by Joy Nash
He stroked up the outer curve of her torso and traced a line along her collarbone. Buried his fingers in the tumbled black silk of her hair and unraveled the last of her braid. Separating the strands at the back of her neck,he brought two sections over her shoulders and let it fall over her upper body. Her breasts all but disappeared behind the sensual veil.
He lifted her chin with one finger. She drew in a breath and tried to look away. He didn’t allow it. Their eyes locked as their combined heartbeats counted off a private eternity. He nearly lost his own breath then. Her eyes were extraordinary—he could have drowned in them. They held the color of the sea—not the angry gray of the frigid ocean beating the cliffs below the castle walls, but the fine, deep blue of the Mediterranean. The Sea of Tyrhennus. The ocean of the people he’d guarded so fervently for so many centuries.
He threaded the fingers of his right hand through her hair while he plucked softly at her nipple with his left. Her beautiful eyes flared and her breath hitched in a more rapid rhythm. For the briefest of seconds, she arched forward, pressing her breast into his palm. Kalen felt as though he’d won a prize beyond price. Then, too soon, she remembered herself and jerked back with a cry.
He lowered his hand, but didn’t lessen the pressure of his thighs on her hips. She struggled, then stilled, no doubt remembering how her resistance had affected him earlier. Her breath was ragged. He almost laughed when she drew as far back as she could and recrossed her arms over her chest.
“No.” He grasped her wrists and tugged her arms apart, holding them gently against the edge of the mattress on either side of her hips. “Let me look at you.”
“I…” She colored. “There’s not much to see.”
“I disagree.” His gaze lingered on her ruby nipples. “Beautiful.”
She must have felt the sincerity he’d breathed into the single word, because a fine tremor seized her.
“I want you,” he said. “Now.”
“I…I can’t.”
“No?” He released one wrist and lifted his hand to her breast, grazing the hardened peak with his forefinger. She shuddered. He touched her other nipple, then used both hands to draw them together. Dipping his head, he flicked the tip of his tongue over both sweet pearls at once.
“Goddess.” Her eyes closed, her hands flattened on the embroidered coverlet.
Grasping her hips, he lifted her onto the bed. She didn’t struggle as he settled her in the center of the mattress, puffs of silk billowing gently around her. She stared up at him with round eyes, making no move to resist as he untied and removed her boots, then tugged off her socks. He unsnapped the horrid denim pants and started working them over her hips. Then, reconsidering, he tore the zipper open, rending the seam all the way to the waistband.
“Hey! You ripped my pants.”
“Good riddance.”
“They’re my favorite pair!”
“They’re hideous.”
“Comfortable.”
He snorted, his fingers slipping under the elastic of her white cotton panties. These he tore as well, ignoring her protests.
She lay naked beneath his gaze. He lifted her, gathering her long hair. For a moment, he just played with it, first wrapping the length around his hand, then sifting his fingers through the glossy strands. He loved the heavy feel of it. Soft, luxurious, sensual. The blue streak glittered in the candlelight. He arranged the glorious tresses over her body, veiling her breasts.
When he was done, she presented an incredibly erotic picture. If he were a true artist, he would paint her exactly like this: clothed in nothing but her hair, face flushed, lips parted. Eyes fogged with arousal.
He felt her thighs quiver, her belly shudder. The silken musk of her arousal flowed around him. Her magic flowed with it, rousing the memory of how perfect she had felt in his arms during that brief moment when she’d replaced Leanna atop the furs in his library.
He touched the peak of her breast, just visible through the curtain of her hair. She shut her eyes and groaned, turning her face to one side.
“No,” he murmured. “Look at me, Christine.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she obeyed.
Christine. Her name sparkled like champagne on his tongue. He eased up off the bed, his hands moving to his kilt. She watched him, eyes wide, as he dropped the garment to the floor and stepped out of it. His phallus sprang toward her. His stones were heavy, aching with a need he’d not felt in centuries.
It took all his strength not to fall on her in a rutting, sweating heap. Despite the fact he didn’t completely trust her, and certainly wasn’t going to answer her Call, he found he wanted her to experience deep pleasure in his bed. Even more than he wanted to take his pleasure of her.
He reached for a stray lock of hair that had fallen across her cheek. It slid through his fingers like a faerie’s wing. She was as enticing as a faerie,but,he knew,not nearly so fragile.
He eased onto the bed, crawling over her on all fours like a stalking predator. The mattress dipped under his weight, creating a depression around her body. He settled the cage of his limbs around her. She lay quiescent, blinking up at him with those beautiful indigo eyes.
He fitted his palm to the curve of her jaw and stroked her lips with his thumb. She closed her eyes and let out a long, shuddering sigh.
She had one last protest to make. “This isn’t right.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.”
He leaned over her. “Then tell me to stop—and I will.”
She looked up at him with wide blue eyes. Her lips parted, but no words emerged. He read her answer in the darkening of her pupils, the soft catch of her breath, the downward sweep of her inky lashes.
And lowered his lips to hers.
She should have told him to stop. The words had been on the tip of her tongue; all she had to do was find the strength to say them.
But she didn’t. Couldn’t. Her magic had slipped from her control and all she could do was follow its lead. When Kalen draped her hair across her nude body, she’d felt his hands trembling—trembling! His beautiful eyes had transmitted such a raw, overwhelming need that her heart had contracted with the desire to give. She felt the pull of his arousal, as strong and sure and inevitable as the tide, and she couldn’t stop herself from responding. And now, with his mouth claiming hers, his lips moving in erotic possession, his tongue sweeping inside to stroke and tangle with her own, she was good and truly lost.
He covered her body with hot, open kisses, his lips moving with an all-consuming urgency that stoked her own excitement. He kept moving, shifting, never keeping to one rhythm or one place on her body long enough for her to catch her breath. First, it was the corner of her mouth that seemed to fascinate him, then the line of her jaw and the long column of her neck. He nibbled and sucked, nipped and soothed all the way to the upper swell of her breast. Each spot he kissed tingled with his magic.
She lifted her arms and encircled his neck. He murmured soft encouragement, pressing her down into a soft cocoon of mattress, shifting up to kiss her lips deeply again, parting them and claiming her mouth with a slick, erotic glide of his tongue. He was almost brutal then, seeming to demand the very breath from her lungs. She gave it willingly. She didn’t have the heart, or the desire, to fight his possession of her body. On the contrary—her own need had grown to a fever pitch. She felt so incredibly empty inside. He had to fill her soon—if he didn’t, she was going to have to beg.
“This is crazy,” she gasped.
He chuckled against her lips, torturing her with the pulsing slide of his tongue. The rhythm evoked an answering throb between her legs. She was wet there, slicked with longing. She groaned and clutched at him, trying to tell him without words what she wanted.
He understood, she was sure, but he had other ideas. “No need to rush,” he murmured.
He scattered kisses over her face, touching her cheeks, her nose, her eyelids. He nibbled her ear, swirling the tip of his tongue around
the outer shell. A river of liquid fire poured through her veins, igniting lust and passion in a need so great it threatened to consume her. It was her magic taking over, splintering out of control as it did during her deepest and most powerful spells. Kalen had awakened her power and now it tossed her into an ocean of emotion, all mooring lines cut. There was nothing she could hope to do to save herself, except cling to the one anchor she could reach.
Kalen.
His lips were hot on her breast. He sucked her nipple into his mouth. She gasped, arching forward, her fingers entwining in his hair, pulling hard. If he felt any pain, he didn’t show it. She gasped. The reality of his mouth on her breast was so much more potent than the same act performed in her vision, and that had been incredible enough. He tortured her that way for what seemed to be an eternity, until she was sobbing his name.
“Kalen. Please…” She could feel his erection—hot, hard, and enormous—pressed between their bodies.
“Shh…” His hand covered her breast, his thumb flicking over the pebble-hard tip. A bolt of molten heat zinged from her nipple to her belly, where it twisted like the blade of a hot knife. Christine sucked in a breath and writhed beneath him.
“Now…” she pleaded.
“Soon.” His hand left her nipple and drifted lower, leaving trails of sensation in its wake. His knee insinuated itself between her legs, opening her. The slide of his hair-roughened leg abraded the soft inner skin of her thigh.
He kissed her jaw, her neck, her breast. His lips closed once again on her nipple. It had been two long years since Christine had made love, and even during that first exhilarating year with Shaun, it had never been like this. Sensation streaked through her. Overwhelmed her. It was too much, too vivid. She twisted and arched against him. Tears collected behind the dam of her closed eyes.
She clung to him. The broad head of his cock slid against the inside of her thigh, prodded her swollen feminine flesh. Her inner muscles started to clench. Instinctively, she lifted her hips, offering him the cradle of her thighs.
“Yes, love. Like that.”
Somewhere in the back of her mind was the dim thought that she shouldn’t offer him everything. That she should keep some small part of her soul hidden. But that was impossible. Her magic ran wild, plucking the decision from her. She could do nothing but give Kalen every part of herself, every nuance of her body and her magic.
She placed her hand over his heart and closed her eyes, casting her witch’s senses into his Immortal essence. The sheer potency of it nearly took her breath away. She’d known Kalen was strong in living magic, had felt it every time he’d touched her, but now, with his body poised to claim her, she found she hadn’t come close to imagining the vastness of his power. It was power inherited from his goddess mother, Uni. Power ancient and impenetrable. Power that could save mankind.
He held himself still, his sex heavy at the entrance to her body. Her thighs were slicked with wanting, her body trembling in anticipation of his intimate invasion. The wide, blunt head of his cock nudged her wet folds. Just that small contact set off fireworks in her womb.
“Christine…”
Her name was a rasp in his throat. Dazed, she blinked up at him, at the shocking need that once again haunted his eyes. She wanted so much to banish that emptiness. Fill him as she longed for him to fill her.
Eyes locked, breath rising and falling in tandem, they moved together. He rocked his body forward; she lifted her hips. Her body opened and he slid inside, stretching her with his thickness, his length. Claiming her fully.
She felt his possession in every cell in her body. Felt her magic rise to meet him. A streak of panic raced through her—she’d lost control over her magic, her body, her very soul. And she didn’t care. She wanted to give all of herself to him.
He rocked forward and touched a fathomless chord inside her. Glided back,leaving her bereft. Again and again he filled her; emptied her. Made her ache,made her beg for more. She wrapped her arms around his neck,sought his lips. He kissed her deeply. He lowered his body,resting on his forearms,his hands bracketing her head as he pinned her to the mattress. She reveled in his weight atop her,shuddered with each hot slide of his cock deep inside her.
It was impossible anything should feel this good. This was potent magic, his and hers together, entwined. Rising on rigid arms, he angled his body and thrust deep, touching a part of her soul she’d never even guessed existed. A hot coil constricted in her belly. Each flex of Kalen’s hips wound it tighter. And tighter.
Her pelvis rose to match his relentless rhythm. He groaned; his movements became harder, faster. Her world narrowed to the reality of their bodies’ joining, a place of sharp bliss and swirling sensation. His sweat was on her skin; her fingers splayed on his back. He was slick and hot, broad and hard. Everything a man should be.
He captured her mouth in a drugging kiss, moving deeply inside her, urging her toward the precipice. Her magic gathered, readying for the fall. An odd, timeless sensation came over her, the world suspended. It was the same timeless clarity that possessed her whenever she touched watercolors to paper.
But sex had never felt this way before. Not with Shaun. She’d imagined she loved him—he’d been her first, and she’d thought he’d be her last as well. Now she realized the passion they’d shared had been a dim spark to the fire consuming her now. Kalen’s Immortal essence was overwhelming, waking every drop of magic inside her. Turning her inside out. Demanding everything she had to give. And she gave it. Freely.
The coil drew taut inside her. Tightened unbearably. She cried out as it broke, shattering her soul into a million tiny fragments. The world dissolved in a blur like paint drenched on canvas.
Kalen’s fingers bit into her hips, jerking her up hard as his body convulsed. She felt him harden and spasm inside her. The last sound she heard before she lost consciousness was his voice, calling her name.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The hideous creature had to be an Unseelie. There was, Mac thought, nothing else it could be.
Mac had spent the last week—except for the one morning he’d stopped in London and ran into that intriguing American witch—following rapidly fading trails of rumor and gossip through the English countryside. Niall and Ronan, his well-meaning but slightly inept cousins, had been making the rounds in Scotland and Wales.
All three of them had arrived at scene after scene of grisly slaughter and blood-draining only to find no survivors and no witnesses. A human coven near Inverness had been attacked in the midst of a circle ceremony. Selkies had been slaughtered on the shore near Aberdeen. A halfling village in Wales had been wiped off the map, and here in England, faeries were running scared. The parapolice, predictably, had fingered the vampire community, but Mac didn’t think vamps were involved—the undead generally stuck to the cities and rarely attacked magical creatures. Now he had proof of his theory, in the form of an Unseelie corpse.
The thing made him ill.
He fought to control his revulsion as he hunkered down beside the body. It lay in a puddle of putrid green slime, its five limbs twisted and broken, its greenish-gray skin already starting to rot. Its batlike wings were torn—he supposed that was what had caused the creature to be brought down by faeries from the village it had attacked. It was a bloody good thing Mac hadn’t nipped into the full English breakfast his hotel had offered him this morning. The stench radiating from the corpse—something midway between week-old garbage and fresh dung—was enough to make any bloke lose a meal.
But the dead Unseelie was nothing compared to the carnage in the faerie village a half mile to the east. Gods, there’d been small bodies strewn across the meadow, ripped in two and drained of blood. The villagers had fought valiantly for their homes, but faeries weren’t warriors, and there’d been more than a dozen Unseelies. It was amazing enough that a mother and her children had survived the attack. They were the first ones who had.
He rose. He was all too well aware of the battered survivors huddling a
short distance behind him. Their expressions were grim,their eyes hopeful. Clearly,they expected Mac to do something. If only he knew what that something was.
How in the hell had the Unseelies escaped Uffern? They’d been trapped in that underground realm for the last seven centuries, since the great battle with the Immortals had ended their reign of terror. They were supposed to have been banished forever. Clearly, someone had been overly optimistic when they’d announced that verdict.
The shrill intrusion of a car horn drew his attention to the highway, where traffic on the M20 whizzed by on its way to the Channel Tunnel a few miles to the east. The Unseelie activity had been scattered across England, Scotland, and Wales, presenting no particular pattern, except here, near Folkestone, where there’d been five attacks within ten miles of the tunnel’s entrance. Coincidence? Mac didn’t think so. He rejoined the faeries.
“What are you planning to do now?”
“We’re for Cornwall,” a plump female replied, tightening her grip on two female children. Two older males hovered behind her. Her face was etched with grief,but there was a determined cant to her chin. “We have kin in Penzance.”
“Gather them and go north,” Mac told her with uncharacteristic grimness. “To Scotland.” He gave her the location on the shores near Nairn. “My cousins will meet you there. Travel by barrow, and spread the word as you go. There’s something very evil in the air. I want every Celtic life magic creature under my direct protection.”
The faerie woman searched his eyes. “Is it as bad as all that, then?”
He sighed. “Aye. It is.”
Her arms tightened on her children. “Then we’ll do as ye say, Mac.”
With a few more parting words, he took his leave of the faeries. He might have used a barrow as well, but his preferred mode of transport was a mundane one—a vintage Norton Commando. His heart clenched every time he caught sight of the motorcycle’s minimalist black-and-chrome beauty. Despite their shortcomings, there were some things humans did very, very well.