by Aja James
“How many have there been, horse master?” he continued, nibbling a path down the long column of her neck, all the while grinding his sex against hers through their clothes.
Oh Goddess!
He felt so good. Everything felt exponentially better when it was Cloud.
Her body was melting into a wanton, useless puddle.
“Do you want to ride me too?”
Too?
There was something wrong with that word. With how he used it. But for the life of her, Aella couldn’t put enough brain cells together to figure it out.
She barely noticed when he used one hand to open her trousers and push them down, along with her underwear. She only gasped when she felt his naked skin against hers, hot and satiny, the coarse hair of his groin abrading her tender nether lips where he held her open against him.
“Just another cock to fill you,” he continued to whisper in her ear, his voice gravelly with barely contained emotion as he ran the full length of said magnificent cock along her opening, coating himself with her wetness, rubbing his own into her most private skin.
Something was very wrong.
She heard the warning in the back of her mind, but her body’s inferno took precedence. She couldn’t think when he touched her like this.
“Here I am,” he gritted out on a guttural gasp, aligning the head of his sex with her core.
“Is this what you want?”
Aella shook her head from side to side, but what she said clearly was:
“Yes.”
Her arms tightened around his shoulders, her hands clawing into the shirt at his back, digging into his skin and muscle.
“Look at me and say it.”
Automatically, she obeyed and looked directly into his eyes.
Those anguished, haunted, laser blue eyes.
“I want you, Cloud,” she said with a certainty that made him flinch.
“I want you to make love to me.”
“That’s not what this is about,” he told her, flexing his buttocks to drive the plump head of him unerringly against her pearl, making her shudder with pleasure.
“I know,” she murmured, brushing her hand against his clenched jaw.
“I know I hurt you. I know I was cruel. I’m so, so, sorry. I wish I could do it all differently.”
“I don’t know what—” he started to deny.
But she put her other hand over his heart, feeling it thrash erratically within the cage of his chest.
“Your heart knows, even if you don’t remember. I know. I remember. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Shut up,” he growled again, desperation vibrating in his lowly uttered words.
“Cloud—”
“Shut up,” he repeated, bruising her lips with another hard, punishing kiss.
She could only hold onto him at the force of it. She locked her legs and arms tighter around his body and tried to convey to him through the desperate hug what he wouldn’t let her say.
But he refused to accept her apology, spoken or unspoken.
“You want me, this is all you get. My cock in your pussy. Fucking you until you scream. Tell me no if that’s not what you want. Tell me now.”
She didn’t want that precisely, but she wanted him. She’d do anything to have any part of him.
“I want you,” she pronounced clearly. “I want everything you give me.”
He inhaled a deep breath as if to fortify himself.
And then, slowly, torturously, he pushed inside, stretching her in the most delicious, euphoric way.
At last!
Her body rejoiced at their long-awaited joining. Her vagina clenched around him, milking him greedily, even before he hit home.
No male had ever, would ever, fill her this way. Because this was Cloud. No matter his incarnation, no matter the time or place. She only felt this way because of Cloud.
Aella was too far gone to notice the way he shuddered against her, the way his breath hitched not in pleasure but with pain.
“Ride me, horse master. It’s what you’ve wanted,” he commanded her in that gritty voice, raw with an indefinable emotion.
With a sudden lunge, he seated himself to the hilt.
Aella gasped at the depth of his penetration, the fullness and steel. She was literally impaled against the cavern wall. No one had ever been this deep, reached this far.
And it wasn’t just physical.
She felt his possession in her heart. Her soul.
“Cloud…”
She clenched and convulsed around him just by having him inside of her. The pleasure was so keen she sobbed with it.
“That’s it,” he rasped. “Take what you want. Take everything until there’s nothing left.”
He began to thrust, slowly, deeply, as if they had all the time in the world. As if there was nothing but the two of them against that wall, coming together, pulling apart, and coming back together again.
The angle of his hips was just right, rubbing his hardness all along her inner walls, the thick, plump head of him plowing smoothly through her tender flesh, the ridged veins around his column scraping deliciously against her private channel.
“Good?” he rumbled, maintaining a constant, unhurried rhythm.
“Oh Goddess,” she moaned helplessly, burying her face against his throat.
“Tell me,” he commanded, and slowed his penetration as if to punish her for withholding words.
As if she dared!
“So, so good!” she cried, biting the flesh of his neck to hold herself together, when all she wanted to do was burst apart.
He was perfect in every way. He knew just where to push her, exactly where to stay.
How did he know her body better than herself? Did his soul remember how they were together before? How devastatingly perfect they were.
“More?” he rasped, tilting her hips so that he could go even deeper.
But he maintained that insane, leisurely rhythm, making her convulse around him over and over and over.
She didn’t have strength for more words, so she simply nodded against his shoulder and clutched him tighter.
He was carrying both their weight. She was a flimsy doll in his hands, boneless and fried. Putty to be molded however he chose. All she could do was feel him inside her.
Hot. Hard. Heavy.
Relentless.
“Beg me if you want more,” he growled, one hand reaching up to tilt her head back so that he could stare into her eyes.
“Cloud…” she whimpered, “please…”
He picked up the pace then, ramming harder and faster into her, building toward a zenith she’d never known.
She was blown away by the feelings he stoked in her. She wanted to give herself over to the unbelievable pleasure.
“Look at me,” he ordered when her eyes began to drift closed.
“See me.”
She looked, and she saw.
She saw beyond the beautiful masculine face. The striking angles, shadows and lines.
She saw more than the configuration of unique features, which together made him so gorgeous to her she wanted to weep with joy and lust.
Joy that he was hers in this moment. Lust…well, normally, it would be frustrated lust, which made her so needy she wanted to cry. But right now, it was wholly satisfied lust. So satisfied, in fact, she wanted to weep with joy again.
Most of all, she saw him.
Cloud.
Yun.
Whoever he was, in whichever form, she’d know him anywhere.
Even when she tried to forget, she remembered.
He was hers and she was his.
“I see you, baby,” she murmured, staring deeply into his eyes while he penetrated her in the most intimate way.
His rhythm faltered at her words, at her honest, open look.
“I always see you,” she added, holding his blazing blue gaze with her own.
“My Cloud. My thunder and lightning and warm, passionate rain.”
His body shuddered against hers as he gasped. He turned his face away and shut his eyes.
He picked up the pace again and drove them both higher and higher, wilder and wilder.
Until they flew apart at the same time, ascending toward the heavens.
Over and over, he released into her, Nourishing her with his life force, prolonging the euphoria he wrought upon her body.
Over and over, she clenched and squeezed him, milking every last drop, ever greedy for more.
At last, they huffed breathlessly together, their fluids dripping down their thighs, their clothes plastered to their skin with sweat.
Abruptly, before Aella could get her bearings, he pulled out of her and let her go.
She almost crumpled to the ground, but managed to hold herself upright by bracing a hand against the wall.
She looked into his tight, closed face, her breath freezing in her throat.
He didn’t appear in any way appeased or satisfied by what they just did. If anything, he looked even more furious.
More shaken.
More devastated.
“Cloud…” she said his name to soothe him.
Perhaps, to soothe both of them. Because, despite her body’s overload on endorphins, her heart felt like lead. Her soul was heavy with dread.
She tried to touch his arm, but he flinched away.
“Set yourself to rights,” he muttered, his expression once again impassive, though a muscle in his jaw kept ticking.
“I will lift the force field in two seconds. Eveline is almost upon us.”
“Wha—”
And then, Eveline was literally upon them.
“Oh! I didn’t see you there!” she said as she stumbled back after almost plowing headfirst into Cloud’s chest.
“I swear, one moment you two were right in front of me, and then I turn a corner, and I couldn’t see you anymore. And now, here you are again…”
She looked from one to the other, her eyes taking in their breathlessness and sweat-soaked clothes. Aella’s haphazard hair, sex-flushed cheeks, and bee-stung lips. Cloud’s almost unfathomable state of undress, wild eyes, and disheveled, black mane.
“Ah…is anything amiss?” she asked tentatively.
“No!” they both barked at the same time.
“Alrighty then,” Eveline said quietly.
“I’ll just walk on ahead for a bit, shall I? You two might want to catch your breath.”
Cloud looked stoically away.
Aella looked guiltily down.
Eveline rolled her eyes at the ceiling and sighed.
“Take all the time you need.”
“If Circe is correct, then the human gene is what her spawn lacks. But if I somehow combine his genes with Ariel’s…Her feline genes should help his seed take root. Now, I just need to find him, the Dark One with an animal spirit. But more importantly, for my own purposes, the Tiger King must be located. If the blood from his beating heart has the Goddesses’ spark of creation, the possibilities are endless…”
—From the secret journal of the Vampire Sorceress Circe, added notes in the margin by an unknown hand
Chapter Sixteen
He fucked up.
He fucked her.
And instead of exorcising his demons, releasing all of his pent-up frustrations, he wanted to keep fucking her for the foreseeable future until neither of them had the strength to stand up and walk.
He’d made everything a thousand times worse.
Cloud was wearing the same clothes he wore earlier. In truth, he’d rather not have worn anything at all.
The soft, light-weight material abraded his too-sensitive skin. Every nerve, every cell, was humming with awareness, bursting with electricity. He felt like he was on the verge of combusting right out of his own skin.
She did that to him.
She woke something inside. And now he couldn’t put it back to sleep no matter how he tried.
He smelled like her.
Her sex, his sex, their sex—mingled together, as if even their scents had mated—all over him, seeped into his skin, lining his nostrils, coating his tongue. He couldn’t escape her if he tried.
At least they’d proven that the Cardinal Rule had loopholes as many Pure Ones suspected: two individuals who didn’t love each other could fuck as much as they pleased without the threat of Decline.
He certainly didn’t love her. He didn’t even like her. And she certainly didn’t love him. He was just another stud…
Cloud stumbled as lightning split through his head at the thought, and his ears rang so shrilly his brain felt like a thousand needles had suddenly punctured it.
He shook his head to clear it, rolled his shoulders and kept walking.
They didn’t love each other.
It didn’t mean anything that she was the first and only female he’d ever taken. As much as he hated to admit it, it was simply a lapse of control. He was a sexually mature humanoid male. Had been one for decades. Just because he’d never felt the slightest stirring of lust with any other female didn’t bear significance.
Aella knew how to push his buttons. She always did. She made him angry, aggravated and frustrated.
Emotional upheaval. Sexual frustration. Same difference.
He needed release, and he finally got it.
As such, he didn’t feel the ravaging effects of Decline, and he hadn’t noticed anything unusual about her physical health either.
Granted, having the genes from all Kinds in his body might protect him from the Pure Ones’ curse, but there was nothing to protect her. If Cloud hadn’t been so certain Aella didn’t have deeper feelings for him, he never would have risked it.
Now, his beliefs had been confirmed—she was an itch, and he scratched it. They were nothing more to each other beyond that.
Inexplicably, his heart twisted in his chest, making acute pain radiate throughout his body to every extremity.
Just a cock to fill her…
Just another stud to use and discard…
The pain within grew and grew until Cloud could no longer breathe.
It wasn’t the Decline. He knew it wasn’t. There was nothing physically wrong with him.
Then, why did it hurt so much?
Why did he hurt so much?
At that moment, Eveline’s surprised squeal snapped him out of his own head.
He lunged forward and caught the Seer by her arm just as she teetered over the almost invisible edge of a sharp cliff.
Pebbles slid over as she found her footing again. Down, down, down, they went, into yawning darkness.
And then, after several seconds, they heard a series of soft plops as the rocks hit water below.
“That must be one of the wells,” Eveline said, stepping safely away from the precipice. “A deep one, from the sounds of it.”
“This is where the trail ends,” Cloud noted, projecting his holographic map.
“But…there is nowhere to go from here,” Aella said, looking all around them, briefly lighting up the walls with a flare. “There’s no path on the other side, just solid stone. The only way out seems to be the way we came.”
Cloud zoomed in and rotated the 3-D projection.
“There is a tunnel beneath the water. Just wide enough to fit three people at a time. There.”
He pointed to a tight tubular channel that ran from the bottom of the well underneath the rock to an opening on the other side. It ended in a natural spring and waterfall.
“How long is that tunnel?” Eveline asked rather apprehensively.
“One hundred and twenty yards or so,” Cloud answered.
He looked to the females.
“How long can you hold your breath, and how fast can you swim?”
“Two and a half minutes, three if I’m pushed,” Aella said. “I’m a good swimmer.”
Eveline paled.
“I think I can hold my breath for two minutes, I don’t know. And I’ve never been much of a swimmer.”
“I’ll take you with me. I can swim fast enough for both of us,” Cloud said.
Even in this humanoid body, he could swim like a dolphin and hold his breath for a very long time. In his natural form, he lived in water, land and sky with equal ease.
“Wait…so, we’re going to, what? Dive into the well and swim through the tunnel to the other side?”
Eveline looked from Aella to Cloud.
Aella shrugged and tightened her weapon straps, stretching her arms overhead and arching her back.
“Looks like it.”
She quirked her mouth at Cloud and winked.
“I could use a cold dunking in that water.”
He scowled back at her, as resistant to her flirtation as ever.
“But how do we get down there?” Eveline asked dubiously. “It must be ten stories in height. We can’t see anything. How do we know we’re not diving right into solid rock beneath the water?”
“The water is deep,” Cloud said. “My laser sensors didn’t find any rock. But we won’t be throwing ourselves over the cliff just like that. We’ll have to scale down.”
“But…I hate to be a burden…I just don’t think I…” Eveline bit her lip.
Cloud clapped a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
“I’ll carry you on my back. We’ll be fine. Just hold onto me tight.”
“But not too tight,” Aella growled, shooting possessive daggers at her friend.
Cloud ignored her.
Why did she act so territorial? They fucked once, and now she thought she owned him?
She couldn’t be more wrong. He didn’t do attachment. He never got attach—
The splitting headache was back with a vengeance.
“Cloud, are you all right?”
He felt Eveline’s small hand on his forearm. Aella reached out to touch him too.
He moved away before she could.
“Let’s go.”
He unsheathed the portion of his spear that had the three-blade tip, the edges like curved saw teeth. He took out a long dagger strapped to his boot with the other hand.
“Climb aboard,” he instructed Eveline and got down on his haunches to make it easier for her.
Clumsily, she did so, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck, her legs around his waist, like a small child riding piggy-back.
Her size was about the same. Eveline looked like a tiny, brunette fairy.