His thinner, harder lips used hers like cushions, sinking into them, pushing them apart. Despite the frost coating his skin, his kiss felt warm instead of cold, masculine, demanding. Hard-mouthed men had always turned Nick on. If that weren't bad enough, the slow, slick trespass of his tongue about made her come right there. Then they were tasting and sucking and biting, lost in it, as explosive as ice to fire, and everything she'd felt in the forest paled like a maiden aunt, packed its overnight bag and went home whimpering.
He lifted his lips from hers. Do you love me, or him?
"I'm not in love with anyone." Jesus Christ, yes, she was, but until this moment it had been mixed up with wanting and sex and disbelief and being afraid for him. Why did they have to meet like this, in this unreal place, to talk about their feelings? Was he even the same guy who was sleeping next to her? "Why do you care?"
He would love you if I could, Nicola.
"We'll work with what we've got." Something moved under her, biting into her ass. Literally—she could feel tiny teeth piercing her jeans.
I'll never have enough. Neither will you.
"Optimist. Damn it." She rolled over, forcing him onto his back, and reached between her legs to pry something small, green, and snapping from the seat of her pants. She held it up between them and frowned. "A dandelion? With thorns?" She yelped as it wriggled, bending over to bite the side of her hand and draw blood. "Ouch." Disgusted, she flung it away.
Two green hands grabbed her hips. Stay where you are.
She turned her head and saw that the dandelions near her face were uprooting themselves, their fluffy heads parting and flashing pointy little fangs.
So, this was bad news. "I'd better call this a night."
You cannot leave without finishing this.
"I don't want to leave you, but the weeds look hungry." Nick tried, but for once she couldn't force herself awake. "Shit." She redoubled her focus, ordering her body to rouse, but remained locked in the nightmare. "Listen, we're in trouble. You're sleeping beside me. See if you can wake up."
Gabriel sleeps beside you. He turned his head slowly, assessing the area around them. I exist only here, with you.
"I can't catch a break, can I?" She noted that every single dandelion in the meadow had come to life and was going feral. One dandelion bite on the ass wasn't fun. One hundred thousand of them… "Give me another option."
I have none to give. You control these nightlands. You have to burn them.
"I have to burn them." And here she'd forgotten to pack a flamethrower. "With what?"
The Green Man's pine-needle hair whisked across her cheek. It has no name. As Nick stared at him, he seized her hand in his. What you feel when we touch.
Oh, that heat. The fanged dandelions were starting to break free of the earth, and they were all turning toward them. "How?"
Feel it, hold it, use it. He pushed her hands flat against the ground. He held her wrists so she couldn't lift her hands away. Quickly.
Nick didn't like the feeling of the grass under her palms, or the faint squirming sensation that she suspected came from the dandelions squashed under her.
The Green Man's grip tightened past painful, grinding the bones under it. Burn them now or the nightlands will rip us apart.
Understanding precisely what he wanted her to do never happened. Something instead bit Nick's forearm. She dug her fingers into the dirt and felt something rise inside her. It spread, a bad fever, an outrageous climax, both and neither. Whatever it was, it slammed through her arms and shot out of her hands.
Black fire erupted all around, a sweeping dark flash of a circle that blasted outward, reducing every feral dandelion in its path to a little pile of dark ash. The circle of fire kept expanding until the entire clearing had turned into smoldering soot, and then it seemed to blow itself out at the tree line.
As soon as the Green Man released Nick's sore wrists, she rolled away, curled over, and got to her feet.
"What's going to happen to Gabriel?" she asked the Green Man.
He didn't stand as much as he floated to his feet. Gabriel is dead.
"He's sleeping beside me at the inn," Nick argued. "I can feel him breathing. You're part of him. If you could get back together—be one man instead of two…"
The Green Man shook his head. The body lives. The soul dies.
More dream riddles. "Could you for once talk in a way that I can actually understand?"
Ask Gabriel what he dreams. The Green Man turned transparent. Ask what he feeds the many. It is what keeps us apart.
Nick came awake with a gasp and a lunge, and got out of bed. As in the dream, she was soaked from head to toe, although with a clammy sweat instead of sky-bound stream water. She looked back and saw Gabriel's scarred torso, and the tangle of his hair on the pillow. He had turned away from a shaft of light that had filtered through a gap in the window curtains.
Nick decided against waking him, and quietly dressed before getting on her laptop. Using her Midi-Pyrenes maps, she planned out her route to Gabriel's estate in Toulouse. Even with the pit stop, if they left just before sunset and took some shortcuts, she'd get him home by midnight.
Leaving him there with his servant seemed a little cold, but she didn't have to be a stranger. If his place was secure enough, she might ask him to let her drop in now and then. She didn't have many safe places to stay in France. It was probably a very cool house. A lot of wealthy people with extensive properties lived in or near Toulouse.
She'd take him there, say good-bye, and hit the road. Under the circumstances it was the smartest thing to do. She didn't need him in her life right now, and he certainly didn't need her.
Maybe, after she found the Madonna, she really would come back and see him again. See if the feelings were still there.
That's not it. You don't want to let him go.
Blood was going to be a problem; Nick knew that she couldn't keep feeding him hers. She'd stop in Nîmes and see if she could make a clandestine withdrawal from one of the city's hospitals or blood banks.
Nick looked over at the man sleeping in her bed. There was something about him that echoed inside her, as if they were back in her dream. But why did the Green Man insist he wasn't Gabriel? Why did he talk about Gabriel as if he were dead? Did the dream have any meaning? She figured the dandelions represented all the new doubts and old fears gnawing at her; only she could rid herself of them.
She would, too, as soon as she found the Golden Madonna. She'd never be free to love anyone until she did.
Chapter 12
Gabriel woke soon after Nick finished packing, and carefully got to his feet. "Has the sun set?"
"Almost." She picked up the towels Adélie had provided and tucked her scissors into her back pocket before she handed one of the towels to him. "Wrap this around your waist; we're going to take a shower."
He didn't move. "I will be seen."
"As long as you're quiet, no one will come looking." Nick tugged on a long, snarled piece of his hair. "This needs washing and trimming. Unless you're into the homeless-hippie look."
Gabriel allowed her to lead him to the bathroom, but caught her hands when she tugged at the towel at his waist. "I am not completely helpless," he told her. "I can bathe myself."
"We had this argument last night. You lost. Besides, if we share, the innkeeper won't get suspicious about how much water I'm using." Nick removed the towel and started the shower. "You're okay with being naked with me, aren't you?"
"Oui," He reached and with startling accuracy ran the tip of his finger down the hollow of her throat. "I only wish that I could see you."
"I'm nothing special. But you…" Nick admired the width of his shoulders, and the hard, lean muscle under the mottled skin of his chest. The green burn scars didn't disguise how beautifully he was made. "You're very hot, even for a vampire."
"You're kind." He sounded as if he didn't believe her.
"Rarely." She quickly stripped down to the skin before stepping into the small cubicle. "Here we go—step over the edge, like that—there you go. Hair first." Once she had him inside, she reached up and pushed his head back to wet the tangled mane.
"It feels good." He turned his face into the lukewarm spray.
Nick worked her hand through his hair to make sure it had gotten saturated before she tapped his shoulder. "I can't reach you all the way up there. Bend down."
Gabriel put his hands on her waist and knelt in front of her, his mouth level with her chin. "Is this better?"
If only she were six inches taller. "That's fine." Nick concentrated on the shampoo, and getting it out of the bottle and onto her palm. "Close your eyes."
"Soap will not harm me."
This close, Nick felt as if she could dive into his eyes. "They're distracting."
She worked the shampoo through the matted length of his hair and used her fingernails to gently scrub his scalp. Mud-colored foam and water ran down his back, and it took two more scrubs and rinses before Nick got the last of the dirt out.
"You've got a major rat's nest going here," she said as she massaged a handful of shampoo into the clean but knotted length. "I might have to cut it pretty short if I can't comb them out."
"I do not care."
Nick lathered a washcloth with the bar soap and went to work on his body. The dip in the river had gotten off most of the blood and surface grime, but what she had thought was an uneven tan turned out to be another layer of dirt. Beneath it his skin was golden brown where he wasn't burned and dark green-brown where he was.
His hands moved up as his head bent. "Let me have the soap."
Nick placed the bar and cloth into his hands. He dropped the cloth and rubbed the bar between his palms. "Let me look at your back again," she said.
"I want to wash you now." His soapy hands encircled her neck, sliding down and over her collarbone before sweeping up to lather her shoulders. "Lift your arms."