Dark Melody (Dark Series - book 12)

by Christine Feehan

  Her hand moved over the thick quilt covering her. It was art too, a beautiful blend of colors with similar symbols woven into it. Each character was wide and clear, the surface smooth to the touch. She found her fingers continually seeking out the different symbols and tracing them carefully over and over.

  She felt Dayan beside her, just lying quietly, his body wrapped protectively around hers. Corinne turned her head to find him watching her, his black gaze loving. There was so much tenderness there, so much emotion, he robbed her of breath. She smiled, her soft mouth curving as she lifted a hand to touch his face with gentle fingertips. “Hello,” she said softly. “Have you been waiting there long?”

  “Several risings,” he answered honestly, shifting so that he could prop himself up on his elbow to better study her face.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, slightly embarrassed by his close scrutiny. He was watching her with unblinking eyes.

  “Memorizing your face,” he answered truthfully, his gaze drifting over every inch of her classic features. “I want to close my eyes and still be able to see you. I used to welcome daylight as a relief from the ever present whisperings of darkness, yet now I resent those hours because I cannot be with you. I want to talk to you, just be silent beside you, look at you, reach out and touch you, know you are real and not some figment of my imagination.” He traced her mouth, her eyebrows, his thumb lingering on the corner of her lips. “I do not want to sleep anymore because I cannot take you with me.”

  “Do you have to sleep away from me?” she asked, running her hand up and down his arm, needing to touch him almost as much as he needed to touch her.

  He bent to brush a gentle kiss across the temptation of her mouth. “When I sleep, it is as if I am dead. I shut down my heart and lungs and do not breathe air. Our species does not have to seek the earth to sleep, and many of our people do not, but they sleep in chambers below ground where they are relatively safe from human hunters and accidents. Most of us do seek the rejuvenating sleep of the earth because it is safer and more natural to us. I would prefer to be beside you always, but it would be unsettling to you to wake and find me as if dead.”

  “Not if I was expecting such a thing. Why are you so distressed, Dayan?” She pushed her fingers through his hair. “I’m beginning to be able to read you, and you are having a difficult time. If something is wrong, just tell me.”

  “Everything is going the way the healers have predicted with your health,” he answered vaguely, his black gaze slipping away from her.

  She curled her fingers around his wrist. “What is it?”

  He shrugged casually. Too casually. “There is a ritual between lifemates. It is necessary to bind us together. Until we are formally bound together, I am still a slight risk to others. There is nothing to be done about it, Corinne, until your health is better. It is just uncomfortable for me.” The beast was struggling for supremacy from within. He felt it growing stronger with each rising. He needed her more than ever to anchor him. He needed her soul bound to his, her heart to complete him, her body for a safe haven.

  “What ritual?” she asked curiously. “And don’t shrug and put me off. If we’re a partnership, then you have to give me the trust you insist on having from me.”

  He sighed. “You are getting tough on me, Corinne. Am I losing my charm?” He made an attempt to tease her, to make light of a dark situation.

  “I don’t think you could ever do that,” she reassured him with an answering smile. “But I want us to be very certain we’re together on this. It’s important to me, Dayan. I don’t want to do the wrong thing and take a chance of hurting you. This has happened very fast. I’m someone who has to think things through thoroughly before I make decisions. And you are asking me to take a lot of things on faith.”

  “We might come from two different worlds, Corinne, but you know we belong together.”

  “Maybe,” she agreed noncommittally. “So tell me the ritual.”

  He circled her waist with his arm and leaned down to kiss her again. This time he lingered over the simple pleasure, savoring the moment. “When a Carpathian male recognizes his lifemate, he recites ritual words to bind her. The words are imprinted on him before birth. It is much like a human marriage but more permanent. Once said, the words bind the two, heart and soul and mind. She cannot escape him. They cannot be apart after that. They must touch one another often, using mind touch or they become...” He hesitated, searching for the right word. “I don’t know — they need to be with one another or they can be very uncomfortable.”

  “He just says a few words and she belongs to him?” She pushed at his chest with her small hand, glaring. “That doesn’t sound very fair to me.”

  “Now, Corinne” — his voice was as soft as velvet and just as sensuous — “I was not the one who created the ritual. It is thousands of years old. I can do no other than what my heart and soul demand.”

  “You said the words to me?”

  He shook his head, his thick blue-black hair falling around his face. “I cannot while you are so ill. I do not know if your heart would be able to stand a separation from me during the hours I must sleep.”

  “And it’s hard for you because you haven’t bound us together?” Her small white teeth bit at her lower lip as she struggled to understand what he was telling her. Words like

  risings

  and

  rituals

  belonged in someone else’s world, not hers. She was very practical. When he began to laugh, she frowned at him, trying to look severe. “You were reading my mind again, weren’t you?”

  He shrugged, that intriguing ripple of muscles beneath his immaculate shirt. “Naturally. I am your lifemate.”

  “How do you keep your clothes so perfect? And your hair. Why don’t you have morning breath?” Self-consciously she put her hand over her own mouth.

  How did he look so perfectly sexy and inviting, when she was disheveled and looking pretty much like a beached whale?

  Dayan really laughed then, he couldn’t help it. Her image of herself was so far from the real thing that it was ludicrous. He couldn’t imagine Corinne’s soft, curvy body looking remotely like a whale. He lay back on the bed with her beside him, real, alive, her heart still beating, and he laughed out loud. It was a perfect moment in time.

  She started laughing too, just because he was so silly, his joy so evident. Corinne thumped him hard on the chest. “Stop laughing at me.”

  “I cannot help it, honey. A beached whale? I can hardly tell you are pregnant. That is not a good analogy at all.” He put his hand over the mound of her stomach. “And I like you disheveled.” He caught her face in his hands and dragged her mouth to his.

  The earth seemed to move beneath the bed, a curious rolling effect that brought dancing whips of lightning arcing through the room. The air vibrated with hunger and need. He lifted his head reluctantly and stared into her green eyes. “I love you as you are, Corinne. Right now, in this bed, while we cannot make love and there is a child growing within you. I love you with your hair all over the place and that slightly confused look on your beautiful face.” He rolled over to place his hands on either side of her head, pinning her to the bed. “I love how you look at me as if you want to take care of me, though I am the one who is the male.”

  She touched her fingertips to his perfectly chiseled mouth. “We can take care of each other.” Her voice was soft and inviting, a temptation he found impossible to resist.

  Aching with love for her, he bent his dark head slowly so that she watched as he came closer, his black gaze hot and hungry and full of terrible need. Corinne circled his head with her slender arms and met his mouth with a hunger of her own. He was heat and light, a symphony of music that lit her very soul. He made her heart beat wildly and her spirit soar high above the clouds. There was no one else for her, whether human or of his species. There was only Dayan with his poet’s soul and hungry eyes and dominating mouth. His hard masculine body and his perfec
t hands that moved over her body with the same talent as they moved over his instrument.

  It was Dayan who pulled away first, putting inches between them, but he was breathing heavily. “Your heart is pounding.”

  Her mouth curved slowly, her eyes dancing. “That’s yours, not mine.” It wasn’t strictly true; both hearts were beating out a syncopated rhythm together.

  “The healers are going to come in here and give us a lecture,” Dayan whispered, glancing at the door.

  She ruffled his hair, enjoying the luxury of touching the silky wayward strands. “What will they do if they catch us?” she asked, smirking at him. “Be shocked?”

  “Order me out is more like it,” he said gravely. “I would be given a lecture about how irresponsible and selfish I am. Which I am. I should be very careful of you at all times, not giving in to temptation every time you smile at me.” He frowned at her when she pushed at his chest. “What are you doing?”

  “Getting up. I have to go to the bathroom. I take it that’s not something your species has to do much.” She was teasing, but the smile faded when he continued to look at her steadily. She held up her hand. “Don’t even go there. I don’t want to know. Just get out of my way and let a mere mortal do her thing.”

  “My love” — the words came out a whisper, velvet soft, and seemed to shimmer in the air between them — “I cannot allow you to run around. The healers said complete bed rest. I must insist you obey.”

  “They didn’t mean not go to the bathroom. I seem to remember you carrying me the last time, but it isn’t necessary.” When he refused to move, she sighed heavily and changed tactics. “All right, carry me again. But this is embarrassing, and I’m afraid it’s becoming a bad habit.”

  Dayan lifted her easily, cradling her in his arms. “I do not see why. You think of the strangest things.”

  “I’d like to be in your mind once in a while and see what goes on in there,” she challenged him.

  He set her carefully on the tile floor beside the wide marble sink. “You can read my mind anytime you like, honey. My mind is always merged with yours. I stay a shadow in there so I can find out all those fascinating things you try to hide from the world.” He smirked at her. “You are just too much of a chicken to actually look into my mind and see what thoughts are lurking there.”

  She stood there, gripping the side of the marble sink, staring up at him for a few moments. “Well?” She waited. “Out! You can’t think you’re going to stay in here.”

  “I cannot leave you alone,” he said mildly.

  “I mean it, Dayan. Get out this instant. No arguing. Out!” She was very firm and tough about it.

  Dayan looked helpless for a moment, then shrugged and glided out of the bathroom, deciding the old adage “Discretion is the better part of valor” held true.

  The door closed with a hard thud behind him at a wave from Corinne’s hand. “Make sure your mind goes with you,” she called out, then found she was smiling because she could wave at doors and faucets and set her toothbrush in motion and it didn’t seem to bother Dayan in the least.

  I do not know why you would think my mind would not go with me and stay with you at the same time.

  His voice brushed at the walls of her mind like the flutter of butterfly wings, sending waves of warmth coursing through her.

  For the first time in a long while, Corinne found she was truly happy. Standing in the bathroom, leaning against the sink, making an attempt to do something with her wild mass of hair, she was perfectly happy. Once she had pulled her hair free from the thick braid, it was too heavy to manage. She found she was too tired to lift her arms to tidy it. She sighed very softly.

  What is wrong?

  There was anxiety in his voice.

  Corinne didn’t actually reply, she knew she didn’t, she just sighed again, but it was enough to bring him rushing in, scooping her up as if she were precious porcelain. Her hair tumbled in all directions, fanning out over his shoulder and across the dark shadow on his jaw. “Just can’t stay away, can you?” she asked, secretly grateful he had raced in to rescue her.

  “I knew you needed rescuing,” he said with great male satisfaction.

  “Was I thinking rescue? That was the actual word in my mind?” She shook her head as she settled onto the bed. “I don’t think

  rescue

  was the precise word. I can’t imagine using a word like that.”

  “Oh, it was

  rescue

  all right.” He wasn’t going to let her off the hook that easily, not when her green eyes were sparkling with laughter and her intriguing dimple was very much in evidence. He especially loved that dimple. He knew he could spend hours looking at that dimple and never get tired of it.

  He took the brush out of her hand. “It is amazing what the males of my race are called upon to do.”

  Corinne waved her hand toward the center of the room. “Go over there and do something.” When he sat there, she pushed him, “Go on, do something.”

  “Something?” he echoed as he moved obediently into the middle of the bedroom. “What kind of something?” He sounded wary.

  “I don’t know exactly. Something cool. What do you like to do?” She was looking at him from under her fringe of long lashes.

  Dayan suddenly grinned like a mischievous boy. “Anything at all?”

  “Sure. Something really big.”

  His black eyebrows shot up. “If I show you, are you going to show me?”

  “Sounds like a dare to me,” Corinne said. “I can’t resist a dare.”

  “Then you go first.” He folded his arms across his chest, regarding her with his black gaze. “If I go first, you are quite likely to faint from shock.”

  “Faint!

  I am not the fainting type .

  Nothing

  you do could scare me that much now that I know you can do it,” she replied haughtily.

  You do not altogether believe I can do it.

  His voice whispered in her mind, sinfully intimate. It was temptation, it turned her body to molten liquid.

  Corinne found herself staring at him, almost mesmerized by his black-magic spell. He had woven his dark melody so completely, so perfectly, she hadn’t realized she was immersed in his music, in his soul. To cover up her reaction to the sheer intimacy of a mind merge, Corinne forced her wayward thoughts under control and concentrated. At once the brush in his hand jumped free and moved through the air to resume the task of taming her flyaway hair. With intense concentration she divided the mass into three sections, using the power of her mind alone, and wove the long hair into a thick braid. A scrunchie came dancing out of the bathroom at her call and fastened itself to the end of her hair to complete the job.

  Corinne looked up at him then, a trace of apprehension marring the perfection of her joy. “Well?” She looked like a little girl, unsure whether to feel pride or fear.

  Deliberately he grinned at her, a taunting male grin of sheer competition. “Watch this.” He held out his arm, his eyes fixed intently on her face, his mind wholly merged with hers in case she was frightened by the change as it came over him. Fur rippled along his arm, muscles contorted and popped.

  Corinne watched in wonderment as the man slowly shape-shifted until a large male leopard was standing in the center of the room staring at her with that same unblinking stare. For a moment she stared, almost frozen in place, but then the cat moved, its powerful muscles rippling as it glided silently toward her. She recognized him! She knew it was Dayan. There was the same fluid grace and power, the same hungry eyes devouring her. Her heart rate accelerated, but it wasn’t out of fear. Amazement. Fascination. Never fear. Not when it was Dayan.

  The leopard nuzzled her so that she buried her hand in the glossy fur, astonished at the texture, at the joy of being so close to something belonging in the wild. She laughed aloud as she caressed the animal’s head with her fingertips. For a moment she rubbed her face along the thick neck of the leopard, loving
the feel of the fur against her skin. It was exotic, a rare privilege to be so close to a wild animal. The leopard nuzzled her back, its eyes staring at her, mesmerizing, trapping her in the untamed depths. Dayan. Her Dayan. She would know him anywhere, in any shape.

  Without warning, a dark shadow seemed to creep slowly into the room, invading the air like a thick foul oil. Corinne froze in place, her entire body going perfectly still. She felt Dayan’s reassuring presence in her mind. She watched in horror as the shadow seemed to take shape on the far wall, a grotesque bent figure, a skeleton stick figure with long, bony fingers that seemed to be tipped with daggerlike talons. Her heart thudded in alarm, and instantly Dayan’s body was solidly in front of her. She felt the others joining with her too, merging minds — Desari a soothing, calming influence, and Gregori and Darius powerful and, she sensed, deadly.

  All of them protected her, shielded her from the creeping shadow. It was wholly evil, a thick oily presence probing, seeking,

  hunting

  something. Corinne felt certain the evil thing was hunting her. She sat very still, kept her mind firmly anchored in the sanity and calm of the others. Shockingly, her heart remained steady, beating in the same rhythm as Dayan’s while her lungs breathed along with his.

  It was Dayan that surprised her the most. Her poet, so kind and gentle, so giving and loving, was suddenly something altogether different. She felt the contrast in his mind first. She was so attuned to him she recognized the change immediately. It came swiftly, naturally, and she realized these qualities were as much a part of him as his music and his beautiful words. He was dark, dangerous, a silent, deadly predator, a killing machine. Merciless. Without remorse. Ruthless. The total opposite of her poet. The cunning, relentless beast he had named himself. He would be unswerving on the hunt.