Rohn (Dragons of Kratak Book 1)

by Ruth Anne Scott

  “If I hadn’t,” he went on, “Aquilla would have ordered all the Guard back to our villages. He never would have talked to the other Alphas about anything. He never would have shown his face to them again except in war.”

  She stole a glance at him. “Is that what you came here to tell me—that you want me to carry the message?”

  He nodded. “I told you I consider you instrumental in sealing this peace process. You’re the only one who could carry the message.”

  “What makes you say that?” she asked. “Any of the others could carry it.”

  He studied her with his intense flickering eyes. “And which of the others would come up here to talk to me—or any other Avitras—to get the message to carry it? None of them. Only you would come up here.”

  “The only reason I came up here....” she began, but she didn’t finish.

  He waited and watched her. “Did you come up here looking for me?”

  She took a deep breath. “Yes.”

  “Did you come because of what I said about you aiding the negotiation?” he asked.

  “No,” she replied.

  A hint of uncertainty flashed across his face and disappeared just as fast. “Did one of the Alphas send you up here to find me?”

  She snorted. “No. None of the Alphas knows I’m having anything to do with you.”

  He frowned. “Then why did you come?”

  “To see you, of course,” she blurted out. “You know that.”

  His eyes flew open. Then he regained his composure and settled lower on the branch. He inched closer to her. “I thought we would be able to talk to each other.”

  “We are talking to each other,” she told him. “What else would we be doing?”

  He studied her. “For someone who came up here to see me, you don’t seem very happy about it.”

  Her anger flared. “What are you doing to me? I didn’t come along on this trip to find a mate.”

  “No one ever said you did,” he replied.

  She waved her hand. “Then why do you keep looking at me like that?”

  “Like what?” he asked.

  She pointed at him. “Like that. You keep looking at me like... like you can see right through me. You keep looking at me like I’m not even there.”

  “Oh, you’re there, all right,” he returned. “You are very there. There’s no doubt about that.”

  “You know what I mean,” she shot back. “You keep looking at me like the person everyone thinks is there, isn’t there, and the person you think is there, no one else knows is there.” She glared at him. “I know it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Oh, it makes perfect sense,” he replied. “What else do I do by looking at you?”

  Her words tumbled out of her. “It isn’t just everybody else. You keep looking at me like the person I think I am isn’t there, and the person you think is there, I didn’t know was there.”

  He listened to all that gibberish with a perfectly straight face. “But it was there. The person I think is there, is there. You might not have known it was there, but it was, and now you can’t hide from it. Or rather, I should say, you can’t deny that she is there. Is that about the size of it?”

  Her eyes flashed. “How can you be so nonchalant about this? This is my...my soul we’re talking about. How can you say what I don’t think is there, is there, and what I think is there, isn’t there? Confound you, will you stop looking at me like that?”

  He didn’t answer, and he stopped looking at her like that. In a heartbeat, he sailed across the branch and kissed her. She didn’t even hear the rustle of his feathers. Her mind exploded, and the rest of her world crumbled at the seams.

  Chapter 8

  His lips dallied on hers. A thousand possible outcomes crowded into her mind. What should she do? Should she sit still and wait for him to finish? Then she could make some intelligible remark and beat a hasty retreat. She could return to the Ursidrean camp and pretend this never happened.

  Then all of a sudden, unbidden, a silhouette rose against the bright background of her mind. A blinding white landscape set off the indistinct outline of a woman. The light hid her features, but she stood tall and straight in the center of a perfectly flat white landscape. The horizon surrounded her in a perfect circle in all directions, and she could see everything around her to the limit of the sky.

  That woman’s destiny rested in the palm of her own hand. She had only to whisper her desire to the universe for it to appear at her bidding. She radiated power from her core to the wide expanse around her, a power so bright and true it cast no shadow. This was the vision she’d seen in Piwaka’s eyes. That woman was her, and radiant power welled up within her to dominate her own world. She had only to grasp it, to own it, to claim it, and it would be hers for the asking.

  Did she dare become that woman? His lips never gave her a chance to question. The power surged up from the bottoms of her feet, through her blood and bones, and over her head. The tidal wave. It smashed her old self, her nonexistent self, to smithereens. She closed her eyes against it. She couldn’t think anymore. She couldn’t decide anything. The wave carried her away, toward him.

  Unstoppable passion threw her at him. Her weight knocked him off balance. If he hadn’t caught her, they would have fallen out of the tree. She consumed his mouth, and he met her with equal force in a desperate, ravenous kiss. They clawed at each other’s clothes, and at their own, in a race to tear away the barriers between them. Nothing remained of the woman Aimee used to be. She no longer cared who she would be or what she would do or what her cousins and friends would say when this was all over. The dry, lifeless husk of her old self was gone for good.

  Piwaka held her against his chest, and her legs caught him around the waist, but their combined weight couldn’t balance on the narrow branch. They teetered. Aimee closed her eyes. She would die in his arms rather than return to her old, hollow self. She held him with all her might, and they tumbled off the branch.

  The air hit Aimee’s cheeks, and her hair tussled in the breeze. They fell through the air. Then her eyes popped open. Her hair fell forward over her eyes, not upward away from her face. They were rising, not falling. The treetops sailed downward, out of sight. He was flying with her up through the canopy into higher treetops, and her arms and lips and legs remained locked around him for better of for worse. She sought out the bottomless pools of his eyes, with their iridescent margins streaked with microscopic fibers, and all her cares and worries vanished.

  Piwaka floated beyond the last branches into the sky. Where would he take her, with her whole self wrapped around him? Before she could wonder, he descended again. His feathers tilted downward, and the air rustled off them in soft murmurs. His hips moved under her legs, and he extended his feet to land.

  Her gaze never wavered from his eyes. She would never doubt him again. Wherever her took her, she would go with a glad heart. Something hard dug into her back, and he laid her against an inclined surface. A bed of soft vegetation formed a bowl under her, with tree trunks rising on all sides. Those trunks joined together into a single tree. The tree must have snapped off in a storm, and several trunks sprouted from the site of the break. Treetops swayed across the sky, and moving air whispered through the branches. Creatures scuttled and chattered in the distance. She was a long way from the ground.

  This was the Avitras world, in the canopy beyond the reach of solid ground, where your feet never touched the forest floor. The Avitras lived their whole lives up here. Most never laid eyes on the ground, much less walked on it.

  How did Piwaka know about this place to bring her here? Those questions belonging to her rational mind, the part she put away on a shelf for good. She wouldn’t answer those questions. She would swim in the ocean of his eyes and the commotion of his touch. Nothing else mattered.

  His hands on her brought her back to her senses. He lifted the corner of her leather jacket and peeled it back to reveal her mi
lk-white skin. The air pricked her skin, and it tightened and stood to attention. Then he lifted back the other side of the jacket. Those clothes formed an armor over her skin to keep the eruption of passion buried where no one could see it.

  Every nerve shrieked to heaven. How long had she worn those clothes, the rough furs of the Lycaon? She always thought they were comfortable, but now, at the touch of Piwaka’s hand, they grated on her nerves. When did she become sensitive? She was always the tough one, the reserved one.

  Piwaka loomed over her with the sky outlining the feathers behind his head. His eyes flashed, and the sun shimmered on his feathers. His shoulders jutted out from his chest in sharp angles, and his muscles flexed in fine chiseled lines. His face bore none of the wear and tear of age. He wore his experience with strength and power.

  Aimee gazed up at him with wide eyes. No man ever struck her with such a sense of awe and wonder. What was he? Who was he? What had he seen and done in his life? She knew nothing about him, yet she could delve into every recess of his soul and never lose interest. What drove him? What brought him to her like this? What attracted him to a woman like her?

  The rush of wind through the trees broke the silence. This belonged to the Avitras alone. The other factions dwelt on the ground, far removed from the rare air of the canopy. Anna never connected with the Avitras, or she wouldn’t have run off with Menlo the way she did. None of the others except Penelope Ann fully assimilated into the Avitras and made their ways their own.

  What secrets remained hidden in the vast forests beyond the border? Those secrets hovered in Piwaka’s eyes, and his eyes traveled down to the white triangle of skin between the lapels of her jacket. He peeled away the years, the crumbling remnant of a thousand useless inhibitions, and the weight of crushing fear and doubt, along with her clothes. She floated on a cushion of cloud that protected her newborn skin from the rough bark and twigs underneath her. The keen breeze and Piwaka’s hands on her skin welcomed her back to life. Her jacket fell away, her shirt underneath, and then her pants and boots until she lay naked on her back for him to see. Her warrior persona dropped away with them to reveal soft female flesh.

  Piwaka’s feathers shifted in the wind. Was he flying, up there above her? Was he hovering over her on drafts of air? She could believe his feet never touched the ground. He was too rare for that. He descended to her from atmospheric heights to lift her out of her misery to joy and contentment. He belonged to some heavenly species beyond mortal reach.

  He drew closer, and smoldering power radiated off him. He took her in his arms, and the heavenly aura erupted in flames. He was no untouchable spirit from on high. His passion met hers in matched ferocity, and they exploded together in fiery bursts of heat and desire.

  He slid his arms under her, and she enclosed him in her arms and legs again. His legs supported her from below, and in a heartbeat, he was inside her. Aimee couldn’t tell the moment it happened. She was one with him from her eyes down to her toes. Their bodies only expressed the reality already accomplished through their gaze and their kiss and their touch.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Aimee caught sight of the tree trunks gliding past her. Nothing could surprise her now, not even the realization she was moving through the air in a primal embrace with him. They tumbled over and over in the air, and trees sailed around her in every direction. One minute she was under him and he penetrated into the center of her being with powerful thrusts. The next minute, he fell under her weight, and she bore down on top of him with all her might.

  Was this the way the Avitras made love, in mid-air? They didn’t need beds, and they shunned the ground. They could fly, so why not this coupling flight? The Aqinas lived in water. The Avitras lived in the air, and everything they did, they did in the air.

  Birds did it in the air. Some engaged in elaborate mating flights. Male and female fluttered around each other in mid-flight for hours until, at long last, they bumped into each other for a split second and transferred the male’s sperm to the female. Then they flew away, and that was the end of that.

  Her time with Piwaka wouldn’t be like that. Her body throbbed with insatiable desire for his body. She inhaled him deeper into her, ever deeper, as deep as she could, but she could never get enough of him.

  Every move she made to bring him closer, to consume him, he answered with greater desire of his own. He consumed her with the insatiable hunger. His passion destroyed the measured rationality that made him such an asset to Aquilla. The power of his desire astonished even Aimee, until she found herself locked in carnal oneness with a man she’d never seen before. Buried physical desire annihilated the old Piwaka the same way it did Aimee, leaving another vision of him, the avatar standing in the white expanse of pure authenticity. The two souls met in that landscape. They met, they merged, they embraced, and they became one. Their two old selves ceased to exist, and left two bright beings standing in their place, side by side for the first time.

  Aimee fell down toward the ground, while Piwaka’s feathers caught him and held him aloft. His shaft slid out of her. The air chilled the film of juice on her thighs and made her suck her breath through her teeth. Then he caught her again and she stopped falling. He supported her, and her weight pulled him down beneath her. His shaft slid back into her, and its heat filled her up. Nothing could disturb her contentment as long as he was there, inside her, with her flesh enfolding him on all sides. Then she rolled around below him, and gravity tore her away from him.

  When did it stop? When did they stop tumbling and twisting and rolling in mid-air, sliding together and falling apart and snatching each other again? Faster and faster they rolled with nothing but their own weight to keep the endless tumult going. They might have gone on like that forever if their own hunger for each other hadn’t driven them to fulfillment. Each turn of the wheel with its thrust and withdrawal brought them to the peak of frenzy until not even Piwaka’s feathers could keep them in the air.

  They no longer kissed. Their lips crushed against each other in a howl of mutual ecstasy. A combined roar to heaven of soul fire unleashed tore from their mouths. The last tumble of the wheel brought Piwaka down on top of Aimee with a powerful thrust of his shaft into her very depths. She cried out, but not in pain. That fall punctuated the long-awaited completion of her rebirth and seared the new reality into her flesh.

  A fiery jet of superheated elixir shot through her insides, and she clapped her eyes closed against the orgasmic tornado sweeping toward her over the horizon. The silhouette in the plain was the only self she had left.

  Chapter 9

  Aimee sat up inside the treetop bowl. The evening breeze played over her bare skin, but she no longer hid her body from the elements. The wind never made her cold, and it couldn’t touch her bright burnished soul.

  She cast a sidelong glance at her clothes. She touched the corner of her heavy leather jacket with the shaggy hair still covering the outside. A curious reaction traveled up her arm, and she pulled her hand back.

  “You should get back,” Piwaka told her. “They’ll be wondering where you are, and when you deliver the message, they’ll have a long negotiation ahead of them to decide what to do about it.”

  She turned away from her clothes and stretched out next to him. “Are you worried they won’t accept the invitation?”

  “Not at all,” he replied. “They’ll accept it.”

  “What makes you so sure?” she asked.

  “They came up here to negotiate with Aquilla,” he replied. “They won’t turn down an opportunity to talk to him, even if the topic isn’t directly related to their peace mission. They’ll start talking about the borders, and that will naturally lead them into talking about other things.”

  She folded on arm under her head and gazed up at the sky. “I wish I was as confident as you.”

  “I’m only confident because I know Aquilla,” he replied. “There’s no other way to draw him into the negotiation. It’s the only way to
get him to trust the other Alphas.”

  “What if he never trusts them?” she asked. “What if he balks at the whole discussion? What if he won’t be drawn into discussing peace at all? What if he gets hostile and storms off?”

  “I’m sure he will,” Piwaka replied. “I’m sure it will take him a long time to trust anyone here—except me, of course.”

  “So how’s he supposed to negotiate peace with people he doesn’t trust?” she asked. “It sounds hopeless.”

  He cocked his head. “I can’t really blame him. I don’t trust the others, either.”

  Her head whipped around. “You don’t? Then why are you going to such lengths to throw them together with Aquilla?”

  He rolled over on his side and faced her. “Do you want to know the truth? I’m doing it for you.”

  “Me!” she gasped. “I don’t deserve....”

  He closed his eyes. “Don’t even say it.”

  “But I....” she began.

  “Do you want to know the reason I’m doing this?” He trailed his fingertips over her collarbone and down her chest, between her breasts. “I’m doing it for this.”

  Aimee shuddered and her eyes rolled back in her head. His fingers trialed off somewhere between her sternum and her navel, and her eyes popped open. Her voice croaked. “What are you doing to me?”

  “Do you think we would have any chance at all together if this negotiation fails?” he asked. “What do you think will happen if Aquilla leaves here without coming to some agreement with the other Alphas? I’ll never see you again.”

  “But I thought....” she stammered. “You helped Anna, and that was long before we ever met.”

  He lowered his eyes. “That was then. I thought peace was a good idea. Now I know it’s a necessity.”

  She hesitated. “I didn’t know....”

  He finished her sentence for her. “You didn’t know I felt that way about you? Do you remember what you said to me this morning—about seeing a part of you that wasn’t there? Well, you’ve seen a part of me that wasn’t there, too—at least, it wasn’t there until you saw it.”