Page 33 of Snag (Conduit #2)

I’m utterly and completely obsessed with my lost mate.

But it feels … right. It feels as it should.

Even when I’m saying stupid shit to Zaya, I feel anchored here.

Finally understanding how adrift I’ve been.

Simply being here, on the estate, near Zaya, fills all the jagged wounds in my soul that I’ve tried in vain to patch with duties and devotion to the club and my family.

I hear something slide quietly and then a light click of metal on metal.

Zaya’s looking at the pictures.

My own gaze falls on the photograph she’s set in the window. Of the three of us and Zaya on the beach — the last moment we four gathered together with love and joy in our hearts. Only to have that joy ripped asunder— irrevocably, I had thought— not even a week later.

I’m not going to be able to ignore for much longer that Rought knows something— multiple somethings, and focused on Reck specifically— about the night we lost Zaya.

She climbs the steps, trailing her fingers along the thick railing.

I don’t imagine those same fingers trailing over me, on me.

I compose my fucking face. And I wait for the sight of Zaya to fill my senses. Each time I see her, it makes me feel as if all the time previously I’ve been looking at nothing at all .

She appears at the top of the stairs like some sort of gothic goddess fantasy. She’s tucked one of the framed photographs under her arm, but I have no idea where she got the gown she wears.

Maybe she fucking fashioned it out of pure fucking essence.

My Tempest incarnate.

The gown is made out of some sort of lightweight, sheer silk.

Dark blue and barely hanging onto her shoulders, with a wide scoop neckline highlighting her fucking delectable collarbone, the dress gathers under her breasts, then hangs straight down to the floor to pool around her bare feet, trailing behind her down the stairs.

A bruise is slowly darkening where her neck meets her left shoulder. The indentations of teeth marks are clear, but the skin hasn’t been punctured. Rought bit her.

I don’t imagine licking across that bite mark, or placing my own on the other side of her neck while Zaya moans needily and comes so prettily for me.

The pink-diamond necklace, radiating all its potent energy, hangs over the neckline of the dress, though Zaya usually tucks it away.

She’s naked underneath.

She fixes starlit violet eyes on me, offering me a playful quirk of her lips as she scans the barrier of books arrayed across the desk between us.

A literal fucking goddess.

My Tempest always felt poised on a potential edge of pure power, but she’s ghosting the footsteps of divinity now.

I’m so, so fucked.

I’m not certain I can even form words. I press my hands to the desk to stop myself from stumbling up from the chair and throwing myself at her feet.

“Rath,” she says, crossing to set the photograph she’s carried up the stairs next to the one already on the windowsill.

I can’t look away from her, not even to see which photo, which memory contained within it, is worthy of being placed next to her first selection.

When I do finally manage to form words … well, one word … it comes out like a fucking benediction. “Zaya.”

Then the scent of her hits me.

My cock hardens further, balls tightening so quickly it fucking hurts. I stifle a growl. She’s all pungent wild mint softened by her vanilla base, but there’s something electric and feral underneath …

My nostrils flare. I draw deep breaths of that scent in, cataloging it.

Zaya glances at me over her shoulder. Her cheeks flush as she takes in my reaction. “The gryphon,” she murmurs.

My eyebrows shoot up in surprise before I can hide that reaction.

Her own eyes widen. Her hands fly up. “No … not like … that.”

My face flames. I’m not certain I’ve ever fucking blushed in my fucking life.

Zaya presses her fingers against her lips, quietly giggling.

She giggles.

Utterly content, utterly sated.

The universe reorders itself around me. Because in this moment, everything is just … right. Just as it should be, between us.

I hold out my hand, not entirely certain that I’m in control of my own limbs .

Zaya steps forward to take it, sliding her palm across mine. Energy shimmers in that touch, prickling over my hand and up my arm.

Then with a pretty pivot and a swish of that wet-dream of a gown, Zaya slides into my lap.

As if she remembers.

As if her body remembers.

The wooden desk chair groans beneath us. But she just perches on my thigh and stretches forward, setting her elbows on the desk to survey the books I have open across it.

“What are you researching?” she asks me, as if we haven’t practically been at each other’s throats for the last few days — all my fault.

I set my right hand on Zaya’s hip, compelled to touch her, anchor her on me, but managing to not simply grab her like a fucking beast would, pressing her full over the fucking desk, ass up, pussy bare for my tongue, my cock.

But it’s a near thing.

“I’m focused on awry manifestations now,” I say, keeping my tone low so my voice doesn’t come out desperate and needy.

Zaya’s essence dances under my hand on her hip, but it’s quiet, settled.

She leans farther forward to run her fingers along the spines of the nearest stack of books, reading the titles, I assume.

I don’t imagine running my hand up her back, then trailing my fingers along her arm. I don’t imagine capturing her hand in mine, bringing it to my mouth to inhale more of her scent from her wrist. Sucking on her pulse point …

I close my eyes and send a silent prayer to the universe.

A thank you that Zaya is with me. Then I look to see what photo she’s brought up the stairs with her.

It’s the one of us heading out to surf. Zaya is walking with Rought, looking at him and laughing, but she’s holding my hand.

Our arms stretch between us, and I’m gazing at her like she’s my entire fucking world.

“Soul bound,” Zaya murmurs, tapping one of the books near the bottom of the stack. “Anything interesting in this one?”

“I’ve made notes,” I say, nodding toward my open notebook even though Zaya can’t see me.

But she feels the movement, or was just waiting for the invitation, because she tugs the notebook closer, reading the open page.

“Near the front,” I say, feeling lightheaded. “I started with it.”

Zaya flips back, pausing in a few places to read. “The necklace holds the power of an intersection point? How is that remotely possible?”

I clear my throat. “Because it hangs around your … the Conduit’s neck. I suspect …”

She glances back at me over her shoulder. “You suspect?”

I take a breath. “I’m still piecing it together.”

She frowns. It’s nearly a pout.

I struggle — hopefully only internally — with another urge to press her over the desk and claim that bottom lip for myself. Then get down on my fucking knees where I belong and worship her pussy for as long as she’ll let me.

I clear my throat. Again. “I suspect that the powers of the Conduit act like another intersection point.”

She blinks. “What? No.”

I scrub my free hand over my face. “I’m still researching. ”

“You think that I’m …” Her tone is suddenly strained. “That the Conduit is another intersection point?”

I gentle my tone. “I think that nine powerful beings went into … stasis, one for each intersection point, while one of their … cohort remained. Perhaps as a linchpin for the protection or barrier spell.”

Zaya huffs. “Nine gods, you mean.”

I shrug. I’ve never been someone who believed in gods and goddesses, but I’m almost certain one is perched on my knee. Zaya Gage will not, cannot be denied.

“Rath!” She laughs in disbelief. “You buy into the whole ‘they laid down their immortal lives to protect the world from outside influences’ doctrine?”

I take a moment to process everything I’ve read in the last day, and everything that’s happened with Zaya — including her returning from the dead. More than once. Then I steadily meet her gaze and say, “I’m getting there.”

She exhales softly. And for the first fucking time in our lives together, she drops her gaze. Thoughtful, but not submissive. “I’m … my aunt believed, but she wanted me to make my own … assessment.”

“I know.”

She flicks those violet eyes up to meet mine, gazing at me as if verifying my truth.

I stay still and as open as I can be for as long as she needs to look at me.

“Did you find any more of my aunt’s journals?” she asks, turning away just enough to reach the journal I haven’t been able to shift, now under a pile of discarded books. She pulls it out.

“There are journals scattered about the shelves,” I say, gesturing toward a nearby group of them. They aren’t a match to the one in Zaya’s hands, and the blank spines don’t give anything away about their content. “But I can’t read them, can’t even open them.”

Zaya hums thoughtfully. Still holding the journal, she settles back against my chest. Her gaze is leveled on the armoire across from us. It’s closed. With no visible latch or keyhole.

I let myself hold Zaya’s hip just a little more firmly.

The armoire radiates an energy that prickles up the back of my neck whenever I’m near it. Or even looking at it, really.

“Maybe the others are in the cabinet,” Zaya murmurs. “Or she skipped years …”

I frown. “Some of Disa’s journals are missing?”

Zaya shrugs, pivoting in my lap so she can pull her knees up and tuck her toes under my thigh. I carefully direct her away from my still semihard cock with a gentle pressure on her hip, but she wasn’t really heading that way.

“I read the latest entries,” Zaya says, thoughtfully smoothing her hand over the front cover of the green leather journal she’s holding. “No hints of whatever took her from the property.”