She grinned. “Promise?”
He grinned back. “Definitely.”
* * *
They headed for Helena’s bathroom, where the lovemaking was slower this time as they lingered over every touch and kiss. When they finally emerged from the bathing pool, they discovered a supper tray had materialized on the table before the bow window, a selection of Sidhe delicacies and wines. They fell on the food with shameless greed, pausing only to feed each other bites.
Later, Helena lay in his warm, muscled arms, listening to the even rhythm of his breathing. He’d fallen into an exhausted sleep after they’d made lazy love for the third time. Meanwhile she stared at the ceiling, listening to him breathe. It was over. The threat of Siobhan had been overcome. Damn it.
Two weeks. They had just two more weeks, and then the month of the Burning Moon would be over. Would Conal want her when the pheromone storm had passed? He’d said he’d loved her, but… What if it had been an illusion created by hormones and shared danger? She rolled over onto her side and watched him breathe, her heart aching, until she fell asleep.
* * *
Helena awoke to the sight of sunlight falling over Conal’s elegant, sleeping profile. And realized she felt oddly… flat. Her body no longer hummed with the ferocious lust that had nagged her for the past two weeks. She knew that feeling. The Burning Moon was over.
But it hasn’t been a month yet! It was the first time she’d ever felt such bitter disappointment at the end of the hormonal storm. Evidently, drawing on the Mageverse the way she had had burned through it, as if her body could produce only so much crazy hormone.
Will Conal even want to make love to me now? She remembered photos of him with all the other women -- the actors, the singers, the models who moved in the same social circles. Women who did not owe their lives to Maeve or serve as her troubleshooter and right hand. Meanwhile, he had a media company to run. They’d go back to seeing each other only in passing. Maybe not, she told herself. Maybe it was real. And it was real, at least as far as she was concerned.
Conal’s lids drifted open, and he blinked at the ceiling. Helena tensed. His head snapped toward her as if he was looking for her, his violet eyes bright in the morning sunlight. A smile broke across his face, dimples flashing as joy broke across his face like the rising sun. “Helena,” he said, sounding relieved. “For a moment I was worried I’d dreamed the whole thing.”
He rolled over and leaned in to kiss her. His mouth felt so soft and tender, her eyes stung. What if he doesn’t feel the same? In her pain, she didn’t kiss him back.
Conal drew back, looking down at her, puzzled. Wondering why her scent wasn’t the same? Wondering why the kiss no longer felt so irresistible, why his body no longer leaped at the touch of hers?
“My Burning Moon is over,” Helena told him, drawing on every bit of her FBI training to keep from crying.
He looked at her, frowning. “Okay,” he said slowly. “I guess that’s a relief.”
She forced a smile and a light tone. “Oh, yeah. It’s good being sane again.”
His expression smoothed, going controlled, remote, the mask he put on for board meetings. “I’d imagine so.”
“I suppose you need to get back to work,” she said, using all her self-control to sound casual.
“I’m the boss. It’s not like they can fire me.” Conal rolled out of bed and started walking around the room, picking up his clothing. His normally graceful movements were oddly jerky as the morning sunlight poured over his magnificent body like honey. “Where the hell is my shirt?”
Oh God, this is horrible. Helena had been afraid it was going to end up like this. She blinked stinging eyes and rolled out of bed. She needed to get him dressed and out of here so she could cry in peace. Glancing around, she spotted something black piled behind one of Maeve’s statues. She walked over to retrieve it and turned, holding it out. “Here.”
Conal stalked over, gorgeous muscle working in his powerful torso. He’d put on his pants, but he hadn’t zipped them yet. “Thank you,” he said with cool courtesy, only to stop in the middle of sliding it on. It hung in shreds.
Helena winced, remembering she’d torn it off him. “Sorry. I got… carried away. I’ll have Maeve conjure you another one.”
“Not necessary,” he said stiffly. “She can just open a gate back to my apartment.”
Damn it, I’m not going to cry.
Conal collected his shoes and socks and put them on, his movements quick, angry.
“What the hell are you so mad about?” she demanded before she could think better of it. “It’s not my fault the Burning Moon is over. I used up all the pheromones trying to snap you out of death god mode.”
His fingers froze in the act of tying his shoes, and his head dropped. His hair fell in a tangled curtain around his face. Softly he said, “You’re right, I’m being a prick. You saved my life and sanity. I have no business acting like an asshole.”
She sighed. “You’re the last man I’d ever call an asshole, Conal. Look, the Burning Moon…”
He looked up at her. To her shock, she saw his eyes were bright, as if he’d teared up. “I realize that you’ve been under the influence of hormones this past week. Maybe you don’t feel the attraction now.” Conal rose from the bed, moved closer, and started to reach for her. Pulled back. “But I want to see you again. I hope you’ll at least let me take you out and give you that tour of New York. The whole thing, not just Beltane.”
Helena stared at him, feeling her jaw drop. “I didn’t mean I only wanted you because of the Burning Moon. I just assumed you wouldn’t want…” To her shame, she felt a tear roll down her face. “I’m not exactly like the women you usually date.”
Conal stared at her a moment, then laughed a trifle unsteadily. “Helena, the women I usually date would’ve run screaming when I turned into a death god. The women I usually date wouldn’t have taken on ten werewolves to save me from being tortured to death.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want you to… Gratitude is not a good basis for a relationship.”
“Gratitude, my ass!” He stepped closer, and his hands came up to cradle her face. “Let me ask you this. Do you want me?”
Helena looked up at him, realizing she was quivering from the emotional storm she felt. His face was hard and intent, a single tear track glistening on his high cheekbone, though he was no longer crying. “God, yes.”
His gaze searched her face. “Do you believe I just pretended to want you for protection against Siobhan?”
“Oh, hell, no. You’re way too honorable.”
His mouth took on a bitter twist. “I don’t see how you can say that, given what I did to Siobhan.”
“Siobhan is a narcissistic, sadistic sociopath,” Helena told him tartly, “and if you hadn’t played the game with her, we wouldn’t be having this conversation because she would’ve killed you and those babies within a week.”
The tight line of Conal’s shoulders relaxed, and she realized Siobhan’s accusations had hurt him. Helena laid a hand against his cheekbone and brushed her thumb over his velvet lips. “The kind of man Siobhan accused you of being would’ve killed her on the spot. Then he’d have killed me and Essus… and gone right on killing. It would have taken Maeve, the Magekind, Cachamwri and everybody else they could recruit to take him out.” Thinking about it, she shook her head. “No, come to think of it, a man like that would already be dead, because Liam have burned him right out of his own brain and taken over completely. Liam has an extremely low threshold when it comes to weasels.”