by S. E. Akers
And they were really GREY…
“I can’t believe my ten weeks are almost over,” I said, making sure my sorrow was officially on record.
“So you’re not even a little excited about your impending reprieve?” Tanner titled his head down towards me. “There’s a lot less reading where you’re headed.”
I could tell from his disbelieving grin that he was dipping into my emotions. “Yardley is the only thing I’m excited about,” I clarified.
He stroked his fingers through my hair as gently as an airy breeze. “That’s understandable,” he assured. I started to tell him how much I was going to hate not seeing him every day when he halted my first words with a light brush of his fingers. “I’m going to miss you just as much, if not more,” he breathed. Then he angled my head back to the sky and gave the top of it a prolonged, soulful peck. “And by the way, it’s still your turn.”
I refocused my attention back to our makeshift canvas, searching the celestial sea of blue with a pair of critical squinty eyes. “A lion,” I finally announced.
Tanner shaded his eyes with his hand. “Where?”
I pointed towards the puffy white bank hovering at the 10 o’clock mark. “See, there’s its mane . . . Its body . . . And its tail,” I diagramed confidently.
“The rules of cloud-watching dictate realism, Picasso,” Tanner chided. “Abstract doesn’t count.”
I propped myself onto my elbows, catching a good taste of his cocky grin. “Um, I let your sorry excuse for an elephant slide.” A frown dropped the corners of my mouth when I turned back to the blue canvas spanning over our heads. The winds had picked up quite a bit and had consequently shifted my lion into an unrecognizable shape.
Tanner arched his brow smugly. “Where’s the king of the jungle, now?”
“It’s not my fault the wind messed it up,” I protested.
“Wind tends to do that,” he laughed. “That’s why there is a ten-second rule.”
“You made that up,” I alleged.
“Are you accusing me of cheating — again?”
“Yes. So you can put those wounded eyes away,” I advised. “Remember, I know what’s hiding in the tip of your pool stick . . . And your chess pieces . . . And the funny ink on your pretty deck of playing cards.”
“How did you find out?” he asked.
“Silas ratted you out,” I grinned.
“That figures,” Tanner grunted and then collapsed back onto the blanket. “Considering all the betrayal and deceit going on in my absence.”
Oh, if I only had a violin… Suddenly a sneaky idea illuminated like a light bulb while noticing how cozy the cheater looked lying on the blanket. Discreetly, I conjured a gust powerful enough to reach the contested cloud. After several manipulative twists and turns, my lion was proudly prowling the skies again…though with one minor improvement. I tapped his shoulder and directed his eyes to the cloud.
Tanner raised his head. “Is that lion sticking its tongue out at me?”
“Sure,” I huffed. “That you can make out.”
He pulled me on top of him, his eyes provocative and steady. “You’d better be careful with that wind,” he warned. “It already landed you into some trouble with your top yesterday. You may end up kicking up a fight this time.” Then he sealed his mouth over my lips for one of his deep & sensual marathon kisses.
I fought off a blush as soon I became fully aware of what my breeze had actually kicked up. Though truthfully, there hadn’t been one moment when our bodies lay melded or entwined over the last several days when I didn’t feel the extent of his want. But this time was different, almost like it held an unquenchable sense of urgency.
My hand trailed a lingering path down his chest once our lips had parted, teasing each of his ridges with the warm pads of my fingers. “I’m not scared of you,” I whispered.
Tanner halted my hand with a fervent squeeze before it could finish its charted course. “Keep doing that and you will be,” he assured, his eyes aching and stormy.
My mind drifted back to his “taking things slow” talk from the other night. Despite how on-board I was at the time, I didn’t realize how damn difficult controlling my desires was going to be. And his playfulness was a big part of the problem. Who cranks a motor and then can just let it sit there and idle a daggone eternity?
I rolled off him and sat straight up, holding on to my knees in hopes of bracing myself for what I was about to say. “What if I’m ready?” I proposed, head high and lips slightly puckered, “. . . for the sake of argument.”
Tanner arched his brow. “We’ve already discussed this — You’re not.”
I wasn’t sure which I felt like more: his pupil again or just a plain old little girl. Either way, I realized I didn’t have much, if any say in the matter — and that had me feeling just as sore as when he’d shut me down in front of Nerina. In the midst of my stewing, a loud rumble rolled through a patch of clouds drifting overhead and then the winds started picking up steam, whirling cold and brisk. Humph… I knew his decree had left a definite chafe, but apparently I was a whole lot more pissed than what I’d thought. Even the skies were showing it.
Tanner rose up immediately, shifting his open-mouthed stare between me and the stormy gray clouds. “Shiloh, I know your emotions might be signaling that you’re ready, but your mind’s not,” he said. “And I want all of you . . . right down to your soul.” He guided my face to his. “No matter how long it takes.”
“But you’re ready?” I submitted, which in hindsight was just about the dumbest thing a gal could ask with respect to a sexually-experienced guy and his hormones. And considering the number of years he’d racked up, I was guessing that he hadn’t just been “around the block” but had personally paved several of its stones.
His face glowed with sincerity. “Yes,” he admitted. “I’ll be the first to admit that each day it gets harder to fight my desire, and that’s the only part of me that won’t miss knowing you’re in the bedroom across the hall. It won’t be long before I’ll find my will completely stolen.” He leaned in and teased my mouth with a kiss, only skimming it with a hint of his lips and a light lick of his tongue. “I can’t tell you how much I’m hoping your mind has whispered its absolute consent before I ever see that day.” Then his eyes swept my entire frame slowly and uninhibited. The pining ache I spied in them left a scintillating trail of tingles along my skin from the thoughts they suggested. Not a single drop of water was needed this time; he’d undressed me with his eyes just fine…and had taken me in a thousand different ways.
I scrambled to regroup my senses. “How will I know when I’m ready?” I posed wholeheartedly and with as sound of a mind as one could after a soul-melting look like that. I couldn’t imagine feeling any more passionate about him or anyone else for that matter than what I did right at this moment.
Tanner stroked his hand down my face, caressing every curve intently. “It will call to you like an out of the blue breeze when you’re all alone and rapt in your innermost thoughts.” His eyes lightened along with his smile. “Then your heart will swell in a way you’ve never felt before, like you fear it’s going to explode.” He laid his lips over mine and sealed his promise with a gentle kiss. “A pounding heart urging your choices in the throws of passion isn’t the same thing . . . In order for that kind of intimacy to be absolutely heartfelt, it should only be shared with the person you’re unmistakably in love with.”
A deafening roar of thunder ripped through the clouds as I sat there staring at him, helplessly stripped of my senses. Luckily its “BOOM” was just what I needed to pull me out of my trance.
Tanner cast an uncomfortable glance at the darkening skies. “That’s not quite the reaction I’d expected.”
I shook my head, my heart stuttering. “There must be a storm brewing. That’s not coming from me.” I swallowed a lump out of my throat to reclaim all of my breaths. “You love me?”
Tanner pulled me into his arms and rolled me onto
the sand. “Little girl, sometimes you can be so surprisingly naïve.” He trained his stare to mine brightly, like there wasn’t a swarm of gray clouds above veiling our sunshine. “Isn’t is obvious? The way you feel about me certainly is.”
My chest was all aflutter. “Then you need to stop taunting me so much,” I scolded. But not too much, my fanatically beating heart cried to my brain.
“I agree,” he admitted. “Those games are far too tempting . . . especially my trick with your bikini top yesterday.”
“Yeah,” I grinned. “Thank goodness for invisibility.” The roguish gleam I spied in his eyes left my cheeks feeling more than a bit flat. “I was invisible, wasn’t I?”
His pressed expression coupled with his silence sent me sinking further into the sand — and not in the dreamy-melty kind of way either.
“Wasn’t I?” I repeated, voice cracking.
“Yes,” Tanner answered and then bounced his brow apologetically. “Once you hit the beach. The wards I placed in the water sort of stripped your defenses — literally.”
My mouth dropped like a sack of bricks, despite the mortifying freeze that had seized the rest of my muscles. “But I felt my golden veil — and I saw it there! The entire time!” I argued, knowing I’d doused myself with enough of the golden topaz’s power that my veil felt cemented to my skin. And I sure-fire didn’t cake some flimsy, supernatural Coppertone glow on there either. I was practically full-on nuclear!
“Yes,” Tanner admitted, only to hesitate for a few tense seconds. “But the way I spelled them won’t allow anything to go unseen. Not even someone given access to this island with the full use of their powers.”
“UH!” I turned away and crossed my arms at my chest, mashing them against me like I was sitting here presently topless.
Tanner nudged my arm. “It’s a good thing you got out of there,” he said. I glanced back to find him lying back in the sand with his arms stretched casually over his head and grinning. “You looked kind of chilly.”
The grumble my head was silently raging could have cracked the island split in two after hearing that. I reached over and punched his chest, hard.
“I didn’t tell you to drop your arms,” Tanner chuckled through his choke, “and you owed me one anyway.” He grabbed my arm just before my next thump landed and pulled me on top of him. “Trust me. I paid for it dearly last night. The thoughts filling my head were tormenting enough, but sleeping pressed so close against you in that hammock was utter hell.”
My stare crashed to a random drift of sand. What’s done, is done, I told myself in hopes of it sticking. Of course it didn’t help alleviate my embarrassment or make me feel any less naked…or less stupid. I turned back to him with a poised glare. “It doesn’t matter,” I announced. “You’ve seen them before.”
Tanner scissored my legs and rolled me over. “Not like that,” he affirmed, his tone just as wicked as his eyes. His mouth nestled into my neck and began devouring the spot just below my ears that he loved baiting with wet kisses so much. It was evident from the warrior’s desire to torture me into writhes he knew just how much of a deadly weapon that tongue of his truly was.
I desperately searched the sky for a distraction, anything to keep my actions virgin-white. Luckily an intriguing enough patch of low hanging clouds called to me. The fluffy formation seemed to be ballooning the closer it drifted, which was kind of bizarre considering the winds were moving the opposite way. My lids shot open when an iridescent flash exploded inside the cloud. The crazy electrical surge fanned to its ends, like lightning tinted with the streaks of a rainbow, and then disappeared into the gray bounds of the cloud. The sky above was now a foreboding haze of rolling clouds and murky shadows; its churn fueled by the erratic winds that were streaming from all directions. A wary vibe pummeled my senses. Some sort of storm was coming. I could feel it. The approaching bank of low-hanging clouds began changing its shape rapidly and seemingly all on its own, without the help of any wind. One of Tanner’s lectures charged to the forefront of my mind. I quickly turned the focus of my thoughts inward and swiftly scoured the golden topaz’s memories. I had to be certain. Reading about something was one thing, but I needed to see it to believe it for myself. My eyes glazed just as soon as I’d located one of the fallen Golden Topaz Talisman’s past encounters while flying the not-so-friendly skies, confirming my suspicions to a terrifying T.
“A dragon,” I breathed out.
“We’re not playing anymore,” Tanner admonished in a rustle. Then to further his point, he increased the fervor of his kisses and wound his hand around to my bottom for a frisky squeeze. His mouth came to a sudden enough stop not a second later, now hovering heated against my skin. It could have been the fire of my pulse or the alarm he’d sensed from my emotions, but I was pretty sure the abrupt halt of his lips was because my holster had bumped his arm upon its reemergence. And though his frame remained unshaken, his blazing eyes locked on mine like a pair of lasers.
“A real one,” I whispered, trying to remain as still as possible so the pillowy cloud dragon encroaching wouldn’t be alarmed.
“A Nimbus?” he asked, though his steely look aired his certainty.
“Yes,” I answered while my peripherals kept a watchful eye on the billowing creature. I could already make out the contours of its dragon face as clear as if it were molded from clay rather than an airy patch of collecting clouds.
“I need your blade,” he requested.
“Okay,” I replied, my chest pounding.
With a swaddling stare, he leaned in and softly kissed my lips. “Tell me when,” he winked.
I waited a few more calculating seconds. Then just as the Nimbus swooped down and stretched out its rolling span of wings, I slipped out my hilt and blared, “NOW!”
The diamond blade shot out of my hilt as soon as Tanner rolled off my frame. I quickly tossed the sword straight into his awaiting hand as I sprang to my feet. Sailing a steady path towards us was a now well-formed, misty white dragon comprised solely of clouds resembling tufts of wispy fur. The creature’s size was rapidly building even now, hand in hand with its fury.
With the Nimbus now close enough and well in his sights, Tanner drove the diamond wand straight into its head. The cloud dragon cried out a blustery howl upon its pierce, igniting its form with a flash of white light and forcing its glowing, orb-like blue eyes to spring forth from their murky sockets. After a smack of its wings, the Nimbus melted into nothing but a dispersed, hazy mass of white and then quickly spiraled a path headed straight for the sky.
I stood there gratefully bewildered. That wasn’t so bad, I thought. I recalled a passage I’d read about the freak, fluffy creatures. They had been around for eons… They were extremely rare… Loners weren’t uncommon, though they typically traveled in small packs… Their roars were thunderously rattling (enough to shake your ears and jolt your weapon right out of your hands if you weren’t careful)… And, they had NEVER been successfully vanquished nor sent back to The Darklands. For the creature to be so unkillable and elusive, I figured it would have put up a little more of a fuss.
Tanner grabbed my arm and pulled me close to him as he panned the skies. “I see your luck made the trip with us.”
“We’re on your island,” I blasted back. “I’ll only accept fifty-percent of the blame on this one.”
“Judging from how fast these things amassed after you shot that cloud with one of your topaz-fueled gusts, I’d say fifty-one sounds about right,” he countered.
“NO,” I groaned, heavy on the throaty.
Tanner shook his head. “There’s no other reason it could be. They’re not prone to shifting into their forms unless they’re hungry or feel threatened. And you twisting that cloud was the equivalent of giving it a magical spank.”
“Did you scare it off?” I asked.
Tanner threw me a glance. “Hardly.” He turned his eyes back to the harrowing scene stirring within the atmosphere. I’d never seen a sky so dark and s
ooty looking, poisoned by the aggressive churn of the clouds. The way it began whipping up raging funnels in random spots made the heavens look like it was preparing for a vicious fight. Even the winds were picking up at an unnerving rate, creating a dust storm of sand on the ground and beating everything in sight.
We raced back into the brush for some cover. “Do you know how rare those things are?” Tanner asked while he kept a vigilant eye on the skies.
“Yes,” I replied.
“And that none have ever been sent back to The Darklands successfully?” he added.
“I seem to remember reading something about that too,” I grumbled.
Tanner pulled me close to him, sensing how bad I felt. “See what you can incite with that wind if you’re not careful.” He checked the skies again and then plastered my lips with a quick kiss. “I won’t say I told you so, even though I’m dying to,” he grinned.
“Thanks,” I snarked, half-amused.
We checked the turbulent skies again, searching for any telltale signs of the Nimbus. Suddenly several of the whirling patches within the clouds began birthing creatures right before our eyes.
“How many are there?” I muttered as I watched another one drop out of the sky and then shift into its fluffy, monstrous form.
Our eyes panned the stormy gray sea above on a desperate hunt for pissed-off cotton-balls. “Five,” we groaned in unison.
“So what’s the plan?” I asked.