Mona Lisa Awakening m-1

by Sunny

  Amber twisted and slipped on a patch of blood-soaked grass and Greeves lunged for his throat. Sharp teeth locked together like a steel trap in a deadly grip. I gasped and cried out, unaware I had stepped forward until I was pulled back and locked securely against Aquila.

  Amber twisted and struggled. He slashed deep furrows in the hyena's powerful chest but those mighty jaws remained deeply clenched. Greeves shook Amber, tossing him back and forth until the mountain lion's struggles lessened, grew more feeble, then finally stopped. Sobs choked my throat and tears poured down my face as those beautiful amber eyes closed. The once majestic cat became dead weight, dragging the hyena forward until it stood breathing heavily over him.

  "No! No…" I moaned in the sudden quiet. "Amber…"

  Amber's yellow eyes suddenly flashed opened and four razor-sharp claws swiped with great force at the hyena's vulnerable underbelly, slashing it open with ripping ease. Rich, tangy blood spurted. Intestines bulged and swelled and pushed out. And those viciously strong hyena jaws unlocked and released. With a chilling howl of outrage and pain, the hyena loped away.

  Amber rolled slowly to his feet, precious blood dripping from the gaping wound at his throat, his breathing harsh and belabored. No one moved.

  Sandoor broke the silence. "Next challenger?"

  No one stepped forward.

  "Amber wins," Sandoor declared, his voice rich with satisfaction and pride.

  I moved to go to Amber but Aquila restrained me, shaking his head warningly.

  A shimmer of energy and Amber was kneeling in the clearing, tan skin above the waist, pale white flesh down below, both colors ribboned with red blood. Flesh had been torn from his throat, and his chest, torso, and legs were ripped open from slashing claws. With effort, Amber staggered to his pants, and pulled them on. He lifted his eyes with tired alertness as Romulus approached him, restraints in hand.

  Amber turned and sought me out, casting me a wild pleading glance, his eyes still that unsettling yellow color. I desperately wished I knew what he wanted me to do. Break free? Try to escape? Even if I could, it would be a futile attempt. More than half the men were still present, rested, whole, healthy, uninjured.

  When I made no move, Amber held out his hands, despair flooding his eyes as the manacles clamped shut about his large wrists. He turned his pleading gaze to his father.

  "Return them back to join Mona Carlisse," Sandoor commanded.

  Romulus took hold of Amber's arm. Amber resisted.

  "Allow me stay here, outside, tonight," Amber asked Sandoor, his ragged voice a low harsh sound.

  "No." His father shook his head. "I am sorry, son." As if the words had released a sudden trigger, Amber began struggling in quiet earnestness. Another blond man joined Romulus and helped subdue Amber. Together they dragged Amber forward. Aquila removed the dagger from my throat. "Can you walk?"

  "I can certainly try." My quivering legs felt like jelly but I was able to walk back to the stone hut that would imprison us. Sandoor unlocked the thing metal door and I hobbled inside.

  "Father, please do not do this," Amber said hoarsely. "I beg of you."

  Sandoor's voice was chillingly sincere. "It is for your own good, son." The terrible thing was that he truly meant it.

  Amber's roar shook the air. "Do not do this to me!"

  But they pushed him inside.

  The door clanged shut behind Amber, locking him in.

  Chapter Thirteen

  "Amber," I cried, moving toward him.

  "Don't!" he said, his voice terribly strained.

  "But you're hurt…"

  "Do as he says!" Mona Carlisse snapped from across the room. "Back away slowly from him," she instructed more quietly.

  Amber leaned with his back slumped against the door, fear and rage filling his eyes, a potent combustible combination. "Do as she says!" he rasped harshly.

  I eased into the corner where he had nursed me, kept me alive, and sank onto the blanket. "Amber." My voice came out small, timid. "What's wrong?"

  Mona Carlisse's voice floated out in the darkness, her voice tight with strain. "He is fresh from battle and from shifting. His blood still pounds with bloodlust and his body demands relief."

  "How can he gain relief?" I asked, already knowing I would not like the answer.

  "Blood or sex. They usually hunt afterward to burn off the powerful tension."

  But they hadn't allowed Amber to hunt. They had locked him here inside instead, with two Queens and his natural powerful attraction to them, allowing it to stir and stimulate his already violent emotions. They had only allowed him one outlet. Sex.

  I understood it now. They expected him to be violent. He expected himself to be violent and he feared it. Mona Carlisse feared it. Her alarm pulsed like an audible call in air that was already thick with the smell and scent of spent passion.

  Amber trembled. His muscles locked. His arms and thighs bulged with threatening strength. He gasped in air desperately like a drowning man. Spinning, he violently struck his shackles against the door so that it shook. Metal rang against metal in a sickening, angry desperate clanging.

  "Let me out! Let me out!" His rage was terrible. He pounded the door, smashing metal again and again until it dented. He spun suddenly, taking a few steps forward, making Mona Carlisse gasp in fright. He threw a viciously bitter look of hatred at her then threw himself against the door. Unbound by silver, he could have ripped the door apart. Even just human strong, he could do a lot of damage. Three hundred pounds worth of damage. He battered the door, battered himself mercilessly, shaking the metal, rattling its hinges, coating it with his blood. But it held. He slid down to the ground, his face pressed against the door.

  "Amber," I called to him, my voice was low, calm. "Come to me."

  He stiffened, his ragged breathing the only harsh sound. Then he burst into explosive motion once again, pounding himself against the stone wall this time, against the weakest point where the wall abutted the door. He battered himself over and over like a human ram. Dust flew but the stubborn stone held. He braced his great weight against the wall and pushed, grunting, straining. He arms bulged and trembled, his back rippling so that all his muscles was thrown into sharp delineation. But he was no Samson, no mythical Hercules. With a sob he collapsed, unable to escape, a wild animal caught in an unbreakable trap.

  Welling up within me was an undeniable, instinctive urge to soothe and comfort, to ease his horrid suffering. You could get your well-meaning hands ripped off trying to help a wild beast. I knew that fact well. Oh, yes. But I was more than willing to risk it.

  "Amber. Come to me. Trust me."

  He shook his bowed head, his matted, disheveled hair flung wildly across his face like a madman. "Don't! Oh, Goddess. OhGoddessohGoddess…"

  What his own father was doing to him with knowing deliberation was far worse than what Miles had done to me with the aphrodisiac. How could a father do this to his own son? How could a mother give away her own child to strangers! a small voice within me whispered. I let my eyes fall down to the pitiful suffering animal huddled on the dirt floor before me and had one of those sudden insights. Perhaps, by giving me away, Mona Sera had done me more good than I had realized. At least I'd had Helen and her warm love for those first six years of my life.

  Amber's head slowly lifted. Feral amber eyes, inhuman eyes, gleamed in the darkness at the huddled figure in the far corner—Mona Carlisse. Crouching on hands and knees, he took a gliding step in that direction, his belly low to the ground, a great cat stalking his prey.

  "No, Amber," I said.

  His voice rumbled deep in his chest with effort, as if it was hard for him to form human words. "I'd rather hurt her than you."

  And I was struck again with another insight. Sandoor had known, had deliberately left Mona Carlisse here knowing his son would choose this, knowing that once Amber raped a Queen, he could never go back, that then he'd have to stay with this band of outcasts forever.

  Grim resolve ti
ghtened like a drawn arrow within me. I would not lose Amber. Not him, too.

  "Watching you hurt her would hurt me worse," I said to him. "Come to me."

  He stopped, shuddered, took a sobbing, sobering breath. "It would destroy me to see fear in your eyes. I would not be able to stand it. Not now."

  "Look into my eyes, Amber. You will not see fear." My voice deepened and the right words came to me from somewhere deep inside. "I am your Queen. It is my right to aid and comfort you. Heed me now. Come to me."

  Almost against his will, he turned to me, his cat eyes a frightening gleam. I held out my hands to him and he slowly flowed to me on all fours, using muscles that no human possessed. He was beautifully, dangerously graceful, even with restraints hampering his movement.

  I reached out to him, wanting to lay my hands on his terrible wounds. To heal him.

  "No!" he cried desperately. "I shall not be able to control myself if you touch me."

  "Alright." I lay back, offering myself to him freely.

  "You're too weak."

  I laughed. "I don't need much strength to just lie on my back. I promise I'll let you do all the work this time." My eyes twinkled up at him.

  The sound of my laughter eased some of that terrible tension in him.

  He turned his head toward Mona Carlisse. "Don't look," he rumbled warningly.

  Her head whipped around to face the wall, and my heart grew soft and warm at the realization that even now, wracked with such terrible need, Amber remembered my discomfort, my odd modesty.

  I smiled tremulously up at him as he crawled over me, careful not to touch me.

  "Oh, Amber." His name was a soft sigh upon my lips.

  He crouched above me, straddling my thighs. His hands reached beneath my shirt, between my legs. One thick finger tested me. My eyes fluttered closed for a moment and I bit back a welling moan.

  "You're not wet enough," he breathed harshly, a faint trembling shaking his entire frame.

  I was wet, but not enough for him, for his size. "I'll be fine."

  "Give me your hands," he gritted, opening his pants and freeing himself. Licking both my palms, wetting them with his saliva, he wrapped my hands roughly around his spearing length, one atop the other, leaving room yet for still another hand had I had one, so thick around that my fingertips did not meet. He groaned harshly and levered over me, his forearms braced above my head. I held him tightly, my hands creating a sheath between my thighs.

  "Squeeze me harder! Yes!" He pumped himself above me, hard, vigorous, violent strokes, not pausing or hesitating even when my hands started to tingle and heat and my power started to flow. He lit the dingy room with incandescent light that shone from within, outlined above me in brutal, savage glory.

  I turned my face and licked the wound at his throat, my tongue going deep, causing him pain, causing him pleasure. He cried out and slammed his lower body into my hands even harder, faster, more urgently, propelling us several inches up the blanket with each pounding stroke. His muscles tightened and he roared his release, spilling his hot essence between my thighs.

  "You're glowing," he said with gritty surprise, lifting his head, his eyes still that animal amber. But the desperate wild edge in them was gone.

  "I love your pleasure," I said, purring, noting with rich, hot satisfaction the smooth, perfect skin that now covered his neck where that deep wound had been.

  "Your hands are hot," he whispered.

  "And you're not afraid," was my soft reply.

  "'You would never hurt me."

  "Oh, Amber." I sighed and brushed him against my hungry opening, drenched wet with his ejaculation. He was smaller, semi-hard in my hands. I moaned and lifted up against him, sliding in his broad tip. "I'm wet enough now," I enticed. My hands dipped down, coated and caressed him with his own fluid.

  He lifted his upper body up, freeing my hands, and I lifted my arms over my head, moving my shackles out of the way. I writhed against him. Opened my legs wider. With his beautiful, dangerous eyes clinging to mine, he pushed slowly into me, so gradually that there was no discomfort, just a feeling of being wonderfully stretched. It was easier now that he was smaller but he still had to work his way deep with gentle, small thrusts that weren't enough. Not nearly enough. Once he was seated in me fully, he stilled. I felt him grow, lengthening and thickening within me to full arousal, filling me deliciously, painfully full and then some, until I felt as if I would burst if he moved, until I felt as if I would burst if he didn't move. I whimpered and arched up against him.

  "Shhh," he soothed roughly. "You said you would allow me to do the work."

  "Then do it," I snapped.

  His rough laughter warmed my heart. His deep thrust suspended my breath. "Oh." The wildly pleasurable tearing sensation that ripped through my body hazed my vision.

  "I love giving you pleasure," he rumbled and stroked strongly, leisurely, setting a slow, steady rhythm that was almost but not quite gentle. He surged steadily, relentlessly, like the tide, building the wave of our pleasure until the light emitting from us was pure and blinding. My wave crested and broke and I spasmed on endlessly. He loosened his control and with one forceful plunge that stole my breath, buried himself hilt-deep in me, all the way to my womb, and held still, letting my strong squeezing contractions milk him to his own glorious release. He groaned sweetly and collapsed over me, his arms still bearing most of his massive weight, and I savored the moment, the closeness, and the triumph. I had come so close to losing him.

  I rubbed my cheek against his in simple affection. "I love your strength, your bigness."

  I felt his passion-slashed cheeks heat even more and I giggled when I realized that he had mistook my meaning.

  "Down there, yes. But also your size, your height. You make me feel safe," came my whispered confession.

  Amber pulled out of me, the slide of his withdrawal making me quiver. He rolled with me onto his back so that I sprawled atop him. Covering me with the blanket, he brushed his lips sweetly, tenderly, against mine. "You make me feel safe, too," he said.

  I smiled, happy, tired, and relaxed, and willingly embraced the bliss of sleep that called to me.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The sun was a high ball of fire in the sky when I awoke. Amber's large hands slid up my spine in a slow, savoring stroke and I lifted my head and smiled at him.

  "How do you feel?" he queried softly.

  "Better," I said after a moment's consideration, "and stronger, oddly enough." I tested the restraints at my wrists and they snapped apart easily. Perhaps when I had healed Amber, I had healed myself as well. Or maybe I had just recovered quickly after some much-needed rest. Or perhaps Amber had imparted some of his own great physical strength to me. That raised another question. Did Queens receive some of their lovers' gifts or did it only work the other way around? Whatever it was, I was too grateful for the return of my strength to question it much now. I stripped off the manacles, freeing Amber.

  With ease, he rolled to his feet with me cradled in his arms and set me down. "Let us depart," he said.

  "Take me with you." Mona Carlisse's quiet voice coming from the corner startled me. She had been so quiet and still that I had actually forgotten she was there.

  I hesitated. "The sun is at its hottest now."

  She stood up. "I care not. I would rather die free in the sun than submit to another rutting pig one more day."

  I looked askance at Amber.

  "They will be less inclined to hunt us if she remains. A good chance, in truth, that they will simply depart to another hiding place. If we take her with us, they shall have no other choice but to come after us."

  What he said made good sense, and yet… I had only been here one week, and awake and aware but only one day. And what I had seen that one day was enough to make my skin crawl. She had been here, at their merciless mercy, for over ten long years.

  "How much sun can she take?" I asked.

  "She can withstand up to one hour of direct s
unlight," Amber answer. "After that, I can perhaps try to shield her with a blanket and carry her if necessary."

  "What about you?" I asked softly. "Will you be able to tolerate the sun?"

  Amber shrugged. "We shall see shortly. If not, we will have at least an hour's start before them."

  I turned to Mona Carlisse. "I have extended a twenty-four hour offer to accept any man here if he comes to me with an honest willingness to serve. Not Greeves or his like, but men like Aquila. I do not know if any will accept, but if they do, I must have your promise that you will not seek retribution personally or through the Council for what they have done to you here."

  Her face was a shuttered mask. "Only to those you accept," she finally said.

  I nodded.

  "Agreed," she said.

  "Where is your daughter?" I asked.

  "Casio shelters in a nearby cave when she does not sleep here."

  "Can you lead us there?"

  She nodded.

  "Good," I said. "Let's go fetch her."

  Mona Carlisse bowed her head in deep formality. "Thank you, Sister."

  I inclined my head. A shrug seemed to impolite. "No thanks needed."

  There was nothing to gather in the primitive structure but the two blankets. A gentle push and the chains gave with a snap that sounded quite loud in my ears, but no alarm was raised from the two huts in the distance.

  The door swung open and Mona Carlisse ran soundlessly into the wilderness, the blanket over her head, only a small part of her face exposed. She led us to a small, well-hidden cave, crawled into the little hole, and emerged a short time later with Casio wrapped in the same manner as herself with the other blanket.

  The little girl blinked wide, beautiful blue eyes at me. I smiled reassuringly at her. She looked behind me and craned her neck back to peer up at Amber. He squatted down to her level and let her study him.

  They had the same brown hair, though his was much cleaner, the same cerulean eyes. I wondered what other like features we would discover behind all that dirt. Amber bestowed a warm, gentle smile upon the little creature that shared his own blood. Casio returned a fleeting smile that stuttered on her lips for a moment, then died. Shyly, she wriggled out of her mother's arms and hid behind her skirt.