by Lora Leigh
She flinched. There was no mistaking the truth in his declaration. She could read it in his eyes, the dark, swirling grays clashing together. She could see it in the pain in his expression.
“I love you, Ariel.” And now she heard it in his voice. “And you can deny it until hell freezes over, but I know you. I know your heart and I know your spirit, and I know you love me.”
She stilled, staring back at him shock.
“Love doesn’t exist.” She heard the ragged sound of the words, felt the effort it took to force them from her lips. “You don’t realize that. That’s all. When you do, you’ll understand…”
His lips tilted in a bittersweet smile. “A thousand years I’ve loved you, wife,” he said then, no regret, no second thoughts. “I will love you until eternity. Of that I am certain.”
He moved to her slowly, staring down at her in a way that had her heart clenching with that strange joy again. She could feel it spreading through her, warming places in her that had been cold, healing wounds that were ages old.
She blinked back at him, confusion filling her as she saw the steadfast resolve in his expression.
“But…why?” she whispered, unable to understand that devotion, that certainty that such an emotion existed. “Why, Shane?”
“Such questions you have,” he sighed then, a small smile quirking his lips. “Once, you easily accepted and returned my love. You questioned only the power that was so unfamiliar to you. Now, you accept your power, and question that love that was so much a part of you. I failed to aid you in gaining your power then, but I will not fail in showing you love now.”
He caught her wrist, pulling her to him, placing her palm against the damp, broad chest before her.
“Feel my heart, Ariel. It beats for you. It aches for you. For a thousand years it has cried for you. That will not change overnight, beloved. It will always be, for as long as time carries on and there is breath in my body. Always, Ariel.”
She wanted to feel that. She wanted to know that certainty, that dedication within herself and each time she searched within herself for it, darkness overwhelmed her. She could feel the warning, the sharp-clawed demon crouched and waiting, ready to attack.
She leaned against his chest, her lips pressed to his heart, feeling the pulse of life beating through him, feeling life, heat, as his arms wrapped around her, holding her close against him.
“I’m scared, Shane,” she whispered the words then that had tormented her for months. For years. “What if I’m not strong enough? What if I fail?”
His fingers slid into her hair, gripping the sodden strands until he could pull her head back and stare into her eyes somberly.
“I have your back,” he whispered, his fingers leaving her hair to move to the crystal where it lay between her breasts.
The touch of his hand against it had her breathing in roughly from the sensations suddenly singing through her body. Warmth, gentleness, joy and passion. And strength. She could feel his strength filling her, flooding the very center of her being.
“He’s coming, Shane.” She knew Jonar wasn’t far behind them.
She was terrified that he would stand in front of her again, that he would protect her with his last breath, and leave her alone again.
“And we will face him,” he told her calmly, his expression assured, confident. Almost confident enough to give her hope. “And we will win, Ariel. I trust you, baby. You are growing daily in your power, more than I ever dared dream. We will win.”
Before she could protest his belief in her, or argue her own fears, his lips took hers in a kiss of pure passion and emotion. Her breath hitched in her chest as his tongue licked at her lips, parted them slowly before sliding inside in a smooth, heated thrust.
She whimpered beneath the kiss, she could do nothing else. It was a benediction, a fiery vow and one that had a sensual, heated ache whipping from her chest to her thighs, swelling her clit and leaving her pussy drenched with need.
Whether anger or hunger drove him, she had no defenses against him. One touch, that was all it took. One kiss, and her knees weakened, her flesh sensitized and she found her mind dazing with a matching hunger that left her with memories of similar events, a remembered passion and joy in his touch that made him more familiar to her than anyone she had known in her life. At least, in this life.
“We need to get you out of these wet clothes.” He was breathing as roughly as she was when his head raised, his eyes darker, nearly black in passion.
Ariel gasped when he bent, one powerful arm sweeping her off her feet as the other cradled her back. He lifted her to his chest, while her arms circled his neck. Here, she felt at home. She felt safe, damn him, and if she believed in love, she would have felt loved.
But she did believe in need, in hunger, in a passion so all-consuming she could feel it burning through her soul as he carried her from the living room into the bathroom.
“Such beauty should be criminal,” he whispered then as he lowered her to her feet, watching her closely as he pushed the hair back from her brow. “I look at you, and my soul whispers in joy, my body burns in hunger. You, Ariel, are the very breath that sustains me.”
“Shane—” She tried to protest, tried once again to secure his promise that he would not stand before her, that he wouldn’t die in her stead.
“No, Ariel.” He shook his head. “I forced myself from you for days, hiding behind my anger, my male pride because your love was not as vocal as it had once been. It took this past night to show me, to prove to me, that time, no matter how vast and limitless, can still be finite for me, or for you. I will not live another day without whispering these words to you. Until one day, you will awaken, and they will pass from your lips as well as you realize what your heart already knows. You do love, Precious. Beautifully, passionately. And you do love me.”
He gave her no time to protest his claim, even had she wanted to. But Ariel knew she was more prone to cry from the tender reverence in his voice, so at odds with the rough sensuality of his hands as he ripped her shirt from her.
“You’re always tearing my clothes,” she gasped as his lips zeroed in on her hard peaked nipples.
“Then don’t wear any,” he mumbled roughly, nipping at the delicate points as his hands fought with the wet clasp of her jeans. “And those boots have to go. I can’t get you undressed fast enough.”
He knelt at her feet, making very short work of the leather laces before jerking the moccasin boots from her feet. The jeans quickly followed, leaving her wet and naked before him as he ran his hands slowly up her thighs, spreading them as Ariel fought for air.
“This is perverted,” she whispered as his thumbs slowly spread the swollen lips of her cunt apart, revealing the engorged bud of her clit.
“No.” His voice was strained. “This isn’t perverted. But I can show you perverted if you like.”
A breathless little laugh escaped her. “I have no doubt. Oh God, Shane…” she cried out his name as his hot, moist tongue circled the hard little bud.
Her hands buried in his hair as she fought to keep her knees steady. It felt too good, too hot and filled with carnal delight to allow the weakness in her legs to halt it.
He licked at her, his tongue running around her clit before delving lower, tickling at the entrance to her vagina before dipping into it erotically. Ariel whimpered against the onslaught of pleasure, biting her lip to hold back her cries as she felt her heart expand with the dominance of his touch.
This was no easy lover, despite the obvious care he took in driving each sensation higher within her. He had been…once. So very long ago. The memories of his touch then washed over her, a contradiction to the demanding caresses he was bestowing on her now.
His tongue was like damp velvet, licking her, eating her decadently as she trembled beneath his touch. Hard hands gripped her thighs, opening her further as he growled against the sensitive flesh of her pussy, his tongue thrusting inside it, sending her to her tiptoes as
the pleasure of it slammed through her body.
“Oh God, it’s too good,” she whispered as he came up again, his lips covering the throbbing point of her clit, suckling at it as his tongue circled it heatedly. “I can’t stand it, Shane.”
He murmured something, she wasn’t certain what, but the vibration of the sound against the sensitive nub of flesh nearly sent her over the edge. Her fingers tightened in his hair, her head falling back against the wall as she fought for breath, for sanity amid the chaotic sensations whipping through her now.
“Your taste is like nectar,” he whispered then, sipping at her again, drawing her juices into his mouth as she trembled on a peak of pleasure unlike any she had yet known. “I could drown myself in you. Your taste, your heat.”
As he caressed the fiery button of her clit, one hand slid up her damp thigh until Ariel felt him parting her further, his finger sliding through the dampness that eased from her body. She gasped in pleasure as it slid slowly, diabolically inside her, rasping the sensitive tissue of her pussy, sending her spiraling higher.
She shook her head, fighting to hold onto her last remnants of her control, but he was stripping it from her as surely as he was losing his own. She could feel his breathing, hard and rough as the muscles of her pussy clenched around the invading finger. Heard his groan of male hunger, like a hungry beast held back too long.
“So tight…” he growled. “Do you know what it does to me, Ariel, to be held in such a grip, gloved and caressed with ripples of this sweet flesh?”
She convulsed with pleasure, fighting to breathe as his finger slid in deeper, crooked and began a slow, destructive caress against a spot more sensitive than any other. She shuddered as she fought for release, tilting her hips toward him, her legs spreading further.
He teased and taunted her with the promise of her completion. Pushed her to the edge, only to pull her back. Her moans filled the room, husky pleas filling them as his touch became just rough enough to tempt the edge of pain, making her hunger, beg for more. She needed more, needed him, all of him.
“Burn for me, Ariel,” he snarled as he drew back a second before her release could rush over her. “Make me burn.”
She gasped as his hands gripped her hips, pulling her to him as he sat on the closed lid of the commode and lifted her to him. Her legs spread, gripping his as she stood poised over the hard flesh of his cock.
“Take me,” he demanded roughly, his hands easing her hips down until the flared head was easing between the plump lips, nudging at the entrance to her vagina. “Take all of me, Ariel.”
Slowly, and not so easily, he slid inside her, stretching her, making her burn as sensitive nerve endings flared to life, sending vibrant, heated pulses of pleasure tearing through her.
“Look at me, Ariel.” His voice was strained, so rough the sound was nearly animalistic as her eyes opened with drowsy sensuality.
She needed to breathe, but the look on his face, coupled with the extreme pleasure torturing her sensitive body locked the breath in her throat. Could it truly exist? Was it really love shining in the dark depths of his eyes? What else could it be?
Joy, pleasure and pain swirled in the gray depths, tightened his expression and in that second, opened something inside her that she never knew existed.
“Yes. Fuck. Yes.” He grimaced tightly as her eyes widened and a small cry escaped her throat. “Feel me, baby. Feel all of me.”
His hands tightened on her hips a second before he drove his cock deep inside her, filling her, stretching her, sending her careening on a journey she couldn’t have imagined.
Her hands tightened on his shoulders, her head shaking desperately as she fought against the response. Not the physical pleasure, that she could take, eagerly looked forward to. But the scarred wound in her soul was slowly tearing apart, emotions, dreams, a lifetime of fears were hidden there. Would she survive if they escaped?
His hips were moving furiously, his cock plunging inside her, retreating, returning in hard, driving strokes as his gaze held hers, refusing to let her retreat, to repair the crumbling walls of her inner sanctum.
“Please…” she cried out hoarsely, feeling perspiration drip from her hair, run down her face, mingling with the tears that began to fall from her eyes. “Don’t…”
He was stripping her, leaving her bare. She didn’t know if she could survive it.
“See me, damn you,” he snarled, his lips pulling back from his teeth as the sounds of each driving stroke inside her pussy pulsed around them. “See me, Ariel. See my love for you. Feel it. By God, you will feel it.”
One hand slid from her hips to the curve of her buttocks, tracing the small crease there until he found the tightly puckered entrance to her ass. There was no resistance to his invasion there. Her body had no will left to fight him. One demanding stroke of his finger sent him deep inside the tight little channel as his cock buried itself deep inside her pussy. She was moving against him, desperate to hold onto the pleasure, to focus there, rather than his eyes, his face, her own inner fears.
“Keeper of the wind…Mistress of my heart…bride of my soul. Take to your body my strength, to your heart my warmth, and forever warm yourself in the fires of my love.”
“No…” She could feel the crystal pulsing at her breast in time to the thrusts of his cock deep inside her pussy. A pulse of life, rebirth, filling her as surely as he was filling her cunt.
“Yes,” he snarled. “Give to me, Ariel. You are mine. Only mine and you know this. Damn you, give to me…”
She screamed his name as the white-hot heat of pleasure consumed her. It wasn’t just her body convulsing in release, but her soul. Her release spilled from her as she felt her heart fracture.
Vows, spoken so long ago came to her lips. In jerky, broken whispers, memories pouring over her, she returned the words to him.
“Into my heart…part of my soul. The winds will whisper, scream of my joy. Take to you my soul, my fears, my pleasures. Know my passions, my heart…” she screamed as power infused her, whipping on the white-hot bolts of pleasure tearing through her body. “…know my love…”
A savage male cry of pleasure echoed around her then as he drove into her hard, deep, releasing not just his seed into her, but pouring through her, over her, memories and emotions she had hid from so effectively, that she was convinced they could never exist.
Racking shudders tore through each of them as she fell forward against his chest, the crystal pressed between them, fiery hot, yet soothing. She could feel the power of it binding them together, reaffirming what she already knew. There was love, and she felt it. Deep, all-consuming, destructive, renewing. An emotion that defied description or denial.
Tears fell from her eyes as he tried to soothe the cries that tore from her chest. He lifted her from him, cradling her to his chest as he rose and stood her in the shower. He cleaned her beneath the spray of the water, washing away the perspiration that coated her body as he whispered soothingly, trying to ease her tears as well.
“I’ll always protect you, Ariel,” he swore when he finished, wrapping a towel around her as he dried her tenderly. “I swear I will not let them take you from me again.”
Her breath hitched in her throat.
“They won’t try to take me this time,” she whispered, staring up at him miserably, knowing that Jonar’s punishment would be even more demonic. “This time, he’ll take you…”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
What had he done? Shane stood in the living room, staring beyond the window at the steadily falling rain as the others sat behind him. They had arrived minutes after Shane had carried Ariel to bed, tucking her beneath the blankets as exhaustion overcame her. She was sleeping there now, a light breeze playing over her hair as the winds she commanded comforted her.
What would she remember when she awakened? he wondered. The love they had shared? Surely she would, it had been the strongest part of what they had known together, that love. Would she remember the child
she had been, the one Jonar had raped and stolen so much power from? And what would that memory do to her?
So many questions and there were no answers. He had spent the better part of the past two hours as Devlin and the others discussed the upcoming battle, trying to figure out where he and Ariel could possibly go from there.
He remembered his last glimpse of her, as the Guardians stole him from her side. He had been but seconds from death himself, his wounds so severe he had known that only they could heal him. He had tried to hold onto her, to take her with him. She had been dying before his eyes, whispering his name on a sigh of regret as he slowly disappeared.
She had died alone.
How many centuries had it taken him not to awaken in a rage so fierce that he would attempt to tear down the very castle that protected him and the others? More than he cared to count. That nightmare had ripped at his soul, often tearing away any peace he could have found in his life.
They had taken him away, forcing her to die alone, without his love to carry her into death. Now, he feared she would blame him for the pain she must have endured. She would remember it now; there would be no way she couldn’t. The power of that damned crystal was more far-reaching than any power love could hold.
“We need to awaken her soon,” Devlin commented from behind him, his voice compassionate, but firm.
He alone could understand how Shane felt now. The fear of losing what had been taken so long ago would torment Devlin now, perhaps nearly as much as Shane felt himself tormented.
But Devlin hadn’t spent the centuries regretting, awakening in a sweat of fear and pain at his wife’s death, or feeling her touch in his deepest dreams. He had been given the tender mercy of forgetting the bride he had so adored. Until her return to his life, Devlin had not known what he had lost so long before. But Shane had known. Known and ached and regretted until at times, death would have surely been easier.