He shuffled behind her, ducking his head. “I painted that.” His voice was infinitely quieter than it had been a moment ago, though the rasp remained, and the feel of it settled into her bones.
Then her mind caught up to what he said. “You painted it?”
A nod was his response, and awe settled through her at how accomplished he was, that such a rough man could create something so fantastic and delicate. “It’s stunning.”
“It’s not.”
“I’ve seen the ocean at dawn, a blazing sky over endless blue. I’ve seen fields of flowers so vivid they’re still burned into my retinas. I’ve seen the lushest, greenest foliage around falling waterfalls. I know what beauty is, and that picture? Is stunning.”
He snorted, raising his head now, but he said no more about it.
He was fully hard behind her, and she needed more – more than what she had last night, more than what she’d been allowed for such a long time. Turning in his arms, she pushed him to his back and climbed astride. She’d had all night for her fantasies to grow, all night with him pressed against her and the memory of his moans and his taste to keep her on edge, and she needed nothing else to get herself ready for him. Raising up, she reached down and grabbed his cock, rubbing it against her before she lined herself up and sunk down, seating herself fully on him.
His eyes were wide, his breathing hard, and as he filled her balls deep, a groan echoed the room.
She rested her hands on his chest and he wrapped his hands around the outside, keeping her tight to him.
She shifted, getting used to him inside her. He was perfect, filling her full but not uncomfortable. Soon her strokes became longer, pulling up until he was almost free before settling back down on him, long strokes that had him begging, lost little sounds escaping from his lips.
Finally he came, and he was spent. “You didn’t come?” His voice held a vague anger, though nothing showed on his face.
She hadn’t wanted to fake it with him. “I rarely do,” she said, patting his chest.
His eyes were intent, and her heartbeat kicked up, pulsing in her neck. He flipped her on her back, his gaze never breaking from hers.
His thumbs made small circles on her nipples, his eyes never leaving her face. The sparks crashing through her body had her hips jerking to the movements.
And now his mouth came down, circling the nipples, playing with different tempos and pressure until he found one that had her crying out.
He was in front of her pussy and he was spreading her out, looking at her. A fierce heat covered her face, and she reached down, “Don’t.”
He paid her no mind. Instead, he dove in, his tongue swiping over her, fucking inside her and eating out the combined taste of her and him.
A heat grew within her, a tension she never felt, and she flexed her hips away but he held her still, his tongue swirling over her clit as his fingers worked inside her.
She was babbling, strange sounds escaping her mouth as the tension filled her body, ratcheting up and up, and he didn’t leave her, he didn’t let her escape, didn’t let her cries or hands or hips dissuade him from his objective. There was only his mouth and that wonderful tongue, reaching unknown places and causing feelings she’d never experienced with anyone else.
Everything went tight, tight, tight, and then she exploded, her body jerking high and every cell seizing within her, electricity racing through nerves and blood and bone, and pleasure like she’d never known filled every empty spot, overheating her.
Small jerks of her body, and petting her hip, and time meant nothing, and opening heavy lids, Merc became clear, kissing her stomach and moving rough, calloused fingertips over her.
“There you are,” he said, and her gaze met his, the heat of his gaze, the satisfaction, the want all for her.
*
She was stunning in her pleasure, her body sweet and alive and fucking gorgeous as she came, tightening around him like a vise.
Once again, he banked down the anger that threatened to overwhelm him. She wouldn’t understand why the thought of her being resigned to not feeling any pleasure would piss him off. He didn’t want her to take it like she was somehow in the wrong.
Her breathing was beginning to regulate, and he kissed her stomach again, the sweat on her skin mingling with their combined taste in his mouth.
She was beginning to calm down. Time to wind her up and start all over.
He spread her wide, hooking her legs over his arms, spearing her with his cock.
He pushed into her hard and fast, against that spot that had her arching and gasping against him. Tucking one leg around his hip, he slid his hand between their bodies and rubbed against her clit while inside he rubbed against her.
Her head fell back and she screamed, and her whole body went vise tight around him, the single greatest sensation his dick had ever known. He pushed into her once, twice, three times to come inside her again, where she was shuddering and welcoming beneath him, where her stunned cries were loud in his ear and her shaky body rubbed against him in the right way.
He came in her, and it felt like he came home.
Chapter Thirty-Three
‡
Amana woke from a dreamless sleep in the exact same position she had been in before – with a mercenary wrapped around her, his arm over her waist and his half-hard cock pressed against her ass.
This time, though, her body was sore in the best way possible, areas stretched and bruised from Merc’s mouth and body on and in hers.
The sun was high, suggesting it was around noon. She lifted her head to see the clock, but her movement disturbed him, had him snuffling in tighter to her.
She settled back in his arms. She wasn’t going to fall back asleep, but she wasn’t hungry and didn’t need to use the washroom, so there was no reason not to stay here until he woke.
Which was about a minute later, whether it was because she woke him or something had disturbed them both together. He moved behind her, his arm tightening around her waist. “Good morning.”
“More like good afternoon.”
“Either way, it’s very good.”
Smiling, she bumped her hip back into his. Instead of returning the motion, he pulled her back into a full body hug, so that there wasn’t an inch of their bodies that weren’t linked somehow. She laughed. “You seem to be in a happy mood.”
“I can be depressed later. Right now nothing can bring me down.”
Since that was how she felt, she couldn’t blame him. She was wrapped in his arms, surrounded by him like she’d wanted to be from their first moments together.
For not the first time, thoughts raced through her head about how right he had felt from the first moment, how she’d wanted nothing but him with a strength that was frightening, ridiculous. And for not the first time, what exactly she was capable of filtered through her mind. Did she somehow bring him to her, find him, because he was perfect for her? Did her power seek him out because she’d been wishing for him? Was it a complete accident she found him? Or was this a type of Stockholm Syndrome, where everything she was feeling was false?
No, not the last one. Her feelings were quick and impossible to explain, but they were real. That she knew beyond all doubt.
Whether what they had ultimately survived the outside pressures they were under, they were real. He was part of her, as much as her brother, and nothing would change that.
An urge came over her, an urge that she wanted him to know her, know a part of her no one else could claim. She almost wished it were dark still so that she could talk to him under cover of night.
Facing away from him, his arms tight around her and his breath warm on her neck, she said, “My brother is in jail for murder. But the truth is, the murderer is me.”
*
“I started wandering in dreams when I was about seven years old,” Amana continued as Merc’s breath caught in his chest, afraid to breathe loud in case it led to disturbing her and causing her to quit talking.
“It was nice, then. I told Nakoa all about it – the people I met, the places I visited. I visited everywhere, including other Realms. I didn’t know that at the time. I didn’t realize there were not only realms here on this world, but Realms as in different planes of existence. I only visited pleasant places though, none of the horrifying ones talked about where necromancers and demons rule.”
Sweat beaded across his forehead and down the back of his neck, and a part of him wanted to retreat, didn’t want to hear what she would say, didn’t want to face the possibility she could tell him something that would change their world. He wanted everything the same.
“I had just turned fourteen, and I hated being on the island. Everyone knew my story. The boys, the men, thought I’d become my mom. And then one night he appeared in my dream. He was golden, slender and beautiful, and I thought my dreams created him, because nothing that perfect should exist.”
Amana was shivering, and Merc brought her closer to his body, tightened the covers around her, tucking her underneath his chin.
A pause, and then she continued. “It turned out he was a wizard who knew about dream crafters, and had been following me within the dream world when he saw me and suspected I was one. I was stupid enough, thought I was in love enough, to follow him in the real world. We moved, my brother and I. My mom was dead, and it was so easy to disappear.”
A shudder rippled and roared through her, her voice quavering as she told the story.
“We met in person, and he kept pressuring me, to leave Nakoa and go with him. I thought, he never had siblings, so he doesn’t understand. I thought, he loves me so much, he wants me all too himself without needing to share. It was so romantic to a stupid girl. So one night I gave in and left to be with him. And when he verified I was alone and had cut all the ties to my world, he hit me, and threw me down. He tore off my clothes, and chained me to the bed. He…”
She broke off, her breathing too fast, too shallow, and she clutched at him, trying to bring him closer, and he followed her lead, bringing them so tight together her skin was imprinted on his.
“Afterward, he spoke about power, and how I would give him children who would serve him while he ruled the world. And I kept thinking, I couldn’t let that happen. Not my babies. Not my children. And I fell asleep, and she was there in the dream – my devil. And she asked me, if my life was going to be lived under him, or if I was going to make things right, and within the dream I…
…I was able to make things right.”
Despair swirled around her, thick in the air and clinging to her skin like a cloud of rancid perfume. She was shivering, no matter how close she got to him, no matter how huddled or small she made herself, and her voice dropped to the smallest he’d ever heard.
“My brother found me the next day. I wrote Nakoa a note, because I’d never abandon my baby brother. Nakoa came in and saw me chained to the bed, saw the body next to me. We knew Nakoa was something, but then there were sirens – I don’t know how they knew – but there were sirens, and Nakoa was screaming I needed to run, and before my eyes my baby brother…a berserker, that’s what we found out afterward…and with his bare hands he freed me, and he began tearing apart the body all the while screaming at me, and…I…I ran.”
Tears were streaming down her face, her voice shuddering sobs, her frame a shuddering mess. “I left him. He was a baby, and I left him. I was the big sister, and…”
Sobs wracked her now, and he turned her around, pressed her close to him, let her cry into him, her fingers clawing into his back and she stayed close, her tears running down his chest.
They stayed like that for timeless moments, as she cried, as he held her, as they clung to each other like children riding out the storm.
Chapter Thirty-Four
‡
It was now late evening. After the deep quiet that always followed an anguished cry, Amana retreated, leaving the bed and the cabin to hide in the surrounding woods. Merc squashed all arguments against it and fought within himself the small fearful voice that said if he let her out of his sight, she’d disappear.
With that voice, the last doubts about what he felt for her vanished, because the fear didn’t come from a place that worried what she might do to him now or in the future, nor a place that foresaw her taking the book from him once again.
No, the voice spoke from the perspective of a future without her near him, her body not curled around his and her smile taken away forever. The only sign of relief when she appeared back at the cabin was closing his eyes and drawing a deep breath, both actions he was careful to hide from her. Without asking, he fed her, not surprised when she only picked at her food.
Now they were sitting in front of the fire, and the silence had gone on too long. He despised the doll-like mask that had sat on her face since she had returned. To him, she was shocked smiles and surprised laughter and a bone-deep fire that lit her every action.
This mask she had on now was what she showed to others, how she survived the everyday of the world she’d been fighting to survive to get to her brother. He didn’t want to experience this, to be relegated to the status of everyone else.
Her gasp sounded in the quiet room as he picked her up under her arms so her face was level with his, her feet dangling, and she grabbed at his shoulders to steady herself. “What are you doing?”
“Stop it.”
To her credit, she didn’t ask what he was talking about. Her eyes skittered to the side while her fingers curled into the muscle of his arms, and while the mask didn’t descend again, a haunting sadness seeped into her features.
Merc gathered her close, wrapping his arms around her torso, though letting her legs dangle free, so the moment she made a move for freedom he’d be able to give it. “I don’t care what you told me. If you think it changes anything between us, you’re wrong.”
“How could it not? I killed a man and let my brother go to jail in my place.”
“You were a scared kid, and your brother loved his sister enough that he stepped in. If you had more than a second to think, you would have stopped him, even at the cost of your life.”
She shook her head, that small mouth so tight with pain it was no longer visible. “You’re trying to forgive the unforgivable.”
“That only unforgivable in this situation is already dead.” He leaned close, pressed his forehead to hers as if it would impart everything – the gut-wrenching swoop as it settled within himself what she had gone through, the fearsome and helpless rage that he could not make it right for her, that she had gone through all this alone. The awe for her brother, who had made such a sacrifice. His words were a fierce and fiery whisper, the rumble in the ground that precedes the first eruptions of a mountain spewing fire. “You are a miracle, and your brother has my respect a thousand times over. The way you have fought and carved out your life after such wreckage, with such overwhelming odds against you, is something not even gods can claim. You are a warrior of the highest caliber, and any who can’t see that are fools.”
She buried herself into him, no cries, no sobs, her slight body shaking against his the only sign of emotion. It wasn’t the overwhelming tsunami that had crushed her earlier. These tremors signaled a return of the woman who met him on the beach that first night in the dream, and who had looked at him with such fire though she thought her life forfeit.
And then there was no time to let her finish her mourning, as the tattoos across his back and down his arms burned and rose in warning. Amana jerked back, her voice holding the last hints of tears. “What is it?”
“Enemies. Magic users.” There wasn’t time to berate himself on letting his attention lapse, letting himself get drawn into a personal crisis so deeply that he forgot to be constantly aware.
Now, there was only time to ready himself for the inevitable battle.
He set her down, pushing her up the stairs. “In the back of the closet there is a hidden door. Say the word Eden and it will appear. Go through and close the door be
hind you. You’ll be safe then.”
“I’m not leaving you.” All the prior depression was gone, and now only a fierce and angry woman stood before him.
“You can’t help me.” There was no time to spare feelings, no time to mince words. “Maybe in dreams you’re unstoppable, but here you have no skills. All you will do is divide my attention and give me a vulnerability. Now, help me and get yourself to safety.”
Debate played over her face only a moment, then she nodded and ran upstairs. He hoped she didn’t equate this to what happened with her brother, but he’d worry about that later. Right now, all that mattered was saving her.
His tattoos began to lift from his body, writhe and undulate in a black mass before spreading out. Some became loose formed mist across the floor, climbing the walls, skulking in corners. Another batch cemented together into black opaqueness and slid down his arms, anchoring themselves to his forearms and jutting out into black blades.
Across the room, ten figures materialized and in the next instant, attacked. As Merc fought, in the back of his mind, in the corner that remained calm and rational even during battle, he began cataloguing.
All were male. From the walls one of his shields grabbed up one of them just as he was muttering a spell, and his magic jerked away from the unnaturalness of the necromantic origin of the spell.
Reign’s acolytes then.
And another joined. And another.
As necromancers cared little for the death of their members, they tended to favor throwing large numbers of fighters into battles, uncaring of what the final body count might be.
The first wave had destroyed the cloaking spell around the grounds and now more came, in large numbers and faster than he could slice into them.
Some broke off from attacking him, searching for the Spellbook no doubt. Every time he moved to stop them, especially as they moved up the stairs, three more of their brethren would come before him, eager to fall before his sword if it gave their comrades time to grab the book.
The Dream Crafter Page 17