“We’re done for now then?” Meara asked.
“Done enough so I want to clear my head and drink a good glass of wine.”
“Well then, we’ll be back in a minute. I just need to . . .” She was already pulling Connor from the room. “Just need Connor for a moment.”
“What is it?” He worried, as she had a death grip on his hand while she pulled him out the back of the workshop, through the kitchen. “Are you upset? I know the ritual was intense, but—”
“It was. It was. It was.” She all but chanted it, dragging him on through the living area, up the stairs.
“Was it the blood? I know it can seem harsh, but I promise you it’s needed to make the potion, to bespell it.”
“No. Yes. Jesus. It was all of it!” Breathless, she shoved him into his bedroom, then back against the door to slam it.
Then she covered his mouth with hers, all but fusing their lips with the heat pouring from her.
“Oh,” he managed, finally clueing in as she ripped his sweater up and away.
“Just give me.” She peeled off the insulated shirt under the sweater, latched her teeth on his bare shoulder. “Just give me.”
He’d have slowed things down—a bit—but she was already unhooking his belt, and what was a man to do?
He started tugging up her sweater—undressing a woman was one of the great pleasures of life—got tangled up with her very busy hands. He considered just ripping it away, then—
“Ah, to hell with all that.”
The next thing Meara knew she was naked, and so was he.
“Yes, yes, yes.” She gripped his hair, assaulted his mouth, moaned with pleasure when he took her breasts.
She’d never been so wild with lust, never known such quaking, roiling need. Perhaps something in the swirling air, the pulse of the fire, the stunning rise and merging of powers and magicks had punched into her.
All she knew was she’d had to have him or go mad.
He still tasted of it, that exotic flavor of magick—potent, seductive, edging toward the dark. She felt the ripples of it still working in him, not yet tamped down.
And wanted that, wanted him, wanted all.
His hands weren’t patient now, but greedy and rough and quick. She wanted that as well, craved being touched and taken as if his life depended on it.
It felt as if hers did.
He whipped her around, forced her back to the door. She had an instant to look into his eyes—fierce and feral—before he drove into her.
She’d thought she’d go mad if he didn’t take her, and now, being taken, went mad.
Her hips jackhammered, challenging him to match her ferocious pace. Her nails bit into him—back, shoulders—her teeth gnawed and scraped. Little pains, quick and hot, that fired into a crazed pleasure that enslaved him. His blood beat hammer strikes under the skin, so he thrust into her harder, faster, deeper in a brutal, breathless rhythm.
She cried out, a sound that joined shock and greed. And again, this time his name with a kind of wonder. When he gripped her hips, lifted her, she locked her legs around his waist.
He ravaged her throat, filled himself with the taste of her as he filled her with his lust until the last frayed tether snapped.
He broke, swore he felt the very air shatter like glass as she tightened around him, as her final cry died off into a shuddering sigh.
Limp, they slid down to the floor in a sweaty tangle of limbs.
“God. My sweet God.” She drew in air like a drowning woman surfacing.
Struggling for breath, he managed a grunt, then flopped off her to lie on his back with his eyes closed and his chest heaving.