Dark Enchantment (34 page)

He crawled back up her body and, straddling her, urged her to turn over, so she was facing him again. A distant thought crossed her mind that she should have been embarrassed lying like this, all naked and sweaty, her arms stretched above her head. But the truth was that, by this point, she was so frantic to have him inside her she was way beyond any such virginal reticence.

His eyes mated with hers as he slid his index finger into his mouth and drew it out slowly. Her breath caught as the warm, glistening digit traced the circumference of her nipples and he blew on the sensitized nub. If it were possible to die from sheer ecstasy, she would have surely succumbed the instant his mouth settled over the crested pink tip. He bit lightly on the puckered flesh, his hand cupping her, working his sensual magic. She was ready. “Now, Caleb. Please, I can’t take anymore.”

But the man was relentless. “Ah, love, but you can,” he murmured in her ear.

Kissing his way down her writhing body, his mouth discovered a new center of her universe. She let one hand slide off the headboard, to tangle fingers in his hair. He stopped. She raised her head. “What…?”

He directed a long, pointed look of warning at the headboard. “You’re killing me,” she muttered, and heard his husky laugh as she grasped the wooden slat again. He rewarded her obedience by adding clever fingers to the ministrations of that skillful mouth.

He drove her higher and higher, again and again, to the shuddering pinnacle of sweet release, where he let her linger, trembling, craving, teetering on the brink of insanity. Still, he refused to send her flying over the edge into life everlasting. “Caleb, oh, God, I need you inside me,” she whimpered, her head thrashing mindlessly. “Now,
please.
”

“Soon,” he growled. “But, for now, I’ll give you this.” And with a squeeze, with a curving plunge of those artful fingers, he sent her freefalling through spasm after spasm of unimaginable bliss, through an explosion of color and light and sound. In his native tongue, he murmured low, ragged words of encouragement as she flew apart in his arms.

Wow. Was her head still attached? Surely, it had blown off out there somewhere amongst the galaxies. It was all coming back to her, as if the dreams were reality, this reality but a dream. Arianna smiled to herself as she remembered exactly how he liked to be touched, to be held.

She peeled her hands from the headboard and pushed on his shoulders. “Now, your turn,” she decreed. “On your back.”

Stunned amusement twinkled in his eyes as he complied. She straddled his chest and, stretching over him, forced his hands to curl around the handy wooden slats that she had just abandoned. Arianna kissed his mouth, pulling back each time he tried to take the kiss deeper until finally, in frustration, he tangled his fingers in the hair at nape of her neck and lifted his head, to fix his lips to hers.

“Uh-uh-uh. Turnabout’s fair play,” she announced, sitting back on her haunches. Leaning over to replace his errant fingers on the slat of wood, she let her bare breast graze his lips. Head raised off the pillow, he tried to take a nip. She moved out of reach. “Remember what you taught me. You know, personal restraint and heightened pleasure and all that.”

She smiled inwardly. He wasn’t looking so amused anymore.

“Arianna?” He growled her name in a soft-spoken warning that clenched her womb with a thrill of trepidation. “Be sure you know what you’re playing at,
a mhuirnín
. And that you’re up for paying the forfeit at the end of the game.”

“I’ll pay.” She bent her head and licked a flat male nipple in defiance. She heard his quick intake of breath. “Gladly, if the currency is anything like the first round.”

She went for his neck first, inhaling the woodsy scent of him as she moved up to nibble on his earlobe, then she worked her way down the delectable smorgasbord spread out before her. Encouraged by his low rumbling groan, she nipped at his ribcage, dipped her tongue into his navel.

And felt his hands thread through her hair. She raised her head, gave him the tsk-tsking look of a prim headmistress. His face a mask of exasperation, he returned his own hands to the bed slats. “Um, is this where we have to start over?” she asked, all innocence.

His low, feral growl made her heart leap, her senses sizzle.

“Okay, well, you gave me a free pass. Just don’t let it happen again,” she said, her tongue moistening her lower lip as she considered his erection. It twitched in anticipation.

Caleb’s jaw locked and she felt him tremble as her tongue trailed up the soft, satiny skin that covered steel. She licked and explored, finding his scent pleasantly clean and musky. Then, her eyes holding his, she took him slowly into her mouth. “Ah, yes,” he rumbled his encouragement, letting her know that she was getting it right.

And then his hands were tangled in her hair.
Again.

“Three strikes…” she began playfully, raising her head to admonish him. But she stopped short. Sensual fear shivered through her as, breath heaving, muscles taut, his eyes ensnared her. Moss green, they were the dark eyes of a predator.

“Caleb…” Whatever she was about to say was cut off as he flipped her onto her back.

Then he was levering himself above her, his knee pushing her quivering thighs apart. He settled himself between her legs, mouth avid on her flesh, hands skimming her body, as he fanned the glowing embers of her need into another roaring conflagration.

She was swept up in a sexual maelstrom. He was wild, out of control. He had warned her that he would demand a price for the games she had been playing. He had been struggling with his own true nature, wanting to be gentle with her, on this, her first time with a man. But her erotic foreplay had released the beast in him, unlocked the cage imprisoning his otherworldly desires. And now she found herself lying pinned beneath him, legs splayed, her much smaller body trapped by the heavy weight of his hard muscular frame.

She felt too open to him, too vulnerable. She was suddenly afraid that he was too big for her, that there was no way she could take him inside. The heavy weight of all that aroused male flesh would be like a battering ram crashing through the gatehouse guarding her woman’s flesh. Instinctively, she tried to close her legs, to protect herself from the assault that awaited her, but the slim male hips settled into the concavity of her pelvis prevented her.

She clenched her teeth, closed her eyes. And waited for the invasion.

Chapter Thirty-five

S
he was lying there, open, ready for him. The scent of her arousal honed the sharp edge of Caleb’s lust, a hunger that had been slicing him to ribbons for weeks. He’d been like a starving wolf chained to a tree, taunted ruthlessly with fresh, raw meat set just beyond his reach. And now that the wee lamb lay spread before him, his carnal nature was urging him to take his fill, to feast and plunder. To ravage her.
There’s no need to temper the ferocity in the way men and women of your kind seek their pleasure,
the growling voice of his need insisted
, for she is of your kind. Tuatha de Danann.

While feeding the ravening hunger inside himself—inside them both—he would teach her well. He would awaken the inherent wildness of her sexual nature lying dormant within.

“Caleb.” His wife’s timid whisper was a cool wash of rain on the inferno of his desire.

“I’ll not hurt you,
a ghrá,
” he vowed, using the spellbinding effect of his voice to help her relax. His weight supported on his forearms, he slowly rubbed himself against her moist heat. “We’ve our whole lives together, love. You’ll let me know when you’re ready.”

Her lips parted on a soft moan. A glitter of magic revealed itself in the angel blue eyes staring up at him. “Will you stop talking,” she breathed, “and make love to me already?”

Brave, bold words, he thought. Like the woman herself. “First I’ve to recite the Ritual Binding,” he explained, nuzzling her neck. Then he looked down at her and warned softly, “’Speak up now, if you’ve any doubts, Arianna. For this is your last chance to escape me.”

Her gaze softened. “I’m not going anywhere. Say what you have to.”

Caleb’s heart filled, then overflowed with that foreign emotion…love…as he began to invoke the words that would mate them for life. “As we consummate our vows one to the other, as we become one in the physical sense, so shall we be one in spirit,
anam cara,
soul mates for all time. Do you accept me into your body now,
a banchéile mo chroí,
wife of my heart? And in so doing will you bind yourself to me, for now and forevermore?”

“For now and forever,” she whispered. “I’ve always been yours, my love. Just as you’ve always been mine.”

He kissed her, touched her, until she was again writhing beneath him, making pleading sounds of passion. He pushed partially inside her, stopping at the slight resistance of her maidenhead, stretching her, making her ready to receive him. “Look into my eyes,
a mhuirnín.
And I’ll share the discomfort.”

As she stared deep, deep into his soul, his long fingers curved over the top of her shoulders. He withdrew, then thrust once. Long and hard and deep.

As he tore through the fragile covering, Arianna tensed and squeezed her eyes shut. She muffled a whimper, clamped her thighs against his hips. “Oh, God!”

Caleb held himself rigid, allowing the tight, unused muscles clutching his male flesh to stretch and relax, to adjust to the intrusion. He tipped his forehead against hers. “That’s it,
a ghrá,
’ he encouraged, his voice strangled. “’Twill be nothing but pleasure from now on.”

Caleb felt it wash over him, a strange metamorphosis. Was this unfamiliar warmth of feeling, the overwhelming rush of gratitude at having this woman tucked beneath him, an aftereffect of the Binding? Or was it yet another aspect of mortal love? This feeling of possessive. Protective…

Gazing down, he winced at the purpling love-bites he’d left on the delicate skin of her neck, the chafing from his late-night stubble. Whispering hot, sexy things in her ear, both in English and in Gaelic, he began to rock his hips against her. Her eyes closed on a low moan. Her breath caught, held. “Breathe,
a mhuirnín
,” he urged her, with a low chuckle.

She opened one eye. “Yeah. Easy for you to say.”

Another rumbling laugh.

“Caleb, is…what we’re doing…well, is it different from m-mortal lovemaking?”

“Sorry?”

“I mean, are you…?” She spread her fingers across his chest, stroked a flat male nipple idly with her thumb. He bit back a groan. “Are you using magic? You know, to increase the sexual pleasure?”

His lips twitched. “Now that would be cheating,
a banchéile
,” he tut-tutted. Dipping his head, he tasted her lips in small, sensual sips. “The only magic between us tonight are our feelings for one another.”

“In that case,” she announced, lifting her head to nip at his chin. “I want you to teach me everything you know.”

“Everything, is it? All in one night?” His hips began to pick up the pace, starting and stopping, leading her as she learned to match his rhythm. “Sure about that, are you?”

“Yes, I am.” Her voice was straining with the building pleasure.

“First lesson: Take control of your own pleasure.” Arianna squealed as he rolled onto his back, careful to keep their bodies joined. She ended up on top of him, straddling his hips. Pleased with the freedom of the new position, she smiled, letting her palms skim the corded muscles of his chest. Then she slid one hand behind her, to investigate the heavy maleness invading her body.

Caleb groaned as he gave a long, smooth thrust upward, his hands gripping her hips and pushing down in counterpoint. “Now ride me, woman,” he ordered huskily, setting a forceful pace as her eyes closed, head fell back. Her long, golden hair tumbled down her back, spilled over her shoulders. He covered her breasts, fondled her budding nipples, as she moved up and down, athletic thighs gripping his hips, muscles flexing with each deep stroke.

“Learn the magic of your husband’s touch,” he murmured, pleasuring the small bud of aroused flesh at her center as he increased the tempo of his thrusts. He pumped into her harder and harder, then pushed up into a sitting position, stretching her legs around his waist as he wrapped her in his arms.

“Yes, yes, yes…” Chanting the word breathlessly with every deep thrust, she ground against him, her voice pitching higher, louder with each stroke. Her body was trembling, vibrating, as she reached for the impending climax, but it remained just out of reach. She whimpered in frustration.

Sensing her growing impatience with her own clumsiness at keeping in sync with the unfamiliar rhythm, he moved forward, pushing her onto her back. “
Ciúnaigh anois, a stór.
Sshh now, pet,” he murmured, bending her knees and sliding her legs over his shoulders to change the angle of penetration. “Let me take you there, hmmm?”

Arianna’s head thrashed back and forth, her nails scoring his back, as he moved inside her, his fingers focused on the tiny feminine nub with the exquisite nerve endings. Applying a pressure that was alternately gentle, then firm, he rotated his hips and thrust, pushing her ruthlessly toward her goal. He could feel her coiling tighter and tighter, the pressure building.

“That’s it, my love,” he growled. “Let it happen. Come with me now,
a ghrá.
Anois
.
Now.
” Buried deep inside her, his hips delivered short, hard strokes as she bucked against him. Contractions deep in her womb marked the beginning of her shuddering surrender, her body milking his. His wife’s screams of release echoed off the ancient stone as, driving into her one last time, he groaned and spent himself inside her.

At long, long last, in the here and now, they shattered together in a blaze of enchantment, the heavens exploding and spilling fiery stardust all around them.

* * *

“Are we still alive?” Arianna joked weakly, afloat in the orgasmic afterglow. At one point the two of them seemed to have been levitating high above the earth. She smiled to herself as a verse of her favorite Heart song played through her mind.

He’s a magic man, mama. He got magic hands.

Caleb kissed her soundly, then flopped onto his back, taking her with him, her arm flung over his abdomen, head cushioned on his chest, knee inserted between his muscled thighs. “We touched heaven, sure.”

Literally?
Putting that question aside for later, she stretched up and whispered teasingly in his ear. “I thought the dreams were hot. But I do believe you’re even better in person.”

Caleb laughed softly and nuzzled her cheek with his whiskery chin.

It was then Arianna felt a strange tingling in her womb…in shades of blue. A flood of joy washed over her, warming her to her very soul.

I’ve just conceived Caleb’s son.

Caleb regarded her silently for a few moments, a strange expression on his face. “A son,” he said finally, the awestruck words so softly spoken she could hardly hear him.

He communicated so much in those two words. His wonder at the creation of a precious life. His thankfulness that she was safe and, unlike his mother, would live to cradle her son in her arms. And his worry that their child’s future would be cut mercilessly short by the waking evil. Troubles they postponed by silent agreement to deal with another day, as they drifted off to sleep wrapped in one another’s arms.

* * *

Arianna awoke to the smell of fire…and brimstone. Before she could settle the question of how she could even know what that smelled like, she was being whisked away, sucked from her bed by some unseen force. She tried to grab for Caleb, to cry out to him, only to discover she was paralyzed, struck mute. No sound, not so much as a whimper escaped her lips as the stone walls of the ancient keep melted around her.

Dragged down, down through a long, gray tunnel at what had to have been the speed of light, her body tumbled head over heels, twisting and turning, bumping and scraping into walls crawling with vermin and unspeakable creatures. A writhing two-headed serpent reached out a talon, clawing at her as she sped past. A large horned insect wearing a man’s face filled the reeking tunnel with an ear-splitting hiss.

Landing hard at the bottom of the abyss, within the very bowels of the earth, she stirred up a soot-like gray powder. The molten ash clogged her sinuses and filled her mouth with grit. She forced a small stream of oxygen through the gray mud clogging her lungs and nasal passages, and gagged at the putrid smell. The stench of death and decay, of burning, rotting flesh, mingled with the odor of brimstone.

God help her, had she died in her sleep and gone to hell? The nightmarish terror gripping her heart with an iron hand made the encounter with Conor pale by comparison.

Somehow, she had arrived at the throbbing black heart of the pits of hell. Whispering voices laughed and mocked. Piteous wails rose on waves of torment, then ebbed away into a formidable silence. At once, two Sasquatch-size creatures appeared on either side of her, matted fur crawling with vermin. Thick, crusty nails darkened with human blood locked a steel grip on her arms, biting into her flesh, as they bared yellow teeth as sharp as pikes.

“Come.” The unearthly growl raised the hair on her arms as they dragged her into a towering vault of ragged cut stone. The walls bubbled and spit with molten lava. In the midst of the chamber sat a golden box the size of a sarcophagus. Carved into the lid encrusted with precious gems: diamonds, rubies and emeralds, winged monkey creatures faced each other. Two long poles were slid through clawed feet at the bottom four corners of the box.

Arianna felt sickened by the abomination. A satanic counterfeit of the Ark of the Covenant, its design patterned loosely on biblical instructions.

The smell of death grew stronger, more pervading, as the lid began to raise. It wasn’t hinged, but levitated flatly above the box. As her demonic escorts fell onto their faces in unholy obeisance, a haunting chant arose all around her.

“Anathema…Anathema…the name which shall not be named.”

Suddenly, some unseen force began to draw Arianna forward against her will. Her feet made scuffling noises on the raw stone floor as she fought against it. Terrified to look upon the hideous creature lying in wait for her within the casket, she tried to close her eyes. But her eyelids refused to cooperate.

As her startled gaze took in the form of the sleeping demon, she drew in a sharp breath. And prayed for strength to fight the blasphemous urge to drop to her knees in worship of the ethereal beauty no human eye had ever beheld. An angel of light with a chiseled jaw, a bare muscled chest, and long, golden curls reclined on a bed of white satin. Of her own volition now, Arianna drew closer, her fondest desire to embrace the heart-meltingly luminous being slumbering gently before her.

As she reached his side, his eyes flew suddenly open. The creature’s black, bottomless gaze, the very origin of Evil itself, bore into Arianna as if raping her immortal soul. She tried to pull back, but her forward momentum kept her stumbling toward him. Only by gripping the edge of the coffin was she able to prevent herself from tumbling in, to lie with him.

Though his voluptuous lips didn’t move, he communicated with her, his foul words soiling her mind. “You,” he hissed telepathically. “Should never have come back to Ireland. Leave now, while you’re still able. For the next time I bring you here…I. Shall. Keep. You.”

And with that pronouncement, the gruesome eyes slammed shut.

At once Arianna found herself catapulted back into the bedchamber she shared with Caleb, who still slept like the dead.

What the...?
Why would the demonic creature have threatened her? Ordered her to leave? According to Caleb, she was not a mere mortal and, therefore, could not be the Woman of Promise. Could the redemption of humanity still be connected to her return to Ireland? And, if so, how?

A sick sense of dread lodged in her gut as her inner voice whispered a warning. That her return to the Emerald Isle might have been only the fated first step, the connection that will ultimately draw the Chosen One to Ireland.

If that woman should happen to be one of Arianna’s lifelong friends.

~~ THE END ~~