Harlequin E Shivers Box Set Volume 4: The HeadmasterDarkness UnchainedForget Me NotQueen of Stone

by Tiffany Reisz

  I gave a small spin. The material made crinkly noises and lifted a small fraction into the air.

  “No,” she said sharply, completely unimpressed with my spin. She hopped down from the bed and came to my side. Then she put her hands on my hips and gripped them tightly. “Like this,” she said, and spun me so hard that the skirt flared high in the air. I came to a halt, the skirts swirled around me and then June stepped closer to me again. She placed her hands on my belly. “When you dance, you feel it here first of all.” A sly look crossed her features. “Before the feeling spreads and you feel it elsewhere.”

  I stepped away from her and tried a spin on my own, using much more power this time. The heavy folds of the skirt rose into the air and the weight of the fabric pulled it away from my body. The two forces combined to make the spin effortless.

  “Yes!” cried June. “That’s it!”

  I moved my feet in perfect circles and the spin continued. I dipped my hips, just a fraction, and the skirt flared, rose and then dipped with my movement. When I finally came to a stop, the skirts barreled around me. “I’m ready,” I announced.

  I followed June down into the courtyard. The night smelled of pine and smoke. She held my hand and led me through the gardens until we reached the archway just before the stones. Right then, the drums burst to life, and I jumped in surprise. To calm myself, I took a deep breath.

  When the drums reached a crescendo, June whispered, “Now!”

  And I stepped through the archway and onto the sand of the beach. Just ahead of me a bonfire burned. The fire was so large that the stars in the sky were blotted out by the flakes of ash that billowed above the flames.

  I felt June’s hands upon me again, leading me toward the ring of stones, but I shook her hand off gently. I knew exactly where to go, because Navarre waited for me there. His eyes slid over me, and I felt very exposed all of a sudden. My body shift unconsciously under his gaze. A flush of pleasure swept over me to see his eyes linger, and when his gaze met mine, I held it.

  The atmosphere was festive, almost expectant, and soon I was swept up into the momentum. Music played. Everyone gathered by the bonfire.

  I went and stood before him in the center of the stones. He held a cup in his hands and approached me with it. He touched it to my lips. My heart beat nervously, afraid of what concoction might be inside the cup. I was so thirsty that my tongue darted out to taste the liquid. It was merely water. Cold, sweet water. I drank deeply, gulping down every last drop.

  “Zara, on this night I give you truth,” said Navarre. “Long ago your name was whispered on the wind, but the wind blew it away. Then your name was whispered in the water, and the water rushed away. But I never gave up.” He swept his arms in a wide circle. “We never gave up.”

  He kissed me deeply, sweeping me up with his arms and pressing me against him. “Here you are.” He kissed me again. “Our truth.”

  I stood trembling, not knowing what to expect. Excited—yes—but very much afraid.

  Navarre was gone, stepped away for a moment. I looked around frantically until I saw him again, returning with a large box in his hands. The box was black as night and shiny like highly polished wood.

  I looked at him uncertainly.

  Navarre’s blue eyes gleamed in the firelight. He didn’t speak, merely gave a small nod of his head. People gathered close, but I paid no mind to them. They simply faded into the shadows of the night.

  He raised the lid of the box, slowly, and my gaze dropped from his eyes to look inside. There was only blackness. I darted a glance at Navarre, and then back to the box again, questioning why it was empty. Then a single, minute point of light appeared. Like the faintest star in the night sky. The light drew closer, larger, until it was the size of a diamond. The image was so brilliant and multifaceted that, for a moment, I shielded my eyes until I adjusted to the shine.

  As I watched, the diamond rotated slowly, revealing darkness on the flip side. Against the blackness of the box I saw a glow emanating from the now-hidden bright side. Like the beam from a lighthouse sweeping in the opposite direction.

  I fell to my knees, and Navarre moved with me, perfectly in time with my fall, and kept the box at my eye level. I was grateful for that, because I couldn’t look away, not even for a moment. The beam of light, the gem, whatever it was, began to spin fast. I felt a warm spray of silver light on my face as it turned and faced me. And then the cold, empty darkness as the light turned away.

  It spun faster. I blinked my eyes. Faster still, and yet again. It whirled shining light, then darkness, until the image blurred. When the spinning light reached an unfathomable speed, an image revealed itself.

  I saw my mother. She stood on the porch of our farm. Wheat fields surrounding us. Healthy wheat, stiff and high, and rustling in the wind. She was laughing, and then turned. She looked at me, as if she was confused by my image. She lifted a hand, tentatively, questioning. Now she took a few steps toward me, her expression shifting a little, turning…fearful.

  “Mother!” I cried, and held my hands out to her. She was afraid. Crying my name, as if she saw me as a specter. On her hand the ring—the one I now wore—glowed red-hot on her hand. She was right before me, and I reached out to touch her, but my hands slipped through her like mist.

  Mist. Her mist caressed my face and whispered in my ear, “You must return. You must…it will all become clear.”

  Then she was gone.

  The image changed again, and now I walked along the earth. I didn’t trust my footsteps, and every step brought me great fear. I was so afraid that I hesitated to walk, but I knew I must. There was something scary that I had to see, but I was afraid to look.

  The image disappeared. Now in the vision, someone was slipping a blindfold over me. It was terrible, more frightening than I could ever put to words for I knew there was something I needed to see. Something crucial. Remembering my mother’s voice that said “it will all become clear.” I knew instinctively that once someone pulled the blindfold from my eyes that everything would become clear to me and I would understand what to do.

  The image fractured apart, and the box turned dark. I pulled away. I knew that I would see no more. I was wrong.

  Navarre took my cheek gently, and turned my eyes back to the box. A light had reappeared. Smaller, though. Different. Like before, I saw black and white spin together until a sharp rush of goose bumps raced across my skin as I recognized what I was looking at.

  I reached out with one finger and tentatively touched the object. It clattered to the bottom of the box. Then, I lifted it, marveling at the beautiful feel of my mother’s ring in my hand. I spun it over and read her initials that were engraved into the ring.

  Suddenly I had so many questions. I looked up at Navarre in wonder. But right at that moment, everyone rushed forward, cheering and hugging me, and I was spirited away among well wishes and smiling faces, and I hardly had a moment to collect my thoughts.

  June rushed toward me and clutched me tightly. “Zara, you are one of us! Now we celebrate.”

  I saw the world with new eyes. Even June looked different to me. Every physical trait was still the same. It was I who had changed. I saw her not just as a beautiful woman, but she was like all women, each of us, complicated. I walked behind her. I saw the land differently, too. Everything was the same, and yet newly revealed, as if I had been blind to the complexities of life.

  Navarre held up a hand, and everyone quieted. When he spoke, his deep voice carried over the whole crowd. “Now we tell our story. The most important one, the one of our beginning. The dawn of our people. We, the Lucians, are but one ray of the sun, and we do our best to bring the warmth, the blinding light of the living truth.”

  Navarre started to walk among the crowd, and everyone turned to follow his movements. “Long ago, when our people belonged to a different land. Before we came to America, we always rose before the sun to welcome every new day after the darkness. We came to the land we now call ours, broug
ht here under false truth. We had been betrayed. We lost the life-sustaining warmth of hope. I ask you,” he continued on, “how do you persevere in the face of darkness? In the face of despair?” His question rang out to the crowd.

  Then he answered quietly and simply. “You believe.”

  “You believe,” he repeated, and his words echoed in my mind until everything blurred together, words and meanings, memories and even the fire and the stars.

  I must have fallen because I lay awkwardly on the damp sand. Navarre stood above me, his dark hair glistening in the moonlight. I pushed myself to a sitting position. “Please,” I said trying to reassure him. “Don’t stop—I’m fine.” It was like some part of me knew that he must continue.

  He smiled down at me, and stroked my cheek before he began to speak again. “Generation after generation, we held on to one truth. A truth that the first gods saw eons ago.” He looked at me again, and I felt a strange sensation in the pit of my stomach. “And that question, how do we believe in the face of these storms? How could we endure? Day after day, our worst nightmares came true, but we held on, and how?”

  He ran his hand over my hair. “We believe. We have faith. We all know the tale, don’t we?” He spoke so softly that I thought he whispered only to me. “She will bring a new dawn to the people, a safe tomorrow, and she shall be forever more claimed as our queen.” Navarre looked down at me, but then continued speaking. “Now we have her. And we can honestly say that we never stopped believing.”

  A shout rose up from the crowd. Drums and music burst into sound. Navarre took me by the hand, and when I stood, my legs trembled as if they had walked a great distance, and I said nothing; I said nothing of the feeling in my heart. He led me to the bonfire, where June waited among all the others. June grabbed me by the hand and pulled me away from him. “Now you dance!” she said.

  She urged me toward a group of dancers that circled around the huge bonfire. I went with her. We formed a chain that snaked around the fire, our arms linked loosely together. I saw Everett and June; they danced as one.

  Navarre sat with a few people on either side of him. He watched me with his dark gaze. I knew this because not only could I feel it, but I also stole glances at him every time I passed by him in the dance.

  June pulled me from the line. While I watched she went and grabbed a flaming torch and brought it to me. With a devious look she said, “Watch now,” and pulled a tassel from the folds of my skirt. Holding the torch until a flame lit the cloth, she said to me, “As long as you dance the flame will not hurt you. But stop, and you shall be burned.” Rather forcefully she turned me around and held the torch to each tassel. “You must move like never before. Make every man here desire you. Make them burn with longing. Most of all make Navarre want you.” June tugged me to the fire. I had to hop and move in place so that the small flames didn’t burn me.

  And I began to dance.

  Around and around I spun, the flames encircling me in brightness. The faster I moved, the higher the skirt rose, until I was surrounded in a ring of flames that burned above my waist. The cool night air rushed beneath the skirt, swirled around my legs and between my thighs. I was nude underneath. But as I danced, my concern disappeared. All that mattered was that I keep dancing.

  For hours, I spun and danced without thought or care. I simply followed whatever urges came upon me. Finally, when I was almost exhausted and sweat slicked my skin, I stopped. Dropping to my knees the skirt swept around me like a cape onto the ground. Each tassel still burned. I was encircled in small flames, gulping for air, my breasts heaving. I looked around and saw the men staring at me with a clear expression on their faces. Lust.

  Navarre jumped from his seat, came to me, and lifted me into his strong arms. He carried me away from the fire toward the beach. My skirt of flames licked painfully on my skin—his, too—but I didn’t care.

  He brought me to the soft sand, set me down upon my feet. While I stood there hopping around to avoid being burned, he ripped the skirt from my body, leaving me naked from the waist down. Tossing the garment onto the sand, it landed perfectly, a blanket circled with small flames. Navarre picked me up and lay me gently onto the fabric. I was surrounded by flames. Then he stood towering above me in the darkness.

  His shoulders took up half the sky. The moon was a mere sliver over one shoulder. I grew anxious under his gaze, and I shyly shifted my body away from his gaze.

  “No,” he said roughly, and shot one hand out, grabbing my leg, forbidding me to turn away from his gaze. Navarre seemed agitated and almost angry.

  “I wanted to keep dancing,” I protested in a feathery voice.

  “No more dancing.” There was a stiffness to his body, and a hardness to his demeanor. “No more dancing for you.”

  I rose to my knees and ran my hands over his body. I pulled him until he stood just in front of me. I saw the bulge in his pants, and without thinking I ran my lips over the rough fabric, feeling the stiff muscle beneath. He cursed and shoved me onto the blanket, laying himself down beside me. Immediately I rolled on top of him, grinding onto that sweet hardness. I kissed his mouth. Hot and wet. Dragged my breasts across his chest. I lifted off him, and quickly pushed down his pants, and for the first time felt the hot bare skin of his cock.

  I moved beside him, kneeled on the blanket, and touched my lips against it. When I placed my mouth over him he seemed impossibly large, though the skin was tender and thin. I slid my mouth over him, slick and wet against hard and stiff. This is what it would be like. Hardness against softness. I felt a twist of lust between my legs.

  It was a desperate ache, and I reached for it with my hand. I was wet, dear God, I was wet. I moaned and rocked my hips all the while holding him in my mouth.

  I felt his hands covering mine. Now he knew what I wanted. What I needed. Still covering my hand, he took control, and our fingers slid together over my wetness. His hand was so agonizingly slow that I cried out and thrust against him.

  I was filled with need. An aching, selfish need. I lifted my mouth and reared back from his body, my hair flying. Opening my legs wider I tried to ride his hand, determined that I should set the pace.

  With a roar he lifted me up and hoisted me over his face. I could barely believe what was happening. But then, as he thrust his tongue into my wetness my body knew exactly what to do. My hips began to move, to grind, and I had complete control.

  I leaned forward and took his hardness in my hand. It was so rigid that it looked ready to burst. I moved my hips, and every time I did, I stroked him, understanding the natural rhythm. Every time I stroked him his tongue went wild. Round and round we went—our individual needs propelling the other higher.

  His fingers sunk into the flesh of my legs. He licked me wildly as his hips thrust against my hand. My breasts rubbed against his stomach as I leaned over him. When I felt him brutally hard and saw him come, I almost fainted. It was so erotic and powerful, so heady that I felt all of these wild sensations pull tight inside me. And then tighter still. I found myself clutching him with my legs, riding his tongue as a delicious, numbing fire spread away from my center and down my legs. Sounds came rushing back. Navarre’s breath, the water slapping against the stones. It was like I had disappeared somewhere else and only just returned. So it was that I became a Lucian.

  Chapter Thirteen

  After the ceremony I was shocked when Navarre returned me to the cell and locked me inside. “How can you do this?” I asked him. “How can you be so close to me, so intimate with me, and then force me back into this awful…dungeon?”

  “This is the last night you will be here.” He leaned against the bars. “Tell me,” he said in a quiet voice, “when you were in Kansas. If at any point you could have stopped the dust storms would you have?”

  “Of course,” I replied.

  “Even if that meant locking me up and making me yours?”

  His words hit me hard. To have my mother back, my father, and all of the green land we loved
so much. I had to agree with him. I looked down as I answered, unable to meet his eyes as I spoke the truth. “Yes I would. Even if that meant locking you up.”

  “Then you understand my position.” He said in a lonely voice as he walked away. “Besides, it is only for one more night and then you are mine. All mine.”

  I tried to sleep but the feel of his hands lingered on my skin. Finally though, I did fall asleep. Naya came to my cell in the morning with another woman named Esther. They unlocked the door, and told me to follow them so that they could prepare me for the ceremony. They walked ahead of me, talking to each other in hushed tones. I trailed behind them. When they descended the stairs I turned and ran in the opposite direction. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I only knew that I needed to get away. To think. There was a set of double doors slightly ajar at the end of the hallway. I opened them farther and slipped inside.

  I was in a library. It was quiet and empty. Books lined every shelf and stood in piles upon the floor. A large wooden desk stood against one wall. Behind it stood a spiral staircase twisted until it disappeared into the ceiling.

  I approached the desk and saw a thick book atop it. The book lay open exposing the stiff parchment inside. Gold leaf bordered every page and the words were written in thick black ink—a strange language I didn’t understand. The page it was opened to revealed a picture of a woman crouched at the foot of a man. Her hair was a swoop of gold leaf. Her hands were pressed together pleadingly. I couldn’t see her face because the man was caressing it. Just as Navarre caressed mine on the night the river flooded. The night I came and pleaded for his help. I couldn’t help but flip the page.

  Now the picture changed and I saw the woman bound to a stone. She was blindfolded, the gold swoop now trailing over her shoulder. It looked as if she was struggling, pulling on her ropes. As if she was afraid…

  I knew I would find the answer on the next page. I reached out to turn it.

  A strong hand grabbed my wrist. I looked up into Navarre’s very blue and very angry eyes. “What are you doing in here?” he asked.