Bloodstone (15 page)

He sighed, and the warmth of his breath caressed her face. Mirianna closed her eyes with pleasure at the contact. They flew open again when his knee crossed hers and the corded thickness of his thigh slid upwards, bunching her skirt above it. His hip leaned into the curve of her bone, and she felt, even as the breath shuttled in and out of her lungs, the pressure of the hard, hot ridge of his manhood against her abdomen. Her body thrummed with sensation. Her nerve endings quivered, jarred by a movement more intimate—and erotic—than any he’d made before.

Let me see your face,
she pleaded, searching the shadow that formed his head
. Let me know who you are.

His movements stilled as if her unspoken words had reached him. For heartbeats, she sensed the scrutiny of his gaze as he lay unmoving, his weight securing her hips beneath his, his knee holding the secrets of her body unlocked and vulnerable. Finally, his hand rose to the fine bones at the base of her throat and lingered there a moment. Then his fingers, feather light, unlaced her bodice and laid it open.

Mirianna sucked in breath while blood pounded in her ears. Her nipples puckered under the gentle breath he blew over each one. Shifting slightly, he grazed a fingertip over each hardened nub.

Mirianna’s world pitched and rocked. Her body arched upward, leaning, straining toward the touch. Her arms rose of their own accord and reached for his shoulders. She yearned to pull him down to her, to beg him to ease the sweet pain coursing through her body with more than a whisper of contact. But as soon as her arms entered the plane of his shape, he vanished.

She bolted upright and blinked like an owl while the room swam around her. Through the lingering sensual fog, she heard, somewhere, the scrape of boots and the sound of men’s voices. Her father? Pumble?
That’s right, we’re leaving, aren’t we?

Her hands rushed to straighten her dress and leaped away when they contacted only skin. Mortified, she looked down and saw her bodice gaping open. A delicate flush colored her breasts and the nipples stood out firm and pointed. She cast a frantic glance around the room. Two long shadows stretched out from the farthest corner and, fingerlike, gripped the side of the bed. Over the mattress, the tips curled like claws, extending narrow bands of blackness across the depression in which her body had only moments earlier rested.

Fine hairs on the back of Mirianna’s neck stood straight up. The down on her arms and body rose in waves that began at her shoulders and rocked to an end at the base of her spine. One thought took on crystalline certainty in her mind. One horrible, terrifying thought:
He touched me! By the Dragon, that—that creature was here and he touched me!

With a groan, she sprang from the bed. Her fingers fumbled with her clothing, jerking the lacings tight over breasts that seemed twice their normal size and prickled with every shift of fabric over sensitized nipples. Shaking like an aspen leaf, she snatched up her belongings, hurled them into her pack, and broke from the room.

In the corridor, she ran headlong into Rees. He absorbed the brunt of the collision with a grunt and a backward step. She ricocheted off his chest, bounced against the wall, and would have fallen if he hadn’t dropped his pack and caught her arm.

His slowly blooming smile told her terror still radiated from her expression. “Can’t wait to get out of this place, can you?” He stepped into the space between their bodies. “I don’t blame you. A sweet thing like you has to be careful where she sleeps.” His free hand skated up her arm, slowing enough next to her breast for the outside of his thumb to graze its swell.

She flinched at the contact, but he only tightened his grip on her arm. “Don’t worry. I’ll protect you from anything that tries to crawl under your blankets.”

Revulsion—sharp, acidic, and wholly unmistakable—squirted through Mirianna’s veins. Her body reacted, propelling her hands into his chest with a force only muscles still charged with panic could deliver.

Rees staggered back two steps, a startled look on his face.

“By the Dragon, don’t you—don’t you ever touch me again!” With a wild look, she seized her pack and bolted for the stairs.

Halfway to the stable, her legs turned to mush. She stumbled to a trough and sank down on the edge, breathing hard while dots of color exploded on the fringe of her vision. Her ears roared, but even within that roar, she discerned another sound. Her fingers dug into the damp wood, curling like claws as her body recognized the voice before her mind could distinguish the words.

—Remember, not all of the beasts—

For a score of heartbeats, Mirianna did not breathe. When nothing further echoed in her mind, she gulped in a lungful of air.
Beasts!
She shoved a shaky hand through her hair. There was no shortage of beasts in the vicinity—Rees, the Krad, Pumble, Ulerroth. Even her father fit the description for wanting to buy stones collected by something monstrous.

And then there was the Shadow Man himself.

Mirianna gulped more air. Her body still quivered with the aftershocks of his touch.
His
touch. Somehow, in that room, his...essence...had invaded her dreams and he had become—

“No!” She sprang to her feet and backed away from the trough, shaking her head. It was too horrible to comprehend. She would not even consider the possibility that he had become—that he might have always been—that he was—

It had to be the room. Nothing more. Now she was out of it, she was free. Wasn’t she?

Mirianna spun, raking the inn yard with a desperate glance. In the late afternoon sunshine, shadows lurked everywhere, long, dark shadows that seemed to slink toward her with the patience—and purpose—of a Wehrland lion stalking prey. Sinking her teeth into her lower lip, she turned and ran toward the stable.

****

By all the sons of Koronolan, she’s breathtaking.

The first glimpse of the woman who came to him like quicksilver through the planes of his dream always left the man breathless. It didn’t matter if she appeared after an absence of days or merely hours, her beauty stole the very air of life, withholding it from him just long enough to fill it with her own lush scent. Lilacs, he thought, breathing deeply. Blue ones, not the cloying purple. And—he breathed again—musk. Just a hint of her own unique woman’s scent.

His body stirred at the thought of her scent warm and slick on his fingers. Hardened at the thought of dark, honey-colored woman’s hair moist against his palm. Stirred and hardened even though he knew why she came, and what visions of paradise she would offer him before she vanished—and he awoke throbbing with need. If only he could wake now, before...but he had no more will this time than he’d had a hundred times before.

Skin the color of milky quartz, hair as luminous and golden brown as polished lion-eye, eyes the twin blue stars in Kiros’s belt, she glided toward him. A shimmering white gown flowed sensuously with the movements of her hips and thighs. Each step parted the gown over a length of alabaster thigh. His mouth went dry, and heat pooled in his groin as she closed the space between them. All the while she looked at him, and there was nothing between his eyes and hers, nothing but a hand’s breadth of air.

He groaned, riven with an ache both pleasure and pain. Her breath drifted across his collarbone and the slowly closing space between their bodies. Then, somehow, his world cart-wheeled and, when he opened his eyes again, she was lying beneath him on a bed of golden furs, her arms stretched above her head, the white under-skin incandescent against the wild array of her hair. Her thighs, long, cool, and as smooth as polished limestone, twined themselves around the leg he’d parted them with. Her eyes, molten blue, fixed on his while she slowly rotated her hips. His breath caught in his throat. Blood hummed in his ears. He leaned into her, pressed himself hard against the bone cradling her femininity, yearning to hold her a moment longer, to hang onto the dream before it dissipated—again—and he was left with nothing but the memory. And the pain.

By Koronolan and Kiros, stay with me...please!

As if in answer to his unspoken plea, her gown parted at the touch of his fingers and, like water, slid from her breasts.

Desire rocked through him like a hammer’s blow, stealing his breath at the sudden and unexpected gift. One part of his consciousness knew the dream had changed, and wondered why. The rest merely stared, drunk with the vision of breasts round and white and as delicately veined as marble. Their crowning aureoles and firm mauve peaks seemed to beg for the caress of his fingers. Stretching out a hand, he reverently touched a fingertip to first one nipple, then the other.

Instantly, a shudder convulsed her body. A look as of pain pulled her lips from her teeth. Her body arched upward and her breasts grazed his chest. Dizzy, he reached for her, hungry for her nakedness, hungry for the touch of skin to skin. His arms closed on nothing.

The man blinked toward the late afternoon sun, seeing it without comprehending. The sensual fog filling his brain left him stuporous, heavy with the blood engorging his groin and flushing his skin. He looked down, saw his boots and realized he’d dozed where he sat. The flat stone beneath him gnawed at the base of his spine. He told himself to concentrate on the dull ache, hoping if he kept his focus, it might ease the desolation already coiling like a viper around his heart.

The despair broad-sided him anyway, like a sword he should have seen but didn’t, even though he knew it was raised against him. Every time she came to him—and vanished—it was the same. Except this time.

He bit back a groan. This time it was worse. Much worse, because she’d offered him more, and then stolen it all away.

He caught his lower lip between his teeth and hunched over folded arms, trying to hold the pain, his agony—everything—within. He tasted iron, and knew the warmth trickling down his chin wasn’t sweat. The realization, and the blood, made him gag. His hands balled into fists, fists of leather and flesh.

Flesh that will never see the light of day!

A snarl curled his lips from his teeth. His jaws ground together, and the cords of his neck stood out.

There will be no woman—ever—who will look at you the way a woman looks at a man. You aren’t a man. You’re nothing but a shadow. A denizen of the night, doomed to kill her if she ever sees you...unveiled.

He stood and gasped for air. His chest seemed constricted, as if bound by too tight armor, and he could draw nothing in. Lightheaded, he wavered at the edge of the sandstone outcrop.

A subtle movement to his left brought his vision instantly into focus. Twenty strides away, where the level patch on which he stood tapered to a point, the she-cat lounged on a sun-drenched, lichen-covered rock and stared at him.

Sweat bloomed on the man’s chest and broke out in beads on his upper lip. His lungs still burned, but he dared not fill them with more than shallow breaths. The lion was too close. Even though it seemed relaxed, lying with ankles crossed as daintily as any highborn lady, the feline’s powerful hindquarters could propel it with such speed the animal would be on him before he could run ten steps.

The she-cat rolled slightly onto her shoulders, raising one huge forepaw. The action revealed a breast patch of snow-white fur, the color a startling contrast to the tawny of the animal’s outer coat. Eyes still fixed on the man, she lowered her head, angled her chin against her chest, and began to groom herself.

The rasp of her tongue, dragging leisurely across her fur, sounded overloud in the man’s ears. He stared, mesmerized by the slow, steady strokes and the unwavering gaze of hooded, yellow-green eyes. With difficulty, his thoughts formed the questions that had lingered like brooding embryos at the back of his mind since he’d first seen the cat.

Who are you? What do you want with me?

As if in response, the she-cat paused, a tip of tongue showing dark pink against the black line of her lip. Her mouth opened, the tongue curled, and she yawned, exposing all of her teeth. Lowering her head again, she returned to her grooming. The luminescent yellow-green eyes, though, maintained their unblinking regard.

A frisson of awareness traveled the length of the man’s spine. The look, the actions, though catlike, gnawed at the edges of his memory.
I know you, don’t I?

The lion paused again. One black-tipped ear twitched a fly away. The luminescent gaze remained unwavering.

Under its steady bombardment, he wondered if the animal was staring not at him but somehow through him, through the protective layers of his clothing, through the web of his thoughts, through everything he had become...to something buried...

“—Do you know me? Or do you only think that you do?—”

The reply rooted the man’s feet to the ground. The quivering had gone out of his legs, and his lungs no longer burned. Although a corner of his mind screamed warning, his muscles refused to mount any defense. A kind of languor had stolen into them, rendering him powerless to pull away, powerless to do anything but remember...

He was howling like an enraged beast, and crashing forward as the spell broke, falling and cutting his hands on the stone, feeling nothing, not the searing heat or the jagged edges. He was howling for Errek, for big, loyal, lovesick Errek who trusted him—killed by his hand. By his own bloody hand!

He stared at it, at the rivulets of dark, glossy red oozing from his fingers and palm and dripping, ever so slowly, into his tunic cuff.

Somewhere nearby, the mage chortled. “You dragon keepers are such a foolish lot.”

Jaw clenched, his lips curled into a snarl. “I’ll kill you, Syryk! By all the sons of Koronolan, I swear I’ll kill you!” His knife was gone, but he still had his dagger and his shield. And, not far away, lay the ancient Sword of Drakkonwehr, the stone in the crosspiece shimmering blood red in the waves of heat rising around it.