Shadow's Light

by Nicola Claire

  “OK,” I said for the second time, but I could see Michel's vampire understood. I meant it. I was OK. And I was OK with loving Michel and letting him love me. No matter what had happened.

  His eyes dimmed from that bright wash of magenta, paling to an amethyst shot with blue. The vampire appeased, the man now hungry.

  “Where were we?” he murmured against my neck.

  “I think you were showing me how much you still loved me.”

  “Yes. That is it,” he said between nips of my ear lobe. “I had better get on with it, there is just so much to show you.”

  I laughed as his hand began roaming over my stomach, lower and lower still. His lips followed in its wake; slowly, tortuously he worked his way back down my body. Until his mouth rested in the crease of my upper thigh. He licked a line along the length of it, ending just before he reached my centre. Then he repeated the action on the other side.

  “I need to taste you,” he said huskily. “I need to drink you down.”

  I lifted my hips in response. He took the invitation, spreading my thighs with his hands, then shifting his body to lay between my legs. The first stroke of his tongue was almost too much. I gasped and writhed back up off the bed. Michel had to hold me down with his flat palm pressed to my lower abdomen. Then, when he was satisfied I wasn't going to get away, he started working harder. His full attention on tasting me.

  The soft sound of his tongue licking and the purr starting up in back of his throat, combined with the sensations he was creating, sent me over the edge within seconds. This was Michel. My Michel. All mine. I cried out in ecstasy, letting more tears roll down my cheeks. But they were happy ones. I had longed for his touch for two months. I had thought it lost to me forever. And here he was bringing me to orgasm again and he was mine.

  “Oh, ma douce,” he breathed the words against me, still licking and sucking and nibbling. “I need to take you now, but I do not know if I can control myself well. I am afraid I may hurt you.” He pulled back to look at me, desire and hunger and a little fear at war in his eyes.

  I didn't care about him losing control, but some part of me wanted this to be more than just Michel and me reconnecting, there would time enough for that. For now, I wanted all of him to know exactly what I felt. I wanted his vampire-within to know it too.

  I scooted out from beneath him, catching a look of regret and sadness in Michel's eyes, then turned myself over and presented my rear to him while kneeling on all fours. I glanced over my shoulder and noted the look in his eyes from before had been replaced with a look that could only be described as someone who had their cake and was about to eat it too.

  His eyes shot with magenta, his vampire rearing its head and he grabbed hold of my hips, brought himself up behind me and entered me in one hard, but languidly slow, long advance. Air escaped both of us at the same time in gasps. He stilled, letting us both catch our breaths and then began that seductive roll of his hips.

  I moaned with every thrust and roll, I cried out when he pulled back denying me what I wanted and rejoiced with a groan when he slammed back in. His movements began to speed up. I matched every stroke with my own returning grind of my hips and had him panting for air in minutes. Then just when I thought he'd let us float over that blissful edge, he pulled me back against his chest, never altering his stride inside me, and bit my shoulder tenderly , holding me fast.

  This was all Michel's vampire. I was his vampire's mate and the vampire within him was claiming me again. Michel's hand came up fisted in my hair carefully, pulling my head to the side to expose my neck. His other hand held on to my breast above one of his marks.

  The sensations created by this vampire mating, were surreal. I had never been one to accept dominance so blithely, but right now as Michel held me so possessively, yet tenderly, it was all I craved. To know this man, this vampire, wanted me as his mate still. Despite a lost joining and having been apart for so long, he still claimed me as his mate. I felt a slow tear track down my cheek and then Michel was pushing me forward on the bed. His hand leaving my hair to rest on my back as he pumped a few more frantic times inside me and then shouted out as he came.

  We both collapsed on the bed in a tangle of sweaty, breathless bodies. And I could feel the warmth of his dragon-within as it curled around us both.

  “Je t'aime pour toujours, ma douce.”

  “I'll love you forever too,” I replied, breathlessly.

  Then Michel reached over and took hold of my hand, pulled it his lips and kissed my palm lightly. His eyes, still a little magenta swirling deep inside, held mine, as he brought his own palm up to his mouth and quickly sliced his fangs down the centre of it. Blood began to well immediately in their wake.

  Still holding my eyes with his, he took my palm and repeated the action, causing me to cry out in pain and wake up from the moment abruptly. Adrenaline shot through my veins. I knew what he was doing, he wanted to join with me again. To join we needed to clasp hands and let our blood mingle. Our kindred compatible bodies would do the rest. A sharing of blood and powers and mind. It was what I wanted too. Desperately.

  But, when he pulled my hand towards his bleeding palm, instead of going willingly, I cried out in alarm and pulled myself free. Tumbling away from him on the bed and landing on the floor.

  The last thing I saw in his eyes before I fell over the edge of the bed was pain and hurt and rejection.

  Chapter 18

  Heart To Heart

  “Oh shit! Michel,” I said, scrambling back up onto the bed. “I'm sorry.”

  “It is all right. I understand,” he said stiffly, getting up off the bed and heading towards the bathroom.

  “Stop!” I cried and he did. As though it was a command laced with Sanguis Vitam. He didn't turn around though, his back and shoulders were rigid.

  “I want to join with you. I want it more than anything.” I took a deep breath in before continuing. “But, the Iunctio will use my power to close the portals. We won't be able to get home”

  He swung slowly back towards me. “Who told you this?”

  “The Champion. She wanted me to join with a vampire within a week of your wake, so they could use my power to close the portals and stop the Fey from entering our realm.”

  “Bitch,” he said under his breath. Not something you hear Michel Durand saying very often. He rarely swears at all.

  He walked back towards the bed and sat down next to me taking my hand, the one not covered in blood, in his.

  “Who did she wish you to join with?” he asked, whisper quiet.

  “She tried to get Gregor to see if we were suitable kindred. He refused.” Michel's eyebrows shot up at that. Gregor, the Master of Wellington City and a good friend, would have done anything in the past to join with me. Now, though, he had Amisi. I was old news. “So, then Avery stepped in.”

  “Avery,” Michel said in a voice that promised death. He ran a hand through his near black hair. I noticed it was shining again. One feed from me and it had its gloss back. I reached up and fingered a strand. I never could resist touching his hair. He smiled at me. “I gather Avery is a suitable kindred?” Then his smile vanished and he sucked in a breath. “You haven't joined with him yet have you?”

  I shook my head quickly. “For some strange reason he was giving me a week to come to the conclusion that joining with him was the only solution. We were a couple of days into the week when Lutin stole me out from under his nose.”

  Michel shifted to face me further on the bed. “You mean you have only seen Avery in the last few days. Where has he been? Where have you been?”

  “I've been hiding in Brazil. Rio de Janeiro actually. I laid a few false trails around the continent and it took him two months to track me down.”

  “So...” he said a small satisfied smile playing on his lips. “For two months you have been on your own?”

  I smiled back at him. “All on my own.”

  His hand came up and brushed against my cheek. “For ten months I
have been on my own."

  We sat there like two dumb-struck teenagers smiling at each other, realising how strong our love for each other had been. The last few days had been a wreck, for both of us. But, for the entire time we had been apart, we had been mourning each other and remained faithful. I knew it was silly to just pretend the last week hadn't happened at all. But, it felt right. I was absolutely comfortable with never dwelling on what nearly had transpired at the end of our time apart.

  His face sobered slightly. “The Iunctio lost your power when Lutin reversed the joining?”

  “Yeah, but I didn't lose mine. I can still Dream Walk and glaze vampires. I'm still strong and fast and can hear and see better than Norms. Plus, I still have my Light. Well, I did,” I said fingering the bracelet on my arm.

  “I fear I no longer have what the joining with you gave me.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked. Michel had more than doubled his power and strength when he joined with me, maybe it was difficult to tell if he still had it here in Álfheimr.

  “I am quite sure, ma douce. I can no longer feel your emotions for one thing.”

  “But you can read my thoughts when I project them and you can project thoughts to me,” I suggested. Those skills had only developed after we Bonded.

  Michel cocked his head to the side. Think something, his voice drifted in my head.

  I did. He smiled. “Were you projecting that thought, ma douce?”

  “Yes.” I smiled back.

  “I love you too,” he said and leaned forward to kiss me soundly on the lips. When he pulled back, he confirmed, “I can hear your projected thoughts and you can receive mine.”

  “So maybe you're still as powerful as before?” I offered. His smile dimmed.

  “I doubt it. I... do not feel quite the same.” He sighed and started rubbing his thumb and forefinger across his jaw. His thumb down one side, his finger down the other. Back and forward. “If we join, the Iunctio may not receive your powers until we return to that realm. I couldn't sense that Amicus was alive when he was here. He was cut-off to me.”

  “Could you sense him when he returned to Earth?” I watched his reaction closely and knew the instant I asked the question, that he had not sensed Amicus at all.

  He stood up and started pacing. “It might be OK, ma douce. We could risk it.”

  I closed my eyes at his words. He wanted to join again with me so badly, I did too, but this was not how Michel usually operated. Michel was more pragmatic than this. Calculated risks only. He never took chances based on emotional responses alone. Sure, he'd willingly enter into a battle to protect me, but this, what we were discussing, was not a life or death situation. It was a desire, a want. Not a need. He wanted that connection with me again and he'd risk us being trapped here in Álfheimr to have it.

  It broke my heart, but I had to say it. “We can't take that chance.”

  When I opened my eyes he was standing still, a few feet away, watching me. It looked like he had been watching me for a while. All the time I'd had my eyes closed and been thinking. He nodded. One short bob of his head. And then he simply bent down and picked up the armchair he was standing beside and then tossed it into the wall with force.

  The sound of wood fracturing and stone cracking reverberated around the room. The door sprang open, three guards stormed in with swords drawn and then silence reigned. The guards looked at the furniture in a heap against the wall. Looked at Michel, standing there gloriously naked and in a blind fury, magenta reflecting around the room from his eyes. Then looked at me, taking in my sheet-wrapped, naked and hunched self and the mess of a bed I perched upon. All three of them grinned.

  “The Queen wear you out, vampire?” A green guard said with a sneer. “Your lady not satisfied?”

  It was natural, I didn't even think. I called on my Light. No one was going to hurt Michel.

  I woke up with a killer headache from Hell. The guards were gone and Michel had put me back in bed. He had also had time to dress and was wiping a wet cloth across my forehead. He smiled and raised an eyebrow at me when I opened my eyes and groaned.

  “So, you thought you might defend my honour with your Light, ma douce?” He leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “Please do not do that again until we lose that damn bracelet,” he whispered against my cheek. “I do not think I can stand to witness you collapsing repeatedly.”

  “What happened?” I croaked, closing my eyes again.

  “Well the good news is you scared the guards away. I think they may have believed you were turning into a Banshee.” I grimaced. “The bad news, ma belle, is I could see your Light. It was beneath your skin and I think whatever you had planned to do with it couldn't escape and you ended up receiving the blast instead.”

  My eyes popped open again and I frowned. “Lutin said I would not be able to reach my Light and when I tried I would suffer pain. His mother, Queen Isoleth, charmed the bracelet that way.” Although I admit I had already kind of come to this conclusion, it was what I had hoped when I tried to use my Light to end it all - when Lutin was about to take things too far that first night at the Ljósálfar Court.

  “Have you only tried to use it to cause pain?”

  I had to think about that and as my head hurt so much, it took a while. Michel waited patiently, still wiping my head with the cool cloth. I was quite sure the times I had reached for my Light I had felt threatened. So, yes I had intended pain. I nodded, then grimaced and gritted my teeth through the responding stab in my head.

  “Yeah, only to cause pain,” I said in a gasp.

  “Well, I suggest when you are feeling better, you try to use it for another purpose.” We both knew what other purpose I use my Light for normally. I blushed. Michel smiled in reply. “Perhaps you are not cut off from your Light, merely that it is contained within you. To know this will help us to break the charm.”

  The door to the room unlocked and opened, then Sora came in. Fluttering her yellow wings as she drifted across the threshold. She didn't say a word until the guard locked the door behind her. Then she glanced up at both of us on the bed and smiled, a wide pointed teeth smile.

  “You are looking much better, Michel,” she said softly, her smile for him a genuine one of affection.

  I looked between them both to see his reaction to her. He smiled back, equally as affectionate. It hadn't even occurred to me that Sora had been Michel's.... what? Servant, maid? Whatever she was to me, she had obviously been something of the same to Michel. For ten months. The familiarity between them set my teeth on edge. Oh, that green eyed monster. And I wasn't talking about the guards.

  “Sora,” Michel said in a voice I had only heard him use when talking to me. “It is good to see you, fīfrildi. You have cared well for my kindred.” His hand automatically came out to clasp mine, but his head didn't turn to look at me. His eyes remained resolutely on the Fey.

  “I have brought food for the Princess.” Michel stiffened at my title, but hid it by getting up and walking over to take the tray from Sora's hands.

  “I'm sure she will enjoy it,” he replied, somehow taking the tray and returning to me, but not putting his back to the butterfly.

  I sat up a little higher in the bed, making sure the sheet remained wrapped tightly around me. Michel was being very careful with his words, I noticed. Ten months here and he had mastered not thanking the Fey. I wondered if this was a natural thing for him, or if he had learned the hard way when he first arrived.

  He placed the tray of food on my lap, his eyes still on Sora.

  “The Queen has requested an audience this afternoon. You will be escorted to the throne room when she is ready.” Sora fluttered nervously a few inches above the ground. I wondered if she was worried what the Queen would do to me, or if her concern was all for Michel.

  “Very well,” Michel replied neutrally.

  “I shall get clothing ready for the Princess,” Sora said turning and floating into the dressing room. Michel's shoulder's relaxed slightly wh
en she was out of sight.

  He turned to look at me. “Eat, ma douce,” he encouraged, but I wasn't hungry. The thought of meeting Queen Sofiq had put me in a tail spin.

  Instead I said, “Come here.” His eyebrows raised in a question and he glanced over his shoulder to the dressing room, where Sora was still out of sight within.

  He knelt down beside my bed and reached up a hand to brush my hair from my eyes. “What is it, ma douce?” he asked softly, barely loud enough for me to hear.

  “You don't trust her,” I stated, just as quietly as he had spoken.

  He shook his head. “I don't trust any of them, but I will do what is necessary to keep you safe and get us out of here.”

  “What will Sofiq do?” I asked, my stomach flipping ominously inside. Michel's thumb started rubbing softly on the back of my hand.

  “Think of her as a cat. A very hungry, old and wise cat. She will play with you, ma douce. And she will have you thinking that it is all for fun. But, mark my words, she wishes to eat you, like any cat would a mouse. She has no care for others, only entertainment for herself is her concern. She is old and bored. Has been confined to her castle for centuries and has grown bitter with resentment. She despises the Nosferatu, as we were the cause of the portals being closed originally. She abhors the Nosferatin, as you are the power that made it possible. And on top of this, she has a deep seated hatred of the Ljósálfar, her captors, of which you are now a Princess. The chances of her not hurting you are zero.” Tell it how it really is, I thought, watching his serious expression. “But,” he said, still stroking the back of my hand, “we can be of some use to her. We must bargain and convince her she has no choice but to work with us.”

  “How?” I asked, noticing Sora was about to come out of the dresser.

  “That is the question,” Michel answered, standing and turning to face Sora in the nick of time.

  “Your outfit has been laid out, Princess. I shall leave you now and return at lunch time. I am sure you would rather I was not here.”