by Alisha Basso
“Even you,” I said, not meaning to make a joke, but I couldn’t seem to help it.
“Yes, in this situation, even me. I bend the rules, I’ll admit it, but with you...I won’t break them.”
What he wanted from me was something which was broken, and how could it be mended and given freely, when it was in pieces? I was afraid of what I could reveal, but more afraid of what I would reveal about myself. Sex I understood, and Talon was right. It could be just an act of shared pleasure between two healthy people. But it could be so much more. That’s the part which really scared me. Investing.
Did I have the capacity to trust him and give myself over completely, holding nothing back? I was terrified to find out if I even had the capacity.
He looked up at me, his voice husky with a deep sorrow. “I know you’ve been through an emotionally devastating time, Lily. I will understand if you can’t do this. Just get me away—”
A sudden rush of emotion caught in my throat. Anguish at the thought of him dying in loneliness and pain...just like Olivia…backlashed and I shouted, “No.” I didn’t want to get closer to this fae. But I couldn’t let him die.
His eyes went soft and luminous, and my heart ached and twisted with the decision. Adrenaline shot into my stomach in a pinching shot. Feeling unreal, I struggled against the feeling that this was going to change my life. I wasn’t ready for it. I wasn’t ready to be defined by the immortal fae. They weren’t forgiving about anything.
I felt myself slipping into a place I had been fearing to go. Too soon. Deep pain wound around me, binding too tight. I couldn’t breathe.
“This has to be for you, too, Lily. If not, I can’t meld. Do you understand?”
“All right,” I whispered.
Relief showed in the depths of his eyes, and gratitude. But the desire there was what stopped my heart, then started it up again, skipping like a stone across a pond. The call of it found an answer in me.
I stared in near panic over what he was asking me to do. I didn’t even know what to call the emotions making my eyes warm with unshed tears and my body long for just one touch of his hand.
“Are you sure?”
I swallowed and nodded.
“All right, I agree, but this time. No knee to the groin. Okay?”
How I was able to laugh was beyond me. “Okay.”
“Then....I need you to touch me. Everywhere. I need the stimulation to release some of my magic.”
“Your clothes?’
“Take them off.”
I went to the end of the bed and grasped his biker boot, and he twisted under my hand. The leather was warm, as though it were alive, the silver from the buckles going from his ankle to the top of his knee twinkling in the light.
I started to pull, but the buckles released as if by a magic hand. My head jerked up, and he gave me a smirk. His clothes were be-spelled. That’s why he was able to change back and forth between his sharp suit and sexy leather.
“You could remove all your clothes in the blink of an eye.”
“I need you to do it. If I use my magic now, I don’t know what will happen. I’m...unstable.”
I took a deep breath, and the honey taste was so delicious now, I sucked on my tongue. I pulled both boots off and dropped them at the edge of the bed, then climbed on. His knuckles whitened as he tightened his hands on the headboard and groaned when I grasped the zipper to the tight-fitting jacket. I pulled the tab and his eyes closed while the leather parted to reveal the satiny skin on his muscular chest, then the rippling washboards delineating his hard stomach.
His living tattoo, the Tree of Life, was inked over his heart. But when I asked, “Can you sit up?” it expanded until it spread across all that gorgeous muscle.
He let go of the headboard and sat up. While I pushed the jacket off him, he breathed hard, pressing his face into my neck. His mouth touched me, his fingers threading through my hair, and I had to use all my powers of concentration to keep it together.
“Baseda! Eick bod yn bridferyth.”
He was speaking Elvish, and the beauty of the language, his magic-soaked, unglamoured, musical voice, and the soft, barely-there whisper made my fingers clench on the leather.
“Take it off, ana’astar.”
I removed the jacket and dropped it off the side of the bed. I tried to push him back, but the moment my hands touched his chest, he groaned deep in his throat. His skin was hot, deliciously soft, the muscles beneath rock-hard. The tree was transitioning from summer to spring to autumn, then to winter’s barren branches. I wanted to watch it. But I dragged my eyes away.
He pressed me back, and the weight and strength of him was beyond my ability to hold off. The smell of new earth flowed over me, and it was so arousing, so intense, I gripped his hair, and was lost, completely lost in the silk of it as I threaded it through my fingers. Talon pressed against my hips, but his pants and my dragonscale armor prevented us from connecting.
He pulled away, his eyes a wild, tri-colored, glassy green, his breathing fast and sharp with need. I gazed up into his face. He was so close to me, his hair trailed against my cheek, smelling of trees and flowers and water.
A soft wind blew over us in a wild spring rush, caressing my body even through the dragonscale armor.
He pumped his hips against me, his spasms uncontrollable. Then I inadvertently brushed against the bites. He jackknifed, his spine bowing, crying out. The sound of his cry just as potent and musical as his voice. I needed to be naked, needed it with a desperation born of fear…and the dragonscale armor simply melted off me.
Be careful what you wish for popped into my head. The first of my barriers vaporized with my clothes.
“Do it again,” he pleaded. “Touch me there. I need your mouth. I need you.” The music of his voice sucked at me.
I wasn’t a Turner, but I felt down to my bones that Talon was moving into a very dangerous stage.
“Lily,” his voice tormented. “Let go. I need you. All of you.”
I closed my eyes and could feel the life of him all around me, and deep inside, with such calm my eyes flashed open in surprise.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said. “Give yourself to me.”
There was only one thing for me to do and I looked him in the eyes and let go.
He breathed out a groan and closed his eyes as I reached for the zipper on his leather pants, and jerked it down. He sobbed out his pleasure, thrusting against my hands, his heat and hardness only a tantalizing tease against my fingers.
“Yes, please, please,” he begged. His breath caught and hissed out.
His thick hair was in the way, and I brushed it back over his shoulder, almost getting sidetracked again by the silky feel of it. The movement revealed his throat and the bites, which were already beginning to heal. Good. He had been able to heal himself a bit on his own. I brushed my fingertips over the bites, and a long ahhhh slipped from his lips.
“Your mouth, please,” he rasped.
I licked him, and he tasted so good. I covered the bites with my mouth and gently bit him. His hips jerked. “Harder. You can’t hurt me.”
I bit down harder and he sucked in a breath. He curled his arms around me and pressed my naked body against his, my breasts flattened hard against the wall of his chest, his leather-clad thighs and groin so hot and smooth.
“Mor dda.” Then he spoke so quickly, his fae words a cascade of beautiful sounds. He rolled his head and thrust his hips against me.
I wanted him free to push into me. I reached for the waistband of his pants again, but I couldn’t get them over his hips. The leather was too tight. I tried to roll out from under him, but he grabbed my ribcage and kept me immobile, his mouth found my breast and my spine bowed at his hot, moist mouth devouring my hard, aching nipple, sucking at me like a vortex. Even in his frenzy, he was gentle with me, and tears sprang to my eyes even as the pleasure washed over me in waves. I felt a pressure in my groin, then the sensation as if his mouth was at both my brea
st and my core.
“Talon,” I whispered, and he jerked so hard I thought I’d somehow hurt him. He released my breast, tossed his head up. His startled eyes crashed into mine and he captured me like I was tangled in a snare. I couldn’t move, the shock and arousal in his eyes grabbing hold of my heart and my lungs until I felt squeezed and breathless.
“Lily,” he said hoarsely and the sound of my name slipped out of him on golden dust as the grains settled on me like dew and I lost a little more of myself to him. His ravenous mouth slammed down on mine, his lips so soft. Hell’s bells, I couldn’t contain all the sensations he was evoking in me.
The honeyed taste of him filled my mouth with a sweet and deep desire, and when he thrust his tongue against mine, I sucked on it.
The tingling grew and grew like the soft, hurrying wind, and the pleasure built until I burst. I climaxed so hard I nearly lost consciousness. His body tightened and coiled. He was doing something, something with his magic, and suddenly I was scared. Worried he would lose control or that it would backlash and kill us both.
“I need inside you, Lily. Need it now.”
I pushed him and he fell back. I reached into my nightstand drawer and grabbed my athame. The jeweled hilt fit my hand perfectly. I slipped the dagger beneath the waistband at his hips and sliced through the leather like it was butter. Moving quickly before he could react, I sliced through the other side and released him, then dropped the dagger back into the drawer.
His breathing was harsher, more desperate, his eyes going distant, but a brilliant green which still almost hurt my eyes.
I pushed the leather off him and gasped at the magnificent sight. His muscles bunched and stretched under his glowing skin, his hips flexed, his abdomen rippled, the ridges thick and hard. Jerking his ruined pants from beneath him, I threw them onto the floor. Then I straddled him, settled against his overpowering heat, and sounds of desperation burst from both of us, mingling in the charged air.
I touched him and he thrust heavily into my hands, smooth as velvet, hard a granite. I guided him to me, joining with him, pressing my hips down to take him in fully.
The scent of him twined with the surge of delight at having him inside me. His energy was an ecstasy, and to join fully with him, I had to completely drop the last of my own barriers.
“Lily, please,” he begged, “drop them.”
He needed me to participate in this act of life fully so he could heal. Sex was an act of creation, of pleasure, of giving and receiving, building a connection with another being who was as precious as your soul.
When I dropped all my walls—everything which protected me—to save his life, Talon was there, a part of me. I cried out at the feel of him joining with me fully, body to body, heart to heart. The essence of him was like a green, incandescent fire dancing within my every cell. It flooded my body, pulsing through every nerve, arousing every artery, coursing like a river which awakened and exulted as it surged and foamed through me.
We were in the eye of the storm, rising on winds which soared through our minds and bodies, throbbing a liquid note as his magic poured out like shimmering honey in waves of golden light that, as they passed, left me wanting, craving, and aching for more. No drug could ever be this potent, no thrill pierce me so deeply, because his essence was a delight, the heart of joy, the perpetuation of desire. Of all the experiences I could remember, the art of his magic painted me with exquisite and aching brilliance.
He was life, light, and beauty. The trust he’d asked for floated away from me to him. He opened his eyes, his face crumpling a bit from the intensity of my offer. “Lily…” he said, wonder threaded through his compelling voice.
This immersion, this knowing, was so beautiful, so heart-wrenching, I moved against him, with him in harmony. His tree of life went from the emptiness of winter branches to the budding, burgeoning beauty of spring.
But it was as if I reached a golden point, a place I’d been trying to get to for a long, long time but could never quite find. That place where life suddenly became more complete and took on even greater meaning.
And in that moment, despite all the fears, all the work yet to be done, and the very precarious future which lay ahead, one thing I was certain of: my time spent with Talon was going to mean something to me for the rest of my life. The rest I let go, and willed myself to just feel, to truly live in that moment and that moment only.
He felt it. Those words in me in a silent communion which made me want him all over again, even before he was finished. I moved, pressing my hips into his. He thrust within me, so deep, filling me so perfectly. It wasn’t wild, it wasn’t frenzied; it was simply powerful and necessary.
I opened myself wider, physically and energetically, giving him more and deeper access. I felt the wind blow, the sweet, renewing wind, not against my body but through it, within it. I could hear the night move outside the windows. I could feel the earth spin, feel the thrilling caress of dirt, arousing me to a fever pitch, sinking down to the cool, giving waters underground. Beneath us the unimaginable depths of the Earth spoke to me of its deepest, darkest secrets with a loving and heavy voice, the power of the rushing blue dragon currents filling me up.
He rolled me beneath him, his arm tucked to the small of my back, and lifted my hips even higher so he could sink into me even more deeply. Our gazes caught, held, and our thrusts came faster, deeper. I closed my eyes as stardust filtered around us, white and touched by the light of the moon.
The tension in him ebbed and flowed, and when I opened my eyes, I was frozen with surprise and delight. His eyes were like jewels—emeralds, jade, his hair like living flame, the golden highlights like ribbons of liquid gilt riding the burning fire. His skin glowed from within, just as golden as those strands. The tree tossed its branches with a wonderful rushing sound of joy and I lost myself in the tumult of beauty, walking into the green like into the forest. My mind twisted and slipped away from me as I fell into an ocean of green.
I was in trouble, but I couldn’t seem to care. I was losing touch with my mind. As an amnesiac, it should have terrified me.
My breath returned in a quick surge, he’d dropped his glamour.
But even as I realized it.
Even as the beauty of it swallowed me whole.
It was too late.
Too late.
Chapter Twelve
“No!” he shouted, that one small word charged with so much anguish.
His voice yanked me back.
Take my hand. Hang onto me, Lily. Hang onto the sound of my voice. Don’t let go. Now close your eyes. Close them, ana’astar.
I didn’t want to. I wanted to gaze at him, trace the patterns of the forest floor, covering his body like delicate lacework as the pressure built into such exquisite and heartbreaking fulfillment.
But he sounded so distressed and so afraid I obeyed and closed my eyes, grasping his hand.
He laced his fingers with mine, but I couldn’t not look at him. I opened my eyes and watched him climb, watched as his need for me strengthened, felt his muscles gather and bunch as he drew ever closer. I tightened around him, needing to know I would be enough to save him. I had to be enough to save him. I found myself shuddering, too in intense satisfaction as he growled through a pulsing release.
The pressure which had been building in the room evaporated with his hard, aching cry. He shoved into me one last time while his magic cascaded over me like a warm spring rain.
He wrapped his arms tightly around me, turning onto his side. He squeezed me so tight it hurt. We breathed deep and heavy, and I curled my fingers into his abundant hair and hung onto the back of his neck like I was still falling and needed a handhold.
His voice was thick and filled with regret. “I dropped my glamour. I almost lost you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to do it…but you took me somewhere I didn’t expect. Caught me totally off-guard, you wicked, wicked witch.”
My voice was hushed in the dark room. “That’s w
hat you really look like?”
“That’s what I look like to you, Lily. Through your beautiful eyes. You saw me as naked and unglamoured as I saw you. Because of the power of our joining and of your unselfish act.”
Tears squeezed out of my eyes. “I’m sure you’ve heard this a million and one times, but goddess, Talon, you are not what I expected at all…not at all. Beautiful doesn’t begin to describe you.”
He smiled, and for the first time there was no rogue, compulsion, or sarcasm in it. “I’ve heard it, but didn’t mean anything until now.”
But that wasn’t all. I had seen him. Who he was. And his essence was just as beautiful as he was physically. His integrity was as blue as a summer sky, his dedication to his job, a sunset orange, strong and true. His character spun like gold through all the colors which made him. “I saw your true colors.”
He was silent and distressed. “And I saw yours. You are very exquisite, Lily, even by fae standards. I saw it right away. Your sense of self is very strong. Your dedication to those you love, stunning. Your regard for me is confused and hesitant. It’s understandable. We are hunter and hunted. I’m not happy about this. It will be difficult for me to remain neutral.”
I didn’t take offense at his statement. He was actually paying me a very high compliment. “This is more than I bargained for.”
“I know,” he sighed. “I warned you.” With a gentle touch on my jaw, he tilted my head so he could see my eyes. “This is too dangerous.”
“Is it over?” I asked, blowing a strand of my hair out of my eyes.
“No. It’s not, and I have doubts.” He shifted so he was fully facing me. “I can’t risk you further. I had no idea…no idea. Just let me go.”
I stroked his jaw, everything in me rebelling at the thought of sacrificing such a being. Snuffed out because of me. It was my fault he’d been bitten. If I had run when he told me to, he might have been able to kill Styx, but I hadn’t because I was fixated on getting answers. The guilt was like an acid in my stomach. “No. I won’t. Don’t ask me this. I can’t, not now. Please, Talon.”