It was like I’d been temporarily possessed.
Wait a minute…
Did you do that?I demanded of Caliel. As I waited for an answer that didn’t appear to be coming, the little creature that had caused all the fuss marched right between Riggs’s legs. He leaned down to pick it up by its shell. It waved four stubby limbs and tried to bite him, which confirmed that light-footed leaping had been an excellent survival strategy. Not so much the girlie scream, though.
“Easy there, little guy,” Riggs said as his grin broadened. “Think this is a turtle.”
I peered closer. “I don’t even know where we are, let alone what that is.”
He waved a big finger in the turtle’s face, which initiated another snap. “We’re in a remote area of the human realm.”
“You know that?” My mouth dropped open. “Did Cara tell you?”
One brow wavered. “She must have.”
The confusion in his tone had me redirecting. “I’ve never heard of a turtle. Is that as big as it gets? He looks fierce.”
His eyes flashed at me. “I doubt he could do more than nibble your toes, but it could be just a teenage one.”
My reaction embarrassed me. Some warrior woman I was, afraid of a fist-sized reptile. But then I considered what he’d said. “A teenage turtle?” Somehow, the concept seemed a bit off.
He frowned down at it. “Why am I thinking mutant? Is that a type of turtle?”
Now I assessed him with more care.
He has lost his memories. Maybe he is also losing his mind?Caliel suggested, less than tactfully.
I ignored him and went with it. “A teenage mutant turtle?”
He looked right at me with an unreadable expression—then, with exaggerated care, he bent to set the turtle down. When he straightened, he rubbed his hand over his skullcap.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeppers, I’m fine,” he answered. His hand dropped to his side, and he sketched me another smile. “I’ll see you back at the treehouse.”
As I watched him go, I was not yet ready to move. But then, suddenly, I was. Or not me, exactly. The grumpy Gryphon who lived inside me took over. He walked our body past the turtle, around the bend, and toward the showers.
Without seven feet of muscular distraction, I now saw that the shower was a series of ledges projecting out over a creek, with water falling from above. The hot spring flowed around the rock ridge and no doubt filled the pool on the other side, where Riley and her team bathed.
Caliel dropped the fur, feather, and scale clothing off me, and stepped us into the waterfall.
It was sinfully warm and wrapped around us like a lover’s embrace, flowing over my shoulders. Twin rivulets leaped off my nipples, while more flowed around my breasts and over my midriff to tickle between my thighs.
Close your eyes.Caliel’s voice was a seductive purr, and my heart leaped in my chest as I obeyed without question. I ached like I had a fever, and I wanted—what did I want? I sought a meeting of mind as well as body. For my spirit to feel embraced as well…
The pulse of emotion from within wrapped around my heart and sang to my starving soul. My hands moved of their own accord—no, it was my inner partner. I’d yielded him this control,and now, he took it. He bent my body to pick up a soaproot from where it rested upon a small ledge. Fingers not quite my own massaged it through my hair and over my face, the sensation cranking every nerve to exquisite awareness. Then the hands cupped over my breasts and rubbed the soaproot over stiffened nipples until I gasped, arching into the pressure.
In the disassociation, my fingers’ touch was as erotic as though another stood before me, tracing their way over my breasts, along my ribs, and across my midriff.
You are so beautiful.His mindvoice was a hoarse whisper, as though he were driven to speak as the fingers drifted between my thighs, and then deeper…
It might be my physical hands that were there, but Caliel used his healing ability to light up every nerve ending I possessed. It was as though I had a dozen lovers, not just one mental specter, running tongues and teasing fingers over my face, lips, throat, breasts, and midriff.
I opened for the real fingers, eager, seeking the slick slip and slide, the friction and non-friction over the most sensitive of places. They circled and rubbed, and then, with the thumb working over the most sensitive part, the fingers eased inside.
My knees almost buckled, and I craved fulfillment with near-silent desperation.
Come for me, my little wind dancer.The fingers, real and imagined, increased their tempo, and my body tightened.
