We’ll see about that, she thought, fanning the anger because she knew she couldn’t afford the fear. She had to be strong—for herself. For Matty and Nick. For her parents, who shouldn’t have had to bury one of their children, never mind both.

Forcing herself to focus, she examined the situation, using her other senses when the darkness left her blind. Her captor’s footsteps crunched on gravel, maybe coarse sand, and there was a faint rasp, as though he was trailing his hand against the irregular wall she sensed right beside them. Other footsteps grated ahead and behind, suggesting a single-file line of five, maybe six people. Vibrations echoed from a wall and ceiling very close by, and that, along with the darkness, said they were in a tunnel of some sort. But water dripped into water on the other side—an underground river with a path beside it, maybe?

The thought brought a jolt of fear, of memory, but she shoved it aside. No freaking way, she told herself. Impossible.

She wasn’t in Miami anymore—she was sure of that much, though she couldn’t have said why. She was also pretty sure it was nighttime, meaning that she’d been out of it all day. Long enough to travel.

Focus, she told herself. Be a cop. Wherever they were, it smelled old. Worse, the vibe reminded her of the grimmest crime scenes she’d ever worked, ones where the body counts had reached into the dozens and they’d had to use DNA to figure out which parts belonged in what pile. People had died down here—lots of them, though not recently.

The shuffling line—creepy in its lack of chatter— turned a corner and the air changed, becoming drier as they moved away from the underground river. Then the faintest hint of a new smell prickled Leah’s sinuses, some sort of incense, and they turned another corner and firelight warmed the tunnel walls, barely detectable at first but growing stronger as they moved on.

In the yellow-orange glow, she saw strangely fluid symbols and pictures carved into the walls—men and women with flattened foreheads and exaggerated noses, fierce animals with long fangs and claws.

Her gut fisted and cold sweat prickled her skin. She wanted to tell herself it was a bunch of props, an elaborate set Zipacna had designed to put the fear of his gods into his disciples. Hell, rumor had it he’d built himself a fake temple in the swampside compound he and his fellow freaks called home. But the air was wrong, the sense of being far underground too strong.

She was pretty sure this was the real deal. He’d kidnapped her and brought her to Mexico, to a goddamn Mayan ruin.

Then the guy carrying her turned the final corner, and the firelight resolved itself to a series of burning torches set around the perimeter of a circular stone room.

In the center stood a dark-haired man, heavily muscled, barefoot and bare chested, wearing loose black pants fastened at the ankles with intricate twists of red twine. His eyes were green, one darker than the other, and he had a flying crocodile inked across his right pec.

Zipacna, she thought with a jolt of fear, of hatred.

His origins were a mystery aside from the claim of royal blood. He’d appeared in Miami eighteen months earlier, bought up a chunk of swamp, and set out to create a social movement. None of her background checks had turned up much more than the obvious: Money wasn’t an issue, but sanity was, and he had some serious charisma going for him.

She tasted bile and told herself it was fury, but knew it was terror, a terror that only increased when she looked around and saw crude stone braziers hung from the wall leaking curls of reddish smoke. In between them, human skulls were carved into the stone, their mouths open in silent screams.

Zipacna pointed toward the altar. ‘‘Strap her in and scram,’’ he said, his voice sounding jarringly normal. ‘‘Stand guard up at the tunnel mouth. Nobody gets in or out until I say otherwise. Understand?’’

A howl bubbled up in Leah’s throat as her captor carried her across the room, trailed by four other guys with cold, mocking expressions and winged croc tats slapped atop older ink.

She tried to block out the sights and the fear, concentrating on what seemed like her only chance for escape: the moment they’d have to undo the zip ties to get her hands and feet into the shackles. Her heart drummed in her ears as the guy carried her across the room and dumped her unceremoniously on the altar. She hit hard, landing on her tailbone with bruising force and cracking her head against the stone. Pain lanced and she cried out behind the gag, squeezing her eyes shut as she saw stars, along with a light so bright it hurt.

‘‘Careful,’’ Zipacna snapped. ‘‘Her blood is even more valuable than her brother’s.’’

There it was, Leah thought on a howl of rage. Confirmation. Practically a confession. And it wouldn’t do her a damn bit of good, because it was the solstice. Two more bodies were due, maybe more because he’d brought them south, to the home of his ancient gods.

Clammy hands pawed at her, and a knife touched her belly as her shirt and bra were cut away. She squeezed her eyes shut, partly to preserve the illusion that she was stunned, and partly because, deep down inside, she didn’t want to watch.

Then, finally, she felt hands on her ankles, felt a tug and release as the zip tie was cut away. Adrenaline revved her senses. Terror. Rage. Come on, you bastards, she urged silently. Do the wrists, too. Can’t you see I’m not going anywhere?

Instead, they shoved her farther onto the altar and pulled her legs apart. The moment she felt the touch of a shackle, Leah erupted. Screaming behind the gag, she opened her eyes, twisted, and dove for the floor.

Surprise gave her a momentary advantage and she actually managed to break free. She hit hard, scrambled to her feet, and slammed her bound hands into the nearest guy’s gut. When he stumbled back, she bolted for the door, heart hammering.

‘‘Damn it, get her!’’ Zipacna shouted, and footsteps closed in behind her, moving fast.

Sobbing, Leah flung herself through the arched doorway as Zipacna yelled something in a language she didn’t recognize, and the stones trembled beneath her feet. Fighting to keep her balance, she skidded around a corner and slammed into someone coming the other way.

For a split second, she thought she was saved. Then she saw the glint of filed-sharp teeth, and knew she was dead, after all.

‘‘Sorry, baby,’’ Itchy said. ‘‘Wrong way.’’ He punched her in the temple and caught her when she fell. Over the roaring in her ears, she heard him shout, ‘‘Chill. I’ve got her.’’

Moments later, she was back in the chamber. Seconds after that, the shackles clicked into place around her ankles, then her wrists. They took the gag off, but she didn’t bother screaming, because she knew damn well there was nobody around to hear, nobody to care.

Backup—and home—was far away.

Tears stung her eyelids and spilled free, tracking down her cheeks, and she whimpered when Zipacna leaned over her. She expected him to gloat, to taunt her.

Instead he touched her right wrist, where her sleeve was pulled down over a faded scar. ‘‘The gods marked you as their own long ago. Your brother’s blood began the process. Yours will complete it.’’ He lifted a black stone blade, turned it so it glinted in the torchlight. ‘‘I’m offering you power. Immortality. A place in what the world will become beyond the zero date.’’

She was trapped in his mismatched eyes, frozen in their magnetic pull, unable to look away. A warm pressure kindled at the base of her skull, urging her to accept whatever it was he was offering. Yes, a voice seemed to whisper. Join us. Help us.

He leaned closer, so her entire world became his lopsided pupils, the crackle of the torches, and the heavy smell of incense. ‘‘Just relax,’’ he said, voice dropping to a hypnotic whisper. ‘‘Don’t fight it.’’

‘‘Fight what?’’ she managed to ask, nearly beyond herself with the fear and the spinning pressure inside her head, the drumming urges that seemed to come from outside her, telling her to do things she didn’t want to do, like give in to him, join with him. He’s the enemy! she screamed inside her own skull. He killed Nick. He killed Matty. How could she know that, yet feel the power, the fascination?

‘‘You can be more than you are, more than you ever thought you’d be. But you have to accept the power. Will you take a master inside you?’’ Without waiting for her answer, he lifted the knife and plunged it into her arm.

Leah shrieked when pain flared white-hot. She thrashed, trying to twist away as he stabbed her a second time, then a third, creating three parallel gashes on her right arm between her shoulder and elbow. Blood spilled from her wounds and onto the stone altar as she kept screaming, unable to stop even though she knew it wouldn’t do a damn bit of good.

The blood ran down a carved track, pulled along by the slight tilt of the altar until it pooled in a shallow stone depression between her legs.

Placing the bloody knife beside her head, he pulled a length of parchment from his loose black pants, and used the folded square to mop up the blood. The air thickened around them, going purple-black with incense and smoke. The humming whine grew louder, not just in her head now, but filling the chamber and sounding like a distant swarm of bees.

‘‘Stop,’’ she cried, sobbing now with the fear and the pain, and an increasing pressure that built inside her skull. ‘‘Stop it!’’

He shouted strange words, and the sound echoed in the chamber until it seemed to be coming from the skeletal mouths that screamed from high up in the walls. Then he spun and flung the blood-soaked parchment into one of the torches. The moment the paper caught fire, a detonation rocked the room, blasting outward from the flames.

The shock wave battered Leah and drove Zipacna back several paces as the purple smoke went black, and the air in the chamber snapped so cold that Leah’s breath fogged on her next shallow exhalation.

Expression beatific, Zipacna stared into the smoke, which thickened and twined, reaching tendrils toward him as he threw back his head and shouted, ‘‘I invite the masters into the woman. Into me. Och Banol Kax!’’

Leah arched her back, straining away from the altar, and screamed, ‘‘No!’’

Without warning, the entire chamber shuddered and dropped downward like some sort of ancient elevator gone wrong, falling a few feet and then stopping with a jolt and a loud bang. Moments later, a rushing noise gathered, then grew louder. Then water blasted inward, geysering from the screaming skull mouths and crashing down to the chamber floor.

Leah moaned, beyond herself from terror and the splitting pressure inside her brain. Zipacna leaned over her, running the flat of the knife softly across her belly before he lifted the blade and slashed it across his tongue. Blood welled up and spilled over as he shouted the same words as before. ‘‘Och Banol Kax!’’

The torches flared higher around the edge of the chamber, above the rising water. A tentacle of black smoke reached for Leah, caressing her cheek, then dropping down to stroke her ribs and belly, blatantly sexual.

Please let this all be a bad dream, she prayed, and felt a mocking chuckle rise up from deep inside her.

Zipacna grinned a gory, horrible smile. Blood dripped from his mouth and spattered on her stomach. Around them, the water pooled and collected, climbing to his ankles, then his knees. He pressed the knife just beneath her breastbone and spoke a string of words in that strange language, only now it somehow translated itself inside her head in a mix of purple and bright gold. As the masters have commanded, I have opened the intersection. With blood I offer myself, offer the gods’ keeper, to become makol, to become a tool for your—

Leah could barely hear him anymore over the howling scream that filled her head, where darkness and light spun together, fighting for dominance.

She heard words in that strange language, though she didn’t know what they meant, knew only that they were there, and the warm golden light urged her to use them. Filling her lungs, she arched her head back and screamed as loud as she could, ‘‘Och jun tan!’’

At the words, a tornado blasted through the room.

One second Strike was hanging motionless, suspended in the barrier—a murky gray-green mist that had no beginning or end, no point of reference, no way out except a magic that he didn’t know how to manage. Then words echoed—a spell he didn’t recognize, spoken in a woman’s voice that sent shivers down the back of his neck.

And the bottom dropped out of his world. A hole appeared in the fog and he plummeted through, straight back to earth. He knew it was earth the same way he knew it was hours later, nearly the solstice, because the magic of it, the power of it hummed in his bones. Then the world came clear around him, and he realized three things at once.

One, he was in the sacred chamber beneath Chichén Itzá, where his parents and the others had died.

Two, the blonde—the one he’d dreamed of—was there.

And three, she was in deep shit.

A guy appeared in midair at the edge of the circular chamber and hovered for a split second. He was a big man, wearing a tight black T-shirt over whipcord muscles, with ragged cutoffs below. His high cheekbones and piercing eyes were those of a warrior, and Leah knew them instantly from her dreams, just as she recognized his dark ponytail and jawline beard, and the ink on his inner forearm, two marks next to each other with a third above. In that instant of hovering, he looked at her, recognized her, and seemed more surprised to see her than he did to have materialized inside a Mayan temple.

Then gravity took over and he fell with a shout, slamming into Zipacna. The men went down together in the deepening water, which churned with their struggles. Leah screamed as they shot to their feet, streaming water and grappling for the knife.

She strained toward the newcomer, screaming, ‘‘Help me!’’

Zipacna twisted away and slashed a wide arc with the stone knife, forcing his opponent to dodge. The stranger moved like a fighter, but had no weapons. Zipacna slashed again, then spun and crossed to the altar.

Blood poured from his mouth, painting his front a gory red, and purple-black smoke twined around him like an unholy halo. Water licked over the top of the altar as he lifted the knife and said, ‘‘The heart of the gods’ keeper gives me life beyond the barrier, the power to become power itself.’’

The stranger lunged across the chamber, shouting, ‘‘Torotobik!’’

The cuffs at Leah’s wrists and ankles exploded, the shrapnel driving Zipacna back a pace without touching her skin.

She wasted half a second gaping before she flung herself off the altar, straight at Zipacna. She lacked leverage, but had the advantage of surprise as she got a fistful of his hair in one hand and drove her opposite elbow into his gut. The knife went flying and the stranger dove for it.

Zipacna bellowed and went down, nearly submerging them both in the cold water, which had started glowing a strange greenish white.

A rising howl echoed in the chamber, nearly drowning out the stranger’s voice when he shouted, ‘‘Get away from her, you bastard!’’

Zipacna thrashed and twisted, reversing their positions so she was the one neck-deep in the water. His eyes took on a strange greenish glow as he wrapped his fingers around her throat and squeezed.

His voice was gravelly and barely human when he said, ‘‘You’re too late, Nightkeeper. I am ajaw-makol, and she belongs to me.’’ He bore down, choking her. Leah’s vision went dim, then dark, and a rushing noise filled her head.

Over it all, she heard the stranger say, ‘‘Wrong. She’s mine.’’ He hurled himself forward and plunged the stone knife into Zipacna’s back.

Zipacna jerked and arched, screaming in pain. He staggered away from her, convulsing as he grabbed for a deep stab wound beneath his shoulder blade. Slamming against the wall near the doorway, he listed to one side, drawing a red smear on the wall.

But incredibly, horribly, he grinned, his mismatched eyes glowing pure emerald green. ‘‘Too late, Nightkeeper. ’’

He slapped his palm against the wall, spoke a low word, and lurched through the doorway. The stranger roared and lunged for the door, but a stone panel slid across the opening, sealing them in.

‘‘Oh, God!’’ Heart pounding, Leah splashed toward the door. She was halfway there when the chamber dropped a few more feet and the incoming water doubled, blasting from the screaming skulls with pounding force. Moments later, the torches snuffed out, leaving the room lit by the unearthly radiance of the water, which quickly climbed to her throat, then buoyed her off the floor until she was treading to keep her head above the surface.

Heart racing, she turned to the stranger. Remembering the grenade thing he’d done with her cuffs, she said, ‘‘Can you open the door?’’

He shook his head. ‘‘No, but I can try something else. Come here.’’ Swimming now, he gathered her close and fitted her body against his as the cool, white-green water edged up past her ears and touched her cheeks. ‘‘Hang on.’’

Leah grabbed onto him as her head bumped the ceiling. ‘‘Hurry!’’

His arms tightened around her and she felt that click of connection, the twist in her belly that said, There you are. He held her close, said a few words in that strange language. . . .

And nothing happened.

Come on. Heart hammering, Strike tried again, bearing down and thinking of the garden center. For fuck’s sake, teleport!

He was wearing a new mark on his forearm, the talent glyph of a teleporter. But no matter how hard he concentrated on the garden center, giving himself a destination this time, the yellow travel thread refused to appear in his mind.

Focus, he thought as the water closed over them. Clear your head.

Still nothing.

The blonde bowed against him, convulsing. Gods, he prayed, help me get us out of here. Please.

But there was no answer as her heartbeat slowed and his own lungful of air grew stale.

Pulse racing, he tried again, this time picturing the studio apartment the Nightkeepers—or rather Jox— maintained near Chichén Itzá as a bolt-hole. Maybe the garden center was too far away. Maybe he could manage something local.

Or not.

Darkness closed in. Despair. How was it possible that he’d survived the massacre only to die like this, in the moment it seemed like the world might actually need him after all?

Gods, he thought, though he’d never been a big one for praying, help me out here.

And, incredibly, there was an answer. Golden light flared, the power of the sky and sun, the color of the gods. Strike’s heart stuttered in his chest as he heard a rattle of scales, a whisper of feathers. And what could only be the voice of a god, pure and clarion.

Accept my power, child of man, the entity said, and it wasn’t talking to him. It was talking to the woman he held cradled against his chest. The one he’d dreamed of.

The makol had called her the gods’ keeper. Yet the writs said that only a female Nightkeeper could become such a thing, and she wore no Nightkeeper’s mark.

Accept the magic and the light, the voice urged again, and there was a tinge of desperation in the words.

The Godkeepers were a myth, Strike thought, a dream. Prophesied to arise at the end of the age, destined to fight the Banol Kax for possession of the earth during the Great Conjunction with their warrior mates at their sides, they were part of the stories he’d been tempted to stop believing as he’d grown to adulthood and the magic had started to seem like a childhood fantasy. But he now had proof-positive the magic was real. What if the Godkeepers were, too? What if the dreams had been telling him that this woman—this human woman—was somehow destined to become his mate, his Godkeeper?

Come on, Blondie, he urged inwardly. Come on. Not because he was in any position to take a mate, but because the gods came first, and if the cosmic shit was really about to hit the fan, the Nightkeepers—or what was left of them—were going to need all the help they could get.

She writhed in his arms, fighting the invading presence even as her heart faltered. Slowed. Stopped.

Come on! Strike shouted inwardly as his oxygen ran out and the universe coalesced to a pinprick of darkness. Terror howled through him, fear for himself, for the woman.

The god’s golden voice came again, aimed at him this time, the mental touch growing fainter by the second as the solstice passed. Save her, Nightkeeper.

‘‘I don’t know how,’’ Strike said aloud, the words emerging as precious bubbles carrying the very last of his air. But then he realized he did. For a god to pass through the portal and link with a Nightkeeper female, she had to be near death. That was the only way to touch the other side of the barrier, except for . . .

Sex.

He acted fast, cursing himself for having not thought of it sooner, for being hindered by modern ethics in a situation ruled by ancient law. He palmed the ajawmakol ’s knife from his belt, drew the blade in a quick slash across his tongue, and then opened her mouth to draw a matching scratch on hers.

Then, as he had done in his dreams, he held her close and kissed her.

A loud crack split the room, and the water rushed out, dumping them both on the floor, but he kept kissing her, willing her to respond. To live. To become what she seemed destined to be.

But she didn’t move, didn’t breathe.

She was dying.

In the space between the purple-black funnel that’d sucked her down and a vortex of golden light that called her onward, Leah found a world of gray-green mist that smelled of her brother’s cologne. The familiar scent beckoned her inside and cocooned her in warmth. ‘‘Matty?’’ she called, suddenly certain he was nearby, though that didn’t make any sense unless she was dead.

So what if she was? she thought on a sad, soft burst of acceptance. Would it really be so bad to turn her back on that life and—

Blondie.

She frowned at the word whispered on the mist. ‘‘Don’t call me that.’’ It had been one of her brother’s favorite torments, one he’d never outgrown. That and the inevitable blonde jokes. ‘‘Where are you?’’

Come on, baby. Don’t let me down.

The whisper didn’t sound like her brother now. It sounded more like . . . She thought for a moment, but couldn’t place a name, didn’t quite have the face, remembered only a pair of piercing cobalt eyes above a warrior’s cheekbones. The image came with a wash of heat and the phantom press of lips.

That’s it, Blondie. Breathe.

She felt the lips again, followed by the touch of a tongue, and other sensations began to intrude. The good, solid weight of a man’s body pressed against hers, kindling heat where there’d been nothing. She sucked in a breath when the sensation spiraled higher, hotter, catching her unawares and vulnerable.

‘‘I’ve got you. You’re okay.’’ She could hear him for real now, and she could feel a cool, wet stone surface pressing against her hips and spine. She opened her eyes and found herself still in the circular chamber with the carved walls and screaming skulls. The torches were lit again, not burning purple now, but rather a warm amber that softened the sharp planes of the warrior’s face. He was lying full-length atop her, pressing against her through their sodden clothing. He stared at her as though he knew her already, and said something in that same strange language Zipacna had used.

It was probably Mayan, given the circumstances, which should’ve freaked her shit right out. But somehow the language and the strange goings-on didn’t seem nearly as important as the weight of his body and the hard press of his erection at the juncture of her thighs. Wild heat flared, running through her veins like power. Like fury. Like sex.

Sex. The need for it thrilled within her. She was incomplete, unfinished. Suddenly, joining with this man, this stranger, was the most important thing in the world.

What are you doing? a small voice asked. This isn’t you. This is crazy!

Perhaps, but she didn’t care about crazy. A beehive buzz hummed in her bones, gaining in pitch as though something was coming, something was waiting for them at the end of ecstasy. She wanted the craziness, craved the madness.

And though it should have seemed entirely wrong, it was perfectly right when she reached up and touched her lips to his.

She was connected to the gods, yet not. Strike could sense the sky in her, could taste the golden power in her kiss and on her breath, and he could feel it when she slid her hands up his chest, into his hair, and locked on. She was human, yet she was somehow magic as well. The ritual her attacker had used to transform himself from a human into an emissary of the Banol Kax had started the process. Now it was up to him to finish it.

They kissed fiercely, passionately. Power spiked amber and crimson, blurring the line between dream and reality. Part of him knew she was driven by something she didn’t have the tools to understand, and that brought a pinch of guilt.

Then the torches flared higher, burning around him, within him, calling to him, telling him it was now or never, and never wasn’t an option if he wanted to honor the sacrifice of those who had gone before him. Knowing it’d been too late the moment he’d dreamed of her, he whispered, ‘‘Gods.’’

And returned her kiss.

She sensed the change in him, felt power in the moment his hands fisted in her shirt and he kissed her hard and hot and fast, and in the buzz of flame and excitement that followed. Connection arced, binding them together at a level deeper than she’d expected, deeper than she’d wanted. That small, panicked voice inside demanded that she slow down, think about what she was doing, think!

Instead, she leaned into him, opened herself up to him, and flowed into the moment as one kiss became many, deep and searching and almost painfully raw. He swept aside her ruined shirt and bra and peeled her out of her damp pants, leaving her clad in only her panties.

His nostrils flared on a sharply indrawn breath. He eased back, and she thought his hands trembled slightly when they went to the hem of his black T-shirt.

‘‘Wait,’’ she said. ‘‘Let me.’’ But instead of undressing him, she slipped off her panties, leaving her naked while he remained fully clothed.

Excitement spike, spearing outward from her center until she felt as though she were lit from within, pulsing gold and crimson with femininity.

‘‘Blondie,’’ he said, voice rasping on the word. ‘‘Gods.’’ Then he broke, moving fast as he swept her up in his arms and carried her to the stone altar.

In some dim recess of her mind, she thought the candles flared and the smoke went from gold to red, but those details were lost in a tidal rush of sensation and need. Hurry, a voice chanted inside her as he fastened his lips on her throat and cupped a hand around her breast, bringing a lightning bolt of heat from her core.

She tugged at his shirt, rushing now, needing to touch him as he was touching her. He rolled her nipple between his finger and thumb, wringing a cry from her, one that echoed strangely inside her skull, as though two voices had shouted, maybe more. She got his shirt off and gloried at the play of his hard muscles beneath the taut masculine skin. Touching her lips to the hollow beside his collarbone, then lower, she went to work on his cutoffs, where the material strained tight across a massive erection. He groaned when her fingertips brushed against his hard flesh, and he thrust against her hand, silently urging her onward.

She freed the buttons and zipper, and then his hands were there, helping strip off his shorts and sandals, until he was as naked as she and they were pressed together, hard against soft, need against need.

The air thickened around them, humming with waiting, with wanting. Then she was finished with waiting. She arched up and kissed him, claiming his mouth with hers and leaving no doubt as to her demand. She tasted his urgency and felt it in the bone-breakingly taut lines of his body, but his hands were gentle when he touched her, when he brushed the soft skin inside her knees, then higher, drawing his fingertips across the acutely sensitized skin of her inner thighs.

She whimpered when he feathered an intimate brush across her center, then nearly screamed when he repeated the touch more firmly, stroking a long, clean line that ended with his thumb atop the nub of her pleasure. ‘‘Come for me,’’ he whispered against her mouth. ‘‘Open up to me.’’

‘‘Let me touch you.’’ She reached for his straining member, but he angled his body away even as he kissed her.

He murmured something against her mouth, something that sounded like, ‘‘We don’t have time.’’ But that didn’t make any sense, she thought. Time for what? Then she couldn’t think at all, because he kissed her long and deep, and the heat rose up to sweep her away.

The hum in Leah’s brain intensified, and her body shook as a strange fracture split her in two. One fragment of her was aware of the press of the stone altar against her buttocks and upper thighs, conscious of the way her legs wrapped around him, pulling him into her, binding them together. A thought tried to break through— a warning—but the spinning in her head and the growing heat beat it back as her body bowed into his touch, welcoming him, demanding him.

‘‘Come for me,’’ he said again, as though her pleasure were the most important thing in his universe. He rotated his thumb and kept that pressure on her nub as he traced two fingers around her opening and then dipped inside in a smooth, liquid glide.

Suddenly, all the restless, shifting energy Leah had been carrying since the dreams first began collected itself at the point of their joining, fisting around his fingers and vibrating deep inside her at a raw, primal level. ‘‘Please!’’ she cried, not sure what she was asking for.

But he seemed to understand, because he withdrew his fingers and moved between her legs, so the blunt tip of his hard shaft rested at her opening. At the first nudge, she opened her eyes and found his face just above hers, his eyes staring into hers. Their cobalt blue depths were dark and intense, and she felt a momentary flicker of fear. But then he was sliding home in one long thrust that had her insides knotting and her eyes closing on a rush of pleasure. She gasped and gripped his shoulders, anchoring herself amidst a storm of sensation. Inhaling deeply, she filled her lungs with the scent of their lovemaking, part incense, part musk. Then she parted her legs wider, accommodating his mass, inviting him deeper, and deeper still.

He thrust once and again, dropping his forehead to hers, his breathing synchronized with hers, his very heartbeat seeming to come in time with hers. He thrust a third time as her body coiled tight around his hard flesh and the humming sound transformed to something sweeter, almost a melody.

Leah cried out as the first exhilarating rush of orgasm gripped her, stopping the breath in her lungs. He thrust deeply in a hard, ever-increasing tempo that matched the hammering in her ears, in her chest. Her consciousness expanded outward until she could feel the press of his mind on hers as surely as she could feel the surge of their bodies. Then everything contracted inward, an exquisite moment spent poised on the brink of explosion.

In that moment, in that breathless pause, she felt something shift, tearing deep within her, ripping away from her even as she convulsed in a hard fist of heat that spun out endlessly. His deep, masculine voice echoed her cries, and he thrust hard within her and cut loose, a groan wringing from deep within his chest—her name, perhaps, or a curse. A prayer.

The pressure in her brain disappeared, leaving only pleasure in its wake. Joy and exultation spun within her, spiraling outward in a rush that made her want to run and dance and leap for joy. But when she opened her eyes and smiled up at him, she saw none of that same joy in his face.

Instead, she saw despair.