by Mima
His face twisted with pain and it was like her heart was connected to him, the way her inner chest ached with the snarl.
“Can’t promise you you’ll be safe.”
“I don’t want false promises.” She squeezed the head of him. Her breath came faster with growing excitement. “But I do want assurance you have control. If I let you into the City, you will only take the darkmages. Not the ones like me, who’ve been tricked unknowingly.”
He grunted. “I only get off on killing darkmages. But I will kill them. No jails. No courts.”
A thrill shivered through her. She’d seen into him and knew how broken he was. Where would this end? When the Queen had decided on a new chatelaine, and her people feared her husband, what would become of them?
He wrapped his arms behind her and drew her in tight to his warmth. Laying her head on his chest, she closed her eyes and marveled at the way his heart beat. Solid. Relentless. No hesitation. “I won’t go live in some cave. The Cities are the battleground I need help on. If your people are so angry with you, do you think you’ll be able to come to me?”
“That’s the plan.” His face was buried in the crown of her hair. He inhaled deep, and deeper again. “Fucking Ash, I’m losing my grip on Bear. He’s headed this way.” His words rushed faster. “You won’t fear Bear.”
There was no need for his order. “Bear is wonderful. I understand only a bit of how he’s joined with you. The two of you belong together.” Here was a lover outside all royal consideration. Here was a warrior unconcerned with her past, a survivor of the darkmages. He was a freed hunter, ready to deliver justice to her City. Lifting her head up, she tried a shaky smile up into his rock-hewn face and slitted chocolate eyes. “Maybe all three of us belong together.” She pressed a small, pursed kiss to the underside of his chin. “I bet we could be great friends.”
His head tipped up to the sky and he shouted. No, he really rather roared up into the daylight of her magescape. When he looked back down, his face was still intent and harsh, but changed around the eyes and nose.
“Hello, Bear-Donte,” she said, delighted. How incredible to have two natures. She forced her hands down to his base, now swollen and iron hard.
“Mate.” He trembled. This great huge brawny being who could break her like a twig trembled at her touch on his erection.
Throwing all common sense away, she laughed, quiet and deep in her throat. Taking a giant breath, she repeated her promise of last night. “Yes. I’ll be your mate.”
He picked her up, one hand at the top of each thigh, holding her wide against his ribs. Donte flickered back to life, the eyes tightening and softening as he slid into Bear while she slid lower toward his hips.
She held to his shoulders, glad to be even with his face and not staring up at his height. “I’m just warning you. This means you’re mine, too. I have a thousand years of protective royal blood in my veins. I hold what I claim.”
His nose curled up as he snarled softly. She wasn’t sure if it was due to her bold words or the fact his tip was slipping into her slick folds, notching in her secret hollow. She hiked her knees up, but he was wide and her heels had a hard time getting around to his ass. Her nails bit into his neck, but she never worried about hurting him. There was no question in her mind that this man could take any passion she could dish out. And she was quite positive of the reverse as well.
“So how does this work? I don’t want you to fuck and disappear as usual. I think we’re coming to an understanding tonight.”
He adjusted his hold to her ass and lowered his grip. “Follow me.”
As he pushed into her body, the world spun around her. Colors swirled and blurred. Pain bit at her entrance and she wiggled her hips. For one heartbeat there seemed to be an immense pressure trying to drive her back, like two magnets unable to meet. He snarled and clamped his fingers harder into her cheeks. His mouth covered hers and she opened, but all he did was nip hard enough to open a sting on her lower lip. Licking across it, he froze, half lodged inside her. His breath caught on an inhale, as if waiting for her reaction.
She threaded her fingers around his neck, arms straining. “I won’t let you go.” Abruptly, the pressure reversed and it was like they were wrapped in a common blanket.
Then the air changed.
When she focused over his shoulder, she was staring at a frothing wall of jungle. Green, deep and dark, tending toward black in the shadows, completely surrounded her, even climbing over their heads in a canopy. They were in a small hollow of flattened ferns. Bear-Donte fell to his knees, and Moriko grunted with the driving push of him into her farthest reaches.
“Where?” she gasped. The air was thicker, more humid, closer. There was a musk in her throat, a male scent.
Tipping himself forward, he laid her down on her back.
Her knees splayed wide, loosening, hips tipping up to keep him close and deep. Licking her lips, she stared up at the wild, intent gaze of her lover’s animal side. “I want you both, you know. Bear, you have to share me.” She wasn’t afraid, but she had been so sure this wasn’t a dream, so how had he dragged her into a different place? Her magescape was entirely in her control, because it was her.
Pressure built in her head. She stretched her neck to one side, trying to relieve it like she could fling water from her ears. Her lungs strained to move the air. Her fingers clawed at his shoulders. “What is this, Bear?”
He was still semi-crouched between her legs, where she lay on an incline, draped on a mound of ferns. That’s how she saw his fingers transform into claws as long as her feet, huge, curving, pointy claws. Vision narrowing, her gaze flew to his face.
He looked … peaceful. His jaw softened and the lines of strain around his eyes faded. “Mine,” he purred at her. Enormous fang-like teeth jutted from both his upper and lower jaws.
Her arms fell from him. The light seemed to darken even more, going from emerald to evergreen. Her fingers scrambled through the frills of the ferns beneath her, twining in stiff stems and soft leaves. She arched her chest up, begging. His body burned in hers, stretching, and she had no doubt it was swelling beyond typical proportions. Changing. Like her man’s spirit.
Amazed at her bravery, sexually thrilled down to her curling toes, she strained to get closer to his hips. Flames popped into his eyes. She’d thought he was a spiritmage, been sure of it. But now dry heat crackled wildly out from his torso, and she knew she was caught up in the unconscious rapture of a firemage.
Her lips curled at the challenge. Good thing she was an earthmage. She hardened her flesh, growled, surged up and tackled him. He fell over backward and she would have laughed if she could have gotten a proper breath. Coughing a little, she swung her hips and stroked him. Dear Earthmother’s Bounty. He was the thickest she’d ever felt. She could barely move on him. It took all her core strength to stroke just a bit, and the pleasure wasn’t anything like she’d expected. Her body shivered, stunned.
Moriko needed sex. She liked it, knew many forms and flavors, and reveled in it. But watching the glowing red eyes of this scarred, half-changed man shed one clear, perfect tear destroyed all her distance, all her skill. She swooped down on him, licking the precious gift away. She jerked, twisted, strained to get him in farther, to move on him, to increase the pleasure.
She couldn’t breathe and the light was so dark she could hardly see. The pressure in her forehead pounded and Bear’s body was mounding with muscle, his thin soft man’s hair thickening.
“Donte, help me.” The word wheezed from her parched throat, but she never stopped plunging her hips. Nothing could stop her drive to finish with this man, here and now.
Not even the visions that started striking her between the eyes. Each came with a burst of white light, moments from his life flooding into her. If this was his idea of helping he was mistaken. They were hard to take.
Scenes of happy camaraderie in a cozy stone maze of rooms were quickly replaced with brooding isolated confusion, of running
along dry mountain ridges and through sparse, strange forests. Then there was a flurry of images of shouting, frustration, shame and loneliness. And in a jungle, watching two men drag a struggling boy up to a stone and disappear, there was gut-burning outrage she understood. But then they’d found him watching and taken him as well.
The scenes of Donte in the darkmage fortress were blurred, indistinct. The pleasure of her delicate, swollen skin throbbing and rubbing on his continued, a dizzying opposite to degradation and horror. Like his bear spirit, she intrinsically knew of it, but couldn’t really comprehend it.
When she came out of the dark memories, Donte was sitting, his strangely misshapen arms curled delicately around her. His face buried tight to her neck and her body thrashed on his, so close to finishing. She saw his homecoming and how much it didn’t matter. Only strengthening the battle against the darkmages mattered. Only surviving to kill them all. That was everything. The reason to continue to draw breath under the crushing weight of sorrow. Determination was what saturated the air in this place, Donte’s magescape.
And there, in the corner, that sharp, stabbing pain, like a bloody knife lodged in her hip, that was the darkmage spell he held tight to, unwilling to lose any tool in the battle against them. Would he ever stop sacrificing himself for his people and let go of the evil he still clung to? It was like a sword without a hilt, a powerful weapon that cut at him as he wielded it. He cried out, clutching her closer, not wanting her consideration of that constant agony. She understood he didn’t want it to touch her and gladly shed her awareness.
He thrust up into her, rocking her body. The curls of his claws brushed down over her chest, catching on her swollen nipples.
“Breathe with me, Donte. I’ll breathe for both of us.” She hardly knew what she was saying, but she was frantic to pull him closer. Her thighs burned where they spread wide across his lap. “Take me.” It was a plea, and an order, and a lover’s demand.
He roared, making her cringe as her ribs rattled and then his jaws locked on the side of her throat. The pain twisted with the constant pressing headache, but it was a punch of adrenaline to her blood, and every muscle in her body wound that much tighter.
Tight was good. Tight was sweet. It was binding, it was locking, it was seizing. She wailed, high and feminine here in this masculine, wild place. Bear’s strange arms were tight around her and Donte was hilted inside her molten body. He swallowed against her thundering pulse and she floated away from all the discomfort into the pure pleasure.
It was an orgasm. She understood that. But the usual burst of ecstasy stretched out, expanding, growing. The pleasure traveled from her clenched pelvis through her trembling limbs and then it inflated in her chest. The churning, eager emotion, the belonging and acceptance, it hurt and she wept, wailing.
Then it was in her head, and she heard the pounding surf she knew so well, but she couldn’t stop pumping her cock. Her flesh was wrapped so tight it strangled, the slick heat without judgment, giving, only giving, asking for nothing, demanding nothing, sharing. Oh Skyfather, the smaller body in her arms was precious, noble. She would care for him, like no one had. She wouldn’t fear him, wouldn’t lose him to those shadows and swirling secret plans he hoarded. Breasts chafed her own tight chest and the blood, so rich, so essential, slid down her throat. Bear was there in a ruffle of coarse, deep fur, rapturously watching, approving, solid, healing.
Green wiped through her vision, and she spat, choking, but her mouth was empty. She’d been inside Donte’s mind. She coughed, arms draped down his back where she hung on his shoulders, while her hips jerked and danced in reflex on the shimmering darts of lightning pleasure. The pressure in her head faded to a tension at the base of her neck, and when his palms soothed down her spine, she sighed shakily.
He pressed a firm kiss to her neck. Heat burbled in her skin and she knew he’d used bodycraft on her. Like most truxet, he could call all six of the elements. But unlike them, Donte was a master of three. She hadn’t known such power was possible. But then she hadn’t known it was possible for a spirit to be strong enough to survive what he had. Her own hands stroked up and down his spine in return. Soothing, reassuring, accepting the mishmash of scars piled there. Glad to be here.
The light had brightened again, and the sound of gentle wheezing came from the side, where a massive lump of brown fur slept on his side. Donte remained inside her, a firm, sweet presence lodged in her hips, but comfortably so. A perfect fit, no longer a burning behemoth. He swallowed. She sighed. And still they held each other, entwined, in silence. There was nothing to say. They were bound. Bonded.
Resting her cheek against his, she breathed deep of his earthy scent. Her father and mother would be absolutely astonished when she claimed him. Her sister would be horrified. She smiled, amused. Her lips wilted as she contemplated the relentless hunter that was Donte loose in the compound. Oh dear. This would take some politicking on her part, since he would be incapable of it.
“I will try to get to you soon,” he said. His voice was a gruff bass rumble.
“I can’t wait to meet you.” Her voice was a throaty rasp, too.
“I’m pretty much the same in the flesh. Might have a few more scars by the time I get to you. Plus a few souvenirs don’t transfer to the magescape.”
“Well I can dress up and turn out pretty good when I try. Maybe you’ll be surprised.”
His hand closed around her hair. “I’d know you anywhere, beneath any mask.”
Pulling against his grip, she leaned back. Taking his face in both palms, she forced his gaze up to hers. “Of course you would. As I’d know you.” His eyes searched hers and held them.
Both of them were so newly full of each other. Moriko had been preparing for this kind of intimacy all her life. It had been the drive itching in her body, to seek out a man with foundations that could never change. Forged in fire, Donte was so solid her earthcraft recognized an immovable, immutable soul.
“You’re mine.”
“Somehow I don’t think you’re realizing the reverse is also true.” She grinned. “But I’ll be there when you finally get it.”
He frowned, an adorable crease between his brows. It made him look positively ferocious, the way his scars pulled at one eye, opposite brow, and the side of his lip. It spun his face into a twisted maze. She’d bedded the handsomest men in the City. But he was the most compelling man she’d ever seen. “I will never tire of looking at you.” Every patch of skin was part of his journey, a record of his beautiful strength.
He grunted. “I’ve got the easier end of that trail.” His fingers toyed in the ends of her hair along her shoulders.
She studied the row of vertical lines across his jaw. Now that she’d walked in his soul, she knew the faces of every man who matched those scars. When they’d brought him to the fortress, there were two hawks in a very bad way. He’d determined to free them, and so the path of survival had been set. Every time one hawk died, they’d send their lizard birds to bring in another or even a few. He hadn’t been able to stop it. All he’d managed to do was give them some comfort of secret companionship, and occasionally steal the power of their deaths so the darkmages couldn’t drink.
She kissed across each of the scars, gently, softly, honoring the responsibility he’d assumed. “You were their protector. All your people may believe you are wrong. But the hawks knew. They knew what you’d done for them. They died knowing you stood for them.”
How many days had he given himself up for torture, just to spare them and extend their life, hoping for some miracle? Dozens. He’d died so many times. They’d brought him back. Believing he was their amazingly rare pet, they wanted to play with him more than drink his death. Time to turn the tables.
Putting the pain of a past she couldn’t change away, she smiled into his intense dark gaze. “I suppose this means we’re married in your eyes, but I’ll still want to stand before the Sacred Couple in our true flesh.”
He grunted again. His
hands coasted continuously down her arms and up again. She knew the feeling. After being so close to him, threaded so tightly she’d felt Bear, the need to touch was an essential hum in her skin. “Talk to me about what comes next.”
“I’m working on getting the leader of the Council, a man named Dom, to convince your Queen we should be together as a political statement.”
His audacity and brilliance thrilled her. “That is a fabulous idea. She’s already ahead of you and has agreed to our marriage. Won’t your people release you now?” Her palms pressed into his chest. Once he’d had a light coating of masculine hair, but now there were only small patches because of the scars. The scars were smooth and warm. He shivered and she knew he’d been so rarely touched with care, even before the darkmages had taken him.
Bear snuffled off to the side of them, a thoroughly sated bringer of death.
Donte considered him. “If I survive and manage to get to the Cities with you, we’re going to have our hands full with him. He’s used to freedom. I have no intention of binding him deep just because we escaped the fortress and I don’t need him to survive their torture anymore. That’s not a clan game I’m willing to play anymore. I’ve got no idea what he’ll be like moving around your humans in my skin. I have little use for manners, and he has no understanding of them at all.”
“What do you mean by doubting him?” She tweaked his nipple indignantly.
His hands grasped her wrist, body taut, looking at her in shock.
“He’ll be fine. He isn’t interested in destruction, only hunting darkmages.” She gave him a tart rebuke.
“And you. He’s into you.” Donte’s voice lowered.
“I’m more worried about your defiance and hostility than I am about him. My position is all about finesse, the dance of politics and the manipulation of egos.” Laughing, she shook her head and leaned her forehead in to touch Donte’s. “This is going to be amazing.”