Pritkin nodded, looking pale but relatively calm. I only hoped that lasted because as close as the Rakshasas were, we wouldn’t have much time if anything went wrong. I closed my eyes and let my head fall back, and the next moment, I was sitting up with Pritkin’s body beneath me.
I put a ghostly arm out and no shields were in evidence. My hand went right up to his chest, and a couple of insubstantial fingers slipped inside his skin. I felt him start at the intrusion, but he didn’t shy away, although I could feel him trembling. I could feel something else, too.
Unlike most ghosts, his spirit was warm and almost solid against my hand. I’d never thought to ask Billy how ghosts feel to each other. But now that I thought about it, the times I’d possessed someone who was still in-house, so to speak, they hadn’t felt like Billy Joe normally did. They’d been a warm,
solid
presence. Like Pritkin.
I started rummaging around in his chest, trying to get a grip, and he began to look very nervous. “Calm down. I have an idea,” I told him.
“Whatever it is, can you
hurry up
?”
I nodded. This was either going to work or it wasn’t, and hesitating could be fatal. I gripped his spirit as tight as I could, stepped into my body and thrust him back into his. The whole thing took a couple of seconds, and suddenly, we were home.
He blinked at me blankly for a moment and then winced as the pain hit. “That was it? That’s all it took?”
“I guess,” I said dizzily. The sudden absence of pain made me a little light-headed.
“Why didn’t you just do that before?”
“Because I didn’t know about it before!” I snapped, sticking my head through the ward over the door.
I borrowed the least sparkly thing I could find—a plain white cotton blouse—to rip up for a bandage and ducked back inside. A glance at the monitors showed that the mages had spread out, with a few left in the club to guard the portal and the others doing a systematic search of the street. I wondered how long it would be before they decided to retrace their steps.
“I’m going to owe Dee big-time,” I said, shredding the cotton with the help of Pritkin’s knife. “I just hope this was off the rack.”
He didn’t say anything, and he was sweating and trembling by the time I got a pad secured around his leg. It didn’t look like it was doing much to staunch the flow. It didn’t help that there were other wounds rending his flesh in several places that I hadn’t even noticed; courtesy of the chase, I assumed. But the leg was what had chills running up my arms, making my hands clumsy, churning my stomach.
“Pritkin,” I said carefully. “Why hasn’t the bleeding stopped?”
Perspiration gleamed in the hollow of his throat as he breathed faster and more shallow than usual. But there wasn’t a flicker of emotion in his voice when he spoke. “As soon as you are able, shift back to Jonas. Get him out of here and do not leave his side. You can protect each other until the issue with the Circle is—”
“What do you mean, when
I
shift back?” I demanded, the cold feeling in my stomach growing exponentially.
“Listen to me; we don’t have much time—”
“Before what?”
“Stop asking questions for once and pay attention. Don’t rely on the vampires to protect you from Saunders. There are too many tricks they don’t know and won’t be able to counter. And tell Jonas . . . tell Jonas he needs to—”
“Stop giving me orders!” I hissed, glaring at him.
That was less than satisfying since I couldn’t see him very well. What little light there was in the room seemed to fall at an angle to him, skirting his edges. I moved in front of him so I could grab his arms, so I could get in his face.
“You said you could heal this. So do it!” He wouldn’t look at me. “Stop the bleeding, Pritkin,” I pleaded, my fingers digging into his arms. “Stop it and I’ll do whatever you want.”
He licked his lips. “My energy level is . . . lower than usual. Healing will take time.”
Yeah. Time he didn’t have. I stared at him in utter disbelief. “You tricked me! You wanted me to switch back because you knew—” I couldn’t even say it.
I stared at him, unable to believe this was happening. That he could just disappear, along with everything rich and strange he’d brought into my life. Vanished, like magic.
“You can’t do this,” he said, finally meeting my eyes. And if I’d had any doubts that he was serious, that look would have dispelled them. “You can’t tear yourself up every time you lose someone. War—”
“Don’t give me some stupid lecture about war when the person we’re talking about losing is you!” I said, surprised by the savagery in my tone. At least my voice didn’t shake.
His face blurred and I tasted salt on my lips. It was warm, warm like Pritkin’s hands coming up and framing my face, his thumbs brushing over my eyelids, soft as his fingers in my hair. “One person is not so important in the scheme of things,” he said, and his voice was gentle, gentle when it never was, and that almost broke me.
But you
are
important, I thought. And yet he couldn’t see that. In Pritkin’s mind, he was an experiment gone wrong, a child cast out, a man valued by his peers only for his ability to kill the things they feared. Just once, I wished he could see what I did.
“Then neither is this,” I said, leaning in and pressing my mouth to his, the kiss lightened by desperation and weighted down by everything he meant to me.
His bloody fingers tightened on my face, but he kissed me back with a tenderness, a reined-in need that contrasted painfully with his passion in Marsden’s kitchen. There was no spark of electricity this time, no cool breeze rolling up my body, ecstatic and draining, no—
No power loss.
I tore away and stared at him. “Wait. What was . . . You healed earlier—back in Marsden’s kitchen. A scratch on your arm. I saw it!” Pritkin didn’t say anything. “You’re half incubus—you can feed from my power,” I said, slowly catching up. His ability must be spiritual rather than physical, like my power. That was why I could still shift, even in his body.
Like he could still heal.
“You don’t have any power to spare!” he told me.
“I have more than you!” I gripped his arms. “Pritkin, you can use my power to heal—” I stopped because he was wearing an expression that I’d never seen before. It looked a little like terror.
“This is precisely what happened last time!” he said harshly, his eyes skittering to the wall, the monitors, the wastebasket in the corner. Everywhere but my face. “You saw the house. It was even more isolated then, with nothing for miles but fields and water and forest. There was no one to help, no one to hear her scream!”
And it suddenly occurred to me that it wasn’t his own death that had him looking like he wanted to bolt. It was mine. He drew in air, his face strained, and a flush darkened the skin of his neck. “You don’t understand the risk,” he said more calmly.
“Your father tried to kill me. Believe me, I understand.” It had been added to my regular nightmare list, that horrible, sucking, draining sensation that had my flesh wanting to shudder off the bone. But that had been Rosier. Pritkin hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone. He’d lost control with his wife because no one had warned him about what might happen. But he knew the risk now.
Which is why he wasn’t going to take it.
It was written in the glint in his eyes, the flare of his nostrils, the jut of his chin. “I can’t lose you!” I told him, feeling defiant and miserable and furious all at once.
“I promise—you won’t. I’ll follow you. But you and Jonas have to—”
“I didn’t want to do this,” I said, cutting through the obvious lie. “But you’re not leaving me a lot of choice. This is my call and I’m making it. Do what you need to heal.”
“Yours?” It was if he’d put all the frustration he felt into a single glare. “How precisely is it yours?”
“Oh. So suddenly I’m not Pythia?”
“That has nothing to do with this!”
“It has everything to do with it! You’re a war mage sworn to my service who thinks he doesn’t have to actually do anything I tell you! And yes,” I said, as he opened his mouth, “I know you have a lot more knowledge and experience, which is why I listen to you most of the time. But you’re wrong about this because you’re too emotional to see that the risk has to be taken. So I’m making the decision—which, since
I’m Pythia
and it’s
my body
, is my right.”
I set my hand against his thigh, surprised by the heat of skin on skin. Pritkin twitched and looked at me, lips parted and eyes a little wild. “I warned you once before what someone looks like when an incubus has drained them completely. Do you truly want to risk that?”
“I’m a big fan of safe,” I told him quietly. “I really prefer it to sorry. But in this case, yeah. I’m willing to risk it.”
“I don’t know that I am,” he said thickly.
And I just couldn’t take it anymore. I closed the distance between us, slammed him back against the chair and kissed him, holding his head still with both my hands buried in that stupid, stupid hair. I half expected more resistance, because Pritkin had never met an argument he didn’t like. So it was a shock when he ran his hands down my sides, cupped my hips and slid us both to the floor.
“I’m going straight to hell for this,” he muttered.
“At least you’ll know a lot of people,” I said breathlessly. And then I couldn’t talk at all because his mouth had settled hot and fierce over mine.
I pulled his shirt off over his head and then let my hands wander. I wrapped one around his neck, running fingers into his hair. It was soft and silky—always a surprise—and slightly damp, like the skin below. I used the other to smooth down that powerful body, strong and filigreed with black ink and silver scars. It was almost as familiar as my own, and yet suddenly, it felt very different.
I followed a ripple of solid muscle over the hard chest to the flat belly, and then dropped to the light dusting of hair that pointed to even more interesting areas. But Pritkin intercepted my hand, pulling it away from him. “Don’t,” he said roughly.
“Why?”
“Because I have to remain in control,
Miss Palmer
, or this will go very bad, very quickly.”
“If you call me that one more time,” I said seriously, and then forgot where I was going with it when his mouth moved to my neck. His lips trailed a line down the side of my throat and along the curve of my shoulder before closing over a spot he liked and starting to suck.
I was quickly reminded of how determined Pritkin could be. Once he got his mind set on something, he was quite . . . single-minded, and right then, he was focused on driving me crazy. He was doing a pretty good job, somehow managing to get my shirt off and my bra unhooked one-handed, a calloused thumb lightly brushing a nipple.
I returned the favor, raking my nails through the dark blond hair on his chest, finding a little nub that went hard under my fingertips. I played with it until he pushed that hand away, too. I gave a moan of frustration and moved on, my hands sliding over bare, hot skin, finding the smooth punctuation of scars, pressing fingers bruise-hard into muscle and bone. There was no softness anywhere, except the velvet of his skin, the touch of his mouth.
My lips slid down the edge of one of the old, pale scars on his shoulder, feeling the faint ridge under my tongue. “Please,” Pritkin said hoarsely, and I smiled against his skin. “Don’t,” he added, and my patience broke.
“Pritkin! Sex pretty much requires losing control, at least a little!”
“This isn’t sex.”
I blinked. “Oh. Then what is it?”
“An emergency!”
I started to argue and then thought twice about it. Considering what Mircea would do to Pritkin if he ever found out about this . . . Yeah. Emergency sounded good.
But something I said must have gotten through, because hands, big and warm and rough, slowly slid down my sides. And something about their touch had changed. His fingers on my skin were as exquisite as a mouth, sizzling my nerves into overload, every touch sending spikes and waves of pleasure through me. I felt him strip away my capris and I didn’t care.
A chill breeze swept through the windowless room and he groaned, low and deep in his throat, and started kissing a path up my body. My heart gave an odd little skip in time with the fear and longing that spiked behind my ribs. He kissed my knee and then a line up my inner leg, applying suction as he reached the crease between thigh and groin, and I shivered at the feel of stubble against delicate skin.
His technique was magic—which I totally should have expected, I thought, torn between tears and hysterical amusement. “Is it sex yet?” I asked unevenly right before a warm, wet mouth closed over me. The laughter died in my throat.
It was perfect, perfect, a slick hot tongue tracing patterns that might have been runes against the thin cotton, but I was already too far gone to tell. He painted me with his breath, alternating between sketching patterns with soft exhalations and tracing them with the very tip of his tongue. A moment with nothing but the whisper of air against me was followed by a delicate, moist stroke, over and over until my vision was blurring with tears and my panting breath was on the verge of sobs.
That barely there sensation had my heart racing and my skin flushed and my body craving
more
like a drug. Every movement sent spikes of pleasure arcing up my spine, turning my muscles soft and helpless. I barely noticed when the breeze intensified into a skin-tingling, hair-raising rush. But it was impossible to ignore when his skin went burning hot.
I slid a hand under the edge of his ruined khakis. My fingertips skidded over a crust of dried blood, but it flaked away when I brushed at it. And beneath, there was only soft skin and hard muscle that tightened under my touch. He’d healed, I realized, so relieved I was almost giddy.
“Pritkin! I think—”