by Sunny
“You said we have to leave,” Sarai said with a slight rasp, sitting up with Brielle’s help.
Hari nodded. “Yes, we need to go.”
She gazed at him, and it was as if those eerie black eyes saw clear down to the very bottom of his murky soul. “Then let us depart here.”
Slipping through the crude opening he had made between the bars, Sarai took her first steps toward uncertain freedom. She led them up the stairs, but at the top, she paused and allowed Hari to take the lead, and with her hand clutching Brielle’s tightly, followed Hari silently through the bedchamber.
Their escape outside was anticlimactic. No one came to investigate their presence. The two demons Hari sensed in the back of the palace did not raise an alarm, even though they had to be as aware of him as he was of them. The worse part was feeling so exposed walking down the front steps, open and unshielded to any eyes that might happen to look their way. Even if Hari’s presence didn’t stir suspicion at first casual glance, any fool would know something was up once they caught sight of a black Floradëur—Flowers of Darkness, creatures that were almost mythical.
Black Flower of Life was another name for them. Drinking the blood of a Floradëur boosted a demon’s power like pouring accelerant on a fire. Drink enough of their blood and the rumor was that it could bring a demon back to life. Which was utter rubbish. Derek had remained as demon dead as the rest of them, and he’d had twenty-six years to gorge himself on Talon’s blood. But still, that myth would have demons pouncing on Sarai like rabid animals. Shit. Maybe they should have taken the time to find something to shroud Sarai in; that pure black skin of hers was a deadly giveaway. But of course Hari had to have this brilliant insight after they had cleared the steps and were sprinting toward the nearest brush cover.
Only twenty paces before they reached concealment, a shout of alarm went up. “Ho! Intruders. A Floradëur!” The last was shouted with jittery excitement.
Sarai stumbled. Almost fell down.
Hari snagged one arm around her painfully slender form and ran with her, carrying her like a football. “Go, go, go!” he urged Brielle, right behind her, keeping his pace no faster than hers, which was much slower than what he was capable of alone—heck, while even carrying Sarai.
“Wait,” he said when they reached the shelter of the trees, and set Sarai on her feet. “Keep going and stay together. I’ll catch up to you.”
Brielle opened her mouth to argue, but Sarai grabbed her hand and took off running. As soon as they left, Hari winked his form out of sight. It was a manifestation of his dragon blood, impure though that strain might be. In their oldest stories, legendary red dragons were able to cloak themselves from sight in such a manner for brief moments of time. Hari never made that claim—that had he been of pure blood, he would have transformed into one of the fiercest and deadliest dragons of their breed—not out loud, at least. But he had always believed it.
Silent and unseen, Hari waited for their pursuers. They came quickly: two bandits. The first demon he had not seen before. The second one was the familiar missing-nosed warrior with his chipped sword in hand.
The first one he let pass by. The second demon, smarter and more alert, stopped and looked around, alerted by the smell of Hari’s blood, which Hari thought rather ironic considering his missing nose.
Hari unveiled himself, snatched the sword away from the surprised demon, and half-severed the bandit’s thick neck with one quick swing. Had the blade been less dull or less chipped, it would have taken his opponent’s head off completely. But it was disabling enough; the bandit toppled to the ground with a gurgle and loud crash.
Dropping the sword, Hari winked out of sight again as the second bandit turned back to cautiously investigate. The smell of blood was too diffuse now to allow the demon to pinpoint Hari’s presence. To the bandit, it appeared as if the sword eerily lifted up from the ground and attacked him of its own spooky volition. Blood sprayed and the bandit screamed as his lower leg was cut off below the knee.
Hari flashed into view and yanked the pants off the first demon he had downed. He needed a clean pair of pants; his own reeked of blood, making it easy for the others to track him, which would play quite nicely for his immediate plans, but he’d need something free of bloodscent later, for the women’s sensibilities if not his own. He was diverted for a moment at the sight of the bandit’s naked penis. The offending organ fired Hari’s fury. This was the same demon bastard who would have raped his dragon Queen as spectacle sport in the arena.
The sword sliced down, cutting off the offensive organ. “Heal that,” Hari growled. He wanted to shove the demon’s dick down his throat and make him swallow it, but approaching noise told Hari he had no more time to waste with further vengeance. A pity.
With the spare pants in one hand and the bloody sword gripped in the other, Hari leaped away with an angry snarl, running in the opposite direction Sarai and Brielle had taken.
Hari laid out a false trail for the others to follow that ended at a stream. Stripping off his stained pants, he waded into the water and swiftly washed the blood off his body. He tied the blood-smeared sword and trousers to a thick branch, and watched it float downstream. Jumping up into a tree, he donned the clean pants and doubled back in the direction he had come, leaping from tree to tree, veiling himself from sight as a group of bandits hurried past. He never truly understood what he did, or how he did it. It was like a partial dissipating of himself, but only in one plane, that of sight; his body was still there, clearly felt if someone bumped into him. Just not seen.
Hari waited until the sound of distant splashing indicated the bandits had reached the stream and were following the false blood trail he had laid out for them.
Good. Now he could return to the women.
Dropping his invisibility, he jumped to the ground and set off at a fast run.
TWENTY-ONE
SOMETHING SOFT BRUSHED my lips. A kiss so light it was like an ephemeral dream—wispy, almost insubstantial—drawing me gently up from deep slumber into drifting wakefulness. If it weren’t for our tie, I wouldn’t have known who it was, or even what it was. But even in half-sleep, our bond twanged, and through that connection, I felt how Talon felt as he kissed me. Soft, sweet . . . my first given kiss. The sadness I felt in him drew a sound of protest from me.
He covered my lips with his again. Shhh, we must be quiet.
I remembered where we were then. And remembered that last revelation before sleep: that he was young but not innocent; that he was not a virgin even though he had never lain with a woman before.
Why did you kiss me? I asked.
I am rested and recovered. We need to go, and—more whimsically—I wanted to wake Sleeping Beauty.
I snorted in my mind. I am no innocent Sleeping Beauty.
Nor am I a handsome and gallant prince.
But you are.
Am I? he asked, and since I was in his mind, I knew how he thought of himself still. As squat and ugly; a distorted being—what he had been his entire life before I rescued him and brought him back to Hell, his natural world. Down there he had painfully stretched out into the slender height and proportion that was meant to be his. And though he was handsome and tall now, a delicately refined Flower of Darkness, the ungainly self-image he had had of himself for so long was hard to throw off.
Yes. You are more handsome than any fairy-tale prince. And more gallant, although . . . Here I smiled, or maybe it was closer to a smirk . . . you rescued the dragon instead of slaying it.
His soft laughter. Not typical fairy-tale creatures, you and I, are we?
No, I thought, awash in the sweetness of his mind-laughter. He was beautiful when he smiled, when he laughed. I became aware of the closeness of his lips, his body slanting over mine. And felt in the faint recesses of his mind his want and desire for me—no . . . more than desire. His yearning for me, for everything that I was.
He saw me clearly, both hard and soft, good and bad, and still he wanted m
e, was drawn to me. Had been from the very beginning. The faint echo of his last thought, that I was someone far beyond his reach, humbled me and made me see clearly what I had not seen before.
I had thought to protect him from myself, not hurt him. In my mind, it had been the reverse. I was over six hundred years demon, with over a hundred lived Monère years on top of that. I’d thought myself too old for his innocence, too cruel for his gentleness, too brittle and hard for his delicate refinement.
I had thought him too good for me, not the other way around. But we were what we saw reflected in others, and I had been rejecting him, though not for the reason he thought. Even as I grasped wisps of his thoughts and felt some of his emotions, so he caught mine, even one I tried to suppress.
You are attracted to me? His eyes widened with shock.
I felt heat rise up in my cheeks, and instinctively moved to shut down the open link between us.
No, don’t, please. A faint whisper across our dampened link. A pleading that was echoed in his pretty eyes as he touched a hand to my bare shoulder. With that physical touch, our link strengthened again despite what I wished.
You think my eyes lovely? The realization filled Talon with wonder, and it was that wonder, that amazement, that kept me from bolting both physically and mentally. Being linked mind-to-mind with him was much more intimate and revealing than being nude. Truth, since it was the state I happened to be in—my clothes had ripped to pieces during my transformation to dragon. Being naked was no big deal; I was comfortable with naked. It was much harder to endure the bareness of thoughts and feelings, with hidden doubts and vulnerabilities on open display. And yet at the same time, there was such a closeness in that sharing, sweet and warm. Painful, exquisite.
I was bared to him, body and raw soul, and still he wanted me . . . as I wanted him.
Talon thought his mind and violated soul as blackened and dwarfed as his physical form had been. But he was beautiful to me, inside and out—such heart, such valor, such purity of emotion.
With trembling slowness, I willfully opened my mind wide to him. And the warmth of our connection, what he found and discovered within me, how I saw him, my attraction to him, made his eyes blaze like a shadow moon rising up in the night.
As he had been pulled to me, so I had been pulled to him with compelling attraction, like two magnets being drawn together—something I had hidden and resisted until now. No longer. Not when it harmed more than it protected.
Kiss me, I thought, simple want unveiled. He did, and it was like sipping nectar—honey, golden, sweet and natural. Like two halves coming together.
Love me. And he began to do that, too. Slowly, gently, with a reverent touch. With the brush of his fingertips against my lips.
The pleasure I felt at that sweet caress reverberated back to him, and he half closed his eyes.
Yes, I thought.
Yes, he echoed.
Let me, he murmured as my hand lifted to touch him. Let me touch you, learn you. Let me love you this first time.
All before had been done to him, I realized. Never by him.
In the whole of my life, you are all that I have ever wanted. Ever dared reach for. Let me.
Yes, I answered, and dropped my hand back down to my side as I granted him that gift: to learn me at his leisure. To touch me as he wanted. To love me guided by my thoughts, my feelings, the sensations of my body openly shared with him through our link.
He started at the top, stroking my hair. It felt like silk to him, softer than he had expected, the thick, glorious mane as wild and untamed as how he saw me.
That I allowed him this—this choice, this control—awed him, humbled him. Burned his need for me even hotter, harder, and thicker so that he ached down there.
A moan rolled between our minds, his or mine, I could not tell, so willingly coupled our minds were. So open to each other, immersed in one another as never before.
Touch me! Love me!
Both our cries, both our wants, our needs, as he pulled his shirt off, shoved his pants down, and freed his stiff hardness. He was lovely, so lovely: The smooth black skin. The delicate beauty of his face. His young, supple body, leanly muscled. Wider shoulders tapering down to elegant narrow hips, drawing attention to the full frontal point of him. His male organ was a surprisingly long stretch of ebony length, less thick than my other lovers, long and slender like himself.
Oh, my, my, my . . . The luscious sight of him, turgid, full and so very long, throbbed need between my legs, an ache that sprang directly to him through our mind-link.
I had never seen anyone as long as him, and it was hard to just lie there and not reach up and grasp him—feel him as I so wanted to. To lie there passive when I so very much wanted to be active—to roll him over and try to stuff the whole of that length into me. See if all that long, succulent distance would fit completely inside my stretched sheath.
When he finally touched me, skin to skin, his fingers tracing lightly over my brow, my temples, my cheek, his touch so delicately light in contrast to the sharp, hungry, throbbing need in us, we both shuddered. He traced my lips—so sensitized they felt. Traced them again, testing the plump fullness of my lower rim. I licked his finger, and he stilled, letting me taste him, letting me lap again. Letting me wrap my tongue around that slender digit and draw him inside the warm, moist cavity of my mouth. My eyes captured his as I began to suck lightly on that part of him, a sweet but poor substitute for what I really hungered for.
Lucinda. He whispered my name as I twined my tongue around that slender digit and pulled it even deeper into my mouth, as deep as I could, sucking harder. He was trembling now, his black eyes blazing. Wetness oozed out, spilled from his slit. And warm honey coated my own hidden passage. My empty sheath clenched and contracted as I sucked his finger, gently nipped the tip. He pulled out and pushed slowly back in with my pursed suction, gently, tenderly fucking my mouth. Ah, Lucinda . . . You’re destroying me.
He reluctantly pulled his finger out and used the wet tip to trace down the side of my neck—so exquisitely sensitive. To dip into the delicate hollow cup of my collarbone.
My skin tingled where he touched me. Shivered under the stimulating moisture left behind. My nipples peaked and hardened as he skimmed down the side of my chest with that light, wet touch.
Eyes glittering, he brought his other hand to my lips, let me moisten another finger with my lips, my tongue, the inner wetness of my mouth that he explored delicately with that long and slender digit. One gentle in-and-out pump and he left my oral cavity to trace that second moist finger down the opposite side of me to just below my breasts, parallel to the other hand. A moment of stillness, of indecision, that I felt clearly in his mind, then he moved the twin points down to the center of my body, one finger dipping into the hollow of my navel while the other finger swirled delicately around the rim. It felt oddly, ridiculously stimulating, more than it should have felt. He didn’t need to look up into my eyes to know and feel how turned on and stirred up I was by those simple, innocuous actions—wet darkness, delving pressure.
Fuck me! I demanded.
His black eyes shone fierce and intent as he locked our gazes. I am. In my own way.
A little hint—move your hands down a few more inches and you’ll hit the right spot.
Humor lit his eyes and made them sparkle like black diamonds.
Black precious diamonds—I love how you see me. How you want me. How you’re letting me touch you like this.
Hush, I admonished gently, and get to it—that touching you’re rhapsodizing about.
He laughed, and the joyous sound in my mind made me smile softly, tenderly, despite my aching frustration.
The look in your eyes . . . The sweetness of your mind . . . So beautiful, so generous, your thoughts, your heart, your body.
With his eyes tenderly on mine, he ran his fingertips down until they reached the tangle of wispy hair.
Your hair is even curlier down here, he thought as he p
layed his fingers in the crisp thatch.
A light gasp as he tugged gently, zinging unexpected sensation through me that arched me up in need. Talon!
Soon, he promised, and settled himself with lithe grace between my legs.
Not what I wanted to hear.
May I kiss you?
His sweet mix of bold and shy turned my heart yielding. Of course. Anything you want.
His eyes softened at my words. At how he knew I truly meant them.
Ah, Lucinda . . . As if my words, my offer, broke his careful control, he kissed me, his tongue gliding in my mouth with gentle exploring strokes to learn me, claim me, mate with me. And I discovered that the surface of his tongue was rougher, coarser, like fine raspy sandpaper. I had a moment to wonder: How would that feel against my breast? And I had the answer to my question.
It was divine. An incredibly stimulating sensation that became even better as he reached my sensitive areola. His agile, rough tongue laved over my peaked nipple, and sharp shards of pleasure burst like a kaleidoscope within my mind. My pleasure seeped in and mixed with his as he lavished more attention on my nipple with that wicked and wonderful tongue.
Moving to my other breast, he dispensed the same detailed attention on my other hungry peak.
Another thought barely formed: How would that wonderful rough tongue feel lower down? And he was suddenly down there, spreading my legs wide with his hands and shoulders. A lick along the outer lips had me throwing back my head, arching my pelvis.
You taste so good, he whispered hungrily. Lapping his way up to my apex, he searched out what he saw in my mind, what I could not help but picture.
When that gently rough, abrading tongue grazed lightly over my hard, swollen pearl, my eyes crossed at the sublime burst of sensation, which backwashed into him with strong eddies of pleasure.
It was a most unexpected find to Talon. A discovery about a woman’s body he would never have known or guessed without our mind-link. Delighted pleasure, eagerness for more filled him as he spread my folds, gently pulled back the hood, and swiped that light, abrasive tongue over the secret pleasure organ he had exposed.
