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Chapter 35

I needed to be alone to prepareon my own for even a little while, but we’d extended the house wards across the back wall to the sood in this case because it meant that no pesticides or herbicides had been used in a very long time We’d put up a ritual circle earlier in the day I opened a doorway in that circle, stepped through, and closed it behind me Now I stood not just in the wards of the house but in a circle of protection Nothingless than a deity or the Na people would have been stopped by it; they weren’t deities yet

The yard had been planted within an inch of its life like most yards in Southern California It was an abandoned lereen leaves It was too late in the season for blossoms I mourned that But thetrees and the dry, crurass and leaves underfoot, I knew this was it The trees whispered a of the past softly with their heads close together in the warm, wararden as a heavy spicy scent that rode the air to e cotton blanket lay on the ground, waiting Maeve had offered to bring silk sheets, but all we needed was so thick enough to cover the unyielding ground but not thick enough to separate us from it We still needed to be able to feel the earth under our bodies

I lay down on the blanket as if I was going to sunbathe I pressedmyself sink into the soft fuzz of the blanket, then past it to the coverings of the grass, leaves, and sticks, a covering of ss, and farther still to the hard-packed earth beneath There ater here or the leround seemed bone dry as if it never felt the touch of rain

Wind caressed ainst e of the blanket The leaves whispered and shushed together The s with its warm, pine-wood scent

I rolled ontoin the wind, feel the heat of the sun on the front of my body I don’t know if I heard a noise or just felt hi on a bed of my own hair, and there he was

Galen stood lost in the tossing green of the leaves and the sreen curls around his face That one thin braid that was all that was left of his long, long hair trailed over his bare chest

As he stepped out of the trees I could see that he wore nothing His skin was a flawless white with a shade of green to it like the gleaer without clothes, a slender expanse of flesh and bone leading up to the swell of his shoulders, and down to the slenderness of his hips He was bigger than I’d thought he would be, longer, thick, growing as I watched, as if he feltand muscled as he moved toward me

I think I stopped breathing for a second or two I hadn’t really believed that he would co Now, here he was

I raised my eyes to his face and found his smile Galen’s smile, the one that had h to care I sat up on the blanket, holding my hand out to him I wanted to run to him, but I was afraid to round Afraid almost to look away from him because if I blinked, he would seep away into the trees like a sue just out of reach and slowly lifted his hand toward ers brushed, and that s like a cloud of butterflies inside h from my lips Galen dropped to his knees on the blanket, hands at his sides, ain

I ca at each other, so close that we almost didn’t need hands to touch His hand raised slowly and hovered over the bare skin of my shoulder I could feel his aura, his power, like a war froy offor each other I’d feared that it would be hard to raise the otten what it truly ic, as the earth and the trees were ic We burned with the saether That warm flame swelled between us, filled the air around us with a shis

We kissed through that rising energy It flowed between our mouths as he bent over me, and I raised ainst my mouth, inside my mouth as his power spilled down my throat inside my body When we’d shared Niceven’s power it had been sharp, hot, alentle war winter

His hands foundmy breasts bare to the wind He drew his lips back fro first one then the other into hispower His hands cupped , until I cried out His hands slid down e of the bikini bottohs, stopped at my knees, trapped He rolledaway

I lay naked before hi overover his body He was propped up on one ar naked line of his body so close to mine I ran my hand down his chest, down his stomach, his waist, and finally touched the war hi When he opened thee that stopped ently, caressed him, and his spine boith it, head thrown back so far I couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed

Iup at the sky, as my hand fondled him I rolled hiht a deep sound from his throat I rolled my eyes so I could see his face when he turned from the sky and looked down at me His lips half parted, his face alasps that started in his stomach, spilled to his chest, and came out his lips in a word He breathed my name like a prayer and touched "

I lifted my mouth fros and stared down at hi I caressed his body with justthe way the color of his skin went froreen, the darkness of his nipples, tight against his chest I rubbedthe skin like brushed velvet or suede, and still there was no word for how soft the skin, how hard and firm the flesh But it wasn’t just his flesh I’d been wanting all these years It was hiswarmth from my skin, and his aura raised like a warether like two currents of an ocean, ether

I ht inch at a time, until he was sheathed inside me He whispered my name, and I bent over him until we kissed, kissed with the feel of him inside me, our bodies pressed in the ainstlooking down at hi to one another, whispering to round, and I could feel the ground underneath us I could feel the earth turning in a ponderous dance under Galen’s body

We becaether,up and down so that we formed a double rhythht and fir hi him with hands, mouth, every part of ht The war up in a wave of heat that spilled up my body until it felt as if my skin let loose, and I floay into the wind and the whispering trees The only thing that kept me anchored to the earth was the hard, hot point of Galen’s body I felt him slip his skin, felt his power spill outward, and for one shining moment ere neither flesh nor blood nor real We were the wind, the trees as they tugged at their roots like anchored kites, thinking both of deep earth and sunlight We were the sweet evergreen srass When I could no longer feel an to spill back into myself My body re-formed and Galen was still insidefor air, laughing into each other’s arms I slid off his body to lie beside him in the circle of his arms, my cheek pressed to his chest so that I could hear the fast, sure beat of his heart

When we could walk, we got to our feet and walked back the e had coic that we had found