Aurora's Promise (34 page)

“I need more.” She did. She didn’t want to need more. Didn’t
want to let go of all she held right here for just one more piece of a dream.
She had it all. She knew she did,
except
for one piece. The only one she
had to have.

The inscrutability common in Connyn’s gray eyes was gone,
replaced by an unguarded will for her to see. “You have everything I have to
give you. You’ve seen it in me. Accept it.”

He didn’t wait for her to reach for his thoughts. He pressed
in on her, taking any quarter she allowed. Drinking it in, she let his thoughts
flow over her mind like a healing balm. “You love me.”

“From the beginning,” he whispered.

“No,” she said. “You said love and destiny, even lust are
all the same to you. They’re not.”

“For me, they are the same when it comes to you.”

The images and feelings his mind was conveying bore little resemblance
to his words. Confusion began to stir under the weight of his thoughts and
anger tinged the edges of her patience at his refusal to even consider how
wrong he was. He smiled down at her.

“I’m not wrong. Love and destiny. Lust, want or need. It all
means the same to me when it comes to you.” He lowered his head until his lips
brushed softly against hers. “Everything, my
vystra
. You mean everything
to me.”

Connyn knew the moment Aurora believed what he said. A shift
took place between them. An elemental shift that opened her totally to him. She
wrapped her free arm around his neck and drew him down for a kiss. Her mouth
opened and her soul opened. Crossing her legs behind his lower back, she
squeezed his hips with her thighs and arched up into him. He let go of her hand
and slid his arms around her, one under her shoulders and the other under her
back to hold her as close to his body as possible.

Taking him in, she challenged him and teased him as her
hands moved over his back and she writhed beneath him. The magic he’d fought
against and struggled through flooded over him in an intense surge that didn’t
push him away or block him out. It pulled him into her the way a powerful
undertow draws a person into the depths of the sea.

He fully opened his mind to her and she flowed in, stroking
his fantasies and wandering through his thoughts. With silken fingers she
caressed his mind, trailing the now familiar golden mist in her wake. She let
him see the need and want he was pressing her to. Laid bare the sensations he
brought to her body, how much she loved what he did to her. How much she loved
him.

The directness in which she gave him access to her thoughts,
to the inner recesses of her heart touched off a very primal instinct to
protect and keep the precious gift of her, his mate. What she offered him and
let him take was beyond what he’d ever hoped for in his most secret of dreams,
the ones he’d not shared with anyone and quit believing in as soon as he was
old enough to judge duty over emotion. From the conversations he’d had and
overheard with his cousins, it was a peculiarity they’d all seemed to share
until their mates, and his, brought duty and dreams together.

When he pulled back from the kiss, Aurora’s brazen smile was
full of challenge and she scored the rounded ends of her nails down his back in
response. When he nipped her earlobe she raised her head and bit his shoulder. “Quit
making me wait,” she whispered.

Past the point of being gentle, he held her tightly and
grazed his teeth up the side of her neck. “Hang on,” he warned.

The ultimate willful giving of his mate had ripped away the
layers of royalty, civilization and generations of education and progress,
igniting a fierce demand to take her wholly. He kissed her with a hard
possession of her mouth as the savagery in his soul rose and brushed against
hers, testing and proving the link between them. Aurora leapt at him,
encouraging, accepting, daring.

He lifted his head to watch her as he took her, crossing his
arms behind her back and cupping her shoulders in his hands. In this position,
he could hold her in place and keep the majority of his weight off her.
Shifting his hips, he pulled back slowly, watching her eyes darken in
anticipation. She clutched her inner muscles as the head of his cock came close
to being withdrawn.

With one powerful and swift thrust he buried himself deep
inside his mate. Aurora gasped and arched her neck as she jolted under him.
Without his restraining hands on her shoulders, she’d have slid halfway across
the bed. He pulled back and thrust in again and again. Her pussy was hot and
wet around his cock, sucking him in and clutching him in its slick grip.
Mine
.

Yours.
The word spun through his mind on her thoughts
with the force of a desert windstorm. She took what he gave, yearning and
demanding. Each time he drove into her, she tightened her arms, her thighs, her
cunt. Seizing him as her body quaked, she skated the edge of an orgasm she
refused to release herself to. Arrogantly she forced him,
dared
him to
take and possess her.

Goaded by the way the friction and force of his taking
spiked the sensations and need in his mate, he intensified the speed and power
of his movements, urging her further into the fire. He reveled both in her
heightened pleasure and her feral insistence for more. The wildness of her lust
flew into him and lit his skin with the sparks of her ecstasy. Sensations
pressed on her from all sides and she threw them back at him, enveloping him
entirely in both his own and her feelings.

His body bucked and drove into her, inflamed by their
combined desire. Abruptly he felt her hesitate, uncertainty pulling her back
from the sharpness and force of the primitive emotions consuming them.

A snarl rumbled out of his chest as he struggled to halt the
onset of his climax. “Stay with me,” he ordered and plunged into her again,
flattening himself against her body, crushing her breasts under his chest and
grinding against her pussy. He called to her from within the wild, hedonistic
clamor they’d summoned together. Riding her hard in both her body and mind, he
demanded her submission and commanded her into the abandonment of all
restraint.

Her body stiffened, tense and tight for the breath of a
moment. Suddenly she threw herself into the ravening euphoria. He willingly followed
her into it.

Their worlds became each other’s. Possessed, held, known. A
fury of color and sound consumed them. Scent and sensation spiraled through
them as the deep places repressed by centuries of civilization rose and
stretched. The climax rolled over him and through him, dark joy mingling with a
world of promise and destiny. He wrapped himself around Aurora as she clung to
him with her body and soul, bound herself to him as he took her in, driving
into her heart as she seized his. Together they flew into the ecstasy, into the
promise, into their future.

* * * * *

Aurora adjusted the tie on her robe and leaned on the
balcony’s railing to look up into the velvet of the Ilyrian night. A vast array
of endless stars was cosseted by a dark purple so deep it looked nearly black.
The shade lightened around the glow of the two large moons hanging heavy in the
sky. Beneath her, the soft muted twittering of the night birds floated up from
the canopy of trees ringing this side of the complex.

She stared out past the torchlight lining the outer wall but
could only see shadowed mountains past the hills of the outlying city. Connyn
had told her that the windows of the private rooms of each House faced toward
their own lands though they were much too far away to actually see. They’d
travel by portals and visit his homeland soon, after nine months or so.

“It’s late.” Connyn’s low voice reached her seconds before
his arms slid around her, crossing under her breasts and gently pulling her
back against the warmth of his broad chest. He dropped a kiss on her hair. “Why
are you out of bed? Are you feeling all right?”

She brought her hands up to hold on to his arms. “I’m fine.
Just thinking.” Slowly she ran her hands over his biceps. She loved his arms,
the strength that was there to hold her, keep her safe. God, she loved this
man. Once Chloe, Amy and Ellen arrived, her family would be complete again.

“Thinking about…?” He prompted when she remained silent,
drifting on her own thoughts.

She shook her head, trying to clear her mind. “I thought Amy
and Ellen would have been here by now. Do you think something’s happened to
them?”

His long silence did nothing to alleviate her fears. Finally
he sighed. “If something had happened, Shy would have gotten a message through
to us.”

“So why aren’t they here?”

“I think it’s been adequately proven that I am not the one
to ask about the whys and wherefores regarding the schemes of Magdalyne’s
daughters.”

Aurora grunted. “It’s not as if the plan went anything like
what we had intended. At least my part in it.”

He turned her in his arms, brushed her hair back. “Just what
was your intention?”

“Ellen knew Amdyn was coming for her and Amy felt it would
probably be safer for both her and Chloe in Ilyria.
If
she were allowed
to bring Chloe that is. They’d survived one Predator attack a month before but
Amy wasn’t sure if they could survive many more by themselves.”

“What?”

Aurora tilted her head back to look up at Connyn’s face,
surprised at the shock and anger she found there. “You didn’t know?”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“I wasn’t there. Until the Riverwalk, I didn’t really
understand Amy’s fear, only that it was very real and very motivating in her
decision to leave Earth.” Her slight shrug was paired with a small, embarrassed
smile. “The way she described the attack and the Predator seemed unbelievable
at the time. I thought maybe she was exaggerating, you know, because she was so
upset and scared for her and Chloe’s lives. But she had to know that Chloe
could come with her to Ilyria. We didn’t know how things worked and—”

“I made things worse.”

Sliding her arms around his waist, she stepped into his
embrace and laid her head against his chest. “You didn’t exactly make things
easier. But what I was going to say is that Ellen has a strong distrust for the
entire Kilth clan. She never actually tried to talk Amy out of returning to
Ilyria, but she never encouraged her either. Basically, she just presented
options.”

“And you masquerading as a Mystic was one of those options?”

She thumped his breastbone with her forehead. “Never once
did I claim to be either a Mystic or Amy. You made an assumption and ran with
it. I had to do very little to keep you moving in the direction we needed you
to go.”

Connyn growled and Aurora hid her grin. “There wasn’t much
of a plan that took us past the meeting at the Riverwalk. Amy was hiding in the
crowd to watch you and Amdyn when you were told that one of the Mystics you
were looking for already had a child. After we saw your reactions, we were
going to settle on a definite plan of going or staying. Ellen was sure she and
Amy would be taken back through the portals, but didn’t know about me and
Chloe.”

“I see.” Connyn was silent for a long moment, holding her
close.

Aurora brushed at his mind and found a deep contentment at having
her in his arms and an equally deep concern about the Predator attack she’d
mentioned.

Finally he said, “Tomorrow we will talk to Wyc and Rordyc
about the attack. If it truly was a Predator, he found Amy before we did. We’ll
ask for a report from the Elder in charge of the official telepathic contacts
between Ilyria and Shy. If he’s heard nothing within the last day or so, we’ll
ask him to contact her immediately and find out what’s going on.”

She hugged him tighter and tilted her head to look back up
at the moon. “Since the day Chloe was born, I’ve felt a special connection to
her. I know she’s still alive. I can
feel
her.”

Connyn’s fingers combed through her hair at the nape of her
neck. “Can you feel anyone else?”

“Besides you?” she asked with quiet laughter in her voice.

“Yes, besides me.”

She stilled, suddenly serious, suddenly nervous. “One.”

“Who? Amy?”

“No.” Aurora took a deep breath. “Our daughter.”

Connyn’s chest stopped moving with his breath. His muscles
locked into place and the weight of the night air against her skin suddenly
pricked cold and heavy.

“Are you sure?” His question was hoarse, his words barely
audible.

“As sure as I am about anything at the moment,” she said,
pushing out of his embrace.

He didn’t let her go far. Grabbing her by her upper arms, he
held her out in front of him, searching her face. “Our child?”

She nodded. “Don’t act so surprised. You were all sure of
yourself earlier.”

“It’s different when someone tells you what they think than
when your mate confirms it.”

“Well, if you’re wondering, it’s a girl.”

This announcement seemed only to increase his shock. He
looked so thunderstruck it suddenly occurred to her that this might not be good
news from his perspective. So before he could say anything, she rushed on. “I
will not give her up so if the fact that she isn’t a firstborn son changes
anything, then—”

“It changes everything.” He pulled her back against his
chest. “And nothing.”

Arching away to breathe she shook her head. “You’re
confusing me. Should I start packing or not?”

He loosened his embrace enough to be able to look down into
her face, a frown on his own. “Why would I want you to leave?”

“Ummm…the whole heir to the throne thing. We had a king on
Earth go through six wives trying to get a son.”

“You are giving me an heir. A daughter.”

“But all the heirs are sons. Magic and the males, remember?”

An enigmatic smile settled on his face. “Just because
something is doesn’t mean that’s the way it’s always been or will be in the
future.”