Carpathian 23 - Dark Storm

see little blue-white streaks running up and down
     the outside of the invisible wall.
    Dax pointed his right hand toward the firestorm and the wall pushed in on itself.
     Quickly, it retreated back, shrinking from the blaze and funneling the heat skyward.
     The fire shrank tighter and tighter until it closed in upon itself and disappeared
     altogether, leaving behind a barren stretch of charred ground devoid of all signs
     of battle. Riley stood up, staring at the blackened ground in surprise, realizing
     that the area had been completely cleansed. Every last hint of the evil that had permeated
     the ground was gone. Dax had destroyed it utterly.
    Dax’s arms tightened around her, pulling her closer as they watched the remaining
     ash rain softly down on the scorched clearing. She leaned her head back against his
     chest and breathed in his clean, masculine scent. His arms were warm, so hard and
     solid. He made her feel safe and protected. She turned in his arms to look up at him
     in wonder. He also made her feel tiny, even delicate, which considering her height
     was no easy task.
    Her eyes searched his face. The burnished skin, his strange multifaceted, burning
     eyes. The strong, masculine beauty that made her heart flutter every time she saw
     him. She laid a hand along the side of his face, brushing one thumb across his high
     cheekbone, marveling at how his skin felt. And how clean. There wasn’t a smudge of
     dirt on him, while she could see just from her hands that she was a sooty, soil-covered
     mess.
    “You’re clean. You just took out an entire army, stood in the center of a blazing
     inferno, and there’s not a speck of dirt on you. How is that possible? I can’t walk
     two steps without getting filthy.” Riley raised her hands, which were streaked with
     dirt and soot.
    He smiled. Really, he had the most gorgeous smile. “There are certain gifts Carpathians
     have that can be quite handy.” Without warning, the dirt, sweat and salty tracks of
     her dried tears evaporated from her skin. One second, she was a hot mess. The next,
     she looked like she’d stepped off the cover of a magazine, every hair in place, her
     skin smooth and fragrant, her clothes crisply pressed and sweet-smelling.
    “Where have you been all my life?” she quipped with a grin. “And do you do windows?”
     She knew she was relying on humor to slow the adrenaline. The sheer terror of seeing
     him surrounded by the insanity of Mitro’s macabre human robots was almost more than
     she could bear. He must have known it, too, by the tenderness in the way his thumb
     traced her cheekbone and moved down to her lips.
    He laughed, and the rich, deep sound rolled over her senses like dark chocolate melting
     in her mouth. Pleasure rippled up and down her spine, and all she could think about
     was dragging his perfect mouth down to hers and kissing him like there was no tomorrow.
    Only the sound of a twig snapping in the vicinity of the wall brought her back to
     her senses. She pulled away, coughing nervously, looking anywhere but at him.
    “So . . . uh . . . what just happened out there? You rigged some sort of bomb?” She
     looked up at him under the sweep of her heavy lashes.
    “We used something called ‘explosives’ that Gary and Jubal brought with them. I didn’t
     know what Mitro might send against us, and I wanted to be ready for anything.” Dax
     indicated the two men. “They are good fighters, very prepared.”
    “And the wall of fire, with the blue and white lightning running through it?”
    “The four of us were too close to the explosives, so I used a ward to hold in the
     majority of the blast. That also let me concentrate the heat of the explosion on Mitro’s
     ghouls, to cleanse their taint and remove the possibility of any future threat from
     them.”
    Riley shook her head. “Why is it I have a feeling that the more time I spend around
     you, the more questions I’m going to have?” The sorrow of the fleeing villagers who
     had set up a temporary camp and taken them in beat at her. The earth cried out at
     the abomination of evil and the destruction of plant life. She needed him to mute
     the sounds and sensations for just a few moments to give her time to recover.
    His answering smile was warm and inviting with just enough sexy to make her hungry
     for more. She wanted to kiss him again. She wanted to wrap her body around his and
     lose herself in his strength.
    Dax’s fingers curled