Through heavy-lidded eyes, she saw vines growing over her. Witch, nature, good. Just as she relaxed, she felt him tense beside her, dragging her even closer, throwing his leg over hers protectively. He leaned up to scent the vines, hesitating. But he didn't move her, and his close hold on her meant he was enveloped as well.
About to drift off, she whispered, "It's okay, Bowen." And he allowed it.
When she woke it was still dark, yet the vines were gone, as were the scrapes at her knees and her palms and the aches in her muscles. Bowen was stretching his body over hers, holding himself up on his elbows. She saw the image of the beast was beginning to fade, the pale blue of his eyes just starting to darken.
Cradling her face with both his big hands, he gazed down at her with such questioning emotion, she felt her eyes water in answer.
He pressed gentle kisses to her forehead, her eyelids, her nose. If she'd seen the beast in a frenzy of lust earlier, now she was seeing it praising its mate for sating him.
Then his gaze flickered over her neck. She'd caught him looking at his bite throughout the night, appearing both proud and relieved to have it on her. "Your skin's healed. But the mark remains." His voice was returning to normal - yet she'd gotten kind of used to his beastly voice and raspy murmurs and was glad she'd hear them at her ear next month.
She frowned. Was she going to be with him for that long?
"Claimed you forever."
Well, at least one of them believed so. And who knew what would happen between them? He'd pushed her to new heights, demanding her body do things she'd never known it could. The affection she'd begun to feel for him surged strong within her.
Who knew what could happen?
"Need you again, 'fore dawn."
When she nodded eagerly, he reached down between them to grip his shaft, positioning it. At that contact, he threw his head back and she arched up to him, as if it were their first time joining. When he flexed his hips, gradually sinking into her almost to the hilt, he grated, "Canna get enough o' you."
Slowing the furious pace of the night, he lowered himself to his elbows once more, easing down until their skin just touched. As he kissed her, he languidly moved over her, with a skilled rolling of his hips that fed his shaft into her just as his body pressed forward to plunge it so deep. Never speeding up his rhythm, he did this again and again until she was panting. Against his lips, she cried, "Bowen... "
"I know my female's tone," he rasped. Even when she could feel how swollen he was and knew he was on the verge, he gnashed his teeth, continuing the measured thrusts for her until she climaxed. With a scream into the night, she arched her back, squeezing her legs around his waist.
"Givin' me... so much!" He yelled out as his body tensed, motionless, before he bucked uncontrollably between her thighs. As she smiled from the rapturous feel of his heat pouring into her, he groaned in her ear... "Mariah!"
43
Bowe woke to find his arms empty of warm, curvy witch. This displeased him.
When he had trouble shaking his grogginess, he realized she'd made him sleep, had cast another sodding spell on him. Damn it, why? He scented the air to locate her, and shot upright.
She was gone.
Had he been too rough with her? Frightened her again? Why else would she run?
Then he saw an area just to the side of him that she'd very purposely cleared of brush. In the mud, she'd written him a note with precise letters.
head:
The name's MariKETA.
Go to hell,
The WITCH, doing a creepy spell somewhere right now.
He sank back on the ground, throwing an arm over his face as he swore low. Had he called her Mariah last night? Oh, bloody hell.
Ach, Bowe, you've ed up this time.
She must be furious. Or worse, hurting. The witch had given him inconceivable pleasure, and this was how he'd thanked her?
He'd loved everything about Mariketa and the way they'd been together. The taste of her flesh was addictive, as was the feel of her wet little tongue lapping his skin as she boldly licked him all over. She'd bitten his shoulder in abandon, screaming against his muscles, and her nails had dug into the backs of his thighs as he'd taken her from behind... he hardened even now to recall that.
She'd given him the pleasure he'd waited for his entire long life...
And I showed her my gratitude by calling another woman's name.
When he removed his arm, he blinked his eyes. Above him, he spied his jeans and boots hanging in the upper limbs of a five-story-high hardwood.
He rose, determined to find her, to make her forgive him. And then, gods help him, they'd start where they left off last night. He scented the air and might have caught a hint of her toward the southern coast.
Mariketa had magically covered her tracks - and her scent - well. But she didn't understand. He didn't have to have her trail. There were only so many places she could be. He'd run back and forth to the coast a thousand times, and he'd relish every step as one closer to her.
He looked up at his jeans again and was startled by his own deep laugh. He grinned in her direction.
Ach, he liked the games they played.
"Lemme get this straight. Getting hunted down in the jungle by a lust-crazed Lykae was one of the safer extracurriculars of your trip?" Carrow asked.
"That's what I'm saying." Mari adjusted the resort courtesy telephone against her shoulder, then took another gulp of her drink - a bourbon rocks with a pink, paper umbrella.
In seriocomic fashion, she'd somehow gotten herself to a Belizean beach resort, then actually enchanted the manager until he was all too happy to extend a hotel-wide tab.
Magick... good.
"I told you not to go by yourself, didn't I?" Carrow demanded. "What'd I say?"