by Nara Malone
“Me? I don’t talk about myself? I didn’t even know you did photography for the paper.”
He looked at Allie. She dug in her pocket and handed him one of the new, official business cards Lila had brought her. “It’s not for the paper. Not exactly. It’s for a new gardening magazine Elaine mentioned when we ran into her yesterday. I left one of these with Maya too. She gave me permission to come out. I didn’t know you were connected to this place. Honestly, if I had I wouldn’t be here.”
He put it in his pocket without looking at it. “And why is that?”
“You didn’t invite me,” she said sweetly. “How did you know we were out here?” He was saved from answering by another figure moving through the shadow-striped yard to join them. This one appeared to be much bigger than your average black bear.
Lila had detached herself from Allie’s arm, but now she sidled close again and cleared her throat, pointing over Marcus’ shoulder.
Marcus pivoted and while his back was to them, Lila whispered, “Do you think he’s angry?”
“Not at us.”
Marcus glanced back. His eyes, when they met Allie’s, said, Don’t count on it.
Allie recognized Jake from the bus as he moved into the circle of light cast by the bonfire. While Marcus was looking at Allie, Jake pressed a finger to his lips. Perfect, the guy who’d gotten them into this wanted her to protect him. She tried to decide if she would.
When Marcus turned back, Jake said, “I brought your truck over. Maya thought you might need it.”
“Did she? Tell Maya I’d like a little chat with her when I get back.”
Lila was only good for cowering in the shadows so long. “If it’s a problem, we’ll go. We didn’t know you hadn’t approved our visit. We don’t want to impose on your hospitality.” She emphasized the last word, her honey-sweet Southern accent drawing it out to a degree that both men had to know she was pissed.
Marcus caught her hand, pulled her closer, turned on the charm. “No imposition, dear. None at all. I’m merely annoyed that my assistants didn’t give more consideration to your safety. And now, I have to impose on you if you’ll allow it.”
She was looking up into his eyes. “Um…”
It was the shortest response to a question Allie had ever heard her give. Lila was going down. Marcus’ palm was against her palm, the other hand covering the back of her hand. Allie knew that touch, could feel energy vibrate against her palm and up her arm as if it were her hand Marcus held. And she knew how the full blaze of the attention he turned on Lila would incinerate her will.
“Would you give Jake a ride back to town? I’ll be here awhile yet and Allie has to get her photographs. Jake has some important work to get back to and there’s no need in you hanging around out here with the wolves and bears.”
Clever of him to mention the wildlife. Lila jumped on the chance to take Jake back to civilization. When the pair was gone, Marcus turned his attention to Allie. Determined to resist his hypnotic qualities, she turned quickly away, looked for something to take a picture of. Dropping first to one knee and after snapping the shutter, dropping to her stomach, she captured the moonlight spilling between foliage. Now instead of a fairyland, sensuality spoke to her, something primitive, and she let the mood entwine itself with the desire that bloomed when Marcus was around, so that the fall of light on pale petals spoke of invitation instead of magic. Focusing and zooming in to catch droplets of dew along the edge of a quivering blossom, she wished she could offer herself to Marcus as simply as the flower opened for moonbeams.
Deciding natural artifacts were too suggestive, she turned to the solid columns forming the edge of the circle, but the phallic imagery adorned with vein-like carvings had her face heating and a soft sheen of sweat springing up along the back of her neck. She aimed the camera at a marble shelf jutting from a shorter pillar situated between the fire and the waterfall.
Marcus put a hand between the lens and her target. “You probably shouldn’t take a picture of that,” he said.
“Really?” She angled her head, aware of a subtle shift in his mood, the warmth of his body next to hers in the cool night air. Desire as soft as the beat of a moth’s wings pulsed between their bodies. He turned toward her and the noticeable bulge of an erection brushed her hip. She pretended not to notice, tried to focus on her work. At first she’d thought the object in question a fancy birdbath, but the shelf was not concave enough to hold much water. A birdfeeder perhaps. Marcus’ reaction suggested other possibilities. “Is it something sacred?”
“Hmm. It is to me, but that’s not why.”
She lowered the camera. “What is it?”
“It’s an altar, used to display a special type of offering. I think some of your readers will find it offensive.” His tone deepened, that seductive resonance had her turning to face him, inching so close that she could see his Adam’s apple rise and fall as he spoke. Allie had to fight a sudden, insane need to press her lips against it, taste his words while they vibrated beneath his skin.
She closed her eyes, struggled to stick to the subject. “I still don’t understand.”
“Don’t you?” He sounded bemused. “Let me demonstrate.” He took the camera from her hands, tucked it safely into the bag she’d dropped in the grass. His fingers threaded through hers, locked flesh to flesh, locked her will to his. Last night he’d held her hand like this, his fingers entwined with hers, as he whispered, I’ve got you while he calmly used the other hand to fuck her with a candle. What were you supposed to do with a man who made you feel safe while he set you on fire?
A warning prickle sent goose bumps over her skin. He pulled her closer as he led her across the marble patio.
“Marcus—”
“Shh,” he said. “It’s time for lesson two.”
She shook her head, panic rising in her throat. “Last night was too…”
“Hush now. Trust.” His voice was firm, unwavering, but still gentle. Between his determination and her body’s all-for-the-idea reaction, Marcus was going to win.
He swept some dried leaves from the stone shelf. As she watched the leaves twirl and fall onto the marble, an echoing sensation fluttered in her stomach. She felt that small and fragile, her resistance as insubstantial as a leaf trying to hold its place against him.
He cast his spell over her in simple touches and strategic maneuvers. First a soft press of his lips to her forehead while he freed her hair from a scrunchie then smoothed it back so he could press his lips to her ear and murmur, “Here, let’s get you out of this jacket, sweetheart. Your clothes are soaked from that roll in the grass.”
He pulled on her jacket sleeve with one hand, while the other lowered the zipper. Article by article he extracted Allie from the flimsy shield of her practical clothes. The black hoodie landed in a heap on the grass, followed by black jeans faded and worn to a shade of charcoal gray. Her sneakers were sidewalk-sale-two-dollar specials—traditional black-and-white canvas. A gray tank top and standard white bra and panties went next. The wildest she’d gotten with her wardrobe was skipping socks. Mainly because she’d been too rushed to completely unpack. In contrast to the plainness of her clothes, the desire he evoked was of the black-leather-and-stiletto-heels variety. She wanted him and each time she reached for a connection—her lips pressed to the place where the robe parted to bare his chest, or lower still to cup his warm balls or rigid cock—he intercepted, redirected. Why wouldn’t he take her? Why did he always stop short of losing himself with her?
He lifted her to the shelf. Cold stone connected with hot flesh. She squirmed and shivered.
“Easy,” he said, his voice running down her spine. They bumped foreheads, then noses. His teeth nipped her bottom lip and she opened to him, taking his tongue inside, her will bending to his as easily as the evening breeze bent blades of grass. He tasted like cinnamon. Like fire.
He pressed his body between her knees, ribs and muscle angled against the soft flesh of her inner thighs. He ru
bbed his face against hers, one side and then the other and the gesture reminded her of the way a cat rubbed its owner. The sensation had a destabilizing effect, like whiskey consumed too fast. When he stopped she did the same to him, needing to feel that faint rasp of stubble against her jaw, over and over.
A new craving took hold, until all she could think of was his teeth. She craved the feel of his teeth as she’d never craved anything in her life. She wanted to feel them against the back of her neck the way he’d done last night. She wanted them at her nipples, along her arms, her belly, her thighs. Her clit.
“Please,” she moaned.
His hands encircled her wrists and pressed them back against something hard. Metallic. Clamps, it turned out, mounted on the shelf, one on each side where the shelf connected to the pillar. Marcus twisted a clasp, opened and then closed the iron bands to receive and bind first one wrist and then the other.
She tipped her head back and looked up at the cross piece, saw two more steel bands, spaced farther apart than her shoulders or his.
He was always reminding her to breathe. Allie was breathing, breathing as if she’d run a mile uphill. Realization dawned. This pillar, in this spot between the fire pit and the bubbling fountain, was meant to hold an offering of the female sort. If her hands were clamped down below her hips, there was only one thing left to go up there. What scared her was how turned-on the idea made her and how she didn’t care at all when he locked her ankle above her head, because he followed that up with a hot trail of soft bites, nipping his way from ankle to inner thigh. She wrapped her free leg around his head as soon as he got below her knee.
“You’re lucky I’m flexible,” she managed to say.
“So very lucky.” He chuckled and the feeling trembled against the skin just there in the curve of her thigh, that spot where a man’s head seemed to fit perfectly. His fingers closed around the ankle and he gently freed himself, giving her dripping pussy a quick lick just before he straightened and fastened that ankle to the crosspiece.
It was a marvel of engineering, this display altar of his. That her body could bend and stretch in ways that allowed him to display her was another marvel. A vertical beam supported her back. The stone shelf underneath her had a manacle on each side for her wrists. None of that terribly complicated to get right. But the crosspiece, resting on a mount that extended a foot from the beam at her back, was positioned so that her ankles fit the manacles above her head perfectly. She supposed there were built-in methods for adjustments but she hadn’t seen Marcus make any.
The result had her legs bound apart above her head, and her hands locked down out of his way. She was looking at him through the vee of her spread legs. He had an unobstructed view and complete access to whatever part of her he wanted to explore. She was completely at his mercy now. Merciful wasn’t a description she could apply to Marcus when it came to sex.
Heat ribboned through her core, had her need dribbling onto the altar. He dipped a finger into her and she could only watch between the frame of her thighs as he tasted and tipped his head back.
Framed there against a limb-laced sky, the moon a spotlight just to the right of his head, the robe slipping back from his shoulders to reveal the broad expanse of his chest, he brought to mind ancient druids and a time when sex was a part of worship rather than something religions shunned. It was as if they’d stepped backward in time and she was about to be initiated into a sacred and primal rite.
When the wolf in the forest howled this time, something other than fear stirred. She had to bite her tongue to hold back an animal cry in response.
Marcus dropped to his knees and sighed. Allie would be self-conscious about the way he had her displayed, were it not for his attitude of total adoration. He had the look of a starving man contemplating a feast. He closed his eyes, leaning in to inhale. The exhale was slow, directed right along the cleft of her pussy, he spread the lips with his fingers and delivered more of the same right over her clit. She squirmed in her bindings of stone and steel. Then his tongue followed the path his breath had taken, unleashing a flood of juices.
“You like that?” he asked.
She couldn’t speak.
He pulled back, looking up at her. “Answer me.”
She nodded.
“You want more?”
All these questions were a bad sign. This didn’t seem like an appropriate time to get chatty. “Yes,” she said.
He pushed to his feet, stepped back. “We need to talk first.”
Smart of him to lock her down before he pulled this. “You can’t be serious.”
“Oh I’m very serious. I left instructions detailing how I wanted you to continue the lesson we started last night. Did you practice this morning?” he asked, stripping off his robe as he turned away.
He folded the robe and put it on a boulder near the fire. The firelight accented the planes and hollows of taut muscles in his back and ass as he moved and bent. His dark hair gleamed.
When he turned back around her gaze latched onto his erect cock. She couldn’t look away. There hadn’t really been time in previous encounters to look at him, appreciate the full impact of how beautiful he was. She had the uneasy feeling she was going to get more time than she wanted now.
“Allison?”
He waited for an answer. Silver eyes pinning her attention. She couldn’t recall the question.
“You didn’t practice this morning, did you?”
She tried using humor to wriggle out of answering. “Where’s that ESP of yours when you need it?”
He didn’t smile. “I want to hear an answer. A direct answer.”
“There wasn’t time,” she said. The plaintiveness in her voice sounded pathetic even to her.
“Allie, we made a pact last night. I committed to teach you. This is not something you can start and not finish.”
He slid one finger along her wet slit and she shuddered. His cock jerked. “To leave off midway is dangerous. You understand this?”
She nodded.
“Good girl.”
He flicked his thumb lightly back and forth over her clit. Pleasure sparked. Her breath quickened, but she held still, absorbing the increasing pressure until he stopped, holding his thumb firmly over her clit. “Now,” he said, “tell me why you really didn’t practice this morning.”
She looked at him. “I was afraid,” she said.
“You light a candle and spend ten minutes meditating on what we did last night. Where is the danger in that?”
“You left out that you wanted me naked, imagining the light as your fingers running over my skin.”
“Why do you feel that is dangerous?”
“I don’t know. It just does.”
“I want a better answer than that.”
She turned her head from side to side, jerked her hands against the restraints.
He withdrew his thumb and had her instant cooperation.
“I feel like someone else, like someone I don’t know, when I do these things for you.” She turned her head, finding it easier to watch flames licking timbers in the fire pit than to gaze into the silver depths of his stare. “When I do these things with you,” she added.
His hands returned her attention to him. He ran a finger along the arch of her foot. She quivered, the air between them incensed with her desire. He put a hand on each ankle, just below the black iron bands that kept her legs open, held her spread like an offering. He closed his fingers around one and then the other. He watched her face when his hands inched lower, moving over the line of narrow bone, the firm curves of calf, lower still to yielding thighs and lush bottom.
He dropped to his knees again, kissed the inside of one thigh and then the other, before looking up at her. Her breasts rose and fell with her soft panting. She watched him as if she were cornered prey, waiting for the sign the devouring was to begin.
“You’ve been on this journey with me since I took you in the rain and opened your body to me with water’s elemental p
ower. It’s not something we chose for ourselves, but something fate chose for us.”
A log fell in the fire pit, sending a shower of sparks up toward the moon.
“Do you believe in fate, Allie?” She looked toward the fire, swallowed, lifted one shoulder in a hesitant shrug.
“Some things we have a choice about.” He slid his hands back up the length of her legs. A tremor ran through her. “We reach for them or run away.” She whimpered when his hands moved back up her legs, but kept her eyes on the fire. A flame popped and another log tumbled in a burst of red and gold.
“When I asked you to reach for the mystery yesterday, you did,” he continued. “I warned you it wouldn’t end until I let you go. But letting you go isn’t a choice for me. Understand?”
His hands traveled the backs of her thighs, cupped under her buttocks, squeezed. He slipped both his thumbs into the scalding heat of her pussy. She bit down on her lip, closed her eyes. Even though she tried to seal the sound in her throat the soft mew was audible. He tipped his head to the side as if to catch the sound, watching her. He’d heard.
“It’s not a choice I make to let you go or keep you. You made the choice and now we’re bound by it.” His next words had a raspy edge. “You are my fate.” He pressed his thumbs deeper and withdrew, slowly. Her muscles clamped down, but couldn’t keep him. She wanted, needed, more from him. Would he ever give it?
She wanted to ask more. Was prepared to beg. Please, fuck me, Marcus.
His eyes went straight to hers, as if he’d heard the thought.
He knelt. His forehead rested right there, against the cleft of her sweet altar. He closed his eyes, tried to close off his craving. He was a male owned irrevocably by this female, his mate.
He swiped her dripping slit with his tongue and this time her cry was full throated. She shouldn’t be able to shift here. Her wrists jerked at the bands. Her legs trembled. Bound by the power of ancient stones, grounded in their energy, her energy wouldn’t rise high enough to reach the shifting vibration. He smiled, nuzzled her plump lips and sucked the nectar they fed him. She was at his mercy.