Gates of Rapture(10)

Still kneeling, she once again looked down at him. “The time has come. I have to leave today. Now. I can’t explain it.”

“I have seen part of my future. If you could wait, it would be so much safer for me.”

She couldn’t hold back the tears. “I feel the need to fold to Leto deep within my bones. I have to go.”

“Grace…” His voice was all breath and tremor as he extended a shaking hand to her.

“Why did you enter the third pool?” she asked.

His lips curved though his brow was crumpled in pain. “I thought to change the future. But today, probably because I entered a pool before I should have, I saw something about my destiny and about Leto.”

Grace put a hand to her throat. “What did you see?”

“That you were right: Our destinies are intertwined with Leto’s, and I have a task to fulfill.”

She feared asking the question, but she had to know. “What task?”

His body relaxed. “It doesn’t matter. You must do what is right for you, and I’ll go where I’ve never gone before—” He actually smiled.

She squeezed his hand. “And where would that be?”

“Where my conscience leads me. How’s that for a change?”

The next roar struck, still something only Grace could hear. She rose to her feet. Casimir turned to her and strained against the invisible binds. Grace saw Beatrice nod. The restraints disappeared, and he grabbed her ankles. She looked down at him. “I must go.”

“I want you to know that you taught me about love. You loved me when you had no reason to. I will never forget that.”

She backed up, and the weakness of his grip caused his fingers to slide over the tops of her feet and across her toes. She turned and moved as if in a terrible dream back across the gardens that separated the pools from Beatrice’s home.

“My boys,” he called after her. “You must promise to always be part of their lives, no matter what happens. You must promise.”

She stopped for a moment. She had been a mother to them all this time, and now she had to leave. Mind-to-mind, she sent, I will return and we will talk, very soon. I will not disappear from their lives. Please stay here, Caz. Please stay and live. Complete Beatrice’s program. I fear more than life itself that you will die if you follow me.

I have my own path to follow, he returned.

She couldn’t bear it anymore. She lifted her arm and folded, one dimension, two, then three, traveling through nether-space straight through the pathway that Leto’s roars had created for her, a shining blue pathway, like his eyes, lit and glowing, calling, begging, all the way from Mortal Earth.

When she arrived, when she materialized, the room was dark except for one small window. She adjusted her vision, turned, and saw a madman, wholly different from what she had expected. Leto was naked and so changed physically, she didn’t recognize him at first.

He was also fully aroused, hunched, and moving like an animal, a beast. His long hair swirled around his shoulders as though it were alive. But he didn’t seem to see her, so she called to him. “Leto.”

He turned, his eyes widening. He seemed to freeze as he stared at her in disbelief. His nostrils flared then he closed his eyes, squeezing them shut as if in pain. His body shuddered.

Only then did the forest scent of him rush at her, forcing her to step back and back. This was so different from five months ago. She didn’t understand what she was seeing or what was happening to him, what he had become. But the scent she recognized.

Oh, dear God in heaven, that scent!

She breathed in, taking a lung-expanding breath, drawing in the sweet, yet bitter and very male tendrils of herbs and fir resin. Desire moved through her, a wet wash of sensation. Her nipples hardened and puckered almost as though she had already orgasmed.

Her knees felt so weak. She ached fiercely and suddenly.

She felt a breath on her neck and opened her eyes.

The beast was in front of her, leaning down from his increased height, and sniffing. His breath came in hot swaths over her chest. He licked at her neck. His hands found her arms and pinned her then slid up to her shoulders and in a quick harsh movement ripped her gown from top to bottom.

“Leto,” she whispered, but her voice sounded hoarse. She didn’t know what it was she meant to say to him: to tell him to stop or to keep going, or to pause, or to take her.

Yet none of it mattered.

She also knew that he wasn’t in control of himself and that the floor was made of stone. It seemed absurd, but just as he pushed her down—in a movement so hard that she was flying backward—in her sensible Grace way she folded a mattress beneath her, the one she had slept on in Beatrice’s house.