“Caring about someone, wanting to save his life, isn’t the same as mating for the duration of it.”
“But they have.”
“They’re different. And it doesn’t matter because you agreed this is only tonight.”
“I’ll take what I can have,” he replied, hands tightening on me.
I moved under those hands, restless, unsure of the meaning there. “I want to undress you.”
He smiled at me, a small lift of his mouth, a wryness behind it that made him think he saw through me. “Far be it from me to stand between you and what you want.”
Just for that I should claw him. He brought out the ornery side of me, and I couldn’t help showing off, just a little. I took his shirt in my fists and ripped it down the middle, using my shapeshifter strength to part the thick cloth as easily as one of Dafne’s papers. He reacted to the shock quickly, hands seizing my wrists before I finished pushing the shirt off his shoulders. We stood like that for an endless moment, locked in place. Then he chuckled, shaking his head, fingers flexing to slide down my arms.
“Wild thing,” he said again.
Yes,” I replied. I scratched my nails over his chest in demonstration. Not hard, just enough to leave faint lines.
“What would it take to tame you?” he wondered.
I licked the hollow of his throat and up to the bulge of his larynx. He caught his breath, muscles flexing under my palms. “Is that what you want?” I asked, nipping at him, then laving the spot with my tongue so he shuddered. “A tame pet on a leash. Go find a mossback girl for that.”
He laughed, wound his fingers in my hair and pulled me into a drowning kiss, my naked breasts crushed against his bare chest. The contact blew all my thoughts away. I had to have him.
I dragged my hands down to undo his sword belt. Once it gave, the too-big borrowed pants slid off his narrow hips. I started to toss the belt aside, but he firmly took it from me, setting it on the desk with precise care, then toeing off his boots and kicking off the pants.
He turned, and I took him by the cock and the mouth both at once, filled with the furious need he’d stirred in me. He picked me up, lifting me easily for the few steps to the bed, then fell on top of me. I worked his shaft, hard, hot, and long. “Inside me,” I demanded.
“But you—” he started and I bit his lower lip, then pulled his hand between my thighs, into the slick tissues, swollen with wanting.
“Now,” I told him. “It’s not in me to wait.”
He stroked me there, watching my face, working his clever fingers until I gasped and threw back my head. I clutched those strong shoulders, hanging onto him. “Please, Marskal.”
A smile curved the tight line of his mouth, eyes burning into mine. “I like that, the way you said my name. Say it again.” He slipped a finger inside me, curling it so I convulsed and cried out. He captured the sound with a kiss, then let me go. “Say it again,” he urged.
I scratched my nails down his back, not being gentle this time. “Marskal,” I growled.
He arched, hissing, and reached down to lift my knee, pushing my thigh back and opening me, then settled between my legs, leaning on one elbow, face taut with desire. “Next time is slow.”
“If there is a next time,” I cautioned.
“There’s all of tonight, at least.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?” His cock nudged my entrance, easing in, so I moaned and closed my eyes, anticipating, craving that first deep thrust. He stopped there. Leaving me hanging, he waited until I opened my eyes to glare at him. “Maybe?” he demanded.
I tried to give him a fierce stare back, but it was driving me crazy, having him almost inside me. I wriggled, to no avail. The man had iron control and my leverage was all wrong, unless I changed that. “Maybe,” I spat at him.
“Then this time is slow.” He eased himself into me, bit by bit, stretching and filling, but depriving me of the powerful thrust and ensuing frenzy. I thrashed against him, lifting my hips, but he stared me down, burying himself to the hilt in me, then slowly drawing back. Almost entirely, leaving just enough inside me to obliterate my control.
“Marskal!” I snarled at him.
Infuriatingly, he laughed, a rolling of breath, soft thunder backing the storm in his eyes. “I like that, too.”
I considered throwing him off me and reversing positions, pinning him so I could ride him to my satisfaction, but he spotted it in me. “Don’t do it,” he warned. “Or I won’t play at all.”
He eased into me, so slowly it was torture. I threw my head back and wailed my frustration. Buried in me, he easily caught my mouth, kissing me with such sweetness it didn’t seem possible that he was the same man tormenting me. “Shh,” he murmured, pressing my hands palm up beside my head, lacing his fingers with mine. “Relax. Calm. Feel that?”
His skin slid against mine, warm, hard edged, our legs and fingers tangled together. Brushing my lips with his, coaxing, soothing, breathing my breath, he rocked in me. No, the ship rocked around us, the pitching and creaking taking us up one side and down the other. He moved in me and I clung to the waves of pleasure as they built, suspended between him and the ship, and the ocean. It was like flying and swimming both. Animal, with our bodies joined and the sweat slicking us together.
More than that. I felt like I had when I was wrapped in Moranu’s arms. Safe and loved. I whimpered and Marskal soothed me murmuring my name.
“Zynda. My Zynda.” He kissed me in between, chanting my name and setting it on my tongue. Somewhere in there I let go, unfurling and going with it, letting myself be held and penetrated and wrapped up. He accelerated the thrusts, slipping a hand under my hips to adjust the angle, pushing deeply into me.
I’d lost all track of everything except his skin under my hands, the play of his muscles, and the sharply sweet merging of our bodies. Just as in the moment of shifting from one form to another, I blurred, no longer bound to flesh, but freed… and the climax took me in a rush, flinging me out of myself and into a starry realm where we were one person and many. Shifting faces of all things together.
I cried out, clinging to him, an anchor in the storm, my mouth feeding on his, on the sweet words he gave me, full of the love I’d been promised and never expected to have. It was wrong, and yet I soaked it up. Just that once.
I might have dozed. Or fainted a bit, from the intensity of our joining. It shouldn’t have been possible to sleep, pinned under his rangy body, my hair tangled under me. Though he’d softened, he was still buried inside me, our pelvises fused, my legs wound around him. He stirred, moving to withdraw and I tightened my legs, preventing him.
He breathed a laugh, kissed my temple and raised his head. “I should get off of you.”
“Not yet.” I drew him into a kiss, and he relaxed into it, leisurely and thorough, now that we’d taken the edge off. We moved too much, though, and he slid out of me, a gush of fluid following. I sighed for it. “All right, fine.”
He cocked a grin at me. “Allow me to fetch a cloth for my lady.”
Levering himself up with considerable vitality given how we’d expended ourselves, he strode the short distance to a stack of towels on a small table bolted to the wall. I turned on my side, enjoying the view, feeling languid as a well-petted cat. “You’re well prepared.”
He handed me one, then sat on the side of the bed, using another to clean himself. “Part of the job.”
I raised a brow at him. “Bodyguard, scout, lover, and handmaid. So many facets to your profession.”
He bent over and kissed me, lingering over it. “I like ‘lover’ best.”
“You’re good at it, too,” I told him, sliding my hand up his lean back. His breath escaped in a hiss and he frowned. “I’m afraid I scratched you. Drew blood in a few places.”
“Did you now.” He sounded aroused and amused, tracing a finger down my throat to my breast.
“Surely I didn’t need to warn you to be wary of my claws.”
“A
nd here I was so careful not to mar your pretty skin.”
“Don’t be careful,” I told him. “I don’t need it.”
“But you do.” He watched my face, cupping my breast and brushing his thumb over it. “You’re so beautiful, Zynda. I meant to tell you before, in the proper order.” He stroked down over my belly, and I turned on my back, letting him explore. “Your skin is like a newborn’s. Flawless and soft as new cream.”
“It’s the shapeshifting,” I said, not sure why I felt like confiding. Something about the way he looked at me made me want to. “We don’t scar. Even the light tan I had before is as dark as I ever get. It’s a kind of rejuvenation, every time we shift.” Except I’d lost that. And I wasn’t going to think about it.
“That sounds like a recipe for a long life.” He looked somber at that.
I nodded. “If we don’t get ourselves killed. That’s another reason shapeshifters rarely form permanent relationships, except with maybe another shapeshifter.”
“That’s why you said Rayfe and Andi are different.”
“I wasn’t sure you were listening then.”
“I always listen to you.” He told me that very seriously, though he seemed to be watching the movement of his hand down my thigh. Then his gaze flicked up to mine. “Though I also know you don’t always tell me the truth.”
He bent and pressed a kiss to the inside of my thigh, just above the knee, and I sighed for the sweet pleasure of it. The man possessed a talented mouth.
“I don’t exactly lie, either. Truth and lies aren’t either-or things,” I murmured, floating on the sensation. His hand smoothed down my calf, his mouth following with such exquisite caresses that I didn’t mind that he laughed at me.
“How very Tala of you,” he said, encircling my ankle with his fingers. “You’re so strong and yet your bones are so delicate, like a bird’s.” He lifted my foot, stretching my leg up and scooting more onto the bed, holding me by the ankle with one hand so he could trace the line of my leg with the other.
I folded my hands under my head so I could watch him and his explorations. “Ever been bitten by a goose or scored by a raptor’s talons?”
He flashed me a distracted smile, pressing his lips experimentally to the hollow by my ankle bone, sending warm currents straight to my groin. My lids fluttered closed and I shifted my free leg, opening my thighs to him. He looked. Oh yes, he took a good long look, his heated gaze crawling up my body to meet my eyes, full of renewed hunger.
“Why don’t you come up here and do that?” I invited.
“Eventually.” He returned his attention to my foot, pressing a thumb into the sole of it, biting lightly at the tendon at the back of my ankle, intensifying my growing arousal. I lifted my free foot, bracing it on his shoulder. He gave me an inquiring glance, his muscles flexing under my toes. “Can’t tough it out?” he asked, a definite taunt in his tone.
“The first time was slow. No more of this…” I trailed off on a hiss when he bit me on the arch of my foot, grasp firm on my captured ankle, other fingers caressing the tender underside of my knee, in an amplifying counterpoint. I dug my toes into his shoulder, but he ignored me, continuing his game. “Marskal,” I said, for lack of a better argument.
He chuckled in that dark, sensuous way. “There was no deal. You wouldn’t promise all night, so for as long as I have you, I’m doing this my way.”
I eyed his muscular body. “I’m strong enough to pin you, I bet.”
“You could try,” he agreed without looking at me, intent on following the line of my calf muscle with his tongue, up to the back of my knee. I could have braced against his approach with my other foot, but I liked the feel of his skin under my toes. “But that would be cheating.”
“So many rules,” I complained, the words coming out on a breathy sigh. I arched my back, instinctively tugging away from the excruciating teasing, but he held my ankle in an iron grip that aroused me as much as the tender kisses.
“Only one rule,” he corrected. “You let me do what I like to you.” He released my ankle, setting my foot on his shoulder, then captured the other, beginning all over by kissing the hollow by my ankle. My laugh became a moan of pleasure.
“That’s hardly fair,” I got out.
“Sure it is.” He sounded perfectly reasonable, as if he didn’t have me writhing at his least caress. “If my lady decides to grace me with another opportunity in her bed, then she may be the one to do whatever she likes.”
“What if there’s no bed? We might not have such a cozy, private spot again.”
“Lady’s choice, then.”
“You might live to regret this bargain.” I couldn’t hold still, the desire burning a hole through me. Restless, needy, I undulated, and his hot gaze slid up my leg to my spread sex. Not nearly so detached as he liked to pretend. I lowered my hands, cupping my breasts and arching again. “Work with me here and I think we can come to mutual satisfaction.”
“Oh, I think that’s guaranteed.” He nipped the back of my knee then sucked the spot, making me lose the thread of the debate entirely. Moving more fully between my upraised knees, he edged up, kissing and tonguing the inside of my thigh. “Your skin is more than soft. Luscious. And you smell good.”
“Dasnarian bath oil.”
“Not what I mean.” His lean face went wolfish as he gazed at me, so close to my groin my lower legs draped down his back. If he were a shapeshifter, perhaps wolf would be his First Form. It made sense on many levels. He inhaled, then flicked his gaze up to me. “You smell like flowers. You always do. As if you have tropical petals worked into your skin.”
I wound my fingers in his short hair, crossing my ankles behind his neck. “Marskal, darling,” I purred.
“Yes, my lady?”
“If you don’t put your mouth on me immediately, I will kill and eat you.”
He gave me that slow, certain smile. “Other way around, quicksilver girl.”
~ 15 ~
A long time later, I lay half-dozing in his arms. I liked it. Wrapped up safe and skin-to-skin. Not something I’d ever much cared for. I’d always been the one to get up and move—just as Zyr’s women always complained he did. We weren’t cuddlers in our family. At least, not since childhood.
How much of this sudden attachment came from Marskal’s tending me when I was the hummingbird? Animals imprinted like that and I’d been the animal for far too long. It hadn’t been the disaster the tales made it out to be, with the shapeshifter never able to return to human form—or, worse, shifting back to their Birth Form, but with the animal mind. Not unlike Deyrr’s living dead.
I shuddered to imagine what that might be like.
“Cold?” Marskal asked and drew the blanket up around us. I wasn’t, but I liked him doing it, so I didn’t protest. Instead I snuggled closer, our legs entangled together, and my head comfortable in the fold of his shoulder. He kissed my forehead. I hummed a little and lifted my mouth for a real kiss, so sweet, quickly turning hot. Laughing quietly, he drew away and kissed my nose instead. “You should rest.”
“I am resting. Besides, you’ve already kept me up most of the night, as promised,” I replied. “It’s only a few hours to dawn.”
He stilled, listening. “How can you tell?”
“I feel it.”
“Shapeshifter trick, or sorceress magic?”
“Hard to say. I always know where the sun is, the phase of the moon. The knowing is just there.”
He was quiet a moment. He’d spread my hair over his chest and threaded his fingers through it, like children do, playing games with ribbons. “Why don’t you use your magic?”
“I do use it. I used it today. Twice.”
“The only times I’ve seen you use it.”
“You don’t see everything I do. Especially magic, because a great deal of that isn’t visible. Not obvious like shapeshifting.”
He mulled that over. “So, you use it rarely.”
Such curiosity. “I wouldn’t say
that. Just not often.”
“Because?”
“It upsets the balance of things.”
“What things?”
I leaned up on my elbow, studying his face. “Why are you so interested?”
He smiled, a slight softening of his chiseled mouth. “I thought I’d made it clear that I’m interested in everything about you.”
“Yes.” I traced the line of one eyebrow, then the other. Not bushy, but thick, the same brown as his hair, but without the sun streaks. “But you’ve never explained why.”
“Dodging the question or looking to be petted?”
“I do love to be petted.” I kissed him, then traced the curve of his lips with my fingertip, and the brackets around his mouth, while I thought about how to explain it. “The world has a particular balance. The cycles of the sun and the moon, light and dark, life and death. One animal grazes, the predator eats the herbivore, then the predator dies and its body feeds the soil that grows the grass again. It’s a balance. A circle.” I set the tip of my finger in the divot below his lower lip and sought his gaze. “Does that make sense?”
“Yes.” He reached up and tucked a spilling lock of my hair behind my ear. “Keep going.”
I shrugged a little. “Well, that’s it. Magic isn’t part of that balance. If I use a spell to kill a flock of living fish-birds, for example, I haven’t eaten them. They maybe haven’t returned to feed anything at all. So, I’ve created a hole in the world. That can’t be good. Now the circle is lopsided.”
“But killing the fish-birds today?”
“I couldn’t kill them because they were already dead. They were already unnatural, outside the circle of life. Once I determined that, I felt no qualms about vanishing them.” I smiled for Kral’s irritable jibes.
He returned my smile. “But isn’t magic part of the balance, too, a natural thing?”
I frowned. “I don’t know. It’s an interesting question. Maybe not? Perhaps that’s why the N’andanans locked it away. Could be it was never meant to be part of this world in the first place.”
The Shift of the Tide Page 17