by Unknown
"Stop taunting each other," said Ross. "Christ, I'm beginning to hate having the two of you together in the castle. Why are you always at each other's throats?"
"The only place that woman is going is into a secure laboratory," Cameron said. "She can't be allowed to wander around this world. Things are tense enough now between the shifters and the vampires as it is."
"Fuck the shifters and the vampires. They have nothing to do with her. Look, I found her. She was hurt, scared. She's just a girl. Leave her the fuck alone."
"She's not 'just a girl,'" Cam said. He was back in his cool, laconic mode. Colin hated the way he could do that: take his feelings and slam them so deep inside him that they disappeared. "She came through the Barrier. She was with a sea dragon. The creature is probably dead, but its body hasn't yet been found. I hope we find it before MI6 does."
"How do you know it's still in this world? Ariane ordered it home."
"There isn't much I don't know," Cameron said. "I know that you swam right through the area where that sea dragon was. You knew all about it, but you haven't mentioned it. I also suspect you know more than you've admitted about the girl. I'm not going to lock you in an interrogation chamber and go to work on you because you're my fucking blood. But if you keep anything more from me about this matter, you will be off the Council for good. I won't tolerate disloyalty, especially in my own family."
Ross shook his head, but Colin was beyond shame. Let them think whatever they liked. He'd been the good boy of the family all his life.
"On this occasion, I have a higher loyalty," he informed them stiffly. "She is my mate. When first I touched her, we both lit up with the sevmelle. As you just saw for yourself."
Cam just rolled his eyes. "The sevmelle indeed. First Ross, now you? Well, too bad, because I don't believe in your fairy love lights. You want to fuck the girl, be my guest. She's a hot little lassie, I agree."
Ross grabbed Colin again, while snapping at his twin, "Dammit, Cam, don't make things worse."
"From now on, no one touches her except me," Colin said. "If there is more interrogation to be done, I will do it."
"You couldn't interrogate a puppy."
"Leave him alone for now, Cam," Ross advised. "Let's everybody cool down a bit before we discuss this any further. If they are really mated, then that's a problem we'll have to solve."
Cam turned abruptly and headed for the staircase leading down to the great hall. "A bullet would solve it nicely," he muttered, and Ross had to put a hard hand on Colin's shoulder to stop him from lunging after him.
Chapter 14
Ross took Colin aside a little later and said, "Look. I don't know what's up between you and Ariane, but you might want to think about acting fast. The sevmelle is not all pretty and benign. It will get hotter; it will burn. And your sea dragon will get all demanding and rapey if you don't make her yours and— Well, you know what I'm saying."
"Rapey?" Colin repeated with a grin.
Ross growled, "Don't say I didn't warn you, cub."
Colin was feeling protective, not rapey. But when he discovered that Ariane had vanished into Kate's quarters with her and showed no sign of emerging, he began to wonder if Ross might be right. Ariane had spent the rest of the day with Kate, who reported at supper that night that their guest's command of English was increasing at speed. The two of them seemed to be getting along famously. Several times that evening, Colin heard the women's laughter ringing through the hall.
But she didn't ask to see Colin. If the sevmelle imprinting was having any effect on her, she had given no hint of it.
He felt a stronger urge than he'd felt in a long time to hunt. He decided to shift to his wolf form and go cull the deer population in the nearby moors.
Deer turned out to be scarce. Either that or he wasn't really interested in them. He killed a couple of rats on a farm he passed, but that was just because they were raiding the grain stores. No way he was going to eat a rat. Nasty critters.
He wasn't hungry for food, anyway.
Colin returned to the keep, weary and unsatisfied, sometime in the middle of the night. He fought down the temptation to enter Ariane's bedchamber via the secret passageway, climb onto her bed, hold her down, part her thighs and shove himself into her, whether she wanted it or not.
Rapey? Damn. Looked as though Ross had been right.
When he knocked on the door to her room later the next morning, Ariane turned sharply. But when she saw that it was him, she smiled. "Colin." His name came more easily on her lips now. He loved the sound of her voice as she said the word.
"How are you feeling, lass?"
"Much better now that I see it is you and not your demon brother."
"I've warned Cam to stay away from you. He still wants to question you, though. I am trying to persuade Ross to do it instead. He's nowhere near the prick that Cam is."
Ross had a different temperament from his twin, and he wasn't the type to be pushed around by Cam. He would handle things in a much more civilized fashion. But Cam hadn't agreed to a change in interrogator. If it weren't for some emergency that had taken him away from the keep for a day or two, Colin knew he would have been demanding that Ariane submit to another session today.
He moved toward her, but she stepped away from him, walking to the barred window and gazing out. Her spine was straight and her shoulders were stiff. Damn. He had been afraid of something like this. Was she lumping him in with his brother? Fucking Cam.
She turned to face him. "I need to know what you and your brothers are planning to do with me."
Oh aye, she regarded him now as an adversary. Shit.
He wanted to reassure her, but the truth was, he didn't know what was going to happen next.
"I understand that I am seen as suspicious. I'm an alien. A stranger in your world. I might have some sort of evil agenda. I don't, but I can see why someone might think it possible."
He floundered a bit. "It's just that...stuff has been happening lately. Cam's a little tense. I guess he has a lot to think about. To worry about. To try to prevent."
"Is there some kind of warfare going on in this world?"
"Well, yeah, there's always somebody fighting somebody else among the human population. And there are times when it's even worse among the shifters. It's just that the vampires have been causing conflict. The darklings, as you call them. Shifters and vampires don't get along at the best of times, but lately it's been even worse. I'm not good with the political stuff, honestly. I try to keep out of it. I'm fond of learning and exploring. I'm something of a traveler myself, you see, in the sense that I love seeing new places, meeting new people and learning whatever they have to teach me."
She smiled. "Me too. There's a diplomatic arm of my Guild, and positions within it are greatly desired. But it's the exploration that I love. The things I can see from the air, the wonder and majesty of the seas, working with my bonded companion."
She looked down at her clasped hands, and he knew she must be thinking about her lost pet. She had been through so much in the space of such a short time. He knew how strange it felt to be in an alien world, but he had planned and intended his own trips to Dunya. He had not fallen through the Rift unawares.
"This can't have been easy for you, Ariane. I admire the way you're coping with it all."
She smiled and stepped away from the window, coming to his side. "I'm not actually coping well, but thanks. I'm sure your brother was just doing his job, and I appreciate the way you stood up for me. But you probably shouldn't have done so. I don't want to cause trouble for you with your family."
Her nearness was charging his body like the crack of a bolt of lightning. And it got worse. She touched his arm, running her fingers down from his elbow to his hand and giving his wrist a squeeze. She must have felt his surprise at her touch, because she quickly moved her hand away, saying, "I am sorry. That is how we greet one another in my world. Is it against your customs to do such a thing?"
He seized her h
and, loathe to allow her to stop touching him. The sevmelle had begun glowing again. "No, I like it. It is a different greeting than we use, though." He showed her how to shake hands. "This is something we do. It is said that it originated as a way to prove to another person that you were not holding a weapon in your fist."
She stared, entranced at the fizzy sparks where their flesh joined. "Colin, what is that?"
"We call it the sevmelle. I think it means—"
"Sevmelle means love light," she interrupted. "In Saric, a language from our world."
That was news to him. "Seriously? I don't know the derivation of the word here, actually. What does it signify in your world?"
She looked awed. "Well, it's a myth. An old one. When two lovers see the sevmelle when they touch, it means they are everlasting mates. But—" she paused "—I never actually believed that."
Me neither, Colin was thinking. He had been hoping for some inventive shagging with Ariane, not a relationship that lasted forever. Although—wasn't that what finding one's mate meant? Among the wolf shifters, it usually meant you stuck with your mate until one of you died.
And he did like her. A lot. Which might have been what made him say, "Let me show you another common greeting. It's used among people who know each other well." He slid his arms around her and hugged her.
She laughed low in her throat and nestled against him. "I like this greeting better."
"Or sometimes, we do this." He dropped a gentle kiss on one of her cheeks. The light spicy scent of her skin just about drove him mad. He felt his cock swell. He kissed the other cheek. "The kiss on both cheeks is a common greeting in many countries I have visited." He looked down into her eyes, trying to decide whether to forge ahead and kiss her on the lips. She was looking up at him, her eyes wide. They were such an unusual color—a misty green, with gold flecks. Her lashes were thick and gold, like her hair, but at some angles, her magnificent hair seemed to glimmer with all the colors of the rainbow.
"When we know someone well, and enjoy being close to them," she said, "we do this." She tipped back her head and brought her face close to his. He thought she was going to venture a mouth kiss, but instead she pressed the tip of her nose against the tip of his. It tickled. He could feel her breath on his lips, and he could resist no longer. He slid one hand into her lovely hair and pressed his lips on hers for a good long and sensual kiss.
"Oh," she said, grinning as he pulled away. "Now that I recognize. We do it too. With people we like particularly well." And moving in close to him, she rejoined their lips, this time sliding her tongue against his and rubbing a good deal harder than she had done with the tips of their noses.
It felt amazing. When she drew back, those beautiful eyes of hers sparkling, he said, "I guess there are some things that are the same in every world."
"So it would seem." Her arms went around his neck and she pressed herself against him from breast to thigh. She must be able to feel his erection, but she seemed no more disturbed by it than she had when his sea dragon cock had surged against her during their swim to the keep. "What do you think would happen if someone from your world joined bodies with someone from mine?"
Was she suggesting that they experiment and see? If so, he was all for it. The sooner the better. "I don't know anything about sexual customs in Dunya. I haven't explored that aspect of your culture."
"Well, it's not the same everywhere, of course. But in my country, Zanovar, we believe that the Mother, our goddess, She who Created the Nine Worlds, gave us physical bodies in order to make our way in this world, and that we should respect and give them their due. That includes good food and exercise, and relaxing activities that calm the mind, and sensuality that warms the soul."
Normally he would have been happy to absorb whatever details she might reveal about her world, which he found fascinating, but right now all he cared about was learning whatever she considered warming to the soul.
To his amazement, she dropped to her knees in front of him. She ran the palms of her hands up his legs, sliding over his knees and under his kilt. "I had to ask Kate about the kilts," she admitted, looking up and giving him a mischievous smile. "I didn't have the vocabulary for the question, but she understood what I was curious about. She told me you don't wear any confining undergarments beneath these skirts."
"Hey, they're not skirts!" he teased back, amused that even in another world, women wondered what a Scotsman had under his kilt.
"At least, she said, her husband doesn't," Ariane went on, undeterred, "But I decided I wanted to find out about you personally."
He was laughing, but he was also rampant and feeling as though he might just lose control and spurt. When her hands reached his balls, he groaned.
"Ah," she said. One hand began a delicious caress of his scrotum while the other moved up to grasp his cock. She looked up again, asking a trifle shyly, "This is permitted?"
His natural inclinations could be restrained no longer. "It is. Do it harder." He could hear his own voice turn harsh as the need for relief intensified. "Show me how you do it in your world."
She laughed. Her lips parted enough for him to see the tip of her tongue. Christ. Was she going to...oh aye, she was.
Kneeling up, she gathered the fabric of his kilt and shoved it aside, and then took his cock deep into her lovely mouth and sucked. Lust pooled in his belly, nearly felling him. He grabbed one of her shoulders to steady himself, then plunged the other hand into her hair. He knew he was being rough as he positioned her face to just where he wanted it, but if he was hurting her she clearly didn't mind. His fingers were glowing with the sparkles of the sevmelle, but it didn't appear to be burning her. She moaned—an incredibly sensuous sound, and drew him deep.
Fuck! It felt amazing. He fucked her face wildly for several seconds, then she evaded him long enough to slow the action. He could feel her tongue swirling up and down his length with each stroke. As he pulled out, she expertly fingered his balls and flicked her tongue in a rapid circle around the helmet of his cock. Then she sucked him again, hard.
Jesus, he was going to come all over her. But she drew back a little and fisted his shaft instead. He was reeling, hardly able to stand. She kissed the head, she hand-fucked him while she nuzzled and licked his balls. She was gripping him firmly, every bit as roughly as he was pulling on her hair.
They both moaned as she sped up, her hand flying up and down, up and down, pumping him furiously. Then she grasped him by the hips, her fingertips digging into his buttocks, and sucked him into her mouth again. Her head bobbed on his dick, her beautiful golden hair cresting in luxurious waves against his belly and thighs.
He lost it completely. Arching his hips in ecstasy, he let her drive him over the edge to sweet release. As his seed shot into her mouth, she dug her nails into the flesh of his ass so hard it hurt, but he didn't care. He kept spasming—hot, wild, and wet, delirious at the thrill of her sweet mouth around him and the dark tight flesh of her mouth and throat.
"Ari," he groaned as the pulses of climax slowly faded. She was still on her knees, her breast and belly pressed to his legs, her face buried in his pelvis. As he withdrew from her, one of her hands came back to hold his dick and her tongue licked and soothed away all the wetness.
"You taste good," she whispered.
"Ari, my god, you're incredible." He gathered her in his arms and lifted her up, embracing her for a long moment before backing up until he felt the edge of her bed behind his knees. He sank down, pulling her with him. "That was...I don't even have words for how wonderful that was."
"I am pleased that you liked it."
"Liked it! Shit. I loved it." He pressed her gently down across the mattress of the bed and dropped down beside her. "I'm going to return the favor." Supporting himself on one arm, he stroked his other hand down her body, marveling as the sevmelle created tiny twinkles of light. Bending over he pulled her top up over her breasts—she was not wearing a bra—and sucked one of her nipples into his mouth. She gasp
ed. "I want to hear you cry out my name. God help me, but I couldn't bear it when my brother was questioning you. When he touched you, I felt like killing the bastard. I can't stand the thought of any other man's hands on you." He held up his hand, gleaming with the light of the sevmelle. "See this? This means you're mine."
He allowed the hand to slide over her flesh, pushing any inconvenient clothing out of the way. She arched to his touch and made tiny gasping sounds when his fingers reached her sex. She was so wet for him. He caressed the soft petals, thinking with delight that women were the same in all worlds. Yet even so, Ariane was special. She seemed smoother, silkier, and more delicious. She was irresistible.
He slipped a finger into her pussy and curled it slightly to stimulate the sensitive inner walls. She cried out and clung to his shoulders, her nails once again biting into him. He added a second finger and moved them in and out. Her hips tilted up as she rode his hand, panting and grinding against him with increasing speed and abandon. His thumb found the hood of her clit and slid it away from the bud. She bucked as he stimulated her directly there, keening now as he took her ever higher. He knew she needed release, and he wanted to give it to her, but he couldn't help delighting in her desperation as she strove to find it.
He wanted to be inside her. Fucking her hard while she squirmed against his cock. She was his, and he needed to claim her. Just thinking about it made him stiff again.
"Say my name," he ordered.
She made a strangled sound that sounded like a combination of a gasp and a laugh. "Colin," she managed.
He finger-fucked her faster, harder. "Say it louder."
"Colin," she screamed. Her buttocks had risen off the mattress as she lifted her hips to drive every inch of his fingers inside her.
He used his other hand to caress and pinch her nipple. The fillip of erotic pain must have sent her over the edge because she stiffened and gave a piercing cry, driving herself against his hand in one final shuddering lunge. Then she fell back, her sex pulsing violently, her features contorting with pleasure before slowly relaxing into a smile.
