The Arrows of the Heart

by Jeffe Kennedy

  “It’s a long story,” I said, slowly and firmly, as I’d spoken to him then, “and what’s important is that I’m all right. And so are you. We are alive and whole and together. I know being imprisoned is the worst thing that could happen to you, but you’re free now.”

  He clapped his teeth together with a click, reminding me of the gríobhth’s clacking beak, and his jaw bulged with tension. “It’s not what happened to me, it’s what I did to you. Don’t play stupid,” he grated out.

  “Don’t call me stupid,” I replied, my own ire rising. “What are you talking about?”

  “I raped you, Karyn. Don’t try to deny it. I see my marks all over you—scratches and bites—I mauled you like an animal. There’s blood all over the furs. I was brutal to you, I forced you, which is criminally wrong in any circumstance, but you were a virgin. You were saving yourself for your husband. That makes it so much worse.” He scrubbed his hands over his face, his body sagging as he leaned back against the counter.

  If he hadn’t looked so broken by guilt, I might’ve held on to my anger—and the hurt that he, even now, didn’t see a future for us. I’d known that, but somehow I kept forgetting to inure myself to that particular truth.

  I extended a leg, showing the long, scabbed over slice, and held out my hands, covered with more cuts, large and small. “I think most of the blood is from these,” I explained. “I really doubt I shed much virgin blood.”

  He dropped his hands, his face a picture of bewilderment. “You weren’t a virgin anymore.” His expression darkened, fingers curling into fists again. “Did they—”

  “No,” I told him firmly, taking his wrists in my hands, holding him steady. “I was a virgin last night—or earlier this morning, more likely—but the whole virgin blood thing is mostly a myth. I’m surprised you don’t know that.”

  He glared at me balefully. “What do I know about virgins?”

  “Well, it’s true, especially for grown women who are physically active.” I was rattling on, but talking seemed to make him focus on thought, not emotional reaction. “With younger brides, especially those girls barely into adolescence, then yes, there’s a lot more blood. Which makes sense since they’re much smaller than their adult lovers.” Sometimes the women got to telling those stories, topping each other with a tale more gruesome than the last.

  “That’s horrifying,” he whispered. “How can you speak so matter-of-factly of such a terrible practice?”

  “That’s the way of—” I caught myself lifting my shoulder in that fatalistic shrug and reconsidered. “No, you’re right. It’s a terrible practice. Dasnaria can be a cold and cruel place, especially to its women.”

  He regarded me for a long moment, then grimaced, a bare twitch of his sensual mouth, full of self-loathing. “As I was to you.”

  I was shaking my head before he finished. “No, I gave myself to you willingly, with all the desire and delight I’d hoped for. More, truly. Last night was incredible for me, so don’t you diminish the sweetness of that memory by coloring it as rape.”

  “I don’t really remember it,” he admitted. “I don’t remember much at all—just fragments. How long was I in gríobhth form?”

  “I’m not entirely certain. I think the High Priestess shifted you out of it at least once, but overall… two days, maybe three.”

  “Too long,” he said, more reflectively than to me. “No wonder nothing makes sense.”

  “It will. You’re already much more…” human, I decided not to say. “You’re more yourself. You’re talking again.”

  “I wasn’t able to talk?” He asked it carefully, but he’d paled.

  Easy stepping needed here. “We didn’t have a lot of time for conversation.”

  “Don’t make excuses for me,” he snapped.

  “I’m not. You were disoriented. You mostly growled and snarled. But you also flew us out of there and brought me to safety. To this safe place, for which I’m so grateful. Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me,” he hissed. He seemed to realize I held his wrists still, and tugged them away in a sharp twist. He stared at his hands as if he didn’t recognize them. Took a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m so sorry I hurt you, gréine. Even if you say you were willing, I wanted so much more for your first time.”

  “It was perfect,” I insisted. “I’m only sorry you don’t remember it.”

  His gaze returned to my face, and he grimaced ruefully. “I’m glad I don’t.”

  Another strike to my tattered heart. “I know you’d decided you didn’t want me, and I understand that last night you weren’t yourself, but I don’t regret it. I am glad, so thankful it was you.” My voice choked up, and I fought back the tears, lowering my face so he couldn’t see. The last thing he needed was a weepy, clinging female thinking she had a right to his bed because he’d dallied with her.

  “Wait.” At last he touched me, placing gentle hands on my arms. “Why do you say that? I wanted you from the first moment I saw you. I never made a secret of it.”

  “On the beach,” I said, still looking down. I’d fought the High Priestess, I should be able to control myself enough not to sniffle. “When I offered you my virginity, you said it…” I had to take a deep breath. “It wasn’t a good idea.” That last came out weakly. How I hated that phrase now.

  “Oh, my gréine.” He rubbed his hands on my arms, then gently pushed back my hair. “Don’t weep.”

  “I’m not,” I replied defiantly. How ridiculous that I’d cry over this, after all we’d been through.

  “I said that because I know—knew—how important your virginity was to you, to your future. And I’d realized… I’m not good enough for you. I can never be the man to give you the life you want.”

  “Wanted,” I corrected miserably.

  “What was that? Please look at me, Karyn.”

  I lifted my face, my vision watery. “I only thought I wanted those things. You were right all along. I was a silly girl drowning in the wreckage of my former life, clinging to those rules of honor as if they’d keep me afloat. But none of that was real. My only regret is that I didn’t say yes to you long ago.”

  He let go of me to rake his hair back, scrubbing his scalp in frustration. “I explained this to you—I can’t be the man you want.”

  “Then don’t,” I replied, a bit sharply. “If right now is all I can have, then I want to have it. I want to have you while I can.” Deliberately I laid my hands on his chest, scraping lightly with my nails. He hissed, eyes deepening in color, his cock thickening.

  “Karyn…” He said my name on a moan. “Don’t do this.”

  I paused, studying his face. “You don’t want to?”

  He laughed, raggedly, gesturing to his rising erection, but holding his hands out and away from me again. “Obviously I desire you… but I don’t want to hurt you again.”

  “You didn’t hurt me before,” I replied, laying my lips on his skin and tasting him. Salt and sweet, a hint of musk.

  He groaned, his body thrumming under my hands and mouth. “I was rough.”

  I looked up at him through my lashes. “I liked it.”

  His face sharpened, getting that predatory glint in his eyes, and I shivered with arousal, my sex flooding with welcoming fluids, my nipples peaking hard. I moved closer and rubbed them against him, loving the way he shuddered at the touch. “I warned you about this,” he ground out.

  Oh, yes—and by doing so, he’d handed me the exact weapon to use against him. “I’m sorry, my lord,” I said meekly, casting my gaze down. “I only want to please you.”

  He growled, low and deep, something I felt more than heard. I slid down his body to my knees, caressing him with mouth and hands as I went, and his growl became a sound of despair. He fisted his hands beside his straining thighs.

  I took him into my mouth, and he convulsed. “Moranu save me!” he snarled.

  Looking up at him through my lashes, I let his cock slide slowly from my mouth, then delicately circle
d the tip with my tongue, teasing him. He gazed down at me, threading his fingers into my hair, touch gentle, eyes hot with demanding lust. “I think She already saved us,” I murmured, “and this is how we celebrate.”

  “Is that so?” he replied silkily, his tone the only warning I got. Seizing me, he picked me up easily with his shapeshifter strength and deposited me on the counter. He’d been cutting up vegetables and meat, I saw, making us a meal.

  I barely had a moment to note that—and be warmed by this considerate man I’d found—before his mouth took mine. Wrapping his hands in my hair, he tugged my head back, making me arch, and kissing me in that voracious way of his. His hair fell around me like a veil of black silk, sliding against my bare skin teasingly. I squirmed, panting, and he pushed between my spread thighs, lightly caressing my open sex with the shaft of his upthrust cock. I held onto his shoulders and wrapped my legs around his lean waist, trying to pull him closer, desperate to have him inside me again, but he held himself just far enough away that I couldn’t quite get the friction I craved.

  “Oh, no, gréine,” he muttered in my mouth. “I’m going to take my time with you, make this something we’ll both remember. Do you know what happens when you tease a predator?”

  My mouth had gone dry, the rest of me drenched with need. “No,” I managed to say.

  He smiled. Slow, sensual, and full of wicked mischief. My heart tumbled with joy to see it, to see the trickster emerge in him again.

  “My sweet, innocent almost-virgin,” he said, his voice caressing, full of cruel promise. “Tease a predator, get the claws.”

  ~ 25 ~

  He laughed softly at whatever he saw in my face, and broke free of my clasping legs with effortless strength. With one hand, he lifted my thigh so my foot rested on the counter, and he anchored it there, holding me open with a firm clasp on my ankle, then leaned his hip against my other knee, pinning it in place. The other hand moved in my hair, gathering it, then winding with steady pressure, making me arch more, leaving my throat and body open and vulnerable.

  Pausing, holding me at his mercy, he looked into my face. “Are you sure you want this?”

  I licked my lips, drawing his hungry gaze there. “More than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life.”

  “So be it then. I’m taking my time with you. I’ve fantasized about this and by Moranu, I’m going to remember every moment.” His mouth found my throat and I moaned, shuddering at the hot clasp of his lips, the sensuous stroke of his tongue tracing the tender skin, finding out the most sensitive spots—where he bit me lightly.

  “Zyr,” I gasped, unable to hold still, digging my nails into his muscular shoulders. “Please…”

  “Please torment you more?” He inquired in that falsely polite way of his. “I do believe I will, my delicious Dasnarian princess. I think I might just devour you.” His teeth closed over the juncture of my neck and shoulder and I cried out, unable to assimilate the extraordinary sensation. “So hot,” he murmured, easing off and licking the throbbing spot. “So sweet.”

  His mouth trailed down the midline of my chest, where my breasts heaved with my frantic panting. Taking his time, he meticulously circled each breast with his tongue, carefully avoiding my nipples. I let go of his shoulders, threading my fingers into his silky hair, and clasping his skull, trying to pull his mouth to my taut nipple. To no avail. I couldn’t move him—and he only chuckled at my efforts. “So impatient,” he purred, and I felt the vibration through his tongue. “When I’ve barely even started on you.”

  He returned to his careful exploration of my breasts, finding that stroking the tender undersides drove me wild. I thrashed so much that he let go of my ankle and hair, stopping to kiss me fiercely. I clung to him, frantically rubbing against him as he held me. When he came up for air, he smiled, though his gaze remained ruthlessly predatory, and he kissed me on the nose.

  “Naughty,” he said, and unwound my arms from around his neck, taking my wrists in a firm grip, and moving them behind my back, standing between my spread knees so I couldn’t close them. He grasped both my wrists in one hand, holding them easily against the small of my back, pushing them in to make me arch again, lifting my breasts. “Remember about the claws?” he asked softly.

  I shuddered, unable to tear my gaze away, as he held up his free hand for me to see, his long fingers extending into silvery sharp claws. He flexed them, watching my face. “Do you trust me?”

  I did. He’d caught me when I fell. He always kept his promises. “Yes.”

  He rewarded me with a kiss, sweet and lingering. “Watch.” Helplessly, I did, as he lowered his hand to my vulnerable breast, lightly tracing the shivering skin with his claws. A moan tore out of me, guttural, animal, and his lips tugged into a smile. He traced slow circles on my goose-pimpled skin, my nipple crimson and tight. I couldn’t look away, nor would he let me move.

  He left a faint red line behind, perfectly concentric despite my shivering response, a demonstration of his control. The light scratch built on itself, so that what started as a tickle intensified into an itch, then began to sting, the sparks of sensation making my breast seem to swell, the skin growing unbearably tight. I kept holding my breath, until I couldn’t stand it anymore, sobbing it out and desperately drawing in air.

  Still he tormented me, drawing closer and closer to the tightly pebbled areola.

  When he flicked my nipple with his claw, I screamed, convulsing into orgasm, my sex opening and closing on nothing.

  He bent over me as I undulated, taking my nipple and part of my swollen breast in his mouth, flicking his tongue against the turgid, sensitized flesh. I sobbed with the excruciating pleasure, and he licked the sting away, soothing me. Gradually I calmed. Until he nipped my nipple, making me gasp and squeal. Smiling at me with delight, he kissed me, still not letting me go.

  “That was fun,” he purred against my lips, the sweet rumble of it shredding me. “Let’s do the other side.”

  I moaned in despair. “Zyr, please,” I begged him.

  He gave me a politely attentive look, retracting his claws and transferring his grip on my wrists, then lifting his other hand and slowly extending claws from it. I watched with fascinated trepidation and anticipation. “Please what, my helpless prey?”

  “I can’t take any more,” I said, groaning as he pressed my wrists into the small of my back, my breast rising.

  “Am I hurting you?” he asked with smooth concern that didn’t fool me for a moment.

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “You know you aren’t. It’s just too much.”

  “Now there you’re wrong. It’s not nearly enough.” He caressed my cheek with the claw, a light scratch that shivered straight to my sex. “Remember—you wanted this.”

  “I want you to just fuck me already,” I snarled, struggling against his implacable grip.

  “Oh, I will,” he promised with dark menace. “I will fuck you senseless once you’re properly tenderized. Now be a good tidbit, hold still, and watch.”

  I sagged with despair—not that it made any difference, as he held me exactly as he wanted me no matter what I did. He began his slow tracing on the other breast, attentively following the same meticulous pattern. I’d thought maybe I could stand it better, knowing what was coming, but if anything, the anticipation made it worse.

  I began to unravel, coming apart and losing all control. Whimpering, pleading, mewling, I writhed under his merciless teasing. He never stopped in his slow trail, watching my skin redden from his attentions, then devouring me with his wild blue gaze. Closer and closer he came to my trembling nipple. I froze, straining, waiting for that final bright caress that would undo me.

  He paused. “Look at me.”

  I dragged my eyes up to his face. He smiled, wicked, and slowly licked his lips.

  The tip of his claw flicked my nipple and I fell apart entirely, screaming my release and shuddering capitulation.

  Again he took most of my breast into his mouth, but also finally let
go of my wrists, gathering me close as he licked and laved the throbbing, tingling skin. I clung to him, wrapping my hands in his long hair and holding on, gulping and crying with the keenness of the collapse.

  He eased me into a semblance of calm, then pressed my hips forward, to the very edge of the counter, trailing kisses up my body until our mouths met. This kiss poured into me. Instead of feeding on me, he filled me with a sweet tenderness, like a cool draught of water.

  When he lifted his head, he rained kisses on my face—and lifted both of my thighs so my feet settled once again on the counter. I held on to his shoulders, watching him, uncertain what he planned next.

  “The look on your face,” he said with a smile. His fingers brushed down my inner thighs, making me tremble violently in reaction. “I’d planned to show you two can play your game, to feed on your sweet sex until you were a quivering mass of need.”

  “I’m already there,” I whispered, half-hoping, half-dreading that he’d do it.

  “So am I,” he answered. “And I don’t think I can wait for you any longer.”

  “Oh, thank Moranu,” I breathed.

  He laughed softly, and slipped soft fingertips through my slick folds.

  My eyes rolled back in my head, and I lost all breath.

  “My darling gréine,” Zyr murmured, stroking me still as he positioned himself. “Open your eyes and look at me.”

  Blearily, I did, our gazes locked as he slowly entered me. He groaned low and long, taking his time still, his face contorting with the effort. I clasped him with my internal muscles, drawing him in, and he shuddered, gripping my thighs, and finally seated himself deeply within me. Deeper than I’d known I could feel. He watched my face intently, a curious half smile on his lips. Adjusting his hold on me, he slid his hands behind my back, wedging his upper arms against my knees, opening me even wider… and pressed me onto him.

  The deep penetration fogged my mind, robbing me of what little reserve I’d retained, and I began to climax in slow rolling unstoppable waves. He rocked inside me, not thrusting in and out, but working us together in a building harmony that intensified unbearably with each flex of his hips and hands. I couldn’t seem to find any purchase, each fresh wave of orgasm stronger than the last, the boundaries of myself blurring, our slick skin sliding together, his hair in my mouth and wound around my fingers. How I loved him.