“The elixir wears thin,” Krysta whispered, her voice heavy with frustration and perhaps tears.
Her words loosed the laces on the last of Darkyn’s control. He moved forward, kneeling before Krysta’s chair. She opened her knees to permit him to hold her, then permitted his kiss as well.
Her lips felt like water on parched skin, soothing and cooling, then heating all at once. Nevertheless, when she locked eyes with him, her expression held no hint of forgiveness. Only flinty resolve.
Before he could speak or master the situation, her hands plunged into his pants. He felt her fingers grip his cock, squeezing gently but firmly as he kissed her again. His erection, already prominent, swelled to unmanageable proportions. Her hold on him was maddeningly perfect. She started at the base, cupping his bollocks, then sliding from stem to tip and back again in a fluid pumping motion.
Mating fervor in a pureblooded Ardani female. Is there anything sweeter?
“You taste like honeyfruit,” he murmured, biting her ear and neck, struggling to unzip her jumpsuit despite his brain’s centered focus on the action of her hands.
Her breasts sprang free, tempting his mouth. pa glittered on her skin like the wild vines all around the secret enclosure, now only shadows barely visible through the walls of Arcus. Krysta’s pa pulsed with each pump on his cock—and the ship’s hull seemed to pulse at the same interval.
“What are you doing, hallas?”
“Making sure you understand something. You will not tear me from my home and family, give me what I’ve forever desired, and take it away.” Her stroking of his shaft became merciless, fast and gut-flaming. His bollocks felt like engines, swelling with power and purpose. “I am starting to love you, Darkyn Weil, and I don’t surrender what I love.”
Darkyn was vaguely aware of heat on his thighs and calves. When he glanced down, his breeches were gone. Burned to ash without so much as a blister on his flesh or the slightest smoke. The remnants vanished, absorbed into Arcus.
Krysta pumped him again, bringing his seed with a violent explosion. He watched as the white liquid landed on her vines of pa, watched as it vanished into the silver rivers, consumed just as his breeches had been.
Something about Arcus was giving his mate power beyond reckoning. As he sat on his knees, spent, almost gasping, Darkyn thought to be relieved that his hallas had said she loved him. The many gods forbid she felt otherwise, for certain.
Krysta kept her gaze on him, steady and smoldering, as she stood before him and unzipped her jumpsuit the rest of the way. He reached up and pulled the leather down past her hips, to her ankles, gazing hungrily at her breasts, belly, and mound as she stepped out of the garment.
Her power excited him, challenged him. Her resolve gave his heart a balm he had never known.
I am starting to love you, Darkyn Weil…
Fervor or no, he knew he would die for her, kill for her. And yet, the needs of The People, his people…
“Think of heavy burdens later,” she murmured as she sat back down and spread her legs. “Think of me now.”
Krysta gasped as Darkyn seized her legs, almost roaring his desire as he buried his face in her pa-coated quim. She ached for his tongue, his mouth, and he gave them to her fiercely, flicking hard against her clit as he sucked and nibbled the wet, tender flesh all around. His grip on her thighs ached and gave her thrills all at once. She leaned back against the chair Arcus allowed her to occupy, aware she was in tune with the truly living vessel, feeling the ship’s will and power possess her even as her mate did.
Arcus charged her pa with new power. She saw and felt the world in ways she couldn’t describe—the sound of colors, the rhythm of smells.
Darkyn thrust three fingers deep in her channel, and she cried out as her sensitive walls clenched around them. Orgasm flooded her quickly, too quickly. She wanted more—needed more. He slid his hand back and forth, pressing upward as he sucked her clit. With the other hand, he kneaded her pa-gloved nipple until she came again, bucking against the force of his thrusts.
Acting more on primal instinct than conscious thought, Krysta shoved her mate backward then, stood and turned, and bent down holding the seat. Her breasts rubbed against the strange pa-infused fabric, burning and crackling with each touch.
Darkyn needed no instruction or invitation. He claimed her hard and fast, grabbing her hips and driving into her quim from behind like an untamed beast. She braced against the chair with all her strength to keep her feet. His powerful movements lifted her feet from the ship’s floor with each thrust.
Outside Arcus, vines swayed in the eerie night gray of Uhr. Guards moved about, unaware of the action in the ship. Krysta sensed Guardian’s ever-watchful eyes, staring from some unknown location. The bird could see into the ship, she was certain. If Arcus permitted this, Guardian must be safe, all other factors aside.
See me, then, she thought to the falcon, and to any human or alien woman who might have known Darkyn, or even wanted to know him. He is mine now, evermore. Don’t think to interfere. I share only what I wish of him. See me!
“Deeper,” Krysta gasped, pleading more than demanding. Her skin pulsed and ached. Her nipples throbbed against the ship’s chair as her vision shimmered. She wanted to feel her mate enter the depths of her body. She wanted to swallow him, to be sure she could never lose him.
“Shanna,” he growled, finding the sweet recesses she wanted him to share. “Hallas. Mine. My woman. I am beginning to love you, too.”
He let go her hips and seized her burning nipples.
Krysta came with instant screaming shudders. Wave after hot wave of pleasure crashed on her consciousness. Darkyn’s seed shot into her, filling her, marking her most intimate regions as his.
She raised her head to howl, but in that one perfect instant, she could see the distant reaches of Ardani space. See the malevolent, oddly shining blackness that was the Barung.
This must be how Darkyn sees it with his special eyes, she thought in that split-second, and knew it to be true.
The past rushed at her with the speed and force of another orgasm, consuming her. She saw bits and pieces of a puzzle too great to understand—old Arda and old Ardani. The Kaeradi with their stones, and so many without. Strange, supple beings that could only be the Perth survivors Darkyn mentioned. Reeling through time, all of the people and places and pictures she could scarcely understand. Everything moved so slow and yet unbearably fast, all coming to a point here, now, on Uhr, with Darkyn in the center and her beside him.
I won’t lose him, she thought, desperation equal to determination as she collapsed forward on the chair, only to feel her mate gather her into his infinitely powerful arms.
“You will not die,” she whispered aloud.
From outside Arcus, and seemingly within the ship as well, came the feral cry of a falcon.
At last, Krysta sensed an accord with Guardian. In this purpose, they could unite.
Chapter 8
Almost two full stellar weeks after her first encounter with Arcus, Krysta woke naked and alone on the dirt floor of Darkyn’s bathchamber. The morning was filled with Chimera song, lightening her heart and mind even as she ticked off yet another set of plans to force her brothers to see and to believe what was happening in the universe around them.
They trusted her, yes—but now she had joined with a man they believed to be their lifelong enemy. Would they still have enough faith in her opinions to accept something as fantastic as the Barung? As Barung, her mind informed her. She couldn’t stop thinking of the entity as human, as male.
They hadn’t even believed Akad on that accord. Superstition and doom-saying, they had told him the many times he had broached the subject. Finally, they had asked him not to bring it up again. The Royal Fleet had investigated the area Akad described, but found nothing—sensed nothing.
Krysta understood why now. The Barung was, as yet, beyond the psi-senses of a normal Ardani. Ki and Fari and all of Arda with their wisdom and arroga
nce, had come to believe that their senses were so powerful as to know all, to see all. Therefore, if they couldn’t sense it, it must not exist.
Sighing, Krysta brought herself fully awake, then smiled despite her heavy thoughts.
The night before had been spent as every night since she arrived, feasting and touching and making love with her sha until neither of them had the ability to move. Their fervor was at last easing, but in its stead a new sort of fervor was growing—that born of deep affection and blistering desire. They had at least used different rooms in the house—Darkyn’s tidy bedchamber, atop his spread of hides and fur—and the main room on floor cushions so soft they felt like clouds.
Her favorite, though, had to be the bathchamber where she now lay. Krysta loved the heat, the steam, and it gave her relief from Uhr’s drier-than-dry air. She could shout and moan with much greater force.
Grinning anew, Krysta felt the heat of big sun and little sister. The light filtering in through high-placed windows and the dome was bright, turning everything a startling, warm yellow-white.
Her sha’s powerful, elemental scent still filled her nose, and the salt and sweat of their lovemaking lingered on her lips. Her body ached in the sweetest way as she ran her fingers over her skin and realized yet again that her pa-coated nipple wasn’t bothering her as much as usual. The lips of her quim also seemed calm. Like she’d had a large dose of elixir, but with none of the side effects.
In quiet moments such as these, she had a sense of detachment, of unreality, that her life had taken such sharp turns. Her roles on Arda, as Captain, as sister, as sister-by-marriage, seemed so distant.
Will you let a few weeks with a kidnapping Outlander change your destiny?
That was Ki’s voice as she imagined it. Fari’s would have been naught but a growl with interspersed swearing.
And what would she say?
“Yes,” she answered aloud to her imagined brothers, both of them, scowls and all. Krysta had never been a fainting-female sort, or giggly, or blushing. More than that, she had never been indecisive. Her time as Captain of the Home Guard sharpened her wit and instinct, as well as her belief in her own ability to choose.
Another woman might have been full of doubts, or torn by angst. Krysta was simply torn by desire, and by a growing need to communicate with the rest of her family first to let them know where she was, and second to convince them of the danger coming in the days ahead.
She needed to show them that Darkyn Weil was no threat to Arda or her family. He was her family, too. For now, for always. He had claimed her, but she had claimed him, too. Without doubt, he would be surprised to learn her identity, when she could bring herself to tell him. He would cope, yes, just as she coped with being his hostage, and then discovering the possibility that he might shed his own life’s blood to stop the approaching evil.
But Krysta Tul’Mar no longer thought of herself as a hostage, or her mate as a potential sacrifice. She also didn’t think of herself as a Tul’Mar, not in the complete, absorbed sense she once had.
“It’s my turn,” she murmured as she dove into the pool to cleanse herself before dancing the Kon’pa. The fragrant streams closed over her, cleansed her and soothed her sore muscles. Even as the pains eased, she wanted nothing more than to make them ache again. With her sha.
And she would be having a say to him about leaving her alone during their new-mating time, even at this late point, and even if only for a while.
Warm water caressed her shoulders and neck, her nipples and belly. She surfaced and breathed in the sweet, moist scent of Uhr’s flowers and trees.
“Uhr,” she said aloud before once more diving down, deep, deep into the pool, stretching her body to its fullest length. The water below grew darker and darker, and warmer still, swirling up in jets and eddies. Some part of Krysta realized she might be able to follow its feeder streams as she had sought to do the night she first arrived—but that desire was fully gone.
Instead, she enjoyed the feel of the water on her skin, the hotter bursts especially. She halted her dive and floated in the near darkness, gazing back up at the surface. Her quim pulsed as more bubbling jets moved through her legs.
Kicking, she stared upward again, fingering her swelling clit. It took only seconds to drive her arousal to a level only her sha could fill.
Where was he, damn it?
Had Akad come into the bath this morning to get him?
Her sex-drunken brain could barely remember.
Though she did have a smile at the thought of sucking Akad’s cock while her mate thrust inside from behind her. And another wild thought of Elise and Georgia, one on each nipple as Akad and Darkyn Weil had their way with her.
Soon, when this madness has ended and life can find its normal rhythm again, it will be time to close the circle. To be a whole and complete family.
She was back to thinking only of her sha and his many, many talents. Her mind filled with images of their lovemaking, of his cock plunging deep inside her core, driving upward toward her center as he rocked her with his muscled arms.
She quickened the strokes on her clit, rubbing hard and fast. She wanted him. Needed him at that basic, total level. In her mind’s eye, she took him in her mouth and drank him dry. Then she took him in her quim, lying back as he held her down and pounded into her. Rougher. Harder.
Krysta felt ravenous. She wanted all of him, over and over. As she rubbed her clit faster and faster, she drifted toward the water’s surface—and for the briefest of moments, she thought she sensed Georgia and Elise. Both reaching for their nether lips and clits in a mimic of what she was doing.
Krysta? Elise’s sharp, strong psi-voice shot through her consciousness like an arrow as she shuddered from her orgasm.
Yes! There was a connection, however slight. Images flew back and forth, wordless. Her niece, born! Her brothers, beside themselves with distress. Fari doing something to ruin his relationship with Georgia before they could be joined, then making amends at the Festival.
Krysta felt a rush of joy and allowed a cautious stream of her own emotions to flow through the breach. Desire, satisfaction, joining. Then by accident, Akad’s image. She moved toward the surface of the pool, lungs burning, halting her thoughts before she showed Elise the true face of her new sha.
I’m not ready, she thought. This is still mine and only mine, for now.
From Elise came a single muffled question, as if a wet towel had been laid over the thought. Are you safe and happy?
“Yes,” Krysta answered in her mind and aloud. “Have no worries. We’ll all be together soon.”
And then a roaring, gnashing darkness burst into her mind so painful that she gave an airless, chest-crushing scream. All motion toward the top of the pool ceased. Krysta felt like she’d been shot with an energy weapon that severed her head from her body.
Like something—someone—was trying to kill her.
Limp, lungs filling with water, consciousness draining away, she drifted back down, and down in the water. Fighting seemed pointless. She wasn’t strong enough. She was already drowning.
Rough hands grabbed her, yanked her from the pool, and dragged her harshly over the lip and back to the dirt floor. Sunslight slapped her eyes, sobering her mind and beginning to dispel the pool’s murderous darkness. She coughed and spit water, tried to stand, but the same hands that saved her cruelly forced her to stay on her knees.
Darkness still clawed at her, but it seemed put at bay by the brightness of big sun and little sister. Soon it faded, leaving only lingering pain in her head.
“Who were you in contact with?” demanded a male voice she instantly recognized and just as instantly despised. All fog cleared from her mind.
The bastard who’d murdered Kolot!
Krysta looked up, still spitting out water and clutching her sides—but glaring and ready to kill the murderer if she could. The big hulk was standing right in front of her. His companion, the one who had helped kidnap her from Arda, wa
s holding her down. An Outlander female stood beside the murderer, hand over mouth. She looked young, more girl than woman, and horrified.
“Beg pardon, Lady,” she said in a mouse’s voice. “The Ta sent me to see to your needs in his absence, but when I found the chamber empty, I thought you had met with harm! I would not have called the guards if I had known—”
“Guards?” Krysta couldn’t help a derisive snort. She managed to turn her head to look at Fergilla Number Two who had her pinned. “These men are not fit to guard a herd of besotted Chimera. Take your hands off me, or I swear I will make you regret it.”
She didn’t care that she was naked, with no weapons but her wits and fists. She’d find a way.
Krysta heard soldier-force in her voice, as well as the confidence of a woman who trusted her sha not to leave her in another man’s hands too long. She made a rudimentary effort to touch her mate’s mind and indeed brushed something like it—Akad, perhaps? Or her sha. Was he drugged? Did he still need elixir to manage a few hours of sanity?
An eerie keening filled the bathchamber, and Fergilla Number Two released her suddenly and stepped away.
“What are you doing?” Fergilla Number One, the murdering bastard, asked his companion as a black falcon sailed into the room. He moved to grab Krysta himself, but the bird landed on the back of his neck, talons first. Powerful wings instantly pounded him about the ears and face as he swore and reached back, trying to grab his feathered attacker.
Krysta didn’t hesitate.
Springing to her feet, she delivered a thundering, crushing kick to Fergilla Number One’s bollocks. He doubled over and tumbled unceremoniously into the pool they had dragged her out of only moments before.
The falcon, preternaturally fast, swooped upward over the water, circled the room, and landed neatly on the edge of the sink. Feeling joy at their growing kinship, Krysta raised a fist of unity toward the predatory bird before wheeling on Fergilla Number Two.
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