by Lora Leigh
“You are a frightened child,” he told her derisively. “You have the power to achieve your every goal and yet you refuse it. Just as you refused me. Just as you refused life. And now you refuse that part of my soul I bequeathed to you. Perhaps I was wrong to have gifted you after all.”
Fury flooded her. She fought the overwhelming wave of weakening emotion. But the damage burned along her nerve endings. She had to control it. What good was the power without the control? She slammed a wave of energy toward his physical body instead, amazed when it connected, almost taking him to his knees.
His eyes glowed. The dragon on his chest seemed to writhe. His eyes lit with a glow of respect.
“You’re still cheating,” he charged her.
“If you were the enemy, you would be dead,” she snapped in return.
“If I were Jonar, you would be in chains, naked and screaming as he fucked your ass to your death, because you refuse to use what was given you.”
Before she could fight, before she could defend herself, a wave of energy had her pinned to the wall, arms outspread, legs and wrists manacled as she screamed out in anger.
He came behind her, his hand tapping her rear with almost stinging force.
“Jonar likes nice tight human ass,” he sneered. “Male or female, makes no difference to him. He’s testing not just your men, but you as well. He knows by now that you alone stand between him and Ariel, and he will make you pay for doing so. If he can get his hands on you.”
He leaned close as she panted out in fury and fear. “Let me go, Alyx,” she demanded roughly.
“Let yourself go,” he told her coldly as he moved closer.
Suddenly, the hard ridge of his cock was riding the cleft of her buttocks. “Anal sex is extraordinary,” he breathed at her ear. “A blending of power and sensations unlike anything you could know. The complete submission, whether voluntary or by force, of the body you take, be it male or female. Power flows from it unchecked, because it is submission, Lynn. Complete and total submission. The acceptance of the body into that area, opening, gripping; the mind accepts it for what it is. Raping it steals a great surge of mental force from the one being raped. It empowers the enemy. When it is given willingly, the mind opens completely, and power joins. It is greater in this way. But Jonar prefers dark gifts of rage. The force. The pain. The humiliation.” He was growing angrier by the second. “And you would give him this? You would take this chance by refusing what you were given?”
“It’s not natural,” she cried out furiously. “It’s dark…”
“It is dark because you deny it.” His hands gripped her hips, his cock grinding deeper into her cleft. “Feel me, Lynn. Feel me and know what that bastard will do to you if he gets you. Then say you have reason to deny what I alone gave you.” The last was grated out with a voice so filled with anger it shocked her to her core.
He had given her? When? How had he given her such power?
“Figure it out, beloved,” he growled. “Because it is your only chance at survival, as well as Ariel’s. And I suggest you figure it out quickly.”
He stepped away from her, the power holding her releasing her as suddenly as it had captured her. She turned, breathing hard, staring back at him in shock.
“What is it?” she demanded. “That power? You know what it is.”
“As do you.” His eyes were almost frightening to see now, they glowed so richly. “As does your body.”
She realized the changes then. Her breasts were swollen and hot, her nipples so hard that her deep breaths were rasping them against her bra, sending hard electric shocks straight to her overheated pussy.
Her eyes widened in alarm.
“When you open yourself to that power, Lynn, then you will know the answers you need. Until then, you are a danger to yourself and anyone you work with. Because Jonar knows you now. This mission, your interference with his designs for Ms. St. James, assured it. He will take you. He will steal that power and laugh at you for your weakness. If there is anything Jonar loves more than terror, it is the moment his victims realize exactly what he had stolen from them. With you he will take more than your power, he will steal a part of mine as well. So not only do you die, beloved, but a part of me dies with you. Because you were too stubborn to fucking care.” He grew angrier with each word until the final phrase was growled out so harshly she flinched painfully at the emotion behind it.
“No.” She shook her head, feeling knowledge swirling in the air around her. She couldn’t accept it. She wouldn’t accept it. “I don’t like your games, Alyx. And I’m starting to not like you.”
She didn’t give him the chance to answer. Didn’t give him the opening to charge her further. She swept quickly from the room and moved at a fast pace back up the stairs, back to the safety of Ariel’s room. But no matter how far or how hard she ran, she had a feeling she would never escape the door Alyx had opened, whether intentionally or unintentionally, into that dark power.
She could feel it growing stronger now, unwilling to sleep as it had for years. Just as he had awakened her body, and her once slumbering desires.
Chapter Five
“The Mother has forbidden it,” Lynn whispered desperately as Alyx’s kisses filled her with a need that rocked her to her soul. “I swore my life to Ariel. I cannot betray her and the gifts given to protect her, Alyx.”
She was desperate for his touch, though. Desperate for the hot kisses, the gentle hands. But she had been warned. The loss of her virginity meant a loss of her powers. She could not take this chance.
“I can replace anything you might lose,” he vowed hungrily. “I swear it, beloved. Your innocence will but give us both greater strength. I swear this to you.”
His body was hard, heated, his bare chest burning against her linen-covered breasts as he moved against her.
“Not yet,” she gasped as his lips feathered against hers. “Let me see her through this one last test. Shanar takes her soon to his homeland. Once they are on the ship that will carry them away, I will relent. I swear it, Alyx. Let me be certain.”
It was only a fortnight away. Her Mistress and the man she had wed would depart the dark atmosphere of the castle then and attempt to find solace in a new life. The death of Ariel’s sister had nearly destroyed not just her, but everyone who had lived within the stone fortress the sorcerer had built for his daughters. The magic the sorcerer had wrapped about the land ensured that the death was forgotten within the minds of those who loved Chantel the greatest. But within the hearts, the woman lived on.
Lynn had barely known Chantel. The magic had not reached her as it had the others. And the night the spell had been cast Alyx lay with her in her bed, a shield of his power enfolding them. Nothing could touch her there. Nothing could touch her as long as she lay within his arms.
Alyx groaned. “A fortnight,” he whispered. “I can bear this if I must. But if I cannot have your body, at least allow me your heart, Lynn. Give me that gift alone to sustain me.”
She stared up at him, breathing heavily. She knew what he asked. If she allowed him to breach that barrier then they would never be apart, not even in death. He had explained this to her. That the power he held would fuse with her soul, marking her for eternity as his heart.
She had accepted him as her soul.
She relaxed against him, her eyes closing, her arms falling to the bed beneath her as she felt him groan in pleasure. Their bodies couldn’t mate, not yet, but their souls could.
It was unlike anything she could have imagined, feeling his power touch hers, penetrate it, fill it until pleasure was like a cascade of exploding flames within her mind. In that instant they were joined forever. A part of each other.
Then the dream shifted. Instead of hazy, floating pleasure, it became an agonizing pain, a sense of hopelessness and futile regret.
“Take the power, beloved,” Alyx’s voice was grief stricken within her vision. “Take it, for both of us. I will wait forever if I know there is b
ut a chance.”
His power weaved about her soul, seeking to merge with it again as it began to lift free of her lifeless body. She was dead. She knew she had died there within his arms.
“For me, beloved.” Tears fell on her white cheeks as the soft fog flowed from the Dragon stone at his breast. “For me. Allow me this chance to know you but once more.”
What he was giving her was a piece of all he was. Not just his soul, but the very heart of his peace, his contentment, a part of the phantom that had followed him for so very long. A part of the power forged with his own blood and carrying a part of all he was. Her heart opened, her soul eased, and she felt that part of him flow into her, warm her as she entered the cold, hallowed halls of death…
Lynn came awake gasping, her body damp with sweat, fear racing through her, pumping in her breast. The mists of her dreams were lightening as they never had before, showing her glimpses of things she neither wanted nor asked for.
She breathed in deeply, containing the gasps that would have shuddered from her body. Alyx. Alyx was the man who had haunted her dreams for so many years. It was his power that had flowed into her on her death, not some evil force as she had always feared. It was he.
Her hands covered her face as that realization rocked her soul. She did not believe in reincarnation, she assured herself. She was not some damned warrior woman reborn. She was just Lynn Carstairs. That was all. A woman with too much power and too many fears.
But she knew there was more. Denying it wouldn’t make it go away. And she knew the man who had the answers she needed.
*
Could he wait much longer? Alyx lay in the bed of the room Lynn had assigned him, naked, aroused. Without the protection of his skin cloth, the sensitive flesh of his body began to absorb the psychic resonations of the woman bound to him.
The black skin cloth was all that often protected a Prime Warrior from a nearly uncontrolled lust before he convinced his bond mate to come to him. The psychic energy was often a double-edged sword. He could feel her arousal, her need, stroking along his skin like a Dar-phantom’s touch. The misty wraiths of his home world were pure sexual energy, bequeathed to a warrior when his bond mate accepted him.
The Dar-phantom was pure pleasure, to both the male and the female who shared a Dragon stone, as he and Lynn did. A shudder of pure lust shook his body at the thought of the creatures, of watching his beloved Lynn being prepared for her own Dragon stone.
His cock flexed in hunger, the silky pre-seminal fluid seeping from the dual openings at the tip of his cock as his balls tightened in need. He glanced down the line of his body, seeing the organ stretching up his abdomen, so different from a human male’s cock, both in looks and in function.
The thick male flesh was heavily veined, the wide ropey ridges nearly as sensitive as the cock’s crest beneath the head. Prime Warriors alone possessed the firm extension below the crown of their cocks. It was an indication of their power, both in strength and in sexuality. During the sex act, the firm, flexible ridge absorbed psychic power, stroked and caressed, as their cocks would thrust inside a tight pussy.
And it would be tight. So exquisitely tight that the seminal fluid that flowed from the two small openings on the head of his cock would be needed to help relax the snug little channel.
He groaned at the thought of it. His beloved was so delicate, so dainty, that the thought of fucking her had his cock pulsing in need. So much need that he knew he could not survive seeing her again without relief.
One hand moved over his chest, his fingers tugging the solid gold loop that pierced his left nipple. The other moved down to his straining erection, gripping it, spreading the natural lubrication over the sensitive shaft as he imagined pushing into the snug cunt between Lynn’s firm thighs.
He groaned. As tight as her pussy would be, the delicate tissue of her anal channel would be even more so. When they were bonded and the Dar-phantom was called to create her Dragon stone, then he would know that sweet entrance as well.
His hand tightened on his cock as he stroked slowly over the shaft, squeezing it, mimicking the tight grip he knew he would find when he finally filled Lynn’s sweet pussy.
He would fuck her slow and easy at first. Work his cock into her sheath as she trembled and shook beneath him, her pussy convulsing as it strained to take him.
Alyx shuddered at the thought as he stroked his cock, his hips and thighs tightening at the tension filling his body. She would scream for him, he thought, as he separated her cunt muscles, stretching them with a pleasure that would ride that fine, agonizing line of pain that a warrior sought to give his bond mate.
She was a virgin. Not so much innocent as she was untried. And, oh, how he wished to try her. His cock plunged forcibly through the grip of his fingers as his hips jerked in response to that thought. He would open her slowly, his cock penetrating, stretching her until he came to the thin veil of her virginity. There he would pause. His hand stilled. He would stare into her eyes, watching the dark depths, feeling her strain beneath his body as his cock leaked the seminal fluid that made all sexual acts more pleasurable for their females.
It would loosen the obstruction, allowing him to stretch her slowly, to slide inside her as she cried out in pleasure. She would be tight and hot. Her heat would surround his cock as it conformed to each ridge, gripping it like a glove that had become a shade too small.
His hand tightened. He moaned as he began to stroke the flesh harder, picking up speed as he imagined her beneath him, her legs splayed wide as he watched her take him. Watched his flesh impale her, fuck her with all the pent up lust that had only built over the human centuries.
She would be so slick with the combination of her lubrication as well as his own. The sound of the moist thrusts would fill his senses; the sight of her cream soaking his cock would make him insane to fill her with his seed. He would hold her thighs wide open, watch as his hips picked up the pace, burying his aching dick inside her pussy until she began to convulse around him. Until she shuddered, screamed, and he felt her orgasm flowing along the tightening veins that carried his seed when he exploded.
It would trigger his own climax. He would bury himself deep and hard inside her, allowing his control to falter, to release the load tightening at the base of his cock. His orgasm would send shafts of lightning-hot energy flowing through his body, infusing his seed, blasting into the exquisite grip of her pussy and pushing her into an orgasm that would bind her sexuality to his forever.
Their energy, psychic and physical, would merge and the first ritual of the bond mate would be completed. The thought of it had his teeth gritting, his hand moving faster on his straining erection. His body tightened. His scrotum began to vibrate. A second later his release surged through the thick shaft as a muted groan escaped his chest.
Silky, hot seed shot from his cock, splattering along his abdomen to his chest in two strong streams of his fertile come. He fought for breath as energy surged through his body, searching for an outlet and finding none. His hips jerked in reaction as a last pulse of semen spilled from the tormented flesh.
“Oh. My. God!” Horror filled the female voice that echoed from the connecting doorway.
Dragon’s eyes snapped open. Lynn’s face was pale, her eyes wide in disbelief, her lips parted as she stared at his still-hard organ. Breathing in roughly and fighting for control he leaned up on his elbow, looked from his cock to her shocked face, and chuckled in delight.
“Don’t worry, darling,” he drawled. “The monster doesn’t bite. At least not yet.”
Chapter Six
Don’t worry darling, the monster doesn’t bite… Lynn stood outside the St. James mansion the next morning, enjoying the heat of the sun, fighting to ground herself back in reality, rather than the events of the night before. The dreams were bad enough. But what she had seen moments later had shocked her to her core.
Or was it really a nightmare? She wiped her hands over her face as she stared around the pris
tine grounds, seeing the evergreen shrubs, the borders of blooming perennials, the elm and maple trees that shaded the two-story white brick mansion.
She hadn’t slept. She had been too terrified to close her eyes, to take her gaze off the locked door that separated her room from Dragon’s. Afraid the dreams would return. Afraid he would enter. And if he did, she didn’t know if she could deny him. Not when everything inside her yearned for him.
He wasn’t human, she reminded herself. She had known that. She didn’t know why she expected him to look human…there.
She pushed her fringed bangs back from her forehead, convincing herself that the moisture on her forehead and over her lip was due to the heat. It had nothing to do with the memory of seeing Dragon jacking off the night before. What he had been jacking off was what threw her off balance.
The monster doesn’t bite… She bet that was the only thing it didn’t do. It was thick and long, heavily veined, though appearing ridged, and beneath the head—she shivered in what she convinced herself was fear—it was much thicker, appearing rather like a rooster’s comb running down beneath the thick tip of the erection. It was a dark as the rest of his body and heavily bronzed.
She swallowed back her whimper as she felt her cunt ripple. Fear, she told herself. She was frightened, not aroused. And the monster, as he called it, was something to be frightened of.
But was it really fear? That was the question that tormented her. Fear wouldn’t leave her weak and wet. It wouldn’t make her hunger to run her lips and tongue over the unusual cock. It wouldn’t make her mind fill with images of Alyx taking her, dominating, stealing her will and replacing it with his own, a will to spread her thighs and open herself to him. To feel the monster impaling her with hard, strong thrusts. No, that wasn’t fear.
She grimaced as she realized what it was, realized that some of the nightmares of her past had been but misty warnings of what was coming. Her body supine, defenseless and vulnerable as she screamed. She had thought in pain, in fear. But as she shifted through the dark dreams she realized something more. It wasn’t pain. Wasn’t fear. Rather it was pleasure, exacting and brutal in its intensity, and she was beginning to crave it.