“Nothing significant,” Gideon lied. He couldn’t tell her the ferryman’s final warning. He didn’t want to worry her. He couldn’t tell her that death’s alter ego had warned him not to forfeit his immortality, because after all that had gone between them over the ages, he could not bear the task of ferrying the Lord of the Dark into the Netherworld. He didn’t want her to know such a thing was possible if the gods were angered enough, though the thought of it haunted him and had for eons.
“Does that creature have a name?” Rhiannon asked.
“He needs no name,” said Gideon. “It matters not what he is called. In this incarnation he is most dreaded, taking the condemned to their eternal torment. His other self is kinder.”
“How can one befriend Death?” Rhiannon murmured. “It is beyond my understanding.”
Gideon smiled sadly. “Immortals have no fear of death, Rhiannon,” he said. “That is what makes the friendship possible…and treasured. Imagine his loneliness. But enough! He cannot help us further; we are on our own. I need to touch down in a place relatively safe from Ravelle, while I decide what to do next. But Ravelle is not the only danger here. I will not sleep again until I’ve gotten us to safety.”
Here, Gideon’s wings gave him the advantage. He could travel great distances in a brief space of time that it would take the satyr much longer to cover in his two-legged body. Wracking his brain for every scrap of lore he’d ever heard about the Netherworld of Outer Darkness, Gideon touched down in a forest glade and took Rhiannon in his arms.
“I thought I’d lost you,” he murmured against her hair. “I never should have slept, and on my back! Madness! I will get us out of this.”
“Have you asked your final question of the rune caster, or called back your feathers finding me?”
Gideon shook his head. “Not yet,” he said. “I had no need of magic to find you. Once I broke my bonds, my wings made that possible. Ravelle is easily tracked. I found you quickly enough. There is great advantage in being able to view the land from the air. That is why he is so anxious that we join forces. I need to use the gifts Lavilia has given me wisely, and I needed to speak with you first, since what I do affects us both, Rhiannon.”
“All this is my fault,” Rhiannon said. “Whatever you must do, Gideon, just do it.”
She was trembling, and Gideon soothed her with gentle hands, holding her close, his hardness leaning heavily against her belly. “I have to call back one of my feathers from the rune caster to get us out of here,” he said. “There is no other way. We are fugitives on the other side of that gate. The watchers will be waiting once we cross back over. You know how much I want you…how much I long to make love to you, and you remember how it was the last time. They will attack if I try to love you. We are spared that here, but the dangers are far worse in this place.”
“We have no choice,” she said. “We must go back—now, before that awful creature finds us again.”
“There has to be someplace where we can be together in peace,” Gideon said. “I will find that place, and rebuild a stronghold where we will be safe, but we will need to be very careful while I accomplish it. The watcher’s lightning bolts are nothing to be taken lightly. I wouldn’t put it past them to try to kill you with one. You are expendable. The cowards banished you here knowing what would happen to you in Ravelle’s hands as a punishment for me. They are relentless now, and they still wait by that gate back there. Are you willing to take the risk?”
“Yes, oh, yes!” Rhiannon cried, throwing her arms around his neck.
He found her lips with a hungry mouth and tasted her deeply, laving the warm honey of her essence from her tongue. How sweet she was. How soft and supple in his arms as he traced her curves through the filmy gown, grazing her hardened nipples with his thumbs.
All at once her posture clenched and he held her away. “What is it?” he asked, cupping her face in his hand.
“Ravelle,” she said. “Can he…is he able to cross over into Arcus? Oh, Gideon!”
He heaved a sigh. “That is something you should ask Marius,” he said. “Yes, I’m afraid he can.”
“Why Marius?”
“Marius and Ravelle are arch rivals—immortal enemies. It is not a pretty story. Eons ago, Ravelle stole Marius’s mate. The demon is a great seducer. He often prowls the archipelago in search of whom he may corrupt. Reva, that was her name, fell under Ravelle’s spell and he stole her away and took her for his consort. After he bedded her, she took her own life.”
“How terrible for Marius,” Rhiannon murmured.
“It will not happen to us,” Gideon assured her. “I will make us a place where it cannot happen. He has his strengths, but so have I mine.”
“We will go now, then?” she urged. “I do not want to see that creature again.”
Gideon hesitated, his hands caressing her. “In the past, the watchers have never attacked unless I attempted to make love to you. We shall have to choose our moments carefully once we return, and may have to…abstain until it is safe. I want to make love to you once more here, where we are safe from the watchers. We are safe from Ravelle also. I dealt him a staggering blow with that chain, and he cannot travel as swiftly as we can aloft.” He opened his eel skin, took her hand, and crimped her fingers around his penis. How hot and hard it was. The events of the past few hours had left him ravenous for sex. He knew she must be also, come fresh from an orgy, despite the terror she must have felt at the demon’s mercy.
This time, he would not lie down on his back, on his wings—never again. His one delicious moment of fantasy come to life had nearly cost them both more than they could afford to lose. He would not make that mistake again. Passion and the urgency of unbridled lust ruled him then. In his arms, she was pure sex, not just her body, her ravishing beauty, her exotic hair, so long and lustrous challenging the hem of her gown. Her heart beat with an erotic rhythm in his embrace; she came alive to it. He had awakened that rhythm in her when he opened the petals of the exquisite flower she was. He had created her, turned her childlike curiosity into a flaming passion that made her his alone. And now he had the best of both mysterious incarnations in this enigmatic beauty. He had always marveled at the innocence and fierce passion that lived in her side by side. Which one was she this time, the innocent or the tigress? How many women was she? He wondered if even she knew. He longed to keep peeling the layers away until he had exposed and claimed them all. It was like taking a virgin each time they made love.
Her fingers played his shaft like a virtuoso plays a treasured instrument. It was the reverencing that so totally captivated him. She held it as if it were more precious than gold—more valuable than all the treasures under the moon and stars. He had never been reverenced before Rhiannon. He had never been truly loved; he knew that now.
Gideon’s breath caught as she traced the purple veins in bold relief along his shaft. His wings unfurled halfway. His heart nearly stopped as her dainty fingers felt for the pulse of the blood thrumming through those veins from root to mushroom tip. He groaned. Exquisite agony.
He could bear no more. Slipping the dark gown from her shoulders, he let it fall at her feet, drew in his wings, and knelt before her, seeking the pleasure spot beneath her pubic curls with his tongue. Cupping her buttocks in his hands, he drew her nearer, laving her steely nub, probing her folds, the sultry heat beyond her nether lips as his tongue plunged inside, tasting her juices, gliding on the honey-sweet musk of her arousal.
Rhiannon moaned his name as she gripped his shoulders. Her hands inched upward finding the pulse in the distended veins at the base of his neck. They crept higher, until she cupped his face and moved on, lacing her fingers through his hair. They fisted in the long, dark waves, holding his head against her pubic mound as he sucked, and laved, and nipped at her sex until she cried out.
A thick, ground-creeping mist had begun drifting over the copse, and the little mall where they stood half buried in it. Bewitched, Gideon savored every inch of her w
ith his hands, with his lips, with his body, until he could bear no more and finally laid her down in the ghosting fog that hid the ground and covered them like a cool, soft blanket.
Gripping her buttocks, he raised her hips, guiding her legs around his waist, and plunged into her with a long, lingering moan. He needed to savor this. If they were anywhere on Arcus, the watchers would be firing their missiles by now. He had to make the euphoria last. The gods alone knew when they’d get another opportunity to love each other without fear of reprisal, but oh, what her tiny hands were doing to his resolve. When they left his neck and gripped his buttocks, gooseflesh riddled the length of his spine and he was undone.
His cock began to throb with orgasmic contractions made more urgent by the walls of her vagina gripping him as he thrust into her. His hips jerked forward, plunging him deeper into the sultry heat of her, deeper still, until the head of his penis nudged her womb, wrenching a guttural cry of carnal euphoria from her parted lips.
Clearly lost in the throes of carnal oblivion, Rhiannon fisted her hands in the mulch beneath them in an obvious attempt to keep from stroking his wings, and froze in his arms. She gasped, groping the forest floor again and screamed. “Gideon, the ground…it’s moving…something slimy!” She fished her shift out of the mist and screamed again, dropping it as if it were live coals. It was covered with wriggling elvers.
Gideon was crouching knee-deep in the squirming young eels; he scooped Rhiannon into his arms and plowed through them deeper into the fog. “They cannot hurt you,” he soothed. “It is just Netherworld glamour. The demons mine your thoughts for that which frightens you. You must have thought of elvers since you entered Outer Darkness. That is what exists here, all men’s terrors plaguing them in perpetual torment. It is real only if you let it be.”
When they’d gone some distance, he set her down again, but still the eels writhed beneath the mist, and she screamed again. “They are real enough for me, Gideon! Take me away from here…. I cannot bear it!”
Again, he moved some distance into the fog, and for a moment, the ground beneath them seemed firm. Again, he knelt to take her, but he had scarcely entered her when the firm ground beneath them became a writhing, squishing nest of elvers just as it had before. This time, laughter boomed through the quiet, deep, guttural explosions echoing from the mist. Gideon’s posture clenched as he withdrew himself, scanning the drifting vapors for the demon to materialize. It was Ravelle’s lecherous laughter. There was no mistaking that bloodcurdling sound, but there was no sign of him, and how could there be? There was no way the satyr could have followed them so quickly.
“You cannot escape me,” Ravelle’s voice tittered. “This is only the beginning, Lord of the Dark. You have made a formidable enemy alienating me.”
Gideon gathered Rhiannon into his arms and flew to the opposite side of the thicket, but when he touched down it was the same, the ground beneath their feet was crawling with elvers, and the laughter came again.
“You see?” the satyr’s voice rumbled through the dank, still air amplified by the mist. “It will be thus wherever you set your foot down in my world. So flee if you must. There is nowhere you can go that I cannot find you, and I do so enjoy a quest. We will meet again, dark one, when you least expect it. You will rue the day you turned down an offer from Ravelle, the Lord of Outer Darkness!”
The hideous laughter came and went like ocean waves, mingled with Rhiannon’s hysterical shrieks, for the elvers were wriggling up her naked legs to her thighs, and her terror was palpable as they approached her pubic mound.
“Gideon, please! Call back the feather, I beg you!” she shrilled, burying her face in his shoulder as she clung to him, her rigid fingers digging into his muscles through the eel-skin suit.
Lifting off, Gideon soared upward, shaking the demon’s glamour free. One by one, the eels fell away, and he heaved a ragged sigh. “Ravelle has dominion over the land in his domain, but I have dominion over the sky wherever my wings take me. Let me show you….” Twining her legs around his waist, he plunged into her in flight. “Creatures in the astral mate thus,” he murmured in her ear, taking her deeper. “Hold on to me and you will know pleasures you never dreamed existed…. You will know what it is to be taken by the wind….”
Gideon had longed to take her in flight since he’d first set eyes upon her in his pool; it was his most secret fantasy, but he’d dared not risk it with the watchers hovering. Seizing her buttocks, he drove into her, gliding on her juices, moving in and out of her folds one by one in excruciatingly slow increments, feeding upon her pleasure moans as they glided on zephyrs in the starlit darkness high above the ugly forest floor.
Like peeling back the petals from a rose, he entered her slowly, savoring each delicious layer, moving on to the next, leaving no velvety mystery unexplored, no hot, silky crevice unprobed. He was Lord of the Air, and she had made him so, for she clung to him, her hands clasped around his neck, in total abandon.
Gideon soared higher, creating the wind that tortured his feathers. “Hold tight! I won’t let you fall….” he panted. Letting go of her buttocks, he slid his hands along her curves until they cupped her breasts. The nipples had hardened like steel against his thumbs as they strummed the dark puckered buds.
Groaning, Rhiannon tightened her grip on his waist with her legs and arched her back, pulling his head down until his lips closed over one turgid nubbin and tugged, sucking deeply. Bewitched by the sultry moans leaking from her throat as he suckled, his skilled fingers pinched and rubbed and scraped against the other bud until she cried out for mercy, calling his name.
Darkness enveloped them like a glove, as he soared higher still, creating more wind to whip through his feathers, making him harder, bringing him to the brink of rapture unlike any he had ever known. He could feel her come—feel the orgasmic contractions—the hot juices of her release as they laved his aching cock, and he wanted it to go on forever.
Convulsed in an unstoppable frenzy of carnal oblivion, he brought her to the brink again, undulating against her, grinding the root of his shaft into her clitoris as he hammered into her again and again, finding the secret place at the seat of her sex that riddled her with drenching fire. He could feel the scorching heat of that fire as her hips lurched forward, and her deep folds gripped him relentlessly. He could hold back no longer, and crushing her close, he rotated his hips spiraling into her, a deep-throated moan escaping his parched lungs.
“Hold tight, my love,” he murmured. “I will take you to heights you’ve never imagined.”
He hadn’t broken his stride, hadn’t changed the friction as he spiraled into her, keeping her just at the edge of climax. Soaring higher still, he felt her posture clench around his rigid cock, felt it grip him on the verge of coming. It was time.
High above the clouds, he paused in flight and, in a split second, dove downward at a heart-stopping speed, while filling her with his sex from root to ridged mushroom tip. Riding the wind, he clasped her fast as he pounded into her streaking through the air in a spiraling tailspin, fueled by her rapturous moans. Her climax riddled him like cannon fire, triggering his own release. It was as if his bones were melting as she milked him dry, the soft, hot walls of her vagina squeezing out every last drop of his come until it overflowed, as they soared down, down through the dark night sky, joined to the soul.
Gideon pulled out of the spin just short of touching down, and found her lips in a fiery kiss as they hovered above the thicket. “You have seduced the wind, my love, and it has loved you well,” he murmured, when their lips parted. “I have longed to take you thus since first we met, to come inside you in the air—my air, for I am lord of it. It is the greatest gift that I could give you.”
Ravelle’s laughter came again, hideous and cold. “How touching,” the satyr said. “Enjoy her while you may. Soon, she is mine to enjoy, dark one, just like that pitiable centaur’s mate was once mine also.”
Rhiannon began to tremble in Gideon’s arms, and h
e soothed her gently. Beneath them, the mist had begun to dissipate, giving glimpses of the ground crawling with elvers.
“Don’t put me down!” she cried, her pinching fingers digging into his neck. “The eels…they are everywhere!”
Ravelle’s laughter echoed through the twisted trees. It rumbled through the shadow-steeped undergrowth alive with crawling elvers in the inky midnight darkness. “The feather…” Rhiannon reminded him. “Gideon, I beg you, please…call back the feather…Take me away from here!”
“Do not listen to him,” Gideon soothed. “He makes a clever demonstration, but he is not here in the flesh. Do not let his evil glamour spoil what we have just shared. Mine is the greatest power…even here.”
“If that is so, why do you hesitate?” she cried. “You cannot be having second thoughts about joining with him?”
That was the farthest thing from Gideon’s mind, but how could he confide his real fears—that the watchers would kill her if he took her back? Wasn’t that what they had in mind when they banished her to Outer Darkness? She had no idea of the danger she was in, or how close she had already come to death.
Gideon soothed her with gentle hands. “Of course not!” he said. “That was never an option. I wanted to prepare, to form some sort of plan before we go. There is great danger in returning, you know that.”
“There is greater danger here. You know what he meant to do with me. He wanted me to convince you to join forces with him here, and I was to be consort to you both! I won’t stand his hands on me again. I’d rather be dead!”
Gideon’s posture clenched, airborne though he was. “You said you hadn’t been harmed,” he reminded her, searching her eyes deeply.
“I wasn’t ‘harmed’ in the way you mean,” she returned, “but he put his hands on me—examined me to see if you had taken me…”
Gideon’s mind was racing. Rage set the muscles along his rigid jaw ticking. There was nothing for it. Though he was hesitant for fear of wasting the feathers, for he had no idea what lay ahead, she was right, he had to call one back.
Lord of the Dark Page 22