by Alisha Basso
It was as if we each protected the other’s burning, beating heart.
I knew I was still beneath him and he was melding with me in my apartment, but a chill permeated the place where I held him and he held me.
And he was afraid.
He was terrified.
His voice found me on the wind. It was formless, no words, just his thoughts winding around me and transferring some of the fear into me.
My magic is going to implode. I can’t stop it. The vamp saliva is too potent. You did the best you could. I don’t think even a Turner could have saved me. If you separate from me now, you might live.
You are not going to die!
I am.
Something fractured in me. All this beauty that was Talon was going to cease to exist. I wouldn’t, couldn’t let go, and his anguish at my decision stabbed into me as deep and aching as his own sorrow.
I don’t know if it was because we had created something between us in this moment of time, or if it was because I had just lost Olivia and hadn’t had a chance to save her from herself. I just wanted him to live, even if it meant I’d have him constantly dogging my footsteps. There was just something about him which resonated with me, like music playing a song only I could hear.
Maybe it was because he was so much a part of the Earth, such a beautiful, living, breathing component of what made life.
With a wrenching, tearing sensation we were once again on my bed, his skin pulsating as he pumped into me over and over. The saliva had hold of him now, and his desire was expanding while his magic was contracting until it would reach critical mass. His breathing was labored. I began to glow blue. When I looked down, my living tattoo had spread until my body was an ocean, the waves roiling and heaving. Breakers crashed, the sound an explosion in a storm-tossed sea. I felt as if I was limitless, going beyond the confines of my skin and bones. As if my body became the sea in all its vastness and its weight and its beauty.
I wrapped my arms around him, instinctively protecting him and my blue and his green mixed until it became a turquoise like I had never seen before, vivid and saturated.
And the power I had neither called nor understood detonated outwards, eradicating every drop of undead vamp saliva tainting his blood.
He was cleansed, and his magic settled over us like a cloak of green, quiescent and once again under his control.
Then the pleasure took us, and the warmth which had been in the wind, in the light, crashed over us. We cried out. The warmth became heat, and it filled me up, spilled out of my skin, my hands. Sounds tore from my mouth, too primitive to be screams. Talon’s body bucked against mine, and the magic cradled us both, drawing out the orgasm to a mind-bending intensity I wasn’t sure my human shell could hold. Both of us cried out again.
Lost in the sensations, I gradually became aware of the bed, my heavy breaths, and Talon lying against me, warm and alive. Alive.
His voice was hushed with wonder. “How did you do that? How did you save me? I was dying, Lily.”
I opened my eyes to find him back to normal. Even the glamour was again dampening the effect of his lilting voice.
“I don’t know,” I said truthfully, still too strung out on what had happened to have any coherent idea what I had done to save him. “I simply wanted it to happen and it did. I don’t know where the power came from.” I reached up to brush strands of his soft hair off his face.
He captured my hand, staring at me wordlessly, like he wasn’t quite sure what to do with me. He brought my hand to his mouth and tenderly kissed my palm. “You are a fascinating witch, Lily. I thought I understood the limits of magic, the limits of my own magic.” He kissed my knuckles.
“But now?” I whispered.
“Now,” he shook his head. “I feel like I don’t know a damn thing.”
“Maybe that’s because I believe magic has no limits.”
He smiled at me, his face close. “May I show you, Lily, how a fae melds when he’s in complete control of his magic? Let us have that.”
After what we shared, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t deeply attached to Talon. I wished circumstances were different for us. I was human. He was fae. I was mortal. He was immortal. I was the hunted and he the hunter. But I wanted to share that magic with him if it would be the only moment we could have together.
“Will you drop your glamour?” I whispered. I wanted it so much. His unglamoured body and face made me want to cry or go blind, he was so starkly beautiful. I completely understood why the fae had made that damn law. It would be utter chaos around them if they didn’t hide what they really were—beings of vivid life, color and light.
He shook his head, bringing my hand to his mouth, pressing a kiss to my palm. “Too dangerous. I would be willing to drop it a small fraction, but that’s all. Don’t ask me to, Lily,” he pleaded softly. “I’m quite under your spell at this point. Don’t ask me to risk you that way.”
“Of course you wouldn’t. You have a soft spot for humans, don’t you?”
He turned his head and sighed. “I do. But if you repeat it to anyone, I’ll heartily deny it, and then have to do something cruel, so don’t expose me.”
I rested my hands on either side of his face. “You scared me when you first showed up.”
There was a weight to his gaze, a warning in his face. “I should still scare you. You’re going to have to watch your back. When I leave here, I’ll have to forget what we shared. It’s the only way I can continue to hunt you.”
I searched his eyes and found I couldn’t blame him or feel angry. He was doing what his heart and conscience dictated. “You have to do what you have to do, and so do I. It’s our path, and it can’t be changed.”
He closed his eyes briefly in acceptance. “No. It can’t. I wish it were different.”
“But it’s not. We have to accept that.”
“If…we were free to do as we pleased, would you...”
I covered his mouth with my fingers. “Yes. I’d explore and learn everything about you, Talon.”
The shade of each circle of color on his iris deepened and his body started to glow a beautiful, translucent green.
“My job is ruthless and merciless, Lily. Without an iron fist, not only would fae be in danger, but so would the very fabric of your world. Dust runs everything now. We were…negligent when we introduced it at the beginning of the Break. We…didn’t anticipate, so now we must police it. It’s our responsibility. We take it seriously, since humans add an enormous amount of energy to the possibility and creation of magic. They’re as integral to the puzzle as we are.”
For the first time since I had learned Olivia was using pure dust in our cream puffs, I felt guilty. Not enough to give up the practice, because now my livelihood was tied to it, but enough to feel the pressure he lived with. It had been easier when I was scared of him. We didn’t really have any common ground, because his suspicions about me were correct. But saving his life did give me an edge, and I was determined enough to use it.
“I’ll meld with you, Talon of my own free will, and with full understanding that you will do what you have to do in the future.”
He sighed. “Ah, Lily,” he said in the tone a man used in the most emotional of moments.
My whole body reacted to the sound of his voice as he dropped his glamour just a bit, but the musical resonance of it was enough to make me crave more.
“I’ll have that mouth of yours now, dust hound.”
With a smirk which reminded me so much of the cocky fae who had stood in my kitchen trying to enrap me, he complied. His warm lips touched mine and his fingers tunneled into my hair.
Something moved along my skin, and I knew it wasn’t his hands. The slide of it was like something velvety, and the smell of spring was strong in the room, acting like an aphrodisiac as my blood heated and passion tightened my body.
The velvet something wrapped around my wrists and pulled my hands over my head and when I looked up at Talon, he was pushing himself
up and off me, rising to all fours.
I looked up slowly, and every inch of him was a shimmering, verdant thing of beauty. My breath caught at the naturalness of it. Not coerced by the saliva, but under his control.
He whispered, “tar amoch.”
His hair was a mass of tangled crimson waves around his rapt face. Looking at him, I knew him like I knew myself. The essence of him was burning, glowing, and I realized melding was a much more powerful connection than mere sex. At least with a fae. Hunger unfurled inside me in a sweet, insistent ache. Pulsing. Throbbing. Demanding to be met.
And then I saw them, green vines covered with a soft radiant, moss, growing and reaching out for me from his body. I stared up at him, and in that moment all I could see was beauty. He was as he was meant to be, a being carved from light, filled with color and magic. The power rose off him in a skin-caressing, body-vibrating roll, embracing me like an invisible, living silken blanket.
The vines entwined in my hair, locked around my wrists and slid along my rib cage. One thin, beautiful vine wrapped around my waist, spreading out into a curlicue pattern against the skin of my stomach. I took a hard, heated breath when one of those active tips found my breast and latched on, twisting around my nipple, the soft, tight sensation making me cry out. Another vine captured my other nipple, while more slipped over my core and rubbed against me.
His mouth descended and his tongue slipped out to lick the tight knot held captive by the vine. Then his hot, open mouth closed over me, his teeth teasing, tugging, then sucking me hard and strong as the vine tightened and released, sending waves of pleasure down to the deepest part of me. Vines wrapped around my ankles, snug, but not painful.
“Níos doichte,” he said raggedly, his voice low and thick, devastatingly aroused and aggressively unrestrained. “Look how much I want you, Lily.” Power burned along my skin like the rasp of his warm tongue had felt against my aching nipple. And I looked, drank him in like wine, his glowing body, the muscles in stark relief, the fall of his glorious hair, the green glow of his flesh. The part of his body which was all male. The vines tightened immediately in response to my reaction, and he watched as my body drew up, stretching out. The vines pulled my legs apart. He was still on all fours watching me, his eyes somewhere between real and dreamy, between jeweled and tri-colored.
I was saturated in both his magic and his presence, and where his eyes touched me, it was as if his mouth moved over me like hot, wet velvet.
He took a deep, gasping breath, his hips jerking, and moaned as if the vines were directly connected to what turned him on. When one pushed into me, I arched my back and it felt like places deep inside my body were being caressed. Places no hand could ever touch—but power...power wasn’t constrained by the bounds of flesh.
Lowering his head, he brushed his mouth across mine, his breath warm and scented with honey and strawberries. When he slid his silky tongue against my lower lip, I opened my mouth and eagerly let him in. He deepened the kiss, voracious and hungry, and I answered, sliding my body sensually against him in a rhythm which matched the thrust of his tongue and the exquisite sensation of the vines.
“Come for me, ana’astar.”
I was helpless to resist him as the vines pulled my arms tighter over my head. All he did was kiss me while the vines against my core softened and slid over me like heated silk. He moaned against my mouth and I sucked on his tongue, the taste of sun-ripened, honeyed strawberries so delicious. While the vines moved in and out of me, deeply, pulling back, coiling, and thrusting again, I moaned softly around his tongue. Sensations as exquisite as they were intense rippled through me in wave after wave of pleasure, drawing me as tight as a strung bow. My body shook. Tearing my mouth from his, I came so hard my hips rose from the mattress, my body convulsing.
“Mmmhmm, beautiful, exquisitely beautiful,” he murmured.
“Talon, please,” I panted.
He rose, whispering, “Ar ais.”
The vines released and melted away, and there was only my ragged breath and his in the quiet of the room. Then he sat back on his heels, his gaze hot enough to sizzle along my skin.
I held his gaze, and the moment was almost too intimate to maintain, but I held it. His eyes had weight and pierced me. The tension in the room grew, swelled, like the pressure before a storm. He was heart-stoppingly handsome, and I remembered there had been times when a mortal woman lost her life simply by looking at a fae.
The glow of his skin intensified, and I rose, reaching out to touch him, sliding my hand along his ribcage and over the swell of his chest, up the strong column of his neck. He sat back, his hands coming up, grabbing my waist, lifting me onto his lap.
His red hair crackled and moved with his power, and a buzz vibrated along every nerve ending in my body. I buried my fingers into his ignited hair, and his power spilled into me. I felt as if my body was expanding, becoming as huge and as vast as the universe. I could touch the stars, contain the stars, become the stars.
Stars which were in his eyes, and we were back in the forest as the elemental awareness of the trees surrounded us. He slipped into me and filled me with more than just his sex. It was a full body experience, setting off pleasure everywhere at once.
My blood caught fire, burning in my veins. I pressed my breasts to his chest, my knees straddled his lap, his hands slid over my buttocks, kneading, stroking. His knuckles skimmed over the taut muscles of my back, skating along the sides of my rib cage.
And as he moved, a storm built inside me, lightning, rain, heavy winds, a tempest which whirled in my blood, danced beneath my skin, shimmered like stardust. I felt as if I were tumbling through space, dizzy, hanging on tight to my only anchor.
Then I was on my back with no roof but a sky full of diamond lights and branches strung with lacy moss, and Talon was lost in me, his green glow casting shadows on the trunks. Running my hands down the slope of his spine, his magic whirling in me, I came four times in succession, screaming my pleasure into the soft murmur of the forest, the air thick with moisture and the heady smell of the earth.
He moved urgently against me, crushed his mouth to mine with a desperate, brutal need. So many sensations, so many tastes on my tongue, I could barely breathe. A low, throaty, on-the-edge moan escaped him.
“Lily.” My name was a whispered seduction hushed out between his clenched teeth as his body convulsed with the force of his release.
When the shudders subsided, Talon tucked his face against my throat. His ragged breathing was hot and moist against my skin, his heart racing just as unsteadily as mine.
And between one heartbeat and the next, I was back in my room, the mattress under my back. He rolled and pulled me with him, keeping his arms around me. Together our breathing slowed and resumed a normal cadence. I wanted to hold onto this moment forever. But with a wrenching, tearing pain, I remembered I couldn’t.
The reality of our circumstances drove a solid and insurmountable wedge between us.
When I woke up, the shower was on, and he emerged shortly after the water shut off. When he opened the door, steam billowed out and mixed in with the soap and male with just a whiff of his spring-like scent. A towel was wrapped around his lean waist, across washboard abs I wanted to run my hands over once again.
His layered hair was towel-dried and freed of the braids and all those silver clasps. It hung heavy on his broad shoulders, clung to his damp chest all the way to his waist. His tri-colored eyes were back to normal, but there was still a faint green glow to his skin.
“Ana’astar,” he said softly and walked to the bed.
I looked up the length of his body and my eyes snagged on his living tattoo and my heart suspended. I rose onto my knees and got closer to the ink and my breath left me in a rush.
“What?” he said.
“Your tattoo, my wave is etched into the trunk of the tree.”
He looked down, his eyes flashing with surprise. He grabbed my wrist and looked at my tattoo then down at the iden
tical one on the trunk of his. Then he looked closer at mine. “Yours has also been branded.”
He was right. His tree was etched into the base of the wave. He grabbed me under the arms and simply lifted me up against his damp, clean-scented body and kissed me hard. I kissed him back just as hard.
When he broke the kiss. We just stared into each other eyes. “This was a significant meld, Lily. I….I…fuck!” he said brokenly.
I cupped his jaw. “I know,” I said softly. “Things just happened because of the vamp.”
He stared at me. “Keep telling yourself that. It will be easier to handle our separation.”
“You promised no withering. That’s what you said.”
He closed his eyes. “I’m a thousand years old, Lily and I’ve never…you are a treasure. Please don’t make me…hunt you.”
I knelt on the bed, and took his face in my hands. “I can’t give you want you want. I’m sorry,” I whispered never regretting anything more in life than I regretted this. One more thing I could lay at Olivia’s feet.
He took a heaving breath. “I’m sorry, too. It’s your turn,” he said, jerking his head toward the bathroom.
I slipped out of bed and he grabbed my upper arm, turning me into his embrace. We stood there for a moment. It wasn’t sexual, it was gratitude and something else I didn’t want to think too hard about. When he let me go, he smiled sadly and watched me walk out of the room.
After I finished cleaning and went back out into the bedroom, he was dressed in the black leather, the pants whole again, gloving his hard body.
His hair was all braided and neat and tidy.