’ve each made more of a difference in the war. They also have a constant awareness of where the other is physically.”

She nodded. She could see that and accept it. “So we do all three things at once?”

“Body, blood, deep-mind engagement.”

“How do we start?”

He smiled again. “Like this.” He lowered himself slowly onto her and kissed her.

Parisa forgot about her worries over this new thing happening to her. She gave herself to the kiss, to Antony’s beautiful, sensual lips, to the love she could feel in every drift.

I love you whispered through her mind, confirming what she could already feel.

I love you, too, she sent.

The weight of him was like heaven. She had always been uncomfortable with her height but not right now, not with Antony stretched out on top of her, his lean muscular thighs pressing into hers, his thick pecs stroking her breasts. Her fingers played with the grooves, swells, and planes of his back.

She shivered when the tips of her fingers found the apertures of his wing-locks moist.

He groaned as his lips plucked at hers. His tongue slid inside and he searched through her mouth. She sucked his tongue as his hips rocked against hers. He was so hard and so big. She slid a hand low and wiggled her fingers beneath his hip. He lifted slightly, giving her room.

She released a heavy sigh as her hand found him and stroked him and loved him. He drew back and looked into her eyes.

“That’s it,” she whispered against his lips. She drew back and met his gaze. “Your eyes. You have a light in your eyes that I adore. I love you Antony, with all my heart. I think I have from the moment I first voyeured you.”

***

Medichi’s chest expanded … again. Her fingers had closed around him, touching him, loving him. He never thought to be undone in this way again. How magical this was, lying against her beautiful body, seeing the admiration in her eyes, knowing he was loved, knowing that his heart had been pierced wide open so he could love again.

He wanted to show her what he felt.

He slid a knee between her thighs and pushed. She opened for him, letting her legs fall wide and his hips slide between. Was there a more vulnerable position for a woman? More open? More trusting? That she trusted him so much pierced him once more.