Obsidian Flame (Guardians of Ascension #5)(11)
Author: Caris Roane

She smiled. “I was so bad. I’d been facedown on my cot getting some old-fashioned relief with my hands when suddenly I felt the air move and there you were. I thought, damn, all my prayers have just been answered.”

He laughed, but he kissed her. “I thought you looked a little flushed. Then Grace showed up and you dipped behind the door so she couldn’t see you. That’s when you showed me your peaked nipple.”

“I wanted you to see my orgasm. I think you got the point.”

“Oh, I got the point.”

“And you came back at dawn just like you promised.”

“I couldn’t not have come back. I thought about you all night while I was out there at the Borderlands. Night had never been so long. I thought the sun would never come up.”

“You’d come straight from battling.”

“You didn’t seem to mind.”

She smiled and stroked his cheek a little more. “Of course not. I knew what most of the hypocrites of Second Earth refused to acknowledge, that without all the blood you and your brothers spilled every night, Second Earth would have fallen to Greaves centuries ago.”

He kissed her and ground his hips against hers. “I need you with me, Marguerite. Please don’t do this to us. Please.”

He looked so earnest and she almost wanted to just nod and tell him, “okay,” but she couldn’t. She shifted her gaze to his chin once more. She couldn’t exactly tell him “no” if she kept looking into his eyes.

She shook her head. “I can’t. I’ve … I’ve imagined my freedom for so long, and how I want to spend it that I can’t stop now. I just can’t. But I don’t want to hurt you.”

“So.” Since he offered a long pause, she met his gaze. He continued, “You won’t mind if I bury this”—and here he ground the hard length of him against her—“in another woman, or lots of other women? You don’t feel any particular claim on my body? Seems to me I can remember dozens of times when you’d be holding my c**k and whispering in my ear, ‘This is mine.’ Remember, Marguerite?”

“I remember.” Jesus, how guilty was he going to make her feel? She scowled at him. “And, yeah, I’ll hate it, but I’m not changing my mind about anything. I don’t want a life with you on Second Earth, or anywhere. I want my own life.”

But he didn’t let her go. Instead he dipped low and began sucking on her neck.

She shoved at him in earnest now. “No,” she cried. “None of that.”

“I want your blood. Let me have it one last time.” Oh, damn, he’d split his resonance, and she was almost helpless when he did that.

She shoved at him some more, but he didn’t exactly budge and her vein started to rise, willing him on. She grew very still. She had to reach an understanding with him. As much as her body was on fire with sudden need and with the most pressing desire to let him sink his fangs and take what he wanted, she drew in deep breaths and willed all that insane need and want and passion away.

He must have figured it out, because he drew back and frowned at her.

She stared at him for a long time then said, “I have to do this.”

His shoulders dipped slightly. Finally, he nodded and rolled off her. He ended up on his side and looked so serious.

She slid off the bed and turned to face him, pulling the belt of the robe tight. “You should probably…”

But she didn’t get any farther. The goddam future streams suddenly opened up, an intense skyline of light-filled ribbons, stretching across the horizon as far as the eye could see.

One ribbon rose, expanded, and moved toward her then crashed hard, just as it had over three weeks ago when she had first made contact with Fiona, her fellow obsidian flame.

No, not again. She didn’t want this. She didn’t want any of this.

She fell to the floor.

Suddenly she was just inside the future streams, inside one very specific vision. The sky was dark, a beautiful night sky, and the forest surrounded her, a forest of incredibly tall trees with straight trunks, close together. She heard noises in the forest, movement—not of animals but of people—a stealthy sound.

Death vampires.

She turned around and saw lights, many lights, but not from electricity, softer, like candlelight or oil lamps. She began running in that direction. She had to issue a warning. But the death vampires swarmed from behind, moving past her and through her. This wasn’t her future, this was the future of whatever or whoever inhabited the glowing forest lights.

She thought the thought and propelled herself into the air and forward, flying without the usual wings, but soaring, speeding, getting ahead of the attack to try to understand where she was.

Higher and higher she flew, straight up through the tall fir trees. She soared over the tips now and began to fly above the glowing lights. Higher and higher until she saw dwellings, like cabins, some square, some round, some large, some small but all with the glowing lights, a river of lights. Higher she flew until she could see the coastline from a distance of several thousand feet. She recognized Puget Sound and she could feel that this was Mortal Earth.

She let the location seep into her mind.

She returned back to the forest and the glowing lights.

She understood then that she was looking at a hidden colony on Mortal Earth. From deep inside her mind, her obsidian flame power vibrated softly, as though amplifying her intuition. Then she knew, without a doubt, that this colony was a refuge for Seers.

Seers have been abused for millennia, their rights buried in the needs and wishes of the more powerful. In a domestic situation, this would be prosecuted as abuse. In the name of government, this is called for the common good.

—Treatise on Ascension, Philippe Reynard

Chapter 3

Thorne had no idea what the hell was going on but oh, damn, he felt sure it had something to do with her obsidian flame power.

He held Marguerite in his arms and spoke to her softly, her face cupped in his hand as he stroked her cheek with his thumb. He kissed her lips. “Come back to me.”

But her lovely brown eyes seemed to rove over something else, something probably in the future.

She trembled, a very faint trembling all over her body. Her fingers twitched and flared as though she was reaching for something over and over.

He knew she was powerful, but he’d never seen anything like this before. “Marguerite, can you hear me?”

No response.

Shit.

If this was the future streams, then this new kind of vision left her vulnerable to attack. Which also meant that if she’d been alone just now, and the enemy had shown up, she’d be f**king dead. And she wondered why the hell he couldn’t just leave her alone; why this wasn’t a simple thing for him to let her live as she pleased.