Parallel Fire

by Deidre Knight

  He gaped back at her, unable to fathom that she told the truth. “What?”

  She nodded. “I was at the palace still, with the other Madjin,” she explained. “It was just before Jared’s parents were murdered.”

  “Yes, that was when I came to serve the king.” Nevin thought back to those early years. “A few months before.”

  “I’d been a naughty shapeshifter,” she told him throatily. “I pretended to be a grown woman—got in much trouble for that, by the way. I talked to you in the hallway. I thought you were…so handsome. Totally mysterious.” She actually released a dreamy little sigh at the supposed memory.

  “You are lying now, Anna,” he cried. “You must be.”

  “No, it’s true. It’s always been true.”

  “You were only a little girl—”

  “I gave you directions—that very first day.”

  Nevin wracked his brain, trying to remember what the woman was talking about. Directions? Had she always remembered this, been waiting until right now to rip open his world? Gods, what if he’d come on to her? She’d only been a child! What was she telling him?

  In a panic, he shoved her apart from him, turning brusquely away. “Enough with the games, Anna! Enough. You can’t have me simply because you’ve decided you must.”

  “I’ve heard that a lot in my time, but I’ve pretty much discovered that if I’m determined enough, I can have whatever—and whomever—I want. And I want you, Nevin. You have no idea what you do to me.”

  He spun upon her. “Tell me what you’re talking about, from all those years ago.”

  She sighed, smiling faintly. For many long moments she didn’t speak, but then at last she slowly raised her eyes to meet his. When she did, he knew that this was no joke or teasing on her part: Anna had always remembered that day.

  “You came at night,” she began softly, “in your transport. It was compact…and fast. All the Madjin whispered about it, buzzing that you had the latest model. I agreed to sneak out with them. Marco took the lead. He was older than me, about a year, and I liked to follow him around. He had a good sense of adventure, about the interesting things. So I went with him. We went around the side yard, through the garden.” Her voice grew more reflective and she looked up at the darkening sky. “The night was so clear, I could have read a book in that garden. I took Marco’s hand when he extended it behind him, and then…there you were. Standing by your black, shiny transport, instructing the security patrol as to the proper way to dock it. You had such a beautiful face; I’d never seen anyone quite so handsome before. The way your eyes were slightly slanted—just like now,” she said, gesturing toward his face, “your long black hair, tied at your nape with a silver chord. You seemed the most exotic man I’d ever seen.”

  “I did wear my hair just that way,” he agreed. “And I had that new model transport.”

  “You came from money, that’s what they all whispered.” Guiltily, he nodded it to be the truth. In the old time, he’d had more money than any young man should have ever been given, and had always enjoyed spending it beyond measure. That had been before.

  “So, when the others snuck back to our compound, I stayed behind. They never realized they’d lost me. I shapeshifted and made myself a lady of the court. You paused and stared at me for at least ten seconds, I think, before asking me directions to the king’s assembly hall.”

  “I have no memory of that.” But he did. Gods help him, he surely did. The lady had seemed to personify the life he would live at the palace. He’d been star-struck, as taken with her beauty as he was with the other finery at the court. In every possible way, he’d been a fool. Valued all the wrong things. Never realized how fragile and tentative life was—that it was a gift.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she told him frankly. “I just wanted you to know that even then, so many years ago, I thought you as beautiful as I do now. Only you’ve grown more seasoned and handsome.”

  “And older,” he whispered, reminding her again of the chasm that separated them—she with her breathy youth, he his settled maturity.

  She shrugged. “Thirty-eight isn’t old, not to the humans and certainly not to our species. You know that. It’s just a flimsy argument because I frighten you,” she told him self-confidently.

  “How did you gain all this control?” he hissed. “When did it happen? At what point did it cease being about your mistakes and about my lust? Please, school me, Anna, for I missed the moment.”

  She laughed in his face, reaching a sure hand to cup his cheek. “Do you feel controlled, Lieutenant?”

  “Completely,” he confessed as she sidled up against him once again. With perfect accuracy she molded her much more compact body against his imposing one. She cupped his hips, taking hold of him. All at once he found himself falling into a thrusting motion with her, mimicking the act itself. He went harder inside his pants, his cock infused with blood and need before he could take a breath. The woman had him on a leash. It would not do. It would not do at all.

  Like a bull let loose, he charged her. Swung her up onto the bank and plowed her to the ground, tumbling her body beneath his, unable to quash his pulsating need for another moment. She squirmed beneath him, trying to catch her breath, but he’d give her no quarter. “You were warned, Anna,” he thundered against her cheek, pushing her body fully beneath his. “I told you to back away.”

  “Yes, Nevin—you did.” She trembled as he sniffed at her face, her neck, her hands. Drawing her scent hard into his own tight body.

  “You don’t know where you’ve brought us,” he warned. “No idea what this life change in me has done.”

  “Yes, I do…I feel it.”

  He let loose a sputtering of curses, frisking her body, searching for the opening to her pants. He fumbled, missed his mark, then thrust his hands down into her panties, never bothering with the fastenings. With a growling cry, he tossed back his head, making his mating urges known to the forest around them. In the distance he swore he heard a wolf cry in return. He felt wolfish, wild and needy.

  They rolled together on the earth—first he on top, then she, then he again, tumbling and laughing and lusting together. His shirt vanished, her pants crumpled into a heap; one item of clothing after another was discarded until he found himself kneeling before her, gloriously naked.

  “Your body,” she whispered breathlessly, gesturing with her hand. “Look at you. I’ve never seen anything quite like you.”

  Self-consciously he stared down at his chest, wondering what she saw. For a moment, he glimpsed himself through her eyes. He was chiseled, completely so. He always had been and in recent months he’d been training harder than ever in a desperate effort to expend just this very energy. It had profited nothing. He was filled to the hilt with sensual stirrings such as he’d never known, not even in his youth.

  “Look at you,” he countered softly, studying the way Anna’s porcelain skin glowed beneath the late day sun. It was as if the sun itself had touched her, she was glorious, curving and full-bodied in a way that caused his erection to leap as he stared at her.

  They each studied the other, kneeling face to face, palm to palm. A sudden stillness fell over them, slowing things, all his crazy need for rutting falling away. There was only Anna…beautiful, graceful, spirited Anna, right before him.

  She seemed every bit as taken with him as he was with her. “I have no words,” he offered softly. “Only my touch.”

  “Then give me that.” She arched her back so that her silky black hair fell across her shoulders.

  With his fingertips he drew a line from her collarbone down to her right breast, trailing his fingers hotly across her smooth skin. When he reached her nipple, he circled it with his forefinger in a rough motion, causing it to bead beneath his touch. It had been years since he’d held a woman like this; it had been months since he’d been able to stop thinking of Anna.

  Staring at her lithe body, naked and perfect, he battled himself for one final moment. Deep
inside he couldn’t shake the sense that he was all wrong for her; he was past the age of giving her children, of any kind of fertility. And he was seasoned enough to realize that the connection between them was beyond overwhelming—if he made love to her, the compulsion to bondmate would be unbearable. Becoming lovers would lead to becoming lifemates…and very quickly.

  “Stop me,” he begged hoarsely, still stroking her nipple. “It’s still not too late.”

  She shook her head, trailing her own fingertips low down his abdomen, twining them in the thick, curling hair between his legs, then sliding them around the tip of his shaft.

  “Oh, Anna.” He growled, shaking off the last vestiges of his self-control. “Gods above…I tried.”

  He bent his head and, drawing her nipple between his teeth, nibbled it. He laved it with his tongue until he felt fire chase down his spine. He licked at first one nipple, then the other; blowing a hot breath across the tender skin, he elicited a plaintive cry from her.

  “Why would you fight me?” she practically purred.

  He shook his head slightly, trailing his tongue in circles about her nipple, and murmured, “Because I’m a thirty-eight-year-old idiot.”

  “Only smart in the conference room, Lieutenant Daniels?” She giggled uproariously, and he pressed his lips against the skin at the base of her neck, feeling her pulse throb.

  “Maybe,” he agreed with a soft chuckle. “It’s where I first found my nerve with you.”

  He nuzzled her, suckling at the pulse-point of her neck, hard. Her scent entered his body instantaneously, and the urge to make her his own was so overpowering and strong that he had to work her up beneath him. There was no time to go slow, not now. They might be rescued at any moment; the fantasy-world that they’d created together might crash down around them completely before he could have her.

  He lifted off of her, kneeling between her legs and she lay back on the ground, gazing up at him through hooded, sexy eyes. With a quick glance overhead at the late day sky, he estimated that nightfall was eminent.

  Rising to his feet, he extended a hand to her. “Come with me, Anna. I have an idea.”

  She looked up at him in confusion, but he just smiled back at her, drawing her to his side. Without a warning he scooped her into his arms, and she wrapped both legs about him, face-first. His swollen cock bobbed against her abdomen as he carried her toward the open field just a few feet away. Willow grew in places, but mostly it was soft, sun-warmed grass. The perfect meadow for first becoming lovers.

  He kept careful hold of her, both of his large hands hitched beneath her thighs, and slowly dropped to the ground until he knelt in the grass that swayed from a slight breeze. Never taking his eyes off of Anna, he lowered her onto her back, and remained kneeling between her thighs. Reaching with one hand, he clasped her hip, with the other he stroked between her legs, immediately feeling the sweet nectar of her arousal. He stroked her harder, his hand trembling as he slid a finger deep inside of her; clutching warmth met his cooler skin and as one they shivered.

  Anna leaned back in the grass, her eyes shut with an expression of pure ecstasy on her face, thick velvet lashes fluttering against her very fair cheeks. Bracing one forearm, he lowered atop of her, still keeping his hips lifted high enough that he could coax and tease the folds of skin between her legs, could plunge deeper with first one finger, then two…now three. She arched her back, and for a moment he settled his hips against hers, levering himself atop of her—although he allowed his fingers to remain inside of her. His breathing grew intense and heavy, her body tensed, and around his fingers he felt a quavering reaction.

  Rolling her head back, she tried desperately to pull more of him inside. “Nevin, gods, please.” She moaned, bucking her hips up, and his hand fell away. “You, I need you.” A scream ripped from her throat; she dug her fingernails into both of his bare shoulders at the precise moment that he plunged within her.

  Her hands gripped at his buttocks, squeezing; the smell of earth and dampness and lust filled his nostrils, driving him harder within her—to the very brink. She skimmed both hands along his back, lingering for a moment on the puckered scar of a bullet wound. He gave his head a light shake; they would talk about the battles—all the painful days—later. This one moment was meant for perfection.

  Raising his hips, he drew himself out to the very edge and she lifted after him, trying to draw him back inside. She couldn’t help whimpering slightly as he kept himself suspended, a wicked grin on his face. “You’re a tease,” she gasped as he sheathed himself deep within her again.

  Wrapping both legs about his waist, she worked him farther in—to the deepest place and his eyes widened, slightly dazed at the pure pleasure and contact.

  Over and over, waves of release and need swept over her, and all the while Nevin lasted and lasted. She’d never made love with a man who had his kind of sexual stamina—nor who seemed so able to pull such satisfying release from her.

  When she felt the fullest wave of pleasure roll through her body, causing her to moan his name and squirm beneath his heavy frame…he came inside of her. Collapsing, his shoulders covered with a sheen of masculine sweat, he burrowed his face against her neck.

  “Ah, Anna Draekus, what have you done to me?” He moaned, nuzzling her playfully.

  She stroked her fingertips back and forth over his prickling hair, holding him against her heart. “I think I just unleashed the tiger within you,” she finally admitted, giggling.

  At first he stiffened within her arms, but then relaxed, a beautiful, masculine laugh rumbling from within his chest. “Just be careful, Anna”—he leaned up on his elbows, staring intently at her—“this tiger has no leash.” She reached to touch his face, to let him know that being out of control was okay—but he pressed her palm against his lips. “And I can’t promise to be controlled.”

  “Promise me that you won’t be.”

  His smile spread again, a sideways tilt to it as he leaned down to cover her mouth with his own. “That, Anna Draekus, is probably a guaranteed fact.”

  Chapter Five

  Another day, another sunset, and still no search parties had come. There was only so much you could do, really, to pass the time. At least that’s what Nevin told himself as he took Anna within his arms, just one more time. Again and again and again, the lovemaking had been unstoppable. No bounds, no limitations. Thank the gods that they’d had these two days alone, deep within the backcountry, even though he knew that someone would eventually find them. That was a good thing, truly, because you could only subsist on lovemaking and personal energy for just so long.

  Anna clung to his body, both of them naked and tangled together, so ready for it. But the lakeshore didn’t seem the right setting, not this night; he needed more from her. Hell, they needed more together, something more erotic, more at the very edge of connecting—and that’s why he was carting her right into the depths of the barely melted lake.

  It would be cold, bracing, but erotic as hell to take her there. For Refarians water was the most arousing element of lovemaking: In the shower, in a steaming pool, even in a frigid lake, and they were driven to near-madness with lust. She thrust her hands through his hair, capturing his mouth with a rough kiss even as he gripped her bare buttocks, steadying her against his own naked body.

  She had both legs slung about his waist. Her back was to the lake, her eyes shut as she made love to him with her mouth, murmuring his name over and over. As he stepped into the water, the first splash of the cold liquid sending a jolt through his body, she made a giddy, wild sound in his ear.

  “That’s going to be damnably cold.” She worked to angle herself against his thick cock. If the woman had her way, he’d fuck her blind standing ankle deep in the lake.

  “You don’t care,” he growled back against her ear, taking several deep steps, until, losing his footing, they tumbled together into the chilly water. His body was blazing with heat, burning from the inside out, and a light steam immediatel
y circled them where they stood in the lake. “Besides, I have the gift of energy, remember?”

  Already the water that lapped about their waists was warming by multiple degrees. In a matter of moments they would be in a veritable hot pool, the temperature of that small ring about their bodies raised unnaturally.

  Anna’s heated body first cooled, then immediately began to bathe in a warmth that was totally new for her. The sensation of Nevin’s energy spilling into the water about their bodies, the erotic play of it along her skin, almost caused her to lose it right on the spot—especially as he dipped his powerful arms low about her body, drawing her legs about his strong hips once again. “Here,” he instructed knowingly, “just float, lean into the water, I have you.”

  She felt the rounded tip of his erection push against her opening, the mixture of her own wetness and that of the water combining with the silky hardness of his masculine body. “No, hold me!” she cried, scrabbling at him, and he swung her upward until they were pressed chest to chest. “I need to be closer, Nevin. I need to feel all of your body.”

  He nodded, burying his face against the top of her head, and with a powerful thrust of his hips, pushed inside of her, deep and hard and thrilling. For long moments after he’d penetrated her, they clung to each other, trembling and gasping for the air around them.

  “Such a strange place to make love,” he admitted with a husky laugh.

  “Perfect,” she disagreed, showering his warm chest with kisses.

  “The bank was so cold.”

  “And the water…” she barely managed to add as he grasped her hips and brought their bodies to the edge of separation, then drove them back together once again.

  For long moments she floated, literally, within his grasp. Unlike their previous times in the past two days, he felt slow, aware of every second that played out between them. Allowing his energy to build about them, he transformed the frigid lake into a bubbling hot tub, the waters churning and pulling at their nude bodies. Nevin shifted his feet on the cool sand beneath them, drawing Anna’s legs more tightly about his body. They were at a perfect ninety-degree angle—she floating along her back on the water’s surface, he the warrior, the one with the sure-footing, driving into his love once again.