by Naima Simone
Sculptures of men in period dress, children and ducks—the sculptures of people forever frozen in time—reminded her of the White Witch’s castle in C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. She’d met the Irish-born author once, early in the twentieth century, before his fame from the series of books based on the mythical land of Narnia. Few humans had ever made an impression on her, but the scholar had. So much, she’d read all his works, including The Chronicles of Narnia. Out of all the movies and television shows she’d viewed in the last five months, Lewis’ books still remained her favorite escape.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
With a ripple and snap of energy, Bastien transformed into his human form, except for his beautiful wings. He reclined against the back of the rider and drew Sinéad onto his lap. Pain and anger still emanated from him. But instead of the white-hot lash in the hotel room, the emotional storm had quieted to a tempered rain over her senses. She cuddled deeper onto his lap and into his arms and the white feathers under his wings enclosed her, surrounding her in a blanket of muscle and downy softness.
“This is probably illegal.” She adjusted her thighs over his jean-clad legs.
“They have to catch us first.” His arms tightened and he rubbed his cheek against the top of her head.
She snorted. People strolled past them without once glancing at the odd sight of a winged, bare-chested man sitting on top of a statue with a woman in his arms. Snickering, she shook her head. If they only knew.
“Bastien?” She waited for his rumbled reply before approaching the painful topic between them—her betrayal. “Why aren’t you angry over my lie?”
He sighed. “Sinéad, you are the most honest person I know—immortal or mortal.” When she parted her lips to object, he laid a finger across her mouth. “The same female who called me beautiful and in the next breath told me my scars are big as hell is not a liar.”
He tipped her head back, forcing her to meet his gaze and acknowledge the truth there. “I’m not so hardened I can’t decipher the difference between a deception and survival. I would do anything, including blindly infiltrate the holding of ruthless vampires to get my life back. How can I fault you for doing the same? At least I retain some of what I used to be. You?”
He trailed a caress down her spine where her wing locks—the ridges of bone her wings would have emerged from—were once located. “I stripped you of your power, strength, wings and even your identity. Yet you continue to fight with an indomitable will that shocks and humbles me. So yeah, Sinéad, how can I fault you?”
Tears—honest-to-Nef tears—pricked her eyes.
Lady, even if she somehow were able to become cruxim again, she would never truly be one of them. How could she ever dam the emotion engulfing her? How could she ever return to being barren of feeling after she’d experienced love such as this? It would be like trying to force floodwaters back behind a steel barrier after they had already wreaked havoc and devastation. Impossible and pointless.
She turned her head and notched it under his chin.
“Will you tell me about her?” she asked.
He stiffened, but didn’t pretend not to understand about whom she inquired.
“Alesia was the younger sister of my best friend, Nicolai. Even though they were both children of our king, we all grew up together and were very close. When Nico was appointed Dimios of our people and left our homeland, Alesia and I became even closer, eventually falling in love. We kept our relationship hidden. Her father, the king, wouldn’t have approved since I was a healer, not a noble male.”
“The hell you say,” she snarled.
His chuckle tickled the hair at her temple. “Birth, Sinéad. Noble birth.” He rubbed a hand up and down her back as if comforting her when she should’ve been offering it to him. “Our king is,” he paused as if searching for the appropriate word, “obsessed with maintaining the purity of his people and most definitely his bloodlines. He would never condone his daughter mating with a male he considered unworthy. And when he arranged a marriage contract to a noble in his court for Alesia, she gave in and became engaged to the male of her father’s choosing.”
Shock ripped through her.
Straightening, she stared at him. “She dumped you?”
His lips twisted. “Yes.”
“What a bitch.”
His eyes widened, his face going slack with surprise.
She nodded. “Worse. She’s a cowardly bitch.”
Real humor warmed his smile, softened the hard curve of his lips. “In her defense, she is a princess—”
“Damn that,” she sneered. “Even more reason why she should’ve had the balls to stand up for herself. She hurt you, betrayed you, because she didn’t want to go against tradition?” She snorted. “Forever is a hefty price to pay for duty. What a fool. She should have fought for you—you are worth fighting for.”
“And would you have fought for me, Sinéad?” he asked quietly.
She turned in his arms. Stared up into his solemn gaze. Lifted her hand and pressed her fingertips to the somber line of his bottom lip.
“I have from the moment I saw you,” she murmured. “And I haven’t stopped yet.”
Chapter Eleven
I have from the moment I saw you. And I haven’t stopped yet.
Sinéad’s words echoed in his head, whispered across his mind like ghostly fingers. Only he didn’t want to exorcise this specter. He wanted to give her vow a permanent residence in his heart, his soul.
Across the hotel room, she twisted her hair into a long braid. Her efficient and quick fingers weaved the thick strands with little effort. After tying a band around the end of the tail, she tossed it over her shoulder so it swung like a heavy, chocolate rope down her spine.
Hell. His eyes narrowed as the brown tip grazed the dip in her spine. If Rapunzel had hair like Sinéad’s, no wonder the prince risked everything to climb the tower.
If he’d known five months ago he would suffer, be disfigured and altered but also experience a love that eclipsed all he’d known before, he’d fly into Evander’s ambush with his eyes wide open.
Sinéad slipped her arms into a black leather vest, hiding her smooth back from his view. He frowned. Would she say the same? Earlier in the park, he’d caressed the supple skin of her back, traced the elegant length of her spine. At one time a huge, black tattoo of wings would’ve spanned the stretch of skin. A set of ridges, smaller than his own, would’ve once bracketed the deceptively fragile spinal column. With just a thought, midnight wings would’ve released from their locks and snapped behind her like black, glorious arches.
The loss of her wings had been only one price she’d paid for opening her wrist and feeding him. But if she could travel back in time and warn herself, would she consider saving him worth losing her immortality? A few days ago, she hadn’t been certain. But what would she say now? He was too much of a coward to ask. Because her rejection would destroy him. Yet not enough to let her go.
She was his mate—his bondmate. If Sinéad accepted the love and soul of both man and beast…if she was willing to not just mate the beast but become it…then they would have a chance.
What would her hippogryph look like? He studied her slender frame, drawing closer as she tucked short knives into each of her black over-the-knee boots. More leather covered her from hip to mid-thigh, high splits on either side of the miniskirt. Would she have black wings like a cruxim? A sun-kissed peach hue like her skin? Or silver like her true hair color under the dye.
Damn, he wanted the chance to find out.
He flattened his palms on the wall on either side of her head, his chest pressed to the slim line of her back. In front of him, Sinéad stilled like prey realizing a predator had caught her scent. He lowered his head to the sweet nook where her shoulder and neck met. Inhaling, he trapped her essence in his throat, savoring her unique perfume. He would need this piece of her when he entered the Cardei castel. He’d need to carry it in with him i
n case he didn’t come out…
“Shut your emotions up, hippogryph,” Sinéad drawled. She shifted forward, placing a minute amount of space between them before lowering into a lunge and then a deep squat. The movement flashed the edge of her black boy-shorts style underwear from under the skirt. Damn, they were sexy. “You’re feeling too loud.”
He snorted. After a moment, she stood, lifted her arms over and behind her head. Slim fingers threaded through his hair, scratched over his scalp and cupped the nape of his neck.
“Your worry pours out of you,” she murmured.
Instead of answering—instead of admitting the thought of escorting her into danger scared him shitless—he scraped his teeth over her throat. A hard shiver coursed through her body and her grip on him tightened. His fingers curled against the wall and the hunger rose on a wave of tenderness and love.
It went deeper than lust, was sharper than the craving for blood simmering in his gut on a daily basis. This need for her defined him. Because he was no longer Bastien Sarris, healer. He’d become Bastien Sarris, healer, bondmate and lover of Sinéad, the warrior.
“Bastien,” she said, tipping her head back, frowning up at him. She released his neck to cradle his jaw. “What’s wrong? I feel your pain.”
He shook his head, circled her wrists and planted her palms against the wall. Silently, he ordered her not to move by covering her hands and applying pressure. A moment later, he stroked up her arms, cupped her shoulders and slid a firm caress down her torso. He tilted her hips back and out until his cock rode the firm rise of her ass beneath the slick leather. But damn, it wasn’t enough.
With rough, shaking hands, he pinched the zipper tab at her side and tugged it. The skirt slithered past her hips and legs, pooling around her ankles. He guided her free of the material and nudged it aside with his booted foot.
Quickly, he released the silver-studded buttons that held the front of her vest together and groaned as he filled his hands with the soft swells of her bare breasts. Taut, hard nipples thrust against his palms as he shaped and molded her flesh. Small catches of breath echoed in the room as Sinéad shuddered under his touch, her hips grinding tight, hungry circles against his cock.
Spreading her legs wider, she pressed her ass to him. Unable to see his hands at her breasts, he satisfied his voyeuristic need by staring down. And almost came.
He fought the mad rush of desire seething in his gut, pounding in his dick. But the sight of her ass rubbing up and down over the cloth-covered length of his cock nearly undid him. Only one thing would be better.
On the tail of a curse, he lowered a hand to the waist of his pants. He continued to pinch and roll a nipple between his fingers even as he hurriedly shoved his belt free and dragged his slacks open. One shove and his cock sprang free, brutally hard and throbbing. The swollen head already glistened with precum in the lamp’s glow. Gritting his teeth, he recaptured her breast and, bending slightly, slid his dick between the crease in her ass.
Little cries spilled from Sinéad’s lips as he pinched and stroked her nipples with his fingers and thumbs. He rocked and thrust between the taut globes of her ass, the slick friction alleviating some of the greedy need clenching his stomach and stealing the breath from his throat. Growling, he opened his mouth over her neck, sucking hard, drawing on slender column like he wanted to suckle the pointed tips cresting her breasts.
Crying out, Sinéad speared her fingers through his hair, clutching the back of his head. The other hand abandoned the wall as well, yanking one of his from her chest and sliding it down her stomach to the flesh between her thighs. Shaking free of her grip, Bastien cuffed her wrists and returned both to their former positions. But he gave her what she’d asked her.
He palmed one thigh and spread her wide—wider. Love, lust, fear, worry coalesced in him like a wild tornado, ripping free the moorings of his control. Man and beast yearned to mark her, claim her as theirs because they might not have another chance. When he plunged two fingers inside her pussy, her scream of pleasure danced in his ears, soothing and arousing his hippogryph. Again.
He withdrew, drove back in. Again. Three fingers stroked deep, curled. Again. The heel of his fist pressed against her swollen, wet folds as he finger-fucked her in a steady, merciless rhythm, dragging answering cries from his woman’s throat.
Bastien grazed his incisors, which had dropped and lengthened in his mouth, up her skin. A shiver quaked through her body. It could’ve been from his fingers filling her sex, but instinct whispered it was more.
She wanted his bite.
He remembered her stillness in the pleasure den when he’d put his teeth on her. Yes, his little cruxim wanted to be bitten by him. Bloodlust so strong filled him, his growl reverberated in the room like a drum of thunder.
As in the den, she stilled, her only motion the rapid rise and fall of her chest.
“You want it,” he said and in his lust-thick voice those words almost sounded like an accusation. “Admit it.”
“Yes,” she rasped without hesitation. She tipped her head farther to the side, granting him easier access to the vein throbbing under her skin. “I want to feel you inside me, to feed you. No one else. Just me.”
He wrapped her braid around his wrist and tugged her head back. Sinéad moaned and her ultra-tight sheath flexed and quivered around his fingers. Bastien lifted his head and caught the flutter of her lashes as she closed them…anticipating his fangs piercing her skin and him drinking from her vein.
But he wasn’t a vampire. And cruxim blood didn’t flow through her veins. She couldn’t nourish him and taking from her would only weaken her strength for the night to come. As much as he yearned to experience the connection with her, he refused to place her in jeopardy.
Regret whispered through him as he brushed the slim column of her neck with his lips.
“You’re already inside me, sweetheart,” he said, turning her head toward him and crushing her mouth with his. He delved between her lips, tangling his tongue around hers. Her taste flooded him even as he moved his fingers once more inside her pussy. He swallowed her groans and sweet mewls as he pushed her closer and closer toward orgasm. Her pussy clutched at the digits, spasmed around them.
With one final stroke, he curled his fingers into the small, smooth patch high in the back of her sex. Pressed it.
She came apart.
He jerked his head back, loving the pitch and intensity of her cries. With murmured words of praise, he rode her through the orgasm, giving her every bit of the pleasure she deserved. As her shudders eased, he withdrew from her sex, his jaw clenching at the soft suck her reluctant flesh gave. His cock raged with the need to experience what his fingers had, needing inside her. Demanding to be surrounded by her blistering, wet heat.
Finesse escaped him as he moved to the nightstand, wrenched it open and removed a condom. Disappointment lanced him as he rolled the protection down his cock. Part of him wanted to thrust inside her with nothing separating them and spill deep within her to kick-start their mating. But he couldn’t steal her right to choose—he refused to do that.
Shifting behind her, he shoved his pants below his hips. He gripped the base of his cock, angled the pulsing head toward the entrance to her pussy.
“Bastien.” He paused and, though his muscles quivered in objection, he waited. “Can I touch you?”
“Yes,” he rasped, his fingers digging into her waist. “Please. Touch me.” When she raised her arms behind her and encircled his head, he hid his face in her neck and shoulder. “Tighter,” he whispered. And she complied.
“Hold me like earlier.”
He understood her request. With a soft call to his magic, his wings unfurled, spread wide and enfolded her in a soft, gentle embrace.
“I can’t go slow, sweetheart,” he warned her, already placing his cock at the portal to her body. The wet fire of her core bathed the top of his cock head and he hissed. She shook her head and it was all the permission he required.
/> One thrust. That’s all it took to be balls-deep inside her pussy. His moan mated with hers. Both of them trembled so hard an earthquake could have shaken the eastern shore with furious aftershocks and they wouldn’t have noticed.
“You feel so fucking good,” he growled against her ear as he pulled back until only his cock head nestled in her narrow channel. “So fucking mine.” And buried himself in her sex once more.
Over and over he drove into her molten core. The damp smack of his stomach meeting her ass echoed in the room under his low murmurs of how tight she squeezed his shaft, how her pussy sucked him like a hot mouth, how he could fuck her for an eternity.
Pleasure sizzled up his spine, arrowed back down and burned in his cock. Her pussy rippled around him, milked him as, again, she neared release. Orgasm called to him with a siren’s song, urging him to free-fall into oblivion.
Bearing down on her hip with one hand, he dipped the other between her thighs and swept his thumb over her clitoris. The stiff, little button pulsed under his caress. He repeated the touch, harder.
“Come with me, sweetheart,” he urged. “Take me with you.”
Sinéad bucked against his hips, grinding down on his cock. His grip on her tightened, firmly keeping her in place as he fucked her with shorter, harder thrusts and rubbed her clit in firm circles. With a sharp scream, she exploded. Her sheath clamped down on his flesh, squeezing him and dragging him over the edge.
He dropped his head back on his shoulders and surrendered to the ecstasy detonating inside him, throwing him into an abyss he had no desire to return from.
