Part 32 (2/2)
His powerful body surged as their need increased. She felt that pleasure building inside him as he opened himself up to her. The connection between them swelled and pulsed with power.
Madoc lifted her hips with one hand, grinding her against him in a way that brought tears to her eyes and stole the air from her lungs. And then everything came cras.h.i.+ng down. Madoc's body tensed as he drove deep. He swelled inside her and the first hot jet of his release pulsed in her core, setting off her climax.
She cried out, holding him tight as his release filled her. The waves cras.h.i.+ng over her throbbed in time with his, melding the sensations together into one continuous blur of perfect sensation. It seemed to go on forever, but once it was over, it was gone too soon.
They were both still breathing hard when Madoc flipped them and draped her over his chest. He was still hard inside her, still throbbing in time with their rapid heartbeats. Sweat cooled across her back, but her front was blissfully warm.
Madoc hadn't shoved her away this time. He was still inside her mind as deeply as he was inside her body.
Which was why she could hear his thoughts. Not only had he been planning to give her away to another man; he was also still planning to keep her here when everyone else went to rescue Tori.
”I don't care how good in bed you are,” she said, pus.h.i.+ng herself up on his chest to look down at him. ”There's no way you're convincing me to stay behind.”
He opened his mouth and said something, but Nika couldn't understand a single word. All she heard was the sound of her name in a scream of pain that echoed inside her skull.
Tori. Tori was trying to reach her.
Nika opened herself up and pulled some of Madoc's power into her so she could find where that contact had come from. As soon as she did, a wrenching pain shot through her body, making her jerk against Madoc. She'd never felt anything like it before. It cut off her breath and shrank her world down to a pinpoint of light. Everything else went gray.
She heard herself scream, felt Madoc's hands on her body and his thoughts in her mind.
”Tori!”
I'm sorry, she heard her sister sob. I'm so sorry.
Chapter 21.
Gilda had lifted her hand to knock when her daughter's door opened. Sibyl looked up at her, her eyes the same pale blue as her father's.
Angus. Gilda already missed him.
Sibyl's blond ringlets were tangled, her dress wrinkled, which was not at all like her. Dark crescents hung below her eyes, dulling their normal sheen.
”I guess it's that time,” said Sibyl.
Gilda was shocked at being spoken to after suffering her daughter's silence for so long. ”What time?”
”For you to die.”
”You've seen that?” Gilda hated it that her daughter was plagued by visions of the future, but she'd never considered she'd have to endure seeing her own mother's death.
”I've seen many things. Too many.” Sibyl stepped back, allowing Gilda to step inside her suite. The frilly furnis.h.i.+ngs seemed wilted today, their normally bright pink dull and dingy.
Gilda settled on the dainty couch. ”I won't stay long. I know things are strained between us, but I felt compelled to see you again.”
”Nothing between us has changed,” said Sibyl. ”I can't suddenly forgive you because you've decided to kill yourself, can I?”
”I'm not asking for your forgiveness. I was just hoping that you'd . . . let me hold you one more time.”
”I'm not a child. You've trapped me inside this child's body, but I'm not a child.”
”You'll always be my child. Just as Maura is.”
”Maura won't talk to me about you. She refuses.”
”You speak to Maura?”
”Sometimes. When she's afraid.”
Gilda hated the idea of her little girl being afraid, but Maura had made her own decisions. She had to live with the consequences, just as Gilda did.
”Will you tell her I still love her?” asked Gilda.
”She won't believe me. She doesn't believe you can love someone who has no soul.”
”Of course she has a soul.”
”Maura doesn't believe that. She says you ripped it from her when you tore us in half while still in your womb.”
”What I did to you was foolish. We needed more women to fill our ranks. I thought having twin girls would help us win the war.”
”Maura and I weren't meant to be twins. You took the defenseless child growing inside your body and cut it in half. How could you have done something like that? How could you have ripped a tiny soul in two when you were the one charged with keeping it safe?”
”I didn't mean for it to be like that. Twins are born all the time. I didn't realize I was doing anything unnatural.”
”You didn't realize. Just like you didn't realize what you were doing the night Isaac died?”
Gilda shook her head. Grief for her son stormed inside her still, even after all these years. ”It was another mistake. One of many. I'm so sorry that you and Maura were left to suffer because of my choices. I only meant to protect you.”
”You make it sound so reasonable, as though any mother would have done the same thing.”
”I didn't know what would happen to you. I swear it.”
”How could you not have known? You came to us that night, woke us from a dead sleep for that sole purpose.”
”No. It wasn't like that. I needed to hold youa”to grasp onto my two living children and rea.s.sure myself you were okay.”
”That's not the way I remember it. I remember you lurching into our room. I remember you were crying. The front of your dress was wet with tears. Maura and I were scared. We didn't know what had happened and you were crying too hard to tell us. We hugged you, trying in our childish way to comfort you. We would have done anything to make you feel better, and you used that to wring from us a promise we didn't understand.”
”I didn't know what it would do.”
”How could you not have known? You looked us each in the eye and said, *Promise Mommy you'll never grow up.' You knew the power that promise would hold over us.”
”They were just words. I didn't want you to grow up and join the fight. I didn't want you to die like your brother had earlier that night.”
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