There had been so much between them from the start, mostly chemistry, mostly lust, but also something else. Something terrifying and exhilarating that had grown with each passing moment to overshadow even the lust and the wanting and the pleasures of the flesh. It was a pleasure of the soul and of the heart. But was he seeking to kill it now, when it had only just begun to burn so hot and grow so strong between them?
“I won’t let you hold it back from me.” She came to the decision the moment the words were said.
“You can’t make me love you.” He squeezed her tighter even as he rejected her.
She laughed, feeling stronger of a sudden, feeling better than she had in years. “I can and I will. I already have.”
“I don’t want to love you.”
“I don’t care.” She squeezed him back, clutching his broad shoulders as the light of her love enveloped them both.
And there was light. Tons of it, stunning, bright gold. Emanating from her to him and back again. It was the light of her power and her strength, and for the first time she was glad of it. To see it, to know it, to feel it pulsing through her and him and between them like a river of warmth.
If she could heal all wounds physical…perhaps she could heal this one wound of his, this spiritual scar that he carried deep within. She poured her love into her power, let it feed the light, let it push with all her might into him and through him.
“I love you,” she said. “I do. I would have never thought it possible. But you are mine. And I am yours. And no matter what happens, this will not change between us. You called me your goddess, and now I will adjure you as such. Heal, my Tryton, heal and love me. No matter what comes, no matter to any of it, we will have this and it will be enough. It will be more than enough. It will be everything and all things. Perfect and forever. I know it. Let your heart heal. Give it over to me. Love me.”
She felt a hot, wet splash on her neck and knew that he wept. “I feared it. The moment I saw you, I feared it.”
“Fear it no more,” she said solemnly, meaning it, letting her power fade until it was no more than a lingering warmth. A memory.
“I can’t hurt you. I can’t risk it.”
“We already have risked it, don’t you see? Both of us. I love you already. For you to deny me now would hurt me far more than if you put a knife in my chest and left me to die. Let it go, the fear, the pain, all of it. I won’t let you hold this back from me.”
He pulled back to hold her face in his hands and meet her gaze dead on. His eyes, wet with tears and fierce with emotion, burned down into hers like twin flames, marking her to her very core. “Anymore, all I want is to be inside of you. Forgetting everything but you surrounding me, taking me deep, making me one with you.”
This is so powerful, she thought, and realized she’d said it aloud. “I can’t control it.”
“I never could. I should have seen it.” He swooped in for a kiss, parting her lips with his fiery hot tongue.
Thunder rumbled, a low, warning sound in the background.
A raindrop splashed onto her head and she gasped into his mouth. She jerked away in surprise, looking up above them, astonished to see the rain cloud hovering above their heads. A slow, drizzle of rain fell to wet their hair and skin.
“What the hell?” She breathed. The water tasted like him, crisp and fresh and magical. It fell on her face like a thousand moist kisses, like endless caresses, like tears.
“You make me lose control.” He shuddered against her. Something like an electric shock sparked between them, her hair stood on end and her skin sizzled, and the rain cloud disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. “No one has managed to accomplish that in at least ten thousand years,” he grinned.
She nearly choked. It took several tries to find her voice. “So I guess this is one of those May-December romance things.”
“No. This is one of those forever romance things.” He kissed her again and she forgot everything, his age, his power, everything but him.
The feel of him. The taste of his kiss. The scent of him—like a rain shower on a warm, spring day—it dominated her. His all made her feel weak and captivated, and she was. He was just too much at once, filling her up, flooding her through, until she was entirely his, unable to hold anything back. She didn’t want to hold anything back.
She’d never felt so whole as she did there in his arms.
A blink and they were in his bed. He’d done that Traveling thing again and she’d been too lost in his kiss to even notice. God he was sexy when he used his magic—and for the first time she wanted to do the same.
Letting it gather, letting it build, was easy. It was so warm. Like his touch. Like his skin. It swelled within her, lighting them both up in a halo of gold that wasn’t unlike his hair, that wasn’t unlike his eyes.
“I’ll make you forget her, forget the pain, forget that you’ve loved anyone but me,” she swore.
He pressed his mouth to the pulse in her neck. “I’ve never loved anyone.”
“But I thought—”
“I have seen love die. I feared it, that’s why my caution with you. But I won’t let that happen to you. I swear it. I could not bear it.”
There had been such pain in his eyes before…perhaps he had not loved the same as he loved her—whether he said it aloud or not she knew he loved her—but he had definitely loved someone in the past. Niki knew it as surely as she knew her own heart.
Her power roared inside her head.
“Don’t force it,” he breathed into her Adam’s apple, pressing tiny kisses there in between words. “You’ll give yourself a headache.”
Niki almost laughed. His conversation sounded so bland, when for years she’d been fighting with all her strength just to control her magic. How could he be so sure, so blasé, so wonderfully calm?
Because he was the same as she. He had such powers. And he knew how to command and master them. He was far, far more powerful than she could even imagine…but he only lost control when he was in her arms. It made her wet and heated, just knowing that she had this power over him.
A blink and they were nude. She didn’t remember taking her clothes off, and she didn’t know how he’d done it, but it didn’t really matter. His kisses zeroed in on her breasts and that’s all she could think about. All she could feel. Her nipples, long and hard, seemed to beg for his attention. He slurped one into his mouth and suckled it like a babe. The other he pulled and pinched delicately with his fingers until it ached deliciously.
Niki gasped and moaned and strained beneath him, wanting more.
“Feed your power, let it blossom,” he said, licking her nipple to stabbing hardness before moving on to the other and taking it into his mouth greedily.
Her magic flared to life and burned her skin, just as his kisses did.
She moaned.
“That’s it,” he moved down, spreading her legs with the incredible breadth of his shoulders. He reached for one of her hands and brought it down between her legs. “Spread you punani, let me see your flower open and wet and mine.”
She almost came, just hearing his words. Her fingers opened the plump lips of her labia, and she watched him watch her. His eyes never left her, searing into the heart of her. He seemed entranced. And god knew she was, just seeing him look at her like that.
“Such a beautiful pussy. So pink.” He took the tip of one forefinger and traced it down the wet valley of flesh she held open for him. He pressed that tip into her, pushing in deep. “So tight. And hot. And wet,” he leaned in and breathed over her clit.
“Oh god,” she gasped.
“I was worshipped as a god more than once over the course of endless time,” he murmured. “How fitting that you are my goddess, to share in that with me.” He pressed a full, lips-teeth-and-tongue kiss to her quivering flesh. “Proud and powerful and brave. A warrior queen. With the finest pussy in all the world, and in all the history of the world.”
He opened his mouth over her, sucking
her, licking her. His finger pumped in and out of her in a slow thrusting that stretched and burned her but did not fill her nearly enough.
She wanted his cock.
He sucked nosily, the sound of it wet and earthy. If a sound could induce an orgasm, it would surely be the sound of his mouth eating at her pussy. He was incredible, shameless, voracious. She would have reflexively clamped her legs shut, but he forced them wide and open with his hands. Niki was stretched and splayed open for his pleasure and there was nothing she could do about it.
There was nothing she wanted to do about it. She lifted her cunt up into his face, urging him to bury deeper against her. He moaned against her and she nearly screamed. His teeth brushed over her clit and she did scream.
“I would make you mine,” he said against her, almost a whisper that she could barely hear. “Make you like me.”
“Then do it,” she said, unafraid.
“You could die.”
“What is love, if not the only real thing worth dying for?” she whispered, knowing it for the truth.
“I won’t love you.”
“Too late,” she smiled.
“Feed your power, hold it tight,” he commanded, a new urgency taking him, taking her, consuming them both.
He rose and flipped her over onto her stomach on the bed in front of him. He pulled her back against him, spreading her legs so wide it nearly hurt, hooking them back behind him as he sat there on his haunches. “You were born for this, for me,” he said, sliding his cock hard into her from behind.
Niki screamed and clawed the flesh of his imprisoning arms until they pinkened and bled.
Tryton threw back his head and groaned, a long and animalistic sound that made her quiver with fear and excitement.
His cock stretched her so wide, filled her so deep, that she was sobbing with sheer, mad, painful pleasure. Uncontrollable and wild, it swelled and washed through her, as did the hot, hard length of him. There was no escape. No reprieve.
It seemed forever that he came into her. Forever until he rested at the heart of her. “I’m going to do it.” He seemed amazed at himself. “I’ve made my choice.”
She could only shudder and shake, impaled on his flesh and helpless with emotion.
“Make your power strong. It will carry you over,” he warned, moving within her now. “Don’t let it go. Don’t let me go.”
“Don’t stop,” she begged, mindless to all but his thrusts within her body, his strong hard body moving at her back.
The rub of the bedcovers burned her elbows. The hard skin of his legs burned the insides of her knees and thighs as he rode her, deep and steady at her back.
The slap of their skin was the only sound for a long while, but for the thunder of his power.
Suddenly, he leaned forward and shuddered over her. He held his arms clutched tight around her middle, moving her upon him with such easy strength it made her feel as helpless and weak as an infant.
“I don’t love you,” he mouthed at her neck. “I can’t.” His lips traced over her shoulders, neck and back, as hot as a trail of fire across her skin.
She felt the tickle and press of his fingers move down to seek out her clit. Her head fell back against him. He pressed hot, hard kisses to the side of her neck, that vulnerable expanse that seemed to have some secret connection all the way to her womb.
With each kiss, each rub of his fingers, each thrust of his sex into hers, she shuddered. She moaned. She sobbed and cried, and still he gave her more.
Suddenly he pushed her away, back onto the bed in front of him.
“I cannot do this, I can not!” he yelled the protest, voice anguished and beyond hopeless.
And Niki knew how to become a Shikar. It had been there for her to know all along, a mystery that was no mystery at all. She felt it in the mountain of restraint he had to exert over himself. Felt it when he tried to withdraw from her body after one, incredible last thrust.
No. She would not let him pull back now.
Niki shoved back at him with all her might, trapping him inside of her as she trembled on her hands and knees in front of him. She let the light of her power flood through them both, setting free all the last remnants of her control.
Tryton screamed like a jungle cat over her, his protest a wordless roar that deafened her.
Niki felt the wash of his come fill her, burn her, drown her. The next breath and she was there with him, caught up in a release so unlike any before it she began to fear that—yes, after all this, yes—she might die. She could die. She was dying.
And it was exquisite pleasure, this death, this end.
Cold.
Oh god…it was suddenly so cold she couldn’t catch her breath. Pain and freezing cold, it filled her up. Her head ached with explosive violence. Even as the last vestiges of her orgasm slipped from her fingers, she was swallowed up in a horrible, shattering pain that ate the world.
But she felt his arms around her. Heard him calling her name. And the pain receded. Her magic was a light that flooded her vision. She was blind with it, blind with heat and illumination and lingering pleasure-pain. Her nostrils were filled with the scent of warm rain, her mouth choked on the taste of tears.
An electric shock raced from her brain to the rest of her body. Stars danced in the light before her eyes. She realized that all this time she’d had her eyelids closed.
She opened them.
“Welcome back,” Grimm whispered down at her from his perch at her bedside and disappeared.
Still buried deep inside of her, still holding her tight with her back against his chest, Tryton wept.
Chapter Thirteen
“Tell me about yourself,” Tryton breathed against her breast hours later as they lay together in his bed, warm and safe, cocooned in a billowing cloud of his plush coverlets.
It had taken this long to get her down from her high. After being turned from human to Shikar, caught nude and in flagrante delicto with Tryton by the stoic Grimm—who’d been summoned to save her—and realizing that nothing was ever going to be the same again…she felt a little excited tension was understandable.
“I still can’t believe you called Grimm in here,” she repeated for what must have been the hundredth time.
“Leave it,” he clutched her tight. “He was the only one I knew who could try to save you.”
“Did it never occur to you that I might have made it back on my own without his help?” she asked. “I’ve told you, I don’t think I really died at all.”
“You weren’t breathing. I couldn’t chance it. I had meant for him to be gone when you opened your eyes but—”
“I woke up sooner than you both thought I would. He didn’t do anything to save me, he didn’t have to, yes I know, we’ve been through it over and over again. I saved myself.”
“I couldn’t have chanced it. If I had known you would come back on your own, I wouldn’t have called for him. But with all the other women—”
“None of the others were using their powers when they changed, were they?”
“I don’t think so,” Tryton admitted.
“I know so. I wasn’t going to die, Tryton. I just know it.”
“I was afraid,” he admitted, pressing his lips against her nipple. He was resting full-length atop her, as if he was afraid she might bolt if he didn’t hold her down. “Everything I’d ever feared had seemed to come to pass…and it was, all of it, my fault. Just as it had been in the past.”
“Tell me about that, the past.”
He stilled against her. “Not yet. I asked you first. Tell me about you.”
She would have grinned at his evasion if she weren’t so tired. “What do you want to know?”
“Who are your people, your family? Where did you come from? What’s your favorite color, your favorite food—everything.”
She did laugh then. “I don’t think I can stay awake that long.”
“Then just tell me a little bit,” he pressed. His hands were petting down
her sides, as if reassuring himself that she was still there, still safe, still in one piece.
“Well,” she sighed, smiling, playing her fingers through his hair, marveling once again at how soft it was. “My mother was only fourteen when I was born, so my grandma raised me mostly. My mom, she had a lot of bad luck. My grandpa was the world to her and when he was killed in a robbery at the gas station where he worked, she just lost it. She was only twelve then. We were more like sisters when I was growing up than mother and daughter. She was into drugs and shit like that, making all the wrong choices, screwing up her life like so many other kids in her position.
“Being poor, the odds are stacked against you from the start. Especially where we grew up, in the south, in Savannah. My grandma, she tried to right in me all the things that had gone wrong with my mom. She taught me how to be strong, to be proud of who I am. To know what I want and how to work hard to get it. She was really strong.”
“It sounds like she loved you very much.”
“We were all close. My grandma had two sons besides my mom, younger than my mom, and she raised us all herself. She made us keep up our grades in school, encouraged us to further our education after graduation, even though she couldn’t afford the bills that the grants and loans didn’t cover. She worked hard right up to her death a few years ago.”
“Did they know about what happened to you?”
“No. I never told them. I had moved away to Boston by then anyway, and I only saw them on holiday and reunions, so it wasn’t too hard to keep it a secret. My uncles went on to join the military, to become officers, to get married and have kids of their own, and my mom died of an overdose shortly before my grandma.”
“That is a tragic tale.” Tryton soothed her with his hands and his voice.
“No.” Niki shook her head, unable to let him think that. “I had a really good life. My mom had it rough, but she made the choices that got her where she ended up. Don’t get me wrong, I loved her, but my grandma taught me that you have to work hard to make it, and my mom dropped the ball long before I arrived on the scene.”
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