Phoenix Rising I (4 page)

“I did not do it in expectation of a ‘reward’,” he growled, his voice the deep rumble she remembered.

It sent a shiver through her that was not unpleasant, in fact just the opposite. She wondered at it, wondered why it did not fill her with fear and loathing.

Because he had saved her, she realized after a moment. Because she remembered that voice meant safety, protection--not threat. “Why did you do it, then?” she asked, curious now.

He looked disconcerted for a moment, then the scowl returned. “I did not think you could fly,” he ground out.

She stared at him blankly for a moment and felt the tug of a smile at her lips. “You don’t want to tell me.”

His gaze skated over her and finally returned to her face and abruptly, despite the harshness of his scowl and the angry glitter in his eyes, she knew why. She mattered to him. For some reason he had not counted the cost to himself because he cared what happened to her.

The thought sent a curious flutter through her. Doubt warred with certainty, compassion with horror, and denial with curiosity. Why would a creature such as he was care what happened to any mortal, let alone her? She searched her mind for anything that she might have done to deserve his regard and found, without surprise, that she could recall nothing at all.

Still, she was certain that he had lied. He had said that he had thrown away his only hope of redemption for a woman that meant nothing to him. He would not have done that if she had meant nothing to him.

Gathering her nerve, she pushed the covers back and moved to the edge of the bed, lifting her fingers to the tie of her gown. “It does not matter,” she murmured shakily. “All that matters is that you saved my life and it’s important to me. It is only fitting that I give as graciously and selflessly as you did.”

She wasn’t prepared for the look of pure fury that comment provoked.

Chapter Five

A frisson of fear went through Bronwyn.

“I do not
need
your sacrifice,” he snarled.

Unnerved as she was by his sudden show of temper, it occurred to her after a moment that it was inspired by hurt. She might have dismissed it as absurd except that she was reasonably certain she had not guessed wrong about his reason for helping her.

She
did
dismiss it as ridiculous, at first. She was attributing human emotions to a creature that was not human! “I offer a gift of gratitude....”

“I do not want your gratitude either!”

“If you continue to roar at me,” Bronwyn said testily, “you will not have the opportunity to distain it. You will bring the guards!”

Surprise flickered in his eyes for a split second before they narrowed. “You believe that is something that concerns me?”

Bronwyn sighed. “It concerns me. I don’t want them hurt.”

Amusement entered his eyes, softened his harsh features and Bronwyn felt a curious warmth wash over her, and surprise, for she discovered that his face was infinitely appealing.

Slipping from the bed, she padded barefoot across the room to him. He stared down at her almost warily as she halted less than a hand’s span from him. Lifting her hand, she settled her palm lightly along his cheek. “If you do not want me, you need only say so. I will not offer again, but I have no reservations about giving you ease this once. It is a paltry enough reward for what you did for me. All I ask is that you accept that it can only be this once. For the king has decree that I shall wed again, and I will not dishonor my future husband, or my own family.”

His fingers closed around her wrist almost bruisingly.

She thought that he would fling her hand back her, shove her away. Instead, he dug the fingers of his other hand into her waist and dragged her flush against his body. “Then I should drink my fill,” he growled, releasing his hold on her wrist to spear his fingers through her hair and cup the base of her skull. The swiftness of his moves dragged a gasp of surprise from her which he used to his advantage. Dipping his head, he covered her startled lips with his own, plunging his tongue into her mouth.

A shockwave rolled over her. Thoughts scattered before it like leaves tumbling in the wind. She lost none of her primal senses, however. Indeed, she was left with nothing else, not even the ability to close herself off from them.

The heat and moisture of his mouth inundated her senses, creating a heated whirlpool inside of her that threatened to suck her down into a place of dark chaos. The rush of his ragged breath and the skate of his tongue along hers filled her senses with him, his taste, his scent.

Pleasure blossomed inside her, swamped her senses. She lost awareness of self, of place, of time as he explored her mouth with his tongue in a restless quest to know every inch of the sensitive inner surfaces of her mouth and tongue that left her weak and trembling, struggling to catch her breath. She had not even realized that she had placed her palm against his hard chest when he had released her wrist to capture her head for his kiss until her fingers curled into his flesh, seeking purchase, an anchor as weakness flooded her.

There was no thought of selfless giving as her fingers crept from his hard chest to his neck to pull her closer to his warm, hard length, no thought at all, as if her body acted independently of conscious thought. Hunger drew her, the same need as a flower tilting its blooms to catch the warming rays of the sun, opening itself to the heat it needed. And when she found that she could not quite reach, she pushed herself up on her toes, the better to reach him.

The movement brought her breasts against the rapid rise and fall of his chest, teasing the tips and sending another wave of exquisite sensation through her body as blood flooded her nipples and they became hard, tight little buds. A tremor went through him that was so hard it echoed through her. His arms tightened almost crushingly around her pulling, lifting. Her mind whirled dizzyingly then righted itself as he turned with her.

She felt the softness of her bed beneath her back and then his weight settled on her, pressing her deeply into the cushioning softness. Coolness wafted over her legs as his legs tangled with her own. His man root pressed against her mound, producing an ache within her belly. Hot moisture flooded her woman’s place as he arched against her again.

She met his thrust when he pushed against her again, tilting her hips so that the pressure of his member nestled closer to the place that ached for his possession.

He made a sound deep in his throat. Dragging his lips from hers at last, he sucked in a harsh breath as he dipped his head to explore more of her flesh with his lips and tongue. A tingling rush went through her as his moist, heated breaths caressed the skin of her neck. His mouth closed over the ear nearest his search and the sensations were so intensely pleasurable she shook with the tremor that went through her. His tongue followed, tracing the convoluted shell with the same thoroughness that he had explored her mouth, touching off more tremors, sucking the air from her lungs.

Yes
, the word echoed through her mind as he finished his hungry exploration and moved lower, following the ridge between her ear and her shoulder,
more, please
. She might have uttered the words. She wasn’t certain, but he seemed to know every patch of skin to caress to give her pleasure, to drive her wilder with mindless need.

She had begun to thrash restlessly against him by the time he had thoroughly anointed her neck and throat, traced the dip at the base of her throat and examined the upper slopes of her breasts. The tips of her breasts, swollen now almost past bearing as was the lips of her womanhood, had begun to throb almost as painfully as an aching tooth. She clung to him desperately, arched, trying to press those aching buds against him.

The thirst arose to feel his mouth on hers again. Instead, he nuzzled his face deeper into the valley between her breasts, nudging aside the loosened neck of her gown. Skimming one hand up from her waist, he cupped a breast, kneading it, pushing it through the opening. The jolt that went through her as his hot mouth closed over the distended tip almost bereft her of consciousness. The air left her lungs as if it had been punched from them. Her belly clenched almost painfully with the first tug of his mouth.

Mindless with the avalanche of sensations jolting through her, she plowed her fingers into the cool silkiness of his hair, clutching at his head, uncertain herself of whether she most wanted to push him away or hold him more tightly to her. The tease of his tongue and warm adhesion of his mouth created sensations that were too keen, too intense to be borne. Tiny animal-like sounds scraped her throat with the panting breaths that were all she could manage to try to fill her lungs.

She’d begun to think she would faint with the torture when he released the tip and then a vast sense of disappointment filled her until she realized that he had merely moved to seek her other nipple. She froze, steeling herself against the sensations she expected and yet desperate to feel them, and still the first tug of his mouth on her stole her breath.

She strummed her hands over every part of his flesh she could reach, stroking and kneading his flesh like a contented cat, begging wordlessly for more and then more still as she felt the hunger grow more desperate, coil more and more tightly throughout her body.

His caresses did not appease the need and she could not think what would, she could only clutch and cling and arch against him as the fever in her blood rose higher, begging him wordlessly to end her suffering. And then, as he moved to torment the first breast again, she could no longer contain herself to silent suffering, to the moans and gasps she couldn’t contain. “Please,” she whispered brokenly. “Please.”

He lifted his head, looking at her, she knew. With a tremendous effort, she lifted her lids to stare back at him, moistened her fever dried lips with her tongue. “Nightshade,” she murmured in distress.

He surged upward, opening his mouth over hers and sending her mind reeling closer to the darkness of madness, but as he surged upward to claim her mouth, he caught her thigh, dragging her leg upward and to the side, and with it her gown, to allow his hips to settle between hers. The moment she felt his engorged member press against the swollen lips of her sex she knew exactly what she desperately wanted, needed. She arched against him when he pressed into her again, spreading her thighs wider, reaching down to take his manhood in her hands and push him inside of her.

Frustration filled her when she realized she couldn’t reach him. She lifted against him more demandingly the next time, rotating her hips in a desperate attempt to engulf his flesh as she felt the head of his cock breach her nether lips and slide tantalizingly along her cleft.

He tore his lips from hers. Sucking in a harsh breath, he shifted to one hip, grasped his member and aligned the head with her opening. Eagerly, she surged upward to receive him, uttering a grunt as she felt him stretching her, breaching the opening. He surged again, recapturing her mouth and spearing his tongue into the wet recess as his cock plowed more deeply into her channel.

She dug her heels into the bed, her nails into his shoulders as she fought her own body’s resistance to his invasion. Her frantic efforts to impale herself on his shaft send quaking shudders through him. He broke from her lips again. Burrowing his face against the side of her neck, gasping hoarsely, he caught her hips in his strong hands and thrust again, bearing down with determined pressure until her channel yielded to him, until he’d sunk to the hilt within her and Bronwyn was gasping with the fullness inside of her, dazed with the wonder of it.

She tightened her arms around him, wanting nothing more at that moment than to hold that feeling to her, to hold his massive member tightly inside of her. She discovered, though, that there was more, much more. As he withdrew slowly and then thrust again, delight rippled along her channel, radiating through her. The tension inside her coiled more tightly still, but this time she felt an instinctual tug toward the appeasement that had eluded her before and when he began to move more rhythmically, she moved with him, striving to reach it, urging him to move faster as she felt it nearing.

Releasing her hips abruptly, he shoved his hands beneath her, tipping her hips up to receive his thrusts. Instantly, the sensations intensified until she was nigh sobbing with the glory of it, the desperation that built and built inside of her until she thought she couldn’t bear anymore. Of a sudden, something seized inside of her and then broke with an explosion of exquisite, rapturous sensation that tore a series of sharp cries from her as her body convulsed with it. He uttered a hoarse groan as her body clenched frantically around his cock. Shuddering, shaking all over, he pounded into her fiercely as her body milked his of his seed and finally slumped against her, gasping hoarsely for breath.

Thoroughly spent, weak, drifting toward darkness and utterly content from the explosive release, Bronwyn lay perfectly limp beneath him, trying to catch her own breath. Warmth and a strange sense of fulfillment wafted through her as he finally caught his breath and nuzzled his face along her neck, brushing light kisses there. And when he finally gathered her to him and rolled onto his side, she snuggled gratefully against him without protest and allowed her mind to drift aimlessly toward sleep.

She was skating the rim between the world of knowing and the bliss of nothingness when she felt his hands begin to roam her body with more purposefulness.

Chapter Six

Reluctance to yield her lazy, cozy comfort for the harshness of reality rose in Bronwyn’s mind, but she felt a stirring of the warmth that had invaded her senses before. It beckoned to her, chipping the unwillingness away. Doubts arose as her mind drifted toward more awareness.

She should not yield to the madness again, she knew, dimly aware that there was danger to her in giving into her body’s cravings, mostly because she had not yielded so much as she had welcomed the loss of control, gloried in the gratification of her senses.