While she was thinking, he slowly slid free of her body, almost removing himself completely. She could have claimed a feeling of relief once the pressure of his girth was removed, but that was far from what she felt. She understood his claim of an instant addiction in that moment, because now that he was gone she wanted him back. More than anything. Her hands slid down his powerful back, clutching at his tight buttocks as if she could pull him back where he belonged. But the fact was she didn’t have to try so hard at all to make him return. He did so readily and with a fair amount of gusto. She sucked in her breath, anticipating pain, and then exhaled with surprise when it didn’t come.
“I told you,” he rumbled against her ear, “I’m not going to hurt you.”
She believed him now. In fact, she was experiencing something very opposite to pain. It was queer the way it felt, and yet her heart was racing in her chest.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she confessed all in a rush just as he dipped for her mouth and kissed her within an inch of suffocating her. When he lifted away she was gasping for her breath, her thighs clenched tight against his hips and holding him still while she tried to process all of the information rushing through her. He had no intention of helping her, though. He made that very clear when he dropped his head to capture her nipple between his teeth. He let her go just as quickly and raised vibrant green eyes up to hers.
“You don’t need to know anything. You’re perfect just the way you are. I like that you’re untried. I like being the only man you’ll ever know.”
Well, she wouldn’t go that far, but she wasn’t going to pop his delusional bubble right in the middle of everything. Even someone as green as she was knew that would be a mean thing to do.
“Okay,” she said idly, her focus disintegrating as he cupped her knee in one hand and pushed her leg away from its grip on him, opening her wide for him. As soon as he was certain she had relaxed a little, he moved inside her once again, a long, slow thrust that belied the savage need she could see in his eyes. He wanted to be doing something far wilder to her. She could see it and feel it in the vibrating energy of his body as he held himself back for her sake. His consideration made her smile, made her relax considerably. She reached for his now handsome face, cupping it between her hands and then pulling him down for an almost chaste kiss.
Adrian wasn’t interested in chaste. His desires ran deeper and hotter than she could possibly have imagined. She didn’t know what it was like to be a beast on fire for a beauty, but he was determined to show her. He pumped himself into her in a long, earth-shattering undulation of his hips, making Kathryn gasp in significant surprise. She’d had no idea that such simple movements could hold so much power over a body. And if the look of utter bliss on his face was anything to judge by, Adrian was feeling exactly the same way.
“Oh, you feel so fine, my pretty Kat,” he said, his voice so low and sexy and sending a thrill straight down the center of her belly. “I’m going to make you scream for me, sweetheart,” he promised her. “You’ll scream the name of the man who makes you feel pleasure like no other ever will.”
She didn’t even have the presence of mind to protest his second possessive remark in as many minutes. The fact of the matter was that she felt like screaming. But it was more likely because he was moving so damn slowly and her body was craving something much more than slowness.
“I want to feel you,” she heard herself panting baldly, her nails once again burrowing into his butt in an effort to make him do what she wanted. “I need to feel you, Adrian.”
Her words seemed to fire something in him because suddenly he reared up and out of her grasping body and hands. With the grip of a single strong hand on her shoulder he flipped her over in the bed, a grunt leaving her as she landed on her face in the pillows. Then she felt his hands bracketing her hips and hauling her ass high in the air, his knees coming between hers and spreading her legs far apart. She scrambled to get her hands under her, wanting to push up and look back at him, but he planted a powerful hand right between her shoulder blades and held her face and chest down against the pillows.
“Feel this,” he ground out as he abruptly thrust deep into her channel. She gasped at the sudden and swollen intrusion, the sheer size of him once again overwhelming her as she took him from a completely different perspective. “And this…” He drew back and slammed forward so hard it took her knees off the bed. She had to scramble to clutch the sheets, to keep herself from sliding into the headboard as his thrusts went deeper and harder as they increased in speed.
Kathryn longed to be able to see him and touch him. Both were impossible as he knelt over her like a conquering hero, keeping her from moving in the slightest way. She felt stunted by the position and frustrated, but he seemed to thrive on it, his breaths leaving him in rising growls of pleasure as he moved into her again and again. Needing to do something to gain his attention, she clenched every muscle in her body, wrapping tight feet around his calves and resisting the pressure between her shoulders. She also locked around his working cock like a fist and she knew the very instant it caught his attention because he gasped out loud and then groaned as he worked past the resistance she was putting up.
“Ah, God, yes! Kat. Oh, my beautiful Kat…” His hands raked down the length of her spine, claws streaking downward, bumping over each of her vertebrae until she was racked with shivers of stimulation and excitement.
What was more, she was aware she could push up on her hands now and even look over her shoulder to see him. What she saw made her blush from head to toe. Not only was he magnificently naked, gleaming with sweat and concentration as he used her body for his pleasure, but he was studying her bare backside as if he’d never seen anything quite like it, his hand shaping over her in slow, affectionate rubs. Then, just to startle her, he ran a claw down the cleft between her cheeks all the way to the spot where they were joined. The intimacy made fire explode along the entire length of her body, even as it made her face heat in a blush. She could tell he liked doing it, too, because he shifted into faster thrusts, punching into her until she was awash with the strangest sensation of pleasure she’d ever known. In a way it was similar to the orgasms she’d given to herself over the years and the one he’d more recently triggered, but it was very different at the same time. Deeper. She felt threads in her chest and belly tugging downward, as if she were a marionette and he was gathering the strings to manipulate her with each thrust inside her.
“Adrian,” she cried out helplessly, shaking her head and not knowing what she should do. Her hair flew around her head as he stroked into her harder and faster, the rhythm impossible for her to keep up with. All she could do was push back against him while he held her in place with strong, needful hands. “Adrian, something’s wrong!” she said, her breath as panicked as her words.
“Nothing’s wrong. Nothing has ever been more right, Kat. Don’t be afraid. Just relax and don’t be afraid. God, you feel so amazing. Do I feel even half as good to you?”
He did. And then some. She just couldn’t seem to bear all of that wild sensation all at once. He was asking way too much of her, she thought. Maybe she just wasn’t like other women. Maybe she didn’t work right like they did. Would he be disappointed in her? Would he regret the day he’d chosen her above all others?
As if he knew she doubted herself he suddenly turned her on her side, pulling her leg way up so her knee was hooked around his shoulder. This forced him to slow down just a little and he reached forward to grab her chin and made her look at him.
“You’ll not hide from me,” he said. “You’ll look at me and know who and what it is that makes you feel this way. And you will feel it. I’ll not stop until you do.”
And she knew he’d make good on that threat. He didn’t let go of her until she looked directly into his eyes. She’d never seen so much lust and passion in the eyes of another before, and she wondered if she looked anything like that. Did she have that expression of borderline desperation
in the depths of her eyes like he did? She could almost believe that she did as the tension in her body wound up to an incredible tightness. The hand that had held her face now fell to embrace her breast, the flicking of a claw back and forth and back and forth over her sensitive nipple making her want to scream.
“That’s it,” he coaxed her softly. “There you go.”
She was going somewhere, all right. She was spinning in her own head, twisting inside and all around. She panted madly for every breath as everything dragged her around inside. Then, suddenly, all the threads seemed to snap at once, and like a released balloon she went soaring. Rich spasms of pleasure rocketed around inside her, clamping her down tight on him, milking him for equal measure. He started to growl in bursts of succession, his hips jerking as he tried to fight her body for depth. Then, with a deafening roar, he came apart inside her. She felt the hot rush of his ejaculate, felt the wild way he couldn’t control himself as he gripped her leg and pushed against their mutual spasms.
Sleeping soundly after a long night of gathering energy to give to the Ampliphi, Aerlyn was completely unprepared for the brutal onslaught of energy that struck her out of nowhere. The power of it physically flung her from her bed, forcing her to awaken and take it all in. She felt the pure pleasure of it, felt the resonance of her brother’s release as he abandoned himself to it. That was when she realized what was happening. This was the power of kind coming together, the energy of kindri and kindra reaching a point of passion together. Powerful enough to feed an entire village. There was no place for all of that energy to go except into her; the other option was to let it wastefully dissipate into this dead plane where no one had use for it, and she would rather drop dead than let that happen.
She sat on her knees, her head bowed and her hands gripping at the floor as it continued to ride her like a bucking bronc. She needed to get to her feet. Needed to move. She could only take so much before she burnt herself out or her head exploded. It took several tries, but she was finally able to grab one of the curtains to her bed. She used it to drag herself over to the bed and with a remarkable show of strength she pulled herself up to the tips of her toes with just a single pull. And still the energy kept coming, rolling into her now like breaking swells in the surf. She wasn’t built to take in so much energy. No one was. If she didn’t find a way to stop it she was going to do herself serious harm, and Adrian would blame himself for it. Her brother was taking the weight for a great many wrongs of late, whether he was responsible for them or not. She would not add this to his payload.
Aerlyn staggered into the hallway and straight to the stairs. She almost broke her neck as she stumbled down them at a hazardous speed. Next were the narrow stairwells leading down to her and Adrian’s workrooms.
Her workroom was everything her brother’s wasn’t. She had decorated it warmly with a desk and footstool, a comfortable chair to rest in after a hard night’s work, and pretty little china bits she’d taken a fancy to over the years. Her own version of a treasure room, she supposed. Sage and potpourri were scattered everywhere, so the room smelled fresh and not of the dank basement location it was in. If she’d had her choice, she would have worked out of one of the upstairs rooms, but Adrian had demanded a low, dismal place in which to work, reflective of his hateful duties, no doubt. She couldn’t bear the idea of him working alone down here, so she had moved herself in across from him. Her love for her brother had never wavered. Not even when it had gotten to its very worst.
Now she knew she had to do something crucial for him. She walked like a drunkard toward her mirror. Oval in shape and framed in white, ivy-like fronds of worked metal, it was twice her height and equally large around. The bottom of the glass touched directly to the cold stone floor. She looked inside the glass, gasping at her own reflection. The stars in her hair looked as though they were going supernova, tiny bursts of light that had they been to scale would have blinded the cosmos. Her silver eyes glowed with depth and energy. So much so that she knew she had gone well beyond her tolerances. The only way to stop it now was to leave the house…hell, the surrounding area, for that matter. So she took the quickest route she knew. With a charge of green electricity, she stepped into her mirror.
The Ampliphi were arguing, as they did quite often, when Aerlyn staggered through her mirror portal and into Justice Hall.
“Aerlyn, what is the meaning of your intrusion?” Rennin demanded irritably because he had been the one losing the argument at hand. He didn’t like to lose. What was more, he despised being thwarted.
Instead of explaining herself, Aerlyn did what she was designed to do. She unleashed all of the energy she had absorbed on the Ampliphi. Like her, half of them were knocked out of their seats. Their ethereal forms slowly but surely turned to solid flesh and blood, a state they so rarely indulged in, in order to conserve energy. But there was no need for conservation today. What Aerlyn had brought them was a treasure trove. The Ampliphi picked themselves up and reordered themselves. Flushed with the nature of the passionate energy they had received, they all changed in demeanor from belligerent and stubborn to easy and sated.
They turned to Aerlyn, whose eyes were still aglow as she tipped her chin and took them all in with the sweep of her arms.
“My brother has found his kindra, and I have brought you the proof of it. His life is no longer on the line and you must accept that now.”
There was so much silence for so long that Aerlyn began to doubt that they had heard her. What she didn’t know was that their recent argument had been about the best methods to destroy her brother when the opportunity finally presented itself. Now that opportunity had vanished before their eyes and they were astounded by the impossibility of it. Yet there was no questioning what Aerlyn had brought to them for proof. The last time they had been so solid had been when Julian had first taken his mate. That had been such an explosive coming together that no one had starved that week. The same would likely have been true had Adrian taken his mate here on their plane.
“Aerlyn.” Sydelle had to stop to clear the huskiness from her throat. “We thank you for this generous gift.”
Christophe, the leader of the Ampliphi and Aerlyn’s mentor, sat forward in his seat. His steady eyes were apologetic and Aerlyn felt a frisson of worry wend its way down her spine.
“Aerlyn, you must go to your brother right away and tell him we will not tolerate his absence Beneath for another day. He and his mate will relocate to your former village, where the energy from their bond together can feed thousands.”
“But you can’t do that!” The stern folding of his handsome face told her she had overstepped herself with the outrageous shout, but she really didn’t care. She was always the first to respect the wise Ampliphi, but in this she would argue for her brother’s sake. “I understand your reasons for wanting this, I do, but he has barely won his mate’s trust, and now you want to thrust them into a world that is so alien to her own? At least the Barrens closely resembles the world she knew!”
“And what will you do, Aerlyn? Take onslaught after onslaught of this energy they create? Look at what it has done to you already. You can barely stand and your eyes are bloodshot beneath their glow. You are lucky you didn’t have a stroke trying to manage that all on your own! This setup is a danger to you and wasteful besides. It was not a suggestion, Guardian, it was a command.”
Fury rolled through her as she faced down the man who had taught her how to rein in energy from the world of dreams. She had known nothing when she had come to him, only sporting a raw talent she’d been born with. He had taught her so much, more than anyone there might realize, and now he was passing down dictates on her as if she were a dog expected to obey.
“What is wrong with you?” she demanded directly from him. “Is it that you wish for Adrian to fail at this? Are you angry to have your opportunity to kill the monster taken out of your hands?” The moment Christophe cast a look at the other Ampliphi she knew, with horror, that she had hit the nail on the
head. “Oh my God. You were hoping he would fail!”
“Untrue. We did not think he would succeed. There is a difference,” Christophe said.
“And now you want to throw their relationship into trial before they are ready. It sounds to me that you are still thinking,” she accused.
“If Adrian fails to please his kindra, it is not because of his location. And this is no longer about your brother but about the thousands he and his mate will feed every time they come together. This is not open to discussion, Aerlyn. He will be here by night’s fall or he will suffer consequences. Am I making myself clear to you?”
“Perfectly,” she bit out.
She turned on her heel and with a wild green electrical show, she and her anger stepped into her mirror. Once they were sure she had left, Rennin turned to the others.
“So now how do you propose we get rid of the bastard?” he demanded.
It took all of Adrian’s remaining strength not to collapse on top of Kathryn and crush her beneath his considerable bulk. Just the same he lay on her heavily, drawing for each breath as though it might be his last. He was stunned, to say the least. His entire body was humming with the power rushing through it. How could he possibly feel so weak and so energized all at once? He brushed both of his hands through Kat’s hair, cupping her head and making her look at him while he tried to comprehend his own thoughts.
“Your eyes are glowing!” she exclaimed. “How do they do that? Is that because of…That’s so freakishly cool!”
“I am glad my freakishness fascinates you,” he said with amusement.
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