Kas thrust up once more, harder, then lifted Myrddin and turned over him at the same time, twisted inside him, all the angles changing, pressure still perfect. Then he was on his back, Kas staring down at him. Myrddin wrapped his legs around Kas’ waist and reached up to pull him down against his mouth. “Lover…lover, take me. Take me.”
A shiver moved through Kas’ body, a soft shudder that added layers of heat to Myrddin’s lust. Kas might have found words, somehow, somewhere, but he still didn’t seem intent on using them, not now, not here. The desire that lay over them, between them, was soft and heavy as the night…but it was silent, too.
Beneath the pressure, beneath the pleasure, Myrddin could feel within himself the waiting flood of green power that told him Kas was right.
He had tried to ignore it, repress it, let it unfold some other way than it had last time. As if, by pretending not to notice, he could keep the truth from being true. But the winter had come today, and though the night was cold, and he had slept, it had been badly.
No deep sleep had come for him, no hibernation…just like the previous year. Had he misunderstood the purpose, the need? Had Kas understood better than him? Not just once. Our rite…
Kas drove suddenly deep, wrapped a hand around Myrddin’s cock and started to stroke in counterpoint to the rhythm of his thrusts. Sensation startled a gasp past Myrddin’s lips, and thoughts deserted him. He moaned, tightened his legs around Kas’ back and urged him on, turned his head against the pillows and lifted his hips.
“Kas—Kas, just like— nnnng.”
He heard himself moaning, reached back with one hand and braced himself against the wall as Kas thrust harder, slammed into him until Myrddin’s groans turned into cries. He tried to say Kas’ name and couldn’t, tried to say please, to beg for the little bit more that he needed, wanted, needed, but Kas’ mouth was on his then, swallowing all his cries, his moans, and if there were words mixed into the sounds, made into sounds, neither of them cared.
All of them meant the same thing—yes and please and more. Myrddin’s pleasure came to its sharp, sudden peak without warning. He arched up against Kas’ body as he felt the heat of him spilling inside. “Kas…oh, Kas.”
“Merlin.”
Slowly, Kas sat back from between his thighs, pulled out of him and left Myrddin empty, grasping at him, trying to pull him closer. Warm laughter fell like rain onto his mouth, and soft kisses with it, but this time Kas made no move to take him again.
When his thoughts cleared, Myrddin pushed himself up, sat with his back against the wall and stared down the length of his bed at Kas—so close, so far. There was watchfulness in him like there had been in the first moments of their meeting. Myrddin scooted forward a little, reached out to touch his cheek, watched his pupils dilate further into darkness, his lips part—but Kas wasn’t looking at him.
“Lover? Something wrong?” It was only when he noticed the strange patterns of shadow on Kas’ face that he turned and looked behind him, saw what Kas was staring at. “Oh…hells.”
The window was covered with an overgrowth of green—vines and leaves, fresh, milky buds of flowers. It was proof he didn’t need, didn’t want, but it was there all the same. Too much of his father’s power, too much spring—and in the pounding of his heart, fleet as a hummingbird’s, the promise of more yet to come.
No winter sleep. Never again. Did Mother really do so much for me, just by being alive?
The sunrise cast ever greater shadows on the wall, and finally he sighed and shifted forward, slipped himself into the spaces of Kas’ waiting watchfulness and was pleased to find his embrace returned.
“So you came to find me…and you know so much about me…and you can save me from myself, if you want to. What is it you want, Kas?”
“To love you. To kill you.” His tongue flicked over Myrddin’s lips, just enough to tease. “Then to love you again.” His hands were suddenly warmer, his grip sharper, not enough to break the skin, but nearly. “Is that what you want, love?”
Myrddin chuckled, shook his head and pressed himself closer to Kas’ chest. “It doesn’t matter. It’s what I need—but I do want it. And you. I’m glad it was you I was sent to find, and not someone else.”
Kas blinked down at the top of Myrddin’s head, considering. There was a fuzz of pleasant warmth that was attached to that answer, to the feeling of being wanted more than he was needed. To want Death was an unusual desire, and he had never met it in quite this way before.
The easy immunity that the overwhelming spring wrought in his lover let Kas come closer to him than he had ever been to anyone living. He did not want to go away, be pushed away—did not want, again, to learn the taste of goodbye and the thousand echoes it left behind.
How would his lover, his love, ever learn him if they were always apart? How could he give what he did not know, in return for what he desperately wanted…without a chance? This is more than a chance.
“Kas? You…what are you thinking?”
“That I will stay with you now, because you want me. That I will have the chance I wanted to make you love me. To teach you what it means to be mine…and not only because you need me. Everyone, everything, needs me. It is to need me that I…it is because I am needed that I am. That is always…has been always…”
The rapid flutter of Myrddin’s breath gave Kas warning, but only a little. He wasn’t prepared for the soft fury of the kiss that took away the rest of the words he had been trying to put together. Eager, yes. That he knew, expected…but this. It was…
He pulled back, held Myrddin still with one hand at his shoulder and touched his mouth with the fingers of the other hand. “What is this? What is this? I took so many words, but this one, not this one. Merlin, this one…”
He stroked the soft lips with his thumb, watched them move down his thumb to his palm, kissing, up the length of his fingers…the same thing. The same thing. “The word. Please, love. I need…that word.”
Myrddin stopped and looked up at him. “But you know kiss, Kas.”
“It is not the kiss I do not know, but how you kissed me.”
“How I…oh, Kas.” The sound of Kas’ name had the same feeling in it as the kiss had, and Myrddin leaned up and pressed his lips against Kas’ again, then pulled away too fast, started talking too fast.
“You don’t know, how could you know? I don’t—Kas, oh, Kas. It’s…it’s because…it’s not fair. What you’ve been given. Not enough. And…and you want me? You think that I am enough? I…it’s caring, Kas. It’s tenderness, and…and I…” But he stopped, shaking his head, out of words or willingness, Kas was not sure which.
“Tenderness…” He paused, because that was the word that he had been looking for, and because the rest was more, and made up his mind. “I am going to stay with you, love. Because you want me—until you need me, and after.” The words gained him a smile.
“Forever, then?”
“That is one of the words that means nothing.”
“Like maybe? But it means something to me—”
“It means teasing to you.” This time he got a full, wide grin in answer, a kiss that held nothing worrisome, nothing heavier than another dose of that same teasing.
Kas liked tenderness better. “You still do not understand. Is that because it is not yet time enough? Why do I know you and you cannot know me?” He was frustrated, bent and kissed the humor away from the curve of Myrddin’s mouth.
“Ever after, if you call for me, I will come. I will remember, I will hear even the sound of your faintest whisper, now that I am neither immune nor invulnerable to longing. All those waiting shades of its presence—certainty, your maybe, and silence.
“My hawk, my love, now when you fly from me I will follow you. If you thought you could escape…but you are not that foolish, are you? You knew, you knew what I was the moment you found me. You knew. You do not get to pretend, to change your mind. Do not toy with me, do not play the games you know—do not misunderstand.”
“Kas…”
“You poisoned your fruit, your strawberry-raspberry-apple kisses, poisoned them with love and planted that feeling like a seed in me. Every kiss, and every word— Do you at least know that the love that grew promises only destruction?”
“Yes. But I didn’t mean to do it! I wasn’t trying to make you love me.”
“Do you mean it now?”
A shudder passed through Myrddin’s body, and he looked up with eyes hazed by something smoky, something both more and less than lust. “Kas. You say that like now, right now, I’m making you love me—” He licked his lips, and Kas resisted the urge to do it for him. “You can’t mean that. I’m just—I’m not even doing anything.”
“You are.”
“I’m not—”
“No. Why is it that you never understand? Even now, when I found so many words for you, just for you… You are. Your being, that you exist…that is enough.”
“I—oh. Kas…” He looked away. “I have…I don’t know what to say.” The tiniest flip of a laugh slipped out of his throat. “That doesn’t ever happen, you know.”
Kas turned Myrddin’s face back toward him with one hand, but he kissed the stillness of Myrddin’s mouth once more, his own tenderness, and felt the soft lips go cold at his touch. “You may choose not to love me, not to want me, but I will never desert you, never leave you behind. Is there something that you need to say?”
“There should be. Kas, there should be. Must be—but I don’t know what it is.”
“You have time to decide. To find out. I am not going anywhere.”
He watched the shadows move over Myrddin’s face as he turned and peered out of the narrow spaces between the leaves that had grown up to cover his window. “Well, there’s time yet. Before our rite.” A smile flickered across his mouth, and Kas leaned toward him, kissed the curve of that smile as it grew.
“Our rite.”
“Do you think the villagers would stand witness?”
“Witness…”
“Like your people, your shadows did before. The first time. Or do they follow you everywhere?”
Kas stared at him. “My…people. I do not have people, only you.”
“Well…there was something, someone. Near us and watching. And a rite has to be witnessed, or it’s not anything.” Kas felt him shrug, slender shoulders moving under his hands. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll ask later—there’s time. Not much, but time. Until then, what do you want to do? And what about after?”
Kas stroked the smooth brown skin of Myrddin’s shoulders, his back, his thighs. He said nothing, let the soft touches speak for him, fingertips moving just this side of sensual, exploring the way patterns of coolness followed his hands. Myrddin made a soft sound that was not a moan, but not quite anything else, either.
“Kas, you can’t…we can’t…live in my bed.” He laughed, then shivered and laughed again. “No matter how good it feels when you touch me.”
“No?”
“No. Don’t you have work to do, responsibilities? I saw you, the night we were together, taking the shadows, opening the way.”
“I do not open. I am.”
“You…oh. I wonder—”
“You should not. Do you not remember your own words, your own thoughts, the way you cautioned yourself? Do you not remember that to come too close to death is dangerous? Even for you.”
Myrddin lay back, and Kas went down with him, over him, a hawk caged in his arms, in his shadow. “Kas, you say that but you want me to love you. You want me close to you. You want me this close, and closer—and closer still. How can you still say…?”
“The truth? Because it is true. How is it that you can say something else?”
Myrddin laughed but softly, the warmth of him shaking a little against Kas’ body. “I don’t know. It’s just who I am. Haven’t you ever seen the spring? It lies before it arrives, and when it does…and even when it’s dying.”
He lifted his head from the pillows enough to kiss Kas again and again, filtering his words through softness and promises Kas was not sure he knew that he was making. “Yes, even when it’s dying, so even to you—even to you I’m only what I am. Only what I am, Kas, but—and you think I’m enough, you love me, you want more of that, more of me forever? Don’t you know that you can’t say never has meaning and not forever, don’t you know you can’t say…”
Kas moved out of reach of Myrddin’s mouth, kissed his throat, his collarbone, ran his fingers down Myrddin’s sides until he could grasp his thighs and part them, make room for himself between them. It did not stop the words, the river of them flowing out of Myrddin’s mouth—the water of life, though all that he said was death.
“You can’t say never leave and not know that means forever, Kas.”
“Lover, my love.”
“You can’t, you know that, you can’t—”
“Merlin.”
“Are you sure that you’re death and not agony—not ecstasy? You make them the same, did you know that? You make them the same, are you sure that… But no, that’s all it means. That’s all it can ever mean.”
Kas shook his head, entered Myrddin’s body with one slow, perfect motion and watched his eyes open wider, wider, a swift, sudden flush rising across his cheeks, spreading across his throat and down onto his chest.
“Kas.” Myrddin sucked in air suddenly, sharply, and Kas took that opportunity to kiss him breathless, press him back further against the bed and keep him there.
“Have you still not learned? Sounds, love. Sounds. Not words.”
Also available from Pride Publishing:
Dark Side of the Sun
Belinda Burke
Excerpt
Chapter One
This is…one of those dreams.
The Red King scowled in his sleep.
A Samhain dream.
Most often, Macsen’s sleep brought him nightmares. He had visions of destruction, of mortals in the woods of the hidden kingdoms, moon and firelight shining on their weapons. He saw flames consuming his palace, or his throne overturned, its frost and darkness both dispelled.
Only on Samhain did Macsen have this dream, in which he was someone other than himself.
He didn’t like it. He didn’t like not being in control of himself, and while he dreamed Macsen remembered things that he knew would not come back to his memory in waking life.
Other visions, other days…the face of a child, a golden power, and… But it was lost to him then, Macsen’s own thoughts caught up in the rush of the images that had hold of him.
Gold grew alive in his hands through some inner power. He looked down, saw a stranger’s face reflected in the gilded steel, had a thought that was his own, disassociated with whoever he was in the dream.
Beautiful, he’s beautiful. Who are you, stranger?
One hand reached up and pushed back blond hair, but it fell forward again over blue eyes dark as summer twilight.
“My lord—”
Macsen’s awareness recoiled.
“—wake up!”
The images wavered like a reflection on a pool.
“Wake up, my lord!”
The vision vanished into darkness. Macsen opened his eyes and tensed his fingers in the fur drawn up over his body. He blinked at the smooth, familiar features of the face leaning over him, then let his hands relax and closed his eyes to the presence of the female bent over his bed. The smile on her face was obscenely cheerful, and all he wanted was to go back to sleep.
For the first time he could remember, Macsen wanted to go back to one of his Samhain dreams. Despite the haze over the recollection, the thought of that male stuck with him, the shade of those blue eyes.
Was he human or sidhe? Mortal or immortal? Real…or not? As he considered it, Macsen thought that those blues eyes were set in a face he had seen before. A face he knew, and not from someone he’d drunk. Sidhe, then. But who?
A name hovered at the edge of his consciousness.
“My lord—”
The voice cut the thread on which Macsen had been reeling the name into his awareness, and frustration boiled in him.
“Enough, Talaith! I’m awake, go find someone else to torture.”
Despite his tone, Talaith’s smile didn’t change. She obeyed, but without hurrying. Before she left Talaith opened the great window in the western wall to let in the moonlight and the night.
The sounds of his winter kingdom’s dances and the horns of the waiting Hunt came faint but clear to Macsen’s ears. He felt a tingle on his skin, a cold wind that came through the open window with the scents of pine and snow.
The Red King closed his eyes again and tried to bring back the memory of his fading dream, but as had happened every year before, the details were gone. Macsen remembered only that he had not been himself. That he had seen blue eyes in a beautiful face.
He scowled then, irritated he couldn’t remember whose face it was, and threw off the covers. The Red King couldn’t ignore his duty, even if he wanted to. The moon was at its half in the sky outside, and tonight was a night of power. His presence was required for the taking of the sacrifice.
But he had seen those blue eyes before, had dreamed of being someone who was not himself before, he knew at least that much. Every year on Samhain night—for how many years now? More than ten? More than twenty?
Macsen wondered if he would ever know what it meant, then shrugged and grinned with all his teeth showing.
Probably. One day.
His was a world in which everything happened for a reason.
Macsen lifted himself out of bed then and crossed to stand naked before the great window that looked out across his kingdom. He tried to push his dream out of his thoughts. It was Samhain, and the night was just begun. He was looking forward to the sacrifice, and wondered which of his pets Talaith had chosen.
Deathless Page 7
