Page 43 of Demon and the Raven

“Help me open the windows, will you?”

“Love, there are a fuckton of windows in this house.”

“I know, but we’ve got to get it aired out, and there’s no time for me to go room to room in this mausoleum and get every corner.”

“You had me do it in my old house too,” he pointed out.

“Yes,” I agreed, gesturing him over to me. “But this has to be more of a forced cleansing than a gentle one.”

“What if there’s something scary outside?” he asked.

“Is there?”

“Not that I could see,” he grumbled.

“You just don’t want to open the windows,” I goaded him.

“You’re right, I don’t, and I definitely don’t want to stay here and close them all again afterward,” he said belligerently.

“We only need a few open,” I soothed him as I began the process.

He helped, he always did, and when he returned, I took his face in my hands.

“Oh,” he whispered, his eyes closing as I kissed him. After a moment, I wrapped my arms around his neck, and he opened for me so I could rub my tongue over his, pushing, tangling as I felt the connection spark between us, the magic that flowed back and forth, a living pulse.

One of his arms slid around me, tight, pressing my body to his, as his left hand cupped the back of my head so I couldn’t move away. He wanted to be kissed.

We stood there together, warmth and love gathering around us, drawn there, like sitting around a fire on a cold day. I felt the house itself respond, savoring our closeness. I also felt a pulse as though it was trying to breathe, to get its heart beating again, but it was being smothered, suffocated by something else.

After a minute, he parted his lips from mine, staring down at me with darker eyes than usual, pupils blown.

“You were worried when I was outside alone.”

Perceptive man. “Yes,” I croaked out, licking my lips, noting that his gaze was instantly there. “Stay here with me.”

He nodded. “I bet the basement in this house is creepy as hell. But I will go down there if you want me to.”

I shook my head, smiling as he slipped a hand over my ass. “No, now we just need to get the front and back doors open, and along with what we’ve already done, that should be enough.”

“Okay,” he agreed, giving me a last kiss before stepping back, or trying to. Hard to do with my arms still wrapped around him tight. “You gotta let go.”

But I needed the connection. “One more.”

Deep, husky chuckle that I loved because it was so very smug, his certainty of my love there in the sound. “It’s a hardship,” he teased before he bent and kissed me again, taking my mouth, my tongue, and I felt the power in the man as he clutched me to him.

In the middle of uncertainty and a mystery, I needed the grounding. When everything was whirling around me, the bedrock of Lorne’s love was even better than being home on Corvus. Because Corvus calmed the river of magic that flowed through me, but the human part of me remained fearful and on edge. Lorne could soothe my magic, as it connected to that which lived in him, and then reminded me that I was loved as well. The primal pull to be close to him assuaged my fears, which in turn helped me focus on what I could control.

When I eased back, he followed, keeping our lips sealed together, and when I laughed, he smiled as we parted.

“We have to cleanse this place,” I told him. “Because I think there is something in here that needs to be driven out.”

His brows furrowed. “Like what? A ghost?”

“No. Something alive.”

“Okay,” he whispered, glancing around. “That’s not scary at all.”

“It’s going to be all right,” I assured him. “We can do this. We can purge whatever is in here.”