Horn of the Unicorn

by Rhyannon Byrd

  “If we are to go any farther,” he said gently, “then you must make a blind leap of faith, Tess.”

  “Faith?” she muttered breathlessly, wanting to smack him for sounding so brave. “Faith in what, damn it? I hate heights, Zarnak. I hate them!”

  His eyes sought hers, and his look told her all that he did not say in words. “In me, lass,” he said quietly, a small smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “You must trust me to protect you.” And she knew there was so much more that he wanted to say.

  “I do,” she said thickly, her eyes wet with tears, and then her lids lowered and her damp palm within his became pliant, ready to be led. For the first time since her parents’ deaths, Tess realized that she had utter faith in another person and it was a purely wondrous sensation, if not a terrifying one.

  “Just a small step, little one,” he whispered, and he stepped forward, letting her feel by the movement of his hand that he was now in front of her, which meant he should have been falling to his death.

  But he didn’t, for he was still holding her hand.

  “Sweet Jesus,” she whispered beneath her breath, and then she followed, stepping out into the air beside him, only to find solid rock beneath her feet. Opening her eyes, her hand clutching at his strong grip like a lifeline, Tess looked down at the miracle beneath her.

  They stood upon a small rocky shelf, with two stone staircases leading down from either side, both cut into the face of the terrifying, majestic cliffs, and she lost her stunned, silent surprise in the sharp gasp that broke from her lips. Zarnak gave a soft, low chuckle at the awed sound, pulling her possessively into his arms. “I’ll not say I told you so, my beautiful mortal,” he teased, nuzzling her ear.

  “I don’t understand.” Her voice came in a rush of excitement, panting and sharp. “This is incredible! Where do the steps lead?”

  He laughed softly at her childish wonder, and pulled her back against his chest, resting his chin atop her head, and explained. “Those to the right lead down to the Dark Caves, which are the doorway to the tunnels that lead into the Lower Realms.”

  Tess eyed the steep stairs with a cautious eye, thinking that they looked the part. They were carved with strange, unsettling symbols that she didn’t want to investigate. From where they stood she was sure she could make out upon the second step the grotesque shape of a decapitated head stuck upon the top of a stake, and that was more than enough for her. Perhaps she could hold onto Zarnak’s back and make the steep descent with her eyes closed, allowing him to lead her on faith again, she thought with a small sigh.

  “And these second steps,” he went on to explain, indicating those to their left with a movement of his hand, “lead into the Dragon Lands, one of the Middle Realms, though it is actually considered part of The Wood. Kind of like our secret dungeon,” he added with a wry tone, “where no one willingly ventures.”

  Tess studied the beautiful Celtic patterns carved into this second staircase and recognized the artistry as truly magnificent, almost spellbinding in its beauty. “Why does no one go there?”

  “The dragons are not necessarily good or evil. They exist between the two, but they are a dangerous people.” She turned to look up at him, and found him watching her with such burning intensity that it nearly melted her, making her creamy with desire. “Someone as sweet as you would be eaten alive within moments of setting foot there.”

  She shivered, then grinned, feeling strangely complimented, rather than insulted by his words. “I don’t think I want to ask if you mean that literally or figuratively.”

  “Don’t worry, little one,” he murmured, wrapping his arms around her and hugging her against his chest. “The only one eating you will be me.”

  She shivered again, and this time he laughed a low, husky sound of delight in her ear, knowing it was with sexual awareness that she’d trembled.

  “Do dragons honestly live there?” she asked, trying to postpone the moment when they would have to venture down that first vile staircase. Her stomach did a sickening twist and she wondered for a moment if the sweet roll she had eaten while they’d walked that morning was going to reappear.

  “Yes, though they tend to keep their human shapes, much as the other shifters. The Dragon Lands are a wild place where those clans who do not serve the Blood Goddess live. Trust me, little one, you do not want to visit.”

  “Yeah, I think I’ll pass on that today.”

  He pressed a gentle kiss to her temple, then moved to her side and clasped her small hand in the burning heat of his own. Smiling down at her, the look in his eyes begging her to trust him, promising that he would keep her safe, he said, “Let’s make our way to the Caves.”

  * * * * *

  Tess wasn’t entirely sure what she’d expected after the gruesome artwork she’d observed on the stairs, but the Dark Caves were a welcome surprise. Instead of finding a primitive hole dug into the face of the Cliffs, they had descended the creepy staircase until they had come to a large wooden door. The door had opened onto a long, shadowed hallway illuminated by burning torches hung upon the stone walls at ten foot intervals. Between each torch stood a smaller door, each about the size of one you would find in a house, and behind the third door on the right was where she now found herself.

  Amazingly, it was a bedroom. And she wanted to cry with relief when she saw that it actually had a small bathroom. Well, if you could call it that. But there was a rudimentary kind of toilet that resembled something she had seen during a tour of the Tower of London before she was separated from her parents, and she was ridiculously happy just to have some kind of facility, no matter how basic. And within the main room itself there burned a large fire within a stone hearth, the intense heat managing to cut the stark chill that she’d felt upon reaching the Dark Caves. Like most people, she’d always thought of hell as being hot, when instead an icy chill had crept over her flesh the moment she’d entered the dank hallway and the massive wooden door had closed behind them with an ominous thud. To be honest, she’d have screamed bloody murder when those last rays of sunlight had been locked out, but the powerful presence of the man at her side gave her a strength that she’d always hoped for, though never really known she possessed.

  And god, he was magnificent. He’d already removed his shirt, and now she watched with warm female appreciation at the way his muscles rippled as he took a large copper kettle from an iron rack above the flames and set it upon a long wooden table. He looked up at her as he poured the steaming water into a wide copper bowl, and the pure warmth of his gaze heated her more than any flame or fire ever could.

  How can you compress years worth of love into a few hours?

  Tess didn’t know—didn’t understand—she only knew that it was true. It had happened. And it had happened to her.

  With a small smile upon his beautiful mouth, he handed her a square crimson cloth and indicated the steaming water within the bowl. Taking another cloth, he wet it and began washing his hands and face, then lifted his right arm and washed the silver tufts of hair beneath. His round biceps flexed, looking mouthwateringly large as she followed the long, sinewy length of his arm, and Tess felt that warm, voluptuous wave of desire roll through her again, stinging and sweet. She licked her upper lip, fighting back the moan vibrating in her throat, and he laughed a low rumble of sound, those dark eyes glittering with mischief when she raised her gaze from the cloth now moving over the sculpted beauty of his chest, and frowned, realizing he’d been purposefully tempting her.

  Wetting her own cloth, she wrung it out over the bowl. “Are we safe here?” she asked casually as she cleaned her hands, her eyes widening when she turned and saw that he had already turned back the dark, blood-red duvet on the massive four-poster bed against the far wall.

  “Yes,” he answered behind her. “Even the Blood Goddess dare not disturb the neutrality of the Dark Caves.”

  “In that case, now that you have me here, what will you do with me?” she drawled teasingly, looking back
at him over her shoulder, wondering if she could seduce him.

  “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” he playfully growled, his dark eyes shining as he tossed their cloths aside and swept her up into his arms. Five long strides took them to the high bed, and he tossed her onto the thick mattress, immediately following her bouncing body down, straddling her hips as he began tickling her ribs and up under her arms, making her squeal with laughter. It was shocking, considering she had expected to be ravished, and yet, so wonderfully intimate.

  Tess couldn’t remember the last time she’d been tickled. The last time she’d laughed for the sheer, simple joy of being with another person.

  “I can’t believe it,” she shrieked as tears filled her eyes, her sides aching from the force of her giggles.

  “Believe what, little one?” he asked, grinning down at her, his long silver hair floating over his shoulders, tickling the insides of her breasts as he opened her vest, making her nipples tighten with lust.

  “I didn’t expect…”

  “What?” he asked as a wicked smile blossomed sweetly across his beautiful mouth. Slowly, he moved his hands from her ribs, stroking them up her torso to part the sides of her vest, until they teased at the sensitive, velvety undersides of her breasts.

  “I…uh, didn’t know that you would be so much fun,” she finished breathlessly, wanting to fist her hands in that magnificent hair and pull him down to her breasts, demanding he suckle her nipples. Demanding he feed her undeniable craving for the touch of his lips, his hands, his burning, sweat-slick flesh and that mouthwatering cock that looked as if it would explode from his doeskins with his next breath.

  He arched an arrogant brow. “You thought I would simply keep you tied to my bed and fuck you senseless day upon day, year upon year?” he tsked, teasing her.

  She smiled softly at him, wondering if the look in her eyes appeared just as soft. Could he see everything she felt there in her eyes, like an open book written specifically for him and no other? “I don’t know what I expected.”

  His thumbs moved up, sweeping across the tight ache of her nipples, and she arched, gasping, moaning low in her throat when he brought his index fingers into play and trapped her nipples between thumb and finger, milking the pulsing tips in a slow, sensual pull that made her melt, her sex growing swollen and damp, hot with hunger. “But you did not expect me to take joy in simply being with you, did you, Tess?”

  “No,” she answered honestly, shaking her head. “I guess I didn’t.”

  “I told you, little one, you are my soul. There is no other place I’d rather be than buried within you, packed heavily within that sweet little quim of yours, riding you hard and hungry, but I take joy in other things too. In hearing you laugh. In seeing you smile. In the mere fact that you breathe and lie beside me when we sleep.”

  She blinked up at him, simply undone by his words. “You are unlike other men, aren’t you?”

  That wicked, boyish smile curled his beautiful mouth, and he laughed warmly as he said, “‘Tis true I’m no mere man, Tess. But I am yours. That is enough. All that I want. All that I truly care to be. Call me simple, but after the life I’ve led, I want nothing more than to spend the rest of my days with you.”

  His words filled her heart to bursting, but her sad smile gave her away.

  He lifted one hand to cup the hot side of her face, and stroked the corner of her mouth with his calloused thumb. “Even surrounded by enemies, Tess, I will not waste the gift of having you. I lived for too long without you not to embrace the beauty of having you as mine. Wholly, utterly, unquestionably. I will fight for you. I will protect those you love because I care about them too, simply because they are precious to you, but I will not let Montgomery’s evil and that of the Goddess destroy what time I have with you.”

  She sniffed at the moisture burning her eyes, and pressed her cheek into the warmth of his palm. “Please don’t talk that way,” she said, swallowing against the lump in her throat.

  “What way, little one?”

  “As if our time will be so brief.” She couldn’t stand it, even though he was speaking her very own thoughts.

  “I’d live lifetimes with you, my beautiful Tess, and I hope that’s what we’ll have. I do not know how our joining will affect our years, but I know that we will age as one. Together. We will not live forever, but we will not die too soon.”

  “Unless he kills you.” And in her mind, she knew that she need not only rescue Emily. No, she would need to kill her uncle once and for all, because as long as he lived, he would seek revenge for his ruined plans upon this magnificent man who held her heart. That was just the way he was. His ego would never allow Zarnak to live in happiness, when he had so hungered for the unicorn’s horn, as well as the beast’s death.

  And she strongly suspected that her uncle was somehow behind the breach into The Wicket Wood. Yes, they would not be able to outrun him, and he would never be satisfied until she and Emily, as well as her lover, were destroyed.

  Plus, she fully believed Zarnak when he said that her uncle and his men were now in these Lower Realms with Emily, seeking a new means of immortality from the Blood Goddess herself. She shuddered to think of what he might bargain with, for surely Emily would play a major role in his sinister plans, as Zarnak believed. And she did not doubt that Zarnak would as well. The Blood Goddess would want him dead, considering she had been the one to curse him in the first place. Neither her uncle nor the Goddess would be happy that they’d found one another and broken the unicorn’s sentence.

  God, even if Montgomery did not seek to pit himself against Zarnak when they reached Emily, she knew instinctively that her lover would not let the hideous man live, not after what he had put her and Emily through. One way or another, the two of them would definitely meet, and she could not help but fear the outcome, for surely the Goddess would aid the side of evil.

  And her uncle was evil incarnate.

  Damn, it was all such a complicated mess that it made her head ache. And now the man that she loved was looking at her as if she’d just told him she thought he was weak. When would she learn to keep her stupid mouth shut?

  “So you think Montgomery will defeat me when I finally confront him? That’s disappointing, little one, for I had truly hoped I would have won your confidence by now,” Zarnak said in a low voice that crawled into her pores and melted beneath her skin in a shivering wash of tantalizing, erotic promises. “Need I prove to you my manly strength again?”

  “Stop it,” she laughed as he raised his brows, “I’m being serious.”

  He sighed. “I know. And I’m trying not to take offense, simply because I know you are worried and that your worry is born of…emotion,” he said carefully, guarding his words. “But I’d have more faith from you, Tess. I’m no underling to be trampled by his pitiful power.”

  She frowned, not wanting him to feel insulted. “I do not think he’s more powerful than you.” And besides…I’ll be the one who will find some way to kill him, not you.

  His brow arched again, mouth twisting with that wry smile that she was coming to love. “Then why do you fear he’ll kill me?”

  The hand at her breast curled around the firm mound, squeezing gently, massaging her, and for a moment she lost the thread of conversation. He grinned wickedly, no doubt because her eyes were all but crossing at the sinful sensations his touch evoked, and she struggled to board her train of thought again before it left her at the mercy of his touch. “B-because he’s evil…and you’re not.”

  A warm wave of tenderness softened the sharp angles of lust in his expression, and he said, “Evil does not always win, my sweet one.”

  She snorted softly. “Then you don’t know the same people I do.”

  He studied her in the flickering firelight for a moment, and she tried not to squirm beneath the intensity of his stare, as if he were seeing right into her. All her secrets and demons and things she would have rather kept hidden away. Finally his mouth curved o
nce more into that boyish grin, and he rasped, “I’ve known evil, Tess, and yet look at me. I will not let that bitch’s hatred kill the joy I feel at having you in my arms now. If I did, it would destroy us, everything that is growing here, and we would have nothing. You must have faith that we will make it through this. Do not let what you have seen at Montgomery’s hands poison your hope for the future.”

  “I don’t know if I can,” she cried out softly, hating that she could feel a hot, tickly tear leak from the corner of her eye. It trailed across her cheek, until he swiped it away with his thumb, his dark eyes glittering with emotion as he stared down at her. “God,” she gasped, “it’s all so confusing. I want to be strong, damn it, and it makes me so miserably angry to know that I’m weak!”

  “Weak?” he scoffed, shaking his head at her words. “Are you blind, Tess? I do not think I have ever known a more powerful woman, whether she was mortal, magical, or divine. You shine with strength and vitality and life,” he rumbled in that deep, honeyed voice. “You burn with power, and watching you only makes me burn hotter. I only look at you and I ache to battle against you for our pleasure. I do not take a mild, meek mouse to our bed as my mate. I take a white-hot, fiery fighter, and she kills me with the beauty and strength of her heart and her mind, with all that she is.”

  He moved his hands to either side of her head, bent his elbows and lowered his face until their noses were almost touching, their hard breaths soughing together in a warm, sensual mist. “Give it to me,” he whispered, his deep voice all seduction and wickedness. “Give me all that you can, Tess. I will not run and I will not cower. I will give it back and make you shatter. Make you cry and scream and come until we’ve drained each other and collapse in victory.”

  She nodded, licking her lips slowly, her chest constricting with excitement as she saw his brilliant, eager eyes following the movement of her tongue. “You can have anything you want, Zarnak. Take it.”

  “No,” he said huskily, smiling at her surprise. “Give it to me, Tess. Show me how much you want me.”