by Lora Leigh
“What are you doing to me?” she moaned as he held her to the bed, restraining every movement, denying her the deeper, closer touch she craved.
She shouldn’t want this. His arrogance the night before should have been enough to keep her anger burning. But it wasn’t anger whipping through her body.
“I am merely holding you, precious,” he whispered as his lips caressed her collarbone again. “Just holding you, just warming myself in your fire. That is all.”
The way he spoke, the odd turn of his words, the light accent just below them. They melted her. That had to be the reason she couldn’t fight against them, it couldn’t really be emotion she heard in his voice. Could it?
And the familiarity of it. That alone perplexed and yet drew her. Each time she fought against the pleasure she was sucked into a pit of knowledge, hazy and distant, that wouldn’t let her free.
“It aches,” she whispered, her hips lifting to the hard presence of his cock between her thighs.
Ache nothing. It was damned well hurting and she needed relief.
“Aye, I ache as well, love.” He was breathing harshly, his voice deeper, rougher than before. “But the pleasure, Ariel. Feel the pleasure the ache possesses. Feel it, love, deep inside you.”
Feel it? It was killing her.
She would have berated him, would have screamed her need for him if his lips hadn’t covered hers a second later. Deep, intense, it was a merging not just of lips, but something more elemental. Deeper. Stronger.
His free hand smoothed down her body. He ignored her whimpered protest when he shifted, his hips moving back from hers, the pressure against the portal of her sex lifting.
That wasn’t acceptable. She strained against the retreat. Then his hand was pushing the tattered remains of her gown to her hips, cool air stroking between her thighs a second before his fingers covered her.
Ariel stilled. Her eyes flew open, caught by his as she felt him part her, his fingers sliding through her wet slit, circling her clit, easing back along the narrow channel to her pulsing core.
She was shaking. His lips still covered hers, his tongue moving against hers, a slow, deliberate thrust and retreat between her lips that only then seared into her mind. She trembled beneath him, caught between pleasure and fear as the wisps of memory invaded her mind. Memories of other touches, other kisses from his demanding lips. His whispered words of need, the lust he inspired in her. Back and forth, memories of a then and the pleasures of now. They were terrifying her.
“Like that,” he growled when he saw she realized the movements he was mimicking. “I’m going to take you like that, Ariel. My lips buried between your thighs, my tongue sinking inside you, over and over again, until I am drowning in the taste of you. Drowning and needing still more of you.”
He held her legs apart as his fingers found the small opening to her vagina. He rimmed the entrance, humming his approval as more of her juices escaped to bathe his fingers.
She was burning alive. She strained to lift closer, as he released her hands, shuddering in a pleasure so intense it was overwhelming. She fought to sift through the layers of memories, reach inside herself to make sense of it. Shaking her head, she concentrated on the crystal at her breast, praying it held the answers she needed. The strength she needed. She connected into the power, but there was little strength to fight against him to be had. It only intensified the pleasure, the familiarity and, God help her, the hunger.
“Be still, love…” The soft words were accompanied by a slight, resounding little smack to her pussy.
Ariel’s eyes flew wide as her body shuddered, electricity whipping from her clit through her bloodstream as pleasure nearly incapacitated her. The vibration of the sharp little swat sent pleasure racing through her cunt, clenched the muscles of her vagina, sent her clit into near orgasmic shudders before it faded away.
“There…” He watched her closely, his eyes narrowed, his chest heaving for breath. “We’re not in a race. Enjoy…”
“Your ass…” She gasped for breath. “Do it again.”
He stilled. She saw the look then, a heat so intense, so overwhelming that for just a moment she wondered if he would lose the control he was obviously exerting over himself.
“Again?” His voice was guttural now. Low, intense.
“Again.” She was close. God, she was so close to…something.
He smiled then. A wicked, sensual smile that had her catching her breath in response.
He rubbed against the soft, damp curls, his fingers sliding through the slit, glancing her clit, then back down to dip enticingly into the narrow entrance of her pussy.
Ariel could hear her heart pounding, the blood rushing through her veins as he lifted his hand once again.
Oh, yes.
She needed this.
Her hips lifted beseechingly, her lips opening to drag in air as she watched his eyes narrow, anticipation tightening his own body as his cock throbbed against her leg.
A second, that’s all it would take, another second…
Raised voices suddenly shattered the atmosphere as the sound of wood crashing inward galvanized Shane into action.
Before Ariel could do more than gasp in surprise, he was off the bed, tossing the comforter aside and jerking the swords from beneath the bed.
“Catch.” He threw her weapon to her before she could even make sense of what was going on.
She caught it with a smooth, coordinated movement, the familiarity of which shocked her briefly, then came to her knees as the room suddenly filled with people. Silent, suddenly stock-still, amazed people.
The warriors from the night before were framed in the doorway, among them, the petite blonde who rode with the commander of whatever fighting force they thought they were. Shock rounded her eyes as her gaze went from the blade in Shane’s hands then to the living sword between his thighs.
“Oh. My. God,” Chantel breathed as Shane cursed, jerking the sheet from the bed as Ariel fought to hold the comforter to her breasts. “Devlin, he’s going to split her in two.”
Devlin’s hand clapped over her mouth. He grimaced roughly as he silenced the woman, wincing at Shane’s muttered curse as he stalked to the recessed doors between the two rooms.
“Sorry, Shane.” Devlin cleared his throat, his lips twitching to hold back a grin. “Chantel felt Ariel was in…uhhh…distress…” The snickers behind him had Ariel’s face flaming.
“Fix the fuckin’ room door,” Shane snapped, ignoring the information as he slammed the panels together between the two rooms.
He snapped the lock into place before laying his head against the panels and breathing in roughly.
“Well,” Ariel breathed out with mocking patience, her sword falling to the bed as she shook her head in confusion. The fragmented memories had slowly dissipated, leaving her drifting in a mix of reality and illusion. “That was interesting anyway.”
He turned back to her with a frown. Irritation lined his face, thinned his lips.
“And you come to this conclusion, how?” he growled.
She shrugged slowly, pushing the blanket aside as she crawled from the bed, pulling the ripped sides of the gown over her breasts.
“Well.” She smiled back at him innocently as she moved to the clothes he had stacked on the small table at the side of the room. “It’s not everyday a girl gets saved just before being split in two. I’ll have to thank them. Do you think, maybe, it would be possible to find a less amply endowed warrior? We wouldn’t want to hurt me, now would we?”
Her sharp mockery obviously struck just as she intended it to, if the narrowing of his eyes was anything to go by.
She swept into the bathroom before he could reply, but she didn’t miss the echo of the curse that rang out behind her. Locking the bathroom door behind her, she breathed in furiously staring up at the ceiling and wondered just how the hell she was supposed to resist him now. More importantly, how had he managed to make her mind work against her? For a small
moment in time, while held beneath his body, she had known him, and she had hungered. A hunger she couldn’t resist.
Chapter Nine
Ariel wasn’t certain which was worse—facing Shane after the humiliating episode of having his entire group seeing her naked and nearly fucked, or facing the implications of who and what they could be.
She sat in the small living room section of the suite, after they fixed the door amid the yells and curses of the manager and handyman, watching the interactions between them all.
The one that fascinated her the most, made her the most uncomfortable, was the blonde who sat beside the commander of the group.
Devlin “Shadow” Hunter and his wife, Chantel, were obviously a perfect match. They fit each other, not so much in size, as he was much larger, but more in how well they seemed attuned to each other.
It was the crystal that hung around Chantel’s neck that fascinated her most. She was the Earth Mistress. Ariel had known that the moment she walked from the bathroom, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and saw the other woman standing by the window, the gems within the crystal glowing eerily.
The central emerald and amethyst stones were brilliant. The sapphire and ruby less intense, but still bright. She knew then that the legends her grandmother had told her were true. That meant the evil she faced was worse than she could have ever imagined. It was true evil, dark and destructive.
To this warrior, whose heart and soul was most pure, the Earth Mother gifted to him, a most precious daughter…the Wind Mistress. The one who possessed and controlled the Wind Crystal.
Ariel possessed the Wind Crystal. But if Shane was the Savage legend told of, then he was… No. She wasn’t even going to consider that. She couldn’t consider that and stay sane. If Shane was indeed the Savage, then her own destiny was most likely entwined with his. A destiny dependent not just on her belief in the impossible, but her belief in the unrealistic.
“We don’t have very many options left at this point.” Devlin leaned forward as one of the others spread a map out on the table. “According to Chantel, the third crystal has to be in this vicinity.” He pointed to a region of mountains in Washington State. “But, she can’t connect with the crystal as she did with Ariel’s.” His black eyes locked onto Ariel’s, holding her mesmerized for long seconds. “That will be your job.”
She blinked in confusion. “That will be my job?” she questioned him, amazement thickening her voice. “You’re kidding, right?” As she thought, impossible and unrealistic.
“No, he isn’t.” Chantel watched her quietly, the eerie green of her gaze making Ariel want to look away, yet unable to. “You have to know what the crystal is; otherwise you couldn’t have called the elemental forces to you the night before. That means you can connect with the next crystal.”
“Whoa! Hold up here!” She laughed incredulously, coming from her chair as she cast Shane a fulminating glance. He could have at least warned her that this was coming. “I didn’t do anything. That storm was not my fault.”
She didn’t like the way they were watching her now. Chantel tilted her head thoughtfully as Devlin’s eyes narrowed on her. The Irishman, who wasn’t bad-looking, sighed wearily. And the crazy amber-eyed warrior smirked. Now that one she didn’t like at all and she couldn’t figure out why. Shane merely watched her quietly, keeping his expression clear, his opinion, thankfully, to himself.
“Ariel, you know better than that,” Chantel finally replied quietly. Relaxed and calm, the woman just exuded confidence. She wore her crystal outside her dark gray T-shirt, and Ariel couldn’t keep from noticing how the emerald sphere in the center of it occasionally brightened. Like it was now. “There was no storm as you neared your home,” she related then. “The sky was clear with no storm warnings. Yet, what happened when you realized Jonar’s men were waiting on you?”
Ariel stepped back. “Freak storms happen all the time,” she pointed out in a brittle voice.
“And when you were running for the motorcycles and Shanar realized they were following too close? He told you to order the winds to push them back. That they would obey your direction. You did that. Didn’t you?”
What could she say? She cast Shane a look of silent retribution.
He spread his hands as though innocent, a smile tipping his hard lips.
“Loose lips can get you in a load of trouble, Shane,” she sniped furiously as she propped her hands on her hips and faced him, outraged.
“I was wearing my comm link.” He shrugged a little too innocently. “They could hear everything.”
“Great,” she muttered, remembering the helpless, yearning little sounds she had made when he held her against the tree, his lips consuming her, burning her alive with a need she had never known before.
“Ariel, you don’t know how thankful we were to have found you,” Chantel said then. “But surely even you realize the power you have at your fingertips? That power is more far-reaching than you know. And only you can connect with the next crystal. You have to do so before Jonar finds her first.”
Ariel shivered at the thought of that.
“That’s why he wanted me dead,” she whispered. “For the crystal?”
“He couldn’t kill you and take the crystal,” she said then, her expression filled with pain. “You had to remove it yourself and give it to him. Don’t you remember what happened to you in his fortress, Ariel?”
It was as though they were holding their breath, waiting on that answer.
“Not much.” She shrugged. She figured she was better off not knowing. “I have a few nightmares sometimes, things that make no sense…”
She dropped her arms, shoving them in the pockets of her jeans as she paced away from the group. She didn’t want to think about those nightmares. Didn’t want to remember the darkness and pain, and the confusing shifts of reality and fantasy that had merged within her head.
“You know you controlled the elements last night, regardless,” Chantel continued. “You are connected to the crystal and through it, to its sister stones, enough to draw on them for aid. If you can do that, you can find the next in the circle of four. You have no other choice. If we don’t find her first, then Jonar could instead. Would you want her to suffer the same fate as you?”
She rounded on them furiously then. “Don’t lay that on my shoulders,” she snapped harshly. “I wasn’t at fault for my own kidnapping and I’ll be damned if I will accept fault for another’s.”
“You have the power.” Chantel’s voice never rose, but her eyes snapped with her own anger. “You have it and you deny it. Trust me, Ariel, you will learn one of these days that you cannot hide forever from what you don’t want to face. It would not rest on your shoulders if you truly didn’t have the power to reach her. But I know you do.”
“Did you have the power to reach me?” she cried out. “Where the hell were you when Jonar was beating the life out of me?” Those nightmares she did remember. The pain vibrating through her, agonizing, hellish in its intensity as she hung suspended from a chain in the ceiling.
She remembered the cell, dirty and as dark as her father’s closet, until Jonar opened the door. And she knew when that door opened that more pain was coming.
“I came to you when you called to me.” Naked pain flashed across Chantel’s face as she laid a hand on Devlin’s chest to prevent the flash of fury in his expression from having voice. Ariel had a feeling she wouldn’t have wanted to hear whatever was building behind that lethal black gaze. “I had no choice. And if you would face who and what you are, you would remember it.”
“Enough. From both of you.” Shane came to his feet then, staring down at Ariel fiercely when she would have said more. “Enough, Ariel,” he repeated. “This will get us nowhere.” He reached out and would have touched her cheek if she hadn’t flinched away from him.
She had no desire to be touched by him or anyone else.
“I’m not hiding from anything,” she told him furiously. “I don’t know ho
w that happened last night, Shane. I don’t know what happened.”
She needed him to believe her, even if none of the others did.
“She’s no different than she was before.” Dark, brutally cold, the amber-eyed warrior rose to his feet as Ariel stepped away from Shane.
He watched her with a smirk around those sensual, cruel lips, his long-lashed eyes cynical and chillingly insulting.
“What the hell do you mean by that?” she snapped, watching as the others rose as well.
“Just as I said, Mistress.” Censure filled each word. “You denied your power the first time and hid behind your fears when it may have aided in saving others’ lives. Now you do so again.”
“Joshua, that’s not true,” Chantel snapped then. “Don’t make this harder than it is.”
“Isn’t it?” He arched a brow mockingly, ignoring Shane’s growled order that he cease. “I remember it well, Chantel. She hid in her room cleaning her sword when the Snake worshippers visited Arriane’s room. And she hid even further after your death. Just as she will hide now. You go too easy on your sister, Chantel.”
Ariel’s gaze flew to Chantel’s. She saw naked disgust and pain on the other woman’s expression.
“As we all hid,” she snapped. “At least we tried to find a way to ease Arriane’s life from the misery you made of it. I’ll hear no more of this. If you have recriminations, turn to yourself first, Mystic. I’ll hear no more against her.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. He cast Devlin a furious stare as the other man stared back at him sardonically.
Joshua snarled, snapped his lips together and threw himself back in his chair. Thick, devil’s-black hair flowed around him, creating an impression of… She drew in a deep, hard breath. A Mayan warrior. That was what he reminded her of.
“He comes to heel so charmingly.” The Irishman chuckled then, his accent deep, throbbing with power. She felt that power now, on the very air around them, reaching toward her, flowing around her.