She scrambled to her feet and bolted for the door. Instead of running into the ice and snow, into the humiliation of the crowded town, she grabbed the jacket she wore for short trips between houses and swung into it. She tied it tight and then grabbed at the waist of it for the double-fanged dagger she carried to protect herself from unexpected trouble when she traveled. Never had she thought that trouble would show up in her own home.
She wrapped her fist around the center hilt, right between the fanged blades, and readied herself for a fight. Harrell was as furious as anyone she’d ever seen in her life. He’d always had a temper and a nasty mean streak, but she’d never realized how truly evil he was until now. He charged her, a towering wall of muscle and wrath that dwarfed her petite frame and strength. Regardless, there was no hesitation as her blade caught Harrell up under his bottom ribs…only the purest sorrow she’d ever felt.
“Ah, damn, baby,” Reule said roughly, pulling her up to his lips and snapping the flow of the memory to a halt just as she recalled the surprising ease with which sharp metal slid through boneless belly, allowing Harrell’s momentum and his own weight to send her nearly elbow deep into his gut.
Mystique took his kiss with greed and desperation. Feeling his affection in that moment, after knowing what she’d done, was like water at the end of a desert. His culture, his role in life, made the taking of a life in defense of himself and his people a practiced experience. Justified and principled in its fashion. It hadn’t been like that for her. She’d spent her life saving and healing others. It had been a psychic tragedy to be forced into that position. It should never have happened.
“But he was a prince. The son of the Middle King, Knar, and he was used to having his way,” she said with soft, hitching words against his lips. “I was in shock and couldn’t move from the scene of my crime. An act of high treason. They dragged me into the square, stripped me, whipped me, and hung me by my ankles for two days, exposed to the populace and the elements. On the third night, someone, I don’t know who, cut me down, threw something on me, and flung me over the back of a horse. They led me beyond the village and sent the horse running. All I remember of him was what he said just before he slapped the horse forward: ‘Only fools kill a child of the gods.’ I guess he thought killing me would anger our gods.”
“Damn right it would have,” he said fiercely as he rolled her beneath his weight and kissed her deep enough to burn fast fire over her face and throat. He did it to drag her back hard into the present. He did it to remind her that she was his now, under his body and under his protection. Reule forced her to recall every nuance of all she’d achieved and earned, how that past was as good as a world away, and how deeply she was loved.
She’d survived insurmountable odds. Passing out of the mountain range untracked, reaching the wilderness, losing her horse in a moment of exhaustion and crawling into a cold shelter where she had, no doubt, intended to die. How she’d done it, Reule would never know. He didn’t think she’d ever truly know either.
And it no longer mattered. She’d clarified what was important. The difficulty would be in helping her cope with the trauma of the memories. It was no wonder at all that she’d repressed so much.
“Now what do we do?” she asked him softly, her wide diamond eyes haunted once more with the weight of sorrow. “Knar ordered me beaten, humiliated, and exposed, but I was also…” She swallowed hard. “To entertain the guards for a week before I’d lose my head.”
“Lord damn me to hell,” Reule swore, his long, dark lashes closing against the imagery those words stirred up with violent vividness. How close he’d come to never knowing her! Never loving her! Somewhere, he realized, there was a Yesu man to whom he owed his entire future. A man who had stood against a bloodthirsty town and an irrational king, risking death to set an innocent free. To send Reule a gift precious beyond all mortal measure. “What will we do now?” he repeated hoarsely. “Now, my foundling love, you will close your eyes.”
She drew her brows down in perplexity, making him smile gently as he rubbed the wrinkled knot away into smoothness with affectionate fingers.
“Close your eyes, kébé,” he said again, his purity of tenderness washing over her. She obeyed him, allowing him the liberty of touching his fingers to her eyelids and lashes. “You now have to reconcile the life of Sylva, the spirited Yesu healer, with Mystique, the apothecary and love of my heart. In the end, the combination of these women will become my Prima. My beloved wife. My soul mate for all eternity. Find her, sweetheart.” He lowered his lips to hers, unable to keep from kissing her. The craving grew more powerful with every second, so he indulged, drawing on her deep, passionate mouth until she was breathless and flushed. He drew back, his taste buds tingling with the dazzling flavor of her. “Find her and give her to me.”
It was as though she’d been waiting forever for his permission to do just that. Her hands sank into his hair with deep enthusiasm as she dragged him back down to her lips.
“Roll,” she whispered before seizing his mouth. Amused, he obeyed the command instantly, rolling over the bed until she was sprawled over his body and he lay beneath her, open to a spectrum of possible demands. She wasted no time. “I want to make love to you,” she whispered against his mouth. “I want to find who I am while you are thrusting inside my body.”
Reule groaned soulfully as her words sent fire whipping through him, making him urgently hard. Hell, he was always half aroused around her anyway, so it wasn’t so big a leap. Her body sang a constant song to his, but hearing her speak so blatantly was like an aria of the erotic.
Mystique got onto her knees, straddling his hips as she drew her skirts out from between them. He felt the thin rasp of silken undergarments as she notched her hot sex directly to his and rubbed herself against him through the layers of fabric. She reached for his hands and drew them along golden cloth and warm skin, over her breasts, corseted waist, and hips. Here he latched on to her, gripping her as she rocked and rubbed teasingly against him, making his body rage with need.
“Damn, woman, you’re asking for a fast, mean tumble,” he gritted out through his teeth. “There’s no lovemaking to that.”
“Oh, but there is,” she insisted in an insidiously sexual taunt. She slid her hands over his chest through the fine fabric of his shirt, the lack of skin-to-skin contact maddening to him. “If this is fast, then the issue of what woman I am is resolved fast, and what more loving a thing could you possibly do for me than to push me past all this uncertainty and confusion?” Her hands drew low down his belly, all the way to the laces of his breeches. She lifted her bottom and slid both hands between their bodies, fingers running sure and wicked over the pulsating steel of his erection. Again, the fabric separating them was pure torture. Reule twitched and groaned under her assault, his hips rising into her palms. She made a delighted, hungry sound and shaped him harder to her hand.
“I’m open to negotiations,” he confessed on labored breaths. “Damn me, how do you get me to this place so fast?”
She leaned forward, licking his lips in sexy little increments as she answered him. “Oh, because I want you so very obviously and I’m not shy about it. Because you know just thinking about you has me wet and ready. Because your cock loves the hot, tight haven I provide for it.”
She honestly was pushing it to the extreme, and she damn well wasn’t pulling any punches, Reule thought furiously as his blood rushed and pounded in his ears. His fangs exploded in his mouth, demanding attention and appeasement. His chest felt too small for his racing heart.
It wasn’t his right, their unspoken agreement giving her all the power, but in a very real sense, it was all about her power. Her power to drive him out of his rational mind. He barely knew how he managed it, but he’d dumped her over, freed his aching body from the confines of his clothing, and torn through thin silk to expose her in a matter of several insane heartbeats.
She thwarted him at the last minute, making a final stand as she rolled o
ver and presented him her bottom while she rose up on her hands and knees. He’d not taken her like this as yet, so the choice was perfectly in theme with her shock treatment. He knew even as he tossed up her skirts that this was lunacy. She was burning emotion with wildness and sex, her heart raving for dominance and the feeling of being in complete control. She was more than willing to sear through his self-command to get it.
And a more willing sacrifice she would never find.
He didn’t even test her readiness, something he normally would not neglect. He took her at her word and her scent and that was all. He seized himself in hand, gripped one of her teasing hips, and drove into her so hard and fast that her knees came right up off the mattress. Her angled hips sent him straight to the depths where her cervix lay and he felt the sweet connection right to his toes. Apparently she did too, because she went reflexively tense from head to heel as she cried out her pleasure. She tossed back that mane of bloodred hair and shuddered. It drove Reule to the brink of sanity to be so inundated.
The next few minutes were a blind blur of deep, slow penetrations that tightened his testicles with pleasure and made her writhe back against him with every pivot of his hips. He felt her body quivering around him lightly, and then he reached around her thigh and slid skilled fingers through damp curls. The combination of touch and thrust fell instantly into a strange staccato rhythm that worked in perfect concert to steal her reason. She came hard and fast, strangling his aching shaft in unbearably beautiful pulsations, her low, keening cry humming against all of his senses wildly.
And that was when she took her control back.
He reached to draw her toward his craving fangs, but she reached around and stopped him with a hand on his chest. She was panting hard for breath, looking back at him through a wild fall of red, and she gave him a positively evil smile. Or so it seemed to him when she said, “Not yet.”
And then the little minx pulled away from him and tumbled herself right off the bed, leaving him there on his knees, aching and stunned as he watched her try to find balance on wobbly legs.
She had apparently decided to get undressed, he realized with a sort of horrified humor. He fell back onto the bed with a pained groan as she stripped with an impressive alacrity. When she crawled over him less than a minute later, he’d just barely eased away from the agonizing pressure in his body that came with an unfulfilled need to culminate. His shirt was stuck to his body in a wash of sweat, the rest of his clothing little better off. To his immense relief, she decided to strip him next. He was all-out chuckling in seconds as her little body crawled industriously over his, pulling here, tugging there. Parts of her were waved under his nose, some of them damned provocative as she turned this way and that to get access to boots, ties, and better angles. By the time he was naked, Reule thought it was impractical for a man to survive such torturous arousal. One more touch, one more flirtation, and he would explode…blood or no blood.
And so, of course, she wrapped her hand and her mouth around him as though she were a starving waif and he a feast. She kept every inch of her body below his waist, all out of his reach save her head and her hair, both of which he gripped with numbing blindness. Her mouth was hot, wet nirvana, dipping in time to the jerking impulses he had to thrust his hips. The ecstasy of it drove through him in hard shards until she had him shouting out curses he hadn’t used since he was a boy. Anything to keep from begging her, which was apparently what she wanted to drive him to. Just when he was ready to become violent and drag her into submission by her hair, she released him and sat back on her heels so she could run hot, slow crystalline eyes over his hard, hurting body. She leaned forward just slightly and blew on his wet cock until he growled rather savagely in warning.
“What is it, baby?” she said with a low, sexy laugh meant only to add to his torture.
“Get your teasing little ass up here,” he snarled at her fiercely, “or I’m coming after you.”
She was kneeling between his knees, so it would be easy for him to capture her. But he wanted—no, he needed her to come to him. Needed her to finish exorcising whatever demons were driving her to do this. If it meant swallowing back some aggressive male pride and urges, than so be it. He loved her. It was as simple as that.
“What would you do if you had to come get me?”
Damn. He could tell by the tone of her voice that the idea of pushing him to that point was exciting to her. Was that what she wanted? To drive him to near or actual violence? No. Not after what she had been through, surely. Or…maybe because of what she had been through? Was she playing with fire just to see what it would take to get herself burned?
“I’m warning you, kébé…”
“Oh?”
She sat between his ankles, leaned back on her hands even farther out of reach, then slowly placed one foot outside of his left thigh and one foot outside of his right. Reule only needed to rise up slightly on his elbows before a glance down his body led him to the sight of gorgeous pink petals of feminine flesh. She was so wet and ready that he could see it. Hell, he could practically feel it, that’s how badly need throbbed through his body. And all she did was watch him with blatant curiosity.
“I have half a mind to put my mouth on you and make you come until you pass out,” he swore vehemently. “But I can’t.”
No. He couldn’t. He’d been tortured to the edge of orgasm a minimum of three times, and his body was screaming for release. So he reached down and grabbed her ankle, making sure she wasn’t going anywhere he didn’t want her to this time. He looked at the delicious sight of her a moment longer and she obliged him by lying back completely and arching her back and hips up from the bed. By the Lord, this bite was going to be his choice, he swore to himself. It was going to turn her inside out. He wouldn’t let go until she had screamed herself numb.
He lurched forward, awkward and raw as he dragged her ankle up to his shoulder. Her brows lifted and her smile widened as he did the same with the other for the opposite shoulder. Her legs flexed, her thighs spreading to welcome him, the sight was too pretty to bear. He watched himself slide against her, watched the swollen head of his enflamed cock notch into that wet, snug entrance to her body. He forced control on himself and entered her by slow, excruciating inches. He even watched as her tight little channel swallowed him up, every single bursting increment.
And then the beautiful little bitch threw back her head, offered up the pounding pulse of her throat, and showed him exactly who was in control. The need was on him like a storm and his breath rasped violently as he fought to focus. But it was hopeless. She was determined to have her way, even if she had to cut herself to get it. He was too primed, the deep-seated throbbing of his body an agonizing thrill.
In an instant, long white teeth were sliding deep into the line of her throat until her breath stuttered and gasped with instantaneous pleasure. Because his lips were against her throat, he felt her cry vibrate against them as her body burst all around him. First with the convulsions ripping through her that struggled to squeeze the essence out of him, and then the explosion of hot, salty-sweet blood entering his mouth.
Mystique’s entire body was locked in orgasm, the astounding bliss of it crackling through her like an electrical conduction. She doubted she would ever get used to the instant crushing impact of pleasure she felt when those sexy teeth drove into her, milking her as her body in spasm was presently trying to do to him. She felt Reule swallow against her and knew such a sense of amazing satisfaction that she was breathless. But she knew she had asked to witness Reule at his most volatile by manipulating him so. Then she felt him lurch deeply forward into her, grinding himself down so deep toward her womb, she felt the rise of a counter wave of release from a completely different place within herself.
And then Reule sank his teeth into her a second time, deep into the line of her shoulder, and she shattered. She made no sound, her vocal cords frozen in spasm just like everything else, as she crested over and over. By the time he bi
t into her breast she was barely conscious enough to feel the sudden searing heat pulsing from his body and into hers. At last, he found release in deep, satisfying rushes that made him cry out from low in his throat and chest. It seemed to grip him in endless minutes of pleasure, her sense of time distorted as nuclear orgasm devastated her consciousness. When Reule finally unlocked the bite of his jaw, Mystique had succumbed to a dead faint.
Chapter 17
“I love you, Reule,” she said at last.
They were the first words to slip out of her in all the time he’d spent gently trying to rouse her. He’d been too rough, too brutish. Again. And she woke speaking the words of his most perfect absolution.
He looked down into her face, stunned, as her lashes fluttered up and her eyes sparkled like silver prisms. Her expression was one of satiation and, amazingly, love. For him. In all of his lifetime, he’d done much to earn love and devotion from a great many people. He was used to accepting love with pleasure and grace. But it wasn’t until that very instant that he knew what it felt like to actually need the love of another, and fear he wasn’t entirely worthy of it.
She was too remarkable, too passionate, and too perfect. Even her fears, flaws, and stubborn little irritations wrapped his heart up into a neat little package and served it back up to him. Now she lay in a stupor of pleasure, covered in the indelicate markings of his claim on her, and she told him she loved him.
“Why?”
She smiled at that, her eyes closing briefly as she struggled with humor, the light of it dancing in her pupils as she stroked her hand up the path of muscles along his arm.
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