Rapture: The Shadowdwellers

by Jacquelyn Frank

  But shocked as she was, she knew instantly that he was giving her exactly what she had asked for.

  Honesty.

  She froze, her heart suddenly stopping.

  Magnus felt her do so and immediately pulled back. To his surprise, though, her hands shot to his shoulders and held him to her. The mixed signals confused him for a moment, but then he saw the awkward doubt on her face and he quickly understood.

  He shifted just a bit, keeping contact with her, but at the most neutral points he could manage with them both being naked. Then he cradled her pretty cheek against his hand and tilted her chin up gently, readying her for his kiss.

  “It’s okay, K’yindara,” he said to her softly and soothingly. “Give me your mouth.”

  “I don’t know how,” she gasped, her eyes wide with distress. “You know everything anyone has ever done, ever, and I don’t even know how to be kissed.”

  “Everyone has to start somewhere, K’yindara. Let’s start you off right here.” He dipped for her mouth, touching lightly and drawing away. “Relax. Soften your lips. There. Match me, now. Copy my pressure. Yes.”

  Magnus was convinced he had completely lost all grasp of reality. Was he really thinking he was going to pit three hundred years of sexual education, and two hundred of those years in abstinence, against a girl who couldn’t even kiss?

  Scratch that, he thought a moment later as her mouth went truly soft against his when she stopped imitating and switched into instinct. She could kiss. The sudden wave of intent and emotional desire that shimmered through her was a physical change he felt all the way to his bones. And he hadn’t even taken a real taste of her yet.

  Magnus didn’t rush her. He didn’t rush himself. He had never grown tired of watching a student blossom and grow, no matter what the topic, but experience couldn’t have prepared him for the stark contrast of innocence and canny wisdom that she used to find her way. He drew back, amazed to find that such simple kisses could so arouse him.

  “Open your mouth, sweetheart,” he whispered as he brushed a kiss over the bridge of her nose and then each cheek.

  “I don’t like it,” she panted in precipitous anxiety, shaking her head. Clearly, she was remembering some sloppy attempt to force a kiss on her.

  “Jei li, this isn’t going to be like that. Give me just two kisses, and if you still don’t like it, I will stop.”

  She was breathing so rapidly, clinging to him so hard. She would be damned before she’d admit to being afraid; he knew that much, but he wouldn’t allow her to dismiss anything out of hand just because some pig had groped and blundered with her.

  His thumb touched her chin, and he smiled when her lips parted hesitantly. The tension in her jaw was ridiculous, but he wasn’t concerned. If he had learned anything in this past hour, it was that she had every instinct she needed to drive a man to distraction, whether she realized it or not. Magnus lowered his head, kissing her in gently increasing increments, but then flicked his tongue against her lips in slow, tiny strokes. She watched him, eyes wide open and unsure, her sharp little mind analyzing when she would call it quits. She was so occupied on that point that she wasn’t expecting to feel his fingertips running down the underside of her arm and then down along her side. She gasped softly, opening her mouth wider. Magnus took full advantage.

  Daenaira suddenly found herself flooded with the taste and feel of Magnus’s tongue. He sought her, stroking softly and slowly again and again until she was quite certain they had gone past more than two kisses. Then again, she was surprised to realize she liked the way it felt to have him filling her mouth in this way. As she relaxed, she thought to mimic him, and to her delight she heard him groan low and soft when her tongue slipped into his mouth and tasted him curiously. His flavor was something so unique, strong and subtle all at once, but it seemed to spin her away from the defined world and make it more acute all at the same time.

  “There we go,” he encouraged her hotly, his own desire filling the spaces between them so she would feed off of it. “Drenna, but you taste good,” he said in a rush of heated breath and undisguised want. “I’m so sorry about before, jei li. Light and damnation, I’m sorry for this, too. I shouldn’t be making love to you.” But even as he said what she should take as an insult, he was starting to devour her sweet mouth, filling his hands with fistfuls of her darkly damp hair.

  When his mouth trailed down her throat, she gasped out for breath and sank her fingers into his loosened hair. She clenched her fingers hard at the roots, quickly gaining his attention, his golden gaze jolting up to meet her amber one.

  “Then don’t. Stop now. Let me up.”

  Magnus went stiller and stiller with each cold dictate she slapped into him, and felt as though ice was spearing through his chest. As he stared down at her, he could see she was glacial with fury, but she was also breathtakingly beautiful. Resisting his weight and no longer soft and pliant beneath him, she looked as if she were ready to kick his ass all over creation.

  “Daenaira…” he said hesitantly.

  “And don’t you ever start something with me again unless you are damn sure you are going to commit to it. I’m not some toy you can play with halfheartedly! Get off me!”

  Magnus obeyed her command with slow reluctance, moving carefully off her. “I meant no insult to you, Daenaira. I only meant—this is going against every ingrained habit I have! You don’t understand how hard and how long I have worked to make Sanctuary what it is! Two hundred years of sacrifice had to have had something to do with that! I can’t believe it didn’t.”

  Dae pushed out from under him, getting to her feet angrily. “‘What it is?’ You want to know what your precious Sanctuary is?” she growled in threat.

  Just like that, deadly danger fell like a cloak over him and he surged to his feet and loomed over her. Through tightly clenched teeth he said, “Don’t. You. Dare.”

  “It’s a den of killers and rapists,” she hissed, daring and more as she stood toe to toe with him. “Drenna only knows what lies in the hearts of some of those treacherous bitches you introduced me to the other night!”

  “Shut your mouth!” It was nothing short of an explosion, punctuated by the way he snared her around her throat and all but slammed her back down on the bed. “Three days you are here and you think you can judge? You give no faith, no commitment to me, and you damn well don’t listen to half the things I say, and you have the nerve to judge my haven? My world!”

  “Your haven tried to kill you an hour ago,” she reminded him on the softest rasp of a whisper, her hands locking instinctively around the wrist that constricted around her. Yet he did not hurt her and did not restrict her breathing despite his unmitigated fury. “You give no faith, no commitment, and you damn well don’t listen to any of the things I say,” she rounded back at him. “You demand from me what you won’t give! You knew there was danger here, and you lied to me and told me I was safe! You gave me no chance to defend myself, and when those bastards were out there killing you, you gave me no chance to defend you!”

  “I don’t need defending and I don’t need you or your disrespect! Drenna forced you down my throat, plagued me until I could barely function.” He let go, and furious gold eyes raked down over her bare skin before his hand plowed down over her breastbone and the center of her body. She tried to maintain her grasp on him, but he easily ignored her resistance until the bend of her wrists forced her to let go. Daenaira tried not to react to the feel of his roughly callused palm as it scraped her every nerve to full attention. “Do you know what the worst of it was?” he demanded, his features a mask of lust and dark anger. “The smell of you.” He lowered his nose to her, the tip just barely grazing her skin as his hand continued relentlessly down her belly. “My goddess inundated me with the sweet, sultry scent of you.” His eyes closed and she watched with a pounding heart as he took in a deep breath, drawing her scent into him, his expression changing to one of unmitigated need and pleasure. “The sweet cream aroma I ca
n practically taste,” he said, the register of his voice hitting rock bottom. “It makes me want to taste you. Until I can’t think of anything else.”

  Just then his traveling fingers sank into the black tangle of curls guarding her sex. Daenaira had become so mesmerized by the massive clash of desires and emotions running over him that she hadn’t even considered where he would end up. There was a poetic tragedy to the struggle she could see him fighting within himself, but she couldn’t let him continue to mess with her already dizzy head any more than he already had. Panting for breath as his stroking fingers sought to continue farther, tickling against her cleft as they burrowed for her heat, she clutched for his shoulders with her nails bared.

  “Magnus, stop! You can’t keep doing this to me!”

  “Why not?” he snapped sharply, his fiery gaze burning up at hers. “You keep doing it to me! M’gnone, look at what you do to me!” He shifted against her and she felt the hottest touch of flesh. He was hard and thick with his arousal, that alone stunning and impressive, but the true impact was how he burned against her hip. And once he made contact with her, he couldn’t seem to control his need to move in restless pressure against her. He bored his gaze into hers, the lacing of pain in his eyes the only thing that kept her from lashing out in desperate defense. “I know it isn’t your fault,” he said quickly, a tempest of conflict slashing over his face. “Gods, it’s wrong in so many ways to make this about blaming you. I’m not blaming you. I swear to you, I’m not.”

  His desperation made the sudden slide of hard fingertips against her most intimate flesh come as a blinding shock. Callus-rough and yet so gentle, he slid his finger between the folds of her sex, and the sensation made her hips jerk as though he had struck a match and thrown it against her. Catching fire, her skin exploded in sheets of billowing heat that climbed up through her until her whole body was flushed with it.

  “M-Magnus…” she choked out, her nails digging into him as uncertainty and fear made her chest ache.

  “All I want,” he whispered as his mouth lowered to drift in sensuous rubs against her solar plexus, “is a taste, little spitfire. I want to know if you taste as sweet and soft as you smell.” His tongue flicked out against her skin, the touch of it like delightful acid as he repeated it for fuller contact. Then he kissed away the moisture he had left behind as he moved farther down her belly.

  Dae was numb and overloaded by turns, her brain quickly muddled by too much information and so much sexual awareness it was like lying on the tips of needles. His words of desire and need combined with every virgin caress she experienced to dizzy her until all she could do was breathe in a series of soft, hitching rasps. She shook her head and closed her eyes, trying to break from the strange sexual spell she was swept up in, but it was impossible when he was lazily stroking his fingertip everywhere except just where she needed it most. Wherever that was.

  “Magnus, please,” she begged him frantically, her fingers finally releasing his skin to catch into his thick hair. “Don’t.” She actually felt the bastard smile against her skin, and it made her want to rip his hair out. In a minute. Just one minute…

  Daenaira felt liquid warmth easing from her body to wet his passing fingertips, and she blushed hotly in embarrassed confusion.

  “Yes, baby, that’s what I want,” he groaned as he felt the viscous proof of her arousal. “There’s my treat.”

  He shifted over her, parting her tense thighs firmly until he could see the beckoning plum of dark, wet tissues. Just looking at her made Magnus realize how agonizingly hard he was for her. Drenna, he’d just climaxed not fifteen minutes ago and already he felt like it had been forever. As he anticipated his little sweet feast, it only became more intense. A wild urge to connect with her beat through him like a massive drum. Not just plunge into her, but connect. Link himself to her. Join. Yes. Join. He needed to join his very spirit to hers, via the moist little sheath waiting so innocently for him. Just the thought brought him to the edge of climax, his cock dripping in anticipation of it. Never had he reacted so strongly to a woman. It was embarrassingly out of control, almost juvenile to a man of his age and skill.

  Magnus had avoided her budded clitoris on purpose, wanting the first touch to be the one that had all but driven him mad inside his ruthless visions. The touch of his tongue. The smell of her arousal was overwhelming, that heady, sweet lure that made his head spin and the feminine purity of musk that used every pheromonal trick in the book to snare him. He looked up her body to see her liquid amber eyes.

  “Don’t,” she whispered almost soundlessly.

  Her fear struck at him so hard it left a stinging flavor of distaste across his tongue. Stunned to realize she was in such a different space than he was, Magnus went still. He shook his head, trying desperately to shed the spell possessing him so mindlessly, but with the scent of her pervading him it was a losing battle.

  “I won’t hurt you,” he said hoarsely.

  “How can I believe that?” she asked as her hands shook within his hair. “How can I believe anything you say when you never tell me the truth?”

  “I never lied to you!”

  “You never tell me the truth,” she echoed numbly. “I only get to feel it in sharp stabbing moments when you use sex against me.”

  “Against you?” Magnus surged up her body, his hands beside her shoulders caging her as he braced himself over her. “I’m not using sex against you! This isn’t a battle, jei li! These are not tactics!”

  “Don’t you call me that! Don’t you dare call me that. Nothing you have done has given you the right to call me jei li! You use me and make me feel things…You confuse me and hurt me and you think I am just going to give in to you and let you master my existence any way you please. Well, I won’t! I am not your goddamn slave!”

  Magnus jerked back away from her as if from a punch. He lurched off the bed, grabbing hold of her arm and dragging her to her feet as well. He shoved her toward the door joining their rooms so hard that she stumbled.

  “Go then!” he spat at her. “Do not lie here and take my unkind abuses any longer, little girl. Run away and hide like the child you are.”

  Daenaira felt the sting of the insult lashing viciously across her back.

  Just like the nine-tailed cat.

  With her chest aching and eyes burning with emotions she refused to feel, never mind show to him, she moved to leave.

  “Dae…”

  She couldn’t help herself. She had to stop when she heard the plain hurt and confusion in his voice. Her chin held high, she turned to look at him over her shoulder. She chilled herself to the vulnerability in his eyes, however. She wouldn’t be tricked by it again.

  “You think you are so superior to my aunt and my uncle,” she said hoarsely, knowing she was doing what she had always done best. Going violently for his balls. “But you’re so much worse. At least they were honest. At least they never fucked with my head by pretending to be anything other than the monsters they were.”

  Daenaira turned her back on him and left.

  Daenaira left Sanctuary.

  Not for good. Not that she knew of yet. She just needed to leave the cloistered environment and find space to breathe different air. She didn’t go very far before she saw someone she realized she recognized. He wore the uniform of a royal guard, but she had no idea how she would know someone like that. The idea that she couldn’t remember his face both mystified and irritated her.

  He was chatting casually with another man as she watched him from a distance and tried to figure out where she knew him from. He had an easy smile, warm and friendly eyes, and a straight tousle of dark brown hair that was cut much shorter than most men around him; the only exception was the man he was talking to, whose jet locks were trimmed tightly to the back of his neck, though it was a little longer where it fell in feathered layers against his temples.

  She looked back at the guard whose lean athleticism tickled her memory as he leaned back against a stone outcropp
ing. He was an animated talker, his whole body moving as he related a tale to his amused audience. Finally, curiosity got the best of her and she boldly walked up to both men. The story stopped cold when the guard caught sight of her approaching him, and he glanced at his companion before letting a wolfish smile cross his features.

  “Excuse me, but don’t I know you from somewhere?” she asked directly.

  “Uh, I don’t know, honey. Do you?”

  “I think so. I was just trying to place you.”

  He shrugged. “Probably around the palace or something. I think if we’d met, I would remember you.” He slowly let his eyes roam over her figure in the k’jeet she was wearing quite openly in public. Women only wore such things in the privacy of their homes. They were provocative, the way they were held to the body with only two ties beneath the breasts and one in between. That was to say nothing of the fact that, even though the material was a deep scarlet, it was quite sheer. Also, tradition dictated that no undergarments were worn when a woman wore a k’jeet. She was as good as naked as far as he was concerned, and his smile grew. He was used to women coming on to him in all manner of ways, but he had to admit this was pretty bold, especially considering whom he was standing with.

  “I’ve never been to the palace,” she said with a shake of her head that made her unusual hair shimmer with color. The funny thing was, she looked very serious as she made a show of racking her brain.

  Daenaira was entirely serious, of course. She had worn the k’jeet because it was the only thing she owned besides her now-ruined sari. Since walking around butt-naked was the only alternative, this was the least provocative choice.

  “What’s your name?” she asked him, hoping it would help.

  “Killian,” he responded with amusement. She really was quite a little actress, the guard thought.

  “Oh.” Then he watched her color pale right before she flushed and her eyes grew large. “Oh! Oh, okay. Thank you. I’m sorry I interrupted,” she said hastily, retreating from the men quickly.