Master of Miasma (The Valhalla Series) (13 page)

Releasing the hold on my life with a mere lift of his thumb off the hollow in my throat, he smiles. It's slow, smug, promising sweaty nights deep in the mystery of the shadows which he pulls down to cloud around us, hot, misty, pressing and tasting me in his stead. “If I don't get us out of this baptism you'll end up doubting what was me and what was the euphoria of transcendental delight.”

“It's you,” I insist. It's an oath, sworn allegiance, desperation.

“
We'll see,” he murmurs across my lips, slipping his inquisitive tongue back in to bed mine, sucking and exploring, big hands endlessly massaging my cheekbones as if watching the genie of paralysis smoke out of my eyes to kneel on his eyelashes, begging for another blessing.

Lifting me up, standing, slopping us in wet steps out of the pool, he eases his hold so I slide heavily over the scintillating canvas of his body, plummeting in the distance of the severed kiss.

Pining deep inside where heat swells and ebbs in endless undulations, I'm forced to stand, and he steps away, keeping a hold on my arms just in case, “You've heard of handfasting?”

I nod. Yeah, I've heard of it vaguely... once.

Who cares! This isn't the time for conversation it's the moment for action.

“
It's the rite, Emma. You accepted me when you clasped my hand yesterday, fasting our hands until they were one in power, with boundless access. I am not the one imposing myself into you, it's mutual–”

“
Shut up and kiss me.”

“
No Emma, not like this. Not now, not here.” Stepping closer so I am deep inside the heat of his aura, spiritually adhering to the charisma pervading my senses, he cups my face again, stooping to murmur his spell into my marrow, “First we eat, we drink, we dance, if after your formal welcome into the clan you still desire me for more, then I will not hesitate.”

“
Now,” I whine, my heart splintering at his cruelty.

“
We are written in the book of Raven's shadows, it's already happening, our spirits knot together in ecstasy, are you truly strong enough to withstand it happening simultaneously to your mind and body? This is just a soul caress elskling, it's nothing compared to the full package.”

The package, the hard rigid provocation imprinting my body we stand so close. He doesn't want to stop. He's needing me to make that call, to take the fall, the blame, the credit.

Defiant I slip my hand between us, stroking in obstinate rebellion to tempt through wet cloth, ducking my head to trace the triangle on my palm with the soft tip of my tongue, pressing it the way I'd press in to taste the arousal of the heat filling my other hand in enflamed anticipation, slipping the moistness around the entire black triangle on my palm to end in a deep penetrating suck in the center of the holy symbol.

This joins us, it's a way in.

His weakness is immediate, dropping to his knees, making us the same height when he grinds tense fingers through my arm muscles to etch the bones, branding me ecstatic when he shudders and groans as shamefully as I did in his arms.

Now we're even.

Chapter 14

Emma:

He's shaking as badly as I did, his eyelids heavy with desire's release, sweat glittering his upper lip.

Kneeling in front of him I rest my cheek on his chest, relishing the labored pump of an elevated pulse. Twisting my head I bite softly into his chest muscle, sucking on it, sliding the lip adhesion to his nipple, flicking it under and over my tongue, intoxicated with my own passion I want him
now
.

“
It's good medicine, Macala,” I promise, nodding, looking up at his bowed head into the face poised above mine.

“
Stop Emma, before I strip and claim you right here.”

Shaking my head I hook my finger into the waistband of his baggies, seductively loosening elastic's grip to coax it down.

Bone crushing hands clamp my wrists, strained arms forcing me away, “No. I will take you in my own time with your dignity intact, not a stone floor in the herald's chamber.”

Pain bludgeons my arms, the vice so constricting it garrotes my desire with tearful agony. His tone is resolute and I know I can't force it.

“Hurting,” I whimper, tears escaping.

He misreads it, thinking I just confessed my emotional carnage to him, and the answer is instant arm capture cradling me tight, kisses on my temple, my heart caving in a surge of unadulterated love. Soothing with safety, tenderness exchanges  place with brutality. The contrast wracks my cohesion, crushing me in waves of alternating experience, pain, desire, pain, adoration, stimulation, throb throb throb.

Infatuation? No, it's not. It's reverence, acknowledgement, epiphany.

God! I'm in love overnight, my need borderline obsessive.

So condemned by my reverie I am lost in the labyrinth of my own thoughts when I become aware of rapid vision blurring the tunnels in his haste.

“
Mac?”

“
Shhh,” he pacifies, birthing us out of the impenetrable shade into the familiar chamber of his bedroom, carrying me directly to the shower, stepping with me into the waiting sepulcher and blasting us both with invigorating water.

My shirt is torn off my body, dependent lips suckle possessively on my breast, his hand already claiming the twin in addicted fondling, kneading their dominion into my skin.

Yoga trousers stretch and deform, puddling at my feet, my knees unhinged with applied pressure, crumpling me ungraciously onto his lap on the shell mosaic floor of the shower. With knees either side of his legs the sensation of his naked thighs and their coarse hair is immediately potent, my own thighs splayed, opening me wide to the heat of the palm cupping my sex, singeing the sigil of valhalla into my holy haven, consecrating my soul when I orgasm on demand directly into the hot skin invading my sacred space.

Appreciative moans mingle with my own, mindlessness invading logic and winning.

That triangle is a mystery with forces within it I need to understand.

Induced enthusiasm rocks my world when he kisses me, my head hard against the wet stone wall, assaulted by his tongue, with his fingers, my nipple crushed in the zealous steel of his free hand. His kiss becomes demanding and with all my heart I want to submit, to be broken, the wild in me tamed through satiation.

Shuddering oaths of ecstasy into his mouth I wrangle my arms inside his, pulling back the waistband and finding the one thing I need inside me more than I need a heart.

Stroking the balmy satin so fluid over rigid muscle, the harsh eruption of his voice magnified by the confines of the shower quells my hesitation. Lifting up on my knees, shoving his hand away from my slippery ache, I slide over him in rapacious force. The impulsive action suddenly shocking, halting my movements and his, my frailty immediate, my vulnerability all too prominent while we freeze, staring hesitance into each other's eyes.

Adulation wisps away with broken gasps, our breathing ragged and exaggerated, spilling the sounds of wildfire passion into the veil of water.

Reason slides her toxic claws into his expression, stealing my male fanatic with her innocuous adhesion to ceremony.

“You weren't... it wasn't...
No
.” He shakes his head, bodily forcing me up and off him, sneaking backward away from me, out of the spray, looking at me with the disapproval of awe scorned and spat on. Shaky fingers run unsteadily through his hair while indecision wrestles his features. Kneeling a foot away, resting on his flexed feet, I want to crawl after him but am condemned by the divorce imposed by his hands when he ejected me off him.

It's consensual, I know it is, why does he keep shattering wanton bliss?

He's breathing hard, his body so tense every muscle is raised for inspection, and I can't help it, I'm devouring the vision with shameless eyes, my gaze fixating on the divinity nakedly on display before me. He's got the body of an athlete crossed with a chiseled bodybuilder. Every muscle cuts into bone, his skin pale and taut, his veins embroidering cords over bulky shoulders, from armpit to groin, his hip-shoulder ratio so decadently delicious I want to kneel down and run my tongue over those veins.

Holding up his hands to ward me off, he shakes his head again, “No Em. Come on elskling, we can do better than jump each other like hellions.”

With his palms facing me I can't avoid the pulsing red glow flaring off his valhalla triangle. Mine doesn't do that.

Spying my surveillance he clamps the hand into a tight fist, “You! How do you manage to distract me with such ease? You've taken decades of guarded secrets and had me expose them to you in an instant. In twenty-four hours you've ruined me!”

“Me?” I squeak through a dry throat. My body is in furor, unable to settle on a driving impulse. Capricious emotions pendulum across my heart, scabbing my soul at the possibility that pushing for breaking point I may have destroyed a boundary they harbor.

Fear or fuck. Pick one.

Blinking rapidly I struggle to stand on unstable legs, stalking him when he scoots back against the basin cupboard. Arrogantly shoving my stubborn streak in his face I kneel and sit back between his legs, avoiding the obvious and holding onto the bunched muscles carving up his torso. “Listen to me Mac, I'm not usually like this. Rabid isn't my style, but we're... fated... you said we were, so why... why wait? Let's do the raven dance.”

My spirit is lynching me with pensive doubt and I deteriorate into pleading, knowing my eyes are an open book to his psychic ability. Worry is turning my blood rancid.

The expression in his eyes surprises me, his fierce scowl dissolving into cherishing adoration while those big safe hands clamp my face again.

He says gruffly, “Because we only get one first time.
One
. I didn't wait this long to dig a bed of regret, I waited to show you what it means when a man has no resistance because of you. When his motivation is more than lust he is patient, considerate, he... I...” The hoarse baritone cracks. “Emma please, let me show you the realms of possibility by trusting my instinct on this.”

Thumbs caress reverently up and down my cheeks, his fingertips digging into the back of my scalp with restrained force, “Believe me, it's got nothing to do with rejection, every synapse in my body is firing for release and it's not that I don't want to. I want to very much, just not like this. You deserve better than to be treated the way Guy treated you. Lip service means nothing to me, actions are my language. I will not tell you how much you deserve, I'm going to show you.”

“But I deserve you, right now.”

His emphasis judders my head in his hold, his treatise sealed with one more butterfly kiss, “You make me crazy but I vow to keep my insanity in check long enough to fill your broken heart with the jewels of love. That starts with respecting you, wooing you, biding time so that when we lock our desires together we transform, forever changed by it. You are more than sexual satisfaction, gratification is fleeting and leaves in its wake hunger so fierce nothing can placate it. When I fill you Emma, you'll never know hunger again.”

His candor bleaches my soul so pale I'm dizzy. This blizzard of attraction bleeding with the nicks of valor is enough to exhaust me.

I want to argue so much but he mutes my thoughts when he says, “I watched you cry for a prick who fucked you around in more ways than one. I watched you degrade your soul for acceptance.” Fond bright eyes stoop with his lowering face to impale my gaze with their blackened sharp focus, “I am not him. You are not that woman I watched for months. You are a Raven initiate and by Odin you will learn to accept the respect which is your birthright.”

He shows me his palm, the incandescence dulled back to black, pointing into the center of it so I feel the applied pressure deep inside my body via the occult contract of a handshake, “This is your space. This is
you
and I will not desecrate this sanctuary for the sake of momentary indulgence.”

Sitting back just as suddenly he scours me with his gaze, desire evident, appreciation clear and blatant. “You are ER, baby. Pure ER. Those legs... fuck Em... you're... I just want to...”

Eyelids droop when he looks at my nipples, hiding whatever is hidden in their supernal depths.

“
E.R?”

My voice sounds alien, too calm to match the massacre of the emotions weeping into my robbed muscles.

“
E
rection
R
esurrection. E.R. You're enough to resuscitate a chaste monk out of the cloth.”

It's such a darling thing to say I am doused in instant shame. I am so.... out of control. I'm never out of control. Ever.

He kisses me, the way you do when you say goodbye; it's reserved. “You are precious and we don't rape precious, we guard it even when it tempts fate to fall into an abyss of sensation. Now shower, I'm going to rustle up food because if I won't have your nipple in my mouth and get to taste the juice of your passion heating my tongue I need a damn decent distraction in its stead.”