by Lora Leigh
Silence met her demand. Lynn turned back to him, staring up at him, once again amazed by the shifting color in his eyes. They were like living mercury, ebbing and flowing in response to whatever emotions filled him at the time.
He watched her closely, his expression staying calm, almost serene.
“Next, is the Completion.” He finally shrugged. “The knowledge and acceptance of all that will change within you is like an unopened box buried deep in your soul. Before Completion can be attained you must look into it, let it flow through you and know that is what you want. Above all things, you must want it.”
Lynn pressed her lips tightly together. There may never be a Completion then. She saw that knowledge in Alyx’s eyes, the sadness that shifted through the swirling silver color. He knew, as well as she did, how much she regretted the gifts she carried.
“Ahh, gentle heart.” He touched her cheek, his expression tightening as remorse fill the air around them, so thick it pierced her soul. “Think, my beloved Lynn. Remember the lives saved. The joy you’ve brought. Think of all you could lose. All that would have never been, had you not been so blessed. Would it really be worth throwing away?”
She looked away from him. She couldn’t stare into his eyes, couldn’t bear his pain. He had lived so long, waited for her, needed her, and she would willingly throw it away for the peace of blissful ignorance. Wouldn’t she?
“No, Lynn.” His voice was gentle and so filled with regret it broke her heart. “You wouldn’t change it. Though you may well die believing otherwise.”
Lynn flinched as he turned and stalked away from her. She could feel the sparks of fury lashing out at her, deflected by the clothing, but there all the same.
“It’s my life.” She fought to breathe, to convince herself she was right. To convince herself it should have been her choice.
“Sadly, it is at that.” The door slammed closed behind him as she stood there, alone. Empty. And wondering if even she knew what she really wanted.
Chapter Eighteen
Would she have changed it? Darkness was rolling in now, the sun setting slowly over the mountains as Lynn lay in her bed, still dressed in the black clothes, debating with herself over the matter. She didn’t like the answers she was coming to.
She would have, she assured herself. Ignorance was bliss. Right? Wrong! Something inside her sneered mockingly.
She closed her eyes, determined to still the riotous emotions building inside her. What did it matter? She couldn’t change it. She was stuck with it. Didn’t she make the most of it?
Behind her closed eyelids a scene slowly took shape. Her heart beat in dread, fear rolling over her. A battlefield. Ariel lay, dressed in leather, feet away from her, bloodied and dead. Other women and several men lay similarly. All lifeless.
The battle had cost them their lives. It had cost Lynn her soul.
If only, Alyx, I had known… She felt the words whisper through her mind. Impressions and thoughts that she shouldn’t have known, shouldn’t have experienced, drifting through her mind. Nightmares she had refused to delve into, until now, suddenly crystal clear.
She hated the sudden flashes of memory that had no place in the time she lived within. She had always cursed them. Always regretted them. Until now. Now, when she could look at them and know what she had thrown away so long ago. She could have been within Alyx’s arms all these years. Awaiting the time when Ariel needed her again. Perhaps being there to stop the attack Jonar had made on her.
Her chest tightened at her own foolishness. For so many years she had fought the very strength and energy that made her who and what she was. She had fought the dreams that tried to warn her and her own deeply buried wishes. She had wanted Alyx to find her. Had needed him to open the door to her own fears, her own knowledge of who she was. Without him, she would always be missing a part of her soul. Because he was a part of it.
And she had hurt him. She hadn’t meant to. She had, once again, given into her own fears. It seemed that risking her life wasn’t as hard for her as risking her heart had become.
The heart breaks easier. And the body goes on; living when the heart withers away in the chest, creating a wound that never heals.
Lynn jerked in surprise as Alyx’s voice whispered through her mind.
She blinked. She could feel him. Not in the sense that she was reading his mind, but she could actually feel his soul, his inner being reaching out to her.
You could do the same, he whispered through her head. All you have to do is open that part of you, Lynn. Allow it freedom. Release the one thing you are most terrified of.
She flinched. He needed the Completion. Whatever the hell that was. But did she know how to give him what she knew they both needed?
He was silent now. Waiting. She could feel him inside her, like a warm, comforting shadow. Patient. Encouraging her to give in to the nightmares that taunted her for years. She had spent so long hiding, how was she supposed to learn to embrace it overnight?
I don’t know how. She felt lost. Alone inside despite the knowledge he was there. She could feel the incompleteness of whatever bond it was they shared.
You know, Lynn. It’s there inside you. A part of you. You only have to find it.
Lynn stared up at the ceiling, frowning. The part of her that most terrified her. Her powers. Losing complete control of the shifting, ever-changing energy that built inside her like a monster ready to devour anything and everything in its path. If the secrets resided there, she might never find them.
Control is merely an illusion, beloved. His whisper seemed to pulse around her. You know this as well as I. The powers are what they are. Nothing more. Nothing less. They are for you to use, however you see fit to use them. They neither control nor are controlled. They simply exist.
She moved from the bed. Nothing was going to get accomplished this way. Nothing was going to be decided. She could stare at the ceiling all night long and it would never reveal the answers she needed. If she was going to be tormented with questions and the lack of answers, then by God, Alyx would share in the agony. Or the pleasure. Whichever came first.
*
Alyx waited for her. His body was tense, his lust like a demon riding him. But she had to make the next move. She had to come to him. She had to complete the cycle of power and release the Dar-phantom from its confinement within the Dragon stone. It would complete the bond. It would seal them together forever. That energy, a part of her, a part of him, binding them together.
He could feel the Dragon stone heating at his breast as she came nearer to his room. He forced himself to wait. To lie still. His cock was stone hard, throbbing in anticipation. She was unaware of it, but he could feel it. The Completion was on her. Her greatest fear, the fear of losing her heart, her soul to another, was slowly easing.
She didn’t have to acknowledge it in words. As long as her inner being knew the truth, then the rest of her would follow. And he could feel her inner being reaching out to him, drawn to his own and the power they were destined to share.
The door opened and there she stood. Framed within the light of the hallway, her hair a dark halo around her exquisite face, her lean, graceful body defined by the skin cloth. Cloth that had seared his soul in the making. Infused with his love for her. His strength. His need. Sewn together with painfully extracted bits of his own power. Power fused from the metaphysical to the physical. Given cohesion and balance. She wore on her body a part of his being.
The door closed behind her and before his admiring eyes the cloth peeled away from her body and floated to the floor by the simple means of her own thoughts.
Her eyes were narrowed. Intense. She was there to still both their demons and she would do so with a power that even she could not realize.
“If you come to this bed, you begin the Completion,” he warned her softly as she neared him. “Know that, Lynn. What your mind has not yet accepted, your soul has.”
Her lips lifted, a rather endearing turn of resig
nation. “My soul accepts nothing that my mind doesn’t first approve.” Her voice was like shimmering threads of lust and emotion. “Perhaps you should remember that, Alyx.”
“You will not have the control I see you are determined to keep,” he told her gently. “There will be no stopping, Lynn. No going back. Know that before you come to me.”
She braced her hands on the foot of the bed, moving slowly forward, crawling between his splayed thighs on hands and knees like a slender cat, her eyes narrowed, hunger glittering in the depths.
The Dragon stone pulsed. His cock throbbed. His body tightened nearly to the breaking point as he felt a warm puff of air, directed from her pouted lips to the drawn sac at the base of his erection.
He would wait. There was little sense in taking this measure of her control before the time demanded it. He could feel the Dar-phantom strengthening, swirling within the stone as the dragon flexed against his flesh.
When her tongue, so small, moist and filled with heat, swiped a path of erotic destruction along the tightened flesh, he couldn’t halt the groan that tore from his throat.
There she was, on hands and knees, her head lowered, her eyes watching him as she began to torture the already strained baggage. She sipped at the taut skin, licked it, scraped it gently with her teeth and all the while her eyes glittered with the power growing inside her.
Sexual, primal heat filled the room. Alyx kept himself still only by a strength of will he was unaware he possessed. He wanted to jerk her to him, throw her to the bed and pound into her until she screamed in orgasm. But now was not the time. The Completion demanded so much more.
Her tongue licked him delicately as it moved from his scrotum, up along the base of his cock, then painted the shaft with a trail of sensual heat that had him gripping the blankets with white-knuckled strength. She suckled at the heavy ridged veins, licked over them with a hum of appreciation, then moved to the wide, bulging head.
“Mercy.” He wasn’t above pleading in this instance.
Her mouth surrounded the throbbing head, suckling lightly then tonguing the crest beneath in a way that sent flares of electricity shooting from his cock, up his spine and into the base of his skull.
The pre-seminal fluid began to ease from the dual tips, only to be licked away by a capricious, mischievous tongue intent on driving him insane. Then once again she sucked him into her mouth, hollowing her cheeks, creating a flashpoint of sensation as her mouth moved up and down with shallow thrusts that had him gritting his teeth against the need to orgasm.
And still, her eyes glowed. A deep, vibrant hazel that slowly built, intensifying as she loosened the extreme self-control she had always held over her powers.
He knew the moment she realized what was happening to her. Her mouth stilled, her eyes widened, and then he struck. He would not allow her the time to adjust to the build-up. To do so would cause her mind to shut down, her fears to close off the avenue of escape he had been building just for this moment.
Chapter Nineteen
Before Lynn could adjust to the strange sensations suddenly building beneath her skin, Alyx had gripped her shoulders, pulling her along his body before flipping her on her back to the bed.
She moved to escape him. To attempt to slide across the bed and away from him, but as always, he was a staggering step ahead of her. He kneed her thighs apart, sliding down her body, his shoulders wedging between them as his lips pressed to the slick, drenched flesh of her pussy.
Lynn nearly went through the ceiling. It was unlike anything he had done to her before. A kiss that shattered any control, that swept over her like a hurricane destroying any thoughts in its path. His tongue sank into her vagina, thrusting with hot, deep penetrations that had her lifting to him; desperate mewls for more escaping her lips.
The more her cream flowed from her body, the harder he lapped at it, eating her with such primal male satisfaction she lost all control. She could feel the power building inside her, heating her from the inside out, driving her closer and closer to a brink that should have terrified her. Should have. But she knew Alyx would catch her. Knew he would be there to keep her from harm.
Tighter and tighter the coil of passion-hot flames tightened in her belly, seared her pussy. Her body tingled, heated further until it felt as though fire licked over her flesh. Her nerve endings were electrified, breasts swollen, nipples peaked like hard little diamond points begging for attention.
“Alyx,” she gasped as she felt the explosion nearing.
In response, his fingers slid through the juices of her pussy, moved lower, one strong, broad finger penetrating, impaling the tender opening to her anus.
Rockets went off inside her as her orgasm consumed her. It was like the Fourth of July times ten, setting off sharp, sudden detonations within her pussy that had her juices flooding it, pouring to his mouth to be consumed by his greedy lips.
A growl shattered the room as he came to his knees, his finger sliding free of her ass, his arms extending. Lynn could only watch in shock. The Dragon stone at his chest glowed brightly, then a strange, illuminating white fog began to pour free.
Lynn was within a second of being terrified back into an unresponsive state. But at the same time, Alyx’s hips moved, burying his jutting cock deep inside her pussy with a thrust that seared every nerve ending it could have possessed.
The heavy ridges and erect cock’s crest stroked through her tight channel, separating her, stretching her as her eyes closed and she arched closer, deepening the thrust.
She didn’t want to see what the mist was doing. Didn’t want to know… Her eyes flew open.
“Oh. My. God. Alyx!” Her strangled scream tore from her throat as a form of pure white light settled over her body.
Hands plumped her breasts, the feel of a warm, heated mouth covered each tip. Alyx was buried deep and hard inside her, his head thrown back in ecstasy as a similar light flowed over him, around him, as it began to creep toward her.
She shuddered as his cock began to move. Slow, deep thrusts as a tentative heat began to work down the cleft of her buttocks. Shock should have been holding her rigid; instead, pleasure began to fill her, stroking beneath her skin, caressing her in ways that pushed her ever higher. She was a creature of sensuality now. Accepting each caress, glorying in it.
Heat moved lower between the cheeks of her rear, stroking her gently, then probing at the small entrance to her ass. Her legs were lifted. Alyx’s hands guided them until her feet rested on his shoulders, his silver eyes glowing as he stared down at her.
“Knowledge of the power…” He pulled his cock back then pushed deep and hard as the heat behind her impaled her anus.
“Alyx. Please. I can’t stand it.” She was shaking with pleasure; with an intensity that she feared would destroy her.
“Acceptance of the bond.” His cock pulled free as the energy filled her. Stretching her. First her pussy as it gushed its juices, then her anus, widening the entrance with a streak of pleasure/pain that had her gasping.
Alyx gripped the shaft of his cock, rubbing it against the slowly opening portal.
“Completion, Lynn,” he whispered. “A part of me, forever a part of you.”
He surged inside her anus. The muscles parted like soft butter, lubricated by the energy filling her and the pre-seminal fluid coating his cock. She was impaled. Stretched in ways she could have never imagined as her cunt caught fire from the feel of another cock, one of pure, white-hot energy filling it.
Alyx gripped her thighs, his face twisting into lines of sublime pleasure as he began to fuck her with deep powerful strokes into her bottom. The energy filling her fucked in a steady, hard rhythm into her pussy. Destroying her.
The coil of electricity fused inside her womb, growing, tightening, piercing her with sensations she feared she would never survive. Then she exploded.
Alyx’s cock began to ripple inside her anus, the cock’s crest stroking, flexing, as the heavy ridges rasped her sensitive tissue. S
he tightened on him, her back bowing, driving him deeper, harder inside her as she felt every cell in her body unravel. Felt them open and felt the power of the whitened form flowing into her.
It was never ending. It was death and rebirth and her scream echoed around them as she felt the hard, powerful pulse of his climax searing her anus, flowing deep and hard inside her, burning her with a pleasure she knew she would be begging to experience again.
“I love you!” She screamed the words as her soul opened, her heart exploding with the power of the emotion she fought, and failed, to contain within her. “God help me, Alyx, I love you.”
And she was complete.
Alyx collapsed over her, his rough voice whispering his love for her. His hands were gentle, soothing her as his cock began to slip free of the tight grip she had held on it.
Sweat coated them, dripped from their bodies, dampening the sheets beneath them. The air was thick with satiation and an emotion that made tears come to her eyes. Love. Love in a form so rich, so intense, it was indeed physical.
“Always now,” Alyx whispered at her ear. “Always, Lynn. Always mine.”
Epilogue
Gryphon felt the force vibrate within his Gryphon stone. A Prime Warrior had finished the Completion and brought his bond mate to the other side. It was a time that would be rejoiced for days by Prime and Initiate Warriors alike. It created another bonded pair, which would in turn create children with the power to strike fast and hard at the darkness overtaking their land.
It was the first bonding in a thousand years. He could hear the Dragon Master bellowing his pride to the Gryphon and Phoenix who shared his quest. And he knew that either himself or the Phoenix Prime would be next. Their bond mates were here, on this planet, as had been foretold so many millennia ago.
His thoughts turned then to a female warrior. His eyes narrowed. She was his. He had known it long ago, but had hesitated in making his claim. She would not be easy to conquer. The Completion was something she would fight. But she would accept it. Eventually.