Lord of the Dark (8 page)

Raising her out of the water, he laid her on the towel he’d set there earlier, slid her hips to the edge, and spread her legs. Rhiannon groaned as he lowered his mouth to the soft, swollen nether lips and sought her hard, erect bud with his tongue. Her primal sound, guttural and rich, resonated through his body, as he laved the little erection as hard as steel, tasting her honey-sweet juices.

His tongue probed deeper, gliding over the length of her virgin skin, the barrier he must penetrate. She shuddered with pleasure at his touch, and his fingers quickly replaced his tongue. Gently at first, he stroked the barred entrance to her sex, long, languid strokes that made her groan in involuntary spasms. He was holding back to prolong her pleasure, while finding the most painless way to open her to his anxious cock. Desire starred his vision and quickened his breath. Grazing her hard, erect bud, the rhythm of his fingers working the barrier skin grew faster—deeper—more urgent until the friction heated his fingertips. She sucked in her breath as the skin gave, admitting one finger, then two. They came away smeared with the blood of her virtue, and Gideon pulled her back into the water and wrapped her legs around his waist, pressing the hot, hard tip of his cock against her broken virgin flesh, until the mushroom head entered her.

Rhiannon’s pleasure moans heightened his need. Lying back in the water, his wings became a flotation device that buoyed them as she straddled him, taking him deeper and deeper in slow, tantalizing increments until he filled her. The water laving his wings as he floated there had brought him to the brink. His need was so great the pain of holding back was nearly more than he could bear. White pinpoints of blinding light starred his vision again as her vulva gripped his cock. He could feel every vein in his engorged sex boring into her virgin silkiness as he raised and lowered her on his shaft, feel the ridged head strike her womb again and again. She was his, and there was no lightning bolt, no watcher to torment and deny him. Could it be? It was too good to be true.

Gripping the firm, round globes of her buttocks, he held her fast as he righted himself in the water. Climax would no longer be denied. Every inch of him—every pore—every cell in his skin had a pulse of its own beating to the same meter throbbing through every feather in his silvery wings.

“Hold on to me,” he said huskily, leading her beneath the waterfall.

He had reached the point of no return. Backing her against the moss-covered wall beneath the cascade, he took her lips in a ravenous kiss as he undulated against her in an unstoppable frenzy, thrusting into her again and again to the rhythm of the pounding in his blood. Deep, spiraling thrusts wrenched a troop of moans from Rhiannon’s throat and shot hot blood through his temples the more he pistoned into her.

Holding her beneath the fall, he let the water pour down over them, over their bodies, over his sexually sensitive wings, and groaned into her mouth as he came inside her. Gripping his pulsating shaft with her vagina, she milked him dry until he’d filled her with his hot, thick seed, until it overflowed her body and mixed with the great, diaphanous clouds of spindrift sifting down over them.

Gideon groaned again. He could feel her release. It heightened his own. Her hands fisted in his hair unleashed sensations he’d never felt before, and her sweet mouth taking his tongue deeply tasted of her own essence and the honey mead she’d drunk at dinner. Yes, she was
his.
How could he ever let her go, but how could he keep her?

His heart was hammering against her, as he held his breath through the final orgasmic ripples coursing through his shuddering body. At the last vibration of drenching fire, his enormous wings bent forward and wrapped around them, cocooning Rhiannon against him as he withdrew himself and crushed her close against him.

Tears and the falling water misted Gideon’s vision as he led Rhiannon out from beneath the pulsating flow. Cupping her face in his hand, he gazed into her eyes. They were dilated with desire—desire he had awakened in her. What had he done to her, this beautiful creature whom the storm had cast up on his beach? What had he done to them both?

Swooping down, he gathered her hard against him again, as if his life depended upon it, and took her lips in a smothering kiss. It was volatile, but brief, before leaving her there veiled in spindrift, like a bride, without speaking the words his heart was screaming, but he dared not speak, not now—not ever.

R
hiannon remained in the pool a while. He had left her so abruptly, but he had loved her so well. Did this mean she could stay? He hadn’t said a word. But then, neither had she. He had rendered her speechless. His dynamic body, so powerful and anxious, had opened her like the petals of a rose, layer upon silken layer to pleasures she never dreamed imaginable. And yet, he had taken her tenderly, for penetration had been difficult. Her virgin skin was thick, the slit beneath narrow, and his sex was enormous, not only in length, but in thickness. The gods had endowed him well. How they could have done that and then punished him for using it was unfathomable to her.

Stroking through the steamy mineral water, Rhiannon spiraled on her back; working her legs like scissors, she opened them to the spindrift, rather than the pulsating flow, to let the fine, luminous mist soothe her sore vagina. But something unexpected happened. Thinking of Gideon, and how he had pleasured her, she became aroused all over again.

She closed her eyes as she floated there. The pulse beat deep inside at the core of her sex and began to thrum a steady rhythm, calling her hand to her mons area, where the root of his rock-hard sex had bruised her. Needing to explore, for he had changed her, and she wanted to see how, her fingers crawled through the V of honey-colored pubic curls and delved deeper, finding the hard nub of her clitoris. Probing deeper still, she parted her swollen nether lips, so sensitive to the touch after Gideon had loved her, and touched the place where her virgin skin had been. Her breath caught in her throat as her fingers slipped inside. How hot the flesh was, still slick with traces of his seed and the dew of her release.

She could see him gazing down at her, his dilated eyes hooded with desire. Her fingers remembered the tactile feel of his soft, silver-white feathers, and what happened inside her when she touched them—how he exploded, pumping her full of his seed—his primitive, bestial groan resonating through her body as he kissed her so deeply, their tongues conjoined.

She was touching places he had touched, places no one else had touched—not even herself until he made it possible. She was his. She was
all
his, but did he want her? She beat those thoughts back trying to duplicate the ecstasy of Gideon’s embrace, trying to feel what he’d felt as her sex seized the fingers she’d slipped inside her.

Groaning, Rhiannon moved closer to the little fall, opening her legs to the flow as she’d done once before. The clouds of diaphanous mist covered her body. Creaming white water suds played upon her breasts, her belly and thighs, stinging, seeking the pleasure points, hardening the tawny buds of her nipples to tall, dimpled peaks as she opened herself to the flow. On the verge of climax, she let the water lave her, let the cascade take her as Gideon had done. The water was her lover then, and she embraced it, just as she’d embraced Gideon. But it wasn’t lover enough. It wasn’t
him
. Nothing would ever be enough again—nothing but him.

Did he want her? Would he keep her? Or would he send her away? Rhiannon had to know, and she had to know right now. Climbing out of the pool, she dried herself on the soft towel, wriggled into the nightshift, and went straight to Gideon’s chamber. But his sleeping alcove was empty. Gideon was gone.

Gideon didn’t go to his chamber. He needed to be alone then. The gods only knew he was certainly conditioned to that. It was the presence of a certain passionate little female, part tigress, part virgin still, that he’d just deflowered and left naked in his pool that drove him out of his cave. He couldn’t trust himself not to turn around and ravish her again, and again, until he’d sated himself. But that was the trouble. He could ravish her for eons and not have his fill. Already he was hard again. And he had just emptied himself in her—filled her with the life of his body to overflowing.

He hadn’t stopped to collect his eel skin when he left her, or to fetch his spare. Half expecting to be struck down the minute he stepped outside, he’d burst out into the darkness and soared off. The night air was like balm upon his damp skin. A pity it turned his traitorous wings into instruments of sexual torture.

He should have said something to her when he left her. But what could he have said, that he had conducted a little
test
, and that he had passed it, but it made no difference? Could he have told her he’d ruined her for naught, spoiled her for a mate who could keep her—love and cherish her? Could he have told her that it would be only a matter of time before a watcher would find out and banish him yet again? Could he have warned her that such a watcher would surely mete out some dreadful retribution he couldn’t imagine that might well overflow onto her as well? What would happen to her then, alone, her virtue gone, cast out among strangers? They would make a whore of her. What else could she be, the castoff consort of Gideon, Lord of the Dark, fallen archangel of the gods, condemned to wander the Arcan wilderness alone forevermore—even to
Outer Darkness
? For that was what he was courting, what surely would be the next plateau of his punishment, to be cast into the Netherworld abyss, where night prevailed and there was no light of day. No fallen ever returned from the halls of Outer Darkness, or human either, come to that. On his present course, it was only a matter of time.

The wind whipped tears in Gideon’s eyes as he streaked through the starry night sky. How good it was in Rhiannon’s arms. How warm and sweet and willing she was under his caress. If she had only fought him from the start, it might have been easier. But no, she wanted him just as he wanted her. They were perfectly matched, and already he did not know how he could ever bring himself to part with such an exquisite woman who surrendered so totally to his passions and shared his same appetites.

He had awakened her to pleasures of the flesh unknown to her. Could he have become so calloused as to have done such a thing with no promise of a future in the offing? No, never that, but it is just exactly what he’d done nonetheless. He hadn’t thought it through. All he wanted was to see if it could be done, if he could dupe the watchers and have the love of a woman—
this
woman. Now that he knew he could, he dared not, else what was blossoming between them become full blown, making separation unbearable. And yet…there was that little voice at the back of his brain reminding him Rhiannon was a gift of the gods and telling him to have what he’d taken while he could.

Flying through the clouds, his cock grew harder as the wind grew stronger, sighing through his wings like a woman in coitus. Other voices were speaking then. He’d heard them before, but never in a conscious state. They had always come to him before in dreams, or on the shadowy edge of consciousness…

What say you now
? the first voice said.
Shall we take him before more harm is done?

Not…yet,
the other replied.
That option will always exist if needs must. The runes have been cast…the fates decreed. It must play out as it is designed.

Gideon strained his ears to hear more, but all he heard was the wail of the banshee wind. “Who are you?” he called out. “What do you want? Take me where?”

Now look what you’ve done
, the first voice said.
He heard you
!
No more while he wakes
…

“Who is there?” Gideon demanded. “Speak!”

But there was no answer. The voices had stilled, but for a rumble of incoherent mumbling, though he called to them again and again.

Gideon lost altitude straining to hear, and began to spiral downward out of control. The wind ripping through his wings as he plummeted toward the bay beneath him tugged at the chord rooted deep in his sex. The climax was riveting, throwing him off balance even more, as his seed left his body in involuntary spurts. But there was no pleasure in it happening so swiftly, only pain.

He had nearly reached the surface of the water when he finally pulled out of the tailspin. That hadn’t happened to him in eons, but then he hadn’t been this distracted in eons. He needed to touch down somewhere and rest a while. Already the tingling had begun as new currents buoyed his wings. He raised his fist to the heavens in a silent blasphemy. He
needed
his wings. If only the gods had left him that, but they had not. They had turned his very
anatomy
into his enemy when they cursed him with libidinous lust.

His head ached from the sudden spiral downward. His heart was pounding in his chest. It felt as if it would burst through his ribs and fall into the bay. His throat was parched and dry from gulping rapid air that dried his throat and nostrils, not to mention the unbridled sensations ripping through his cock all over again.

What had the voices said? He wracked his brain trying to remember what he had heard before self-preservation took over his senses and he lost the thread of their strange disembodied speech.
The runes have been cast
…That was all he could remember.
The rune caster!
Maybe she was the answer. Gideon hadn’t visited the rune caster since before he fell, when the woman he loved was so gravely ill. The rune caster was always a last resort, for she did not have the favor of the gods, since they took a dim view of divination. Visiting her again would bring back those dark times, but there was no other alternative. He’d heard those words:
The runes have been cast.
And whether a real voice had delivered them or his subconscious, he had to heed them, and he changed direction.

The rune caster’s dwelling stood on a rocky little islet swathed in mist on the edge of what the Arcans believed to be Outer Darkness, for no man had ever gone beyond it and returned. Tales abounded about the Netherworld, about the Poison Sea that bordered it, and about the gateway beyond the last of the archipelago’s string of enchanted islands. But Gideon knew well what lay beyond the great stone arch that marked the channel. It was the gateway to hell.

Halfway there, he wondered at the wisdom of making the visit. The rune caster was a woman to be reckoned with, and he had no tribute to bring her, naked as he was. That had been enough the last time, but who knew what would be expected now.

The worst of it was no one ever knew what incarnation they would find her in when they visited her rocky islet. She was a shape-shifter, able to transform into many guises. No one really knew which incarnation was her true one, and some were terrifying. The last time, he found her in the form of a beautiful, voluptuous woman, and seduction was her price for augur that was true enough but brought him sorrow. What would her price be this time? And how would she extract it?

Thinking these thoughts, he almost turned back. What good would it do to visit her? What could she tell him that he didn’t already know deep down in the depths of his soul? He was doomed to suffer the wrath of the gods through all eternity, unless there was some way for him to have what he had just tasted with Rhiannon.

A she-wolf met him on the rocks when he touched down, a sleek, black wolf, with eyes like fire. Was it a minion or the woman herself? There was no way of knowing. It disappeared in a fog pocket as Gideon scaled the rocky islet and made his way to the rune caster’s thatched roof cottage in a little hollow, steeped in mist. The door was open. Stooping down, for he was much too tall to pass through it upright, Gideon entered, his sharp eyes darting about the perimeter.

At first, he thought the one-room cottage was empty, until a great raven strafed him soaring past to disappear in the mist outside. Sorceress glamour, he had no doubt. The formidable creature left a mark upon his cheek when whizzing past, drawing his hand to the wound. His fingers came away smeared with blood.

“Mica’s arse!” he trumpeted, wiping his cheek again.

A burst of giddy laughter from behind spun him around to face the woman he’d come to see, Lavilia, the rune caster, in a different incarnation than she’d appeared to him so many ages ago. This time she was old and withered, her sour-smelling hair, a matted snarl of wiry gray matter that resembled frayed hemp, fanned out about her head like a misshapen halo. She wasn’t naked now. Instead, she wore a metal collar, from which long ropes of seaweed hung, sparing him the sight of her grotesque body beneath.

“You ought to cage that vulture!” he snapped at her, still soothing his face.

“He doesn’t like intruders,” the woman cackled.

“I am hardly that,” Gideon said.

“You may as well be, Lord of the Dark.” She nodded toward his wound. “That there is your punishment.”

“Will there never be an end to punishments?” Gideon railed.

“Is that a question,” she returned. “You may have only three, and it wouldn’t be wise to waste them. That I even ask is a courtesy I need not extend. You are too long a stranger, Gideon.”

“It is a complaint,” he sallied, “nothing more.”

She nodded. “Very well, then…To what…or whom do I owe the honor of this visit?”

“Three questions, you say?” he queried. “Cast your runes then.”

She drew a leather pouch from the folds of her seaweed costume, flashing glimpses of her faded nipples, which he was certain was not accidental.

“Your price?” he asked, nodding toward the gray sagging breasts.

“Not this time, dark lord,” she said. “What I want from you is far more precious than that cock I see there standing at attention, but we will get to that.”