Firebrand (18 page)

Chapter Fifteen

Amber stared out into the dark night from the porch of her room in Tolhram’s castle. Beyond tiny lights from fires that lit the homes of the fae twinkled like Christmas lights but beyond those she could see nothing but blackness.

Strange world, she thought. Nothing like home where man-made light could turn night into day and the people were intense, assertive, sometimes appalling in their will to do whatever it took to survive. This was a much gentler world, kinder, more dependent on the old ways. This was a world that truly needed her help and protection.

She looked again into the darkness. She’d never been afraid of the night she even embraced it. Like a mother’s arms, it gave her comfort. When she closed her eyes, she could pretend that none of this was happening. There were no choices to make. No destiny to fulfill. No past. No future. Nothing, just a world filled with ordinary purpose.

But when she opened her eyes, the reality of it all came rushing back. A realty that not only was the world she knew unsafe but other worlds as well and she was responsible for saving them all. But how, and how would it all end?

“Amber?”

She turned at the familiar voice coming from behind her. “Is Roswyn going to be all right?”

“I think so, she’s sleeping,” David said. “Corin is with her.”

Amber returned to looking out into the night. “I can’t believe that a part of that vile thing that did that to her lives inside me.”

David stood beside her, mimicking her pose. “You’ll never be like them.”

She wrapped her arms around her stomach. Minutes passed while they just stood there. Even though they didn’t touch, she could feel the length of his body as intensely as though they had melded together. Every fiber in her body tuned to his aura and she could even feel him breathe.

“I wish I could believe you, David,” she said.

David put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to him. “I believe it,” he said.

She looked into his eyes, trying to ignore the way the wind caught his heady, male scent and carried it to her. Her senses honed in on the primitive human inside him when he moved closer. She could see the light from the torches on the wall flicker in his eyes, making it seem as though she could see right down into his soul.

He dropped his gaze to her lips and then to the rise of her breasts. When he looked back at her, she could clearly see desire building in his eyes and it fueled her own hunger until it roared and hissed and begged for freedom. Waves of longing crashed over her until she felt she would drown in their wake. She touched his face. On contact electrical pulses of pure primal instinct tingled through her and she was helpless to control them.

“Kiss me David,” she said, her lips parting in a harsh breath. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him to her. “Love me, David. Ease the torment that’s building inside me.” All the thoughts of what she was and what she had to do slipped away as she began to give in to the needs of her body.

“Are you sure?” His haunted gaze searched her face. “Because once I touch you, there’s no going back.”

“I am,” she said looping her arms around his neck. Her breasts pressed against his chest, her hips seared his. She threaded her fingers in his hair. “But not just with touch tonight,” she said. “I want everything.”

Stepping back, she dragged his shirt over his head. He picked her up and she locked her legs around his waist, settling against the hardness beneath the straining fabric of his pants as he carried her to the bed. He set her down on the edge and shedding his clothes, stood before her naked and ready.

He moved to join her on the bed when she stopped him with a hand to his chest. “No. I want to look at you.”

She brought her hand down and touched his erection, marveling at the sight of his length, his breadth. He was harder and hotter than before. Trailing her nails back up his body, she raked across his six-pack abs, his shoulders lifting with each breath he took in response. His hands rested on her shoulders, kneading the muscles he found there as a means of control to allow her the time she wanted to explore him.

Skimming her palms around his waist, she stood and traced the corded muscles of his back to his broad shoulders. Then moving slowly, she caressed his chest, tangling her fingers in the soft dusting of hair she found there. With a patience that was nearly painful to her, she let her hands descend, carefully avoiding the shaft that called to her. Her fingers moved slowly across his thighs and around to his backside. She felt him shudder when she cupped him, her palms compliant to the perfectly male arch of the muscles there.

“I love your body,” she purred into his chest, flicking her tongue across each nipple before kissing it.

“Use it.” The words came out like a growled command and she ripped off her clothes.

With both a hunger and a power, she pushed him onto the bed, her mouth clamping down on his as they fell demanding his compliance. Around them the air crackled with pulses of discharging energy that sparked onto their skin with a jolt of pleasurable pain. The wind came up, catching the ends of the gauzy canopy that surrounded the bed and closing it around them.

David held her so hard that she felt she couldn’t breathe. He was strong, powerful and she felt his want seep into every cell in her body where it ran hot and furious inside her. She could feel his hunger, his lust, as her tongue tasted him deeply and fully.

He made a little growling sound and moved his hips solidly against hers. She rocked with him in return, the rhythm of their bodies coming faster, harder. In one smooth motion, David rose up and turned, rolling her onto her back and pinning her there with his body.

Amber gasped when he cupped one breast with his hand, palming the mound and fingering the nipple into a tight aching bud. She heard herself moan and felt herself suck in a shallow breath with each stroke of his fingers. After a few minutes of exquisite torture, he lowered his head so he could take the nipple fully into his mouth and nip it with his teeth.

When his lips touched her skin, Amber cried out his name. His tongue swirled across her puckered bud and the sensation that ripped through her almost made her stop breathing. At another pinch of his teeth, every part of her body screamed in pleasure.

David raised his head and returned to her mouth, taking her lips in hungry passion. His hand trailed down her stomach and when she felt him begin to push her legs apart, she helped him, opening herself to accept his touch. As his fingers slid into the wetness he found there, she arched her back to receive him. His fingers dove deep, plunging, stroking and rubbing until she was writhing in an ever increasing tense pleasure beneath his masterful touch.

David continued the skilled manipulation of her body, whispering her name as his fingers took her over and over in a lover’s dance. “Amber, I love you so much. I never wanted anyone or anything as much as I want you.”

She could hear the husky thickness of want his voice. “I need to feel you inside me this time, David,” she said, her own voice layered with a wanting of her own. She reached down and cupped him even as she continued to arch to his touch. “All of you.” She looked into his eyes and could see him burn with the desire to grant her wish.

He stopped the excruciatingly pleasurable play of her body and swallowed hard, clearly fighting for control. “We don’t know if you need to be a…”

She captured his mouth with her own to silence him. “The Triad will happen whether or not I am a virgin,” she whispered against his lips. “I want this, David. Now. Before my visions become reality.”

“If we do this, Amber, no power in the world, this or any other world, will ever be able to stop me from loving you again,” he warned.

In response, she took his lower lip between her teeth and bit down until she drew a warm trickle of blood. “I want you, David. I want to feel you inside me. Now. Later may be too late.”

His hands found her breasts again and she shivered, her body telling him what she wanted him to do. Her nipples were hard and hot beneath his touch, the furious hunger racing through her more profound than it had ever been. For a brief moment he hesitated. There was so much at stake. But looking down into her face so filled with love for him, nothing else mattered, not the three worlds, or anyone in them. This moment was theirs and theirs alone. Her whimpered moan of need fired through him. He moved over her and plunged himself inside her.

She screamed. Not because of the pain of the first contact but because the sensation of his movements deep and hard inside her were so intense that she could feel it in every cell of her body. She bent her knees and tipped her hips so she could take every luxurious inch of him, accepting each thrust with a matching force of her own.

He slid his hands under her backside and held her to him as he rose up on his knees and leaned back, pulling her up with him. He shifted, holding her, lifting and lowering her over him again and again as her head fell back with the rapture he gave her with each thrust of his hips, exposing the creamy white expanse of her neck to him.

The rhythm continued as he lowered his mouth to her throat, kissing her, licking her, suckling her skin until it reddened and he heard her whimper.

A fire overtook her as she rocked with him. She clawed at his back pulling him forward, wanting him deeper still. Her body bucked against him and his groans of the pleasure-pain they were both feeling sent her desire into overdrive.

David felt the power pass through her to him and he matched it, his biceps bunching and knotting as he held onto her sliding pelvis. It was like a duel to the death but clearly there would be no winner. Only total surrender on both sides.

Rocking against him she stared into his face, her teeth bared as her breath hissed out at him. “I am yours David, forever.” Then she came, clinging to him, shivering, moving harder, faster, her inner muscles gripping him as her orgasm crashed from her in waves.

The silkiness of her juices slithered over him, wrapping him in a sheath of velvety wetness. He felt the crescendo of his own pinnacle race through him and he drove hard into her, once, twice and then he threw his head back as his body jerked and pulsated. He pulled her close, the power of their joining ravaging them with its force, his pleasure pumping into her.

After the force of the joining abated, they clung to each other as though the world would end if they parted even for an instant. Amber kissed his neck, tears of love glistened in her eyes.

“Nothing will ever compare to this moment, my love, nothing.” He murmured in her ear as they separated and settled down into the downy softness of the bed.

Amber nestled against him, cradling his head on her shoulder. As she let herself spiral down from frenzy to calm, an awareness caught her. Something different from anything she’d ever felt before, something separate from the lovemaking.

A pinpoint of heat began to build inside her. Small at first, it spiraled, gaining force until it could not be ignored. Like the fluttering of the fairy wings she was now used to, it settled deep and warm inside her. It was something wonderful. Something promising.

It was Life.

* * * * *

Eric Sinclair stood outside in the darkness the breeze tangling his dark hair. There was a hint of rain in the Irish air. He could feel its touch in the wind. Beyond him waves crashed onto the shoreline. Behind him the caves of the mountains hid the entrance to his former home.

The pull of the human world had been too alluring, too strong. He preferred Italian marble, travertine or thick wool carpeting to the dirt floors of the catacombs. Down blankets felt better than animal skins at night. Coarse fabric would never replace the cashmere that now caressed his skin.

Even as his blood began to burn with the coming of The Taking, he knew he could never return to the life he once knew. Never.

Amber was the key to both his immortality and his humanity. He would do whatever it took to possess her.

He turned to walk to the mountains when a body fell at his feet with the dull thud of lifelessness. He looked down, unmoved and kicked a motionless arm out of his way with the toe of one shiny black eel-skin shoe.

“Hmm, Furnum.” The words were more a statement of recognition rather than an expression of concern. Eric raised his gaze just as Jolinax stepped from the shadows. “How did the fool die?”

“The Drakeman killed him,” Jolinax replied.

Eric stepped over the body. “This does put a new spin on things.”

“We must take our revenge,” Jolinax declared.

Sinclair laughed. “Why? Drake did us a favor.” He jabbed at Furnum’s body with his foot. “Eliminating a potential problem.”

Jolinax knelt and rolled Furnum’s body onto his back. “No, the Drakeman created a problem. You must look,” he said pointing to the fatal wound in Furnum’s body.

Sinclair stooped beside him. He ripped the bloodied tunic Furnum had worn apart and inspected the gash. As his fingers traced the irregular split, a sickening realization washed over him. His anger flared. “The mark of the Sword of Shadows.”

“The Drakeman. He has found it.”

Sinclair grabbed Jolinax by the edges of the vest he wore and stood, pulling the soldier troll with him. “Where is it? Where is he?”

“He has escaped, Master,” Jolinax said, his feet three feet off the ground as Sinclair held him fast. “With the other. Into the snow they went. Took it with them.”

“Then we must…” Sinclair’s reply was cut with a growl that came from inside him like the rumble of an exploding volcano. He looked up at the starred sky. The moon had set. It was time.

He felt his skin burn and the pain begin to spiral from the center of his body. Almost quicker than the eye could see, his body flashed between his human form and his true troll likeness.

Jolinax fell to the ground as Sinclair’s hands moved between the perfectly formed lines of a man and the thick, gnarled appendages of a troll until his form finally settled in that of the underworld king.

He gathered the expensive suit that fit his perfect human body. His yellowed eyes glowed “Find him,” Sinclair, now Gorash, demanded. “If he delivers the sword to his daughter, it will ensure the Triad.” He grabbed Jolinax and pushed him to the ground. “And it will also ensure your death.”