Warriors of Poseidon 02.5 - Shifter's Lady

to her and crouched down next to her. “I don‟t know the answer to that. The doings of gods are far above my territory. But we need to get you to a hospital, please, Marie. Your neck is still bleeding.”
     
    She drew a deep breath. “First may I hold your hands?”
     
    He unclenched his hands and held them out to her. “That‟s the best offer I‟ve had all day.”
     
    She smiled a little at his attempt at humor, then took his hands in her own. The healing was fairly minor, but she was weakened by the residual fear and the pain. She could amplify her healing powers through the strength of another, and she suspected Ethan‟s strength was far and away powerful enough to assist her. “Please hold still and do not remove your hands while I do this. You will feel a faint warmth.”
     
    He nodded, and she closed her eyes and called to the Goddess. “O, Goddess of the Nereids, it is your First Maiden who calls upon you. Please lend me your strength and your healing and your power, through my own small means and through the freely offered power of this man before me. Heal my injuries that I may serve you in full measure, O Lady.”
     
    For a moment, there was nothing but the pain in her hands, knees, and throat, and the rapid beating of her heart, caused as much by the feel of Ethan‟s hands in her own as by her injuries, she suspected.
     
    Suddenly, the warm glow she‟d experienced before in hundreds of healings swept through her body, focused and concentrated on the wounded areas of her skin. Even as the healing sent shimmers of sparkling heat through her, she watched the abrasions and cuts heal before her eyes. Ethan made some small noise, and she looked up to find his face mere inches from hers, his eyes wide.
     
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    “It‟s like magic,” he murmured.
     
    She smiled at him, invigorated by the healing power of her Goddess. “You who are part human and part beautiful, lethal cat would doubt the existence of magic?”
     
    “Any man who looked at you could not doubt the existence of magic, Marie,” he said.
    His eyes darkened to a burnished gold, and he leaned forward and kissed her.
     
    He kissed her, and the healing warmth exploded into an inferno. Flames swept through her body and her blood, and she was helpless to do anything but lean into his kiss. He never released her hands, but somehow she was on his lap and felt the hardness of his desire pressing against her.
     
    Ethan‟s tongue pressed against her lips, demanding entrance, and she could do nothing but accept him, surrender to the passion of his kiss, and moan at the rightness of it. He kissed her until she could not breathe, and then he lifted his head to stare at her, shock plain on his face.
     
    She began to pull back, suddenly shy, still dazed from the intense hunger sweeping through her merely from the feel of his mouth on hers. But he shook his head and, releasing her hands, caught her around the waist and pulled her to him until not even a breath of air could have found passage in the space between them.
     
    “Oh, no,” he said, voice husky. “Let‟s try that again on our own, okay?”
     
    She had a fraction of a heartbeat to realize that the Goddess had gone—the healing was complete—and then he caught her lips with his own again.
    This time the fire was generated solely between the two of them, and she could not blame any of it on the healing warmth. Ethan kissed her as if she were a feast and he a starving man. He kissed her as though she were the prey and he a stalking predator.
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    She succumbed, surrendered, clutching at his shoulders, wondering who was making that whimpering noise and then finally realizing it came from her own throat.
     
    He left her mouth and pressed hot kisses to her throat, exactly on the now-healed spot where the knife blade had cut into her skin. “Never again, ocean girl,” he murmured so softly she almost didn‟t catch the words. “Never again will anyone harm you. I swear this on my oath as alpha.”
     
    He lifted his head and stared into her eyes, and something of enormous importance passed between them, but she could not decipher it.
     
    Refused to decipher it.
     
    Fear of drowning, of entangling herself in the depths of a passion so far beyond any that she had known, shivered a sheet of ice through her, and she pulled away from him.
    “Ethan. No, Ethan,