“My love,” she whispered, hands moving to the small of his back. “Yes.”
Cormac growled. And he let himself go.
His kisses fell on her flesh, brands of fire, then he took her mouth in a kiss that broke her, lightened her, and seared into her heart. At the same time, Cormac slid inside her, opening her with his thick, blunt cock.
Nell pulled him down to her, excitement taking her swiftly.
In her heart, the mate bond flared—a sweet, dark pain that made her drag him closer, closer. She drove up to him, and he came down to her with his hands, his mouth, his body loving her as it should.
“The mate bond,” he said softly, his broken voice holding triumph. “I knew it would save me.”
The note of joy made his voice sound better already. In time, it would heal again, and Cormac would speak her name with the beautiful rumble she’d first started to love.
“Nell,” he said, the word caressing. “Mate of my heart. Mate of my life. I love you.”
“I love you,” Nell said, her own voice breaking. The words were the truest she’d ever spoken.
Cormac brushed the mouth that said them with a long kiss, then he held her in his arms and kept on loving her, first swiftly, then—after a long time—more slowly.
Her touch certainly was healing him. After their first climax, he rested only a few moments before his smile turned wicked again.
Cormac’s mouth came down, landing on her breast in an open-mouthed kiss. He licked his way to one nipple, making it stand up in a tight peak, before he suckled it into his mouth. He skimmed hands under Nell to cup her buttocks, raising her hips a little.
He dropped kisses down her abdomen, his mouth hot, pausing at her navel to lick it. Then he pressed his mouth over her belly, and blew, lips sealed to her skin, making a raspberry noise.
“You shit.” Nell laughed and pushed at his head.
Cormac laughed with her, deep and dark, before he licked his way between her legs and did the same trick with his mouth there. This time Nell rocked her hips, a moan escaping her. “What are you doing now?”
“Savoring you.”
No more laughter. Cormac’s voice caressed her name, then his tongue caressed her. Nell’s thoughts dissolved on a wave of intense pleasure.
“Cormac. I love you.”
He answered by plying her with his tongue—licking, nipping, kissing, suckling—her hips moving in rhythm. Nell was rising to him, needing him, wanting him.
He licked until another climax swept over her in rolling waves. She cried his name again, savoring the word as he savored her.
Cormac rose up over her, his strength returning, and entered her in one firm stroke. His hardness opened her, satisfied, felt so right. He belonged with her, and she with him.
The mate bond began in warmth as he loved her, then it wove around them, binding them as they spun again to climax. Nell skimmed her hands to his buttocks and pulled him to her, feeling herself whole for the first time in such a very long time.
The splinters of herself solidified, Cormac’s weight on her, his body in her arms, sealing her into herself, and into him.
Two hearts, two mates, one bond.
The Hunter’s Cabin
by
Jean Johnson
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My beta-editors, as always, get my thanks: NotSoSaintly, Alienor, Stormi, and Alexandra. My thanks also to the editors and copy editors at Berkley. I write the story; they ensure it makes sense.
This romance is from the world of the Vulland Chronicles, steampunk short stories filled with magic and machinery. Check online at www.JeanJohnson.net for more information about these and other tales. May you enjoy this one as well.
CHAPTER ONE
The cabin was difficult to spot from the air. Vee knew she had the right valley; the hunter’s descriptions of the landmarks that were visible even in deep winter were near-perfect, but the actual location of the cabin was difficult to discern thanks to the avalanche that had tumbled down from higher up the slopes. It was the man clinging to her back who spotted the front of the stout stone chimney marking the mound of snow covering the structure.
“There! There it is,” Kiereseth asserted, freeing an arm to point at a shadowy cleft and a snow-mounted peak. Around them, tiny flakes drifted down, the tail end of the storms that had plagued this region for weeks. He couldn’t fly like Vee could, which meant she had to carry him. Kiers had done his best to be useful, spotting airships to dodge, people to avoid being seen by, and looking for likely places to rest at night in their haphazard travels. “That has to be it. Those straight lines aren’t the kind made by trees. That one there below it, that triangular bit could be the front of the roofline.”
Tensing her muscles, Vee angled their hovering bodies around the ridged mound of rumpled snow projecting out from the mountainside, giving both of them a good look. She then turned to view the jumbled mound of snow blocking everything down to the smallish mouth of the little valley. She shook her head slightly, bringing her body to a hovering stop at just enough of an angle that she could look around comfortably without forcing her piggyback passenger to clutch at her body for fear of falling off.
“Mister Horgen was right,” she stated, her light alto voice echoing slightly off the snow. “This is about as remote as you can get, and still be under the Vull.”
“Remote, except for the airships we’ve seen,” he reminded her, his baritone echoing as well. He glanced up, looking for signs of an airship. The clouds obscured most of the sky, but they were high up enough, the rippling, transparent gold membrane that separated the continent of Earthland from the Skylands could be seen through the thinner bits. “Thank the Light they don’t seem to have seen us.”
“That’s why I had you buy that gray overcoat, because you’ll look like a bit of cloud when paired with me . . . or in this case, a bit of snow,” Vee reminded him. “Air Couriers do know how to hide from our enemies, even if our ‘package’ is a person. But let’s figure out how to unbury this cabin before another airship comes by. We don’t know if any shipping routes fly past this exact valley.”
Leaning forward, Kiereseth pointed past her shoulder. He pointed the other way, and she obliged by turning them midair, following the thrust of his wool-shrouded, snowflake-dusted arm. She squinted along his arm as he spoke. “Getting in will be difficult. There’s been enough snow dusted over everything since the avalanche that any effort we make will be noticeable. Mister Horgen said the cabin’s a little over two stories high, and that the front of the roof extends out a bit. That means the snow must be a good twenty feet deep. We’ll have a difficult time getting in through that small gap in the front without leaving signs that are visible from the air.”
Frowning in thought, Vielle studied the hillside. Off to her right, to the left of the cabin, a thick cluster of trees had blocked some of the heavy snowfall. It had been awhile since she’d flown over lands covered in so much snow. Only a couple of years out of the Courier’s Academy, she strove to remember her training about deep winter maneuvers. “Maybe yes, and maybe no. If it’s really that deep, maybe we can tunnel in from those trees to the porch? If we use our thon? It’s just a twist on building snow-shelters.”
“My affinity for Fire thon can melt all that snow, yes, but I won’t be able to shape it, Miss Vielle,” the ex-prince groused. “I come from the southlands, remember? Where snow is only something someone with Air and Water affinities can conjure, because the weather is too warm. I don’t know how to make a shelter, as you propose. The drifts would probably collapse on top of us. Forming a stable tunnel requires more than a mere smidgen of Water, which is all I have.”