by Mima
He chuckled. “Be still KarRa. Be at rest. You are safe with me. I am an experienced spiritmage, with honor.”
After she had relaxed in silence, clearing her mind, accepting his nearness, he murmured softly, “Build me a door.”
KarRa thought of the doorway to Rylan. She journeyed inward in meditation until she felt it, the Grif-made stone doorway along her path to Rylan. And she gently, with a rush of affection sent to reassure, closed the door. She didn’t want Rylan in her head while this man was there. That would be bizarre. Turning, she found herself in her comforting, enclosing fog. Like Grif, she built the outer casing first, then the door.
She closed it firmly, and then said in the barest whisper, “Come.”
Instantly the presence of a man surrounded her. He was strong, both as mage and in spirit. She smelled a musky smell that reminded her of the forest, and she felt his pure intent. He was all around her, strong enough to go where he wanted, but waiting at the door. KarRa rolled it open, and Merk was there with his head lowered, shoulders rounded in submission.
KarRa looked around her mists. Merk would come in here. Eventually he would wander around until he knew about her fights with Rylan. He would see her nightmares of being alone in the darkness, hunger gnawing, knowing that death was lurking around every corner. He would see the smallness of her world, the wrong things she had done to people. The men and women she had hurt.
He would certainly see her secret longing for Rylan. She was standing here, on this threshold, on this journey to a new life bound to a strange man because of her love for Rylan. She was not sorry. There was no stopping this. She stepped to the side and said, “Enter.”
Merk stepped forward and jerked to a stop, his eyes going directly to hers as if in shock. He was frozen, tense, as if only his strongest will kept him from reaching out to grab her. KarRa looked at him curiously, and stepped back. The space between them was as nothing in the spirit world, nor the physical world with his Beast abilities, but it felt better to have the distance and she gestured out into the mists.
“Should I lead?”
Merk seemed to forcefully rip his gaze from hers. Breathing deeply, his mouth flattened. “No. You did well. You may rest. Take yourself to a peaceful place, or wait here.” He strode off into the fog and disappeared.
KarRa examined how she felt. It seemed as if she should feel crowded. Or worried. Or afraid. She felt no different. His presence still pressed around her like a blanket, and she realized it was similar to when Scuffle had marked her skin. Grif's presence had been much more shocking. Shrugging both mentally and physically she turned from her rock door to a slightly crooked wooden slat door washed blue. Pushing it open she turned to the right and began to imagine the walls, floor, and furnishings of Scuffle's shak when he lived there.
She had moved from the finished shak and its roof view to a new mind game: trying to remember all the beautiful things she'd seen on Freezha these past days. She had remembered a dozen rainbow-hued outfits when Merk called her, a gentle tug. Dropping the image of a peach colored robe painted with gold, she turned and strode into the fog, her heart beginning to beat harder.
Merk was waiting by the door, and he seemed bigger. He still was of a size to fit through the opening, but his entire presence seemed more. Closer and warmer. He looked at her, and in slow movements strangely awkward for him, he came to her.
Standing in front of her he reached out and touched her jaw softly. Heat seared through her physical body. She looked into his dark eyes. They were intensely deep and heavy lidded. She recognized this look now, the same she had seen on him after her first test in that distant room. He was aroused.
“KarRa,” he breathed, extending her name into a primal chant. “You are beautiful.”
Surprised and confused she stepped away and he let his fingers fall. No one ever called KarRa beautiful. She wasn't. And if he had seen even half of her life in the Dark, he wouldn't have found any beauty at all.
“Oh yes, you are. And it is my pleasure to name, finally, the Element you belong to.”
Her whole being poised on the edge of a cliff. “I… Me?”
“You. They didn’t value it in your old life. They didn’t recognize it because they couldn’t kill with it. KarRa, you are a Spiritmage.”
“Oh!” That teetering disbelief launched into the mists and soured into rapturous joy. “I’m…a Spiritmage!”
“You are. We’ll help you.”
“I want you. You to help me.”
His black eyes seemed to sparkle with emotion. She felt the gratitude and respect swirling in him. “We’ll see.”
He nodded at her, the formal chin tuck of respect, and turned and went through the doorway. When she didn't move forward, he swung it shut himself, his eyes on hers. As soon as it grated closed in her mental ears she opened her physical eyes.
Her body was lethargic, as if it had swum up through a heavy sleep. Turning her head toward Merk, she found him sprawled back against the wall behind him, his legs extended, loose from their previous tight cross. His hands lay upon his thighs, and his black eyes were on hers. He blinked lazily. His body smoothly, slowly began to draw up.
He came forward onto all fours and began to stalk forward, his gaze now sweeping hungrily down her body as he whipped her blanket off her. KarRa let her breath fall as slow and deep as his, and her thighs began to tighten and release as dampness came to her. He was magnificent, his dark hair soft and thick, falling long around his face, his tan skin shimmering with a light sweat.
He came up to her side and didn't stop, smoothly moving right over her until she was caged between his arms and legs. He stared down at her and she stared back, until he began to growl low in his throat. A nonhuman growl, the low rumble of a Beast. Smoothly and calmly KarRa tilted her chin up showing her throat, keeping her body lax. He immediately stopped and lowered his head to her throat.
She thought he might take it in his open jaws as Grif had done to Rylan, but he nudged her jaw with his nose, pushing her head to the side. His hot breath washed over her neck for an eternity, her breasts beating with the need to be touched, before he finally put his tongue out and drew it smoothly up the side of her neck. It was not lewd or damp, but purposeful. The rasp brought up every fine hair on her body. Then he buried his nose behind her ear and inhaled long and deep. It was one of Rylan's favorite things to do with her, but she was still surprised at the shivers of pleasure that quivered Merk's skin.
After a moment he sat back on his heels, his weight resting across her thighs. He was so aroused now she could see the press of his erection tenting the soft leather of his loose skirt. He reached for her hand and brought it to his mouth. Her gaze was riveted to the look of her extended forefinger between the clasp of his darker hands, poised in front of his mouth.
“Look at me.” His voice was a rough command and her eyes snapped to his glittering black ones. He put her finger carefully, gently into his warm mouth and nipped once, hard. The pain was a quick spike up her arm, then a dull ache as he closed his lips around her finger and drew hard a few times. His lips were firm and soft, his tongue working smoothly along the length of her finger. Her belly throbbed in sudden, surprising jealousy to feel the soft wet heat. He let up on the suction and swallowed, her hand falling from his as his hands hung poised in the air in front of him, lax.
He shuddered, transfixed at the taste of her blood. It was clearly a powerful thing for him, and KarRa felt her thighs clench and release again, her hips lifting against his weight in a slow roll, trapped beneath him. His eyes flashed open and this time they were mage green, whirling with mists of power. KarRa's breath stopped in her throat.
“Was that an invitation?” The words were even more gravelly than before.
KarRa looked up at this powerful stranger who had wandered in her mists and called her beautiful. He was so comfortable. His physical heat was an echo of his mage presence lingering inside her.
Tightening her stomach she raised her bo
dy to an incline and propped herself with an arm. Raising her hand to the rock-still man's jaw, she let her eyes follow her finger as it drifted down his carved face, over his strongly muscled and furred chest, so different from the few smoothskin boys she had known with their slight, wiry, bare frames, to the black leather trapping his searing heat against her legs.
Slowly dragging her gaze back up to his, her finger pressed brazenly against the tip of his hard heat hidden by leather. She whispered, “Yes.”
There was no hesitation. He swooped down on her neck, kissing, giving sucking nips and hard long licks. Exhaling in pleasure, KarRa fell back on the pillows, stunned at her response, but not sorry. It had been a very, very long time. This man felt so good, inside and out. She would take this heat and enjoy.
His hands were hard and quick, moving over her body smoothly. He peeled off her tunic and tossed it aside. Plumping her breasts, tugging, tweaking, turning her nipples until she writhed, her own hands came up to his small nubs and echoed his movements. His chest fascinated her—the slabs of muscle, the hidden nipples in the soft hair.
She learned the scope of his shoulders and the curves of his biceps as he moved his voracious mouth down her body. Her hands went to his head to glory in the feeling of his soft long hair trailing coolly over her hot skin, the silkiness as it threaded her fingers. She massaged the nape of his neck as he began to worship her slight breasts.
His legs moved to the inside of hers, and her thighs drew up to cradle his ribs in welcome. His face rolled over the softness of her skin, rasping it but soothing it with the scorching damp heat of his mouth. Fire bloomed inside her. She lifted herself into his weight, canting her hips, and pressed herself teasingly against him.
Rising, he smoothed the leather down her legs and tossed it aside. He reached under his skirt and worked at some constriction containing himself, then bent in half to spread her legs as wide as they could go. He drove his nose into her wetness and breathed, his breath hot, flowing across her in pants as he took in her scent. KarRa cried out at the intensity of it.
Surging back up to press his body now skin to skin with her wetness, he ground himself in tight to her, causing a soft cry to escape her lips as he again lavished heat and moisture on her thick nipples, scoring them with his teeth. His key burrowed thrillingly between her wet women’s lips, but her thighs wrestled with his to move him lower. Her hands swept restlessly over the expanse of strong shoulders. Her fingertips tingled as they traced crown, nape, spine, biceps, ribs.
The heat and tension built until KarRa's body was twisting so strongly against Merk he began to heave from the force of her thrusts. His hardness chafed the pinpoint of agony between her legs but he still wouldn’t slide into her. The feel of so much skin, so much want, made her drunk.
Surging higher up to put his face over hers, his cock sliding in her hot crease, his eyes a brilliant unnatural green and his teeth gone into serrated points, he gritted out-”Keep those doors closed, KarRa, both of them.” He waited for her to struggle up through her passion to understand and she gave a short nod, mentally firming both her door to him and to Rylan, not sure what he was afraid of but trusting him.
He seemed to feel it but just as he pulled back to enter her, Rylan battered on her door. Always before she had battered on his, but had never barred him before. To feel Rylan pushing in her head when all she wanted was Merk pushing in her body made her stomach heave and head pound. Merk snarled as her hands flew to grasp her head. She gave a cry of frustration at the strength it took to keep Rylan out, wrenching her concentration from her body. She built a lock on the door and turned it, mentally set a trap to it for further protection. All the while her body shivered, missing Merk’s heat as he crouched between her thighs, waiting to see who would win.
Finally Rylan retreated and her hands fell lax to her sides. She was gasping for breath, aware of her aching breasts, the air cooling the moisture on her thighs. Merk watched her somberly, his eyes black once more. He knelt between her knees, waiting. She wanted to scream at the distance she saw on his face. Instead she allowed herself a frustrated snarl worthy of a Beast. Merk’s hands went gently to her taught hips as she swirled them demandingly at him.
“I know, beautiful. I will soothe your need. We are alone again?”
In answer she drew her knees as far up and out as she could, splaying her center open to him. A thrill of satisfaction twined in her core at his gasp. His thumbs went to her folds, his fingers burrowing in her dense curls, twining tight in them. She moaned when he pressed into her depths, pulled her opening wider, swirled his fingertips teasingly around the entrance.
“So beautiful. Your scent…”
Why was he talking? Where was the wild urgency they had just had? She attempted to pull him down to her with her feet on his shoulders but he was too far below her for her to get a good grip on him. He simply turned his head and nibbled on her ankle propped next to his neck. Three of his fingers drove into her depths with a wonderfully hard thrust and his thumb ground her clit in a wet circle.
She shrieked at the satisfaction. He did it again, only this time his mouth sucked lightly where he had nipped her leg, and his other hand closed hard over a nipple. Her hands flew to press his hand deep between her legs, her body bowing forward with the lash of pleasure.
Dimly she was aware of his voice, low and urging her to squeeze, to tighten, to hold. She did as he asked, winding herself tighter with every twist and drive of his hand between her legs.
Reaching up to his stark face, she placed her hands on either side of his skull and hissed, “Merk! Give it to me now!”
He started to shake then, his hand moving so much faster, slapping wet sounds in her heat. KarRa realized nothing but his hands were on her body.
The intensity held and held and held until finally Merk dropped his head to her breasts with a cry. KarRa arched beneath him, echoing his cry with a long wail of her own as she rose up into a beautiful dark to meet him. Falling into a sprawl, they lay entwined, panting in time together, completely winded. He wrapped his arms comfortingly around her, and she felt his magic pull in around them as well.
She hummed with contentment. “Mmmm, an extra layer of Merk.”
He paused on top of her, his cheek pillowed on her small breasts, and laughed. It was a deep rusty sound. Rolling to the side he brought the cups and pitcher over. After they sipped their thirst away he used a corner of blanket to wash first her then himself under his skirt. KarRa remained in a comfortable sprawl before him, accepting his intimate touch. She wasn’t embarrassed.
“You rose with me?” Her voice was husky with contentment.
“More like exploded, but yes.”
“Why didn’t you join with me? Rylan’s intrusion bothered you?”
He held his skirt up with his chin and she saw there were shorts beneath it that attached with buttons on the side. After he had righted himself, he knelt at her side and gently smoothed his hands over her body. It seemed he was soothing himself as much as her with the sweeping touches. “I'm not sure I should have—you were vulnerable…”
She cut him off. “Merk. There was no dishonorable seduction. I made my decision and am glad of it. Haven’t you ever taken pleasure from a woman after souldancing before?”
He nodded at her but still seemed uncertain.
“Are you mated?”
He appeared appalled. “No! Of course not!”
She stretched and began to dress. “Well then. Will you take a meal with me?”
He looked up at her at last. “I would. But this was—a delay. I need to use the spiritair you've left me with to seek for you.” He was definitely growing tenser.
KarRa frowned. “Will it be harder for you to do that after having shared pleasure with me?”
He sighed and seemed to will his tension away. “It should not be.”
That was a half-answer, but she let it go. He stood and they embraced. She laid her head on his chest, rubbing her cheek in his crisp hairs, an
d enjoying his surrounding strength again. She was like melted butter. She felt touched in a way she’d never felt with the smoothskin boys she’d rarely paid. Was this what Rylan had with his lovers? She pushed the painful thought away.
“It was … good, Merk. Thank you.” She felt him nod. “I'll see you again.” He nodded again.
KarRa said, “I don't know how to get back to my room.”
He chuckled. “There will be someone waiting for you in the first room on the right.” He kissed her on the forehead. “Goodnight KarRa. Thank you for sharing yourself, inside and out.”
“Goodnight.” She rolled the door closed again on the image of him settling back into a cross-legged position.
The young warrior, yet another of the seemingly endless black Wolves, led her silently back to the rooms. His nose had flared upon her entry, but he had directed his eyes to the ground and kept his mouth shut. KarRa realized that around the Beasts, privacy in bed pleasure was impossible. They would all know as soon as they got near you.
She went directly to the baths to find Freezha already there, the other women whispering furiously in the other tubs. She joined her, more casual now at stripping and entering the tub, although she still made it a point to have her towel nearby before she got in.
Freezha greeted her and after a moment it came as a relief to know Freezha did not guess she had been with Merk. She would not have to share that private moment. Still, she turned the magewind on in the tub to hide the completeness with which she cleaned between her legs. To her surprise, Freezha was a bit afraid of her spiritmage. A Bear named Wat, she said he was the biggest man she'd ever seen in her life and made her feel like a child. A naughty child. She was entirely relieved to have let him in quickly this month, and that he had been quick in turn.