Excessica Anthology BOX SET Winter (109 page)

 
There
was an undeniable lure between them though, a sense of need so primitive and
powerful that it would not be quelled.
Rhiannon reached out and touched
the side of his face. The brusque rub of his stubble sent a charge through her
fingertips, startling her. He let out a gruff sound in response, turning to
kiss her fingertips, his hand enclosing hers where it touched him. His actions
set lose a strange yearning deep within, and memories of the sexual release she
had found in her dreams flooded her, making her body grow hot and tremble.

“Mine.”
The single word he uttered was barely audible, delivered in a deep, unearthly
rumble as it was. His hands arrested her waist as he said it, and he narrowed
his eyes. His head lifted, his nostrils flaring as if seeking the source of a
scent on the atmosphere nearby. With one hand he tugged at her fly, pulling her
pants open.

Rhiannon
started, shocked to the core and yet hellishly aroused as his fingers found
their way inside her pants and underwear, and stroked against the soft down
covering her pussy. Heady desire sluiced through her groin, her body responding
keenly to his attentions. He hauled her clothing down her hips and dropped down
to nestle his face against the warm, tender spot between her thighs. Rhiannon
swore beneath her breath, her clit throbbing wildly as he closed. Then she felt
the sharp edge of his fangs as his face moved over her tender flesh and cried
out, her body pressed hard against the pillows at her back.

Undeterred,
he threw his head back as if he had found salvation. Grasping at his throat, he
ripped at the tattered fabric covering his body. With a wrench his cloak was
gone and his shirt was gaping wide. Once his chest was bared in the moonlight
she saw that it was covered the raised tattoo of healing scars. His hands
clawed at them, a guttural sound of pleasure in his throat.

A
sense of identification hit the pit of her belly, hot and restless.

“Oh,
fuck,” she muttered, confusion hitting her when she realized how readily her
body was responding to him. She should be trying to break free. Instead she was
noticing how hot he was. Arousal and fear had twisted together in her veins, a
heady concoction.

His
head snapped back as he focused on her again.

She
swallowed her words, wishing she had kept quiet.
He was some sort of wild
animal, for Christ’s sake.

His
eyes were glazed and he looked at her with purpose, real purpose. He moved
closer against her, brushing his cheek against hers, nuzzling her.

“Edgar?”

When
she said the name aloud, he growled, and the sound was filled with pleasure.

“Edgar.”
She said it again, and again.

As
she did images began to spill through her mind: memories.

The
night he’d first carried her to this bed—their wedding night.

The
night he'd been turned half-feral—and her fear.

The
night her family had taken her away from this place—and her pain.

He
turned his head and brushed her mouth with hers, gently, giving her the
strangest, most seductive kiss, as if attempting to soothe her. He knew she was
afraid.

“Edgar,
I remember,” she whispered.

She’d
been forced to leave him and it broke her heart. She’d lived a pain-filled
existence, her life an empty void without him. Kept under lock and key by her
family, those people who thought he had driven her insane, those who believed
their duty was to protect her from what she wanted beyond life itself: her
husband. Through many lives over she had felt the pain and heard his call. Her
place was by his side, and destiny had finally allowed her to make her way back
to him. Emotion swelled in her chest. She put her fist to her breastbone,
something he had done when he first told her he loved her and wanted her to be
his wife.

When
he saw that, heat from his body swept through her, and something else in its
wake, a deep recognition of his nature. Feral, sexual,
predatory—overwhelmingly seductive.

“Rhiannon,
my love,” he whispered, his voice hoarse from lack of use.

She
stared into his black eyes, mesmerized by him, her heart thudding wildly. She
nodded. “Yes, I’ve come home.”

She
could do nothing but whimper in supplication when he pushed her legs apart.
Then the scent of the moor and something else, like moss, escaped from his hair
and immersed her senses in earthiness. A flood of heat hit her groin, sexual
and fierce. She cried out, not with fear but with relief, when she felt the
warm lap of his tongue pushing into her slit and riding firmly up against her
clit. And then he was moving rhythmically, his tongue lapping over her
sensitized flesh, eating her up. She arched back against the bed, her body
supine and willing. Each lap of his tongue freed bolts of pleasure deep inside
her. Her juices were running. She could hear his hungry gulps as he lapped her
up, and she was gone on it. He sucked and lapped at her until she was blinded
with ecstasy.

She
became frantic as the sensation built towards its peak. He gripped her hips,
latched his teeth over her clit, his tongue lapping at it from beneath. The
riot of nerves condensed then peaked. Her hips bucked, her climax sending a
deep long shudder through her body. He released her, pushing her legs wide
apart, he moved down where her buttocks and thighs were sticky and damp with
her juices, his tongue lapping all the while, spinning out the pleasure for
her.

Need to feed.
The words whispered
around her mind.

Need you, Rhiannon. You have come home to me. We will be as
one.

It
was then that he bit. Then, when her groin was hot and heavy with blood and
pleasure. His fangs sank into the juncture of her thigh where the artery pumped
fierce and strong. Pain and pleasure spiraled through her, her body jolting
over and again. She felt him drawing on her life force and she heard her own
moans of pleasure echoing overhead, tasted her own blood in her mouth as she
thrashed and bucked beneath him, the bite as fiercely climactic as the orgasm
had been.

Eventually
he lifted his head and climbed alongside her, his mouth and chin dark with
blood. He placed damp, sticky kisses on her throat, and then rested his face
between her breasts, licking the scratches there. He eased back and rasped his
tongue over her ragged flesh.
Healing you.

She
understood. She didn’t flinch.

Then
came the thrust of his cock. The sudden stretch and fullness stole her breath.
As she sucked oxygen back in to her lungs, the memories of their frantic
lovemaking swamped her consciousness. It was as if she were back there in his
time again, where she should always have been. As she thought that, so his
visage became more human. Her submission was bringing him fully back to her.
They were joining, not only in body and soul, but in time and place.

“How
I have longed for this,” he said, and began to drive like a man possessed,
claiming every part of her.

The
firm thrust of his cock at her center made her growl aloud, the pressure of his
body there too exquisite. Each thrust bonded them, each grateful touch
treasured. The slick draw of her body on his was audible, their lovemaking
filling the room with heat and noise. Her skin was hot and damp, her clit
thrumming with sensation beneath the weight of his body. She clawed at him, her
hips arching to meet his, the reunion too poignant to sustain.

At
her moment of climax he sank his teeth into her neck. The dual punctures
through her flesh were agonizing, for a moment, and her body jolted and
stiffened, a harsh cry escaping her. Then his mouth covered the wound and once
again he fed. As he did so warmth and vitality flowed through her, the innate
knowledge that they made each other whole salving her doubts. All the while his
cock maintained its urgent rhythm inside her, drawing her orgasm out in an
unending ocean of bliss. As her blood poured into his mouth so he climaxed and
pumped his seed into her, a cycle that she instinctively knew would sustain
them forever.

Panting
harshly, he lifted his head, seeking her out with urgency.

When
she leveled she drew back a ways, trembling, overcome with sensation and
confusion. What should have been torture had been pleasure, and one so very
intense. How could this be? Maybe she was too far gone, most likely delirious.
Her body felt strangely uplifted, floating.
Perhaps I am dying
.

“Rhiannon,
you have made me whole again, but you will turn now.”

His
mouth covered hers and the taste of blood on his lips and tongue was earthy,
metallic and salty. She opened herself to it, her tongue tasting his, her body
claiming the primitive blood connection.

“This
is what they would not allow to happen,” he added, while he kissed her jaw, her
eyelids, and her throat. “I had to be sure, and you came back to me. I always
knew you would.”

I
will turn. I will be like him, wild and feral.
Fear
of the unknown jagged briefly at her senses, and then washed away. She was
lulled by the beat of his heart as he lay against her, clutching her to him as
if to keep her warm. She was weak with pleasure and blood loss, but drifting in
a strange tide of surreal pleasure and pain. A prism of understanding sprang
free deep inside her consciousness. He was keeping her warm. He was making her
his, making her a timeless part of the moor, just as he was.

Her
eyelids were heavy, her body began to float. The last sound she remembered was
reminiscent of a cat, a sated cat, purring, and the sound of it filled her
senses and echoed in her heart, making it stronger, making it beat in time with
his.

* * * *

Rhiannon
came to when she heard a door closing. Her eyes flashed open and the breath
sucked into her lungs. She recalled she had been up at the lay line rock, and
that she had fallen into a ditch. Had he carried her here? Was he real? Had it
happened at all, or had it been a hallucination? Had the whole thing just been
a crazed dream, a result of her injury? She put her hand to her head, where her
hair had been matted with blood. The hair was silken smooth, and fanned out on
soft pillows.

“Rhiannon?”

She
rolled her head. Morning light filled the room, and it was just as it had been
before, so many decades before, richly furnished with a wedding bed to be proud
of. Edgar stood by the doorway. He wore a loose white lawn shirt and knee
breeches. His feet were bare. Glossy black hair fell to his shoulders and his
eyes gleamed possessively as he looked at her.

Beneath
the bed covers her fingers went to the place between her thighs where she still
felt him claiming her. The skin at the juncture in her groin had healed, but
bore a raised tattoo of markings, a scar much as he had on his chest. Her clit
felt bruised, bruised and sated from his delicious torment, her cunt heavy with
the aftermath of the carnal pleasure that had swamped her. He had made her like
him. She was sentient now, but would she end up like he was, half-feral in the
light of the moon? She should’ve been afraid, she supposed, but the prospect
didn’t faze her, because destiny had already embraced her, long ago
. Let it
take me where I am bound.

She
blinked when he walked over and sat down beside her. Staring into his eyes, she
knew exactly where she should be: home, in the house on the moor. Everything
she had left behind her faded away.

Edgar
had stepped out and called to her through the mists of time.

“You’ve
come home,” he said.

Tentatively,
she reached out and stroked his handsome face. “They made me leave you, I
didn’t want to.”

 “I
know, but I also knew you’d find your way back to me one day.” He turned his
face and pressed his mouth to her palm. With a lingering kiss he breathed her
in, deeply. When he turned back, his eyes had turned to molten fire. “Are you
hungry, my love?”

Rhiannon
nodded, her blood darkening with instinctive anticipation. He rolled onto the
bed, lying on his back. She swallowed hard, the urge to move closer to his body
taking her over. Climbing to her hands and knees, she straddled his hips and
arched over his neck. His hands went to her naked breasts and he molded them in
his hands, a deep lingering sigh in his throat.

Her
sharpest teeth were aching for him, her mouth filling with saliva. She could
hear his blood pounding. It was as if she had her ear to his heart. And his
scent! His scent filled her senses to overflowing, her lips parted and it
multiplied as she breathed him in across her tongue, every sensory receptor in
her mouth and throat heightened in awareness—his scent, his body, his
strong male body, all of it filled her and overwhelmed her with the need to
take him.

Her
teeth ached and her curious tongue felt its way around the edge of her
sharpening fangs, dripping with saliva in anticipation of the act. Beneath her
splayed pussy, his cock was hard and he freed it from his breeches, readying
for her to mount it. As she closed she could hear his blood roaring in his
throat. She was changing—and she could sense his anticipation, his
interest, and, yes, his darkening arousal. She growled low in her throat,
instinctively knowing how good he would taste and how fiercely his blood would
run to his groin when she bit into his throat, how good that would feel in her
mouth and her cunt. They would become strong through it, bonded as one.

She
closed her eyes, and felt desire run rabid in her blood. First she mounted his
cock, and then she sank her teeth into his throat, piercing the skin and
closing her mouth around the hot, heady flow. As she did, she saw images of
them together, out in the moonlight on the moor, mating copiously.