‘‘It didn’t make me someone that I’m not.’’
‘‘And I’m not a prince.’’
‘‘Jared’s brother would be second in line to the throne.’’
With a quiet cry of anguish, Marco declared, ‘‘You have to promise me that he’ll never know.’’
She shook her head, even as she heard herself agree to his terrible bargain. Relief washed over his dark-skinned face—a face that from the very first time had always reminded her of Jared’s. Of course, she hadn’t imagined a familial connection possible between them; there’d never been any mention of another living D’Aravni.
A D’Aravni! Her mate and husband was the one other soul she’d craved for her entire life. ‘‘I can’t believe it.’’ She touched her flushed face in wonder. ‘‘All this time, my whole life, Marco, I’ve thought Jared was the one for me. That he was my intended mate, that he was the man I loved when . . .’’
But the words she’d spoken in an outpouring of love for Marco died on her lips; his face blanched, his mouth pulled tight, and he jerked backward from her as if she’d just scalded him.
When all along I was waiting to fall in love with you, she wanted to finish, but the wounded look on his face silenced her.
‘‘You loved Jared? You love him? What are you really saying, Thea?’’
She waved her hands between them as if she could recall the words. ‘‘No, that’s not what I mean,’’ she rushed to explain. ‘‘My whole life I thought I loved Jared—I was promised to him as an infant, you know.’’
His expression grew icy. ‘‘No. I didn’t know.’’
‘‘Of course, we were cousins, it was always meant to be.’’
‘‘You love Jared,’’ he repeated, piercing her with his hard gaze. ‘‘Love my king, my lord. You love him, Thea?’’
‘‘You’re not listening to me!’’ she shouted, frustration and fear boiling over.
He pounced to his feet in the space of a moment, backing away from her. ‘‘I understand just fine, wife. You love my brother. He was the one you waited and waited for—’’
‘‘That’s not what I’m saying.’’
‘‘I understand perfectly.’’ And he was gone from the room before she could even go after him.
Thea woke to find Marco still missing from their bed; for hours she’d lain hoping for his return, but finally drifted into a fitful sleep. A glance at the clock showed it to be almost four a.m. But where would he have gone for so long? Had he stayed down at the base on this, their wedding night? Was he really that angry and hurt with her—upset enough to stay away rather than sealing their mating rites? She couldn’t understand how he’d misunderstood her to such disastrous proportions. He’d never even given her a chance to explain! Wailing, terrible pain bubbled up inside of her, and there seemed no possible way to express it.
Leaping out of bed, her bare feet met icy-cold hardwood, her naked body shivering. Glancing around the bedroom for additional clothing, her gaze fell on Marco’s parka, hastily discarded on the foot of their bed.
So he is here, she thought, walking purposefully toward the main living room that adjoined their sleeping chamber. She found him there on the sofa, his jaw set in cool determination, his curling hair disheveled and wild.
‘‘Marco?’’ she whispered, holding onto the door frame tremulously. ‘‘When did you come in?’’ He said nothing, so she took a tentative step closer. ‘‘I wish you’d come to bed with me,’’ she pressed, but he only grunted in reply, nothing more.
He’d never before treated her so coolly, not even when he’d been telling her they couldn’t be together. At least then he’d displayed something of his gentler nature; right now, he was only showing her one thing: his left profile.
‘‘You’ve got a black eye.’’
His full mouth tensed into a hard line, and she had a strange flash of trying to soothe a Varakeesa, a tiny multicolored bird that had populated their home world. As a girl, she’d spent hours in her mother’s garden trying to tame one. Move slowly, Haven. Infinitesimal progress is all it takes.
‘‘I hit it on the door frame when I left the guesthouse. Cut my eyebrow on the fucking latch.’’
‘‘I could heal it,’’ she suggested gently.
‘‘Don’t bother.’’
‘‘So you want to stay bruised and injured like this? That’s smart.’’ Another step closer, edging there, edging.
He cut his dusky eyes sideways at her; it was the look of a man who believed himself betrayed. For the briefest moment, she felt the physical sensation of Marco’s entire body as if it were her very own. The throbbing in his jaw from the battle at Warren; the swollen pressure behind his eye; the hot pain in his left wrist. Experiencing a moment of heightened empathy with him, now of all times when he was so hurt and angry, nearly suffocated her. Oh, he was in pain all right, a great deal of pain, and not just in his body.
‘‘Look at your face, Marco,’’ she muttered, needing so desperately to touch him, even though she knew to keep her distance. ‘‘Please let me heal you. I need to heal you. I feel how it hurts.’’
‘‘Like hell.’’
‘‘It hurts like hell?’’ she asked, confused.
‘‘No, Thea,’’ he answered, with what was obviously very forced patience, ‘‘I mean, like hell am I allowing my . . . wife’’—he speared her with his midnight gaze—‘‘my lifemate . . . m-my . . . cousin to heal me!’’ he sputtered furiously. ‘‘Like hell you’re going to touch me.’’
‘‘So that’s your answer?’’ she murmured, feeling tears sting her eyes.
‘‘I’ll see the medics later.’’
‘‘Why not see your wife right now?’’
‘‘Because I’m not sure what to think about my wife,’’ he said. ‘‘Not after last night.’’
She threw up her hands. ‘‘How can you say that to me? After all that we’ve shared, Marco? With as much as I love you, how can you possibly say such a cruel thing to me?’’
‘‘I-I thought I was your first love,’’ he blurted, spreading one hand over his heart.
‘‘That’s what I thought, Thea. I thought what we had was special. That I was the only man you’d ever wanted like this!’’ With a quiet cry of anguish, he buried his face in his hands.
‘‘Marco!’’ She moved quickly, dropping to her knees in front of him. ‘‘You know what you mean to me!’’ She placed her palms on his knees, trying to get through to him. Trying anything to get the damned, stubborn man just to understand.
‘‘But you loved him first.’’ He dropped his hands away from his face, looking her in the eye. ‘‘You loved my brother before you loved me. How can I ever forget that?’’
She laughed, rubbing her hands over his muscular thighs. ‘‘For an empath, Marco, you can be unbelievably dense.’’
‘‘What’s that supposed to mean?’’ His black eyebrows furrowed into a scowl.
‘‘It means you were my first love.’’
He shook his head. ‘‘Last night, you told me that you had loved Jared, that—’’
She cut him off. ‘‘Words mean everything, remember?’’ she reminded him. ‘‘That’s part of a Madjin’s training—you were the one who taught me that. ‘Words have life.’”She paused, waiting for him to interrupt, to object or say something, but he did not. So, taking hold of his shoulders, she leaned up onto her knees and pressed her face close to his.
‘‘I said I thought I was in love with Jared. Thought. Until I met you, and then I realized there was this giant hole inside of me, this place that was so hungry, just searching for a man of the D’Aravni line. It was as if I knew I was supposed to wait on you—but then you didn’t come . . .’’ She had to swallow hard before she could continue. ‘‘When you didn’t come, Marco, I mistook Jared for you. You see, you aren’t my first love’’—she paused, gathering both of his large, dusky hands within her own—‘‘you’re my only love.’’
Squeezing her hands, he leaned f
orward until their noses were practically touching, until she could feel his hot breath against her face and until she could inhale his familiar, woodsy scent in her nostrils. Gods, how she loved even the very smell of her mate, the way he always seemed to have just come in from the fresh air and the trails. ‘‘I love you,’’ she whispered again. ‘‘More than I could have ever imagined it was possible to love another person.’’
‘‘You make me crazy, Thea. It frightens me, what I feel for you,’’ he admitted, releasing her hands. He slipped his muscular arms around her, rubbing his fingers along the base of her neck. ‘‘It’s too much, too out of control, too . . . overpowering. And this fire in you, well, it makes me hunger for a lot more too.’’
‘‘More?’’ She didn’t dare hope that he meant awakening his D’Aravnian side; not when he’d been so frightened by it the night before.
His breathing grew heavy against her cheek as for long moments he said nothing; when he did speak, his voice was thick with unconcealed emotion. ‘‘I crave to be myself with you, Thea. Both selves. I want to understand it, what it means when I’m with you—and I want to understand the fire I feel inside whenever I gaze upon your beautiful, sexy, D’Ashanian self.
Heat infused her cheeks at his frank admission.“I would love that,’’ she whispered huskily in his ear. ‘‘Would love to see how gorgeous you really, truly are.’’
He pulled back, and his black gaze shone with emotion and desire—power, too. His other nature had already begun to rouse from its lifelong slumber, she could tell. ‘‘And,’’ he admitted, his gaze never wavering from hers, ‘‘I would love to know what lovemaking could really be for us in our other form.’’
Thea’s lips parted, and she really did think she was going to say something. But not one word came to mind. All she could do was stare in wonder at her beautiful, strong husband. A prince! She had married a prince; and, as it happened, not just any prince. The prince of her heart. ‘‘I can show you how. To make your Change again, I mean, to learn how to control it, not just let it happen out of arousal and fear like it did last night.’’
A devilish gleam flashed in his tired eyes. ‘‘I’m counting on it.’’
‘‘It might take time,’’ she told him, feeling an unaccountable shyness as he cupped her warm face within his palm. ‘‘To, well, you know. Show you. Teach you . . . take you there, I mean.’’ She shook her head, frustrated by her stammering explanations. The truth was, slipping into her natural state was the most intensely personal experience she knew. The idea of sharing it with him—and awakening it within her lover—well, it left her feeling strangely like a virgin all over again. ‘‘It’s just very . . . erotic.’’ There, she’d told him.
His long-lashed eyes drifted halfway shut, his swarthy face seemed to flush a little red, and he sighed. ‘‘Why else do you figure I’m so interested in it?’’
‘‘Because you want to know your true self?’’ she supplied in a helpful voice, but she knew better.
‘‘Partly,’’ he purred. ‘‘And partly because I know you’ll be even more of a wildcat when we’re having royal sex.’’
‘‘Oh, please!’’ She swatted him on the arm. ‘‘Royal sex?’’
‘‘What else should I call it?’’
‘‘Try . . .’’ Well, he had her there. At least in English. She pressed her lips against his ear, murmuring sweet words of Refarian love and pleasure, and called it exactly what it was. Llala durshk. Translation: at least the rough, imperfect one, ‘‘the sharing of fire.’’
He nuzzled her cheek, pressing his full, warm lips against her face. ‘‘In other words, I’ll show you my fire, if you show me yours?’’ He laughed huskily.
‘‘Sort of like.’’
‘‘Mmm, this will be most interesting, my lady.’’
And inside, right in the center of her belly, Thea felt a quaking, trembling heat begin. Closing her eyes, she knew that their mating rites had really just begun.
Chapter Twenty-seven
After breakfast, Jared finally returned to the cabin in search of his wife. She’d been sound asleep when he’d left for the day at five A.M., and now that sunlight pierced the dawn he found himself desperate to make love with her. Strange, but his compulsion to make love with her had intensified dramatically in the past day, so that it seemed the only thing he could think about. Erotic thoughts crowded his mind—images of Kelsey astride him, riding him hard, or images of them tumbling before the fire, thrusting and groaning. From the beginning, his desire for Kelsey had been nearly maddening, but . . . this rampant craving was unique.
Every new husband yearns for his mate. That’s all that I’m feeling, he tried telling himself. Of course I want to bed her as often as possible.
But a quiet part of his heart wanted to believe that perhaps it was something far more monumental—perhaps greater than a new husband’s unrelenting passion for his wife. What he wanted to believe, when he actually admitted it to himself, was that maybe the gods were smiling upon them—maybe he wasn’t actually done with his first mating season.
He discovered Kelsey at his desk poring over a small book, glancing back and forth between her handheld translator and what he would have sworn was one of Prince Arienn’s journals. With iPod headphones over her ears, and her attention focused on the pages before her, she never noticed his entry. Making his footsteps light, he crept up behind her, feeling heat sweep from the crown of his head to the tips of his toes. Flushing heat, the sort that came from nowhere and made you dizzy.
Bending over her chair, he slid his arms about her and she jolted in his embrace. ‘‘Geez, Jared!’’ she shouted in an overly loud voice thanks to her headphones. ‘‘You scared the living crap out of me!’’ He laughed, pointing at his ears, and she ripped the headset away.
Nuzzling her, he nibbled at first one ear, then the other. ‘‘I was feeling frisky.’’
‘‘How frisky?’’ She set the iPod on his desk.
The flush in his face deepened. ‘‘I wish to bed my wife.’’
‘‘That’s definitely frisky.’’
Bending over her shoulder he asked, ‘‘What are you reading?’’ He gave the book a glance—it was one of the prince’s journals, but not one he’d ever seen before. ‘‘Arienn’s diary?’’
This time it was his wife who blushed, and deeply. ‘‘It’s something Thea gave me,’’ was all she said, placing it atop a stack of Refarian science texts.
He plucked the book from her grasp with his most kingly manner. ‘‘I see that, but the question is why.’’
Kelsey averted her eyes, and he briefly scanned the journal pages, grasping the reason for her embarrassment. In painstaking detail Arienn had outlined the specifics of the first night he lay with his wife—his human wife.
‘‘Arienn coupled with a human,’’ he observed, shocked to the core.
Kelsey gave a nod, saying nothing.
‘‘I’ve never read anywhere that he mated with a human.’’ Jared read on, skimming until he came to one particular entry that caused the beating of his heart to increase rapidly.
Some say that humans, by temperament, are unable to partake of the mating heat. They say wrongly! Louisa has reacted with particular verve and pleasure to my cycles, often falling under the fever’s sway first, inducing me, provoking me. Ah, it is a glorious mystery, this blood fever. Would the world know, I should be the envy of every non-heated Refarian male! Every human male would declare me outrageously fortunate! So I am, so we are.
‘‘By the Gods!’’ Jared could hardly contain his excitement. ‘‘They experienced the heat . . . together!’’
Kelsey gave him a bold smile. ‘‘So they did.’’
Jared gulped, feeling something powerful lodge in his chest. Was it hope? Perhaps fear? He couldn’t be sure. ‘‘If they did, then you know what that means, Kelsey . . .’’
Her smile, so radiant and broad, turned much more beguiling. ‘‘That things are going to get very interesting between u
s eventually.’’
‘‘Are you . . . repulsed?’’ he asked, his lifelong shame about his mating compulsions surfacing yet again.
‘‘Will you get over yourself, Jared? Please?’’ She swatted him on the hip. ‘‘I don’t know how many ways to say this, so I just will: I am into this. It turns me freaking on. Okay? Do you finally get it?’’
Chastened, he bowed his head, grinning from ear to ear. ‘‘The thought of you in the throes of mating frenzy turns me . . . freaking on.’’
‘‘Don’t say freaking.’’
He cocked his head, confused. ‘‘No? Is it somehow wrong, the manner in which I used it?’’
‘‘No, it just makes me want to giggle at you.’’
‘‘Ah, so I see.’’ He preened like the king that he was. ‘‘I do not wish to amuse you in bed. Only pleasure you.’’
‘‘My point precisely.’’ Still, she did giggle—and quite loudly.
With a final glance at the page, he realized one question still concerned him. ‘‘Tell me, love, did they . . . conceive? Have we hope from their own conception?’’
For long moments she did not reply, until at last she rose from the chair, pulling herself to her full six feet of height. ‘‘Yes, there’s hope.’’
‘‘They conceived a child?’’
Her lovely wide smile vanished. ‘‘It doesn’t say—but they did cycle together, repeatedly.’’ She indicated the journal he held in his hand. ‘‘Arienn writes about three of their cycles in there.’’
A jolt of heat shot straight to his groin, causing his cock to stiffen in proud salute. ‘‘Three cycles—together.’’ He growled possessively, jerking her against his body. ‘‘We best begin to call the fever upon ourselves immediately.’’
‘‘You’re not afraid of it anymore?’’ she asked, uncertainty darkening her freckled face.
‘‘Damn it all, I have my pride to think about now! I won’t be outdone by Arienn.’’
With a quick kiss on his cheek, she rumbled in his ear, mimicking his mating sounds. ‘‘If my king commands it, how can I deny him?’’
Parallel Heat Page 35