Crystal Fire (21 page)

"Maybe it didn't willingly reveal it. Maybe at the moment it was wrenched from its pedestal of power, the stone went awry and transmitted information it couldn't control."

He considered that for a moment. "Perhaps. I hope that was all it was. And whatever the reason, it was definitely to our advantage."

"Yes, perhaps it was . . ."

Brace noted her thoughtful look. "What is it, Marissa?"

"Something your father saidor almost saidthat still bothers me."

"And what's that?"

"Something about Ferox. Something you and Teran should know. 'A secret kept for far too long' . . ." Marissa shook her head. "What do you think he meant?"

"Who knows?" Brace shrugged. "Probably just another shocking revelation of Ferox's cruel and power-crazed life."

"You're probably right. And in the total scheme of things, what does one more past atrocity matter? It can't get too much worse. In the meanwhile," Marissa said, rising from the table, "it's time we both took our rest."

He arched a dark brow. "And what do you suggest the sleeping arrangements be?"

"We've both slept close before. A spot beside the fire seems the most prudent. That way we'll be able to feed the flames whenever they begin to die."

"I could keep you very warm, Marissa."

"Yes, I imagine you could." She repressed the smile his hopeful words elicited. "But I didn't mean
that
close."

Brace sighed. "No, I didn't think you did. But it was worth a try."

He grasped the quilt about him and strode to the bed, returning with the extra quilts and two pillows. "Here, let's make a pallet and get some rest."

A half hora later Marissa was sound asleep. Brace lay there for a time, listening to her breathing. Watching her. Wanting her. Wanting her and fearing she'd never return his need.

She felt something, he admitted grudgingly. Her heated response in Tutela and again on Aranea was not that of a woman insensitive to him. But there seemed an impregnable wall of reserve about her, a rigid self-control she never let her emotions slip past. And he didn't know how to break through it.

With a despairing sigh, Brace rolled over onto his back, pillowing his head atop his hands. He gazed up at the cobweb-strewn rafters for a long while, listening to the storm. Outside the snug little hut the winds howled with a ferocious intensity, the dismal sound mirroring the bleak, bitter pain that had twined about his heart.

Smothering blackness consumed him. Brace tumbled downward into an endless pit of deafening cries and clutching hands. Hands that clawed at him, tearing at his flesh until he was one huge, gaping wound. He watched as his life's blood gushed away.

He fought back, screaming out his rage and frustration, but to no avail. The blackness dragged him down as his body weakened. Brace knew the end was near.

There was no hope, nothing left but surrender. Surrenderto eternal oblivion, to the haunting vision of madnessand join his father.

Yet in that last moment before total submission, a voice called to him. Instantly Brace recognized it. Marissa, the woman he loved. The woman he'd never win. But a woman to whom he owed a debt and the fulfillment of a quest, terrible and dangerous though it was. With the last of his strength Brace fought back, seeking union with the voice that was his final link to sanity.

He awoke, gasping, drenched with sweat. Awoketo find himself in Marissa's arms.

"By the Crystal Fires, Brace Ardane!" she sobbed. "I'd thought I'd lost you for certain this time. I couldn't reach you no matter what I did. What are we to do? Ah, what are we to do?''

Brace turned into the comforting softness of her woman's body and groaned. "II don't know, femina. Gods, I don't know anything anymore! Just hold me. Hold me until the terror passes."

She bent her head and kissed his pale, clammy forehead. "For as long as you wish. Forever, if that's what it takes."

He lifted his face to hers. "I'm so sorry, Marissa. You need a strong man on this quest, and I'm rapidly falling apart. Better if I'd been the one to die, rather than Rodac. He'd have been of far more use than I."

"Hush, hush," Marissa soothed, stroking back his dark, damply matted hair. "You're all I need. You're the strongest, bravest man I've ever known. And I'm
so
glad I found you."

She gazed down into his beautiful, measureless eyes, saw his anguish and tormentand knew, in that piercingly sweet instant, that she was lost. The last vestiges of distrust and animosity faded. Her heart went out to him, and a woman's instinct to comfort, in the age-old ritual of mating, filled her. Marissa's head lowered, and her lips softly, tentatively brushed his.

He tensed for the briefest of moments, then, with a shuddering sigh, opened his mouth hungrily over hers. When she didn't draw away, Brace deepened the kiss, touching his tongue to her lips, coaxing them to open. When their soft fullness parted, he slid his tongue gently between them.

As he began to explore her mouth, pleasure spiraled through Marissa. Brace's hands caressed her, and when he moved to lie atop her, the hard strength of his body, pressed so intimately against hers, brought Marissa to vibrant life. She arched up to him, her hands wildly stroking the thickly muscled shoulders and taut planes of his broad, crisply furred chest. Ah, to finally touch him was heaven itself!

His hands left her to fumble with the quilt that covered the lower half of his body. In one sweeping movement Brace lifted himself and pulled it away, then lowered to once more rest upon Marissa.

She felt him then, even through the bulk of the fabric still covering her. Felt his sex pressing at the junction of her thighs, thick, hard, and straining. Marissa's hands slid down Brace's body, past his narrow waist and hips to grasp his roundly muscled buttocks and pull him more tightly to her.

He rubbed against her, in a rhythmic motion that imitated the mating act. The action stirred a rising excitement within Marissa, filling her with fire and a wet, unbearably aching heat. She lifted her hips, joining him in the dance.

"Marissa," Brace groaned. "Sweet femina. I need you so badly! It's been such a long, long time." "Then take me," she whispered. "For this nocte I am yours."

He stilled, then lifted his head to gaze down at Marissa. His dark eyes impaled her.

"And for all the rest of the noctes of our lives?"

Inexplicably, an image of Brace bound and beaten with Ferox standing over him filled Marissa's mind. Nausea welled inside her. She must tell him. He'd understand and find some way through it all. There could be no hope of anything between them until she did.

"The future is so uncertain," she began. "And there's something I haven't told you about the quest"

He silenced her with a gentle finger. "Later, Marissa. I was wrong to press you. There's time enough to bare the secrets of our hearts, to make plans for the future." His hand cupped the underside of a softly rounded breast. "But for now, it's enough to seal our fates with the joining of our bodies."

Before she could protest, Brace's mouth came down upon hers, fierce, hard, and utterly uncompromising. Marissa struggled against him, desperate to have the issue of her betrayal settled, but the seductive onslaught of Brace's lips and probing tongue soon drove all rational thought away.

He ran his hands over her breasts, teasing her nipples through the fabric until she tingled with anticipation. She whimpered, squirming beneath him. His fingers freed the quilt, fling- ing it aside to bare her to his gaze. For a long moment Brace stared down at Marissa, his glance hot, searing.

"You're so beautiful, femina," he whispered huskily. "The most beautiful, lushly rounded woman I've ever seen."

He trailed a finger lightly down the curve of her ribs to the narrow indentation of her waist, before finally following the sensuous flare of her hip. "And your skin," Brace murmured. "Like the finest of Tenuan serica cloth . . . so smooth, so warm, so alive."

Her eyes raked his powerful male body. "And you're the most beautiful man
I've
ever seen. I want you, Brace Ardane. I want you so badly I ache with it."

She pulled him into her, pressing his hard, throbbing shaft against her woman's mound. "Join with me. Please!"

Brace grinned down at her. "Ever the impulsive little warrior, aren't you? But once again you must learn patience. I mean to pleasure you like none other before we finally join."

Marissa flushed, averting her eyes.

"What is it, femina?"

She forced herself to meet his gaze. "Th-there has been no other. I'm a maiden."

A fierce, possessive joy surged through Brace. Tenderly he stroked her face.

"Do you know how happy that makes me, to hear you're a maiden? To know I'll be the first?"

"A typical male emotion, I'm sure," Marissa muttered, still uncomfortable with this new possessiveness in Brace. She didn't know whether to be glad or angry. Was that what this mating urge was all abouta bittersweet confusion?

Brace kissed the tip of her rose, then her eyelids and temples. "Typically male, eh? Well, perhaps . . . but perhaps not. Would you mind sharing me with another woman?"

"I'd cut her heart out if she so much as touched you."

He grinned. "My point exactly."

Her lashes fluttered down onto her cheekbones. "But II don't know how to pleasure you."

"Then let me show you."

Taking her hand, he guided it down the muscled length of his body until her fingers spread against the warm, softly furred flesh of his groin. Brace trembled at her touch as her fingers grazed his sensitive skin. Then, with a deeply inhaled breath, he brought her hand to lie over his blatantly aroused manhood, curling her fingers around the thick erection.

"Rub me," he whispered in a low, constricted voice. "Stroke me," he pleaded as he guided her hand up and down his shaft. "Yes, that's it, femina. Ah, Gods, it feels so good!"

Brace arched upward as she worked his turgid flesh, throwing his head back to reveal his thick, strong throat, thrusting his sex even more forcefully into her hand. His eyes clenched shut. His face turned dark and strained with his arousal. A groan, low and guttural, slipped from his lips.

Gods, Brace thought, he was so hard he hurt, so swollen he felt near to bursting. It'd been too long, over two cycles without a woman, filled with long noctes aching with need, and now to have one as sensuous and beautiful as Marissa, lying naked beside him, stroking his

With a grunt of desperation Brace moved to straddle her, a knee on either side of her hips.

His mouth lowered to hers, the kiss long, deep, and drugging. It left Marissa limp and pliant in his arms, save for her continued stroking of his sex. She marveled at the feel of him, his shaft hard, his skin so soft and smooth. And to think he would soon enter her with it, plunge it deep inside . . .

The thought both thrilled and frightened her. She expected pain. Like all Moracan females, Marissa had received the usual maiden's lessons on the act of mating. But it wasn't the pain that frightened her. It was what the penetration symbolizedall she'd ever been raised to abhor. Submission, domination, passivity. To become, at long last, the weak, docile female she'd always despised.

Marissa was nearly overcome with the impulse to turn away, to put a halt to the act they were rushing so headlong toward. But with one glance at Brace's face, at the hot look of passion which she sensed must mirror her own, Marissa knew that flight was impossible. Whatever ultimately happened, they were meant to join this nocte. Whatever their fate, it had inexorably led to this.

And a single joining did not make her his mindless handmaid for the rest of her life. She chose this as freely as he, and there was nothing submissive in that decision. Listening to his ragged breathing, seeing the rising need in his eyes, Marissa knew that Brace was as much a slave to the delicious ecstasy as was she. If there were submission and domination, then both of them felt it equally. Equallyin this gloriously sublime act between male and female.

As he moved to suckle her nipples to taut, thrusting little peaks, Brace pulled her more snugly beneath him, until his throbbing shaft pressed a hairbreadth from the moist heat of her womanhood. His hand slipped over her softly rounded belly. He lingered over the silky curls guarding her femininity before sliding down into the velvet cleft. Marissa gasped when he found the nub at the top of her sex and began to rub it. Instinctively, her thighs parted to grant him greater access.

"Brace!"

"That's it, femina," he rasped. "Open for me. Let me see you, touch you there."

She moaned, writhing beneath him. An unbearable tension, a searing heat built within her. If she didn't soon find release . . .

"Ah, please. I can't take any more," Marissa cried on a sobbing breath. "Please, Brace. Please!"

At her pleading words something shattered inside him. In one quick motion Brace pulled her hand away and moved between her outspread legs. Grasping her buttocks, he lifted her up to him until his big, wet tip touched her secret place. For the space of a sharply inhaled breath, he hesitated, then drove himself into her with one quick, deep thrust.

Marissa arched back, her mouth opening in soundless agony, an agony that passed in an instant. She felt full, stretched wide with the length and breadth of him, consumed by the fierce heat of his hard male body. She lifted her hips toward Brace in an instinctive feminine move, and he grabbed at Marissa desperately, halting her.

"Not yet. Gods, not yet, Marissa!"

A secret smile curved her lips. He was as near his breaking point as she was hers. And her power to dominate him was as great as his to control her. The realization filled Marissa with a curious, soaring sense of elation.

But she lay there obediently beneath him, quite still, savoring the ecstasy to come. Finally, with a trembling sigh, Brace began to move.

His strokes were slow, languid, gauging her readiness with the greatest care. Her response soared rapidly past his. She whimpered and arched, wrapping her long legs around his hips, pressing her plump wet flesh against his rock hardness. His pace quickened, the rhythm of his thrusting shaft becoming hard, fast, and deep. His tongue plunged into her with the same probing intensity.