by Audra Hart
He then takes control of her hips, moving her up and down with increased speed and power, until she cries out his name and arches backward as her orgasm rips through her body with all of the violence of an earthquake. He continues to thrust upwards, each time he brings her down onto his hard shaft until he too feels his impending release. He sits up and traps her pliant body to his stony form as he climaxes as well. She is still shuddering from her orgasm when she finally collapses completely onto his hard, cold body. She’s trying to murmur his name but her breathing is too ragged to allow speech of any kind. He brushes her sweat dampened hair from her face as she snuggles into his icy hard chest.
He lies back in the bed, holding her body close to his. He draws the cover up around her body, fearing she might get chilled against his own ice cold body, but he is totally unwilling to turn loose of her. He waits until her heartbeat has finally calmed to a more normal speed and her breathing levels out before he speaks, “Morna, are you alright? My God baby, you were a wild thing! You drove me completely out of my mind. Did I hurt you?”
She giggles and raises her head so that she can look into his perfect face. “You silly man, I told you I remembered how to weave the iron-lion. I guess I never released the spell after the encounter with the two stooges. Do you think I have that much strength to ride you so hard and fast on my own?” She stretches toward him and kisses him passionately. “Oh God, you were absolutely glorious! Has our lovemaking always been this… forceful, wild? So wonderful?” she asks, her voice full of amazement.
“Baby, it’s always been amazing, but I told you earlier, you are different this time.” he rasps throatily against her eager lips. “You are more physical, wilder, and more sensual than ever before.”
She’s quiet for a minute and then says, “You know how I have often complained that the iron-lion interferes with my enjoyment of our lovemaking. Well, oddly enough, I didn’t feel the slight barrier between us I have always detected before. Either I am getting more sensitive to you or I really didn’t do it right,” she frets out loud.
“Morna,” he says seriously, “I was not exaggerating when I said that you drove me out of my mind. I really do not think that I was controlled enough to hold back. I was honestly afraid I had hurt you, afterward, you know when my mind came back to me. I wasn‘t holding back baby, you must have woven the spell correctly.”
She’s really not sure about that, and pushes away from him, escaping his hold even though he doesn’t lessen it to allow her freedom of movement. She darts over to the wardrobe, she just has to check something out for herself, confirm her suspicion. She silently mouths the words that release the spell, and then opens one of the doors, quickly slips her fingers inside and slams with all her might. The wooden door shatters, but her fingers are left unmarked. She very quickly returns to him and straddles his chest and arms between her legs before he can sit up, effectively pinning him in place. He laughs uproariously, “Darling, I think you wove the spell correctly!”
“No Luca, I released it before I slammed the door. That was all me.” She slowly eases herself down his body, freeing his arms and snuggling into his perfect hard chest. They are both lost in thought for several minutes then Luca asks, “What do you suppose it means? You seem to be getting your magic back spontaneously. I would almost swear you are no longer mortal. You have never been this strong on your own, baby,” he murmurs in amazement.
“I don’t know Luca. But I am truly glad we are going to see Brigid and some of the others from Airendell. I really want to see what they think might be going on. I am very confident in my growing strength, but I wish we had another First Order weaver nearby. I am nearly useless at sorting this puzzle out until I get my memories back.”
“Breena is in New Orleans,” he admits quietly.
“Breena? My sister is in New Orleans? Can you take me to see her?” Morna is ecstatic at the news until she notices the frown on Luca’s face. “What’s wrong Luca?” she asks quietly.
Luca sits up in bed and looks very uncomfortable. “I am not sure how to explain this. Oh hell! Morna, I never wanted to share any of that time with you. I always prayed it would never come up. I am so ashamed. After you left me the first time…” he hesitates.
“You mean when I died?” she asks quietly.
“Yes, I still have a hard time saying it. I am sorry, I didn’t mean to make it sound like you meant to leave me. But I went out of my mind with grief and guilt. I was selfish and self-absorbed. I just gave up for few years. I was consumed with the fear that the witch’s curse wouldn’t work and you were truly gone. And if the curse did work, I just couldn’t believe I would ever be able to find you again. To me you were just lost. I even briefly contemplated giving in to the darker side of my nature to seek forgetfulness. But I did seriously consider finding someone capable destroying me. I am ashamed to admit it,” he confesses.
“After three winters Breena came to see me. In no uncertain terms she told me I was failing the faith you had maintained in me after the change and that I was dishonoring your memory and failing my obligations to… Anyway, we argued bitterly, and I accused her of meddling. I really lashed out and accused her of just seeking a wild romp with a vampire. I asked her who was truly dishonoring your memory. I was a real bastard to her.” Luca rakes his hands through his hair, looking chagrined over what he had done. “I had not been hunting in months, I was bloodthirsty and I was so filled with uncontrollable rage. I shoved her away from me, with all my strength. She flew 50 feet or more and slammed into our cottage and broke some bones and received a nasty concussion.”
Luca rakes his face with his hands. “Morna, I could have killed your sister. I was absolutely crazed, completely out of mind. I had allowed myself to get so wrapped up in my grief and my rage that I was out of control. When I realized I had injured her, I came to my senses. I picked her up and carried her into our cottage and tried to perform the healing spells and songs. But I was too crazed with thirst to perform them correctly, so I hunted and came back and successfully performed the spells.”
“But it was couple of days before she was completely healed. After she healed she stayed a few more days to talk to me, to be a friend to me. Breena really saved my life. She was so confident that you and I would be reunited. She predicted that you would come back stronger and stronger until we were able to break the curse. She made me see that I had to focus on my duties as…She helped me to leave the glen and start looking for you. To stop wallowing in self-pity.”
“Anyway, she really brought me back to myself. Breena tried to make Magdrid see that she had been wrong in some assumptions she had made about me after the change. Anyway, it didn’t go well. Breena was humiliated and disgusted with Magdrid who hinted to her that she believed us guilty of improprieties. Even the Elders were no support.”
“I’m not surprised. Magdrid controlled the Elders pretty tightly.” Morna muses thoughtfully, trying to grasp some niggling worry that she just can’t bring into focus. She shakes herself mentally and focuses on what Luca is telling her.
Luca looks at her questioningly, wondering how she remembered that, and then he continues speaking, “Breena was so angry she left Airendell and has never been back. She wandered around Europe for a time, helping me search for you. t first we had no idea how we might be able to find you.
We couldn’t weave a successful finding spell because you look different in each incarnation. Do you remember that one must be able to visualize the person that you are searching for in order to use that spell?” Morna nods as she absorbs this information. “But it was Breena who saw the first signs of your return in Verona. She learned how to track your psychic energy and taught me how to do it. She also began getting visions of a tall, black haired woman with emerald green eyes. In her gut, she just knew it was you. After a few years of visions, she finally saw enough to realize that you were in Verona, Italy. Breena had already reasoned that you might come back near a gateway, so we had already been focusing our efforts
near gateways. She found you but wasn’t sure if it was you or not. But I could tell it was you.”
“How could you tell, Luca?” Morna asks as she strokes his face tenderly.
“Your smell, baby. In every incarnation you smell and taste exactly the same way. Oddly enough, scent was one of the best tracking tools I had to find you. I learned how to expand my vampire abilities. Now they are ’magically enhanced’. Your body and face may change, even your personality, to a degree… but not your scent. Your sweet, alluring scent that calls out to me like a siren‘s song and holds me in its thrall is always the same.”
Morna blushes at the look on his face when he speaks of her scent and its effect on him. He looks sexually excited, love struck, and half-starved all at the same time. She leans in and kisses him gently, feeling overwhelmed by his love for her and strength of his convictions that have kept her safe for all of these centuries even though he is mass of writing emotion, blood thirst and sexual need because of her scent and his love for her.
“Breena tried to help me restore your memories of who you really are. But we made a real mess of it. Trying to absorb that knowledge made your life a living hell, physically and emotionally. Breena couldn’t stand seeing you suffer so much. Her ability to experience what others are feeling almost drove her insane. After a few arguments between her and I about what was best for you, she eventually came to the New World and has been living around New Orleans ever since. I have never gone down there to visit her, I really don’t know if she would welcome me or not. She essentially lost her homeland and her sister because of me.”
Morna had sat quietly and listened to his story. She thinks back over everything he had told her, and then she suddenly starts shouting in utter rage and helplessness, “I am so angry with you I could, I could… er… how could you consider giving up on yourself like that? How could you possibly consider dying! The world is always supposed to have you in it! Don’t you know that?” She throws herself at him, hits him several more times as her rage expends itself, and then collapses in his arms, sobbing uncontrollably.
Luca holds her close stroking her hair and murmuring assurances to her softly. When she has calmed down a little, he sets her away from him, strokes her face gently and says, “Did you not contemplate the very same thing? I saw you Morna. I saw you standing there on the edge of that horrible pit, those many times you drove out to that granite quarry in the middle of the night. You don’t know how many times I nearly took you away by force to try to make you remember who we are. To make you remember why you had to live. Why you could not give in to your grief and your pain.”
“I was in your house on those dark nights when you poured all those pills in to your hands and begged God to release you. I was there Morna! I saw you struggle with the lure of ending it all and knowing it would be the wrong thing to do. I saw stand in your kitchen staring at the kitchen knife you had sharpened endlessly. It wasn’t hard to guess what you were thinking. I saw it all Morna, and I had to stand back and let you come back to yourself on your own. I didn’t have a choice because every overture I made towards you, you rebuffed until I showed up at the bar with Seth to play pool. Don’t you realize that was hell for me, but if I had forced the memories on you, you might not have been able to cope. You couldn’t cope with the memories in Verona. You were crippled with pain during your waking hours. I ruined your life that time by telling you more than you were ready to hear. So I had to stand by, and watch,” he finishes in a voice of a man tortured beyond his ability to endure. He looks into her shocked eyes, “I had to just stand by… powerless.”
At first she listens to his words in shock and then disbelief. “Did I really do those things?” When she reads the utter pain in his eyes she knows that she truly was lost. “Luca, I swear to you, I do not remember doing any of that. I must truly have been possessed by grief over the children. I am so sorry. Luca. Please believe me,” she’s weeping openly and brokenly now. “Please…”
“Of course I believe you Morna. I understand, you were not yourself. I was not myself. Loss can crush a soul. We are living proof of that. But it can also bring forth a stronger soul. I think of us as being forged by fire, fire that burns the very soul of those without enough mettle to survive. But amazingly, we both survived. We survived and we are again together. And look at you! Breena was right. You are wiser, more mature, and stronger than ever. And I am more committed than ever to be the man you always believed me to be. We are made better by all the hell we have endured! But mostly by our love for each other.”
Luca takes her in his arms to comfort her, to comfort himself. He kisses her tears away. Strokes her face, and holds her tightly. Eventually they find themselves entwined in each other’s arm and legs. Making slow and gentle love, the kind that heals wounds, and seals bonds. Eventually they fall silent and still in each other’s arms. Morna drifts off to sleep a few hours before the sun comes up. Luca holds her close to him as she sleeps, and vows silently to find a way to keep her at his side forever this time. When she gets chilled he is so reluctant to let go of his hold on her that, he wraps her in the quilt she had made for him over two hundred years ago and continues to hold her close as she sleeps.
At 6:00 her cell phone rings. Luca mutters under his breath, “Who hell would be calling her this early.” He realizes it might be the halfway house with an emergency or something could be wrong with Mike, so he goes and retrieves her phone out of her purse and takes it to her.
“Morna your phone is ringing,” he whispers as he shakes her awake. She reaches out to take the phone, snaps it open and whispers, “Hello?”
CHAPTER 14 - SISTERS
Morna sits straight up in the bed instantly awake because Breena is on the other end of the line. Morna has the presence of mind to push the speaker button so Luca can easily hear the voice on the other end.
“Morna, wake up! This is Breena!”
“Breena, my sister?” Well duh! Do you know any other women named Breena?
“Yes silly, your sister. Is Luca listening?”
“Yes, he is,” breathes Morna.
“I’m here Breena, what is wrong?” Luca interjects.
“Nothing is wrong, everything might be right… finally. Listen to me you two. I haven’t been snooping on you two. I promise I wasn’t seeking a vision of you two, it just came to me. I know you have been healing and Luca has been trying to resume his relationship with you. And you have been on my mind, but I wasn’t poking my nose in, I promise. But you came to me in a very long and I must say exciting vision last night. You two do not do anything halfway do you?” She laughs and then says, “Sorry. I can’t help teasing my little sister. But seriously. I saw, rather I experienced everything.”
Morna gasps. Everything?
“Listen, don’t waste time being embarrassed or mad at me, I didn’t do it on purpose. But I came to a realization that Morna and I can join our spirits, our powers, something… I am not sure exactly, but we can connect in a way we never have before…”
Morna and Luca look at each other in surprise. Morna is more than a little embarrassed, but doesn’t say anything as Breena continues talking. “And there’s my research over the last 500 years on breaking curses, it has led me to a very, very ancient passage about an assembly of the magical and the supernatural that can accuse and find guilty anyone who enacts an unfair, unreasonable, and unjust curse on an innocent, and reverse the curse! Don’t you see? You may be nearing the end of this nightmare?”
“We must gather as many of our friends as we can in Chicago next week. Morna, you have to remember everything, and soon. We are going to have to take you through all the histories and lore until your memory kicks in or something to that effect.“ Breena breathes excitedly.
“There is someone very, very special and very important waiting for you to get your memory back. Don’t worry Luca, I am not going to force Morna’s memory. I know how painful that is for her. I wouldn’t ever make that mistake again. It would only be counterpro
ductive for me to try to force her to hear what she can’t remember. But she needs to be surrounded by her family and friends and soon!”
“I am going to hang up now and start contacting everyone here in North America. And Luca… We need supernatural beings too, like your kind, I think. Do you know any that would be willing to stand up for Morna?”
Morna interrupts, “Breena, were we joined, our power I mean last night. Is that why I was so strong?”
“No way kiddo! That was all you! You are the First Warrior of the First Order of Airendell, and all of Ireland, Wales, and apparently of all the New World too. Oh Morna! You were and are so amazing, so awesome! I could feel your power! It nearly overwhelmed me, I think you might have been holding back to protect Luca. Can you believe that?”
“No, not really,” breathes Morna in a tiny, frightened voice.
“And by the way sister, I must confess to being a little jealous. I certainly hope you know what you have in that man there with you! He is just as awesome and just as amazing as you are. WOW! Sorry, I digress. But seriously, I am totally jazzed!!”
Morna laughs, “Gee sis, I couldn’t tell.” She rolls her eyes at Luca.
Luca interrupts, “Breena, how did your vision get through my buffer spell?”
“Luca, I think Morna got out of it, not the other way around. I don’t know. But I know your magic is sound brother. You are protecting her, don’t worry. You have never and will never let her down.”
“Okay Morna, I know you have teacher things to do today. By the way, you rock at that too! I have been getting random visions of you for years, but couldn’t pin down your location, or see your face clearly. Gee lady, don’t you ever look in a mirror?” Morna shakes her head at her sister’s silliness, and Breena continues; “But anyway, I will call back tonight. We need to make plans. Don’t break any more furniture little sister! Or your man!” She laughs heartily. “I am so glad to have you back little sister! I love you! Bye.” And then she hangs up before Morna or Luca can say anything else.