"Zoya?" She spun around at the sound of his voice, hardly daring to believe. But there he was, standing in the doorway, hesitation hovering around his eyes.
"Marten!" She flung herself across the room and into his arms. "How did you..."
She got no further, because he was kissing her ravenously. Lips, eyes, face, neck he devoured, whispering, "Oh, gods, Zoya... I was a fool... so sorry..."
She managed to put her hands on the sides of his face and pull back just enough to look into his eyes. They were beyond exhausted, shadowed with sorrow and fear and filled with love and urgent desire. He tightened his grip on her waist, pulling her body tightly against his. "Zoya, please..." he whispered, and she - the fear of losing him fresh in her heart - acquiesced by sliding her arms around his neck and kissing him deeply.
In a blurry haze of kissing and touching they moved through the room, somehow divested themselves of their clothes, and stretched out skin-to-skin on the bed. Once all possibility of her pushing him away had fled, he'd reined in his urgency and they spent some unknowable time luxuriously exploring each other, reveling as they mounted each new summit of fiery pleasure.
Finally, finally, there was no way to wait a single second longer, and her legs wrapped around his hips as he laid her back into the pillows. In ecstasy, she tipped her head back, eyes closed, and they moved together, gasping with the intensity. Gradually, she became aware he was speaking, whispering, and she hazily opened her eyes to see him looking down at her.
"I said you would be mine," Masato laughed, and she screamed-
She woke screaming, sitting bolt upright.
Glossaria was there before the echoes had faded from the room. "Only a nightmare," she rasped to her concerned apprentice. She straightened the tangled and sweat-soaked bedclothes, gave Glossaria a reassuring smile, and laid back down. But she dared not return to sleep.
Copyright 2000 by Elizabeth L. Brooks. Not to be reprinted without written permission of the author.
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