Danith shuddered. She opened her eyes to see T'Ash lying on his side in front of her. The twinmoonslight brushed the angles of his face with silver. His eyes appeared stark, until she met his gaze, then she saw a flame of passion.
She loved him. She wanted him.
Between them tension built, the last vestiges of all the emotions of Passage melted into a craving for him, a desire she had no will to deny.
She needed his arms around her. She hungered for the taste of him on her tongue. Most of all, she wanted his sex stroking within her, giving her the ultimate climax she would only find with him.
T'Ash looked into Danith's eyes, deep pools of green, melting with desire that threatened to whirl him away into a passion he'd never experienced. Within him lust mixed with tenderness, possessiveness, protectivenessâan exciting, new sensation.
She wanted him. She wanted him. Now.
He remembered how it had been between them during his own recent Passage. His body hardened beyond refusal. His breath rasped. His heart raced.
His heart. He should think of his heart, of his HeartMate. He should resist the temptation. Her life had changed too fast, and once he claimed her body, he didn't know if he'd ever be able to let her go, let her have even the space of a septhour from him. And if he took her, his heart would be affected as much as his body. If she later rejected him, it would rip him to pieces smaller than Zanth with a lizard. And he had to hide his flaws.
Me guard.
Zanth trotted away, humming cat-satisfied sounds, one ear and his tail sticking up.
Danith pulled T'Ash's head down to her own. When her lips touched his and her taste blossomed on his tongue, he was lost.
Blood heated and streaked through his veins like molten fire, and the fire felt good. He embraced it, liked how it caused his body to tremble.
She was soft beneath him, her hands urgent on his back, kneading his flexing muscles.
He groaned and rolled aside tearing his lips from her eager ones, capturing her wrists.
Her lovely face showed passion's flush even in the twinmoonslight. Her eyes were wide with desire, her lips parted, and her expression squeezed his heartâa deep yearning, as if he were necessary to the fabric of her life.
When he looked at her, time stopped. All the energies and emotions that forged through him, leading him to this point, eased. He had to take this slow. He had to make this perfect.
Her hands would incite his lust beyond control.
The scent of the sweet earth rose to him, comprised of grass and night flowers.
He slipped a finger in the shoulder tabs of her tunic and peeled the cloth back, spreading it open and exposing her breasts. The twinmoonslight caressed them, shimmering over them, painting them silver with dark, berry tips. Her fragrance insinuated itself along his nerve endings.
His mouth dried. He grabbed at spinning wits, shards of reason, the control that rarely deserted him, and never for sex.
She tossed her head back and forth, whimpering with desire.
“Easy, dear one.” He didn't know where the words came from, or the tenderness. He only knew the passion building within him was stronger than anything before, and that he wanted to stoke it and savor it, until the shattering explosion flung him beyond all sense.
She wriggled her trous off.
He gasped and could not speak.
She was more beautiful than anything he'd ever seen, finer than the richest stone. She lay like alabaster, waiting for him, wanting him.
Blood pounded in his temples, banishing reason, but not caution. His fingers trembled as they curved around her face, dropped a kiss on her pale pink lips.
He had to touch her, know her through touch, shape her as he had so often shaped his creations. He had to learn all the textures of her body. He wished he was a sculptor.
He laid his hands on her shoulders, thumbs tracing her collarbone, and absorbed the contrast between them.
His hands were large, the bones solidly made. Her bones were delicate, refined. His skin was olive dark against her fairness. His palms were calloused against her silkeen softness.
Would she like being touched by calloused hands? He slid them down over her breasts. She arched upward. Gently he molded her flesh, feeling the softness of the mounds, the pointed nipples in the palms of his hands.
He wanted to speak some sort of love words but his brain froze and his throat felt too thick. So he lowered his head to press a kiss on her lips. Her tongue darted out, tempting him, but he wanted to taste more than her lips.
Still caressing her breasts, he brushed kisses across her collarbone, down between his enveloping hands, further down over her stomach, until he came to the delta of her thighs.
Her scent was everything he'd ever wanted. Ripe apples. Passionate lover. Sweet, generous, woman.
He kissed the curls at the top of her thighs, but went no further. Her womanflesh would tempt him into raging madness, and he wanted to give her gentleness. He wanted to show her all she meant to himâthe lover to fulfill him, the woman to walk by his side, the mother of his line. His HeartMate.
He stroked the satin columns of her thighs, curved his hands around the firm flesh of her calves, cradled and flexed her feet in his hands. And all the while a pretty glaze of passion bedewed her body, telling him of her desire. Her fragrance grew stronger, luring him to his fate.
Slowly, more than his hands trembling, he unclasped his sword and placed it on the ground. More quickly he shoved his clothing off.
She gasped when she saw his great need for her. Then she licked her lips.
His body pulsed under her gaze. He felt himself thicken, ready for the possession of his mate.
He closed his eyes and stood before her, letting her know of the strength of his body that would take her. And its scars.
He felt vulnerable but powerful. This was right. This was destiny. Mating with her on the rich earth beneath two shining moons, taking her to the summit of sensation amidst the calls of birds and the scent of flowers.
He opened his eyes. She lifted her arms.
He went to her, thrust into her, and she moaned with pleasure.
Passion ripped through him, desire that couldn't be denied. He needed her. Needed her to cradle him, to sheath him tightly, to encompass him. To hold him.
But now he craved her passion as a drug, heard her little cries and shuddered with delight. He set the rhythm of the age-old mating, thrusting, rocking, feeling her tight and wet and caressing his shaft until he could only strive for release.
She cried out, clenched around him, and he surged once more and gave her his seed and his heart.
When he could move, he rolled so she lay atop him. He needed her close. Her body was limp and supple in his arms. She breathed evenly, in the depths of sleep.
After her Passage, she had hungered to mate, firing his own desire that he could no longer contain. He joined with her.
Slightly worried, he touched the edges of her mind. She was slowly descending into dreams, dreams he sensed would be pleasant and comforting.
Not wanting to break the contact with her, even for an instant, he kept a bare foot under her hip as he stood. “Robe, on,” he softly called. The ash brown robe from his Residence garbed him. He took the earrings from his trous pocket and put them in a secured pocket inside his robe.
He wanted to take Danith to his Residence but did not dare. Nothing must upset her upon waking. Nor could he chance teleporting them to her bed. A gentleman did not sleep in a lady's bed without being asked. He'd learned that much from the courtship book, though it had danced around the issue in mealy-mouthed language. And though Danith had wanted his loving in the moments after Passage, he didn't think sex, even sex mixed with caring, constituted a real invitation to sleep with someone.
He stared at her in wonder, his woman, his HeartMate. Fire had ringed Danith, and he had walked through it for her, braving the flames, letting his clothes steam around him. He shuddered now. He had faced his deepest physical fear and mastered it. As he had mastered his deepest emotional fear, his berserker nature.
Danith was very good for him. If only he knew he would be equally good for her. And he hadn't been able to tell her of his old hurts, or let her open those doors to his past when he'd sheltered her in her own Passage. Her Passage had been clean, leaving no demons unfaced and no doors locked. He grimaced, then fell to his knees to stroke her hair and soothe himself.
Desire curled in him. He kissed her temple and the taste of her made his body harden. Sweet temptation. But something even more sweet tempted him.
Now, as she slept, he could meld with her. Insinuate himself into her very dreams until she accepted him, and initiate the HeartBond. He wanted it more than he wanted anything in his life. His heart throbbed with aching pain at their separation.
But he knew her now. Knew she was more than a beautiful smile and green-gold eyes.
He clenched his fists. He could not do it.
She must ask it.
And for the first time, perhaps the only time, he understood the ancient rules for HeartGifts and HeartMates.
She must accept him of her own free will.
Somehow he had to win her outside of the HeartBond, while still hiding his flaws and wretched past.
His fists tightened. Somehow he, T'Ash, a man without grace or manners, a man with little knowledge of women, would win this fight, too. On his own terms.
A battle-shriek ripped the air. T'Ash rolled to cover Danith, scrambled in grass to find his sword.
Weight slammed into his back. An arm appeared, knife flashing, in front of his eyes, darted to his throat.
T'Ash lunged up and back. Before they hit the ground again, his enemy twisted. They rolled together on the ground.
The boy, Nettle, was young, slighter, and less muscular than T'Ash. But his lips pulled back in a feral smile, his eyes rolled with the madness of grief of having one triad-brother slain, the other captured. From his strength, T'Ash knew both surviving teenagers, Nettle and Shade, were linked, with Shade feeding power to Nettle.
They tangled, wrestling, hitting, kicking, jabbing.
Danith stood, her body white and perfect in the moonlight. She ran, grabbed a knife from the ground. It looked old and nicked and bloody. Now she ran toward them.
“No!” cried T'Ash.
“Yes.” She bared her teeth, hovered near them. “I won't run. We're a pair. I'll fight, too.”
“No, not you!” Anguish flooded T'Ash. She should never be tarnished with the stain of violence. She Healed, she could never kill.
“Yes!” She danced around, her eyes intent on the fight, holding the knife all wrong. “We're together.”
T'Ash rolled on Nettle, pinned him. He let his body hold the youth as he visualized Danith's back grassyard. He flung her there, her anger and objections echoing in his mind.
The boy flipped him, jumped up, withdrew step by step. “Not this time. You wait and suffer. We get you, Shade and me.” He stabbed the air viciously with the knife. “Then we get her and play.” He ran, breath gasping and obviously near the end of his strength, until he once more disappeared into the dark shadows.
T'Ash mentally tracked Nettle across the estate and out to the streets, then to Downwind.
Putting his swordbelt on around his robe, T'Ash let the quiet of the night wrap around him and fill him. He and the youth had fought and he'd felt fear for Danith, but no berserker fit, no descent into bestiality had threatened. And now he knew he'd placed it firmly in the past and it would never rise in him again.
“Zanth!” he bellowed.
Me here. Bad scruff. He odd Flair. Made Me sleep. Bad. Bad. Bad.
The Fam paced, tail lashing.
T'Ash sighed. The two survivors had joined to bespell Zanth, then the free one had attacked.
T'Ash stretched, his muscles working smoothly and easily. No other men, boys or cats remained on the Blackthorn estate.
Zanth followed, grumbling.
Me tired. Do much today. Me want food. Me want cocoa. Me want My pillow. Me want . . .
T'Ash stopped listening. When they reached the small door in the wall he stood, hands on hips, and examined it. The only way to keep the estate safe, now and in the future, would be to strengthen the wall forceshields. T'Ash leaned his sword against a nearby tree and slipped off his robe. It would be a long and sweaty business, to imbue power in the wall surrounding the estate brick by brick. Then he could go home to Danith.
He got to work.
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Danith fumed. First she paced her mainspace, mutter
ing swearwords. It had been only moments after T'Ash teleported her that she sensed the danger was gone and he was well. Still, he didn't come, and she had a lot to say to him.
She'd whiled away the time by taking a shower and washing the grime of the night from herself, wondering what T'Ash had done with her favorite tunic trous casual suit. That he, and it, hadn't appeared by the time she'd cleaned up continued to be a thorn.
Since she felt so irritated anyway, she decided to finish filling out the multitude of forms that needed to be submitted to the NobleCouncil.
How dare he just fling her away. They were a couple, a pair, friendsâeven lovers. She felt the heat of a flush, but continued in her angry thoughts.
He wanted her to be his HeartMate. He'd taunted her with being a coward, yet when she'd stood to fight by his side, he'd taken the decision from her hands and used his great power to send her home, like she was a child. As if she had no say in the matter.
The forms went surprisingly quickly as she made instant decisions that would form her future.