“Will you say it again?” she whispered.

“What?” He murmured it against her skin.

“What you said…when you caught me.”

He nodded against her collarbone, kept kissing her, making his way down to her breast. Tendrils of lust unfurled in lazy pleasure everywhere he touched, but she managed to give him a push.

“What?” he asked. “You meant now?”

This time she slipped from his grasp in truth, giving him a splash directly in the face. She evaded him for a solid three seconds before he caught her. He lifted her up against him, guiding her thighs around his hips, his arm banding around her back as he stroked into a deeper part of the pool, where her feet couldn’t touch but his could, where she depended on him to keep her above the water. Or take her under, as their desire might dictate.

His cock slid against her sex. “Put me inside you,” he said, low. “I want to feel your hands.”

When she gave his testicles a little scrape with her nails, he bit her neck in response. She slid her fingers over him, her knuckles brushing her mound as she adjusted and he helped, shifting so she could angle him into her. The moment she was in the right position, he took over, tightening his arm around her back and hips, closing the distance and sliding in deep.

She hummed at the fullness, the near-painful stretch swiftly replaced with something else. He kissed her forever, taking a nip at her tongue as he withdrew, pushed back in.

He could get her aroused with only a look, but as hard as he was, as insistent, she was aware she could do the same, with no more than a lazy, hip-swinging walk into the water.

“Mikhael…please.”

He lifted his head, those intriguing eyes studying her. So much unknown about him, but she had a feeling he’d open that treasure room for her now and again, whenever she desired, because she and she alone had that key. His mouth curved, and she liked the way it looked. It was pretty damn close to a smile. He had a sadistic side, but this wasn’t that. It wasn’t the torment of making her beg that turned him on. It was the fact that she would do it for him, that she trusted him with that side of herself. It flat-out turned him on when she begged, driven by raw need, lust…love.

“Please.” She curved her arms around his shoulders, bringing her breasts up against his chest, pressing as close to him as she could get, one body, one heart, one shared soul. “Please. Tell me. I’m yours.”

He shuddered. Exultation swept her, the knowledge that this ownership went two ways and would grow deeper and more binding with every passing moment.

“I love you, Raina. Always and forever. You have my heart. You’ll have it long after you’re gone and I’ve grieved you thousands of years.”

The thought of him grieving made her heart hurt, and she locked her hands around his neck, pulling herself up to kiss him back fiercely. “I’ll be such a pain in your ass, you’ll be happy to be rid of me.”

He touched her face, not smiling. Not saying anything. So she caught his hand, held it tightly. “I’ll never be gone,” she promised. “If Isaac can have another life, then so can I. I’ll come back to you again and again.”

When she saw raw emotion in those eyes, her heart cracked open entirely, giving him everything. “I love you, Mikhael. Always and forever. Through every life, now until eternity.”

He shifted his hand to her nape, thrust, withdrew, took himself into her deep and slow, making her thighs tremble. She squeezed down on him, giving as good as she was getting, and was rewarded by the quiver in those powerful hands.

“Come with me,” she said. “Together.”

The climax made the water ripple all around them. Their cries echoed throughout the chamber, surrounding and reinforcing the pledges they’d made here. The pleasure of it brought tears to her eyes again. Unashamed, she baptized his shoulders with them, until he pulled her head back and kissed every one of them away.

THEY LAY ON THAT FLAT SERIES OF STEPS, HALF IN AND half out of the pool, the water lapping along their hips as she curved into the side of his body. He was stroking her hair.

Raina pressed a kiss into his chest, played with the silken line down his abdomen. She wanted to swim some more, so she sat up, stretched, then stroked off into the water. It was shaped like a figure eight, so she made a couple passes, pausing under a waterfall to let the warm, salty water splash over her face, her breasts, before stroking his way again.

He was up on his elbows, watching her. He made quite a picture, sprawled out like that. His cock was stirring again, a wonderfully promising reaction. She didn’t want to leave here until they’d done this at least two more times. After all, the law of three was very important to witches.

“I just had a thought.”

“I bet.” She gave him a sultry look. “Want to come bring that impressive thought over here?”

“Nymphomaniac.”

“Sex demon,” she corrected.

“Same thing.” But he slid fully into the water, lazy and dangerous as a crocodile. She held her ground until he was there in front of her, just his head above the surface of the water, for he stayed on his knees so he could wrap his arms around her hips.

“What was your thought?” she asked, watching his gaze course with heat over her breasts.

“If you come back to me in every lifetime, I’ll have to court and romance you every time. That’s a lot to ask of a man. It’ll be like Titanic, times three hundred. No pussy is that good, even yours, and—”

She managed to push his head under. She was pretty sure he allowed it, but it was satisfying all the same. Then she shrieked as he came up under her like a swamp monster, carting her over his shoulder, suffering her pinches and slaps on his fine muscular ass until he sat her on a ledge along the water’s edge. When he slipped back down to his knees, it put him at an ideal level, such that when he crowded himself between her thighs, his mouth ended up in a very strategic place. In no time she was gasping and writhing, arched back on that flat rock.

When she climaxed, her screams echoed off the walls again, and he left her limp, sated and tamed…for the moment. His capable hands brought her back into the water, letting her twine around him. They waltzed slow, languid circles together.

“You all right?” he said against her hair. It touched her and made her smile, realizing he was worried he’d overdone it, because she was quivering. She definitely wasn’t at full strength yet. But when she was, she’d turn the tables and make him weak as a baby. She swore it to herself, but then the playfulness melted away before a stronger emotion.

“I would pursue you through any life,” he said against her hair. “You’ll never lose me.”

She closed her eyes, held tighter and believed him with all of her woman’s heart. A Dark Guardian didn’t lie. Ever.

Especially her Dark Guardian.