Serpent's Kiss (17 page)

He had a thing for her. He had it bad and it gnawed in his gut, a craving he had not yet found a way to satisfy.

Wyr, when they mated, did so for life. There was a line beyond which an irrevocable change occurred. No one fully understood where that line was drawn because, he believed, it was different for everyone. Mating, for a Wyr, came from a complex combination of choice, sex, instinct, actions and emotion.

He did not think mating could happen unless something deep and fundamental within a Wyr invited it in. He had witnessed firsthand both Dragos and Tiago as they had experienced the throes of mating. He had talked to each male at some point as they had gone through the experience, and he had, in fact, tried his best to get Tiago to reverse course, which had nearly cost him not only Tiago’s friendship, but Niniane’s as well. Neither Dragos nor Tiago had chosen to back away when they realized what was happening. Instead they seemed to embrace their fate. More, they did everything in their power to make it happen.

Rune had acknowledged the presence of a few other potential mates throughout his life. There had been a couple of rare women who had a combination of personality traits that caused him to look at them in speculation and think to himself, you might just be perfect. In the end he had not pursued any of them.

He wondered now what would have happened if he had. Perhaps nothing. They might have been terrific lovers for a time and become a good memory. He had not wanted to take a mate and had chosen not to risk it.

He believed he was all right for now. A dangerous fascination did not turn into mating all on its own. Carling’s own barriers would help with that.

He had been wrong about her. Maybe she wasn’t a giggling girlfriend type, and maybe she didn’t allow very many people to get too close, but she wasn’t alone on a pinnacle and completely closed off. She cared, sometimes very deeply, sometimes, he thought, more than she knew, which was why Duncan had been grieving when Rune had talked to him. It was also why Carling had tolerated Rhoswen’s excessive devotion for so long, and why she insisted on healing and keeping Rasputin, even though it was not easy or convenient for her to do so. He wondered if she realized the real reason she cooked Rasputin chicken. It wasn’t to remind herself of the details of physical appetite. It was to remind herself of love.

That being said, the invisible line she had drawn between them still stood. They were still too different from each other, their lives too far apart. He could come up to the line and then choose to go no further.

A mating Wyr gave his life to his mate. Such an extreme gift called for an extraordinary kind of devotion or loyalty in return, especially from those who were not Wyr, for they could always choose to walk away while the Wyr who had mated to them never would. Although Rune had been concerned at first when Tiago had bonded with Niniane, he had come to admit, Niniane had the kind of capacity for devotion Tiago needed. Rune did not believe he could throw himself one-sided into mating with someone. He simply was not impetuous to the point of being suicidal.

But what a spectacular lover Carling would make. The thought caused his groin to tighten. Rapid-fire images bulleted through his brain, images of her curved luscious body writhing under his, her head thrown back, gorgeous eyes glittering with desire and pleasure as he pistoned into her. She would be a truly haunting lover. He wanted her mouth on his skin, her hands on his body. He wanted it more than he had wanted anything before. He broke into a sweat just thinking about it.

He regarded her, his lids dropping to hide whatever expression might be in his eyes. The way to satisfy a craving was to indulge it. To gorge on what one craved, taking and taking it, until the blaze of desire finally melted into satiation. That was how he could work Carling out of his system once and for all.

As fascinated as he had been with her these last few weeks, he hadn’t made the decision to actually pursue her.

Not until just now.

And she would want him to. He had already seen the kernels of passion in her, like a banked fire that had been abandoned but had not yet gone out, and he had tasted it on her lips. Earlier on the cliff, he had watched as desire warred with other emotions on her expression. He had chosen not to push, but not any longer.

By the time he was done with her, by all the gods, she would want him.

C
arling watched in bemusement as Rune’s face and body grew tight and sharp-edged. His heart rate increased, a flush of color darkened his lean cheeks and an intensity of emotion exploded out of him.

What was that feeling? It was the same kind of feeling that had poured out of both Tiago and Niniane whenever they were together, a driving force that had impelled them into a new, uncertain future. Carling had known the feeling before as well, so very long ago....

Hunger. Rune looked at her and felt hunger.

She stilled and opened her mouth, just as he launched off the table to pace throughout the room, his restless movements filled with a tight, liquid, urgent grace.

“We need to come up with a plan and it should be a fast one,” he said. “We have to go to San Francisco to call Seremela. Maybe she’ll be able to fly out for a consultation.”

Carling nodded slowly. She had been angry and shaken earlier, and ready to do anything that would let her escape from Rune. Now, with a cooler head, she thought of Julian again. Julian considered her deteriorating state too dangerously unpredictable. Even though she had originally agreed to stay on the island, now there really wasn’t any other option.

Rune continued. “And we need to discover whether or not the knife is where I told Akil to put it without expending any time or energy on it ourselves.”

Carling stirred. “I can see that it gets done. A Djinn owes me two favors. He’s very old and Powerful. I’m sure if anyone can retrieve your knife quickly, Khalil can, and there’s certainly no reason any longer for me to save those favors for a rainy day.”

“A Djinn.” He barked out a laugh. “Is this the same Djinn that kidnapped Niniane and threw Tiago into a frenzy?”

“The very same,” she told him.

He swiveled to look at her. A strange angry feeling gnawed at his insides. “What did you do for him that got you three favors?”

Her expression shuttered. “That is not my story to tell.”

“It had to have been a hell of a thing to get a Demonkind that Powerful indebted to you.” He said roughly, “You had to have given him something rare and precious, something no one else could have given him. And he had to have wanted it very badly.”

Carling raised her perfect brows. She said, “All of that is true.”

He felt goaded by her impenetrability, by what clawed at him from within. He started to growl.

Her eyes widened in surprise. “Are you
growling
at me?” Her face hardened. “Whatever the hell is going on with you, I suggest you think twice about it.”

Instead of stopping, he actually bared his teeth at her. Bared his teeth. He turned her chair while she was still in it, moving so fast she made a muffled sound of surprise. He slapped his hands onto the table on either side of her, pinning her in her seat. “What did you do for him?”

She looked from one side to the other at his corded arms trapping her in place. The angle of her slim eyebrows turned wicked. “Remember what I said earlier? Do not try to restrict my movements.”

“Damn it, Carling,” he hissed. He leaned down close so that she came nose-to-nose with his angry face. “Now is not the time to cop an attitude with me.”

“Pause that.” She flicked his chin with a forefinger, hard. “Who’s copping an attitude here?”

His expression turned murderous. “Your life is riding on what happens next, and maybe mine is too. You know how capricious and malicious the Demonkind can be.”

“I know exactly what the Demonkind can be. Khalil and I have known each other for a very long time.”

“What did you give him that got you three favors?”

“That’s none of your business!”

“Like hell,” he bit out.

She glared at him, her dark eyes snapping. “He’s the one who came to me. He asked me for help, and he offered me three favors. He has no reason to resent me, and now he can’t renege, and that’s all you need to know.” She thrust her face even closer so that the tips of their noses touched. “Now get out of my face, Wyr.”

The low, rough sound he emitted at that was infuriating, fascinating. Wait. Was he still growling? Or was he
purring
? His eyes drifted half closed. He gave her a heavy-lidded, sleepy, sensual, entirely disingenuous look.

“Make me,” he said. “Witch.”

The force of feeling that punched out of him was stronger than anything she could remember sensing before from anyone, the molten sirocco that reformed her world.

Violence. Rage.

Not simple hunger. A voracious, ravening urgency.

It clawed all common sense from her bones.

She growled back, shoved him away, and then she launched out of her chair to body slam him.

Surprise bowled him over more than anything else. He fell back onto the floor with a force that would have knocked the breath out of anyone human, and she came right along with him. Still growling, she landed on her knees straddling his body and planted her hands on either side of his head. Her loose caftan rode up to her bare thighs, and her hair came loose and spilled all over them in an extravagant waterfall of midnight silk.

He stared up at her, transfixed, all the rage knocked out of him.

He was such a beautiful man. He was far more beautiful than he had any right to be, and then he started to laugh and his handsome face creased with vivid recklessness. Her legs tightened until she gripped his long, lean torso with her calves, and there was so much Power that coursed through the massive muscled body between her legs, it caused a railroad spike of need to slam into her body from the long-dormant nerve endings at the apex of her legs.

As old and disciplined as she was, as solitary as she had been, out of choice as much as anything, it was all too much for a woman to take. She made a muffled sound and reached for him with both greedy hands.

He surged into a sitting position even as she sank her fists into his tangled hair. His arms came around her waist. Her legs were still on either side of him, and he yanked her down onto his pelvis so that the empty part of her that ached so desperately slammed onto the hard swollen length of his erection. He jammed his open mouth over hers.

Then they were together, locked in the same place of extremity, shoving their tongues into each other. Nothing about it was gentle or civilized. She jerked at his hair, pulling it with enough force it had to have hurt. He hissed against her lips. He pulled her lower torso closer as he ground upward onto her, hard, with his hips.

She was locked rigid into place, her need so severe that when she tried to pry her fingers out of his hair, she couldn’t. All of her plotting, all of her fine thinking, was vaporized until what was left came out of her in a thin, shaking animal whine.

His lungs worked like bellows. Heat blazed out of him. The rough vibrating rumble in his chest turned into a raw groan. He ran one hand up her spine to grip the back of her head, supporting her head and shoulders on his arm. With his other arm, he clenched her hips firmly against him. She took the hint and wrapped her legs around his waist as he rose up on his knees. He bent over to place her on the floor and then he came down with her, until there it was, what she had envisioned for what had seemed like forever, as she lay down with weighted limbs and his heavy body settled full on her.

Then she was able to loosen her grip in his hair only enough to hook her fingers into his T-shirt. She tore the cotton down his back, baring a wide expanse of muscle that flexed as she dug her fingers into him. He dragged his mouth away from hers with a shaken gasp. She had no idea what he said, but it seemed like it was in the form of a question.

“I hate your clothes,” she muttered.

He flattened his hand on her breastbone just under her throat and held her down as he reared back to stare at her. He was so roused, a luscious flush of blood darkening his tanned skin, those lion’s eyes glittering brilliant with desire, his face taut.

“I hate your stupid clothes too,” he said. He took the neckline of the caftan and ripped it wider, baring her breasts.

The door to the cottage opened, and a chilly rush of wind entered the room. Rhoswen stood in the doorway, clutching the dog under her arm. Rasputin erupted into a frenzy of snarling and barking. Moving almost quicker than sight, Rune lunged forward to cover Carling. She turned her face into his chest, not from any modesty but from the need to continue touching him in any way that she could.

He cupped the back of her head, shielding her face from scrutiny, and growled again, and this time there was no mistaking that low menacing sound. The heavy bones in his broad chest seemed wrong, as though he might have flowed into a partial shapeshift. She thought of Tiago’s monstrous partial shift when he had come after Niniane, both at the hotel and later when Niniane had been kidnapped, and need pulsed through her again. Carling closed her eyes and opened her mouth on Rune’s skin. She drank down his feral emotion like wine.

In her precise, Shakespearean-trained voice that was frigid with bitterness, Rhoswen said, “Apparently this was not the best time to say good-bye.”

ELEVEN

C
arling coughed out an incredulous laugh that had nothing to do with amusement. The snarl that came out of Rune sounded infuriated, guttural.
“Get the hell out and SHUT THAT GODDAMN DOOR.”

There was a frozen moment, filled only with Rasputin’s frenzied barking. Carling closed her eyes and leaned into Rune’s hot body, and his arms tightened on her in a hard, possessive hold. Then Rhoswen slammed the door, the sharp wooden report echoing through the shadowed cottage.

A corner of Carling’s mind worked hard to process what just happened. The rest of her was shaking with the aftermath of the firestorm that had swept through her. She felt like a drug addict coming down off a high. Rune knelt on one knee as he held her. His heartbeat thundered in her ear. His T-shirt hung in shreds off his tightly bunched biceps, and his body vibrated with such tension he felt poised to attack something.

Then he released the tension on a sigh, and she felt his body flow back into its normal lines. He stroked her hair, threading his fingers through the loose, tangled strands. He said roughly, “You all right?”

She gave him a jerky nod. It was almost a complete lie. Need still pulsed low in her pelvis, a sharp, empty pain that was shocking in its intensity. She didn’t recognize herself in the untamed creature that had launched at Rune.

He said, “I’ll be damned if I apologize for any of that.”

She stirred and managed to find her voice. “What would you apologize for?”

“Throwing my own shit fit. Yelling at Rhoswen.”

“I’ll make a pact with you,” she whispered. “If you don’t apologize, I won’t either.”

“It’s a deal.” He kissed her temple. Then, after a pause, he said, “She interrupted us deliberately, you know.”

“I know.” Carling sighed. Rhoswen hadn’t been caught by surprise. She would have heard them before she ever reached the cottage door. “She was completely inappropriate.”

Rhoswen had achieved her objective, however; she had destroyed the raw out-of-control moment Carling and Rune had been engaged in.

Rune settled his weight back on his heels as he released her. Full night had descended, and the only illumination in the cottage came from the moon that had risen. Even though it had begun to wane, it held tremendous Power, spilling through the windows and limning the edges of their bodies with a delicate lattice of silver. For a long moment she sat still and let him look at her, the fluted wings of her collarbones, the full ripe globes of her bare breasts with their plump jutting nipples and the shadowed indentation of her narrow rib cage underneath.

He crouched over her like the giant cat that he was, looking as if he were about to pounce, unblinking intensity in his moon-silvered gaze, his wide shoulders bowed as he leaned on one fist he had planted on the floor beside her hip. An aftershock of urgency rolled out of him and into her, but their earlier frenzy had splintered with such a crash, it left her feeling slightly sick.

She looked down to pull her ruined caftan up her torso, and he helped her to find edges of the material to knot together to cover her temporarily, his long-fingered hands so gentle that the alien, traitorous tears filled her eyes again.

For so long she had treated her own body like a weapon, and yet he treated it like it was a temple. It made her feel ludicrously fragile, as though she might shatter into pieces without his high regard, and she wrapped her arms around herself.

“We need to get to the city,” he said quietly. “And get a move on all the things we talked about.”

Wariness touched her. Reluctant to start the whole ridiculous argument again, she just nodded and kept her tone noncommittal. “Yes.”

He watched her closely. “I was jealous.”

She froze, and her eyes widened. “You were—what?”

He leaned over to whisper in her ear, his warm breath caressing her cheek. “You heard me. I said I was jealous. I am not apologizing. I am explaining.”

Then as she turned her head to stare at him, he did pounce. His hands snaked up to grip her by the head as he brought his mouth down to hers. He hovered there, deliberately brushing his taut lips against hers as he breathed, “I was jealous of the Demonkind, your Djinn, whom you’ve known for so goddamn long and bargained with every appearance of goddamn amicability, who needed you and you were there for him in such a meaningful, Powerful way he bargained away
three goddamn favors
, and you don’t have to say anything because I already know how stupid that sounds. So I acted like an ass. A stupid, crazy, illogical, senseless, rampantly jealous ass.”

She gripped his wrists and started to shake again. “Rune.”

“ And I was jealous,” said the gryphon, speaking from the back of his throat as he made his words into a burning caress, “because I want you so bad, it’s messing with my thinking. It’s a hook in my gut I can’t pull out. I’ve wanted you ever since that evening on the Adriyel River. I dream about taking you. And in my dream, you take me too. Just like what nearly happened here on the floor.”

Her unsteadiness increased, until her mouth trembled under his. His wrists felt iron-hard and rock-steady under her shaking fingers. “That’s enough now, stop. We—we need to go.”

“All right,” he murmured easily. “I just wanted us to be clear about what almost happened here. This was not a fluke. I am going to come after you again.”

She sucked in air. She whispered, “This—thing between us—”

“This isn’t a ‘thing.’” He pressed a quick kiss onto her mouth. “It’s attraction.”

She shook all over. “It’s totally inappropriate.”

“I know.”

“It can’t last. It’s got nowhere to go.”

“I get that.” He bit her lower lip and held her with such careful tension she wanted to claw the last of his clothes off of him. “But think about how good it will be until it ends. Because it will happen, Carling.”

Will happen, he said. Not could happen. Because he was going to come after her again, sometime, somewhere, and the thought of him on the prowl made her groan. Then his hands opened and he let her go. Just like that.

Just like that? Her hands clung to his wrists as his hands fell from her head; she found herself leaning forward, reaching for his mouth with hers as he pulled away, her gaze falling along the clean lines of his face that was shadowed gray and black, and limned with the faintest touch of shining silver, as if he were gilded with the moon’s eldritch blessings that were just barely visible to the naked eye.

“Rune,” she murmured again, and the previous shock in her voice turned throaty.

“Darling Carling,” he said very low. He paused and shuddered, and something like pain caused his face to spasm. “Just fucking say it.”

Desire is vulnerability. But they were all alone, just them and the moonlight, and the moon never told the secrets of what she saw. So Carling took hold of every scrap of her courage and said it.

“I want you too.”

T
he moon opened wide its invisible sails and soared through the starred sky over the island’s redwood forest.

It was already night again. Carling struggled against a sense of disorientation. When she had lost the ability to sleep, time had increased in velocity. Meditation helped but only to a certain extent. There were no longer any breaks in her experience, just the relentless cascade of events, until she felt like she was being shoved into the future by a gigantic unseen force, faster and faster until she approached the speed of light.

She walked into the trees. Far overhead the moonlight filtering through branches was a study in ivory and black. At ground level the forest was so shadowed, only her sharp Vampyric vision allowed her to pick her way along the path. She paused to listen to the tiny night sounds. Once there would have been total silence when she walked through this wood, but the creatures that lived here had long since grown accustomed to her presence.

Rune agreed to wait for her on the beach. He wanted to come with her, but she needed to be alone to do this one last thing before she left the island. He said he would give her a half hour. If she had not returned by then, he was going to assume she had gone into a fade and come looking for her. Carling didn’t argue with him. There was nothing here that would hurt her, but even so she didn’t like the idea of sitting helpless and unaware, alone in the forest.

She tucked her research journals into a worn leather bag, along with the papyrus sketches and a few other odds and ends from the cottage, and she gave it to Rune to take with him. When he had left, she dug through a cupboard for another clean, intact caftan, which she donned after throwing the ruined one away. So he hated her caftans, did he? She snorted. How many had she ruined in the last couple of days? There was a reason she wore them so much. They were easy on, easy off. She tended to be very hard on clothing, especially when she was engaged in matters of magic.

After dressing, she came to the forest to find her usual spot, a dark squat stone that was so old that time had melted its rough edges smooth. It made for a good seat. She settled herself on its cool, hard surface and waited.

It was one of her favorite places in the world. The ferns and orchids that thrived under the towering redwoods provided a scene of generosity and extravagance to someone from her old desert roots. This place had its own kind of Power, green ancient dreams filled with an endless parade of sunlit days and moon-traveled nights, and the wild crash of sea-blown storms.

She listened until she felt a faint nudge against her awareness. It was not so much a sound that was distinguishable from any other of the small noises in the night, but more of a presence that touched the edge of her Power with shy delicate fingers, and she knew she was no longer alone.

“I came to tell you,” she said in a quiet voice to the winged creatures she never quite saw full-on in daylight. “I have to leave now. I will try to come back. I wish I could say I will return but I don’t know if I will be able to, so I left as many protections for you as I could.” She had worked with Duncan, and had left legal safeguards and magical wards in place, but neither laws nor magic were immune to time. Things arrived on this earth and they passed from it; still, at least she knew she had tried her best.

It was one more obligation she had released. She could come to like this growing sense of freedom, all except for the dying bit. Then without her conscious permission a truth slipped out of her mouth, the words winging into the darkness like freed dragonflies.

She whispered, eyes stinging, “I will miss you.”

For so long, she had felt all but dead, more intellect than emotion. Now after so many arid centuries, her soul was undergoing a renaissance of feeling. But rebirth, like change, was hard, and the well of tears she had discovered seemed to be inexhaustible.

Something rustled, then other tiny noises joined it, and she heard wings in truth overhead. As she looked up, a length of softness touched her cheek. She reached up to grasp it.

It was a feather, like the one left as a present for her on her windowsill. She couldn’t see it in the shadows, but she knew the feather would be an iridescent black. Then more softness touched her, on the face, the neck, her hands, as the forest creatures flew overhead and showered her with feathers spiraling down, like the gentle nourishment of midnight rain.

She wiped her eyes and straightened her spine. Her past had become as uncertain as her future. Time had become a crucible burning everything away. There could be no greater or profound crisis.

But this much she could know. In both versions of her past she had been born into poverty and taken as a slave. And in both versions she had reached for immortality and had become a Queen.

I didn’t change you
, Rune had said.
Not you, not your soul or spirit.

She finally understood what he meant.

“I know who I am again,” she whispered.

And I will take ownership of this new life as well, for however long I may have it.

R
une slung Carling’s bag on one shoulder, collected his duffle bag from the main house, and went down the bluff to wait for Carling on the beach. A briny breeze blew off the water. The cool wet air felt good on his tight, overheated skin. He stripped off his ruined T-shirt and dropped it on the ground by the bags and the waterproof container he’d left on the beach when he arrived. Then he rotated his shoulders to work out the tension that strung his muscles as tight as piano wire.

He felt antsy, just barely over the county line from the land of irrationality. He didn’t like being apart from her. Didn’t she realize how vulnerable she was when she went into a fade? The thought of her caught on a busy city street made him just about break into a sweat. She was one of the most dangerous of the Nightkind or of any of the Elder Races, but now at times she was also one of the most defenseless. It would be such a simple matter to slip a stiletto between her ribs as she stood still and unresisting, her mind locked in another time.

And if being in proximity to one of her episodes could affect him the way it did, who or what else might be affected by it? What other creatures or Powers might be able to slip into her mind or the past, or whatever the fuck was actually happening, to encounter that brave, fierce, painfully fragile tiger cub that was Carling’s child-self?