New World--Made for Me, page 22
“I didn’t want you to either,” I confessed. “It was so hard to keep away from you those first few days. I pretended to meditate whenever I sensed you getting close to the bedroom, because I knew if I saw you, it would awaken all these new feelings inside me.”
Her hands tightened on my hips.
“I knew,” I whispered, gazing into her eyes. “That first night when you said you could see my chakra, I knew you were the one. But I refused you because I thought you were someone else.”
She nodded, a small smile tilting her lips. “I put the pieces together and figured that’s what you meant when you said you refused me.”
“I’m glad my Goddess didn’t listen.”
Our smiles met when she kissed me again.
“All right, enough of that!” Maa yelled from the kitchen window. “Come on up, I made some celebration wine.”
I grabbed her hand and tugged her along behind me as the stairs thudded under our bare feet.
Nero greeted us on the balcony, her little chirps of welcome warming my heart.
“Nero, look who’s back,” I said, bending low to pick her up.
“Uh, actually, she guided me here,” Ana confessed, reaching out to stroke her chin.
I rolled my eyes. “Of course. I’m beginning to think she likes you better than me.”
Ana’s fingers ran over Nero’s light. “You never explained why you share the same chakra.”
Just hearing her say that word gave me goose bumps. I couldn’t explain why.
“Nero is my familiar,” I explained, giving her a kiss on her forehead. “The definition of one depends on who you ask. To me, she represents the reincarnation of one of my ancestors. She guides me, understands me, soothes me when I’m sad...”
“If you ask me,” Maa said from the doorway of the kitchen. “I think Nero might be my mother, dark as sin but sweet as the freshest fruit in the summer.”
“Thank you for having me in your home,” Ana said, straightening up when Maa’s voice cut into our little bubble.
Maa waved around the ladle in her hand. “This place is Kit’s anyway. How long am I going to live? Make yourself comfortable, child.”
She shuffled back into the kitchen, and we followed along behind her.
“I made some spiced wine ’cause I knew we were going to celebrate. I just knew it.” She handed Ana a glass already filled with the dark liquid.
I set Nero down on the dining table, reaching for a cup of it myself.
Then Maa did the weirdest thing. She turned to me with an exaggerated wink.
I paused, looking around and spotted a very familiar pink jar.
“This is good,” Ana said on her second sip. “Very strong, though.”
I shot Maa a look. You didn’t.
She giggled like a little girl.
Ana looked at us, her brows furrowing. “What’s in this?”
“Little of this, little of that,” Maa said, stirring the rest of the liquid in the pot. “So, Ana, what’s the first thought that comes to mind when you see my Kit?”
Oh, I could hit that cheeky old lady with her meddling ways.
But Ana’s answer drew a gasp from me.
“I can’t wait to see her in a wedding dress.”
My heartbeat doubled. Then it trebled until I thought my heart would beat out of my chest. Did Ana truly think about such things? About me...about me and her getting married?
Then I noticed the frown marring her brows even as she said those words. “Did I just say that out loud?”
I reached out and took the glass away from her, trying to calm my heartbeat although I truly wanted to yell NO TAKE BACKS!
“Maa put a truth serum in your drink,” I said. “You’d better walk away now or she’s going to ask you more personal questions.”
I expected her to stride out the door like she was on fire. Instead, she only chuckled, drawing me against her.
“Bring it on, old lady,” she said, then laughed harder. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud either.”
“I’ll have you know I’m not a day older than seventy-five. I could take you, Commander. My strength is in here.” She tapped her mind.
“So,” she continued her prying. “What do you like most about my Kit?”
“Her mouth.”
I choked on a breath of air as Maa cackled.
“All that brattiness comes out of there. It makes me crazy,” Ana continued like she couldn’t help herself. “Maybe I’m crazy ’cause I like it so much. Can’t help myself.”
“She’s always been that way,” Maa commented, ladling out some wine for herself and blowing the steam away. “Honest to a fault. Takes after me, or so her mother used to say.”
She took a deep sip.
“So take a good look, Commander. In fifty years, this is what she’ll look like.”
Then she did a 360-degree turn with small, mincing steps like she was showing off a new dress.
Ana smiled, turning to me. “If I’m still around in fifty years, I’d be the luckiest woman alive.”
“Aren’t you sweet,” Maa commented before I could say anything, taking another sip of her wine. “Can’t say I’m feeling so hot today, but good to know I still got it.”
That made me laugh. I’d never seen my grandmother so animated before. She seemed genuinely happy; her cheeks even held a pop of color like the pictures of her as a teenager.
But she wasn’t done with her prying.
“Now, tell me—what secrets are you hiding from my granddaughter?”
“Maa, everyone’s entitled to their secrets...”
“I have panic attacks sometimes. They’re bad. Sometimes they last for over an hour.”
She said it in a rush, as though it hurt to say those words.
I turned to her, resting a palm on her chest and feeling her heartbeat quicken.
“I saw you,” I confessed. “That day on Cycle 1. It tore me apart to leave you behind when you were obviously hurting.”
“I was horrible to you, kitten,” she said, covering my hand with her own. “I would’ve done the same in your shoes.”
“No more running,” I promised. And she squeezed my hand in agreement.
“Oof.” Maa grabbed her back with the heel of her hand. “Something’s starting to hurt.”
She set the glass down with a thud on the counter.
“I’ll get your stick,” I said, rushing out the door to find it. She tended to leave it wherever she went and then promptly forgot about it.
When I returned with her walking stick in hand, I came upon the most interesting sight.
Ana had lifted Maa up into her arms and the old lady had her arms around my Mate’s neck. I frowned.
“Looks like you’ve got some competition, kitten,” Ana said as Maa rubbed her head against Ana’s shoulder.
I frowned and pointed. “Her room’s that way.”
As they walked past me, Maa caught my eye and winked.
My befuddled look was lost on both of them.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Ana
When Kit was in my arms, I couldn’t imagine a time when they’d ever been empty. She filled out the space so well, the crown of her head tucked under my nose, her cheek resting on my shoulder, her shapely leg thrown over mine.
I felt a growl of utter contentment rumble through me when she played with the edges of my neckline, tugging the fabric away from my body.
The windows were wide-open, letting the fresh evening air slide into her bedroom.
“I miss you,” she said, rising slightly off the bed to press a soft kiss on my chin.
Those words triggered a reciprocal tug in my chest. “I’ve missed you, too, kitten.”
She leaned over me, letting her hair fall like a fiery curtain around us.
“I need to speak to you,” I said.
Her lips brushed along my temple.
“About?” Her breath warm against my skin.
“You. Us. Your powers.”
She stilled. I reached up, pushing her hair back so I could look into her eyes.
“What I said was true, Ana,” she said hesitantly. “I didn’t know what I was doing that night. I felt like I was in a trance.”
“I believe you.”
I let my fingers follow the line of her brow, skirting the outline of her chakra.
“You should have told me,” I began, even before I’d mulled the futility of bringing up the past. “I never knew that no one else could see this. I thought it was a mod.”
“I know you did,” she acknowledged. “And I let you think it. What else was I supposed to say? ‘Oh, gee, I know you’re kidnapping me, but uh, do you know you’re my Mate?’”
“I meant after we were intimate, kitten.”
“Imagine the pressure that would’ve put on you.”
“So you just let me go on thinking we were strangers that happened to be very attracted to one another?”
She bit her lip, brows furrowing as though considering her response.
“How did you figure it out?”
“A friend told me about certain cultural practices on your Star, and how Mates found one another,” I explained. “After what I’d seen the past few days, I thought nothing could shock me again. I was wrong.”
“I wanted you to see me, Ana,” she whispered, entwining our fingers. “I wanted you to know me as a person before I brought any of this up.”
I lifted our joined hands to my lips.
“I suppose I can understand why,” I acknowledged. “Your powers—they intensified because we were together?”
She nodded. “It’s part of a transition. You come into your secondary powers around the time you hit puberty. That’s when you can do small spells, or learn a few neat tricks, like astral projection, for example,” she explained. “Your primary powers kick in when you find your Mate. For Maa, it’s Knowing. For my mother, it was Healing. For me, it’s...”
“Pyrokinesis,” I finished for her. “Creating and controlling fire.”
“Creating, yes.” She glanced down, avoiding my gaze. “I’m not so sure about the control part.”
I turned onto my side, giving our joined hands a little squeeze. “I would be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about that.”
“Maa says she can help,” Kit hurried to assure me. “It’s an unusual power to have, but not totally unheard-of. As with every other ability, control begins in the mind.”
“This trancelike state you were in,” I began hesitantly. “Do you see that happening again?”
“I—I don’t think so.” I watched her throat work in the semidarkness. “But my powers can’t hurt you, Ana.”
I remembered the way they licked against my skin, the flames like a warm blanket.
“It’s about control,” she breathed. “I promise I will learn to be safe.”
Her lips met the curve of my cheek, then the bridge of nose, and the dip of my chin.
“What are you doing?” I questioned, goose bumps forming on my skin when she reached the ticklish spot under my chin.
“You kiss me like this all the time. Why can’t I?”
Because it’s making me tingle inside.
She slid her leg over mine, straddling me in a smooth slide, but I grabbed her hips to steady her and gently pushed her off.
“What? Why?” she protested, sitting up on the bed. “Haven’t we finished talking?”
“Perhaps for now, but I will hold you to your word, kitten. You’ll need to learn to control your powers.”
“Cross my heart.” Her smile made me breath stutter.
She tried to move above me again, but I kept her firmly on the bed.
“Not under your grandmother’s roof,” I cautioned.
Her lips parted in a protest, but I cut her off.
“I think I lost part of my hearing the last time I made you come.”
I would never get used to the sweet pleasure of watching her cheeks flush even as her gaze darkened.
“I can be quiet,” she insisted, before pressing her lips together. “That’s a lie.”
I turned onto my side, pulling her back down onto the pillows so that our noses touched.
“Will your grandmother be all right if we left her alone for a while?”
She nodded. “She sleeps early, but she’ll be up before dawn.”
“Good.” I reached out to touch her hair, scraping my fingers across her scalp and watching her shiver. “‘Cause I need to hear you scream for me again.”
She gasped, a quiet little sound that warmed the space between us.
“Yes. Yes, please.”
She rose from the bed and padded over to a chest of drawers in her bare feet. After digging around for a moment, she pulled out a thick blanket.
“Let’s go,” she said, throwing me a look over her shoulder, before hurrying out of the room and down the flight of stairs that led into the forest.
“We have many ceremonial caves in the area for our tribe’s worship,” she explained, picking through the foliage with ease under the moonlit sky, barefoot and bare-shouldered.
Her skin glowed under the illumination of the moon, pale slivers highlighting the red waves of her hair as we trekked uphill. She moved with practiced ease, pushing aside low-hanging branches and sidestepping fallen logs as though she had walked this path many times.
In the quiet of the forest, she spoke in a whisper, warning me to watch my head when we passed a small tree with surprisingly spiky branches, and grasping my fingers in hers as we saw a clearing in the distance.
“This cave is my favorite,” she whispered, squeezing my fingers between her own.
We stopped near the edge of a cliff, and she pointed upwards to a large opening carved into the mountainside several feet above us, overlooking the forest below.
“This way.”
Now her steps were hurried as she moved back into the thick of the forest again.
“There’s an entrance through the back,” she explained, pulling me along to a hidden set of rickety stairs that creaked under our weight.
The smell of old soot reached my nose before we turned a corner to the mouth of the cave.
The view was breathtaking.
The large moon framed the cave, slit in half by its top left corner. The tops of trees on the forest floor peeked out from the bottom edge like a pointy green canvas. It was like looking at a live painting.
“What do you think?” Kit asked, looking at me instead of the view.
I turned to her, placing my hands on her waist. The play of moonlight on her expectant features tugged at me like a swirling riptide.
“I think I want to make love to you right here,” I whispered, aching to feel her skin against my own.
Her lips parted with a breathy sigh. “Yes.”
When I pulled her close to me, she reluctantly pulled away. “But wait.”
She extracted a little red tube that had been bundled in the blanket and moved to one bare wall.
I heard her murmur under her breath in a language I didn’t understand, drawing intricate patterns on the rock.
I watched her for a minute, her movements cyclical. Mesmerizing.
But after minutes of patient waiting, I found I couldn’t hold myself still anymore.
My lips found her bare shoulder in the darkness, pressing kisses to the pale, tempting flesh. She gasped, a minor hiccup in her chants, before she continued, the tube rubbing away like chalk against the wall.
I felt her tremble as my fingers ran down the length of her bare arm.
“Ana.” Her breathing was raspy, echoing in the small space.
“Yes, kitten.”
“Say these words with me.”
The words were in her native tongue, but I trusted her, repeating the rumbling phrases as best I could.
I could feel how they were affecting her, making her come alive, shiver and pulse under my touch.
“Now take your clothes off.”
“Was that an order?” I asked, raising a brow.
“Please,” she added. “I need to mark you.”
I slid my shirt off, letting it fall on the ground next to the blanket.
“Mmm.”
She hummed at the back of her throat as her fingertips ran over my exposed skin.
I heard a pop, then a crackle, and a bonfire came alive behind me.
My puff of laughter held a note of unease. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that.”
She raised the red tube to my skin, drawing 45-degree lines over my chest and arms.
“What does this mean?” I asked, breathing in the smell of her skin mixed with the burning embers of the fire.
“An offering of pleasure to the Goddess to thank her for bringing us together.”
She placed the tube against her skin and pulled, leaving identical red marks across her chest. Her gaze never left mine as she marked herself, and I felt a fierce need to have her in my arms again.
The tube dropped from her fingers with a clatter, and she flowed to me, pressing her chest against mine.
The sparks of firelight reflected strangely in her eyes, as though...as though the embers were really swirling inside of her.
“I’m yours,” she said, hands twining around my waist. “Take me, Ana.”
My fingers were none too steady as they delved into her hair, pulling her close for my kiss.
I was beyond caring that this felt crazy, too intense, like pure madness. It felt like each time I touched her, the need to possess heightened to a fever pitch until I couldn’t stand having an inch of space between us.
I lifted her, and she instinctively wrapped her legs around my waist, pressing even closer to me as our tongues dueled in the firelight.
The need for more, more, faster, drove me wild, making my usually patient fingers shake as they held her hips, anchoring her to me.
