A Kiss of Magic: A Kiss of Magic Book One (16 page)

“Believe me, there was plenty of times when I did not feel as confident as I would like. There still is.”

She gave him a doubtful expression.

“But now is not one of those times,” he added.

She laughed. “I am very glad to hear that. One of us should know what we’re doing.”

That made him hesitate. “I had not thought to ask…as beautiful as you are I thought…have you been with a lover before?”

She nodded. “One.”

“One?” he echoed, seeming to be incredulous. “Either men are blind or you are very discerning.”

“A combination of the two I suppose.”

“Very well then. We shall broaden your experience. For I am not blind and choosing me shows you have excellent taste.”

She laughed out in a bright burst and it made Dendri smile. She was incredibly beautiful when she laughed. Hell, she was beautiful no matter what she did. She was especially gorgeous in his bed. He determined to keep her there as long as possible.

“Now raise your knees and part your thighs,” he said roughly.

She blushed, but did exactly as he instructed. His gaze tripped down over her rosy fresh skin and down to the thatch of curls between her thighs. Her pubic hair was very sparse, allowing him a full view of the flushed pink folds of her labia.

“Good God,” he rasped. “I’ve done nothing to deserve you.”

The compliment made her flush with pleasure. The coloring only deepened when he reached out and stroked her wet flesh with searching fingertips.

“So wet. So ready,” he murmured. His searching fingers found her clitoris and stroked her in a deep circular touch. It lit every one of Yasra’s nerves on fire. She moaned softly, her fingertips reaching down to touch the back of his playful hand. As she stroked the soft hairs there, it was almost as though she were touching herself. He seemed to know her needs just as readily as she would have, knew just the right way to touch her.

“Dendri,” she whispered.

His eyes darted up to hers.

“Say it again,” he demanded of her.

“Say…?”

“My name. Say it again. I want to hear it on your lips as I give you pleasure. I want to be sure you know exactly who it is that touches you.”

“You have doubts?” she asked him.

“No.” He shook his head. “But I want to hear it all the same.”

“Yes, Dendri. Of course Dendri. Anything for you,” she said, “Dendri.”

Dendri growled with pleasure and was suddenly over her, his hips driving up between her legs, the weight of his torso pressing into her. He drew a knee up against her backside and the back of her thigh, opening her up to the feel of his hot hard flesh driving through the flesh of her core.

“God! How you feel!” he groaned savagely. “I wanted to do this slowly…to take my time with you…but you make it impossible for me to keep my head on straight. Right now all I can think about is diving into you…feeling your wet heat surrounding me.”

“There’s plenty of time for everything,” she said softly against his lips before he kissed the breath straight out of her. “What we miss the first time we can get back to later.”

“True,” he said, his breath hot against her lips as he thrust his hips forward again. He didn’t penetrate her, merely stroked against her, lighting every nerve like a match to tinder.

Yasra moaned as he did it again…and again…and again. Her body ached with emptiness. Yearned to be filled. She gripped at his back, begging him with her body to take her. Shifting her hips in the hopes of accepting him. Just when she thought he was going to thrust deep, he pulled back, lowering his mouth again to her breast. He drew and tugged on her nipple until she was wild with craving.

“Please,” she rasped, her nails digging into the flesh of his shoulders. “Please!”

“What do you please, sweetheart? What can I give you?”

“You. I want you. Please Dendri!”

He growled with need and desperation. He covered her mouth with his and kissed her deeply. As he did, he notched himself against the entrance of her body. Then, with a single rending thrust, he sank deeply into her.

They both exclaimed in pleasure. Finally. Finally, they were joined. It felt as though it had taken forever. Dendri was nearly blinded by the pleasure of having her surround him. He had heard there was nothing like the mating of a Gestalt couple, no words to describe the experience. They had been right. Desire and need clawed through him, blinded him to everything but her. He withdrew to the very brink of leaving her, and just before she could decry the loss of him, he thrust hard forward, sinking deep again. He did this again. And again. Then he kept himself rooted deep inside of her, his movements shorter, unable to leave her. He looked down into her startling blue eyes, saw the pleasure she was lost in and he began to move harder within her. Deeper. He leaned all of his weight on one arm, freeing his hand to touch her at the crest of her cleft. Then just a little lower.

Ah. There was the spot. He could see it in the slight widening of her eyes. Her pupils dilated with pleasure and she began to cry out in soft pants of need. He wanted her to come. Right then. As he was buried deep inside of her. He stroked her inside and outside until her nails were scoring his flesh and his name was breaking over her lips. She detonated with release, the muscles of her body clamping down around him, milking him in desperate drawing pleasure.

“Oh God! Yasra!” He changed his rhythm into her. Pounding out a sudden staccato burst of need. Harder and harder, fighting the tide of her clutching body. Then it was on him like a whirlwind, endless pumping pleasure. A release like nothing he’d ever felt before. As he emptied himself into her she tightened her legs around his. She held him to her in every way she possibly could.

He collapsed atop her, gasping for breath, shaking with the aftermath of his orgasm. She was stroking his back…his hair…her hands soft along his sensitized skin. He levered his weight up onto his elbows, but their chests remained pressed together, their legs remained entwined. He was still inside her and he could feel the twitching of her body and his own.

Yasra could hardly catch her breath. She had never known such blinding pleasure was possible. She had certainly never felt anything like it before. All her experiences before this paled ridiculously in comparison. Dendri was a magnificent lover…and they had barely scratched the surface she knew. She knew that once he had taken the sharp edge off his hunger for her that he would next take his time.

She had never looked forward to anything more.

“That won’t happen again,” he said in a low growl.

Unclear of his meaning she raised a brow and looked at him.

“It won’t? Didn’t you like it?” She couldn’t help the touch of nervousness that entered her tone.

“Of course I liked it! Yasra, I only meant…I would like to exhibit a bit more control next time.”

“Oh.” She smiled at him. “I don’t mind you losing control.”

“I can’t help but feel I’ve skipped a few steps,” he said with consternation.

“We’ll get around to it,” she said with serene assurance.

He laughed. “I suppose we will. Just as long as you don’t plan on going anywhere.”

A light frown touched her lips. “I can’t go anywhere else.”

That made him hesitate.

“Yasra, you’re not required to…I mean…I hope you don’t think I’ve bullied you into this.”

She regarded him with cool blue eyes. “You have bullied me into this. You’ve swept in and taken control and made demands of me that I never thought I was capable of. But,” she added when his countenance turned troubled, “I’m all right with that. I like the way you push me…the way you’ve taken control of me. I may not always like it, but right now, as I adjust to all of this, it’s exactly what I need.”

Dendri stroked a hand up her entire flank, from hip to armpit. “You just let me know when I’m pushing too hard or too far. I don’t want you to feel as though you haven’t got a say in your life.”

“All right. I will.” She pressed a kiss to his lips. “Meanwhile…want to bully me some more?”

He chuckled. “Give a man a minute to recover,” he said teasingly.

“One. Two. Three…” She kissed him deeply. “Four. Five.” She stroked him down his back and onto his buttock. “Six. Seven. Eight.” Her fingertips flirted with the crease between his cheeks. “Nine. Ten. Eleven.” She tightened her muscles around him.

He began to grow hard inside of her. She wriggled with pleasure.

“Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen,” he said as he kissed her cheek, chin and throat.

“Fifteen. Sixteen…”

Chapter Twelve

Yasra woke suddenly, a gasp of breath drawing inward. Sun was streaming into the room and she was lying naked and alone in Dendri’s bed. She pushed her tousled hair out of her face and looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was mid-afternoon. They had spent the noon hours making love again and then, exhausted, she had fallen asleep. She hadn’t realized just how keyed up she’d been these past few days until Dendri had managed to finally relax her. She had then promptly fallen asleep on him.

She wondered if he had slept to, or if he had immediately abandoned her there. She frowned a little at the thought. She wasn’t sure she liked waking up alone without him.

Get dressed and come to me, sweetheart.

The thought in Dendri’s voice entered her head and she drew in a soft breath. It was a little unnerving to have him in her head like that. It reminded her that, should he desire it, all of her private thoughts could be his.

And yet…she wanted to try the connection out.

I’m coming
, she thought back to him.

No. You already came. Several times in fact.

She laughed at that. He really could be very arrogant sometimes. She shouldn’t encourage him. But still she thought:

I’m not the only one.

She leapt out of the bed and scurried about gathering her clothes. It was chilly out of the bedclothes, the fire having not been made up since it was the middle of the day. No one would have expected them to be in the room in the middle of the day.

She hopped into her pants and then her boots and quickly combing her fingers through her hair she hurried out of Dendri’s bedroom. She twisted her hair into a quick plait to hide its mussed up state and searched for Dendri in the main rooms.

I’m in the front parlor.

She changed direction and headed for the front parlor. She walked in the door and saw Dendri standing there, his lean, graceful body looking strong and delicious. She smiled at him and moved forward, but she stopped just as suddenly when she realized there were two men in the room she didn’t know.

The first was darker even than Dendri. His hair as black as a raven’s wing and his eyes so dark brown it was almost impossible to tell the pupil from the iris. He was shorter than Dendri, but not by much, and was too severe in his looks to be considered truly handsome. Not that he was ugly. He was just…intimidating.

The other man was about Dendri’s height and build, with sandy blond hair and an indolent smile. His light blue eyes danced with amusement, as he looked her over just as thoroughly as she was looking at him. More so in fact. There was almost something predatory in his look.

“Yasra, this is Jal Menro,” Dendri said, pointing to the darker man. “And this is Ky Freed. They are the rogue hunters I was telling you about.”

“Oh. Hello,” she said, holding out her hand to them. Jal shook her hand, but Ky picked her fingers up to his lips and brushed a kiss on them.

“Lovely to meet you, Yasra,” he said.

Yasra blushed to the roots of her hair as he stroked warm fingers down her wrist.

“Enough of that, Ky,” Dendri said, reaching to snatch her hand out of his and draw her closer to his side.

“Jealous Dendri?” Ky said with amusement.

“Just protecting her from your avaricious charms,” Dendri said coolly.

“Come now. I won’t bite. I’ll only nibble a little.”

“Ky!” Dendri snapped.

Ky chuckled and held up his hands. “I get it. No touching. But that doesn’t mean I can’t flirt with a pretty girl if I want to.”

“And you always want to,” Dendri said dryly. “Pay him no mind Yasra. He’ll chase any woman he sets eyes on.”

“Even the ugly ones,” Ky said with a smile to charm a snake.

“Somehow I feel suddenly less pretty,” Yasra quipped.

“Not at all. The pretty ones get my full force of attention. However, Dendri has clearly marked you off limits, so I will be on my best—or nearly best—behavior.”

“If we’re done with this nonsense, can we get back to the matter at hand?” Jal said with a frown.

“Yes. Of course. I wanted Yasra to meet you so she can feel confident in your abilities to help me if we go after Delongo.”

“What houses are you from?” Yasra asked.

“I am from house Torenic. Level 16,” Jal said. With a flick of his wrist he made a fireball appear in his hands. He rolled it between his palms for a moment, then with a snap made it disappear. “I have much more intense tricks than that,” he said, “and I’ll be happy to show them to you. But I’m not a trick pony doing things for applause. I mean serious business. Delongo is in need of eradication. I’ve been looking forward to an opportunity like this.”

“I am house Vendii,” Ky said. He raised his hands and a sudden clap of powerful thunder shook the house. “18
th
level.”

“You can call and direct lightning,” Yasra said. “You can freeze, cause a blinding snowstorm. Make it hail. Yes, I’m very familiar with Vendii majji. My parents are Vendii.”

“Really? Who are they?”

“Illa and Orto Desro,” she said.

There was a flicker of something in his eyes, but he smiled to cover it. “Ah. I know of them.”

“Are you friends with them? I never met you before this,” Yasra said. “I would have remembered.”

“I hope that means I make a good impression,” he said with a chuckle. “No. I’m not friends with them. They are…not my type of majji.”

“What type of majji are they?” she asked curiously. She already knew the answer to that, but she wondered what it seemed like from an outsider’s perspective.

Here he hesitated, glancing at Dendri. “We merely travel in different circles,” Ky said diplomatically.

“You mean they are selfish, self-centered, power-hungry graspers?” she asked.

Ky’s eyes widened with surprise and again they filled with amusement. “Something like that,” he admitted.

“It’s all right. I know full well who my parents are,” she said to him.

“So it would seem. Now, what can we do to put your mind at ease about this mission to fetch Delongo to justice?”

“What is your plan? If he has an entire army surrounding him…”

“It will be easy enough to infiltrate now that we have Dendri on our side,” Jal said. “Before this we couldn’t get close enough because Delongo would sense our thoughts and intentions long before we could reach him. Unless he was asleep…and even then he was powerful enough to be alerted to any danger to his person. Dendri can mask our thoughts and because he is a higher level than Delongo we can move undetected toward him. Then it will just be a matter of containing him. Or killing him. Most likely the latter. To capture him would take an enormous effort on Dendri’s part and could put everyone in far more danger. It is best we assassinate him straight out.”

Yasra suppressed a shiver as she listened to this hard man describe killing another person with such perfunctory ease. She should have realized that was what this would mean. The death of another.

“What can you do to protect Dendri?”

“Well, Ky can blind the rest of the army with a snowstorm…or he can send them all running for cover with hail. That’s one way to do it. Leaving me open to burn the bastard to a crisp.”

“Or I can just raise a fog and blind them like that. It could be explained away easier than a snowstorm in autumn. The trick is to keep them from knowing they are under attack until the last possible second,” Ky said.

“But any drastic change in the weather will be suspect,” Yasra said. “He’ll be expecting an attack if he becomes aware of it.”

“Perhaps. But he’s an arrogant fuck. He’ll think he could be aware of and kill anything that comes at him with just a thought. And he wouldn’t be wrong. But he won’t be expecting Dendri. Dendri’s no rogue hunter,” Jal said.

“He surely knows the triumvirate is going to send their best man after him. He knows Dendri is the only one who can defeat him at his own game,” Yasra said with a frown.

“That may be. We’re not saying there isn’t a risk. There is, but Dendri will go after Delongo and we’ll take care of anyone flanking him.”

“You can fight his mind,” Yasra said to Dendri, “but can you fight him physically. You’ll almost be matched head to head in majic…that means you’ll probably have to fight him hand to hand.”

Ky laughed. “Don’t you know? Dendri is an excellent marksman, a disgustingly talented swordsman and a frightening thing to behold at hand-to-hand combat. He isn’t like most of these powerful majji who sit around on their asses going to fat,” he said.

“Majji can only reach the height of their ability if the take care of mind, body, and soul to the very best of their ability,” Dendri said quietly. “I could never have reached this level if I didn’t do all of that.”

“That means Delongo is also all of those things in order to have reached his level,” Yasra said anxiously.

“This is true,” Dendri said. He took both of her hands in his and turned her until her head tipped back and she was looking directly into his eyes. “This isn’t going to be easy. There is a great deal of danger and risk. I won’t pretend otherwise. But I wanted you to meet the men who will be supporting me so you have some idea of the force we can bring to bear against Delongo. It will be the three of us against one man.”

“And an entire army,” Yasra said, biting her lip as she looked into the intensity of his stunning green eyes. There was so much vitality and life in those eyes. It would be a devastating loss to the world if something should happen to him to remove him from it.

To remove him from her.

“We can fool an entire army easily. It’s Delongo we are challenged by.”

“If they have another powerful weather majji they can counteract whatever weather Ky uses to bear against them. Even the lowest level majji can clear a fog.”

“Not one of my fogs,” Ky said.

“That would raise suspicion.”

“True. But we plan to be in his headquarters by the time he recognizes there’s something amiss around him. They’re traveling in a mobile tent city. They stay in wagons and tents for the most part unless they are in a town they have taken over. We have to decide if it’s better to take him in a tent or in a building in the center of a town, then plan our strike accordingly.”

“Ky is right. We’ll have to decide a few things before we take action,” Dendri said. “But it makes no sense to talk over plans until we know if I am actually able to go or not.”

“And what will happen if Dendri doesn’t go?” she asked.

“Then we make a run at him without him,” Jal said.

“But…you should know…we aren’t the first to try. And Delongo doesn’t kill the assassins he captures right off. He likes to fuck up their heads for a good long while before he finally grows weary of the game. Then he’ll either make the person kill themselves or it’ll be death by combat or some other such thing,” Jal said bitterly.

“Oh my God! You’re mad to try it!” Yasra cried.

“Someone has to try,” Dendri said quietly. “The alternative is untenable.”

Yasra felt a little sick to her stomach as she looked from one man to the next. She felt the weight of their expectant gazes and it felt as though it was squeezing around her heart.

“At least the assassins know what they are getting into. They know what they are signing up for. It’s the innocent victims in the town he infiltrates that shouldn’t be forced to suffer at his hands,” Ky said.

“He twists their minds,” Jal said with a grim frown deepening the brackets around his mouth. “Once he had a loving couple—“

“She doesn’t need details,” Dendri cut him off sharply.

“Maybe she does,” Jal said harshly. “Maybe she needs a good dose of the reality of what it will mean to let that bastard continue to run wild on the face of this planet.” He turned hard eyes onto Yasra. “He raped the wife while the husband watched. Then turned her over to a line of men…but that wasn't the worst of it. The worst of it was that he had control of her mind, the pleasure centers of her brain, so he was able to make her enjoy every minute of it. All while the husband watched. Then he would occasionally release his hold on her mind and she would realize what had been happening to her…to her mind and body. Only to have him seize control again. It went on and on until he gave the husband a choice…kill her or kill himself. Kill her to stop her suffering or himself so he wouldn’t have to watch or live with the memory of what he had seen. It had to be one or the other. There was no third choice.”

“What…?” Yasra asked tremulously. She didn’t want to know, but she realized Jal was right. She needed to hear what would happen if she refused permission for Dendri to hunt Delongo.

“He killed his wife. The woman he loved more than life itself. To end her suffering. Then Delongo let him go after tormenting him with nightmares for weeks afterward. Let him go to live with what he had done. The only reason he didn’t take his own life immediately after being released was so he could tell someone what had happened. He gained an audience with the triumvirates, told his story, then, on the steps of the capitol, he sank a dagger into his heart.”

“And if you’re caught…he can do something similar to you?” Yasra asked Dendri.