Shadow Kissed 03 - Shadowman

back,” he said, low, in her ear. “I can still take you back.”
    â€œI won’t go.” Her soul was ringing again with recognition. He was no stranger, yet she didn’t know him. She trusted absolutely but could recall no basis for her conviction. She wanted him , not the polite enigma who left her roses. Five minutes or fifty years . . . she wanted him . Opened for him .
    â€œYou’re a fool,” he said.
    â€œYour fool,” she answered.
    She felt a hand at the waistband of her jeans. A tug and the fabric fell to dust. She was abruptly naked, the powder an inch thick at her feet. Her skin flashed from hot to cold, nipples peaked, belly quivered.
    His arm came around her waist, an unyielding band of black at the edge of her vision.
    Her shakes redoubled, but she relied on the strength of his arm around her. At least he was close in this terrible place. A lonesome howl of wind lifted the ash, but she knew, strangely, that the sound came from him. He existed here, lost in this misery of gray, unchanging dearth.
    She tried to turn, to comfort him, but he held her fast, and, with a hand to her cheek, turned her face back to the wasteland of Twilight. “Don’t look at me.”
    She was cold and scared, her womb aching. All she wanted was him. The real him.
    He braced his legs, sending the ash into powdery clouds. He cast a hand up her thigh. He tilted her hips.
    She went liquid hot, throbbing in wait. Her breath halted. Her core and soul braced for an invasion.
    â€œForgive me.” And he thrust.
    Her vision blanched winter white, the barren silhouettes of skeletal trees scraping an empty sky. Her senses were utterly overwhelmed, so that all she heard was the beat of her heart, all she smelled was the blood it pumped. He pulled back, then roughly reseated himself inside her. Again and again, she was filled with him, gasping for breath in the wake of his driving rhythm.
    A feminine voice from the past broke through her memory into the present. Can you show me how to go? I don’t know. . . .
    And Khan’s answering, with infinite gentleness. I don’t know either.
    Kathleen had never known this side of him. Relentless, brutal, a being of staggering power. She’d never known the bleakness in his heart.
    The wind carried a wail toward her. The warped voice had no gender—it could’ve been wrenched from his throat or hers.
    Where their first coming together had been a fantasy of sensuality, this was need, a longing accumulated over incomprehensible time. His darkness was alive within her, circling her core, wrapping around her soul.
    He could have preyed on her. Drawn from her essence. She understood that now, the danger of the fae. And she would have let him.
    Here, take me. I’m yours.
    The rhythm grew faster, harder, so deep she couldn’t breathe. Just clutched at his arm around her, trembling toward a rapturous brink. She gave him her weight, trusting him with everything she was. Arched against the broad wall of his chest.
    His free hand circled to the juncture of her thighs. Stroked her there, hard and sure, and a little bit cruel.
    Her belly went tight. Her womb clenched around him, Shadow, beast, monster, fae. The ground shook and he roared behind her.
    She split, awed by an exquisite flowering within that thrilled every molecule of her incongruous body. The winter trees likewise bloomed before her dimming vision, crackling into blue and purple and green, the lushness of life and an ecstasy of color. The sky went violet, stars twirling overhead. Dizzy. Pulsing with magic. Or maybe that was her.
    Her trembling gave way to tears, which coursed rapidly down her face. “Khan, please, just let me hold you.”
    â€œNo,” he said. “You’ve seen enough.”
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    Rose hunched in a campsite bathroom on the cold, concrete floor next to the sinks. There were three stalls in front of her, all in need of a good cleaning. She put a finger delicately to her nose. The bathroom was bad, but with this kind of odor, there had to be a body decaying around here somewhere.
    She’d worn out her welcome in town. There were strange folks about, beautiful and hard at the same time. They almost had her once or twice, but their thoughts gave them away.
    And it wasn’t as if she could hide in a crowd. The scarf she wore couldn’t cover all of the change on her neck and ear, nor the fact that the skin on her cheek had started to