Was there never any choice?

She sensed him drawing back. “Don’t. Don’t go away,” she begged. “Let me love you. I need to love you.”

She wound her arms around him, used her mouth to seduce. For now, she would trade pride for power without a qualm. As her body moved sinuously under his, she felt his quiver.

Hands stroked. Lips took. Breathy moans slid into air that had gone dim and thick. Long, lazy kisses built in intensity and ended on gasps of greed.

He was with her now, locked in a rhythm too primal to resist. The hammer blows of his heart threatened to shatter his chest, and still it wasn’t enough.

He wanted to gorge on the flavors of her, to drown in that sea of needs. One moment she was pliant, yielding; the next, as taut as a bunched fist. When her breath sobbed out his name, he thought he might go mad.

She rose over him. Locking her hands in his, she took him into her, a slow, slow slide that tied his frantic system into knots.

“Malory.”

She shook her head, leaning down to rub her lips over his. “Want me.”

“I do.”

“Let me take you. Watch me take you.”

She arched back, stroking her hands up her torso, over her breasts, into her hair. And she began to ride.

Heat slapped him back, a furnace blast that had his muscles going to jelly, that scorched his bones. She rose above him, slim and strong, white and gold. She surrounded him, possessed him. Spurred him toward madness.

The power and pleasure consumed her. She drove them both faster, harder, until her vision was a blur of colors. Alive, was all she could think. They were alive. Blood burned in her veins, pumped in her frenzied heart. Good healthy sweat slicked her skin. She could taste him in her mouth, feel him pounding in the very core of her.

This was life.

She clung to it, clung even when the glory climbed toward the unbearable. Until his body plunged, and she let go.

HE made good on the soup, though he could tell it amused her to have him stirring a pot at her stove. He put on music, kept the lights low. Not for seduction, but because he desperately wanted to keep her relaxed.

He had questions, a great many more questions, about her dream. The part of him that felt that asking questions was a human obligation warred with the part that wanted to tuck her up safe and quiet for a while.

“I could run out,” he suggested, “grab some videos. We can veg out.”

“Don’t go anywhere.” She snuggled closer to him on the couch. “You don’t have to distract me, Flynn. We have to talk about it eventually.”

“Doesn’t have to be now.”

“I thought a newspaperman dug for all the facts fit to print, and then some.”

“Since the Dispatch isn’t going to be running a story on Celtic myths in the Valley until all of this is finished, there’s no rush.”