Dragon Bound

NINE

Pia was running for the sheer joy of it.

The wind played in her hair. The moon looked down from its throne in the royal purple sky and smiled at her. The night was brighter than she’d ever seen before, a velvet carpet strewn with stars that winked diamond bright and sang faint ice-cold snatches of song, of distant journeys and enchantments in other realms. The magic in the land nourished parts of her that had been crippled and half dead. She felt stronger, freer and wilder than she ever had before. She leaped high and reached up to tickle the edge of the moon, who laughed in delight.

She was in a field miles wide, with all the room in the world to stretch her legs. Distant trees shadowed the edges. A tall dark man with raven hair and gold raptor’s eyes stood in the trees and watched her.

She didn’t care. He couldn’t catch her. Nothing could, not even the wind, unless she let it.

Pia.

She knew that voice. She loved that voice. She turned and saw her mother running toward her. In her true shape, her mother had an incomparable loveliness and shone brighter than the moon who bowed down before her.

Mom? She slowed and turned. She felt like a little girl again. Mommy?

They came together. She threw eager arms around her mother, who nuzzled her. My sweet baby girl.

I miss you so much, Pia told her. Please come home.

Her mother drew back and looked at her with great, liquid eyes. I cannot. I have faded from your world. I no longer belong there.

Then let me come with you, she pleaded. Take me to wherever you are.

A roar of denial shook the trees. It ran through the earth, which trembled at their feet. Pia looked back at the male, although her mother remained untouched by the disturbance and seemed unaware of the figure in the trees.

You cannot join me, darling. Your place is among the living. Exquisite eyes smiled at Pia. Giving birth to you was the single most selfish thing I have ever done. Forgive me for leaving. I did not mean to abandon you.

Tears clogged her throat. I know you couldn’t help it.

I have come to warn you, said her mother. Pia, you must not be in this place. There is too much magic here. It is why I never dared to take you to an Other land.

She looked around. But I like it here. It feels so good.

You will be exposed here, and hunted. Go back. Starlight began to shine through her mother’s figure. Go back; blend in with humankind.

No, don’t go yet. Pia tried to reach for her.

But her mother had already faded, leaving a final message on the wind. Be safe. Know that you are loved.

She reached after her mother, almost grasping an answer to something important. She could almost make out where her mother had gone, could almost follow her, except the whispering wind curled around her and held her to the earth.

The whispering circled around her, stroked along delicate nerve endings, coaxing her, Pia, stay. That was not her true Name, but the Power behind the whispering was enough to make her hesitate. The wind became a dragon twining around her, brushing against her skin like a cat. Stay. Live.

She brushed her fingers along the hot skin of the beautiful, feral creature. It turned its head. Great molten, hypnotic eyes stared into hers and she was caught.

She woke up.

She was lying on the ground, wrapped in the Elven blanket, beside the glowing red coals of the dying campfire. Dragos crouched over her, hands cupping her head. He was whispering in a language she didn’t recognize, but it tugged at her bones.

“What is it?” she asked in a sleepy voice. She glanced down at herself. She was gleaming with a faint, pearl-like luminescence. She jolted full awake. “Goddammit, I lost hold of the dampening spell in that dream we had too. I’ve never lost control like that before. I can’t keep doing this!”

He took a deep breath. His body was clenched. A fine tremor ran through his heavy muscles. He was paler than she had ever seen him, eyes dilated and stark.

“What’s the matter?” she asked again. She laid a bright ivory hand against his cheek. “What happened?”

“I put you down,” he said. His blade-honed face was drawn. “I went to go wash at the stream. I wasn’t gone long . . . I was just twenty feet away.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “Whatever happened, it’s okay now.”

He was so upset, unlike anything she had seen from him. To date he had been calm, arrogant, infuriating, amused, angry, cautious, downright imperious. But this was like how he had been when she found him chained in the cell, only worse. It was hard to see such an indomitable male so shaken. She stroked his face.

He sank his fists into her hair as if to trap her more completely. “I turned around,” he gritted, “and I could see the fire through your body. You were transparent, Pia, and you were fading.”

“That’s impossible,” she said.

Or was it? Her mind raced back to her dream. If she had started to fade—could her mother have visited her in truth? Her lips pulled into a bittersweet smile.

“No smiling. This isn’t something to fucking smile about,” he snarled at her, his fists tightening. “You were almost gone. My hands passed right through you. If I hadn’t started calling you back, you would have disappeared for good.”

“Maybe, I guess, but I don’t think so,” she said in an absent tone, letting her fingers slide through his hair. She loved the inky black strands of silk. There wasn’t a kink or hint of curl in it. “I don’t think I could have gone where I tried to go. She said it wasn’t my place.”

“What are you talking about?” His eyes narrowed, but the tension in his body dialed down a notch.

“I dreamed about my mother.” Her gaze went unfocused and she said, “And I think it actually was her. When she left I tried to follow her.”

“You are never to do that again,” he said between his teeth. “Do you understand?”

“Dragos,” she said, speaking with care because he was still so upset. “You’ve got to stop giving me orders.”

No matter how gently she said it, it was still like a spark to dry tinder.

“Fuck you,” he snapped. He thrust his face down to hers, eyes flaring to lava and features hardening. “You’re mine. And you. Can’t. Leave.”

“Whoa, there. I don’t know what to say to you. You’re like some stalker guy on steroids.” She threw back her hands and rolled her eyes. “You are aware, aren’t you, that you can’t have slaves any longer. You know, abolition. Big war. Happened a hundred and forty, forty-five years ago.”

“Human history, human terms,” he snarled. “They mean nothing to me.”

She had already known she shouldn’t attribute human motives or emotions to him. Here was the reminder. The dragon was very close to the surface. The big body crouching over her was taut with menace. Every legend she had ever heard of a dragon’s possessive, territorial nature came to mind.

Damn, it was enough to make her swallow hard but not, she realized, in fear. Muscle by muscle she relaxed. “Okay then, big guy,” she said, soft and easy. “You tell me what you mean.”

“I don’t know.” That fierce, proud face was puzzled. “All I know is you’re mine to keep and protect. You can’t fade away, and you can’t die. I won’t let you.”

She thought it was not the time to point out that she was going to die at some point. She had too much human in her.

“So, I’m yours for how long?” she asked, curious now that she decided to explore this path. “Until you get tired of me, or you get bored again?”

“I don’t know,” he said again. “I haven’t figured this out yet.”

A sudden rush of affection surprised her. He wasn’t faking his perplexity. He wasn’t putting on an act. “That makes two of us,” she said. She thought of the Elven wayfarer bread, the hairbrush and the soap, and his thoughtfulness surprised her all over again. She reached up to run a finger down his throat. “So, for the sake of argument, if I’m yours as you said, to keep and protect, that seems to me like you would want me to—be all right. To thrive?”

“Of course,” he said. He looked down at her hand as she drew circles on his chest, and the menace he exuded turned darker, smokier.

“Dragos,” she murmured, “I don’t thrive when someone barks orders at me all the time.”

She peeked at him to see how he reacted to her logic. He was frowning. “It’s how I talk to people,” he said.

“It’s how you talk to your employees and servants, you mean?” she replied.

His frown deepened. She bit her lips to keep back a smile. How could she be so damn charmed by such a primitive thug? She had to establish a different footing with him or be mowed under by the sheer force of his personality.

“See, here’s the thing.” She kept her voice gentle while she started to rub his chest in soothing circles. “Someone barking orders at me makes me feel trapped and stifled. I understand you’ve gotten into a habit, but maybe,” she suggested, “you could try not ordering me around sometimes. You know, just until you get bored and let me go.”

He had grown heavy-lidded as she stroked him, but at that his narrowed gaze snapped up to her face. She smiled at him, nonthreatening and relaxed. “What if I don’t get bored?” he said. “What if I don’t let you go?”

She was jolted by a sense of longing that swept over her. She lost her smile and looked away. “We don’t even know what we’re talking about, anyway,” she said.

He loosened his grip on her hair, shifted his weight onto one elbow and took her luminescent hand. He tilted her arm and looked at it. “You’re remarkable. No, don’t!” he said, as she remembered and began to dampen the glow. “Let me see you as you really are, for a while at least. Look at how fast you’re healing.”

She looked. The ugly black bruises that had mottled her skin had almost faded. “I feel good,” she confessed. “Different, somehow. Better. More. Hey, am I the Bionic Woman?”

He smiled. “It sometimes happens with halflings when they come to an Other land,” he told her. “The heightened magic can help them access abilities and traits that might otherwise have remained latent.”

She tried to keep a tight grip on the hope that surged at his words but questions still leaked into her thoughts. Was this the explanation for everything she felt since they had crossed over? If what he said was true about her, might she be able to shift? What if she could end this sense of living a half life, the feeling of being caught between two incomplete identities, human and Wyr?

“I had no idea,” she said. “My mother always refused to bring me over to an Other place. I’ve never had enough Power to cross over by myself. I barely have enough for telepathy.”

In the dream, her mother had said it was dangerous for her to be here. She glanced around the dim coal-lit clearing. That meant they should leave soon. The thought lacked urgency.

“Ah yes, your mother,” he replied, sounding distracted as he inspected her slender fingers, the graceful tilt of her wrist. “Very soon we’re going to have a talk about your mother, who she was and why that dumbass Elf loved her so much. We’re also going to talk about why you’re not right in the head and if you have any more IDs or stashes of cash hidden anywhere.”

She snatched her hand back and smacked him on the arm. “None of that is any of your business! And just because he liked me but he didn’t like you doesn’t mean he’s a dumbass Elf!”

He gave her a lazy, predatory smile as he moved his torso over hers. “You’re not afraid of me at all anymore, are you?”

She sobered. Call her crazy, but she thought he would rather cut off his hands than hurt her. “So what if I’m not?” she muttered.

His beautiful, cruel mouth pulled into a smile. “I think if you’re not, it’s a very good thing,” he said. He moved, and before she realized what he intended, he had her hands pinned over her head. “It gives me all kinds of license to do bad things to you. With you. On you. In you.”

She jumped and her heart hammered. He looked at her splayed and helpless underneath him and insinuated one heavy thigh between hers. He pushed up with his leg as he bit her neck in the exact same place where he had in their dream. He drank in her gasp and held her with ease as she tried to tug her hands free. Not that she tried all that hard.

Excitement took the express shuttle through her body. She stretched for the sheer enjoyment of feeling herself slide against his naked torso, and his brilliant gaze tracked every movement she made. She was feeling less human by the minute.

She licked her lips. “Dragos, I don’t think . . .”

“You don’t think what?” His burning gaze swallowed her up.

“I don’t think I’m as good as I thought I was,” she whispered. Her eyelids dropped down and she smiled.

“That’s my girl,” he whispered.

He pushed her legs wider apart, settled between them and began a sensual assault on her, nibbling and licking. He pulled her lower lip between his teeth and suckled at the plump flesh, then thrust his tongue deep into her mouth.

They both groaned. He dug deeper into her, thrusting harder and harder. She tilted her head to open more to him. He shifted her wrists to one hand so that he could push the other under her tunic, running calloused fingers up to the soft swell of her breast. He grasped the plush mound with greedy care, found her nipple and began rolling it between his thumb and forefinger. He tugged at the sensitive flesh and gave it a light pinch.

Pleasure jolted through her as he played with her breast. Her breathing became choppy. She tugged harder, but he refused to let go of her wrists, his body hardening. She raised her legs to cradle his long body, shifting underneath him until his heavy, long erection lay nestled against her pelvis.

He hissed, face darkened with lust, and he reared up to grab hold of her tunic.

“No!” she cried, stiffening.

He froze. God love him, that dragon didn’t even breathe.

“I don’t have anything else to wear,” she explained. She gave him a shaky smile when his eyes flashed to hers.

The stricken look left his face. He let go of her wrists and sat back on his heels as she sat and yanked the tunic over her head. She tossed it to the ground. He put his hands to her rib cage and ran them up to cup her breasts.

“Goddamn,” he said. His normal deep voice had gone hoarse. “Will you look at that.”

She looked down at them. The lines and curvature of her torso and breasts looked ultrafeminine against the brawn of his big hands and muscular arms. Her radiance and the dusky hue of his skin seemed to feed on each other. The paleness of her skin was creamier, the blush of her nipples pinker. The sinews of his hands and wrists shifted under skin that was a richer, deeper bronze.

She put her hands on his torso and watched as she ran them up his chest. Muscles rippled underneath her palms as he took in a shaking breath. She raked at his nipples with gentle fingernails. Part of her was ecstatic with shock. I am touching him. He is touching me.

He hissed and grabbed her fingers, coming over her as he bore her back down. He put his hands at her waist and, understanding what he wanted, she lifted her hips for him to pull the leggings off. He shifted to tear off his jeans and fling them aside. Then he slid back over her, heavy and hard and naked, and they were lying skin to skin.

If he had seemed hot before, he had since turned volcanic. She could feel his heart hammering against her breast. She lost herself in the enjoyment of rubbing herself against him, running her hands up the considerable musculature of his powerful back.

He slid down her body, running his open, shaking mouth along the length of her neck, down her collarbone, until he could feast on her breasts. He sucked and bit at the succulent flesh, gripping her nipples between his teeth and flicking at them with his tongue, one after the other until she arched and cried out, incoherent with sharp delight.

Then he slid down farther, licking and biting his way along the curve of her waist. He gripped the inside of her slender knees and held her splayed as he sucked the tender flesh of her inner thighs. She writhed in his hold, crying out again as she lifted her hips up to him.

He paused to look his fill of her. Elegant bone structure, radiant cream and dusky pink, she lay on an extravagant pillow of tangled pale gold hair. He could track his journey across her body in the luscious suck-bruises that were blooming at the undersides of her breasts, the insides of her thighs. Her violet dark eyes were huge and shimmering with desire, just like they had in the dream.

Just as he had craved ever since. Desire for him, the monster, the Great Beast.

But this was no dream, and he was so hard and full from wanting her he was in superb pain. He looked at the plump, fluted pink of her labia topped with a tangle of white-gold curls. She was slick with moisture, drenched with it, and his heavy cock leaped at the generous evidence of her arousal. He whispered, “I’m going to eat you until you scream.”

Her slender feet curled and a deep groan burst out of her. He lowered his head and continued his assault, licking and biting and sucking with shaking greed. He drew her stiff little bud into his mouth and suckled as she bucked and shook with the force of the pleasure spiraling through her.

She lifted up on her elbows, panting, and stared at what he was doing to her. That dark head and those broad shoulders between her shivering thighs, his blade-cut face drenched with arousal as he worked her, was a sight so erotic it hurtled her into a climax. She hung her head back and squealed as she came with an intensity she had never known before.

He never stopped. He kept licking and suckling, his mouth absorbing the ripples that cascaded through her. He put a flattened hand on her lower abdomen as she clenched, feeling the rhythm of her climax. He wrung her out and still he continued to suck.

The sensitivity became too much. She sank trembling fingers into his hair, tried to pull his head back. “Stop, I can’t . . . I can’t . . .”

He made a throaty sound, his hot gold gaze flashing as he focused on her sweaty dazed face and suckled harder. He plunged two fingers deep inside her, and just like that, he pushed her into another climax, this one longer and more intense than the first. He gobbled that climax down and without stopping shoved her into a third.

Her torso arched off the ground and the tendons in her neck distended as a thin, breathless scream broke out of her. She was completely taken over by what he was doing to her. The brilliant star-studded night sky disappeared as her eyes filled and spilled over.

At last he pulled away and crawled up her, breathing harsh, intent carving every flex and shift of his body. She had no words as she stared up at him. He was such a splendid aggressive male, the broad muscles in his chest and upper arms quivering, his large erect penis hanging long and heavy between rock-hard thighs. She looked into his eyes as she curved a hand around the broad mushroom head and stroked.

With that he went bat-shit crazy for the third time in three days. He lunged down at her, his lungs working to take in great gulps of air. He scooped an arm under her hips to yank her up for his entry. She guided him and he slammed all the way inside.

She shrieked at the invasion and dug her nails into his back. He was no delicate, diffident lover. He was like nothing she had ever experienced, a tsunami crashing over her head and destroying her old identity, reshaping her life.

He wrapped his other arm around her, clutching her by neck and hips as he began to plunge into her in heavy, powerful strokes. He was groaning in her ear with every thrust as they mated like the animals they were. The increasing pressure, the sound of their flesh coming together, her total lack of control, had her digging her nails into his back. She stretched and whimpered, lost in the inexorable rhythm of her body, and came again.

He threw back his head, face contorted in savagery, astonishment. With a last convulsive thrust he made a muffled sound and joined her in climax. She felt him pulse deep inside and she clenched everything she had around the delicious length of him, holding on to the sensation, on to him. He rocked into her, panting, eyes closed as he gushed into her. She put a hand at the back of his head, an arm around his waist, holding him as he held her, murmuring in his ear, yes, there you are, yes.

He turned his face, found her mouth and kissed her as he held them so tight together at pelvis and hip, for a while it felt as if they had fused together and become one creature, light and dark, yin and yang.

It was then her shattered consciousness caught up with what he had growled in her ear as he fucked her. Mine, he had said. You’re mine. You’re mine.

She drifted, looking at the silhouette of the back of his head against the sky as she rubbed her cheek against his, as his weight bore her down. Something in her was sputtering and trying to shift into overdrive in reaction to what just happened. It was too much. She couldn’t think.

He started to move his hips again, pulling out, pushing in, his breathing deepening. Oh God, he was still huge and hard. Not human. She made an amazed noise at the back of her throat, clutching at him as he worked inside her. It was too gorgeous. She thrust up with her hips, matching his pace.

This time a moan tore through his chest and he shook all over as he started to pulse. She worked inner muscles and rocked him through the climax, murmuring in his ear. He turned his face into her neck.

He pulled out, face drawn. She woofed in surprise as he flipped her onto her stomach and yanked her hips up so that she was on her knees. Her tangled hair settled in a cloud over her face. “Not deep enough,” he groaned. “Got to get deeper.”

More than willing, she spread her knees and arched her pelvis back. She reached between her legs to help guide him as he pushed into her from behind. The slick, hot, velvet length of his cock felt even bigger this way. She murmured a throaty encouragement as he buried himself to the hilt. She was taken over not just by his overwhelming sexuality but by this strange creature who lived inside her body and who felt more sensuous, more female, and more desired than she ever had before.

He covered her, one arm low around her waist to hold her for his frenzied thrusts, the other hand planted on the ground beside hers so that he bore most of his weight. This time the pistoning of his hips was relentless. He drove hard and steady as he buried his face in the back of her neck, his breath shuddering against her skin. The pressure built again, but this time she wasn’t sure she could take it. She sobbed and clutched at the ground for purchase. Grass tore under her fingernails.

He sank his teeth into the back of her neck as his Power curled around her. Come with me. He shifted to put his hand between her legs, to rub long fingers along the place where he entered her and to pinch her clitoris. He shoved in hard one last time and held taut. His Power rippled over her, through her, with his climax.

Her mind went incandescent. She flew apart.

Dragos poured everything he had into her. It came roaring up from the base of his spine as he locked himself in the tight glove of her sheath. This wasn’t sex. He’d had sex countless times. Sex was a simple coupling and release. More often than not, half an hour later he would have already forgotten the female’s name.

This was something he’d never done before. This was something far more elemental and necessary than sex. Feasting on her didn’t ease his hunger but fed his need. Working inside her wasn’t enough. Climaxing didn’t assuage the lust. It built the frenzy. She absorbed everything he did to her and amplified it back, and bloomed even more lustrous and intoxicating. He had to drive into her so deep he never came back out.

He came back to awareness. He still covered her from behind, was still inside her, his hand spanning the graceful are of her pelvis. Tremors quaked through her body. The slender muscles in her thighs quivered against his. She gasped for breath in quiet sobs.

What had he done? He pressed his lips to her neck and drew them along the sleek angle of her shoulder. He withdrew his hand from her pelvis to brush the tangled cloud of her hair out of the way as he tried to see her face. “Ssh,” he murmured. “Easy.”

She was too weak to stay on her hands and knees without his hold supporting her. His softening penis slipped out of her as she sank to the ground. She rested her head on her arms. He shifted to lie on his side, one thigh draped over the back of hers. He smoothed her hair, rubbed her shivering back.

Her face seemed wet. Was she crying? Had he hurt her? The questions knifed him. He could have sworn she was with him the entire way.

He stopped breathing. He eased fingers under her chin to coax her head up and turn her toward him. Her face and those brilliant eyes were devastated and wide-open. She looked as beautiful and fragile as cut crystal. His gut clenched.

“I lost control,” he whispered.

That, along with the worry darkening his eyes, anchored her back in her body. Was he trying to apologize?

“So did I,” she whispered back.

“I’ve never done that before.” He touched the delicate skin at the corner of her eye, rubbed the ball of his thumb along her lower lip.

“Neither have I,” she confessed. A smile broke over her face.

His fingers dropped to trace the curve of her lips. “Are you—all right?”

She was a mess. She was euphoric, an emotional train wreck. She needed to go into a quiet, dark room somewhere and try to make sense of everything that had happened—and that he had done—to her.

But first she had to wipe that uncertainty off his face.

Her smile widened, and she told him the truth. “No,” she said. She leaned over and pressed a kiss to those incredible seductive lips. “You demolished me. I had no idea anybody could do the things you did. And I want to know how soon we can do it again.”

The worry vanished and an answering smile lit his eyes. He looked at her mouth. “I want a lot of things.”

“What you do with your tongue is a sin,” she teased.

That vulnerability he saw in her still lurked around the edges, but he chose to go with her attempt to lighten things up. He told her, “There are many advantages to being a bad man.”

“Such as?”

He sat up and pulled her onto his lap, turning her so that she faced him, torso to torso, groin to groin, her slender legs stretched out on either side of him. It was an intimate position made even more so by their nudity, a position perfect for making love. He wrapped his arms around her and she curled hers around his neck.

Even sitting on his lap as she was, his body was so much bigger and longer than hers, he had to tilt his head down to go nose to nose with her.

“A comfortable lack of conscience,” he said. “The enjoyment of unbroken sleep. An uncomplicated desire to discover every possible carnal pleasure with the beautiful woman in his arms.”

Her eyes brightened at the compliment and crinkled at him. He smiled back and kissed her, a long, leisurely exploration that curled her toes.

“Well, I think you keep a very well-hidden secret,” she told him when she could breathe again.

He cocked an eyebrow.

She tapped a finger against his chest. “There is a pretty charming creature buried deep inside there. You should let him out more often.” He laughed out loud, but then the look on his face turned calculating. She laughed too as she realized she found even that charming. God, she was a goner. She warned, “Don’t make me regret telling you that.”

“I’ll try not to take too much advantage,” he said.

“Oh, thank you very much.” She rolled her eyes. That probably meant he was going to wring everything he could out of it. Her stomach rumbled. “I’m starving again.”

They sat in reach of the pack. He gave her a leaf-wrapped wafer, which she unwrapped. She ate while he tried to run his fingers through her tangles. “We did a number on your hair,” he said. He sent a gentle pulse of Power through his hands and her hair smoothed out.

She swallowed a bite of the delicious wayfarer bread. “You ever get tired of being a multibillionaire businessman, you could make another fortune as a hairdresser.”

“I’ll be sure to keep it in mind,” he said. He didn’t tell her he had no interest in anyone else’s hair but hers. He looked around the clearing. “We’ve lingered too long here. We should leave as soon as you finish.”

“Right,” she said, looking around also. “And why did we come this way, instead of going back the way they brought us?”

“You’ve never been to an Other land before, right?” She nodded, and he continued, “This isn’t the best analogy, but it will work for now. Time and space buckled when the earth was formed, and the buckling created dimensional pockets where magic pooled. Picture them like lakes or large bodies of water. There are lakes of varying sizes. Some are quite small, more like ponds, and some stand by themselves. Others are almost as big as oceans and are linked together, with streams or rivers. I can sense that this”—he gestured around them—“is a very large area connected to other large land areas.”

“How do you do that?” she asked.

He frowned, not, she could see, from irritation at her question but more in an effort to figure out how to explain what he experienced. It must be something he had known how to do for so long it came automatically to him, like breathing. “I put my hand down on the land and send out my awareness. It doesn’t take a heavy pulse of Power. It’s more like a knowing that comes to me.”

She tried to imagine what that must feel like. Maybe it was the same kind of knowing she got when she sensed magic was around, or a spell had been cast, just more focused on the land. She wanted to try it out for herself sometime. “So there are different ways in and out of this place.”

“Correct. We had a better chance of getting away by taking off in an unpredictable direction than going back the way they had crossed over. We may even be able to go so far north that we can connect to New York or get at least close to it.”

“Since we’re talking, why doesn’t technology work in Other lands?”

“That’s a bit of a misnomer. Some technologies work if they’re of a passive design, if they utilize natural forces that are already present like water flow, and if they don’t involve combustion more complicated than a wood-burning stove or a boiler. Modern crossbow designs aren’t exactly passive, but they’re fine to use because they don’t ignite. You can also bring over things like factory-made glass windows, artwork, various convenience appliances like Melitta or French-press coffee-makers and even composting toilets, as long as what you bring over is not dependent upon electricity and you can transport it safely through a dimensional passage.”

She chuckled. “You sound so domestic.”

He smiled. “I have quite a comfortable house in an Other land connected to upstate New York where we’ve done a lot of experimenting to see what works and what doesn’t. It is designed to take maximum advantage of the sun, which heats water for an underfloor hypocaust system that keeps the house warm. Very Roman. As far as why certain technologies don’t work?” He shrugged as he ran his fingers through her hair. “There are a couple of theories bandied about, but the short answer is nobody knows for sure.”

She tilted her head back, reveling in the petting. “A single-action revolver isn’t a very complicated device, nor is a flintlock rifle, but I’ve heard that even simple guns are too dangerous to use.”

“You’re right. Simple guns are just the application of gunpowder, fire and lead, with a barrel. Interestingly the more primitive the gun is, the longer you could use it in an Other land. Automatic weapons seize or misfire as soon as they’re brought over. You might get a few more shots fired out of a simpler, more historic model. You might possibly get as many as a half-dozen rounds fired off, but the amount is never predictable and in the end the gun will always misfire.”

She frowned. “Good way to lose your eyesight or your hand.”

“Or your life,” he said. “One possible explanation is the Living Earth Theory. What if the world was a gigantic entity? When you use a living creature as a conceptual model, then the earth would have discrete parts, organs, limbs, veins, muscles, a skeletal structure and arteries and so on. What if the Other lands are more essential to this organism’s overall system than other places are, more like the artery than the outlying vein, or a vital organ as opposed to one you can survive without? What if the magic that is so strong over here and that dampens, even sabotages, certain technologies is Earth’s defense mechanism?”

“Kind of like white blood cells?” she said. “If you use that analogy, maybe you could shoot simpler guns a few more times because it would take the immune system longer to recognize them.”

“Exactly. The theory is more poetry than science, but I like it. There’s also a modified Living Earth Theory that knocks out the concept of a world entity. It focuses instead on individual pockets of Other land as collective ‘minds’ that are created from the magic-drenched land and regional wildlife, although these minds aren’t necessarily conscious as we currently understand consciousness. In this theory, the concept of magic acting as a defense mechanism and hampering technology is still the same.”

She smiled, intrigued and delighted by this new glimpse into him and his active, curious mind. “You’re quite the scientific thinker, aren’t you?” she said.

His eyebrows rose and he nodded. “I like to look for underlying patterns and meaning to the world. I do a lot of reading in scientific journals.”

She finished her meal and licked her fingers for any lingering sweetness. His gaze dropped to her mouth, and she felt him harden against her inner thigh. Her breathing hitched.

But he moved her from him, rose to his feet and offered her a hand to pull her upright. She was too sore to be disappointed. She told herself that a couple of different times as she scooped up the crumpled tunic and leggings and the blanket. She went to the stream to rinse away the evidence of their . . . whatever.

What was the word for what they had done? Lovemaking was too pretty. Sex seemed too simple and basic. Mating sounded like it could be too permanent. She bit her lip as anxiety threatened to knock her sideways.

It’s too much to think about. It’s too big. He really did demolish me. I don’t know who that hellcat slut was that tore up grass and screwed her brains out. I don’t know who I am anymore.

She shut down those thoughts before she careened too far out of control. She reasserted the dampening spell. She sighed with resignation as she turned her hands over and looked at them. Predawn was lightening the clearing to gray, and they were just normal dim, human-looking hands.

A real hot meal, a bed, a stable schedule. Going to bed in the evening. Getting up in the morning. The things you take for granted until you don’t have them anymore.

She dragged the tunic and leggings on and sat on the ground to pull on her tennis shoes. She bit back a grimace at their dingy state and added it to her list of grievances. A hundred thousand dollars down the toilet. Three IDs gone. No car. No socks. No underwear.

And what did she do? She went and had sex with the cause of all of her problems. Sure, it wasn’t the yawn-and-make-upa-grocery-list-until-he’s-finished kind of sex. It was a kind she had never even imagined was possible, a what-the-hell-is-my-name-again kind of sex, but sex was all they’d had. She was worse than a fool if she tried to make it into anything else—she was a Wyr-dingbat, and wasn’t that a god-awful sorry concept for a creature.

She yanked her shoelaces tied as she bitched to herself; then she glared at the object of her obsession.

He had rinsed at the stream too and pulled on his jeans and boots. He was on one knee by the dying fire. He laid his hand on the red coals and with one last pulse they went black. She sucked in a breath. So, okay, maybe he was a what-the-hell-is-my-name-again kind of guy.

His head came up and his body stiffened. He twisted to stare in the direction of a light breeze that blew through the nearby trees.

What is it? She drew in a deep breath, scenting the breeze. She caught a hint of stench.

He leaped upright. “Run.”