Me and My Shadow - Katie MacAlister [77]
“Your wits have returned. I was concerned that you had suffered some trauma.”
There was a certain translucent quality to the face that had my spirits dropping. “We’re in the shadow world, aren’t we?”
The amusement left his eyes. “Yes. You were unconscious. What happened?”
Images flashed in my mind, of a house so perfect, so astoundingly desirable, it left me salivating. “The house. I want the house. Agathos daimon, how I want the house. You’d like it, too, Gabriel. There is a lawn so smooth it could be made of satin, and trees and flowers and what looked like it was a maze where we could run and hide and make love out in the open. We wouldn’t have to swim in the lake if you didn’t want to. But you would like the maze.”
“Yes,” he agreed solemnly. “I would like a maze. I would like to make love to you outside, with the sun shining down on your lovely flesh. I would allow you to make love to me under the stars, with the cool night air caressing your delicious little breasts as you arched above me, riding me, your hips moving in that way that drives me insane, and when you shadowed with your climax, I would know that you really were my little night bird, my wintiki.”
“I want to make love to you right now,” I said, my fingers twitching impotently, desperately wanting to touch him, to pull him down onto me. I needed to feel his mouth on mine, to catch his breath as I touched him, to taste him as he entered my body. The need for the house was tangled up somehow with my need for him, but he was only a projection into the shadow world, not really here. “I want to touch you, Gabriel. I want to slide myself across your chest, tasting you, stroking your lovely warm flesh. I want to have foreplay. I want to take you in my mouth like we’ve talked about, but never seem to be able to do because you drive me totally and completely witless the second you touch me. I want you buried so deep inside me, I can feel your heart beat.”
Gabriel groaned and closed his eyes for a moment, his hands fists as he knelt next to me. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing to me? I’m not near you, May. I’m not even in the same country as you, and yet I’m hard and burning for your heat.”
I was silent for a moment as the last shreds of my wits that had been scattered by Fiat’s attempt to kill me gathered up and coalesced into my normal reason. “Where are you?”
“France. I will be home soon. I will be in your arms sooner. What happened to you?” He reached for me, as if he were going to stroke the hair from my cheek, his hand fisting again as he dropped his arm to his side.
“Fiat tried to kill me.”
He was so still that for a moment I thought he hadn’t heard me.
“Then he will die for that folly.”
I smiled, warmed to the tips of my toes by the cold, icy threat in his voice. “He didn’t succeed.”
“So I gathered. Fiat? You are sure, Mayling?”
“Quite.”
He swore. “How did he slip past us? We were watching all means of transportation, monitoring all the por taling companies.”
“I have no idea, but he’s definitely here, and Kostya wasn’t with him.”
“What happened?”
I gave him a brief rundown of the events that led up to us meeting Fiat in the bar. “Fiat more or less went off, and picked me as a likely recipient of his spleen venting. And much as it distresses me to admit it, he might have succeeded if I hadn’t been rescued.”
Gabriel watched me for a few seconds, emotion running so high in him I could swear I felt it even over the distance I knew separated us. “Who rescued you?”
“I never believed I’d ever actually have cause to say these words, but Magoth saved me. He coshed Fiat over the head with an eighteenth-century andiron in the shape of a peacock, which I have to admit is somewhat fitting. Gabriel, it’s not Kostya Fiat is working with—it’s Baltic. He’s here. This is actually his house. How or why he got Fiat to kidnap us is beyond me.”
Gabriel stiffened. “Where is this house?”
“About two hours outside of London.” I described