Page 30 of Snag (Conduit #2)

EIGHT

ZAYA

The first hints of sunrise have lightened the gaps between the heavy drapes as I slowly surface from a deep, dreamless slumber.

On my bed. In my bedroom. The estate is still and quiet around me.

Even the simmer of the intersection point feels settled, content.

I’m curled up on my side, facing the windows and tucked next to a warm, welcoming body.

Rought.

Our evening activities come back to me in a heady rush. My climbing into his lap. My pushing us past the kisses. The desperate need to connect to him after his confession that he had tried to kill himself, thinking I was waiting for him just beyond the veil.

But instead of being embarrassed or feeling hollow as I often do after a sexual encounter, I feel … calm. Even … happy? And maybe a little intoxicated.

I carefully roll over, blinking through the early-morning dark that still shadows the bedroom to take in my lover’s face.

My soul-bound mate. Rought’s expression is utterly relaxed, his breathing measured in sleep.

He looks younger than thirty. The dark-blond hair long enough to curl at the ends falls wildly over his brow.

He’s mostly sprawled on his back, but curved slightly toward me.

The arm nearest me is flung up over his head, resting along the headboard.

One leg is splayed, foot hanging off the far side of the bed.

His other knee is bent toward me as if he’s just rolled away from holding me.

While I’m tangled in layered blankets, Rought is gloriously naked. Miles of naturally tan skin stretches over taut muscle, tattoos feathered — some of them literally — up his arms, his shoulders, kissing his neck.

I quash the urge to turn on the lights so I can take him all in, every minute detail.

The dense patch of curls around his softened cock is darker than his hair, and I suppress a quiet curl of desire and another sudden urge, this time to take him in my mouth and gently suck him to hardness.

I don’t like giving blow jobs. That’s really fucking intimate.

But … how close could I get him to orgasm before he woke?

Okay. Being dick drunk is most definitely a thing.

Plus there’s the matter of consent. Would I want to wake up on the verge of orgasm with Rought’s tongue between my legs, lapping at my clit?

Desire pools between my legs, my nipples tighten, and I swear my aforementioned clit fucking twitches.

So … that’s a yes.

I laugh silently at myself, then carefully untangle my legs from the sheet and duvet that have been rearranged so they cover only me. I’m wearing a simple black silk nightgown with thin straps, which normally falls around midthigh though it’s currently bunched around my hips.

Last night, Rought made me come twice more on his tongue, then pressed me to the bed and fucked me hard and fast before coming again himself.

I can’t remember the last time I came two or more times in succession, and even then that was mostly by my own hand or with the help of a shower wand.

Sleep came easily after that release, even though I’ve never shared a bed with someone before.

We might have only been teens fooling around thirteen years ago, thinking we loved each other enough to try to bind ourselves together by exchanging bites.

But it’s becoming clear that the reason I can’t remember ever really liking sex — other than when driven to it out of the sheer need to touch, to momentarily connect to another person — is because I can’t remember all the years with my soul-bound mates.

My gaze rests on the partially curtained windows, recalling the items collected on the dark-wood windowsill.

Items currently hidden from my sight. I know without asking Rought for clarification that those were, are, tokens of our friendship.

Our love, plural. The broken bracelet, the jar of notes, and the handmade wooden box that I knew, even without a single memory of them, were from three separate people when I first tried to touch them.

No other trinkets are collected anywhere else in my rooms. So what else could they possibly be but gifts from my mates?

Except those gifts are now surrounded by that strange suffocating emptiness, felt when I first tried to examine them.

Is that emptiness, that void, a side effect of our bonds being severed?

Assuming that’s even what happened. Or of my memories being wiped?

Or maybe it’s all a side effect of my dying that first time …

Maybe I lost the soul bonds all on my own. Nothing nefarious about it. Just a tragic side effect of being Everlasting …

Except if that were the case, the same would have happened to my aunt. She was Everlasting too. Did she have to renew her bonds with her chosen every time she died?

Of course, that line of thought brings up the ultimate unanswerable question … does any Conduit ever truly die before the final time? Or do our bodies simply go into stasis until they are strong enough to once again house our souls?

The necklace now perpetually dangling around my neck feels heavy for a moment.

Normally, I barely notice it. I wrap my hand around the cage of gold threads that encases the pink diamond.

The essence contained in the diamond stretches, as if testing its boundaries.

I know it’s filled or fueled with my own essence, like some kind of extra storage or an extra battery …

or whatever is the best metaphor. Because my mortal body isn’t strong enough to hold everything the universe needs me to hold, including the intersection point.

I slide my legs off the bed. I intended to close the curtains before slipping back in to snuggle and maybe even sleep.

But now that’s been overwritten by a pure need to check, to verify, whether I can now touch the tokens arrayed on the windowsill — now that I understand the connection to my three soul-bound mates.

A warm arm wraps across my ribs just below my breasts and gently tugs me back from leaving the bed.

I glance over my shoulder. My quiet laugh dies on my lips.

Because Rought isn’t touching me .

Not with his hand, at least.

The arm that was flung over his head is stretched out across the bed toward me, yes. But his fingers — once again tipped with the sickle claws he manifested last night — are curled as if holding onto something …

Open in slits, Rought’s eyes blaze with a golden-tinged power. His features have sharpened, bones pressing against his skin. He’s partially transformed?

He tugs me closer. Again. But still not touching me. Simply tightening his fingers around … air …

Not air. He’s holding … he’s manipulating —

I blink, shocked and overwhelmed. All the essence blanketing the room comes into focus.

Most of it is settled sleepily around both of us.

Even Rought’s complex, multilayered twist of life force is currently gently twined around him, though a few of his threads stretch beyond the walls of the room. Likely his sibling bonds.

A thick rope of vibrant essence stretches between Rought and me, hooking into his rib cage right through the memorial anatomical heart tattoo etched across his actual beating heart.

Sprigs of what I now know is wild mint and vanilla flowers radiate from the tattoo’s valves and arteries — the scent of my essence.

Shimmering with power and sparkling with starlight, that bond is currently roped around my lower rib cage … before then hooking into my heart …

I curl my hand around the essence tie stretching between us. This is no ordinary thread that might form between us through extended intimacy.

That essence shifts under my hand, as if more energy is being channeled through it.

A fierce possessiveness pulses through my chest, fueled by a raging desire, and softened with … adoration .

I can feel everything radiating from Rought.

It’s overwhelming.

I inhale deeply, struggling to accept it, absorb it, because I’m not at all certain I can block it. I close my eyes for a moment, still holding the bond in my hand but trying to clear my eyesight, and my head.

The connection eases into a simmer of awareness.

I open my eyes.

Rought’s eyes narrow, crinkling at the edges at my reactions. Smugly. Then he bares his teeth.

It isn’t a smile.

This is the beast — the gryphon — who’s awoken to drag me back to bed.

The gryphon who lassoed me with the bond.

All the unusual smugness, all that vehement possession, radiating through the connection— that’s not Rought’s either. At least not at this level of intensity.

I contemplate running, getting some space between us. An irrational response to any beast. But this connection, this revelation, is almost too much because … because …

“The soul bond,” I whisper, needing to vocalize the realization, however quietly.

Energy shifted between Rought and me — new threads forged and anchored — when we made love, strengthening with every orgasm. Perhaps because of the trust and vulnerability inherent in the act of allowing someone to bring you to that pinnacle of pleasure.

But this bond, the bond the gryphon is holding, is otherworldly. This is our missing soul bond.

Or, more accurately, and assuming I’m actually managing to wrap my head around all of this …

It’s another soul bond.

I know . Just touching it, I know . This connection couldn’t have been easily taken from us. Not even through death. It’s constructed out of the very energy that created the universe, that created our souls. The energy that creates our life force, our fate.

The gryphon controlling Rought’s body abruptly lunges across the bed, grabbing me by the back of my neck and looming over me on his knees.