No doubt of it, he was dying.
Except that Rhiannon had no intention of allowing that to happen.
Blessed Lady, how is it possible that I’ve grown to love him utterly, and in so little time?
Torn between marvel and dread, anticipation humming in her blood, she finished her preparations swiftly. She performed her ritual bath, while the unknown incense Zamiel had left smoldered and blackened in the brazier, its queer bittersweet smoke curling thick as mist through the cubby.
Gratefully she cast aside her muddy mortal gown, clad herself in a gossamer milk-white robe of spider-silk, and brushed the silver tangle of her hair until it swirled loose around her shoulders.
Barefooted, she padded to the brazier, where she brewed a potent tea from the forked root of mandrake. Deadly nightshade, and too much would kill him. But for this spell its hallucinatory and aphrodisiac qualities were essential.
Carefully she measured out a few sips for Beltran, who was beyond even swallowing, forcing her to pour the dangerous potion directly down his throat. The potent dregs she drained herself, with an anxious glance through her shuttered window.
In the Summer Lands one rarely saw the sun, but the russet light of sunset was fading in the sky. Beneath the boughs, the lavender shadows of twilight thickened.
Less than an hour till moonrise. She must act now or never, and live with the consequences.
Seized in a terrible paralysis of indecision, she caught up her bronze mirror and searched its depths. Her own familiar face stared back at her, eyes enormous with trepidation, smudged with violet shadows of exhaustion. She should have been white with dread, yet a wild-rose blush bloomed in her cheeks. Her breasts rose and fell swiftly, and that hum of excitement was mounting. The mandrake was working its magick, she supposed.
The next time I look into this glass, I’ll no longer be a maiden. Perhaps I’ll no longer be a Faerie princess, blessed with immortality, but a mortal woman cursed to wither and die.
Would they exile her from the Summer Lands or let her live like a shadow among the Fair Folk? Would she be anything more than a nameless face, just another mortal who’d stumbled through the Veil by mischance?
A low groan from the bed dragged her back to the present. Straightening her shoulders, tilting her chin with resolve, she laid the mirror aside and took up her silver lute. Standing before the brazier, while Beltran lay senseless, she touched the strings. A glissade of liquid notes rippled through the air.
For a time she merely played, letting the cascade of music soothe her desperate fears and ease her anxious heart. When the music led her to it, she wove her voice into the melody, spinning a song of sweet repose.
Beltran lay unresponsive, bedclothes twisted around his naked hips, sweat gleaming like oil on the broad planes of his chest. Muscles twitched in his bulging biceps and shoulders, in the sinewed column of his abdomen. His warrior’s hands lay curled on the blanket, strong and calloused, infinitely capable of both kindness and cruelty. The gold seal of Justice glinted in the firelight.
She thought of those hands on her body, hard and sure. Heat kindled in her blood and pulsed in her womb.
Now her song deepened and slowed, the low croon of a woman in love, flesh tingling and aching for her lover’s touch. She closed her eyes and swayed with the rhythm, her silken garment whispering around her.
When the spirit moved her, she began to dance, spinning slowly, breath quickening, hair flying free in a scented cloud around her. Her fingers caressed the strings; her tongue caressed the words. The fire’s heat built against her skin and pooled deep within her.
She was no longer herself, no more the shy maiden.
Yet she’d never felt more free.
She was floating across the floor, eyes closed, entranced...
Warm hands closed around her waist and pulled her back against a man’s tensile heat. Her eyes flew open to find the bed empty, blankets flung to the floor.
The ritual had begun to weave its magick, turning her love from the threshold of death to a last flickering glimpse of life.
Soul and body, she recognized the touch of the man behind her, though she could not see him. Strong brown hands spread over her ribcage, just beneath her breasts, as though he had every right to claim her. Naked beneath the whisper-thin silk, she felt his fever-heat seep into her, his chest scorching her back.
One hand gathered her loosened hair and smoothed it aside. The warm flutter of his breath teased her neck, there at the vulnerable nexus where neck and shoulder joined. Then the brand of his mouth seared her.
A tingling pleasure raced through her. She gasped and shivered beneath his kiss—surely the mandrake doing its work. When his hands closed around her breasts, she voiced a low cry.
Dear Goddess, the way he claimed her, weighing her breasts in his palms, fingers circling and teasing her nipples until she ached for him. As he brushed the tingling peaks, low pulses of pleasure throbbed in her belly. Moisture gathered like dew between her thighs. Wickedly skilled, he played her like the lute that dangled from her fingers. He touched her with a certainty that had no business in a man sworn to chastity.
“Rhiannon,” he breathed, low and husky, breath tickling her ear. A flicker of relief made her sag against him. Between the magick and the mandrake, she hadn’t been certain he would know her, or be capable of any more than mindless rutting.
Still she knew he was deeply drugged and far from waking, else he’d never have the strength to stand.
“Do you want to know what I intend to do to you?” he whispered against her skin, voice thick with mandrake and desire. “You who made me wait for you? Made me burn for you? I plan to undress you, princess—one layer at a time. I want to tease and suckle your perfect pink nipples until you moan and rise against me, just as you did in the forest. Until I smell the musk of your arousal, until I spread your thighs and drink the sweet cream of your desire, until you arch into my tongue and tighten around my fingers and beg me to take you.”
Surely if he’d been himself, he would have known she needed a maid’s patient wooing. Instead his words left her breathless, half-fainting against him.
“Beltran, for the love of all Gods! We must do this slowly...”
“I want you to take my cock in your warm little hands and fit me against you, princess,” he murmured, “so both of us know what you want me to do.”
Heedless of her plea, his hands slid down her body, a liquid caress that left her languid and melting against him. One hardened palm stroked down her belly, until he found the heat burning between her legs. The lute slipped from her fingers.
“And then, Rhiannon,” he whispered, “I’m going to mount you slowly. And you’re going to beg me for every inch.”
“Merciful Lady,” she whispered, on a scrap of breath. Her mind was reeling, her thoughts dazed and clouded. Yet her thighs eased apart to grant him the access he demanded. Her head tipped back against his shoulder, face turning into his neck, the sweet spice of frankincense mingled with male arousal.
She was an aching void of craving, her skin chafed by the gossamer silk between them. She was arching into his seeking touch, just as he’d promised she would. His fingers slipped between her folds, only the cobweb silk between her flesh and his.
Yet even that barr
ier between them was intolerable.
With a low curse he released her, but only for a heartbeat. He caught the thin fabric in his fevered hands and swept it upward, baring her body to his unfettered heat. Reflexively she grabbed for it, a last flash of defiance against her fate. But he moved with a fighting man’s quickness. The silk settled to the floor in a cloud, and the fire’s heat encased her naked skin.
Like a physical touch his gaze swept over her—the arch of her spine cloaked by the fall of hair, the curve of her naked bottom beneath.
“God in Heaven, Rhiannon,” he muttered.
The world of Faerie turned gray and shivered around them. But the enchantment gripped him too tightly to notice. The shadow of death blotted out the world around him; he saw and heard and smelled nothing but her.
“Please don’t,” she whispered, a tendril of fear snaking through her. Any attempt to call upon the Christian God within the bounds of the Summer Lands was blasphemy. It made the entire realm tremble like an insect struggling in cobwebs. Inevitably, the dissonance must pluck at Morrigan’s attention.
And then she would send her hordes to deal with them, or be upon them herself.
“Too late,” he said roughly. Clearly his senses were clouded by magick, mistaking her fear for sexual reluctance.
His warm mouth blazed a trail of fire across her shoulders. His hands claimed her breasts once more, calloused thumbs teasing her upright nipples until they thrust eagerly against his touch. Her senses reeled beneath the assault.
When his fingers sought her warm core, slipping between sensitive folds to find the honey of passion that coated her, her body melted against him. Unerringly he found the pulsing pearl that swelled and ached with her yearning for him. His fingers teased her, swirling around that tender bit of flesh, stroking her own cream over her, massaging her flesh until she moaned and writhed against his touch.
“You’ll let him peel those stiff garments from you, caress you and suckle you until you pulse for him, stroke and fondle your little pearl until he makes you whimper and beg him to slide that great throbbing man-root between your thighs...”
She thrust away the unwelcome echo of her sister’s warning. She cared for nothing but that rhythmic friction, there, this breathless excitement that squeezed her chest and made her breath hard and fast, the mounting excitement that fluttered in her belly and pulsed against his touch. Tingles raced down her thighs, her toes curling into cool earth.
Blindly her hands sought him. His corded thighs seared her palms. Burning with a sudden hunger to know all of him, she caressed his hard lines, her hands curving to find the clenched muscle of his buttocks. He groaned and thrust against her, the stiffened blade of his arousal nudging her spine. Relentlessly he teased her nipple, making fire arc through her. A vortex of heat swirled at her core. Her body, burning like a brand, kindled to a bonfire by his touch.
She turned her face into the tendons of his neck, tasting salt on her lips—the sweat of his craving, or the salt of her tears? Moaning, she rubbed against that maddening friction between her thighs. All the blood in her body was collecting in that little pearl of flesh, making it swell and harden beneath his touch. In another moment, she would explode...
Abruptly, he nudged her forward, strong hands steering her progress. When the front of her thighs brushed the bed, her eyes flew open, arms stretching to catch herself as she tumbled forward. Deftly he caught her, cradling her hips, bending her forward at the waist. Hair spilled around her hot face, blinding her. His hands slid up the backs of her thighs and parted her, spreading her wet channel wide for him.
Now the potent magick they’d kindled could not be turned aside. He’d forgotten her lack of experience—made her forget herself—abandoned both of them to the sweeping force of this unstoppable seduction. Again he found her throbbing pearl and she thrust into his touch, her body moving with the rhythm she could no longer contain. Her tight channel opened to the finger that eased into her virgin depths. Her face burrowed into the bed, linen sheets still hot from the fever that consumed him. She panted as the unbearable tension built and spiraled into a tight coil of need.
His rampant lance seared her thighs like a white-hot iron as he bent over her. The heat of his body enclosed her, cradling her, steadying her for what was to come.
Deep within, a last futile warning rang like a bell, the slow peals tolling through her soul. Bright Lady, she couldn’t do this! How could she surrender everything she was, her dream of acceptance among her people, her identity, the only life and home she’d ever known?
But if she didn’t, he would die. The notion was monstrous, unbearable, worse than all the rest.
If she didn’t, she would die herself. Surely no living creature could suffer this pounding craving and survive it. For her own sake, for the love of him that burned like a candle within her, she closed her ears to that warning tocsin.
Afire, restless, fretful, she managed to roll over. She needed the reassurance of seeing him, her own eyes showing her she wasn’t alone, that he too burned for her. For the magick was strong in him now. His manhood was probing her, sliding into the slick channel her desire had readied for him. Surely he was far too large, would never fit there—
Afloat and drowning in a sea of pleasure, she saw the bloom of pain like a crimson rose.
...Red is for heartbreak...
A moment of perfect clarity shimmered around her. Her eyes fluttered open to drink in the erotic tableau—his powerful crusader’s body taut and rippling with muscle, sun-gold skin glistening with fever-sweat, thrusting against her slight fair-skinned form, her hair flung across the bedclothes like a tangled silver banner.
Then a glowing shaft of moonlight streamed through the window to pour across the bed. Her skin glowed alabaster, bathing their entwined bodies with a pure nimbus of white light. The lightning charge of magick lifted the hair on her forearms.
But it was more than moon magick that swept through her, tingling along her skin, building into a tight spiral of need between her thighs. She soared beneath another kind of magick entirely—the enchantment of sweat-slick skin and the rhythmic clench of his buttocks under her desperate grip, the rush of hot breath as he gasped words of command and endearment in her ear, the sweet shock of need as the friction against her woman’s pearl drove her mad with wanting.
Still the thrust of his manhood filled her aching depths, slippery with her own desire. Shameless, her body arched to meet him, found the driving rhythm of passion and matched it. Deep within, the low, delicious ripples of pleasure built and spread. She wrapped her legs tight around his hips and surrendered to him.
The climax tossed them high, to the very pinnacle of passion. It crashed over and through them, arcing from one to the other. Together they shuddered, voices mingling as they cried out. Her woman’s channel pulsed with spasms of pleasure, rippling outward until her fingers curled and tingled. When he convulsed atop her, the spurt of life flooded her womb like spring rain.
Slowly her vision cleared. She found him collapsed against her, his raspy jaw cradled against her shoulder, face buried in her tumbled hair. His weight pressed her deep into the straw-filled mattress. She felt the slow rise and fall of his chest, the deep rhythm of a restful and healthy sleep.
His skin had cooled, his fever broken, sweat drying on both t
heir limbs. Weak with relief and gratitude, swamped by the knowledge of her loss, Rhiannon turned her face into the mattress and wept.
* * *
Slowly Beltran returned to himself, though the journey was far from easy. His memories of the previous days—weeks?—had kinked into a maddening tangle: the baying of hounds, the glimpse of Rhiannon’s terrified face that turned his heart and obliterated all his godly intentions in a heartbeat, the burning prelude to the killing rage dropping over him like a curtain wreathed in flames.
Clear as his faith in God, he recalled the intense pounding pleasure of climax, a paroxysm more powerful than he’d ever known.
“Christ, what a dream,” he muttered. The earth quaked beneath him.
His eyes flew open.
A half-remembered scene coalesced around him—a cozy chamber walled in red-gold wood, beams hung with bundles of dried herbs. A bright banner of sunlight streamed through the window, across a trestle table littered with mortar and pestle, wooden cups and a pile of bloody bandages.
Nestled in bed beside him lay Rhiannon, tucked into the curve of his arm as though she’d never belonged anywhere else. Her sleeping face was turned into his shoulder, her delicate profile like white damask against his sun-browned chest. Her mane of gilded curls wrapped around their entangled limbs.
Both of them naked as newborns beneath the supple deerskin tossed over them.
In a scalding rush, a torrent of images and sensations tumbled through his brain.
“Not a dream after all. God save me.” Again the world trembled like a strummed harp. Overhead, the hanging roots swayed.
Against him Rhiannon stirred, dark lashes fluttering up to reveal sleep-clouded eyes. For a moment she blinked at him, gloriously tousled and bewildered. Then comprehension rushed into her face.
Swiftly she sat up, clutching an armful of deerskin to her bare breasts. And wasn’t that a pity?
Magick by Moonrise Page 24
