Zauran

by Poppet

  Pleasure parts my lips and desecrates the hallowed moment with a moan of delirious wonder. It clusters my focus to the tracking of his fingertips, wherever they roam the frisson chases up into my heart through my skin. It's like a long wet kiss drenched in passion and heat, sending embers through my body with his diaphanous light. The aurora borealis in his eyes has spread across my body, turning us both into half naked glowing specters.

  Aching with a creeping yearn, vertigo flirts with my eyelids and I slump weakly into the embrace of his comfortable bed. Strong hands hold my wrists, shoving my arms away, held fast with weight, allowing downy soft hair to tickle my skin with fevered trickles as he rests his chin on my ribs to introduce the skating of silk-soft stubble over my nipples. Back and forth and back and forth.

  The slick heat weakening me and pooling in my hips is heavy quicksilver which ebbs and flows with his movement. It ripples through me like a flux of unfiltered desire.

  It's unbearable how longing and need overwhelms me, chasing away the languid delight of his glow, leaving me so desperately wanton I'm pleading before I can think.

  “Please....”

  With his weight sinking onto me I'm like a child under a boulder. I'm bathed in sedating breath with the rabid rape of my mouth. Urgency whips paths from him into me when he sucks on my lips, plunges a tongue across mine, and presses a rigid promise up between my legs to scald into my jeans from beneath his.

  The heat of chest muscles is euphoria to my frigid nipples, the hair below his navel is fated temptation sent to thrill and titillate when I am powerless to trace that trail; to discover the labyrinth of his body with my own tongue.

  Clap – Clap – Clap

  It's hollow and loud, breaking the spell and searing reality across the moonlit chamber.

  “How entertaining,” sheds its loathing contempt over us in the harmonies of a solitary voice.

  Zauran's head rears, flicking hair up in a fan of surprise, his eyes feral and glowing with aqua musk; a potion so stimulating it's divine.

  “Ryan,” says Zauran.

  It reverberates and booms, too loud, too unholy.

  “No drinking from her Zauran. Na uh. You have not won her, you take her far too soon my greedy student.”

  Silence hangs like the center-point of a tornado, charged and terrifying. My heart is hammering and I don't want Zauran to move and expose my naked torso to his horrid brother.

  “Get out!” roars from the man balancing over me. It rattles the bed frame, blasting vibrations right through my lungs and detonating pain behind my eyes.

  Fright makes my aorta feel like it just ruptured in reaction to the raw abrasive threat in Zauran's voice. Jesus. I've known him for ages and have never... never thought he could... holy crap he's... I'm lying under an inhuman being. Can we trust our hearts?

  Am I mad to be here? He could destroy me without even trying. I really know nothing about him. Nothing.

  Something solid thunks next to my head and the mattress reacts with a bounce.

  “Read it,” says Ryan.

  Then I assume Ryan leaves because Zauran's glowing eyes look back down at me; petrol green wisps waft off like steam from a hot cup.

  “I'm sorry,” he whispers. “I humiliated you Zaria, I'll admit to that. But I have never hurt you. I never will...” He swallows hard and he's so close I feel as if the motion is my own. “...I never could.”

  I promise to catch you when you fall. I promise it.

  The phosphorescence in his eyes dims and the stare he's giving me is determined.

  He means this promise.

  My arms are still pinned, my skin still soldered to his chest and abdomen with amorous warmth, our heartbeats ramming up against each other through oversensitive nipples; but the lust that was drugging me has waned, a lot.

  Twisting my head I look at a thick old book. It's partially wrapped in leather.

  His sigh washes over me and he rolls to lay next to me; tenting long legs sexily cloaked in thigh hugging jeans. He stays immobile, staring at the ceiling with elegant fingers laced over the hard ridges of his stomach.

  Licking my lips, thirsty, I dare to sit up to examine the book.

  He snatches it, sitting up with me, “Don't open it.”

  His eyes are completely back to normal - just two black sunstones segmenting every light particle into flecks of green and blue chips. They're like granite.

  Blinking, he looks down, his unruly hair flopping to dip tips into his eyelashes while he caresses his hand up my thigh and squeezes.

  “I'll go get you a drink.” Looking back up to meet my gaze, a cute smile quirks the tips of his mouth into sharp corners, “Munich Mule?”

  I nod, returning the smile.

  Frozen, still trying to absorb what I just went through, what I witnessed, one more path off the road of supernatural duplicity, I wait until the echo of his barefoot footsteps is lost to the kitchen.

  Then I pull the book toward me and unwrap frankincense scented supple leather to expose a tome so precious, I know in my heart it's ancient and holy.

  Cracking open the metal cover I peek at the first words.

  Khdyhq zhofrphv brx

  A voice reaches into my head from the crag beyond the other doorway. He's concealed with shadows when his smug tone wipes its smear across my mind, I knew you couldn't resist. Now you will be mine.

  Chapter 5

  Zaria:

  Snatching a pillow I defensively cover myself, peering into the dark.

  Why does every room have two doors?

  “Go away!” I yell at the dancing thick ink of the atmosphere beyond the other bedroom door.

  Zaria, be warned. You will think I'm evil, you will think I have an ego pining for ownership, and you'd be wrong. He may not drink your light until the time is right. He knows it, I know it – you do not.

  I protected you tonight. One day you'll thank me for the Alpha consciousness pumping my heart and infusing my blood.

  Zauran told me the neuri were created to protect humans from tyranny. He said that they're not werewolves but instead a defender race.

  Is that what Ryan's really doing? Protecting me?

  His bulk steps out from behind the shield of shadow and I note he's rolling up his sleeves, turning them into neat cuffs perched above the elbows.

  The buttons of his shirt are undone to his chest and what it reveals is a Titan with bed head black hair, happy jet eyes, a strong stubborn jaw, and full sensual lips now curving into a wide smile.

  He looks so immaculate and civilized dressed that way, it totally contradicts the impression he makes. I bet on a good day he could charm anyone with his cultured voice and winsome smile.

  The foreboding hulk flashes an isolated moment of gentle vulnerability to me before his expression hardens like indomitable epoxy.

  Your light is sacred. I am defending you Zaria. I am protecting you. We are not werewolves, we are warriors who smell, taste, and adore pure spiritual-light. You have a lot of it, it's tempting and provocative. The scent of you is so overpowering it permeates every room in this house where you have walked. You are not safe around any neuri. To his credit I'm surprised Zauran hasn't penetrated you before now. It's instinctual to dive into your sexual light. That's how you make us react. I'll be taking my leave now. Expect me to show up again when you least expect it.

  And do not let him drink your light.

  It's like a warping dream when the warm smile he gives me fades as he turns to stride away into the abyss beyond that threshold.

  A parting comment trespasses in my head.

  Fabulous nipples. How do they taste?

  Laughter booms somewhere deep in the bowels of the house as Zauran walks back into the room, his attention snapping from the book, to me.

  “No!”

  It's sharp and urgent, cracking my inhalation with apprehension when he zooms to the bed and sits, holding out the glass to me when he stares at the words exposed on the title page.

  His f
ree hand grips his hair in a tight fist as he stares eternally at those three little words that make no sense to me.

  When he finally looks up his jaw is clenched so tight it disables my defenses, and I edge closer, touching his leg, “What? What did I do?”

  Blinking, he shakes his head and stares back down.

  As if unwilling to look at me his eyes close, and his gruff tone says, “Take your drink please.”

  I do, sipping it to soothe the ever increasing dryness of my throat. Nerves are getting the better of me.

  When his eyes reopen and scan me huddled behind a pillow, he then looks at the doorway leading into the house instead of the kitchen, as if knowing what transpired.

  His loud swallow pops the silence bubble in the bedroom and he looks back to me, nudging his head at the window, “I can hear him leaving.”

  I strain to listen, but the throaty growl of Ryan's motorbike starting up is easy to hear in the blanketing silence suffocating us.

  You wouldn't expect him to be on a motorbike. The way he walks and talks you'd think he has a chauffeur and a Rolls Royce Phantom.

  Zauran's eyes fill with that hypnotic aqua mist and his voice is three shades deeper when he says, “Are you staying?”

  I want to. I've committed myself to seeing this through. When he gets home after dawn I want Darise to know I'm never coming back. I'm making sure I can never go back. I want to do irreparable damage to 'us'. And the one person I'm destined to do it with I once fought myself internally over.

  I loved Zauran, and I think I still do.

  With Darise being a bartender at Pravus, the only bar for demons, vampyre, and neuri, in this corner of the world, it never occurred to me the ex-vampyre would take his pick of the women drawn to supernatural men.

  It never occurred to me he was that flawed. And yet I knew it somewhere deep inside. I gave the vampyre his freedom and this is how he thanks me. At least I can say his name now and he can't hear me. If this had happened while he was still immortal he'd have known where to find me.

  As much as it hurts, I'm not that surprised.

  I nod assent to Zauran, leaning to place my drink down on the bedside table.

  A warm hand traces my hip, dipping into my pocket and withdrawing my car keys.

  “I'm hiding your car in the garage and we're moving this liaison to the one room none of them can track us to.” He leans closer to skim skin across mine, delicately capturing my lips with his mouth. It's such a tentative and soft kiss it turns the faucet of my decision to full blast.

  I made the right choice tonight.

  And screw Ryan; there's no way on Earth Zauran would ever hurt me. He made his feelings plain from the word go, yet not once after his first mistake has he ever been anything other than tender and protective toward me.

  If neuri can love, this man loves me.

  Even Venix knew it or he wouldn't have chosen for me.

  Oh God! Venix knew!

  Venix could see it. When I didn't know who to choose, Venix brought me here to Zauran's house. When I was a wreck of emotions the person he guided me to was Zauran.

  Venix is related to Darise and is an arch-angel. He was one of the first vampyre on earth and he vanished right outside this house when he found redemption through rain.

  My eyes sting with gathering tears when I think of rain and how Venix taught me about how it heals humanity. Zauran even smells like rain. If ever there was a bigger clue that should have been it. How blind was I that I couldn't see the billboard blaring the obvious at me?

  Zauran's eyes sparkle and flare, the aqua vapor tracing its phantom trails between us.

  He looks as shocked as I am at this realization.

  Are you reading my mind?

  He nods, reaching up to tweezer my chin between his thumb and the curve of his forefinger, “I do love you.”

  Slipping the thumb up to hook my bottom lip open, he exhales a monsoon breath over the gloss, tracing his tongue slowly around it to flick onto the tip of my own, as if he is tasting something hidden in my jeans with the motion.

  It returns the erotic ache to punch up inside me.

  We have an arch-angel's blessing, Zaria. He chose for you, and now it's time you took his advice and trusted me. Body, mind, and soul.

  Melting, lost in the euphoria of the emotional turbulence and vapid desire arcing my spine with subconscious craving, I glide in a dreamy state to press against the satin heat of his body, surrendering to the probe of his tongue and the stake of the fingers he has entwined in my hair.

  I'm so wet with pleading need I'm sure he can sense it.

  Lifted up, moved so fast the world blurs around me, his voice is a dirge carrying deep and low and stealthy as it roams across the prairies of my mind, I can. And it's making me throb.

  My keys jangle in his haste down stairs, rattling like a chain made up of links of silver sin. Earthy hued walls are wiped with our shadows as he rushes us through the arteries of his home to the fated room where he first hid me away from the world.

  The temperature changes as he steps into the hideaway and his grip lessens marginally.

  His muscles are rigid with tension when he drapes me onto the couch in the secret den, pausing to inhale my breath from my lungs with the suction of his mouth on mine. His teeth tease the lip between them as he extricates slowly, reluctance stalking his movement.

  I'll be right back.

  I watch him sprint to hide my car away with a desperate pulse firing rapidly into the seam where my jeans join.

  It's automatic, I slip my hand in the hollow of my legs and press down to dull the sensation, gasping at the sensitivity and pleasure of the pressure.

  Chapter 6

  Zaria:

  The heartbeat clanging my blood in a pound through every vein is now bashing an insistent tattoo across the swollen readiness of my arousal.

  Curling into the chair, I bury burning cheeks against cool leather. Exhilaration scorches my skin into the fervent ache of frisky scintillation.

  My skin is alive with so many nerve endings missing his lips, pining for those incredible fingertips, shivering for the quenching thrust of his tongue – it's a curse driving the pain of separation into the cavernous hollow between my hips, slippery with the obsession to have the void filled, now.

  Gripping the arm of the couch I sink nails into it, my breath too shallow and shaky to be healthy.

  Staring at the fifties diner decoration in this den with walls of serpentinite, it reminds me again of Venix. The greenish-yellow stone scarred with dark veins is the only stone that can protect humans and withstand a nuclear detonation. The lines arcing through the waxy stone are magnetic. Venix explained it works much the same way as a credit card's magnetic strip, storing information with the same principle.

  That magnetic stone also jams the senses of neuri and vampyre. When we're in here no one can sense us. This is a secret, one he shared with me the very first day he took me away from my home. Venix's entire home was created with this stone. Crushed into powder it can fill safe doors and act as one more shield against location and tracking – and attack.

  This room has a safe door.

  Zauran risked everything in his life to get to know me. He kidnapped me just to introduce himself, because the war between the vampyre and neuri meant he'd never get close to me without resorting to extreme measures.

  Venix will always be a special person to me, kept locked in the memory chest in my heart. I wish he was still here, I could use his counsel. This room reminds me of him – and of the first moment Zauran broke my defenses and branded my life with his vulnerabilities.

  He was so honest and without pride, it just makes me hornier waiting here for him, clinging to the chair, my body lambasting me with dire desire. He sounded so defenseless and borderline desperate when he told me the history the vampyre had omitted to share.

  Sound breaks the reverie.

  His footsteps leap into the room with a decisive thud and I look up to see his eye
s wild, his hair untidy and disheveled the way it always is, bringing with him the garroting fresh air of a soldier sent to storm clouds into your heart and to wash through your mind with hurricanes of tempest.

  He doesn't hesitate, it's bold and determined when he undoes the top button of his jeans, rushing at me to thump a landing hand either side of my head and squashing me immediately with air chilled lips and brisk breath.

  His chest smothers mine and the slick of my desire turns into deluge. Squirming hands between us I yank open the button on my jeans and pull the zip down without divorcing the pressure of his lips for one second. Racing my tongue over his I taste every corner of his mouth with my eyes closed. Pushing at the waistband of my jeans my movement is halted with iron fingers blocking my wrists, snaring them away to expose my breasts to him.

  Shifting like a sand dune, effortless but impressive in grace and stature, like a mountain crafting a new peak he cascades lips over my nipples while his free hand hauls my jeans off, his following, and I'm trembling when skin presses to skin in a primal dance driven by primeval subconscious demand.

  Savoring his smell, his power, his weight, his everything, my breath is coming out in forceful gusts as if I was the one running and not him.

  He releases my hands to adjust my position beneath him and I whimper at the luxurious brush of his legs against mine, caressing my calves over the chenille texture of his, clamping my legs around him with impatient need.

  Tracing my hands down the planes of his back, the curse lifts when my fingers slip into the deep dimples above his ass, and it jerks him into the origin of my craving.

  Subjugated by his nearness and strength, I quiver, waiting, immobile; staring into the nebulous narcotic flowing in mesmerizing drapes from his eyes.

  It's surreal when he manipulates my body to fill every niche of his, his arm so tight around my waist now I'm held fast, unable to squirm an inch.