Rejar (32 page)

Familiar reflexes being what they were, he overtook her before she completed the pivot. His strong arm came around her waist from behind to bodily lift her off the floor.

“Nickolai, put me down!” She kicked, thrashing naked in his arms.

Rejar gave her what she wanted, but, perhaps, not in the manner she expected. He tossed her down on the rug before the fireplace and immediately covered her with himself.

Splaying her hands against his bare shoulders. Lilac pushed at him in vain. The muscles of his powerful chest rippled in the firelight as he clasped her wrists, one in each hand, to bring them down over her head. Effortlessly he pinioned her by interlacing his fingers with her own. It was a sexual stance of Nickolai’s that Lilac knew well.

He was inflamed.

Remembering what had happened to her on the previous occasions when her husband had been so inflamed, Lilac ceased her thrashing. She hesitated, thinking quickly. Nickolai was quite something when he was inflamed. ...

Those incredible eyes of his, narrowed with fury, shot blue and gold fire at her. His sable hair hung about his face, tousled and silken. Those velvet lips of his were compressed in anger but it only accentuated their firm, sensual curve. Lilac thought he had never looked more beautiful.

All rational thought flew out of her head. What was she fighting him for? She wanted him. Lord knew he was exciting her!

Unfortunately, blinded by the splendid picture above her, she was missing his very real ferocity.

“What did you say to me?” he hissed, a hint of white teeth showing.

She grabbed a handful of his hair and made the terrible mistake of saying, “I want you.”

Women had been saying that to him his entire adult life.

Her unthinking words enraged him anew. He did not want her to just want him; he wanted ...

With a growl, he speared her with a smoldering look. “Do you? Then far be it from me to not give you what you want.” His mouth crashed down on hers claiming her mouth in an overpowering abduction.

Rejar was out of control.

He pressed forcefully against her lower lip with his tongue, using the expert technique to gain entry into her waiting mouth. There, he swept inside, demanding all that he touched.

Kissing her over and over, he claimed her mouth as he intended to claim her. Thoroughly. There was no conscious thought to his movements, only a cloud of primitive passion.

Employing the Familiar technique of the silken sting—using two teeth on a small portion of her skin—he nipped the corners of her mouth and the center of her lower lip. The bite was designed to kindle selected points of feminine sensitivity.

He continued the technique along her jawline, delivering the silken sting in a devastating line to key spots of her collarbone.

With the carnal onslaught of that merciless mouth, Lilac couldn’t help but moan. Nickolai’s mouth. A mouth that could deliver untold ecstasy. Her cry of passion escaped lips that pressed against his heated brow.

In his haze, Rejar continued his path, not even realizing he was starting to introduce her to a multitude of methods Familiars had with the loving bite. He moved to her breast, capturing it in his open mouth to administer the waiting haven, a bite particularly suited to his task.

By her choking sounds, Lilac agreed.

After paying equal attention to the other breast, he traveled down the plane of her torso, intermingling several different bites: the kitten’s taste, the fluttering wing ... On and on he went, leaving a trail of acutely aroused nerve endings in his wake.

When he reached the joint of her thigh, he ruthlessly delivered the sting of honey, arrowing along the dainty crease. Male lips and teeth came together in an unparalleled combination.

The highly erotic bite brought shivers to his wife.

Tossing back his black hair, he moved up the length of her, only to demand in a low, husky voice the question which would be her downfall. “What is my name, Lilac?”

Passion-dilated eyes glazed back at him. “N-Nickolai,” she whispered.

He held her within his embrace. “No. It is Rejar. Say it, Lilac.”

So, that was his game, she thought, some of the passion-fog leaving her. Well, it wouldn’t work! He would not bend her to his will with his sensual expertise. “I will not call you by that ridiculous name! It is a cat’s name, not yours.”

Rejar’s eyes glinted, a muscle in his jaw pulsed. “Gifted,” he said quietly.

“What?” she bristled.

“Gifted. My name means gifted in the language of my mother’s people.” It was a name he carried with pride, a name his mother had given him in the time-old Familiar tradition of using the senses to name one’s child. It was a name she had given him with great joy when she realized that despite Krue’s Charl blood, she had birthed a Familiar babe.

It was a name his wife would not speak.

As if echoing his perception, she said, “I will never call you by that name, Nickolai.”

He did not take the news well.

His blue/gold eyes became slits of ice and fire.

In a dreadful decision to lighten his darkening mood, Lilac smiled tremulously. “But you may try to convince me how ‘gifted’ you are.”

“Do not play with me, Lilac, lest you are ready to deal with the consequences.”

It came over Lilac then. A heretofore undisclosed mulish streak. She hadn’t even known she possessed one this strong. The fact that it was horribly ill-timed escaped her.

She reached up to run her fingers through his luxuriant hair, for she knew he particularly liked it. “If you play with me, then I shall play with you ... Nickolai.”

He did not react as she would have hoped.

Her playful action combined with the blatant use of the name Nickolai seemed only to make him madder. Too late, she realized her mistake. Eyes widening, she vainly tried to scoot out from beneath him.

His full weight came down on her.

She felt rather like a squashed bug. “Nickolai, get up!”

He raised up on his elbows, taking some, but not all, of his weight off her. “Think you we will not resolve this tonight? What manner of man do you believe me?”

After what she had seen, she really couldn’t say.

“I ask you now to acknowledge the truth. What is my name?” He was barely controlling the fire in his blood. A fire that had its roots in the restlessness which was somehow, in some way, connected to all of this.

Defiance rose up in her. Her chin notched up in the air. “It is Nickolai. Nickolai! Nickolai! Nickolai!”

With his first thrust he set the tone for what was to come.

It was powerful, raw, untamed.

With every one following, he went deeper, surer, stronger.

Poignantly, he stared down at her as he moved inside. Their eyes met and held. Then his rhythmic movements began building. And somehow Lilac knew he was just starting.

His hands released hers to cup her face, and he brought her mouth up to meet his own.

“Say it.”

This stubborn side would not back down. “No, I will not!” she gasped defiantly against his mouth.

His eyes flashed; the cords of his neck stood out.

It was a nonverbal roar.

Lilac’s eyes widened. Now she had done it! For the first time since Nickolai had come into the room. Lilac was starting to have second thoughts about inflaming him. It appeared she had awakened a sleeping lion!

Nickolai is lost to reason! Lilac had the moment’s lucid realization before she was swept away by the sensual storm invading her.

Beyond cogent thought, Rejar fiercely covered that stubborn mouth with his own.

And enhanced.

She felt... something ...

It sizzled through her from the place where they joined, radiating outward to every point of her body. A burning vibration of raw, sexual energy. Awakening the tiniest of sensory nerve endings.

Each and every part of her body seemed to become instantly erogenous as the effects of this alien augmentation magnified the sexual sensations she was experiencing.

In the midst of this overpowering skill, Rejar’s provocative mating scent, like an exotic spice, covered them both.

Lilac writhed beneath him, scattering kisses all over his face—his eyes, his lips, his nose, his jaw.

Reputation withstanding, the Familiar had made her wild.

With Lilac’s fervid response, he growled something indecipherable. Then he bit her shoulder.

Without realizing it, Rejar began the rhythm of the Nine Hundred Strokes to Love.

It was the sacred ceremony of Familiar incarnation.

His thrusts followed an ancient incremental pattern: eight shallow, one deep. The compelling movements were not actually counted but were measured against a mnemonic device Gian Ren had taught him when he entered his maturity.

With each measured stroke, Rejar’s breathing and concentration increased, his love-thrusts emulating the fire building inside him. It was a fire Lilac was not prepared for and a fire which he should not be experiencing for years.

Lilac begged him to stop even while urging him to continue between breathless moans and pleas.

He was beyond hearing her.

Rejar was in the throes of a highly explicit mating—ritualistic and savage. He had turned completely feral.

Lilac lost track of time, of herself, of where she was. Only his endless thrusts had any meaning to her. In what way, she was not sure.

She only knew that she hugged him tightly to her and cried out his name over and over.

It was not the name he wanted to hear.

He glided the edge of his hand along the seam of her mouth. Nudging her lips apart with the side of his wrist, he snarled, “Bite!”

Lilac searched his glazed eyes. He wanted her to ... ?

She sunk her teeth into the spot he indicated on the back edge of his wrist.

Rejar groaned aloud. It was an old Familiar trick to increase sexual stamina in the male. The secret spot was a pressure point in direct connection to his erotic senses.

It brought him to another level.

He reared back on his haunches. Clasping her waist, he brought her halfway up his thighs.

He grasped her right ankle. Tormenting her with his innate ability, he scraped his nails along her responsive instep before lifting the leg over his shoulder. Carefully, he bent forward to support the back of her neck with his left hand.

The creative position allowed him to thrust very deep.

Lilac shattered.

Before her convulsions had even stopped, he withdrew from her.

She had not even regained her breath when her left leg joined her right over his opposite shoulder. Nickolai had situated her so he could replace his manhood with his mouth.

With her legs dangling over his back and Nickolai intent between them, Lilac came again.

“What is my name?” he murmured, his mouth hot against the delicate inner folds of her femininity.

“N-Nick-Nickolai,” she stuttered, barely able to speak.

“Wrong answer.” He scraped his teeth over her, making her cry out at the exquisite torture. Then he rolled across the floor with her in his arms, entering her anew.

The tempo continued.

And so it went to the small hours of the night until Rejar finally came to his senses and ended it. By that time. Lilac had screamed her releases so many times that she simply fainted dead away.

He lifted her in his arms and carried her over to the bed.

Depositing her beneath the covers, he angrily seized his pants from the floor and yanked them on.

Barefoot and bare-chested, hair flying about him, he stormed downstairs to the study.

The dark room was lit only by the fire in the fireplace. Rejar strode over to the liquor cabinet, slammed down a glass, and poured himself a brandy. With a shaking hand, he lifted the glass to his mouth and downed the contents in one swallow.

He had brought his wife to the first tier of the incarnation ceremony. He had meant only to enhance!

Enhancing was an accountable trait for a man to possess and for this reason Familiars used it very cautiously. There were many reasons for it to remain shrouded in myth and cloaked in secrecy. The mating rhythm, however, was something he should not have felt the need to attempt for years. What had happened to him?

Disgusted, he threw the empty glass against the fireplace.

It shattered into a thousand pieces.

Like his heart.

A voice came from behind the high-backed chair in the darkened corner of the room. “What troubles you so, Rejar?”

Traed.

Drained, Rejar sunk into the chair near the fireplace.

He heard Traed approach.

This newfound brother stood before him, his back silhouetted by the firelight. The odd thought. Why does he have his back to the fire? filtered through Rejar’s mind. Traed needs to face the light. ...

Rejar shook off the unsettling insight.

With the patience he was famous for, Traed waited for his brother to speak.

When Rejar finally looked up, there was intense sadness in his blue and gold eyes. “I have mated with a woman who does not love me, Traed.”

“What foolishness is this? Lilac—”

“No.”

“Why do you speak thus?”

Rejar uttered words the meaning of which he never thought would matter in his life. Words, the essence of which, in his carefree youth, would have been more than enough for him from any woman. Prophetic words that came back to haunt him.

“Lilac does not love me; she only wants me.”

“Surely not!” Traed was not certain what to make of this development. It did not make sense to him; the two of them were mates, therefore ...

Rejar must have perceived the situation wrong.

“It is so, my brother.” The enormity of his recent feral act confronted him. “What have I done?” Overcome, Rejar bent forward in the chair, covering his face with his hands.

Compassionately, the elder man placed his hand on Rejar’s shoulder. The fraternal gesture was new and alien to Traed. “Tell me.”

“I cannot speak of it.”

“Cannot or will not?” Traed asked this with some alarm. What had the Familiar done?

Rejar looked up at him, eyes shining with moisture. “I cannot, Traed. It is something Familiars do not speak of—to anyone.”