Moonshadow

Chapter Twenty-Two

In the shadowed bedroom, Nikolas set Sophie down. Before her feet touched the floor, he was kissing her, plundering that soft, generous mouth. He yanked the tie out of her hair and pulled the braid out, sinking his fists into the fragrant, curling mass.

It had been such a long, difficult night, he had no patience. Dealing with the needs of his army, talking strategy with Annwyn in bursts as they found time. Looking for Sophie whenever he had a moment until he finally ran into Rowan, who had given him his ring, told him what she had said, and that she had left for Shrewsbury.

The news had been a kick to the gut. She had gone, just gone. No word of explanation. No information about where she was staying.

This is how people die, he thought. You expect them to be there, and then suddenly they aren’t.

Well after midnight, when he felt like he could finally leave, he had taken Gawain’s Harley to go look for her. She didn’t answer her phone. Her stupid solicitor didn’t know a goddamn thing. He had to resort to going from hotel to hotel until finally he recognized the Mini parked in the street.

The experience had scared him and made him angry. Not that he had truly believed she might die. She had been right when she had said to Rowan that it was the perfect time for her to go.

It had scared him and made him angry, because she had left him.

Facing that possibility burned everything else away, and he understood what Braden had been saying. While they collected the bodies of their fallen troops and prepared them to be transported back across the passageway for burial at home, he confronted what his life would be like if Sophie was truly out of his life, and he realized he would have done anything to spend as much time with her as he possibly could.

Pushing the night into the past where it belonged, he focused on the here and now. Sophie stood in front of him, healthy and whole. She spread her hands over his chest, and her touch soothed the last of the rawness away.

Need took control of his actions. He yanked her shirt over her head, and as her arms came free, she scrambled out of her bra. His skin was on fire, and the restriction of his clothes felt intolerable. He tore them off while she wriggled out of the rest of her things.

Then they came together, flesh to flesh, with nothing between them. It felt so necessary and right he paused with his mouth resting on the pulse at the base of her neck, breathing her in, taking her into every darkened, solitary corner in his soul so she could light him up with her presence.

She seemed to understand he needed that moment; as she rubbed his arms, her head tilted back to expose the slender curve of her vulnerable throat.

“I’m still going to try to protect you,” he whispered.

She stroked his hair. “I’m still going to try to protect you too, and I’m never going to sit in a tower and learn how to knit.”

“We have so much war ahead of us.”

“I know, Nik,” she said, gently steady. “I accept all that. I will try to learn how to be the best partner I can be, for you.”

“As I will, for you.” He kissed her while he let his fingers stroke along the underside of her breasts. With the last of his rational thought, he murmured, “We work well together, even when we’re fighting and driving each other insane.”

“We do, don’t we?” She nuzzled him. “We work well in other ways too.”

The fire in his veins took over, and he pulled her onto the bed. Time broke apart as they traversed their own crossover passage, passing from uncertainty, fear, and anger into acceptance, optimism, and passion. Her taste drove him wild. He licked and bit her everywhere, leaving marks, while she twisted and gasped underneath him.

She incited him to more, scraping her fingernails along his sensitized skin, sinking her teeth into his lower lip, rubbing herself along the length of his body with such evident pleasure, he almost spurted against her hip.

Finally he couldn’t tease her any longer. As she lay back against the pillows, he rose and pushed between her legs. She welcomed him, her expression flushed and sensual, reaching between them to caress his cock and guide him to her entrance.

Thrusting in, he rocked gently, working his way into her with care while she made the most delicious sound, a shaking, needy moan, and arched her torso up to him.

Then he slipped all the way in, pushed as hard against her flesh as he could while he kissed her with the force of all the fierce emotions raging inside. He drank in the sight of her, the velvet, excruciating sensation of her inner muscles gripping him as tight as a fist. He drank all of her up.

When he saw tears glittering in her eyes, he paused, breathing hard. “My Sophie,” he whispered. He loved saying that every chance he could, biting into the possessiveness like eating a ripe, succulent peach. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I am.” She stroked his back, and then a mischievous smile broke over her face. She said with genuine delight, “Thanks for asking, asshole.”

He burst out laughing and kissed her extra hard as punishment. He was almost certain it was punishment. To be sure, he kissed her again and again as he started to move inside her. She caught the rhythm and moved with him.

“I love you,” she whispered against his mouth.

Pleasure spiraled high on brilliant wings. He thrust harder, deeper, watching as her lips parted in a gasp. “I love you too,” he gritted. “You’re mine now, Sophie. Do you understand that?”

She nodded, touching his hair, his face. “You’re mine too. I don’t know what on earth I’m going to do with you—what we’re going to do with each other—but you are mine.”

“We’re going to make love bigger than anything else,” he said.

Words fell away as he lost himself in movement and fire. He took her with him, working her with just the right caress until she gasped and shuddered underneath him. Her inner muscles pulsed with her climax, which hurtled him over the edge.

Then he took her there again, and again, playing her body like a musician while he found his home inside, until the only thing left in the room was something shining, new, and pure.

Afterward, he wrapped her in his arms, and she rested her head on his chest. They dozed for a while, then suddenly Sophie swore and sat up. “Damn it, I forgot. I was going to meet Paul for lunch. I’d better give him a call.”

Nikolas settled back against the pillows, enjoying the shapely lines of her back. “Clearly something came up,” he drawled, letting his fingers walk down her spine.

She gave him a laughing glance over her shoulder. “Oh, snicker.”

He grinned. “You’d better make that call quick while you can. I think something is coming up again.”

After spending the night in Shrewsbury and meeting Paul for breakfast, they headed back to Westmarch and the manor house.

Their battle over who would drive the Mini was brief and idiotic. Finally he accused, “You don’t even want to drive. You said yourself you don’t like driving on the wrong side of the road.”

“Well… yeah.” She scowled. “You just held out your hand for my keys in that preemptory way, and then I had to argue on principle.”

He sighed. He was truly mystified by how happy she made him. “Get in the car, Sophie.”

She gave him an arch look. “I’m getting in the car because I choose to get into the car. Not because you told me to.”

He barked out a laugh.

Happiness. The emotion felt foreign, breakable. On the way back he reached over and laced his fingers through hers and drove one-handed.

Turning onto the property, he saw the troops had started to clear away the cottage rubble and the downed trees. When he switched off the engine, they looked over the land. An army camp had been erected. The doors to the manor house had been taken down, and there were two visible cracks in the outer structure.

“Ten million pounds is so much money,” she said doubtfully.

“You are the world’s worst negotiator,” he told her. “As serious as our problems are, Lyonesse’s treasury is rich. Now that we have a viable crossover passage, we need to have access to it. Take the deal.”

“Well, I don’t really have a choice.” She waved a hand at the mess in front of them. “I don’t have the means to fix this, and you deserve to have the property. I’m just a little sad about it. I had been planning on living here.”

“The land can be healed,” he said. “It’ll be green again. We’ll plant trees and restore the lake. We want to make this our permanent headquarters so you and I can build a house here. We’ll need to build several structures to house a permanent fighting force to protect this place. That tunnel is our only viable crossover passageway, at least for now. I think even the manor house can be repaired, at least enough to make the structure safe again, although Annwyn wants to tear it down. She says the very fact of it is offensive to her.”

Sophie made a face and sighed. “When I think of why the house was built in the first place, and the Dark Court perspective on what happened here, I can’t blame her. What would happen to the annuity?”

“That’s a question we can ask Paul.”

As they climbed out of the car, Annwyn stepped out of the manor house and strode to meet them. She touched Nikolas’s shoulder in greeting and turned to study Sophie in frank assessment. Having grown so accustomed to the clothing fashions on Earth, Nikolas found Annwyn’s boots, leggings, and tunic a disturbing combination of the familiar and the strange.

She was just as he had remembered her—sleek and racy as a cheetah, and just as dangerous. The sunlight touched on the strands of white at the temples of her auburn hair.

“I’m glad you’ve decided to return,” Annwyn said to Sophie, offering her hand. “I’ve been hearing stories about you from Gawain, Rowan, and the others.”

Color touched Sophie’s cheeks as she shook Annwyn’s hand. “I deny all the bad bits.”

Annwyn laughed. “There are no bad bits. Do you accept my offer to buy this land?”

“Yes, on one condition. I want to explore the contents of the library with you. If there’s anything relevant that pertains to the Dark Court, it’s yours, but I want everything else.” Sophie shrugged. “I don’t even know if it will be interesting or if I’ll want to keep it. I just don’t want to give the whole thing away sight unseen.”

Annwyn cocked her head as she considered. “That’s acceptable. It’s a deal.” She paused. “I want you to consider something else as well. There are other broken crossover passageways. With some exploration, we might be able to make one or two of them viable as well. Will you help us?”

“I’ll do what I can,” Sophie said. “I’m not as Powerful as a full Djinn though. If we find I’m not able to help, you can always see what they might be able to do for you. If you go that route, just please be careful when you bargain with them.”

“I have a condition of my own about that,” Nikolas said. Both women turned to look at him, eyebrows raised. He said to Annwyn, “She doesn’t go to any of the other broken passageways without me.”

“Done.” Annwyn smiled. She strode off.

Sophie watched the other woman walk across the torn lawn. “What about the crossover passageways Morgan has hidden?”

“We haven’t figured out yet how to dissipate his spells.” Nikolas crossed his arms. “He’s also hidden the passageways that lead to Avalon, the Light Court land, so if we can figure out how to reveal our passageways, we can uncover theirs again too. That reminds me, have you seen Robin? Somehow he escaped from Isabeau, so he might have found a way to use their passageways.”

The corners of her mouth turned down. “He stopped by yesterday morning to say good-bye. He said he’s going to strike a blow at the heart of her strength. I’m worried he might have meant he’s going to attack Morgan.”

Nikolas pinched the bridge of his nose. “We’re going to have to trust he knows what he’s doing—or at the very least that he can keep from getting captured again.”

“He promised to come back when he could. I hope he returns soon.” She squared her shoulders and turned to face him. “We need to get back to something you said earlier.”

She looked like she was ready to go into battle again. He crossed his arms and readied himself. “What’s that?”

“You said we’ll build a house together, but Nik, I’m not going to move in with you.”

His impulse to smile died away. He scowled. “Of course you are.”

“No,” she said, “no, I’m not. We’ve known each other for four days.”

“Seventeen,” he reminded her.

A not-quite-smile trembled on her lips. “Seventeen,” she agreed. “But no matter how you do the math, like we said, it hasn’t been very long. So we’ve both agreed we’re together, but that doesn’t mean we need to live together. In fact, I think that would be disastrous. You go ahead and build your own house, and I’ll find some place to rent in town.”

“Unacceptable,” he snapped.

She cocked her head and planted her feet in a sturdy, immoveable stance. “I’m sorry you’re going to have a difficult time with my decision.”

“No, Sophie—I’m serious. It’s not acceptable. If you move to town, I’m going to have to assign a security detail to you twenty-four/seven. That’s going to cost me fifteen to twenty men.”

Her eyes flew wide. She gave him a look filled with horror. “Oh no. You’re not doing that. No security.”

“Yes, security,” he growled. “Put aside our personal relationship for the moment. You’ve become a major asset to us, and that means you’ve become a major target. If Isabeau got her hands on you, she would have you disemboweled for half the things you’ve done.”

“Ugh!” She dug the heels of her hands into her eyes and turned her back to him.

She was so clearly upset his frustration with her intransigence evaporated. Walking up behind her, he slipped his arms around her and rested his cheek on top of her head.

“I do hear what you’re saying,” he said after a moment. “There are five acres here, and Annwyn is looking to see if she can buy more.” He pointed in the direction of the lake, or at least where the lake had been and where it would be again. “When we restore the lake, we’ll build you a place there. How would you like that?”

She sniffed and leaned back against him. “I’d like that a lot.”

He swiveled her around to face the opposite direction. “And we’ll build a house for me over there. We’ll be as far apart as we can possibly be from each other, all right?”

“Oh for God’s sake,” she exclaimed. “That wasn’t the point. I didn’t mean for us to be as far apart as we can possibly be from each other, I just think it would be healthy to keep our own spaces so we don’t kill each other while we work on developing our relat—”

He slipped a hand over her mouth, cutting off the flow of words, and said in her ear, “You need more orgasms, don’t you?”

She froze. Then nodded.

“I thought so,” he whispered. He bit lightly at her neck. “I might need a few more myself.”

But where do we go? she asked.

He lifted his head. Urgency roughened his voice. “They’ll have a tent set up for me.”

He was correct. They did have a tent set up for him. As befitting a commander, it was a spacious and comfortable two-room affair, with a bed in one area and a sitting room with table and chairs for meetings in the other.

Tearing off their clothes, they fell into the bed, and together they made again that pure, shining creation.

A love bigger than anything else.

That was their respite. Their refuge.

In the following weeks, Nikolas’s duties took long, demanding hours. He coordinated an intensive search for Morgan and the Hounds that had escaped the battle, which ultimately turned frustrating.

“Morgan was wounded twice with silver-tipped arrows,” Nikolas said one night, burning off his frustration by pacing in the sitting area of his tent. “I saw it. He won’t be able to heal those wounds magically. He’s at his weakest right now, yet we can’t find him.”

“Are you saying Morgan is a lycanthrope?” Sophie set aside the book she was reading.

“He’s not just the Captain of Isabeau’s Hounds,” Nikolas told her. “He is a Hound himself. That’s how he’s survived all these centuries. If he had remained a human, he would have died a very long time ago. He must have reached Avalon to disappear so completely.”

She uncurled from her position on the settee and approached to rub his back. “Don’t get discouraged,” she said. “We’ve still made so many strides.”

We, she’d said.

That small, simple word warmed him.

Turning, he pulled her into his arms and soaked in the comfort she offered. Not that long ago, he had lived a barren existence where there had been no comfort to be found. “Yes, we have made huge strides.”

As the summer turned heavy, ripe and golden, the sale of the manor house went through, and Sophie became a wealthy woman. They celebrated by having a picnic on the floor of her new, four-room cottage. When the needs of the Dark Court became less urgent, she talked about searching for what happened to her family, but it was never with any sense of personal urgency. She knew her parents must be dead. She just wanted, someday, to discover their story.

Sophie and three Dark Court scholars began to inspect the contents of the library. It would take a while to get through everything. Many of the documents had been half eaten by mice, and none of it was organized. There were estate records, correspondence, bills of sale, and a hodgepodge of illustrated books that looked to be in the best shape, as they had been stored in trunks and apparently never handled or read.

The army engineers got scaffolding erected throughout the manor house to support the areas that had been weakened. Knowing they needed to complete many of the new buildings by winter, the barracks, communal halls, and small, individual houses were built quickly.

Those who had an affinity for land magic worked on healing the scars Morgan had created. They trucked in mature trees to replace copses and hired workers from town to handle electrical wiring, gas pipelines, and other modern Earth techniques that were foreign to the Dark Court engineers.

Nikolas had been concerned about how the townspeople in Westmarch would react to having such a strong Dark Court force on their doorstep, but they were such an economic boon to the area, everyone he talked to professed themselves delighted, especially when he coordinated with the local constabulary to increase security in the area.

Annwyn began to search for physicians who might be able to help with the malady that held Oberon in its icy grip. After talking with Sophie, Annwyn researched Kathryn Shaw’s background and made an initial approach to hire her for a consultation on Oberon’s condition.

Kathryn turned Annwyn down. While, Kathryn replied, she was sympathetic to the Dark Court’s plight, as the official doctor for the sentinels who governed the Wyr demesne in New York, she had her own duty to attend to, and the time slippage between Lyonesse and Earth was too extreme.

Nikolas moved into his house and got a new car since his Porsche had disappeared. Sophie moved into hers. In theory, separate dwellings were a good idea, but the reality was, either he slept at her place, or she slept at his.

Unless they fought. Then five acres didn’t seem like nearly enough space to put between them.

We, she had said.

Nikolas couldn’t let it go.

One morning in her cottage, Sophie announced, “My visa is going to expire in a few weeks. According to Paul, I’m going to have to leave the UK and come back in. It shouldn’t be that big of a deal. I’ll show proof that I have an income and apply for residency.”

“You don’t have to go through all that.” Nikolas gathered his clothing off the floor where they had dropped it the night before. “Apply for Dark Court citizenship. Annwyn will grant it in two seconds.”

“Not going to happen.” She shook her head.

He pulled his shirt over his head and frowned at her. “Why on earth not? You can still keep your American citizenship. You’ll have more legal protections, and you won’t have to leave and come back again.”

“No, Nik. I’m not going to become a citizen of your demesne.” She sat on the edge of the bed to tie her shoes.

“Of my demesne.” What happened to we? “You need to think about this rationally.”

“Oh, believe me,” she said. “I have.”

He planted his fists on his hips and glared at her. “Prove it.”

“If I become a citizen of your demesne, I become subject to your laws. And because you’re high up in the governance of the Dark Court, and you’re the commander of the military, I become subject to your authority. That’s not going to happen. You’re overpowering enough as it is. Remember, I am my own sovereign state.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he snapped. “Nobody is their own sovereign state. You’re subject to all kinds of laws. Besides, when you marry me, you’ll become a Dark Court citizen anyway.”

She wagged a finger. “Nope. Nopers. Noperooni.”

“Those aren’t even words!” he shouted.

She fixed him with a glare. “First of all, nobody has asked me to marry him, and I don’t randomly marry people because they order me to. Secondly, Sophie don’t do nothing Sophie don’t want. I’m not your employee, I’m not a soldier in your army, and I’m not going to become your subject. I am a consultant on vacation.”

He strode around the bed to take her by the arms. “You’re not on vacation! This—you—me—you made a commitment. Why wouldn’t we get married?”

“Wait a minute. Maybe this will bring it home to you.” She pulled out her phone. Holding on to his patience, he waited while she did some incomprehensible search. She stuck the screen of her phone into his face. “Here. This is me.”

He watched a clip of an octopus running away along the ocean floor. The words, “Nope. Nope. NOPE.” appeared at the bottom of the screen.

“What the hell am I looking at?” he barked.

“It’s a nope GIF. You’ve never seen a nope GIF? There are hundreds on the Internet.” She smiled. “We literally never have to have this conversation again. You’ll bring it up again, and I’ll just send you a GIF. Subject closed.”

But she didn’t wait for the topic to come up again. She started sending him nope GIFs anyway. In one, a gorilla stood on his hind legs and walked off into a forest. In another, a cartoon character built a rocket, climbed inside, and shot to the moon. In yet another, a dog wearing a Christmas sweater ran under a sofa.

For some reason the dog was the last straw. When Nikolas’s phone pinged and he saw that she had sent him yet another email, he stormed out of his office, which was located on the ground floor of his own house.

Sophie was supposed to be cooking dinner instead of harassing him. As he rounded the corner to the kitchen, he thundered, “Stop sending nope GIFs to my work email, or I’m going to plant my old-timey foot in your ass.”

There was silence in the kitchen. Sophie had opened the back door, and Annwyn and Gawain stood just outside. All three of them stared at him as if he had lost his mind.

He understood why Annwyn and Gawain looked at him that way. It was Sophie’s utterly unjust expression that sent him ballistic.

Gawain did that thing he did when he was trying to cover up a laugh by coughing into his hand.

Amusement gleamed in Annwyn’s eyes. She said, “I understood only three words in that sentence.”

Nikolas angled out his jaw and rubbed the edge of it. “I’d explain, but it’s a long, exasperating story.”

Sophie twirled a curl around her finger. “I’ll leave you three alone to talk.”

She slipped out the door before Nikolas could stop her. After he, Gawain, and Annwyn had settled their business, Nikolas went to hunt Sophie down.

He found her sprawled on her stomach, on the sofa in her living room. She had kicked off her shoes.

“I thought you were going to cook dinner,” he said.

“I lost my impetus.” When he sat on the floor and leaned his back against the sofa, she said, “I won’t send any more nope GIFs to your work email.”

“Thank you.” He leaned his head back, and she slipped her fingers through his hair. No matter how much they argued, or how angry he got, her touch always soothed him. “Marry me.”

“No.”

He reached behind his head to capture her hand and brought it around to press a kiss to her palm. “Marry me.”

“No, Nikolas.”

She had dug her feet in. He would have to go at this from another angle. He said, “Tell me you don’t want to marry me.”

She sighed and turned on her side, curling around his shoulders. “I don’t want to marry you.”

As falsehoods went, that one was a whopper. It had neon lights all over it, blinking LIE. He began to smile.

Thinking through all her objections, he asked, “Will you marry me sometime in the future when we’re both ready for it, if I get a special dispensation from Annwyn exempting you from my military and/or governance authority so you can remain a consultant on vacation and your own sovereign state?”

Because he was pretty sure she wasn’t really objecting to dual citizenship.

Rising on her elbow, she said in his ear, “That was awfully wordy.”

“You had an awful lot of objections,” he told her.

“Do you know what I heard?” She pressed a kiss to his jaw.

He turned his face toward her, relishing the caress. “What’s that?”

“I heard you ask me,” she whispered. She slipped an arm over his shoulder and hugged him.

His voice turned husky. “I haven’t heard you answer yet.”

“Yes.”

He twisted around to cup her face, kissing her lingeringly as he stroked her cheek. “That’s my Sophie.”

She nuzzled into him. “Now that we’ve got that settled, what do you think about having some orgasms to celebrate?”

He smiled. “Best idea I’ve heard all day.”