* * * * *
Through the night Kenna tossed in agitation. From Julianna she knew that Thomas suffered. Every cell in his body accepted the antidote, making the treatment a painful torture without relief. They could not give Thomas pain medication for fear deadening any bodily response would retard the production of antibodies needed to combat a poison they couldn’t trace.
By three a.m. Lore had seen enough. Around them the acid burn of pain moved through the air. Many others had connected with Thomas to try to dissipate his agony. Even though Kenna was cut off, she could feel echoes of it in others who attempted to help him.
Spending these hours powerlessly living Thomas’ pain was not serving him. It was not helping their cause and he didn’t have the time to indulge in useless activity. Nor could he allow Kenna to suffer this way.
The problem he wanted to solve was elemental. Lore suspected the power he wielded was loud on the plane in which it existed. Going loud was always a last resort in military terms. Through Kenna’s experience with the god he had felt that being’s power signature and then a backdraft effect as it disappeared. Conclusion followed that it was possible to conceal their power signature. Combat required stealth. Silence was possible, but how?
Rolling out of bed, Lore paced to the window and stared into the night. A sickle moon shed random beams on the formal gardens below. The grounds were shadows shot through with short moments of silver splendor.
“What are you doing?” Kenna asked quietly behind him. Tall, splendidly naked, Lore stood at the window. He was a dark figure that melted in and out of the night. Kenna frowned at the rippling effect. He didn’t lose mass as his body touched the night. He simply seemed to become part of the dark.
“There has to be a control to our power signature. Do you feel how loud it is? When the god left the hall, his power disappeared as if it had been shut off. You could follow shreds of it, but I think that was because of the blood connection,” Lore stated calmly, pleased her attention was on him, not the painful ordeal in the medical section.
“Are you trying to do it now? Because I can still feel you but visually you’re sliding in and out…sorta,” Kenna said in soft wonder.
Lore’s head turned to look at her. “What?”
“It’s hard to explain. You’re rippling.”
Turning to face her, Lore tried again. He thought of the night being a cloak he could pull over himself.
Kenna gasped and shrank back from the shadow he became. Immediately the shadow evaporated and Lore stood there frowning at her. He was so male, so overwhelmingly physically muscle and man, and yet he’d become something else.
“What?” he questioned sharply, hard eyes narrowing.
“Ah, the power didn’t go anywhere, but you did,” she told him as she looked him over to be sure nothing was missing. “I knew you were there, but you were the night as well. It was…unusual.”
Lore slipped into her mind. There he saw what she’d seen.
“Damn,” he breathed softly. “I didn’t mean to do that.”
Kenna scooted across the bed to get out on his side. She needed to touch him, feel his warm muscles moving under her hands. Not that it wasn’t a constant need, it just seemed urgent after watching him disappear.
Walking the two steps to him, she was a creature of swaying grace. The dark fall of her hair flowed with her movements and her hands reaching for him appeared to glow softly silver in the meager light. Looking at her, he was struck with how stunningly beautiful she really was. “Have I told you how beautiful you are?” he asked softly as her hands combed down the fur of his chest.
“No,” she smiled into his face.
“So many things I’ve not said.” Lore’s hands glided up her arms in a slow caress. Her humorous response was expected. He wasn’t ignoring it, just too caught up in her to tease back.
Kenna looked up at the striking male holding her and let what he was wash over her. She forcefully rejected the initial spike of fear at his new abilities as she chose to embrace this future. It was becoming easier to ignore her old human reactions to the unknown. Her other reaction had been wonder and…lust? Yes, lust. He turned her on with the new ability. Touching him was touching the future. Impossible and forever met in his body.
Stepping into him, pressing against his torso, Kenna’s lips glided along the underside of his jaw. Her arms wound around him and her hands petted the tight span of muscle that made his back. They both sank into the sensation of touching in that magic moment when reality and fantasy shimmered around them.
“Do it again. Now,” she murmured into his skin. “Make us the night.”
Lore’s hands smoothed down her slender back. Holding her close, he folded the night around them using the cloak metaphor as a tag he could manipulate. They were still standing in the room, arms around each other, but also they were not.
“Turn us off like you quit broadcasting in the old castle,” Lore said softly, experimenting with the concept that they could combine their abilities. If he could take her with him in this way, her already-learned skill of disappearing on the paranormal plane the others felt could be shared too.
Kenna shifted, pulling back to what she called
hide
from everyone else. Immediately the others reached for them, proving they were no longer on the plane of consciousness the others shared.
“Take us back,” Lore ordered calmly as the others swiftly became agitated with their absence. She had suppressed her ability to broadcast more fully than when the two of them simply talked. Following his lead, she had concentrated on disappearing completely. “Try returning slowly, a fade-in. Snapping on abruptly gives away location. It did when you were in the old castle.”
Sending reassurance to the community as soon as they were fully back, Lore remained holding his princess of the night. Her eyelids were heavy and he had no difficulty feeling her excitement and wonder at what they’d just done. His lady liked a little magic in her man. “You’re not afraid?” he commented as his hands cupped her ass to rub her over his erection.
“Not afraid of you,” Kenna said with an intimate smile. “We did that together. Each a piece of the whole. Are you afraid of us?”
“No,” Lore stated. “We have no time for fear.” Their mouths met. Lore growled in pleasure as she rubbed up him in sensual demand.
His head lifted from her mouth.
“What are we?” Kenna wanted to know, searching his eyes. Pale hands dug firm nails into his back as they dragged down in slow, tactile delight.
“We are Kenna and Lore. We are whatever we want to be.” Lore licked languidly down her neck. Little nips lit sizzling fires as he bent to gain more of her pearl-white skin. Pulling her thighs up around his hips, he easily held her slightly off him, the tip of his engorged cock nudging slick folds of the pussy dripping with welcome.
Flexing biceps, he lifted her body up and down to stroke her folds with his cock. All the while kisses rained across her collarbone. Kenna’s fingers sank into his hair as her back arched, thrusting breasts up for his attention. It didn’t matter what else was going on, apparently the greedy wanton within was always ready. Heat zipped around her nerve endings with compelling demand.
She didn’t clutch him, there was no need. He lifted her, moved her body as he chose and she was breathlessly safe exactly where he put her.
Kenna moaned in a throaty purr. The wide head of his shaft prodded into her slick channel. Teasing her with the promise of thick intrusion, his control of their pleasure shot spirals of sensation up her body as she stretched around him.
“Oohhh yessss,” she gasped. “Should we? Thomas is suffering. This seems wrong.”
Licking over her nipple, Lore answered mentally.
“Thomas will suffer this night regardless of what we do. Learning how to use what is given to us is the only protection we can offer those who follow. Embracing what we are is our gift to them. This is part of who we are.”
Sucking her nipple deeply into his mouth in the same moment he pulled her against his body, slamming into the hot welcome of her body, he drove the sentence home.
“Finding joy where only confusion ruled makes us what we are…”
Using his hold on her bottom, he pulled her off him and back down his shaft.
“We are the One. Not the first daughter and her One. That was the mistake of the past. Together we make the One.”
Slowly he walked to the bed, driving his cock into her with each step.
“When we are One, we become a much greater power. We should have realized that when the group united, but we didn’t follow the logic to what happens when just you and I join like tonight. Not knowing how to use our gifts does not excuse us from being responsible to do so.”
Lore knelt on the bed, still holding her trembling body impaled on his shaft. He moved to the center of the large bed and slowly bent to lay her on cool sheets. Settling over her, his lips left her breasts to lift his eyes to hers as his hips finally thrust into her with the power of his need. Looking into her soul as they connected, he continued aloud. “This is what we need. There is no other duty than being One. We are responsible to wield the protection of many, those not gifted with the strength to fight their own battles.”
She raised her arms, stretching hands above her head in total surrender of the body arched beneath his driving hips. Her knees came up, slender legs wrapping loosely around his flexing back.
“Yes, baby, that’s it,” he approved as she moaned in harsh delight. “Take your due, offer me what’s mine. Do it, invite me to make us One.”
Joined in body and mind, she knew what he asked for. They were not one yet. Not yet. Spiking pleasure mushroomed between them in the elemental rhythm of sex. Sweat perfumed the air with Earth’s primal demands.
There was one more link, the one that took them into another reality. That last bond separated them from the Earth’s population in ways nothing else could. Willingly embracing it had freed them from the past and imprisoned them in a future yet to be seen.
Kenna’s head arched back, her chin turned to the side.
“Please,”
she moaned into his mind.
Grimacing with the driving force of exploding pleasure, his head whipped back as his body strained. Swooping down, his mouth closed over the offered flesh. As his teeth struck her skin, hard points pierced her and he inhaled deeply. The dark liquid of life rushed into his body.
Thrusting in rapid, brutal pleasure, his cock drove into her in a basic claim that increased with each deep draw on the life force flowing into his mouth. They were both exploding with sensations that drew them into each other. Sharing with joined minds was nothing compared to the shattering intimacy of connecting this way. They were sharing bodies.
Pulling off her neck, Lore’s head whipped back, his body arched to turn his face up to the future. Connected at the hips in an earthly mating, they burst into the universe and moved among the stars. He’d filled her with his seed and she’d filled him with the wonder of unlimited possibilities.
Relaxing down on the woman clawing his chest, Lore basked in her sharp little demands. His hips still thrust in lazy strokes that let her down off the high of orgasm, but not off the hook of need. His own body remained hard and sensitized as they looked into each other’s eyes.
“I’m not done with you,” he growled into her panting face.
“Damn straight,” she agreed as her teeth clenched through an extended shudder.
He gripped her by the shoulders and rolled them both over. Buried deep in her body became deeper as she sat on him. His hands trailed down from her shoulders as she leaned back on his propped-up knees. Hard fingers glided around shuddering breasts.
Her hands reached around to claw up the backs of his thighs. Her body, mounted on his cock, was splayed open to him as her head fell back.
Thick and hard, he filled her. She felt she had to straighten her back to accommodate the pole rammed into her.
His hands possessively kneaded tender breasts, both swollen nipples pouted in invitation. He ignored them to cherish the yielding flesh around them. He urged her body up his shaft in a leisurely stroke. Kenna moaned. The slow drag off his veined cock was excruciating pleasure.
Large hands moved to just under glistening breasts to wrap around her ribs, he held her above him and drank in the picture. Her legs strained to support her weight. Lovely cunt folds stretched around the head of his cock. Damp curls had been pounded flat and concealed nothing as she strained to take the shaft she was poised over. Her belly trembled with tense muscles.
He drew her down. Neither of them wanted gentle. Instead of being sated after that first orgasm they felt an edge of ravenous hunger. The pull and demand of male and female had become stronger, harsher.
Kenna snarled at the rough impalement, her hands reaching for her own nipples as she looked down at him. He was holding her pressed down on his cock, his fingers wrapped around her ribs. Her hips jerked in small movements as she gripped protruding points of flesh. Squeezing the tender tips, she rolled them, spiking harsh flashes of greedy pleasure into the tension of grinding demand driving both of them. Open mouthed, she gasped in air as her body worked to rub damp folds into his hard groin.
She was feral decadence suspended above him. A priestess of gratification intent on experiencing every sliver of sensation she could capture. Roughly she pulled her breasts out, stroking the nipples from root to tip in long, rolling twists. He’d never seen anything so beautiful, so sexually earthy.