The Roads of Taryn MacTavish, page 56
part #3 of Lords of Arcadia Series
Funny, how what could be eerie and too quiet in a dark room was only peaceful in an open field. Beautiful, even. Made a girl wish she’d never have to leave.
Movement drew her eye toward the middle of the kraal. Rhiannon’s arm rose to cover her naked breasts even as she leaned out to better see who it was.
She must have known already, really. She didn’t think she’d care if a horseman saw her in the altogether, but it wasn’t a Farasai she was looking at once he stepped out from the shadows.
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She and Arion stared at each other in the moonlight.
There was nothing else around him, nothing to distract her restless senses. Without moving, without speaking, he overwhelmed her. His body was light and shadow wrapping pure power; she could see the silvery slope of every muscle gleaming under his fur. His eyes were dark suggestions in a face she could not see as bestial, no matter how hard she tried. His horns were a halo, which made him easily the most bizarre angel there could be, but there he stood, and it was impossible to see him any other way.
It bothered her and she retreated, closing the shutters and barring them.
Rhiannon sat on the table next to her candle, frowning, aware that she was frowning, but not certain she knew why. Her thoughts were all mixed up. The angels of Arcadia—Arion and Gabriel—and she knew she formed a third point to that triangle, but she couldn’t see herself as clearly. She knew only one thing: She didn’t want to be here tonight, not in Taryn’s room.
She moved decisively to the little pile of her shed clothing and started dressing. She doubted anyone would say anything if she crept into the cook’s lodge and crawled under the table for the rest of the night. She wouldn’t sleep, but that was fine. There were worse things than no sleep.
The sound of the door opening on its well-oiled pins stopped her as effectively as an explosion. She looked down at her skirt and watched it twist in her hands. The leather creaked, louder, so much louder, than the sound of Arion’s hooves as he entered. She shivered, wishing she felt cold.
“Rhiannon.”
She gripped her skirt for strength and spun around to face him. Never mind she stood there in her panties and a tore-up t-shirt, she dipped into her inner armory of Fierce and came up with weapons. “You can’t just come barg—”
He raised one hand, silencing her instantly, and quietly said, “Before you bid me leave, let me only do one thing.”
Rhiannon shivered again, became distracted by the candle flame, and when she looked back, he was right there. His hand slipped around her waist, preventing her instinctive backwards flight, and then his mouth was at her neck, his hot breath pushing her hair back from her bare skin.
She tried to scream, but all she made was a gasping sound. She tried to shove him away, but her hands wouldn’t obey. She felt the skirt fall from her fingers and after that, her arms hung limp, useless to her. Her eyes were open, staring, shocked.
“Rhiannon.” He turned into the curve of her neck, the tip of his tongue gently tasting her sweat. Now he shivered, and pulled her closer. “How I love to speak your name. Rhiannon.”
Was that fur under her hand? When did she raise her arm? Was she pushing or pulling?
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Her heart was pounding, slamming against her ribs so hard, it seemed her skull was reverberating. She shouldn’t be able to feel anything else…but she could feel his hand slipping beneath her shirt to cup her bare back. His fingers on the little valley of her spine burned like red irons.
“S-stop it.” She twisted, trying to find a place where he couldn’t follow, but he was all around her. He was consuming her. “Stop!”
“Nay. Bid me leave and I shall leave. But if I stay, I will have all liberty.” He drew back to gaze intently into her eyes. “What command, my warrior?”
Her lips moved. There was no sound.
Arion’s horns dipped and he closed on her again, breathing her name.
She flinched hard, but he held her fast, licking and nuzzling at every inch of exposed flesh from one shoulder to the other.
“You can’t!”
“Mmm.” Arion knelt, his mouth never straying from her flesh. Down he moved, over the thin covering of her shirt as he lightly teased at her breasts, down the ticklish span of her midriff, down to the scanty cotton V covering her sex.
“Let go of me!” she begged. Her arms were stiff, her hands braced at his shoulders, but her fingers were clenched on his pelt. Pushing or pulling? She shook her head, fighting for clarity. “Let go!”
Arion’s tongue, thick and powerful, pressed hard against the full length of her cleft through her panties. He licked back and forth, working the fabric in deep between her folds. His hands tightened slightly, then relaxed, caressing her back before coming to rest on her hips. His muzzle bored at her, wedging her squirming thighs further apart, forcing her to admit him.
“Please!”
He leaned back to hook his thumb through the waistband of her panties, but pulled them down only enough to lick at her navel. “Thee surpasses all imaginings,” he murmured. “I thought thy skin would be soft, but thy flesh is as petals newly unfolded, as pearls pulled fresh from the shell.”
So unlike teasing, brutally-patient Arion. Rhiannon felt again that whirling vertigo, she becoming Taryn, he becoming Antilles. She had never really stopped to think about the mechanics of her sister’s sex life (beyond a vague sense of amazement), but now her mind was fired by a single image, vivid enough to wipe her actual surroundings utterly away. She could see Arion bending over her, see him inside her, and with that first imagined thrust came a shuddering, cramping heat deep in the private core of her powerful enough to shatter her fantasy and show her the real Arion, really touching her.
It was this place, she decided, looking dazedly around the dark room. It was being surrounded by centaurs and griffins and dragons and it had nothing to 436
do with Arion per se, but only him as minotaur. It wasn’t passion, in other words, only the fantasy come to life.
Or it maybe it really was her. Her own inherent licentious nature. The whore in her that the angel in her dreams kept coaxing out, now calling to anyone with an itch to scratch in a voice she wasn’t allowed to hear. Rhiannon looked down at the dark head that nuzzled her. He seemed so sincere.
But then, so had Jordan.
Now Arion was pushing her shirt up slowly, his hand moving in small circles that bared her just a little more with each rotation. He claimed what he uncovered with his mouth and she stood silent, watching until she felt the bunched hem of her shirt brush at the underswell of her breasts. “I hope I’m doing this right,” Arion muttered unexpectedly. “When one doesn’t wear clothes, one has no notion in the wide world how to remove them.”
A giggle ripped its way out of her numb throat, breaking the invisible chains that had held her so mesmerized and allowing all the true horror of what was happening to come crashing down on her. She stumbled back so suddenly that she actually got away from him. “I told you to stop!”
“As I told you to bid me leave,” he replied. He rested one hand on his bent knee, gazing up at her with a calm eye. “Say it, if you wish it so. Say,
‘Arion, leave me.’”
She tried, but managed only a hurt, “Nunh.”
He rose, and the sight of him standing up struck her as something titanic and strange, like watching Poseidon emerge from the sea. He was beautiful. Not creepy-pretty like the angel in her dreams, but beautiful the way mountains can be beautiful, or storms or rivers crashing over rock. It was not wildness, exactly, but a natural-ness, a rightness. That sudden, dizzying crush of fantasy came back and she imagined again how it would feel to have his weight on her, his fur against her bare skin, his breath on her shoulder. Panic swallowed her.
“You can’t!”
“Bid me leave.” He came forward implacably and she backed up until her knees struck the bed and she dropped into a sit. He dipped his horns in that Cerosan smile, reaching out to touch her hair. “But be swift if you so intend, my warrior. I am rapidly reaching the end of my ability to walk about with dignity.”
Rhiannon’s whole body flinched at this reminder of his nudity. How could she possibly have forgotten?
Her eyes dropped and there he was, all the masculine essence of him open to sight. She shouldn’t look. She had to look. Her eyes moved up and down in frozen fascination, taking in all there was, all he offered her.
As if her stare had substance, his great shaft began to stiffen and swell.
‘For me,’ she thought, disbelieving, and scrambled back over shaggy fur and cushions until she banged into the wall.
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He laughed at her, an Arion-laugh. “Aha! I finally discover what weapon makes my warrior quail. Hai, ‘tis no killing thing. Come, Rhiannon.”
She shook her head wildly, but her traitor hand half-rose before seizing on the bedding once more.
“Will you not touch me?” he asked. His hand closed on himself for one lingering stroke. She could feel her own palm itching; she clenched them both into fists and didn’t move. He said, “I have wanted your touch, well, not since the first, in honesty, but nearly that. I dream of you, only you. I hear your name in the beating of my heart.”
“No, you don’t!”
“Aye.” He put one knee on the edge of the bed. “My warrior. My Rhiannon. Lie with me tonight.”
She tried to tell him no, tried to scream it, but she couldn’t even shake her head. She looked at him, at the dark rod rising from his thick fur, and felt heat sink into her as deeply as he ever could.
“Are you frightened?” he asked suddenly, frowning. “Truly so?”
“I’m not afraid of anything!” she blurted and shuddered back.
He laughed, relaxing somewhat. “Nay, for there is the warrior I came to woo. But if there is some fear of this unknown—”
“I’m not a virgin!”
“Nor am I,” he replied comfortably. “Though new to the sport of thy fair frame. But I shall not hurt thee, and I shall take nothing more than I am given.
Here.”
He lay down, stretching out across the width of the bed at her feet. He pillowed his head with one arm and touched her shivering leg with the other, just a gentle brush of the backs of his knuckles, no more heavy than a breeze. “At thy leisure, lady.”
She avoided his hand, but somehow crawled onto her knees, edging around him and staring at his jutting shaft. She supposed she could bolt now, get to the door and be gone before he could even sit up, but she didn’t. And wouldn’t, she thought, dismayed. She wanted him. She knew she wanted him.
Even if she ran away, it would only be far enough to find a place to take the heat out of her throbbing loins herself. In the beating of her eager heart, she could hear Gabriel’s quiet, knowing laughter.
“Why me?” she heard herself whisper.
Arion blinked, half-rising onto one elbow. “What?”
“I’m not…” She trailed off, huddled small in the bed.
His frown grew, but despite the urgency apparent in his flesh, there was only concern in his eyes. “What is it, Rhiannon? Tell me.”
“You don’t…want…me.” The admission came out like razors and she rubbed at her throat, avoiding his eyes. “You can’t.”
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“Aye, I can. I do. Ah, Rhiannon.” He laughed softly, stroking her arm with the side of one finger until she looked at him. “I have had many lovers,” he said. “And never have I wanted even one with half the fevered longing that has me now, that has had me for some while. I can live if you send me away, my warrior, but I can no longer live without proclaiming honestly my desire. I flatter myself that I have seen some equal yearning…?” He paused to eye her closely, laughing when she blushed and ducked her head.
“So never tell me that I cannot want thee,” he said as he settled back onto the bed. “For tonight, I have seen thee at the window, more beautiful then the moon in her skies or home at the end of fifty years’ exile. Tonight, I need air to breathe, I need blood in my veins, and I need my Rhiannon to lay her cool hand upon me.”
Rhiannon’s cool hand brushed at her eyes. Her fingers twitched at the touch of her skin, as though disappointed they had not found fur. “Where?” she asked at last, and surrendered to her nature.
“Wheresoever thee wills.”
She reached out haltingly and touched his shoulder. She heard him utter a soft, broken breath that may have been a laugh, but there was no impatience in it. She relaxed, just a little, and spread her fingers to rest her palm on him. He was warm, soft and yet hard. She could feel the power in his body, his inhuman strength.
Arion. She was touching Arion.
She kept her hand on his shoulder, but reached with the other to touch his horn. Smooth. Cool. Striated, like a fingernail. Porous, like wood. Less polished than she imagined it would feel. She followed the sweeping curve of it to the blunt tip and down again to the thick base at the top of his head, sinking her fingers into fur once more.
Leaning over him to explore placed her at his mercy. She felt his breath blush warm through her t-shirt, and then his strong tongue prodded at her breast.
When she didn’t pull away, he reached up and lightly touched, petting at her to coax her nipples to peak, and then suckling at her through her clothing.
Rhiannon touched his face, cupping the strange dimensions of his cheeks in both hands, and then down. She closed her eyes and in blindness followed the path of his broad neck, his powerful chest. She felt his heart beating, steady and sure. Her own was the hammering of a clockwork bird’s.
His hands were at the hem of her shirt again, pushing it up unhurriedly.
She leaned back to make it easy for him, raising her arms as he bared her, and then letting them drop to her sides when he let the shirt fall. She watched his eyes anxiously as he looked at her in the candlelight. The sense of unreality was back, making it difficult to think, to breathe.
Arion lifted one hand and let his fingers drift over the smooth valley between her breasts. For a long time, he did nothing more. When he finally 439
spoke, his voice was hushed, reverent. “You are so beautiful. My eyes cannot see enough how all your body moves together. You are…so soft.” He swirled his hand across her, caressing all of her in gentle patterns before cupping one breast.
She was unprepared for the intensity of her body’s reaction to this, for the fiery surge that arched her back and tore a ragged breath from her throat. She closed her eyes, fighting it, and alone with his touch in the darkness, she reached back for him. She touched the shocking heat of him, and now it was his turn to arch and gasp. Her fingers closed with an instinct all their own and the fire burning in her aching sex became incandescent.
Apart from his size, he was no different from Jordan, or any other man, she guessed. So why was her heart racing like this? Why did every shaking pass of her hand echo itself so demandingly in her own loins?
It was as though she were separate from herself, watching from some safe place as she caressed him. She was mesmerized by him in his response, in the open, greedy way he accepted her touch, groaning and straining beneath her hand until—
“Nay! Nay, a moment! Ah, Rhiannon!” Arion gripped her wrist and pulled her away, pressing her palm to his muzzle in a kind of kiss. “My warrior.
My own.”
“I’m not—”
He didn’t seem to hear her. He brought her hard against him, nuzzling at her with that amazing blend of power and control. Her breast, her side, her arm, her throat, her wrist, her belly—there was no part of her that he would not touch or taste. She could sense his urgency building, but he vented it with shocking unselfishness on her.
His hands closed on her hips, pulling her suddenly astride his shoulders.
She cried out, then slapped both hands over her mouth to kill any following sounds. Unlike his cautious explorations of the rest of her body, this was something he knew well. Her panties were no obstacle; the friction of the fabric between them added a whole new dimension to his mouth’s forceful movements.
She writhed in place, muffling her cries as she suffered the excruciating pleasures of his tongue. It was eternity before he even began to remove her panties, and by then, she couldn’t bear to have his mouth away from her even long enough to let him take away that last restraint. In the end, she was able only to tolerate him pulling the material aside and then he was at, against, and inside her, seemingly all at once.
She came like a crack of thunder, deafening in her own mind. She couldn’t feel herself in space, his shoulders beneath her knees, or her hands over her mouth. Only his tongue at her clit, driving deep into her passage, undulating in shivery waves before licking all along her cleft. He tended her as though he 440
wanted to, as though he could be quenched by nothing but her, as though he could imagine nothing greater.
The second burst of pleasure was even more powerful than the first. It numbed her to all sensation, even that of him swinging her down onto the bed and deftly tearing her panties away. Then he fell on her again, his arms wrapped tightly around her hips, burying himself in her to drink and drink and drink.
She was saying something—God alone knew what, since she still had her hands over her mouth—but whatever it was, Arion heard it for her heart’s plea.
He rose above her, breathing hard. She reached between them to grip his shaft, stroking twice rapidly before guiding him to her. He watched with burning eyes as she fit them together, and then he touched her face—that gentle, questing touch—and came down to her, entering her.
He was careful. She didn’t want careful. She locked her ankles around his hips and yanked him deep, gasping as he imbedded himself fully in that single thrust. Arion lowed, a bullish bellow that nobody and nothing could make but Arion. She felt the sound shaking in her bones and ground against him for more, locked in a world of endless climax. He seized a handful of pelt-covered mattress next to her shoulder and pulled hard as he surrendered to her, shaking her and the bed and the whole damn planet with the power of his thrusts.
