He’d first kissed her to fuel his shield spell, and though he’d later apologized for how far it had gone, she knew the sex had given him a hell of a power boost. What if she went to him now, and asked him to return the favor?
On another day, under other circumstances, she never would’ve considered a booty call. But the Nightkeeper ways were different from those of the outside world, often for logical reasons. Like this one. And once the idea took root, she couldn’t shake it. Didn’t want to. She was hot and bothered, wet and wanting; strange tingles skimmed over her skin, heating her, making her ache with the need for sex. For him.
She’d changed out of the combat clothes into flowing drawstring pants and a tight tank, with a sweatshirt over the top. Figuring that—gods willing—she’d be out of the clothes pretty damn quick, she didn’t bother switching to something else, instead jamming her feet into a pair of slip-on sneakers and heading out of her suite, her pulse already bumping, her body ready for hard, fast sex.
As she skimmed down the hall, she knew her eyes were too bright, her cheeks flushed, and she hoped to hell she didn’t meet anyone coming or going, because they would know exactly what she was up to. Tacit permission was one thing; the walk of shame was another.
Breath backing up in her lungs, she stopped outside Michael’s suite, which was a corner unit with hallways on two sides, one leading to the mansion, the other connecting to the winikin’s residential wing. She knocked quietly. When there was no answer, she knocked a little louder, then risked it and stuck her head through the door, took an interested glance around the slick glass-and-chrome tables and black leather furniture, and called his name. There was no answer. Michael’s suite was empty.
“Damn it,” she muttered under her breath. “Where the hell are you?”
“If I might make a suggestion?” a familiar voice said from around the corner leading to the winikin’s wing.
Sasha blushed and shuffled around the corner, following the voice to its source. She found Michael’s winikin sitting just down from his door, reading a well-thumbed hardcover. “Were you waiting for me?” she asked, feeling awkward in the extreme.
“Hoping,” he said, with a small, tired smile. “I was hoping.”
“And your suggestion?”
“Try the ball court. These days he goes there almost every night and fights himself into exhaustion.”
“Oh.” She winced at the image that engendered. “Do you . . . Never mind.” She didn’t want Michael to think she’d been sneaking around behind his back, quizzing his winikin.
But Tomas answered. “He has problems managing his temper sometimes. He was an angry kid, got worse in his teens. That was why all the fight training, not just because it’s expected of a mage child, but because it was the only way I could think to keep him in check. I thought the military would be a good choice for him. That didn’t stick, but he found his way into FBI training on his own. I thought it’d be a match. It wasn’t. And since then . . .” The winikin spread his hands. “He’s trying.”
“He’s been much worse since I came, hasn’t he?”
“Yes, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. You might be just the motivation he needs to make him buckle down and fix himself. The process is not uncommon in the bloodline.”
“So that makes it okay?”
“Of course not. But it makes it . . .” Tomas paused, trying to find the right word. “Manageable. The Stones that have the problem eventually figure out how to control it. You met him at an awkward time, that’s all.”
She stared at the winikin, not sure whether he totally believed that himself. “And that’s all it is, right? Nothing, um, magical?” She still wasn’t totally comfortable discussing magic as a reality.
“There’s not a really nasty talent in the bloodline, right?”
He glanced away, shaking his head. “Mostly warriors.” He paused, then met her eyes once more and said softly, “That first night, when he brought you out of Iago’s compound, he handed you off to me and made me promise not to give up on you, no matter what. So I’m asking for the same thing from you. Don’t give up on him. Please.”
“I—” She broke off, unable to make the promise. “I don’t want to.” But at the same time, she had to protect herself.
“I understand.” Tomas closed the book, let it rest on his thin knees for a moment. “The gods brought you to him. I just hope he’ll listen to them better than he ever listened to me.” He stood and inclined his head in a half bow. “Good night, Princess.”
Then he turned away and headed for the winikin’s wing of the mansion, leaving Sasha to stare after him.
When he was gone, she told herself to abort the mission. Maybe she should follow Jade’s example and drink herself to sleep. But the idea didn’t appeal nearly as much as the image of Michael somewhere outside under the full moon, fighting himself into oblivion. She considered the options for all of five seconds. Then she pushed through the sliders and headed out into the moonlit night, intent on a hunt of her own.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Outside, the moon was lower than it had been before, during the ceremony, and gone yellow with its declination. Some small part of Sasha noted that it wasn’t orange or otherwise off-color, confirming the latest reports that whatever was wrong with the sun, it wasn’t the atmosphere’s fault.
The larger part of her, though, focused on her footing, and the growing sense of nervy panic at what she was about to do—not only the booty-call aspect of things, but the prospect of disturbing Michael at his most private.
Still, though, she didn’t turn back. She padded across the ash shadow where the great hall had stood in Ambrose’s day. The ceiba tree that had grown from its ashes was black in the wan moonlight, its leaves limned in gray. Then she forged onward and passed into the wide space between the tall, parallel walls that formed the I-shaped ball court, where small stone rings were set high overhead as the goals of the ancient game, with its life-and-death stakes.
She was dimly aware of passing a tray of covered food, but she focused entirely on the man at the center of the open space.
Barefoot and naked to the waist, wearing only the loose black track pants he favored around the compound, Michael wielded a pair of curved swords as though they were extensions of his arms. He moved as one beautiful, balanced whole when he spun, leaping into the air to avoid the swipe of an invisible attacker. He landed and lashed out, then flowed away again, his movements liquid and lovely in their perfect violence.
Sasha was hardly aware of moving, but she drew closer to him, crossing the packed earth that her ancestors had used for a game that had celebrated the daily rise and fall of the sun, the cycle of life itself. This night, though, the lone player wasn’t celebrating anything. He was trying to burn himself out.
The moonlight gleamed off his skin; shadows edged the sharply defined muscles that slid beneath.
His wide shoulders bunched and flexed, and the strong column of his spine curved elegantly as he reversed, redirected, then swept low and pinwheeled out of his phantom opponent’s reach. There was no sound but the brush of his feet on the trampled dust, and the flare of his nylon pants. The silence made the whole scene feel otherworldly, as if she were standing outside herself, looking down on the scene.