Cream gushed from her. She bucked, one hand slapping at the mat as her words became sounds. Just sounds. Sounds of pleasure that echoed through Torin’s head, surged through his body, erupted in his groin. He curled his fingers into her hips, tore his mouth from between her thighs and—in one fluid move—rose up onto his knees and plunged his swollen cock into her constricting sex.
“Yes!” she screamed, instinctively and instantly locking her legs around his hips. Her muscles closed around his thrusting length, tighter than tight, her wet heat scalding his craving flesh. He threw back his head and roared, unable to leash his pleasure anymore. The sound rent the air, rocked him to his core. He drove his cock into her pussy again, again, her cries and screams for him to fuck her harder, harder—“Oh, God, Torin, harder”—incinerating his control.
Molten steel flooded his balls. They rose up, pressed to his body, throbbed, ached. He slammed into her, wanting to be gentle, wanting to be savage. Wanting to take her to places of carnal rapture she’d never been, he’d never been before.
He pumped into her, filled her, possessed her. Claimed her. And just when he didn’t think he could survive any longer, she thrashed her head side-to-side, arched her back and screamed once more. “Yes yes yes yes!”
Torin’s release detonated. Rhythm deserted him. His seed pumped into Kala’s centre, his arms wrapped around her waist, his sweat dripped onto her flesh. With one final roar, his body turned into a living fire of pure pleasure and he burned.
***
Ice-cold shadows reached for him, snaking over the floor, growing from the walls. He studied them, his muscles strung to breaking point, his blood roaring in his ears. Somewhere in those moving shadows, she waited.
He adjusted his grip on his sword and continued walking deeper into the chilling darkness, alert. Ready.
A trickle of sweat ran into his eye but he didn’t blink or wipe it away. To do so would present a split moment of vulnerability. A split moment was all Kala needed.
The silence devoured the sound of his footfalls. Pressed down on him like a shroud. He raised his sword to guard, its hilt level with his chest, its heavy length parallel with his face. He saw nothing reflected in its silver length but the smooth stone walls and the suffocating shadows and his pulse quickened. He knew he was not alone, even if his eyes told him he was. He could feel her. She was here.
He lifted his sword a little higher, a little closer to his face, and he could almost believe the dead chill seeping into his cheeks radiated from its core. The sword had pierced more hearts than one weapon should, had spilled more blood than any other held by a Sol warrior and with every life taken it seemed to grow colder, as if infused with their displaced soul.
I’ve done this before, haven’t I?
Torin moved further into the darkness and the shadows moved with him. Like tendrils of death he’d wrought on the worlds.
“You taint the air with the death that surrounds you…”
The words slid into his ear in an oily rasp, spoken…when? By whom? He narrowed his eyes. Where was he now? Where was—
A soft breeze caressed the back of his neck, played with his hair and he spun, sword tilted. Ready to deflect a strike.
Nothing filled the emptiness behind him. Just a long stretch of darkness never ending.
The shadows waited for him, their dense energy hungry.
Or was it what waited within those shadows that was hungry?
Hungry for him? Hungry for—
Is this is a dream?
The whisper of feet jerked him back around and he tightened his grip on his sword, straining to see her. She was there. He felt her. A molten heat in the crypt-like emptiness. A heat his own sought. Craved. Feared.
She was there.
Watching him. Waiting for him to—
A blinding wall of golden light flashed around him and he staggered backward, squinting into the glow, one hand raised to his eyes. His heart slammed against his breastbone and he dropped into a sprung crouch. He couldn’t see. If he couldn’t see, he was—
As quickly as it came, the light vanished, and he stood in the darkness again. Alone and unharmed.
He pulled a slow breath through his nose, his nerve endings like hot wire, and studied the shadows again. Where had the light come from? The walls themselves? What did it mean?
“It means the time is here.”
He didn’t recognize the voice breathing in his head, but he understood the words. He swallowed a thick lump in his throat and began to walk again. There was no other course. The seed had been watered. The perversion empowered.
I’ve done this before…
The shadows reached for him, growing hungrier. More insistent. His breath fell from his mouth in white mist, curling away from his lips in intricate patterns before dissipating to nothing. He frowned and lifted his sword higher, his gut clenching. There was meaning in those patterns, images he could not decipher. Images that would give him the answer, but he did not understand the question.
What question? Where was he?
I have. I’ve done this…
He quickened his pace, moving deeper into the icy bowels of the darkness, his grip on his sword growing painful. He had held it in his hands for a lifetime, an eternity. He could not remember a time when his fingers had not circled its hilt.
Yes, you do. When you found her. When you took her. When you pressed her to the floor and filled her with your seed. You did not hold the sword then. All you held was her. And you made her scream.
He stumbled over the whisper in his head and his gut clenched again. Syunna, what was—
Kala stepped out of the shadows, her hair a wild mane of black silk, her skin aglow, her green eyes incandescent. She looked at him and raised her right arm, the long sword she held horizontal in her hand smoldering with an inner heat that chilled him to the core. A sword made by the vengeful Eldest from the heart of existence to bring punishment on the worlds of man. “It is time, Sol.”
Dreaming…
She swung the sword in a wide arc. Up behind her head and down over her shoulder.
Its long blinding-gold blade carved the blackness of the night in two, leaving behind concentrated fire and infinite energy.
Gods, am I dreaming again?
It sang as it did so, a thrum so deep and elemental, so powerful and potent, Torin felt the veins in his body quiver.
Again?
He dived away from its lethal trajectory, crashing to his shoulder and rolling across the cold granite floor, hot pain engulfing his neck and torso as he snapped to his feet and spun about.
She stood watching him, the sword waiting in her right hand. That she held it just with one hand alone made his mouth dry. She was small, so small, and the sword was so big. Too big. How was such a small slip of a thing able to wield such a weapon? It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. She was so small and the sword was so big.
I’ve done this…
She was so small and he was so big, so big. He towered over her and yet he’d held her, taken her, pressed her to the floor and filled her sex with his—
Her eyes flickered cold revulsion. “You gave your word.” The sword ignited. Erupted in pulsing golden fury. “And you still made me scream.”
She came at him again, hatred in her green eyes, the gold chips circling her pupils aglow with the contemptuous emotion, reflecting the blade’s burning length.
…before. I’ve done this before.
The sword blurred in her confident grip, a deadly extension of her smooth, brown arm. He swung his own sword up into a counter attack. The edges struck and a violent shudder rocked existence. A pulse of silent sound, colourless light. He stumbled and Kala swung at him again, striking down in an arc of perfect rhythm and fluid grace. A searing jolt of pride stabbed into him—he’d taught her that—before he found his balance and deflected the blow. Just.
Once again, the world shuddered, as if two immense forces collided. Two elements never intended to meet.
A wave of scalding ice rolled over him, through him. His stare locked on Kala’s, and for a frozen moment every molecule in his body seemed to shatter.
I’m dreaming. I’m dreaming.
He swung into a preemptive counter attack, slamming into her forward motion, his chest as tight as his grip on his sword’s hilt. He cut the air with a sharp slice, his heart screaming at him, “No! You will kill her,” even as his sword sped towards her head. She intersected the strike, the blunt parry jolting him off balance again. She came at him again and once more he was overcome with elated pride—his student, his student—as her blows forced him back a step. Another.
He raised his arm, drew guard, his knuckles popping, his shoulders burning as she rained down upon his sword strike after strike after strike.
The sword blazed brighter, hotter with each blow. He met each one, exhaustion tearing at his adrenaline, perverse joy feeding it. Her mastery was complete. She was everything the prophecy foretold. She was the weapon and the warrior.
As he had trained her to be so.
He had created her, forged her, taken her. Pressed her to the floor and made her scream.
“As the prophecy foretold.”
The unknown voice drilled into his head and guilt claimed him. Cold and absolute. He faltered, his sword suddenly heavy.
Gods, I’m dreaming. Wake up.
Her sword sheared through the dark between them, wide to her side, down into a blurring arc and, before he realized what she was doing, its length drew under his arm and its blinding point sliced up his chest, cutting him open from nipple to shoulder.
He flailed backward, scalding agony searing through him, his stare locked on her face, her beautiful face, the face he would kill for. The face he would die for.
She threw herself forward into a cartwheel so quickly he didn’t see her move before her heel smashed into the bridge of his nose.
I’m dreaming.
He went down. To his knees, blood oozing from the gaping wound in his chest, blood gushing from the shattered protrusion on his face.
Wake up.
His own sword, the one he’d used since he was twelve, dropped from his hand, sliding across the floor. Out of his reach. Lost in the shadows. Useless.
“I thank you, Torin Kerridon, last command warrior of the Sol Order.” Kala Rei looked down at him, her eyes cold and merciless.
She leveled the point of the blade at the base of his throat. “For training me so well.”
He lifted his chin high.
For the love of Syunna, wake up.
“You are welcome, False Fire,” he replied.
Seconds before the woman he loved plunged the Sun Sword into his—
Wake up!
He jolted awake, gasping for breath. Sweat slicked his flesh, stung at his eyes. Syunna, the dream. The same gods-cursed dream.
A low whimper jerked his wide-eyed stare from the walls of the training room to the back of Kala’s head. She lay on her side with her back to him, her hands tucked under her head, her knees slightly bent, her smooth brown skin somehow luminous in the room’s muted light. An almost desperate need to feel her close gripped him and he slid his arm more firmly around her waist, drawing her body into the curve of his. Her bottom nudged his groin, her spine pressed his belly and she whimpered again, an almost inaudible hitching sound that made his chest ache and the pit of his belly stir.
“Shhh,” he hushed quietly, stroking his fingertips over the smooth line of her ribcage. “Everything is well.” The relaxed firmness of her muscles told him she was still asleep and he let out a ragged sigh, pressing his lips softly to the top of her head.
Fuck, the same dream. Why was he having the same dream?
He closed his eyes and immediately the image of Kala standing over him, Sun Sword blazing in her hands, cold hatred in her face, filled his head. She swung the sword in a graceful arc of absolute surety and terrifying beauty and plunged it into his chest—again.
Biting back a grunt, he opened his eyes and stared hard at the array of weapons mounted on the training room’s far wall. Syunna, what was going on?
Pulse rapid, mouth dry, he smoothed his palm over Kala’s belly, drawing comfort from the satiny warmth of her skin. She sighed in her sleep and wriggled closer to him, her bare backside rubbing his crotch with innocent friction. A wan smile pulled at his lips and he moved his hand up to the slight curve of her breast, brushing the knuckle of his thumb along its soft swell. She felt so good in his arms, so right. He’d never believed someone so small would fit so perfectly to his size and yet Kala did, as if they had been carved from the one piece of the old gods’ stone. So why in all the hells was he having the same dream? Why would his subconscious keep telling him Kala was the False Fire? Keep torturing him with such a chilling notion?
“You gave your word.”
An echo from his dream drifted through his head and a heavy lump formed in his throat. He swallowed it down. He had broken his word, for the first time in his life, but he believed with every fibre in his body that he had not done the wrong thing. Kala had wanted him as much as he wanted her and he would not believe otherwise. The heady musk of her pleasure still lingering in the air told him as such. The way she’d moved beneath him, the way she’d held him, kissed him, told him his desire was not one-sided. No, his subconscious was wrong. He felt no guilt, only an overwhelming sense of rapture and peace. He knew who the False Fire was and the woman lying in his arms, her sweet scent tickling his nose, her gentle heat warming his body, her creamy pleasure wetting his thighs, was not the Eldest’s perversion.
The False Fire was twisted by hate and fury. The False Fire was a creature of cruel lust and savage vengeance. The False Fire was bitter with contempt for mankind and hungry for its brutal demise. Kala was none of those things. The woman sleeping peacefully in his arms was kind and brave and stubborn and wonderful and…
“The One Who Burns,” he murmured, lips pressed to the top of her head again. He drew a deep breath, letting the clean soapy scent of her hair filter into his body. He’d watched the inky-black strands grow over the last six months. Transform from a tangled, choppy mess barely long enough to hide her scalp, to a luxurious curtain of silk that tumbled around her shoulders when loose. He’d longed to bury his hands in its thick, glossy weight time and again, to feel its cool texture slide through his fingers, feather his bare flesh. He’d fantasized about it night after night, and now here he was, living those fantasies and yet the moment he closed his eyes all he could see, all he could live, was a lie beyond any nightmare.
The woman in his arms was not the False Fire. She couldn’t be.
And still his chest ached from the memory of the Sun Sword puncturing his flesh, severing his muscle, his sinew, piercing his heart. And still his heart ached for the possibility he refused to accept.
“And still you made me scream.”
Kala’s tortured words from his dream scraped at his mind and he squeezed his eyes shut, denying them. No. He would not believe it. His head may try and tell him it was so, but his heart…his heart knew it was not.
The woman he had trained, the woman he desired above all else was not the False Fire.
Smoothing his hand back down to Kala’s stomach, Torin gently tugged her closer, cradling her against the curve of his body. Her arse rubbed over his groin and she released another soft sigh, the contented sound curling his mouth into a small smile.
Torin released his own sigh. Despite the latent desire stirring in his sex at the intimate caress of her bottom, he let languid sleep steal through him, resting his lips against her head, his hands on her hip and waist. She was not the False Fire.
And nothing, not even his own guilt-ridden subconscious could convince him otherwise.
***
Kala opened her eyes, letting sleep’s warm embrace slide away from her with contented calm. She smiled, stretching out her arms and legs, the flow of blood spreading through her exhausted limbs like a tingling caress. She roll
ed onto her side and tucked her hands under her head, grinning at the keeper of the Sun Sword’s truth asleep on his side beside her.
“Well,” she murmured, letting her gaze move over Torin’s relaxed face, the glow of her numerous climaxes still warming her body. “I finally brought you to your knees in this training room of torture.”
“See?” he murmured back, eyes still closed, the corners of his mouth twitching into a little grin. “I told you that you were a mighty warrior.”
Kala laughed, the sound bubbling up her throat as wonderful as the pleasure Torin had given her. “I have a very, very good trainer.”
Torin’s grin spread into a wide smile and he rolled onto his back, threading his fingers behind his head and nodding with arrogant mirth. “Yes, you do.”
Warm bliss rolling through her like the heat of a rising sun, Kala stretched out her right arm and rested her head on her biceps. She’d never seen Torin so relaxed. So completely at ease. The sight of his obvious contentment made her smile and a soft pulse fluttered deep within her sex. She pressed her thighs together, her nipples growing hard. She wanted to make love to him again. Now. She wanted to give Torin back the pleasure he’d given her.
You are going to kill him.
The Oracle’s raspy voice whispered through her head and Kala’s smile faded. The old woman had told her many things standing in the entryway of her cubicle, things that made little to no sense—a man who could not see was watching her; space would open and evil would step from within; she would be torn apart and remade; the heart of the future would ignite in the soul of the sword; the burning heart would pierce the undead heart and the Sol would live in the fire’s flames—but Kala refused to believe any of it. They were the deranged ranting of an old hag who wore a dead rabbit about her neck. A dead rabbit! Ignoring everything else, what kind of savior was Kala meant to be if she was to kill the only person ever to show her kindness? The only person to show her true happiness? It was insanity to believe she would kill the man she loved. Lunacy to believe the very thing Torin had dedicated his life to would cause his demise.
The Sun Sword Page 10