Primal Heat 05 - Darkness Reborn

beat before. Not until I met you.
    "Kane," she gasped, pulling away. She gripped his hair, desperate to hold onto this man who was breaking through the shields she'd kept around herself for so long. "Don't do the blood bond with one of the Calydons from our woods. They're evil. You shouldn't have their blood in you."
    His eyes glittered, and she felt a pulsing heat from him. A burst of raw, sensual desire. "You're worried about me?"
    "Well, yes..." She glanced at the talismans on his body and felt a ripple of fear at the thought of what their purpose was. "I mean, we don't know exactly what we're dealing with here and—"
    "Shit, woman. No one worries about me. It's an insult." Then he locked his arm around her waist and kissed her again. Hard this time. Like he wanted to possess every inch of her soul and own it forever. But I fucking love that you said that anyway.
    She almost laughed at his reply, even as heat tore through her body at his kiss. You big strong guys are just liars. You want to be coddled, don't you?
    "No." He pulled back, his gaze so intense it seemed to bore right through her. "I want to make love to you until you can't move. I want to be inside you, on top of you, wrapped around you on every level of our being until our spirits are so intertwined that everywhere I go, for every second of every day, I feel your spirit inside me, keeping me alive."
    "Oh." She could barely manage to squeak a response, she was so overwhelmed by the mixture of emotions flooding her. His. Hers. Passion. Lust. Protectiveness. Darkness. Desperation. She didn't even know whose emotions were whose, but it was an unbelievable feeling. Suddenly, she knew what he meant when he'd claimed that she made him come alive, because he was doing the same thing to her.
    She'd shut down her own emotions the day her daughter had died in her arms. She had closed herself off to any emotions, including the hope and faith that was so necessary for her to live. "I was dying, too," she said quietly. "But you're giving me hope again. You're not letting me shut you out."
    He grinned. "Good. I hate being ignored."
    "No. It's not good." She groaned and closed her eyes, resting her cheek against the cold stone of the cave floor as she realized the implications of what she was feeling. "I can't go through it again. If I hadn't trusted Mason so completely, it wouldn't have devastated me so badly. I can't do that again." She sighed. "I know, you're this big, tough badass who's at least five hundred years old, and Mason was only twenty-two, so you should be able to resist what he couldn't and not go insane, but it's not that easy, Kane."
    Kane was silent for a moment, his hand rubbing small circles on her lower back. "Sarah. There's something I need to tell you about Mason."
    "What?" Sarah inched closer to him, checking her flask of water from the river. She couldn't afford to think about Kane or how he made her feel. She couldn't afford to let down her guard. She had one job, and that was to find out what was poisoning the village and stop it before it destroyed her.
    The water was a reminder of what she was about to face, of the need to recover if she had to strike offensively with her powers. She had two flasks on her hip, and several more on the ground beside her. Kane had forced her to bring them, ordering her to be prepared to use her powers to save herself if she had to. With the water at her side to help her recover, Kane was determined that she would be able to protect herself and not die from it.
    She had other plans, and they involved not hurting anyone. She'd had enough of that. Tonight, it would be different. Kane and his team could fight the battle. She was going to find the source of the taint and end it. Now.
    Kane had told her to stay close, that he would teleport her to safety if she needed it, and she knew he meant it. He would take her out of the battle, even if she wanted to stay. Heat went through Sarah at the memory of how he'd saved her before. The intensity of their lovemaking, the power of their connection. She missed that. She wanted it again. She wanted to fall into what he offered her and forget about everything else. She wanted to believe his words and his touch and stop trying to stand on her own, but she'd done that before, and how wrong she'd been.
    She couldn't lose sight of what mattered. She couldn't make herself so vulnerable that she lost the ability to do what she was supposed to do. The darkness that was