“You are damned,” she whispered through bloodless lips.
She turned her head on her stone pillow. He followed her gaze and saw that a twin tomb had been placed next to her, and he—Blaise—lay in this one, his cheeks hollowed out, his skin cracking to dust and his hair inexplicably gray. He was diminishing before his very eyes—decaying, shrinking…dissolving into nothingness. Horror surged up from his belly and clutched at his heart.
“No,” a woman said, her voice as rich and stirring as Elysse’s had been cold and flat. “It’s not death, but life.”
He turned and saw that Elysse no longer lay in the tomb. Isabel had taken her place. She lay nude, her skin smooth and electrically vibrant, her long, chestnut hair like living silk, her dark eyes a mystery coded into flesh. She put out her hand to him. He eagerly reached for her, pausing when he noticed her other hand extended.
Morshiel was there, kneeling next to him, his hand clasped in Isabel’s.
She took Blaise’s outstretched hand, joining the three of them, and a shock went through him.
He awoke choking, gasping for air, dying. Yes. This was dying.
Before he could comprehend his thoughts, he stumbled out of his bed and rushed into a pair of pants. He winced as he inserted his tumescent cock down the left pant leg and fastened the fly over the fullness of his testicles. It didn’t surprise him that he’d awakened erect and throbbing with need. He’d done so since Isabel entered Sanctuary. Since he’d taken her, mated with her, he always rose from sleep ready to claim her.
What confused him utterly was why the dream of Isabel beckoning both Morshiel and him would arouse him so desperately. He didn’t have the time or energy to consider that puzzle now, however. He could only think of one thing—awakening Isabel from sleep. She’d be soft and warm, and she would greet him with outstretched arms, for he was her dream, and her sleeping-self waited for him, wanted him…
He froze when he heard a sound in the outer chamber. He turned his head, listening with the acute senses of wolf and Magian combined. Even though his study was dark save for the dying fire, when he slipped through the opened door, he knew precisely where she stood.
She didn’t look up when he switched on the dim lamp on his desk. She wore a black nightgown, her alabaster shoulders naked save for the thin straps. In the periphery of his vision, he noticed her feet were bare. She must have awakened and fled her room in a hurry, heedless of robe and slippers. Her long hair half covered her face as she looked down at the pile of wedding silk. Her hands were naked. He stepped forward when he saw the tears on her cheek.
“Don’t,” he said gruffly, alarmed to see her reach out to touch the silk—her hands ungloved. He hated to see the anguish on her face when she inadvertently touched something during their frantic matings, especially since he was the one to demand she remove the protection of her gloves. He extended his hand to stop her, but too late.
She stiffened and whimpered when her naked fingers delved into the opalescent silk.
“Isabel, don’t.”
“I want to,” she said, lifting her head. Her eyes remained closed as her fingers moved in the fabric. Tears began to stream down her face. He couldn’t stand the sight. He grabbed her wrists and forced her to turn.
“What are you doing?” he asked harshly.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him. “You need not search the silk anymore. I can tell you where every flaw is in the fabric.”
“Bloody hell, I don’t care about the silk. It’s nothing to me.”
“You’re wrong,” she whispered. A tear slipped between her pink, trembling lips. “You have gone over the fabric so many times with your hands, searching for flaws, your essence has become grafted to it. So much sadness. So much courage. I dreamed of touching it with bare hands, and I had to come. I want to touch it again.”
Despite her pressured words, she didn’t turn toward the silk but instead pressed closer to him, stirring his senses into a frothing boil.
“Isabel—”
“I want to touch you.”
He groaned in rising misery. When he’d first taken her, he’d wanted nothing more than her touch on his bare skin. But he’d been a fool then, not understanding what it would mean to have her touch him, to know him so intimately. Still, the sweet words uttered from a sweeter mouth tempted him beyond reason. He captured her wrists in one hand and leaned down, seizing her lips in a searing kiss.
It was the first time. The first time he’d kissed her. He hadn’t allowed himself the sheer luxury before.
It was the first time he’d tangled his tongue with hers, the first time he’d permitted himself to drown in her taste.
A human being couldn’t comprehend what a kiss meant to a creature such as he. He didn’t want to stop. Ever.
Which is why he’d set the sanction upon himself.
He opened one hand along her lower spine, his fingers reaching and delving into the taut curves of satin-covered buttocks. She moaned and arched into him, the sensation making his mind go black for a moment. He pushed against her, willing her to move back with him toward the table. He grabbed for the silk roughly and brought it up around her, draping her in it. The weight of the fabric pulled on her long hair. Her head fell back, exposing her white throat. His cock leapt next to his thigh and his incisors extended.
“I had to come,” she whispered, her eyes opened into gleaming slits.
“If you had not come, I would have come to you,” he said before he kissed her again, trying to slake his monumental thirst. She shivered in his arms when he ran his lips over the column of her throat. He lifted her and the silk, the dense fabric the heavier weight of the two, and carried her before the dying fire. He knelt, laying her on the carpet. She stared up at him, cocooned in priceless silk, and held up her arms.