She had a hunger that matched his and she was ferocious about it. He loved that, too. She was his match in every way. Her breathless cries told him she was close, so he stopped abruptly, lifting his head to watch her face. He saw hunger there, all for him. All his. It had been a long road, but he had her now.
“Turn over, Lorraine. I want you on your hands and knees.”
She flicked him a look that said he’d better hurry, but she turned over readily. Before she could comply with his order, he bunched the thick mass of hair in his fist and tugged gently. She turned her head obligingly. He kept tugging until her head rose and then she was on her elbows looking over her shoulder at him. He sat very still on the side of the bed, holding her hair like reins, admiring the way her full breasts swayed, nipples dragging along the sheets.
“Are you looking at something in particular?” she demanded, her voice miffed.
He grinned at her because he couldn’t help it. “Yes. I am looking at the love of my life.” Her body was flushed a beautiful rose color. Her green eyes were slumberous. Sexy. Her bottom was up in the air, waiting for him, while her breasts swayed gently in temptation. She squirmed. Bucked her hips. Did a slow circle with them.
“I’m waiting here.”
“I see that.” His palm caressed her right breast. Teased at her nipple, tugging gently. He watched the beauty that happened. How her face changed. Her expression. The swift intake of breath. Using her hair, he guided her mouth to his. The fire had gone hotter than ever.
He took his mouth off hers, barely a scant half inch. “Do not move, Lorraine. I want you just like this.”
“You’d better hurry, or I’m going to try out one of the many Carpathian spells you all whip up on a dime.”
He wasn’t certain what that meant, and in any case, he didn’t feel the need to hurry so he took his time moving around behind her. Gathering her hair again, he pulled her head toward him until her back was down and her bottom was up. One handed, he pushed her thighs farther apart. Keeping her hair tight in his fist so she couldn’t move, he began using his fingers and occasionally dipping his head down to use his mouth, teeth and tongue, driving her up where he wanted her, but keeping that fire from igniting.
“Andor.” His name was a wail. A groan. He smiled and added his fingers, just to keep that burn right on the edge. “Do something. Anything. Hurry, honey.”
He liked the way she gave him an endearment. He liked the way she pleaded, that soft moan that told him she was very, very close.
He entered her fast and hard, a deep thrust that sent her right over the edge. Immediately his cock was surrounded with her scorching hot sheath. She was liquid fire, tight gripping muscles, paradise taking him in. He moved, feeling the streaks of fire racing up his spine, racing up hers. He closed his eyes to savor the heat, the experience unlike anything else, but she was there as well, behind his lids, her body writhing around his.
She cried out as the ripples grew, so intense, spreading through her body, so that her tight sheath massaged and gripped his shaft as he pounded into her. He thought gentle in his mind, but his body betrayed him, taking charge, giving both of them what they wanted—and needed. He held out against the wild waves crashing through her and around him. And then her body clamped down viciously, a vise of perfection, wringing him dry.
Andor came down over top of her as she collapsed under him. She lay breathing hard, his body weighting her down, blanketing her. He knew he should move, but he couldn’t find the energy. It took minutes to control his heart and breathing because, honestly, he wasn’t trying very hard. He enjoyed everything about making love to Lorraine, even this aftermath, where their hearts beat out of control and their lungs burned raw.
He threaded his fingers through hers on either side of her head. She had her eyes closed, and when he lifted his head enough to set his chin on her back so he could watch her, those lashes of hers did the flutter thing he found mesmerizing.
“I’m too tired to go teach self-defense. I think Bella could kick my butt,” she murmured.
“Who do you plan to teach first? The women or the little ones?” He rubbed his jaw along her back, and then watched with satisfaction as her skin turned pink from the tiny stubble shadowing his jaw.
“If the little ones are still up when I get out there, I’ll give them a lesson. Genevieve said if I tired them out for her, she’d pay me top babysitting wages.”
“Um, csecsemõ, you have no more need of money. We are very wealthy by human standards.”
“I’m not really going to take her money, silly. She was teasing me. And I do need a bank account. All of you should have one if you’re going to appear human.”
“It is bad enough that Tariq is photographed so widely,” he objected. “Sooner or later he must appear to grow old, and he will have to move on so as not to be discovered.”
“Leaving your property to yourself, to an identity you choose before you pretend to die, can be done over and over. I don’t see that it will be harmful as long as he’s careful. I need air. Are you going to move?”
“No.” His hand smoothed down her hip, over her butt and down one thigh. “You have to learn to regulate your breathing. You are not going to suffocate. Think of filling your lungs with air. It will come to you.”
“I see. This is training.”
“Yes. And you are doing very well, Lorraine. So far you have not panicked.”
“There are other ways to train me in filling my lungs various ways, you know.”
Again, he closed his eyes at the suggestive temptation in her voice. The moment he did, he found her there, the image of her on her knees in front of him, his cock down her throat, holding there while she learned air could find her lungs when needed. His cock stirred all over again. It hadn’t taken much. The thought of that mouth surrounding him with heat and fire made him harder than ever. His hand stroked her bottom again and then slid lower, between her legs, fingers whispering over her sensitive clit.
“Are you trying to get out of teaching those little girls?”
“Yes. Absolutely. If you give me a training lesson, no one can say anything about me being late. I have a really good excuse. I can start their training tomorrow night, unless I don’t get this first lesson right away.”
Her hips moved, pressing her pelvis deeper into the mattress. He smiled against her back. “I do not know. This lesson may be too advanced. I doubt very much if you can get it in one try.”
“I’m willing to do my best.”
He slid off her back and rolled over, one hand circling his thick shaft. His erection felt heavy, his need growing. He liked the way she played. The way she made everything fun. Making memories where he had very little. They were all about her. His lifemate. He had no idea how he’d survived without her. When she knelt in front of him, took him into her mouth, swallowing him deep, lips stretched around him and her green eyes staring up at him, he didn’t know if he would even survive with her.
APPENDIX 1
Carpathian Healing Chants
To rightly understand Carpathian healing chants, background is required in several areas:
1.The Carpathian view on healing
2.The Lesser Healing Chant of the Carpathians
3.The Great Healing Chant of the Carpathians
4.Carpathian musical aesthetics
5.Lullaby
6.Song to Heal the Earth
7.Carpathian chanting technique
1. THE CARPATHIAN VIEW ON HEALING
The Carpathians are a nomadic people whose geographic origins can be traced at least as far as the Southern Ural Mountains (near the steppes of modern-day Kazakhstan), on the border between Europe and Asia. (For this reason, modern-day linguists call their language “proto-Uralic,” without knowing that this is the language of the Carpathians.) Unlike most nomadic peoples, the Carpathians did not wander due to the need to find new grazing lands as the seasons and climate shifted, or to search for better trade. Instead, the Carpathians’ move
ments were driven by a great purpose: to find a land that would have the right earth, a soil with the kind of richness that would greatly enhance their rejuvenative powers.
Over the centuries, they migrated westward (some six thousand years ago), until they at last found their perfect homeland—their susu—in the Carpathian Mountains, whose long arc cradled the lush plains of the kingdom of Hungary. (The kingdom of Hungary flourished for over a millennium—making Hungarian the dominant language of the Carpathian Basin—until the kingdom’s lands were split among several countries after World War I: Austria, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia and modern Hungary.)
Other peoples from the Southern Urals (who shared the Carpathian language, but were not Carpathians) migrated in different directions. Some ended up in Finland, which explains why the modern Hungarian and Finnish languages are among the contemporary descendants of the ancient Carpathian language. Even though they are tied forever to their chosen Carpathian homeland, the Carpathians continue to wander as they search the world for the answers that will enable them to bear and raise their offspring without difficulty.
Because of their geographic origins, the Carpathian views on healing share much with the larger Eurasian shamanistic tradition. Probably the closest modern representative of that tradition is based in Tuva (and is referred to as “Tuvinian Shamanism”)—see the map on the previous page.
The Eurasian shamanistic tradition—from the Carpathians to the Siberian shamans—held that illness originated in the human soul, and only later manifested as various physical conditions. Therefore, shamanistic healing, while not neglecting the body, focused on the soul and its healing. The most profound illnesses were understood to be caused by “soul departure,” where all or some part of the sick person’s soul has wandered away from the body (into the nether realms), or has been captured or possessed by an evil spirit, or both.
The Carpathians belong to this greater Eurasian shamanistic tradition and share its viewpoints. While the Carpathians themselves did not succumb to illness, Carpathian healers understood that the most profound wounds were also accompanied by a similar “soul departure.”
Upon reaching the diagnosis of “soul departure,” the healer-shaman is then required to make a spiritual journey into the netherworlds to recover the soul. The shaman may have to overcome tremendous challenges along the way, particularly fighting the demon or vampire who has possessed his friend’s soul.
“Soul departure” doesn’t require a person to be unconscious (although that certainly can be the case as well). It was understood that a person could still appear to be conscious, even talk and interact with others, and yet be missing a part of their soul. The experienced healer or shaman would instantly see the problem nonetheless, in subtle signs that others might miss: the person’s attention wandering every now and then, a lessening in their enthusiasm about life, chronic depression, a diminishment in the brightness of their “aura” and the like.
2. THE LESSER HEALING CHANT OF THE CARPATHIANS
Kepä Sarna Pus (The Lesser Healing Chant) is used for wounds that are merely physical in nature. The Carpathian healer leaves his body and enters the wounded Carpathian’s body to heal great mortal wounds from the inside out using pure energy. He proclaims, “I offer freely my life for your life,” as he gives his blood to the injured Carpathian. Because the Carpathians are of the earth and bound to the soil, they are healed by the soil of their homeland. Their saliva is also often used for its rejuvenative powers.
It is also very common for the Carpathian chants (both the Lesser and the Great) to be accompanied by the use of healing herbs, aromas from Carpathian candles and crystals. The crystals (when combined with the Carpathians’ empathic, psychic connection to the entire universe) are used to gather positive energy from their surroundings, which then is used to accelerate the healing. Caves are sometimes used as the setting for the healing.
The Lesser Healing Chant was used by Vikirnoff Von Shrieder and Colby Jansen to heal Rafael De La Cruz, whose heart had been ripped out by a vampire as described in Dark Secret.
Kepä Sarna Pus (The Lesser Healing Chant)
The same chant is used for all physical wounds. “Sívadaba” (“into your heart”) would be changed to refer to whatever part of the body is wounded.
Kuńasz, nélkül sívdobbanás, nélkül fesztelen löyly.
You lie as if asleep, without beat of heart, without airy breath.
Ot élidamet andam szabadon élidadért.
I offer freely my life for your life.
O jelä sielam jŏrem ot ainamet és soŋe ot élidadet.
My spirit of light forgets my body and enters your body.
O jelä sielam pukta kinn minden szelemeket belső.
My spirit of light sends all the dark spirits within fleeing without.
Pajńak o susu hanyet és o nyelv nyálamet sívadaba.
I press the earth of our homeland and the spit of my tongue into your heart.
Vii, o verim soŋe o verid andam.
At last, I give you my blood for your blood.
To hear this chant, visit: http://www.christinefeehan.com/members/.
3. THE GREAT HEALING CHANT OF THE CARPATHIANS
The most well-known—and most dramatic—of the Carpathian healing chants is En Sarna Pus (The Great Healing Chant). This chant is reserved for recovering the wounded or unconscious Carpathian’s soul.
Typically a group of men would form a circle around the sick Carpathian (to “encircle him with our care and compassion”) and begin the chant. The shaman or healer or leader is the prime actor in this healing ceremony. It is he who will actually make the spiritual journey into the netherworld, aided by his clanspeople. Their purpose is to ecstatically dance, sing, drum and chant, all the while visualizing (through the words of the chant) the journey itself—every step of it, over and over again—to the point where the shaman, in trance, leaves his body, and makes that very journey. (Indeed, the word ecstasy is from the Latin ex statis, which literally means “out of the body.”)
One advantage that the Carpathian healer has over many other shamans is his telepathic link to his lost brother. Most shamans must wander in the dark of the nether realms in search of their lost brother. But the Carpathian healer directly “hears” in his mind the voice of his lost brother calling to him, and can thus “zero in on” his soul like a homing beacon. For this reason, Carpathian healing tends to have a higher success rate than most other traditions of this sort.
Something of the geography of the “other world” is useful for us to examine, in order to fully understand the words of the Great Carpathian Healing Chant. A reference is made to the “Great Tree” (in Carpathian: En Puwe). Many ancient traditions, including the Carpathian tradition, understood the worlds—the heaven worlds, our world and the nether realms—to be “hung” upon a great pole, or axis, or tree. Here on earth, we are positioned halfway up this tree, on one of its branches. Hence many ancient texts referred to the material world as “middle earth”: midway between heaven and hell. Climbing the tree would lead one to the heaven worlds. Descending the tree to its roots would lead to the nether realms. The shaman was necessarily a master of movement up and down the Great Tree, sometimes moving unaided, and sometimes assisted by (or even mounted upon the back of) an animal spirit guide. In various traditions, this Great Tree was known variously as the axis mundi (the “axis of the worlds”), Ygddrasil (in Norse mythology), Mount Meru (the sacred world mountain of Tibetan tradition), etc. The Christian cosmos, with its heaven, purgatory/earth and hell, is also worth comparing. It is even given a similar topography in Dante’s Divine Comedy: Dante is led on a journey first to hell, at the center of the earth; then upward to Mount Purgatory, which sits on the earth’s surface directly opposite Jerusalem; then farther upward first to Eden, the earthly paradise, at the summit of Mount Purgatory; and then upward at last to Heaven.
In the shamanistic tradition, it was understood that the small always reflects the large; the perso
nal always reflects the cosmic. A movement in the greater dimensions of the cosmos also coincides with an internal movement. For example, the axis mundi of the cosmos corresponds with the spinal column of the individual. Journeys up and down the axis mundi often coincided with the movements of natural and spiritual energies (sometimes called kundalini or shakti) in the spinal column of the shaman or mystic.
En Sarna Pus (The Great Healing Chant)
In this chant, ekä (“brother”) would be replaced by “sister,” “father,” “mother,” depending on the person to be healed.
Ot ekäm ainajanak hany, jama.
My brother’s body is a lump of earth, close to death.
Me, ot ekäm kuntajanak, pirädak ekäm, gond és irgalom türe.
We, the clan of my brother, encircle him with our care and compassion.
O pus wäkenkek, ot oma śarnank, és ot pus fünk, álnak ekäm ainajanak, pitänak ekäm ainajanak elävä.
Our healing energies, ancient words of magic and healing herbs bless my brother’s body, keep it alive.
Ot ekäm sielanak pälä. Ot omboće päläja juta alatt o jüti, kinta, és szelemek lamtijaknak.
But my brother’s soul is only half. His other half wanders in the netherworld.
Ot en mekem ŋamaŋ: kulkedak otti ot ekäm omboće päläjanak.
My great deed is this: I travel to find my brother’s other half.
Rekatüre, saradak, tappadak, odam, kaŋa o numa waram, és avaa owe o lewl mahoz.
We dance, we chant, we dream ecstatically, to call my spirit bird, and to open the door to the other world.
Ntak o numa waram, és mozdulak; jomadak.
I mount my spirit bird and we begin to move; we are under way.
Piwtädak ot En Puwe tyvinak, ećidak alatt o jüti, kinta, és szelemek lamtijaknak.
Following the trunk of the Great Tree, we fall into the netherworld.
Fázak, fázak nó o śaro.
It is cold, very cold.
Dark Sentinel ('Dark' Carpathian Book 32) Page 38