“No.” He pulled her up from the sofa. “Rowan, you can’t sleep. Not now. Talk to me.”
Part of her wanted to. The rest wanted to push him away. The logical part of her said stay awake and find out as much as you can, find out what is wrong with you, what makes you want to sleep like the dead. The rest of her told the logical part precisely what it could do with itself. She wanted sleep, needed sleep, as she had never needed it. And nothing on the entire planet could induce her to—
Daire kissed her. His lips claimed hers, burned against the sensitive skin. His mouth parted slightly, requiring a response. It was both invitation and a plea. His breath caressed her flesh, driving her senses beyond what they could stand.
His hands cupped her shoulders, holding her swaying body in place as his kiss filled her. She wasn’t sure how to respond, even if she had the strength, so she let him hold her to him and drank in kiss after delirious kiss.
Daire broke away from her and when he spoke, his voice sounded ragged. “Rowan, I’m not sure how much of this you’ll understand, but try to follow me. Magic needs energy. I am a creature of magic. And you…”
As if unable to help himself, he leaned in and kissed her again, like someone faced with a long-denied addiction. Hunger, need, and desire, beyond reason. She sensed his failing reluctance and yet couldn’t help luxuriating in the sensations, the touch of his lips, his tongue filling and enticing her. Her heart thundered against her ribs as he pulled back.
“Somehow, you are a source of enormous magical energy. It is a mortal’s gift from the Creator, the ability in turn to create. That is true magic. Do you understand me?”
She nodded, but with the movement the exhaustion flooded back again, a dark wave of oblivion which crested far above her. Her head lolled back as she surrendered to it.
Daire kissed her again, buoying her back to the light of his embrace, to the sound of his voice. His lips trailed across her cheek, up her jaw line, to her ear.
“I asked you to give me some energy, without thinking you would give me so much. You are a giving person. It isn’t in you to hold back. I should have thought—for that I am sorry. I should have guessed you would not understand the implications. I need to give some back to you, Rowan. Or you will be ill. Dangerously ill. Your tine anama is unbalanced, your soul flickering. I must restore what is yours.”
“How?” He sounded so serious. And the way her consciousness lurched sickeningly between the dark and Daire’s light, it felt serious, or would if she could bring herself to care for more than a moment. Every time she could grasp the importance, it slid away, straight into shadows on an oil-skimmed track.
Daire cradled her against his body again, rested his face against her hair. His words drew her back, though she felt certain he thought she slept.
“Would that I could make love to you, Rowan. I can imagine no greater honour, nor admit no more earnest desire. And that would restore any amount of your power, for it is a shaping of all things. But I dare not. I cannot. I wish I could, but I am not the man to love you. There is no heart left within me for love.”
She stirred, disturbed by the tack this was taking. Opening her eyes, she looked into his smile and knew no matter what he thought, he felt nothing of the sort. Daire had a heart. She could feel it hammering against his chest, echoing through her body. She could see its glow in the depths of his wondrous eyes.
“But there are other ways, Rowan, if you will but give me your permission.”
“Permission?”
“To touch you. To fulfil you. To bring your strength back.”
“But the other night—”
“That is part of the problem. Two nights in a row, two nights I have—” He cursed, though the words were ancient and unknown to her. “I’m like nothing more than a Leanán Sidhe, feeding off mortals for my own purposes and enrichment. Please, Rowan, let me return what I have pilfered. It burns within me, tortures me with the knowledge of the forbidden.”
His lips brushed her neck, a little trail of fiery kisses down the edge of her erratically pulsing jugular. Her blood beneath surged in response and her breath caught in her throat.
“But you said you…you can’t make love…”
“Other ways, sweet Rowan,” he murmured into her skin. “I will never harm you. May I?”
Rowan bit her lip, intrigued. He couldn’t make love to her, by his own admission, couldn’t or wouldn’t love her. Other ways? Excitement mingled with fear and yet the dark silence still called. Rest, oblivion, peace…and if their enemies came she would be completely helpless.
“All right,” she said, unable to hide the wariness in her voice.
“I will stop if you command it,” he promised solemnly, and she believed him.
Rowan released all control to the Sidhe prince and allowed him to draw her back from the shadows calling her. Daire made her comfortable on the sofa, removed her shoes and her coat, all with the neat precision of a ritual. He loosened her hair, running his fingers through its length as if he was experiencing the finest silk. Just when Rowan was sure he had changed his mind, that he had decided to grant her the peace she craved and feared, his mouth closed on hers.
Daire’s kiss was determined, no chaste brush of the lips this time, no mistaking his intent. She opened beneath him like a flower to the sun. He smiled as he kissed her. She could feel it in their lips and somehow that made her too scared to open her eyes. Daire of the sombre expression, Daire who was constructed from hard lines of determination, Daire was smiling.
He trailed his way down her neck while his hand slid beneath her body, cradling her, massaging the taut muscles where her neck met her shoulders. For a moment she lost all sense of self, her body relaxing into his touch. She lay so still that one might think her deeply asleep, and yet inside herself, she struggled desperately for equilibrium.
Rowan had no idea when he opened her blouse or removed her bra, but she gasped as his mouth closed over her nipple, drawing it into his mouth, warm, wet and welcoming. His tongue swirled around the areola. His other hand brushed the soft skin of her thighs, parting them effortlessly. Fae enchantments? She squeezed her eyelids tighter, and arched her back, her breath coming harder as he switched breasts, as his hand cupped the mound and pressed with just the right amount of pressure.
That was one of the old stories, wasn’t it? The fae lover who could make a woman wild with desire, fulfil her so that she would never want another, would waste away with the need for his touch. Hadn’t she suspected his glamour of acting on her before? Hadn’t she thought of her reaction to him, her need for him, and wondered if it was deliberate? She had been a fool. That was a vague shadow to the things she felt now. That was just a dream, a myth, a fleeting shadow. Now she lay in the heart of the sun.
“Daire,” she forced the words out. “Daire, please!”
Caught between love and duty, can she make an impossible choice?
Heart of the Volcano
© 2009 Imogen Howson
Five years ago, Aera was called away from everything she had ever known: her home, family, and Coram, the boy she was growing to love. She was given no choice. As the only living lava-shifter—able to transform her body into molten rock—she is destined to serve the volcano god as his fire priestess. Now, before she takes her ordained role, she must face her final test. Execute a criminal sentenced to death for the most unforgivable of all sins. Blasphemy.
She’s shocked to discover it’s no anonymous law-breaker waiting chained at the center of the labyrinth. It’s Coram. For the crime of being a gargoyle, a winged stone-shifter. A gift akin to hers…except his gift is unsanctioned by the temple, his powers proclaimed unholy.
If she refuses the test she will betray her god and condemn her family to dishonor. To pass it she must kill the boy she used to love…the man she still does.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Heart of the Volcano:
“You want to know what it is?” said Coram. “Will it make it easier to know? Easi
er to kill me, when you see the abomination I’m hiding?”
“No.” Nothing will make it easier to kill you. But she couldn’t say that aloud, standing here as they were, priestess and victim.
He shrugged. The chains swung down as his arms fell against his body. “Very well. Watch, fire-priestess, servant of the volcano-god, standing with all your power in your very own labyrinth. See the path laid before me.”
And he changed.
She was looking into his eyes, and change came there first: a swirl of grey spiraling out from his pupils, swallowing up the colour, spreading to transform the whole of both his eyes into the lifeless stare of a statue.
Then it poured over the rest of him like water soaking through fabric, a tide of grey washing from his face down over his neck and chest and arms, hardening every angle of bone and curve of muscle until they looked like contours on a cliff face. He’d been big at fifteen, and bigger still now he was grown up, but as the stony colour seeped over his skin, his chest and arms grew visibly even larger, muscles bulging under the folds of his toga-tunic.
He moved, just a little, and it made a horrible grating noise, stone on stone. His head went down, his shoulders tensed, then wings unfolded, huge, stone-feathered wings, arching above their heads like a temple roof.
When he spoke even his voice sounded different, hollow, echoing, like the wind blowing through empty caves. “Blasphemy or not, then, priestess? Do you believe it now?”
Of course it was blasphemy. Terrible blasphemy, the worst kind, the kind that was a travesty of her own gift. Turning, not to fire that came from the god, that purified and destroyed sin, but to something less than human, even less than animal. She’d not seen or heard of it before—what is he? Does the gift even have a name?—but she knew all the holy gifts, the fire gifts, and this was none of them. Yet, all the same…
It’s like my gift. Living stone. Like me. And he’s—oh, I cannot say it to him, but he’s beautiful.
The words swelled inside her, hurting her chest, making her breath catch. She’d never imagined anything like the way he looked, never imagined that stone, her own substance, the thing she thought she knew so well, could look like this, all smooth grey planes, every line of his body somehow more defined than it had been in flesh.
Helpless to stop or control it, she heard her voice go back to a whisper. “What are you? A—a stone-shifter, a—”
“Gargoyle.” He spread his arms a little, looked down at himself. “Or so they said when they came for me. Stone-shifters don’t have wings. So they said.” Contempt and anger flashed through his voice.
Gargoyle. An ugly-sounding word. She had heard it before, she realized now, but hadn’t known exactly what it was, and had taken little notice. No one expected her to know the many horrible permutations of the unholy gifts. It was not her task to find them or identify them, only to destroy—
She stuck on that last thought, her mind stuttering over the word. Destroy. Coram had never asked for this, would never have deliberately gone against the god’s will. And he…this thing he was—it wasn’t horrible. But all the same, she must—
She couldn’t think it, not yet. In a minute she would face the thought, the reality of what she must do. Not yet. Not yet.
Above her, his wings bent, drew downwards to fold onto his back. The stony rustle grated on her ears and echoed around the walls of the labyrinth eye. The grey colour receded from his skin, and his body changed, shrinking, redefining its shape. He stood wholly human before her.
“You can stop staring now.”
She looked away, embarrassed. “I’m—I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for staring? Or sorry you’re going to kill me?”
The words stung. She flinched, not looking at him. “For staring…”
“Oh, don’t worry.” His voice was as hard as if it still came from the stone lips. “I know very well how appalling I am—an abomination to gods and men. I hardly expect you not to be revolted.”
I’m not revolted. She swallowed. I’m not revolted, and I should be. Even if I’ve not seen an unholy gift before, I’ve been a priestess for five years, I’m one with the god’s power, I’m supposed to be one with his mind. I should see this as the abomination it is.
“Go on.”
She jerked her head up to look at him. “What?”
“Go on. You’ve seen the justification. Do what you came here for.”
“You mean…”
“Kill me. Do what your god tells you. Fulfill your destiny.”
Him: hunter turned lover. Her: lover turned prey…
Summer-set
© 2009 Karalynn Lee
At Prince Kaen’s court, Ryuan holds a place of honor…and fear. He is wolf-born, and although he uses his shifter abilities to hunt down criminals who threaten the realm, he is considered more beast than man. Only in the chase and killing of outlaws is he truly free to be himself.
While tracking a rogue sorcerer, he encounters Calanthe, who not only is unafraid of him, but dares to tease him. Intrigued—and unaware that she, too, is driven by a purpose—he offers her a drink of water from his hands. It is an offer of more than a simple sip.
Calanthe accepts, for she has been sent by the sorcerer to distract Ryuan however she can, even with her body. Instead she finds herself giving in to the urge to make this grim warrior smile, then to something deeper. A summer of romance, rain and lovemaking.
When Ryuan awakes to find he has lost both her and the sorcerer’s trail, he lets his wolf-born side loose with renewed determination. He will serve his prince and kill this sorcerer once and for all. But now, his true prey is Calanthe…
Warning: This title contains explicit sex, earth-shaking confrontations, a hero who could rip your heart out, and a romance that will put it back in.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Summer-set:
He had been hunting a man into exile when he first saw her. She was lifting water from a well. Against the dimming sky she was a seductive foretelling of the night, with her smoke-dark eyes, earth-dark skin and raven-dark hair, falling free down her back as no respectable woman would wear it. Gold glinted around her neck with the last of the sun’s light.
Ryuan scented no danger, so he turned human. He wore nothing but a chain about his neck, from which dangled a signet ring. It identified him as well as his name would.
She looked up at his approach and her eyes caught on that telltale signet. Then her gaze slipped lower for a moment before she caught herself. She unhooked the bucket. “Water, my lord?”
Grown men blanched at the sight of him, knowing him to be wolf-born, while women turned away from his nakedness. She seemed unfazed. Intrigued more than thirsty, he cupped his palms and let her carefully pour water into them so that he could sip. “My thanks.”
“You’ve been on a long road.”
And no one ever spoke to him about his hunts. They were his business and the prince’s, the execution of law, not fodder for gossip. “You know who I am?”
Her eyes flickered to the signet again. “The prince’s hunter. Lord Ryuan. No other man would be fool enough to wear that. And nothing else.”
Her forthright manner was more refreshing than the drink she had offered. “Your name?”
“Calanthe, my lord.”
“And what do you know of my journey so far, Calanthe?” He let suspicion harden his voice. He didn’t want her to be in league with the sorcerer, a sentiment that surprised him, but how else would she know of the path he had taken to track the man?
She wasn’t oblivious to the danger she was in—he heard her pulse grow faster—but she answered readily enough. “It started at the capital, did it not? Perhaps it’s shorter as the wolf runs, but for the rest of us, it’s more than a tenday away.”
He relaxed, chuckling at how he had overlooked the obvious. “My apologies for the interrogation. My journey did start there. And it has been long, even as a wolf.”
“And you are parched in either form, I’m sure.
They always warn us about the hungers of the wolf-born, but they should mention the thirst.” She smiled and gestured for him to cup his hands again.
He did so, but this time he watched her instead of the flow of water. Her hands, like her figure, were slender and graceful yet strong. There was a sureness to her that he liked—not the arrogance of the court women, but an unaffected confidence that his presence did nothing to diminish. She spoke easily of him in his wolf-shape, made light of the wild-mind.
He wondered what this woman would be like in bed. Just as bold and teasing? A touch careless, though, in her attitude.
“You shouldn’t discount danger so easily,” he said. “Not from me, but there are men in this area who would part you from that gold.” There were lawless men in these parts. Ironically, it had been the death of one of them that had brought him here. Ryuan would deal with them if he encountered any, but for now he had greater prey to pursue.
“With the prince’s hunter here to serve justice?” She shook her head. “Surely there’s nowhere safer right now.” Was that a trace of banter in her voice, as though his prowess could be questioned?
“I am on hunt,” he said. “I won’t be lingering long.”
“You spurn my hospitality, my lord?” She tilted her head and looked at him in wide-eyed appeal, still playing her game of innocent challenge, and yet the thought of spending a night with her was a temptation.
It had been long—too many nights spent curled as a wolf in dens he had dug. There had been a court woman the night he had left the capital, but he had already forgotten which one it had been. Those were empty rituals of pleasure, enjoyable but always the same: some woman seeking the thrill of bedding one of the wolf-born, perhaps also trying to win the prince’s favor.
Calanthe would be different. He would stay a night, he decided, if this woman were willing to share more than a roof.
Ryuan nodded to the bucket and said, “I won’t spurn more water.” But this time, after she poured and set the bucket upon the rim of the well, he kept his filled hands still and said, “But I interrupted you just as you were pulling this up. You too should drink.”
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