“Ah, still a weakness there, I see. That one small spot.” She reached for it again, and he caught her wrist.
“Mind yourself, as I recall a weakness or two of yours.”
“None that make me squeal like a girl, Finbar Burke.” She shifted again as he reared up, wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck. “Still would rather a fist in the face than a tickle along the ribs.”
“The one’s less humiliating.”
She shook back her hair, laughed up at the ceiling.
“Do you remember—”
She looked back at him, met his eyes. It was all there, in that instant, looking out at her. His craving for her, and the love wrapped around it. Past and present collided, rushed through her like a hot wind, sparking her own terrible, burning need.
“Oh God, Fin.”
No more patience, no more careful explorations. They came together in a fury, all wild need and desperation. Rough hands rushed over her, took greedily while her own yanked and pulled to free him of the rest of his clothes.
Nothing between them, she thought now. She couldn’t bear even air between them. Their mouths came together in heat and hunger as they rolled over the bed to find more of each other.
She closed her teeth over his shoulder, dug her fingers into his hips.
“Come inside me. I want you inside me.”
When he drove into her, the world stopped. No breath, no sound, no movement. Then came thunder, a hoarse roar of it, charging like a beast from the hills. And lightning, a flash that lit the room like noon.
With her eyes locked on his, she gripped his hands.
“It’s for us to say tonight,” she said. “It’s for us tonight.” She arched toward him. “Love me.”
“Only you. Always you.”
He gave himself over to the need, to her demand, to his own heart.
When they came together, they were the thunder, they were the lightning. And over their heads her stars shone the brighter.
• • •
WHEN HE WOKE, THE SUN WAS UP AND STREAMING. A BRIGHT day for the start of a new year. And Branna lay sleeping beside him.
He wanted to wake her, to make love with her in that streaming sunlight as they had in the dark and through to the soft kiss of dawn.
But shadows haunted her eyes. She needed sleep, and quiet, and peace. So he only touched her hair, and smiled, reminding himself she could be annoyed at best, ferocious at worst, on waking.
So he got out of bed, pulled on his pants, and slipped out of the room.
He’d work. He wanted work, wanted to find the way to end all of it, to resolve it once and for all. And to find the way to break the curse a dying witch had laid on him, so long before.
If he could break the curse, remove the mark, he and Branna could be together, not for a night, but a lifetime.
He’d given up believing that could be. Until this New Year, until the hours spent with her. Now that hope, that faith was back inside him, burning bright.
He would find a way, he told himself as he went to his workshop. A way to end Cabhan and protect the three, and all that came from them. A way to erase the mark from his body, and purge his blood of any trace of Cabhan.
Today, the first day of the New Year, he’d renew that quest.
He considered the poison they’d created for the last battle. Strong and potent, and they’d come close. The injuries to Cabhan—or what inhabited him—had been great. But not mortal. Because what empowered Cabhan wasn’t mortal.
A demon, Fin thought, paging through his own books. One freed by blood sacrifice to merge with a willing host. A host with power as well.