Outcroppings of lava rock jutting from the base of the volcano were flung like a casual arm eastward into a stand of scrub pine.
Poor dwarfed-looking things,
Rhiannon thought.
“Do spirits live in these pines as well?” she asked of neither of them in particular.
It was Gideon who replied. “No,” he said, “those who once occupied these trees are…gone now.”
Both Gideon and Vane stopped in their tracks. Rhiannon didn’t miss the strange sidelong glance that passed between them. She had evidently touched on a topic that was forbidden, and she said no more.
After a moment, they resumed their pace and came upon a rock formation that at first look seemed like something an eruption had left there. Following Vane through an opening that was virtually invisible to the untrained eye, they found themselves inside a well-appointed chamber.
“Rest here,” Vane said. “I shall go and bring the lava rocks I was gathering when you arrived. They are to warm your pool.” He gestured toward a small archway. “It’s through there. This dwelling is separate from the rest, and therefore not fed by the volcano directly. I repair here often. It’s cooler. The lava rocks will heat it pleasantly. Remain inside during the day. I will join you later with food and we will see what’s to be done.”
“You are too kind, my friend,” Gideon said, “but we cannot stay here. We shan’t put you to the hazard. The watchers are relentless this time. I haven’t seen them like this since they destroyed my keep. I won’t have you suffer reprisals for helping us. We will leave when the sun sets.”
Vane nodded. “As you wish,” he said. “Meanwhile, whatever I can do, consider it done.”
Lord Vane left them then, and Gideon took her in his arms. “I can battle the watchers on my own easily,” he said. “I’ve been doing it for eons. It is your safety that troubles me. I would leave you here. You would be perfectly safe with Vane, but I also left you in Marius’s keeping and look what occurred.”
“You mustn’t fault Marius. I should have stayed where I was safe. I shan’t make that mistake again, but I don’t want you to leave me, Gideon—not for moment. If they separate us and play to our weaknesses, they could win. Whatever we are facing, we need to stay together.”
“I can’t get enough of you,” he murmured against her hair. “It started out as the curse that has damned me to perpetual lust and turned my own body against me, but now, oh,
now
…it’s not that at all. Every breath I take is for love of you, Rhiannon, and I fear only that I could well be putting you in danger because of it.”
Rhiannon silenced him with a finger across his lips. He drew it into his mouth, and she moaned as he laved it with his tongue. The sound of his wings rustling riddled her with expectant fire in anticipation of ecstasy to come. The magnificent appendages had unfurled halfway, just as they always did when he was aroused, and when he pulled her close, the bruising pressure of his hardness leaned heavily against her belly. The soreness would linger long after they made love, reminding her of the power of his passion and the magnificence of his member.
All at once, she stiffened in his arms. “Wait…” she murmured. “I heard something…”
Gideon hesitated, his ears pricked, listening. “I don’t hear anything,” he said, pulling her close again.
“There! I heard it again…a rustling sound.”
Gideon smiled. “Field mice, no doubt,” he said. “It’s too soon for Vane to be returning with the lava rocks, but not if we waste it.” He reached for her lips, but she resisted still.
“Is there a rear entrance to this place?” she said. “The noise I heard sounded like it was coming from beyond that arch, where Lord Vane said the pool was.”
“I am not certain,” Gideon responded. “He’s virtually alone here, though. Few will risk the threat of an erupting volcano, or the company of one whose touch could turn them into a human torch.”
Rhiannon gasped. She’d heard the legends, but she’d never had it explained so vividly before. “His touch did not set that horse on fire,” she pointed out.
“No, but if he had been aroused or in a rage, it would have, along with anything or anyone he touched.”
“Well, I doubt he was aroused or in a rage when we met. Why did he refuse to take my hand?”
Gideon laughed. “Your innocence delights me,” he said. “For all your loss of sexual naïveté, you have not lost that wide-eyed childlike innocence that so often is lost with it. Silly goose, the Lord of the Fire is a
man
after all, and the mere sight of you—especially as you are now, in that flimsy veil that hides nothing—is enough to make a dead man’s member rise! He was merely being cautious, and well he ought. Now, enough of Vane!
I
am on fire for you. Let us deal with that.”
He began sliding the frock down over her shoulders, but again Rhiannon hesitated. “Shouldn’t we wait?” she asked. “What if he comes back and catches us?”
“Trust that such a thing shan’t happen,” Gideon said, circling one hard nipple with the tip of his finger and then his tongue as he sucked it through the spider silk frock. The sensual wetness remained, pebbling her areola, laving and scraping her nipple through the gauze long after he lifted his lips. She had never felt the like. “Lord Vane has given us this time together,” he went on, nipping at the other hardened bud. Besides, worry over that happening should heighten our pleasure. There is something very erotic about being caught in the act, as it were.”
She melted against him, no longer able to resist the pull of the fiery sexual tether crackling between them. It seemed enhanced since they arrived on the Isle of Fire, with its visible heat and sultry atmosphere. The whole isle seemed to pulsate like a living, breathing entity, its steamy pink breath rising from the volcano looming above. The very air smelled of brimstone and felt hot to breathe, like the heat of a scorching day in summer, when no breath of a breeze is stirring and there was no relief in sight. It was the kind of heat that scorched the nostrils inside and out, paralyzed the senses, and ignited sexual desire. It had consumed them both with its magical fire.
All thoughts of rustling sounds, of watchers, and of the peril they were in melted in the blistering heat of that moment. Her gown floated to the floor and puddled at her feet. Gideon had opened the front of his eel skin. Driving her to her knees, he offered his aroused sex. Rhiannon took it in her hands and guided it into her mouth.
Gideon groaned as she laved his shaft from root to tip. Rhiannon felt it harden like steel beneath her tongue, felt his blood pumping through the distended veins. They were standing out in bold relief through the silken skin as she took him deeply in a swift, spiraling motion that brought his wings fully open, stirring in the steamy air.
She had avoided the sensitive tip of his penis as she sucked. Tasting the salt of his pre-come, she slowed her rhythm. She could feel the pulse beat of his passion through the tip of her tongue as it circled the rim of the head of his sex. The anxious rhythm of his desire vibrated through her body and soul.
Groaning again, Gideon took back his penis and raised her to her feet. Seizing the globes of her buttocks, he hoisted her up and plunged into her to the base of his shaft, grinding himself against her, undulating from side to side as he raised and lowered her in an unstoppable frenzy of carnal oblivion.
Rhiannon cried out as she clung to him. The root of his sex was grinding against her clitoris. As he pistoned into her, the curve of his shaft found that innermost spot—that hidden mystery of succulent sensation that opened her to him like the petals of a rose. One layer at a time, his passion peeled away the layers until, full blown, the flower of her sex, wet with the juices of her climax, exploded in wave upon wave of orgasmic fire.
Rhiannon felt as if her bones were melting. Her breath was coming short, her heart hammering against him in a shuddering rhythm that captured her breath and held it. She could feel his climax building through her fingertips, through the pores in her skin, slick with the glistening patina the sweat of raw sex had left behind. When she stroked his wings, a cry like nothing she had ever heard him utter poured from his throat. It mellowed into a shuddering timbre, a gravel-voiced supplication in the shape of her name that rang from the rafters of the little chamber that neither of them had even noticed for the urgency of their coupling.
Surges of drenching fire ripped through Rhiannon’s loins as the climax lifted her out of herself. The involuntary spasms of her release gripped his penis until she’d milked him dry of every pearly drop of his come.
As if she floated on cresting waves of the sea, Rhiannon let the rhythm of his climax take her again. Oh, how he filled her, even now. Fused to his dynamic body, she was powerless against the riveting surges of climactic sensation that riddled her mercilessly. His enormous wings folded around her, cocooning her to him in a whoosh of eiderdown softness, and she burrowed into them like a child snuggles beneath a comforting blanket. How safe she felt under the protection of those wings.
Gideon didn’t withdraw himself. Instead, he dropped his head down to her shoulder, groaning as the hot breath puffing from his nostrils ruffled his feathers. His evocative scent rushed at her laced with the piquant musk of sex, stirring her senses awake again. Now she did begin to fear that Lord Vane would return and catch them out. Gideon was right. There was something erotic about the prospect that someone might see them thus. It made her heart race and her sex thicken with arousal.
Neither spoke. There was no need. Like dancers, their bodies moved and swayed and undulated as one, their moans resonating in the breathless air like living things. Gideon found her lips and slid his skilled tongue between her teeth, tasting her deeply. She could taste his arousal and feel the palpitations fresh erection brought to bear. It was even more powerful than the first, and her heart began to race with new ecstasy.
From somewhere far away, she could have sworn she heard that rustling sound again, and her heart leapt. Had Lord Vane returned? Was he hidden in the shadow-steeped umbra that surrounded them, watching? A strange thrill surged through her at that prospect, but it soon passed. In that one perfect, suspended blink in the eye of time, there was no danger. Lord Vane didn’t exist—no one did. The moment was theirs alone, and Rhiannon surrendered to his kiss, and to the urgency of a need that took her again and again.
“Y
ou are sure your lady won’t go prowling about on her own?” Vane queried of Gideon. They had repaired to the Fire Lord’s sanctum sanctorum in the base of the volcano. From there, Vane could monitor the pulse—the very heart of the fiery mountain, which was vital not only to the Isle of Fire, but to all the isles in the Arcan Archipelago, as Gideon knew well from past catastrophes. For it was an eruption eons ago that had turned the Dark Isle into a virtual slag heap.
“She will not venture forth,” said Gideon, who remained standing, his wings being prohibitive. “She did that in Marius’s keeping, and I had to enlist the aid of the rune caster to have her back from the astral realm when the jealous sprites crossed her over.”
“I wish I had your confidence,” Vane returned. He had dressed as appropriately as one could dress in such a steamy climate. He was stripped to the waist, over tight-fitting raw silk leggings and high-top buckskin boots of the same type Marius wore. Gideon could see he was uncomfortable in his finery. But for company, the Lord of the Flames would be going about quite contentedly in the altogether.
“I needed to have this conversation with you in private,” Gideon said. “We are in far more danger than Rhiannon imagines, and I do not want to frighten her any more than she is already.”
“Umm,” Vane gargled around a swallow of grog from his goblet.
“How can you drink this stuff?” Gideon wondered, eyeing the contents of his cup dubiously.
Vane lifted the ruby glass goblet to the rushlight flame as in salute. “Liquid sanity, my friend,” he said, twirling it to and fro between his thumb and forefinger. “’Tis what makes life bearable here in the bowels of hell.” He dipped his finger into the glass and stirred the brew. Steam rose from the goblet and the grog began to bubble. “Tastes better warmed,” he said, raising his finger. “Allow me?” he offered.
Gideon’s eyebrow shot up. “Thank you, no,” he declined. “Mine is…fine as it is.” He hadn’t visited the Fire Lord in some time, and the sight of him thus was painful to view. He couldn’t imagine the loneliness of Vane’s existence, but neither could he have imagined his own, if it were happening to someone else, and he lived that on a daily basis.
“There isn’t much chance for socializing here on my isle,” Vane drawled, “but then, I’m sure you know all about that.”
“At least you have an isle,” Gideon chortled. “This last escapade of mine left me homeless. Are there no others here with you now?”
Vane shook his head that there were not and took another rough swallow from his goblet.
“I ask,” Gideon resumed, “because Rhiannon thought she heard something moving about in the pool area of our chamber. I know it couldn’t have been you, you’d just left us…”
“No, it wasn’t me. I wanted to give you two some privacy. The gods only know when you’ll get another opportunity as things stand.”
“And I thank you for it. I didn’t hear anything, but she seemed so certain. Is there a rear entrance to that chamber?”
“Yes,” said Vane. “It isn’t easily accessed, but there is a way out. I should have shown you. I will when we return.” He hesitated, twirling his goblet. “What are you going to do?” he asked.
Gideon sighed. “I can’t impose upon Marius further. I fear for the Ancient Ones he protects. He is a fearless sort, is Marius. He fired upon a couple of watchers—hit them, too!”
“Did he?” Vane warbled. “I’d have loved to have seen it.”
“There are bound to be reprisals, and I won’t have them on my conscience. Simeon would shelter us in a heartbeat, but neither of us could exist beneath the waves. And I cannot impose upon you. Your situation here is volatile enough without my adding to it. I fear this respite you’ve allowed us may have already brought the retribution of the gods to bear.”
“Suppose you let me worry about that,” Vane said. “What about the mainland?”
“Too close, and I would be too conspicuous there, though Rhiannon would fare well. That is what troubles my conscience. I love her, Vane. I should have let her go long ago, but I waited because there was one who was a threat to her on her ship when it ran aground in that storm. I wanted to be sure he’d moved on before I left her unprotected…and now it’s too late. I’d rather die here now than lose her.”
“What about the nomads in the hills?”
“The watchers can reach the nomads. They can reach everywhere in the twelve hemispheres.”
“But they won’t bother you as long as you’re not…in the company of a woman…”
“No, they won’t—at least they never have before.”
“Will you hear advice?”
“I will hear,” Gideon said, “but I make no promise to heed it.”
“Fair enough,” Vane said, refilling his goblet from a decanter on the table alongside his Glastonbury chair. He offered more to Gideon, but Gideon declined, still nursing the drink Vane had given him earlier, and wondering what the Fire Lord saw in the dreadful stuff. “There is something you are overlooking,” Vane went on cautiously. “You are immortal; she is not. She will age and she will die, and you will not.” Again, Vane hesitated. “There are…other…women, Gideon. There have been in the past, and there will be in the future…but not if you force the gods to end your existence at last—or worse yet, force them to end
hers
to punish you, which would be more likely.”
“What makes you the sage in these matters all of a sudden, old friend?” Gideon snapped. The mere thought of losing Rhiannon in such a horrific manner was more than he could bear. “Are you drunk? Are you in league with them, too—the damnable watchers—with the gods themselves, perhaps? What have they promised you to bring me low?”
Vane vaulted out of his chair as if he’d been launched from a catapult. His startling amber eyes glowed like molten lava in the lamp light. Gideon could see the Fire Lord’s aura—blood red—rising in heat waves from his body. He seemed to have burst into flame. Rage flared his nostrils, and he brandished the goblet.
“This damnable stuff makes me a sage in these matters, Lord of the Dark!” he seethed. “You think that I am in my cups?” He loosed a spate of raucous laughter and heaved the goblet—grog and all—across the room. It landed against the wall with a clang that echoed, its contents dripping down the chipped plasterwork. The sound ran Gideon through. “
You
are the drunken one—besotted upon the fruit of the vine called
love madness
! How dare you accuse me of such disloyalty? By the gods, you go too far!”
Gideon set down his goblet and raised his hands in a gesture of truce. “Forgive me,” he said, raking his hands through his hair as if he meant to keep his brain from bursting. “I am half mad with this. You think I have not thought of what you say? You think it does not haunt me waking and sleeping?” His cock was hard against the seam of his eel-skin suit, and he struck it a harder blow than he’d intended with his fist. “Bad enough the curse keeps me in a state of perpetual hardness!” he raved. “Bad enough that I cannot bear the touch of the wind that carries me aloft without an attack of libidinous lust—bad enough that my own body betrays me, but now the mere sight of her drives me mad. It isn’t only the curse of the gods that keeps me hard any longer. I need her, Vane, and I mean to have her!”
Vane’s anger was palpable. Gideon could feel the heat of it reaching toward him from across the room. He had no idea why he’d said what he’d said. It wasn’t like him at all. He must be running mad. There was no other explanation. After a moment, the Fire Lord’s breathing sought a calmer level, and he began to resemble something other than a fire-breathing dragon. Gideon was well aware that Lord Vane, Prince of the Flames, took his loyalties seriously. He had little left but his fierce integrity. Gideon could not imagine what had possessed him to challenge it.
“Very well,” Vane said. “If you must have this woman, would you be willing to give up your immortality to do so?”
“Whatever I must do,” Gideon said before the Fire Lord’s words were barely out.
“Then that is where you begin,” Vane said. “You know what you are willing to sacrifice if needs must—”
“If the gods will allow me,” Gideon corrected him. “Judging from the events of the past few hours, it does not bode well.”
Vane poured himself another goblet. He heaved a mammoth sigh. “I have no right to advise you,” he said. “I do not know the lady. But from the light in her eyes when she gazed at you earlier, it is clear that she loves you, Gideon. I would give my eyes to see a woman gaze at me thus…just once. And if I had such a love, I would destroy it. That is
my
curse, my friend.”
“When I leave here at sunset, I have no idea where I will take her,” Gideon said, attempting to change the subject. It needed changing. His dilemma had brought the Fire Lord’s own situation to the fore, and that was the last thing Gideon wanted. “I need to see her to safety. I fear the watchers will use her to get at me, and I cannot let that happen. I do not presume to imagine I have reached your isle undetected. You said you saw them hovering this morning. That is no accident. They lurk in wait. I know them well.”
“Then we must find a way to spoil their strategy,” Vane said buoyantly. He had come out of his dark reverie suddenly. “I will pour us each another goblet and we shall see what we shall see, um?”
Rhiannon fell asleep the moment she curled up in the mahogany sleigh bed where she waited for Gideon in Lord Vane’s guest chamber. It was made with sheets of the finest silk, and quilts of eiderdown, no doubt gleaned from the sea after shipwrecks like the one that had claimed the
Pegasus
and begun her strange odyssey among the enchanted isles.
Her eyes had no sooner closed when dreams came, soft, tender visions of gliding airborne in Gideon’s arms on zephyr winds high above the cottony clouds that hovered over the archipelago. She could hear the air whispering through the Dark Lord’s wings, feel the kiss of those silvery white feathers against her bare skin, for she was naked in his arms, and he had cocooned her against his likewise naked body as he soared higher still.
His hands roamed her curves, finding all her pleasure points, lingering upon the ones that set her heart racing and turned her bones to jelly. She felt him grow hard. His thick shaft bruising her belly sent waves of silken fire through her loins. She undulated against him, making him harder still, wrenching a husky moan from his throat as he took her lips in a fiery kiss that stole her breath away. Literally.
She had dreams before when she couldn’t open her eyes, when she couldn’t scream, or run, but she had never had one where she couldn’t breathe. Making matters worse, Gideon’s flight pattern changed abruptly. All at once he was spiraling downward. She could feel the rush of air from the wind his motion created. Why wouldn’t her eyes open? Why couldn’t she breathe? It felt as if something thick and hard was clamped over her mouth. That was why she couldn’t breathe!
A hand!
Rhiannon’s eyes snapped open. She was in motion, but not soaring through the air. He was carrying her through the doorway out into the twilight. His arms were strong, but they weren’t Gideon’s arms. His long-legged stride was surefooted, but it wasn’t Gideon’s stride. The hand clamped over her mouth was powerful, but it wasn’t Gideon’s hand. This hand was foul. It smelled of strong spirits. It pinched her cheeks and prevented her scream as her eyes focused. Blinking back the last veils of sleep, she stared, not into Gideon’s mercurial eyes but into Rolf’s dark glare instead, and it wasn’t a dream! The nightmare was real, and she struggled against his hold upon her with all her strength.
“Stop that!” he snapped, carrying her through the scrub at the base of the volcano. “You thought you could escape me? I know what you’ve been up to with that…creature. Don’t think to deny it. I’ve
seen
you fornicating with him, and he isn’t even human! Well, that’s ended now, my pretty.” Kicking her feet wildly, she wriggled out of his arms, but his hand over her mouth remained firmly in place and he dragged her along instead, a good grip on her hair wrapped around his arm. “I used to want you for myself,” he grunted, “but no more…not after what I’ve seen! You wouldn’t spread your legs for me, but you spread them wide enough for whatever that creature is….”
Rhiannon’s trapped screams sounded more like squeaks trying to escape her throat. His hand forced over her mouth pressing up against her nostrils as well had cut off so much air she’d become lightheaded and feared she’d lose consciousness. She clawed wildly at his hands, wrists, and arms, but her hair was wound around them and she couldn’t get a good grip.
“We might have had a good life together if you’d been…willing,” he panted, for she was putting up a valiant struggle. “Now I have a much more lucrative plan in mind. I visited your intended—the gentleman your father had sold you to—and he is willing to pay handsomely to have me deliver you to him relatively unscathed. Oh, but that’s not to say I won’t take a little of what that winged creature’s been getting before I turn you over. Hold still! I’ve a skiff in the cove waiting to take us to the mainland…for starters…He won’t mind my sampling your wares, as it were, along the way, but I shouldn’t want to leave too many marks on you in the process. He was most particular about that.”
Terror gave Rhiannon strength, and she bit down upon the hand Rolf had clamped over her mouth with all her strength, drawing blood. He jerked his hand away and cried out, lowering the back of it hard across her face. Raw fright loosed a troop of screams from Rhiannon’s throat that reverberated off the steep sides of the volcano, rupturing the twilight silence.