Serpent's Kiss (28 page)

She looked at him with such feral bewilderment he might have laughed if the stakes weren’t so high. “You have legions of women, and I don’t share.”

“There’ll be no one else, ever again. I’m all yours,” he murmured. “Body and soul.”

The Vampyre sorceress, who had been Queen, hissed in his face, “Swear it.”

“I swear it,” he whispered, stroking her hair. In this one thing they mirrored each other, for he needed her dominance and tenderness too. He opened his eyes wide again to take all of her in because he didn’t want to miss a single moment of this gorgeous, deadly woman.

“I tried to be good. I tried to set you free.” But she was a bad woman, of course. It was something she came to terms with centuries ago. His Power roared against her senses, even as he lay stretched out underneath her. She was so slick from wanting him, she felt drenched.

“Why would I want you to be good? I want you to be you.”

“If I take you, I will never let you go.” Her gaze grew heavy-lidded as she came down to his lips. “Never.”

“I will always hold on to you,” he said against her mouth. “Always.”

He slid his hands under her silken flowing T-shirt, and his clever fingers found their way under the camisole underneath. He eased the material up, and she held her arms up so he could pull it over her head. Then she was naked to the waist, and he almost groaned aloud as her gorgeous full breasts swung free. He fingered the dusky aureoles, watching as the nipples stiffened with pleasure. She caught her breath, and his cock pulsed at the telltale, ragged sound.

Then she lifted off of him. The beast who had been lying in wait for her to take him lunged to the surface to snatch at her, but she was only shrugging out of her jeans. Her hands were shaking so that she could hardly manage it. He sat to help her yank her boots off, and then her jeans were gone as well. Her curved body was unbelievably gorgeous, bearing the twin scars of the whip and flowing with the sinuous grace of a cat, and it was
Carling’s
naked body,
Carling’s
most private places that were revealed,
Carling
who looked at him with the feral red gaze that was yet still delicate with need, and the luscious, plump, frilly flesh between her strong slender legs was so beautiful, it sent him into a meltdown.

He came down on top of her. She was already wrapping her legs and arms around him as his mouth drove onto hers. His hands were shaking, everything was shaking, and the sound that came out of him was harsh and guttural and completely inhuman. She felt between their bodies and grasped his cock, her palm massaging the broad thick head, and he felt huge and full and in so much goddamn pain, it was like he had never taken her. “Oh fuck, I wanted to take my time with you,” he gritted between clenched teeth.

“We don’t have time,” she whispered. Her head fell back as she guided him to her slick entrance, and as he felt her soft moist cushion of flesh embrace the tip of his cock, he lost the last shred of control he had and came inside of her.

It was torturous, beyond pleasure. He felt huge and burning up, and she was such a tight, wet fit. Need drove him deeper into her. He shoved one arm underneath her waist to clench her lower body more closely to him. He cupped her head with his other hand while simultaneously bracing himself on the elbow, an instinctively protective position. He couldn’t get far enough, deep enough inside, and he pushed harder until he was slamming into her.

She raised her hips for every thrust, hands fisted in his hair, and he was so completely sure she was with him the entire way that when she made a miserable, shaking sound, very suspiciously like a whimper, icy shock ran over his skin.

He froze, his heart pounding, and searched her face. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Her face contorted with frustration. Her eyes watered. She looked like she was in actual pain. “I want to bite you. I need to bite, but my damn fangs won’t descend.”

The image of her sinking slender fangs into his neck as he took her ran through him like a live wire, and he almost came right then and there. He slipped his hand under her slim neck and lifted her head. He said huskily, “Bite me anyway.”

“I’ll bruise you with these dull teeth,” she whispered.

“Promise?” he growled. He was on fire everywhere. In his body. In his soul. He was blind with it.

She keened, lunged up and bit the strong cord in his neck that ran down into his shoulders. At the same time, she clamped down on his cock with her inner muscles, and his climax exploded out of him with such force he groaned with it. He ground his pelvis into hers, spurting hard, and she made a muffled sound, her whole body shuddering as he sent her over the edge. He could feel the rhythmic pulsing in her body, and holy hell, it was more than he ever imagined it could be, but it wasn’t enough—it could never be enough—

He rocked with her and clenched her to him with everything he had, and when the pulsing of her body eased, he started to move again. She let go of his neck and fell back to look at him with eyes gone wide in surprise.

“Rune?”

He hissed, “Don’t stop.”

Then he was beyond seduction, beyond enticement, deep in that place where language had been new and strange, and his need ran like lava, pared down to its purest sense, a hot primal scream.

“You’re mine,” the gryphon snarled at the witch. He took her by the back of the neck and shook her to make the words go in. “You’re mine.”

Whatever she saw in him stripped her raw. She looked young again and transfixed with wonder. “Oh God. You’re so beautiful.”

The compulsion drove him into her. It was so exquisite he tore his claws into the bedspread. She held him tight, her knees high so that she cradled his whole body. She gripped his wide flexing shoulders as his hips moved and moved, and her garnet eyes were filled with some kind of epiphany. Her lips were moving as she made strange sounds. Much later Rune would recognize she had been swearing in ancient Egyptian, and the realization would make him laugh. But that was later when he had recovered the layers of civilization that were now stripped away.

Then she stretched underneath him, and reached above her head with both arms as she lifted up with her strong, graceful hips and legs and he felt it again, felt her inner muscles begin their gorgeous spasm. She climaxed with a shaking gasp, and he hurtled forward again, spilling into her.

And again. This time he flipped her onto her hands and knees. She was mewling into the bed and shoving her ass back to him as he took her from behind. He wrapped his arms around her, his wise and wicked woman, and slammed her into the headboard. She braced herself as best she could and reached up behind her head to clutch at him, and he wrapped an arm around her neck, and this time she was the one who groaned it through clenched teeth. “You’ve gone and done it now—you’re so mine, Rune Ainissesthai—Rune—Rune, oh God—”

Three times, the witching number.

“That spell’s already been cast,” he said into her hair. And he gave himself to her, spilling everything he had into his mate.

S
he could not let go of him. He propped himself against the headboard and pulled her into his arms, and she went willingly. She rested her head on his shoulder and only realized she was clenched on his arm when she caught sight of her hand out of the corner of her eye and saw that her knuckles were white. She forced her fingers to loosen and saw that she had left a red imprint on his tanned skin. If he had been one of the more fragile of the Elder Races, she might have broken his arm.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, stroking his bicep.

“Don’t ever be sorry,” he said. He kissed her forehead. “Bite me, mark me, claim me in any way you wish.”

That was when she realized he held her just as tightly too. He rested his face in her hair, and his chest rumbled. It had a low, deep, rough cadence that vibrated against her cheek. She ran her palm across the broad muscled expanse wonderingly. “Are you
purring
at me?”

“I might be,” Rune said. His deep voice was rougher, and lazy with intimacy. “Unless you’ve done something wrong. Then I’m growling at you again.”

She tightened her lips to try to keep the laughter in, but it spilled out anyway. “Just because I’m laughing doesn’t make it okay,” she warned.

“The purring?” He threaded his fingers through her short hair.

“No, the
growling
. I will not be chastised by you growling at me every time you think I might have done something wrong.”

“Then I will definitely be purring from now on even when I’m growling.” He captured her hand before she had the chance to smack him, and he brought her fingers up to his mouth to press a kiss on her knuckles.

She refused to laugh again. She clenched her jaw against it until the impulse eased. Then she cleared her throat. “About what just happened.”

“What about it?” He sounded calm, his purring steady and quiet. It was remarkably soothing.

She looked out the French doors at the wrought-iron balcony they would most likely be too busy to enjoy. The sun had almost set, and the red and gold streaks across the sky were starting to fade. Dr. Telemar would be arriving at SFO soon.

“It was—more than I expected.” As old as she was and as much as she had seen, she found herself unexpectedly at a loss for words.

“You mean when we mated.”

That was what they had done. They were mating. He was mating with her. She had taken him into her body as she had taken him into her soul, and he had wrung her inside out. Everything ached, pleasantly, although that would fade soon enough as she healed with Vampyric speed. “I didn’t know it would be so intense,” she said softly. “How could you trust me like that?”

He was silent for so long, at first she thought he wasn’t going to answer her. Then he stirred and said, “It just happened. The more I learned about you, the more I cared, and the more I trusted you. Your research, your dog, the way you looked at me and said you took responsibility for how we might change things. You think I don’t know you said that to make things easier for me, when I might have been the only one to remember what happened? Then this last time when I went back, I looked at you and panicked at the thought of losing you. I know I told you too much, but I couldn’t stop myself. And so you knew all this time that I would come to you some day, and you said nothing, did nothing.”

She buried her face in him. “I had a lot of time to think,” she whispered. “I thought about time looping back on itself, and about how you said you were from the future and how every time you came back, you changed things in the past. You said it was incredibly dangerous, and I believed you. When I finally met you again and realized who you were, I thought about getting in touch and telling you what had happened. Then I realized that if I did, I might change you too so that you never came back in time to see me. And I didn’t want to risk losing those memories, so I waited to see what would happen at Adriyel River, and beyond.”

He pushed her onto her back and came on top of her, covering her with his body while he held her tight, pressing his lean cheek against hers. “You thought it through and held steady,” he said. “You closed the time loop we created. You held your ground when I don’t know of anyone else who would have. Then after
all of that
, you tried to send me away this afternoon, and it was so goddamn loving and extravagantly stupid, how could I not want to mate with you? Of course I trust you. I knew if you laid claim to me, you would hold on no matter what.”

“No matter what.” She swallowed hard, gripping him as tightly as he held her. They were wrapped around each other, torso to torso, skin to skin, Power entwined with Power, so that she was not sure where one ended and the other began. “I think I can see what my life must have been like before you went back, and everything feels truer now.”

He nuzzled her neck. “All the pieces interlock. The thought keeps running through my head that it’s like a keystroke password to an unbreakable code. It opens a vault door to a strange new country, and even though it is strange and new, it is all still familiar. All the colors are brighter and more fierce, the song notes more piercing.”

She kissed his temple and ran her fingers through his hair. The weight of his body sent his purr vibrating through her chest, and she felt a sudden rush of adoration for him so intense it made her feel drunk, insane. “It’s a more beautiful, deadlier world because there’s so much more to lose,” she said. “Rune, you can’t go back anymore. We have to protect what we have.”

“There’s no reason for me to go back now,” he murmured. He kissed her collarbone. “I think I can hold my own and not get caught up in the episodes when they happen. We’ve warned your younger self to take care, and I also think we’ve learned everything we can. The most important thing now is to guard you and keep you safe when you’re caught in them, while we figure out how to get them to stop.”

“You sound so optimistic,” she said.

“Are you still the glass-half-empty kind of girl?” he said. “You know, the more things change, the more they really do stay the same.”

She shook her head and exhaled a silent laugh. She loved how he could make her laugh.

The more things change. A sudden wave of fear had her clutching him tighter again. She had embraced the changes that had happened to her long ago, but what if something else changed in the world because of what they had done? She would never know, but Rune would. He said he remembered everything. What if they had done something wrong and had somehow destroyed something that should have existed? What if she had decided to do something she shouldn’t have, something that she hadn’t done originally?

She felt again that sense of hurtling forward, faster and faster, in time. She wanted to turn her racing brain off, to close her eyes and rest against Rune’s strong body in a true sleep. Then something else occurred to her.

“I just realized, right after I talked on the phone I went into the fade. I haven’t had the chance to tell you,” she said. “I’m pretty sure Julian’s turned against me. I can take him if we’re one-on-one, but as King he commands the support of the whole Nightkind demesne. We need to tread carefully.”