by Kay Hooper
“Thank you,” he said. “That’s much better. No pain or stiffness at all—”
That was when she leaned forward and pressed her lips to him.
Instantly she felt him react, his muscles tightening in a purely sensual response, and she had the impression he wasn’t breathing at all. Her hands stroked upward to shape his shoulders, probing the hardness of bone and sinew and flesh. She rubbed her cheek against him slowly, her eyes half closing.
“Serena …” His voice was low, almost harsh.
“You said you didn’t mind me touching you,” she said softly.
He cleared his throat. “And you said we weren’t ready for this.”
“That was then,” she said. “I think we’re ready now. At least ready to try. Don’t you?”
Merlin was trying to think, which was virtually impossible, since she ended every sentence by pressing her soft lips to his back. It felt wonderful. Better than wonderful, it was utterly maddening. “You know I want you.” He expected to feel that familiar jarring sense of conflict within him, but this time it was no more than a faint uneasiness far in the back of his consciousness.
Serena drew away from him, which made him turn swiftly to stare at her. She slowly unlaced her vest, pulled it off and tossed it aside, then pulled the tail of her green blouse free of her pants.
Without thinking about what he was doing, Merlin got rid of his boots and socks. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. She looked oddly demure kneeling there on the fur cloak flung across the pallet, with her fiery hair loose around her shoulders and her expression so solemn, but the firelight danced in her vivid eyes like a pagan invitation, and her slightly parted lips were moist and enticing. While he watched, she dispensed with her boots and socks using wizardry, but began slowly unbuttoning her blouse with her slender fingers.
Merlin moved closer and rose on his knees, grasping her shoulders and drawing her up, as well. Serena felt her hands touch his hard, powerful chest, and then he was pulling her into his arms and hers were around him, and the most incredible sense of relief swept over her. She hadn’t been sure. Bravado aside, she hadn’t been sure.
But when his mouth closed over hers and she felt the hardness of his body against hers, she was. He was very much with her, she could feel it; there was no curtain being drawn in his mind because she was a woman, something to dread and be wary of. And she thought he knew that his need was like hers, emotional as well as physical.
Their bodies, pressed together, strained to be even closer, though they hadn’t moved apart long enough to rid themselves of what remained of their clothing. Her fingers clutched at his back, and his swept down her back to curve over her buttocks and bring her lower body tighter against his, while their kiss deepened sharply.
Serena suddenly, fiercely, wanted them both to be naked, and because she wished it, their clothing vanished. She tore her lips from his with a gasp, shocked by the stark sensations of her breasts flattened against his chest and her belly rubbing the swollen hardness of his member as he held her and moved sensuously against her.
His eyes, liquid black, burning, gazed into hers, and it was Serena who tried to struggle against this, not physically but emotionally, all her fears wild in her eyes. For so long she’d thought him beyond reach, and it had been safe to love him, love Merlin, without risk or vulnerability, but now he was Richard, flesh and blood and the heat of need, and it was terrifying to think of giving so much of herself to him….
Merlin could see, as well as feel, her emotions, and her panicked defenselessness made him reach out with an instinct far deeper than any his ancestors had instilled in him.
“Don’t, Serena, don’t be afraid,” he murmured, both his hands lifting to surround her face, his thumbs gently smoothing the hot skin over her cheekbones. “You’ve been so brave and strong and clearheaded through all of this, even when I gave you so many reasons to hate me. Don’t leave me now, please. Fight the way you always have. So stubborn and fierce … my Serena …”
She caught her breath on a little gasp, and as quickly as it had surged inside her the trepidation was gone. She was left with a necessity that was almost frantic, a hunger for him that held all the intensity of a storm trapped under glass for too long. It felt as if she had wanted him forever.
“Yes,” she whispered, all her senses once more focused on the overwhelming contact of their naked bodies.
Merlin kissed her, his mouth urgent, and eased them both down into the softness of the fur-covered pallet. Leaning over her, kissing her again and again, he touched her silken stomach and felt it quiver, then slid his hand slowly up to cup her breast. She jerked and made a little sound, and he raised his head to look down at her. Her eyes were wide and fixed on his face, startled and wondering, color and heat blooming over her cheekbones as his thumb brushed over her nipple.
He kissed her once more, his tongue slipping between her lips to touch and play with hers until she answered the intimate little caresses eagerly. She made another little sound, this one of disappointment, when his mouth left hers to trail over her face. He touched her eyelids and forehead, her cheeks and nose and chin, almost as if he were using his lips to memorize her every feature. Then his mouth moved down her throat, and she felt the shattering sensation of his tongue slowly tracing the little heart with which he had marked her as his.
He was kneading her breast gently, and when his mouth finally reached her nipple and closed over it, she moaned and clutched at his shoulders, her senses nearly drowned by the waves and waves of burning pleasure.
For the first time in his life, Merlin’s perceptions of this act were completely unclouded, unaffected by anything except his senses and emotions, and her responses. The hunger inside him was clean and sharp, rising, filling him with a pulsing ache as alive as his beating heart. He had never known desire could be like this, so overpowering, and he gave himself up to it with a joyous sense of freedom and gratitude.
It wasn’t simply a female body he needed so badly, but Serena. Her skin was heated silk under his touch, her luminous eyes gleamed up at him with a hunger that matched his, and the little sounds she made touched all his senses with fire. There was something almost familiar about making love to her, as if some deeply buried part of him had always known how it would be.
He caressed her breasts until they swelled and blushed with passion, until she was breathing as quickly as he was, and then he moved his hand down over her quivering belly, his fingers sliding into red curls, parting her to find the soft, hot flesh already throbbing for his touch. She cried out into his mouth and bucked upward in surprise, but he held her securely and stroked her in a steady, quickening rhythm.
Serena was slightly astonished when her thighs parted for him so eagerly, when her hips lifted and moved to his touch, when her body seemed to give itself over to him completely with utter naturalness. But before she could follow the self-preserving instincts all humans shared and try to regain control over herself, it was too late, far too late.
The wash of feelings was vast, tremendous, engulfing her. Pleasure and heat and a rhythmic pulsing and pleasure, and she heard herself cry out … maybe it was his name, because he came to her then, joining their bodies in a merging so stark and powerful and absolute that it felt utterly right. There was pain, but it was fleeting; and when the pleasure returned, she forgot there had ever been anything else. And even in the instant of naked vulnerability when she knew that everything she was lay exposed to him, she was utterly fearless because she loved him.
Merlin couldn’t take his eyes off her, drinking in the beauty and mystery of her. She was so giving, so honest in her responses; he could see her every emotion in her eyes. He watched her desire build until it took her beyond herself, until he took her beyond herself, saw her wonder and joy. He saw her brief pain and watched her forgive him for causing it. He saw her hunger rise again, this time even more intensely, and he was with her now, completely with her, their bodies moving together with urgent intent, driven
toward the release every part of them demanded.
Serena cried out wildly, surging beneath him, her eyes going wide and dazed, and her beautiful features stamped with a profoundly female satisfaction. Her strong inner muscles tightened around him in spasms of pleasure, and Merlin shuddered, groaning, as that shattering caress sent him over the edge.
And even then, even in a moment so primitive and overwhelming that it completely blocked coherent thought, even in that instant of being beyond himself, Merlin whispered her name.
FOURTEEN
He had absently conjured another blanket for them, because neither wanted to move long enough to get under the ones beneath them. Serena’s cloak supplied soft and sensuous bedding, and the fire only a couple of feet away provided warmth (since it was a wizard-created fire, it would burn on exactly the same until it was told not to), so they didn’t miss being covered until the heat of their bodies ebbed.
Exhausted and wildly happy, Serena lay close beside him as he lay on his back, her head pillowed on his shoulder and her fingers sliding through the thick black hair on his chest and probing the skin beneath. He was so hard, she thought, yet it was a hardness her body and all her senses welcomed eagerly. She felt one of his hands toying with her hair, stroking it and smoothing it over her back, and his other hand came up to where hers was touching his chest. Their fingers twined together.
He hadn’t said anything since they had come back to themselves. A little anxious, she closed her eyes and concentrated. It wasn’t actually cheating, she assured herself, trying to do what she had managed twice before, because she wouldn’t be able to read his thoughts. But if she could perhaps get a sense of his emotions …
She saw the front edge of the lean-to and, beyond, the darkness of a sky that was cloudy. She felt that alien sense of a different body with greater muscle and mass, and she felt utter relaxation, and she felt—
You’re cheating Serena.
Startled, she opened her eyes and lifted her head with a jerk to stare down at him. He was smiling. She cleared her throat. “Well. I was curious. Sue me.” Before he could do more than lift an eyebrow, she added, “How is it that you can say things to me in your head even though I can’t read your thoughts?”
“Because I’m a Master wizard,” he replied simply.
“Oh.”
“What were you curious about?”
“Now, what do you think?”
The exasperation in her voice made his smile widen, and he reached up his free hand to stroke a wayward tendril of bright hair off her cheek. “I think you’re beautiful.”
Serena would have protested—if only weakly—that the reply hardly satisfied her curiosity, but his hand slid to her nape and pulled her head down so that he could kiss her quite thoroughly.
“I think you’re incredible.”
She felt the words murmured against her lips, and almost whimpered in pleasure when the tip of his tongue glided along the sensitive inner surface of her bottom lip.
“And I think I’ll never be able to get enough of you, even if I live a long, long time.”
“You can have all of me,” she murmured, her lips clinging to his and her tongue darting out to answer his maddening little caress. “I want to give you everything.”
He kissed her, his mouth fierce, and his eyes burned into hers when she finally raised her head. “If I’d known it would be like this, I would have fought like a demon to have it long ago,” he told her, his voice strained with feeling. “To have you. There was an empty place in me, and I didn’t even know it.”
Serena could feel the heat building in both of them once again, and she decided her curiosity had been satisfied far enough for the moment. Merlin obviously decided the same thing, because he was kissing her again, shifting them until she lay on her back, pushing the blanket off them. Her arms were around him, her fingers probing the muscles of his back, and her mouth was eager under his.
“I don’t want to hurt you again,” he said against her lips.
“You won’t.”
Rain woke them hours later, after midnight, the sound almost unfamiliar because it hadn’t rained the entire time they’d been in Atlantis. It was a steady rain, not light but not a downpour, and they lay close together watching it.
“Another portent of destruction?” Serena wondered in a hushed voice.
“No,” Merlin replied softly, his arms tightening around her. “Just rain.”
Serena listened for a while to the soothing sound, wide awake now. They had eaten hours ago, a rather sumptuous meal complete with a bottle of old wine, and then had made love again before falling asleep. She felt rested, and boneless with satisfaction, and she didn’t want to move a muscle, because he felt so wonderful against her. They were lying together like spoons, both on their sides as they faced the brightly burning fire and the rain.
He moved slightly, his right hand drawing the blanket up around her shoulders, and she found herself staring at the reddish mark of the owl with which he’d been branded at the gates of Sanctuary. She wanted to try to remove it, but since they were planning to return to the city again, she knew she couldn’t. Instead she caught his hand and brought it to her lips.
His fingers twined with hers “What is it?”
“Nothing. Just … I hated it when they marked you like that.”
“It’s all right, Serena.”
“Yes. But I hated it.”
“How did you feel when I marked you?”
“Strange. Somehow connected to you. I think I needed that when you went up to Varian’s palace and we didn’t see each other for so long. The more I learned about Sanctuary, the stranger it seemed, and I needed to feel … anchored.”
“I’m glad it helped you. I can remove it now, if you like.”
“No. No, not yet.”
He rubbed his chin gently back and forth against her head, silent because he sensed she had another question to ask. Finally, abruptly, she did.
“Why did you mark me with a heart?”
Merlin smiled to himself. “Why are you asking me only now?”
“I don’t know. Because there wasn’t time before, I suppose. Or because I didn’t think about it until now. Why did you, Richard?”
In a musing tone he said, “I used to watch you at parties without your awareness, watch the way people were drawn to you, the way their faces lit up when you smiled at them. And everyone brought their problems to you, because they knew you’d do something to help them. It worried me sometimes, your kind heart. I’d been taught all my life that a wizard was detached, that he couldn’t let himself be … dragged down by the troubles of those around him, but I watched you, and over the years I realized your heart made you a better wizard.”
After a moment she said, “So that was why you marked me with a heart?”
His arms tightened around her. “No. I didn’t mark you with your heart, Serena. I marked you with mine. Something you’ve had for a long time.”
Serena didn’t move. She didn’t even breathe. She didn’t dare. She thought this might be as close as he could come to telling her that he loved her, now at least, and her eyes closed briefly as she tried to endure the shattering wave of emotions that washed over her.
With desperate calm she finally said, “You’ll accuse me of being prosaic again if I confess that I decided you chose a heart simply because no other male wizard here would have.”
“That,” he said in a thoughtful tone, “never even crossed my mind. Go to sleep, Serena.”
The rain began to come down harder just then, and Serena closed her eyes, smiling, listening to that and feeling his heart beating against her back. Without even realizing she was going to, she drifted off to sleep.
“Where do you suppose Roxanne and Tremayne are?” Serena asked early the next morning. She was standing near the edge of their little clearing, looking down on the valley as the last of the Curtain dispersed in the sunlight.
Merlin came up behind her. “Why don’t you reach out an
d try to find them?” he suggested.
When she’d tried to do that in the past, Serena had never been able to gather anything except vague impressions, but she made the attempt now because she was curious. She closed her eyes, since it helped her to concentrate, and sent her senses winging out over the valley.
Sounds. Bird sounds, she thought. The smell of wet earth and the whiff of sulfur that is always present in the valley. What was that? A hit of motion? No … a child’s laugh….
Behind her Merlin lifted his hands and put them gently on her shoulders.
Serena gasped and opened her eyes, startled. She could feel Merlin’s power spreading through her body, warm and tingling, and an image promptly formed before her eyes. The image wavered as her concentration faltered, but then she focused intensely, and it was as though she were looking at a hologram—three-dimensional, alive—suspended in the air several feet away.
Roxanne and Tremayne were walking slowly, his head bent attentively toward hers, an expression of shy eagerness on her face as she talked to him. They were holding hands. Holding hands. And a little girl rushed up to them—Kerry—talking rapidly, a doll held in the crook of her elbow. Tremayne seemed more amused than annoyed by the interruption, and Roxanne’s delicate face softened as she answered the child. Then Tremayne put his free hand on Kerry’s shoulder and they kept walking, and Roxanne turned her head to look up at him so seriously, talking….
“Damn, doesn’t this channel have sound?”
The image vanished instantly.
Merlin took his hands off her shoulders and sighed.
Serena turned to face him, grinning a little. “I know. I’m such a trial to you.”
He bent his head and kissed her. “Yes, but the advantages seem to outweigh the disadvantages.”
“Seem to?”
“We’ve only been together nine years, so it’s a little early to be sure,” he explained gravely. “As an Apprentice wizard, you have a long way to go.”