Dragon Lord (12 page)

He swallowed. Mesmerized, she watched the movement of his throat, watched his face as it moved closer, filled her vision, and then his lips as they parted and then she lost all awareness of anything else as she felt the pressure of his mouth over hers. Her heart clenched painfully in her chest. Something hot and burning shot through her veins. Like acid, it seemed to burn a path through her and leave ash in its wake.

His mouth was hot, demanding, savage, almost hurtful, his tongue a conqueror, not a petitioner, as he thrust it between her lips and raked it along hers with a ravaging hunger that took the last of the starch out of her knees. As she slipped, the hands she hadn’t even realized were holding her, tightened, one on her breast, one on her waist. The pull of fabric in her clutched fists told her she was gripping two fistfuls of his shirt even though she had no recollection of grabbing a hold.

Fire pored through her, awakening her to sensation all over her body. As if she’d been frozen and abruptly thawed, it was so intense it was almost more painful that pleasurable. His taste enthralled her, intoxicated her. Her world reeled on its axis drunkenly and she clung more tightly to his shirt as she lost equilibrium along with all else. Her belly quivered, the walls of her sex tightening and easing in a milking fashion, as if begging for the feel of his flesh inside of her.

She wanted it, more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life before. Images flooded her mind of his body striving above hers. The thrusting sweep of his tongue in her mouth became the thrust of his cock in her nether mouth. The walls of her sex tingled and clenched in a mournful, aching echo of the pleasure rocketing through her from the feel of his tongue along the sensitive flesh of her mouth.

She sucked in a shuddering breath. Want, need, desperation thrummed along her vocal chords, emerging as an animalistic sound of supplication. An answering shudder rippled through him at the sound. His hand tightened on her breast, squeezing and releasing like the muscles along her channel.

She moved restlessly, entwined her tongue tentatively along his to savor the taste and touch of him even more. Almost as if he’d been waiting for that sign of complete and utter surrender, or perhaps as if it had somehow broken through his own focus of his needs, he withdrew his tongue from her mouth, withdrew his mouth from hers as abruptly as he’d captured it. She followed the retreat as far as she could before the tether of his fingers in her hair prevented further pursuit.

His ragged breath fanned her face. She opened her eyes with an effort, no more than a sliver. His face was taut, his golden eyes, narrowed, but wild with the same savagery that had been in his kiss. “Next time,” he ground out, “the forfeit will be more than a kiss. I will take everything I want.”

A shiver crawled over her with the withdrawal of his heat. She stared at him blankly as he released her completely and eased away from her until he no longer touched her anywhere, too focused on trying to keep her legs from dropping out from under her to think.

“Get out!” he snarled. “And do not ever come in here again.”

She stumbled over his feet as the order galvanized her to move at last. Grabbing the edge of the door to steady herself briefly, she fled mindlessly down the hall, unaware of any destination until her gaze lit on the narrow, rear stairway. She blundered down them blindly. Her feet skidded out from under her the third or fourth stair down and her ass made painful contact with the step behind her. It broke her fall, jarred some of the shock out of her along with her breath. She didn’t move, couldn’t gather her wits enough to even figure out how to get up.

Mrs. Higgenbottom appeared at the bottom of the stairs, fresh folded linens in her hands. She stopped as abruptly as if she’d hit a wall, staring up the stairs--past Raina’s head. Feeling the hairs on the back of her neck prickle, Raina wrenched her head around to follow the path of the woman’s stare.

Simon, still breathing heavily, stood braced at the top behind her. Dimly, she realized the sound of her fall must have drawn him. Her lips parted in surprise but the sight of him was enough to send a rush of adrenaline through her. She pushed herself up and stumbled down the remainder of the stairs, sliding across half of them on ass. Her grip on the handrail was all that kept her from pitching forward when she neared Higgenbottom and slamming into the woman. She nearly knocked the woman down anyway as she shoved her aside to get past her.

“Rainie!”

Instead of freezing her on the spot, the sound of Simon’s voice calling her name sent another burst of adrenaline through her. She flattened herself against the back door momentarily when she failed to disengage the latch fast enough, fought for several mindless moments and finally managed to disengage the latch. Realizing at last that she had to pull the door inward to get it open, she wrestled with it and finally got the door open far enough to squeeze through. Without a pause, she raced through the garden, through the covered walkway, and across the front lawn.

She found herself jogging down the beach with no idea at all of how she’d found her way there. Feeling a stitch in her side, she slowed, gasping for breath. She heard the pounding of running footsteps behind her then, though. Whirling, she saw Audric barreling toward her. Uttering a breathless cry as her heart lurched in her chest, she whirled away and started running again.

She couldn’t hear anything beyond the roar of the tide and wind in her ears and the internal pounding of her heart. Thoughts flickered disjointedly through her mind, had since she’d fled Simon’s rooms, but she was in no state to try to collect them or sort them into any sort of order. She didn’t even know why she was running or where she thought she was going.

She’d simply yielded to an instinct to flee and been caught up so tightly in the urge that it continued to drive her even when she’d begun to feel as if her heart and lungs were going to give out with the effort. Something hard slammed into her abruptly, pitching her forward toward the sand. He fell with her, caught the brunt of the collision with his shoulder and hip, and it still jarred her painfully. She was only stunned momentarily, though, began struggling to claw her way out of his grip, driving sand painfully deep beneath her nails.

His arms tightened around her. Briefly, they wrestled on the sand and then he heaved himself over her, pinning her hips beneath his, manacling her wrists with his hands and forcing her arms to the sand. “Raina!” he growled when she continued to heave against him in an effort to throw him off. “It is I, Audric!”

She stopped abruptly at that, staring up at him. She’d known it was Audric all the time. A sob of a breath escaped her. Her lungs were still heaving so desperately for air she felt nauseous. Numbness abruptly gave way to pain and she expelled another hard sob. Another chased it, and then another until she was gulping and sobbing uncontrollably, hard cries that wrenched painfully at her chest.

He eased his hold on her wrists, lifted a hand to stroke her hair from her cheek. It was enough of an invitation to pour out her grief. She grabbed two fistfuls of his shirt and burrowed her face against him, trying to find comfort in his warmth and his scent. He rolled, carrying her with him until they were lying side by side, his arms tightening around her and holding her close. After a few moments, he began to stroke her back soothingly, murmuring words she couldn’t understand--in his own tongue, she realized dimly. It didn’t matter. It was still soothing and she still cried until she couldn’t any more, until she could only snuffle and hiccough for breath.

Exhausted finally, she relaxed against him, more because she didn’t have the strength to continue to cling to him frantically than because she wanted to let go.

“Why cry, Raina?” he asked huskily when she’d quieted.

Why? she wondered dimly, uncertain of why she’d wept as if her heart was broken, or why she’d run.

“Simon hurt?” he asked after a lengthy pause, anger threading his voice now.

When she didn’t respond, he eased away from her, trying to see her face. She burrowed deeper against him, trying to hide her tear ravaged face, to avoid the probing of his gaze. He wouldn’t allow it. He caught her jaw in one hand and urged her face upward until she could only close her eyes to shield herself from him.

“Simon hurt?” he demanded.

Simon hurt, she thought. Yes. Simon hurt. That was why she’d cried, not for herself, not for anything he’d done. Although it had hurt her to the quick when he’d snarled at her to leave, she’d understood that it was fury borne of pain that had inspired it, anger that she’d seen something meant to be private and not shared, certainly not with her.

It wasn’t
her
pain that had dredged up the hurtful wails. It was
his
that was chewing her up,
his
suffering that made her hurt so badly she felt like she couldn’t bear it.

Because she knew,
knew
, that he had loved that woman,
still
loved her and there was not even a tiny little corner of his heart that was open to anyone else. She hadn’t even realized that she had coveted that as much as she’d yearned for his body until she’d seen just how truly hopeless such an idea was.

She sniffed, shook her head. “No,” she finally managed. “He didn’t do anything.”

His face tightened. The smoldering of anger in his eyes blazed into rage. “Liar.”

Her chin wobbled. “No,” she said on the edge of tears again, but she couldn’t explain it. Even if not for the language barrier that stood between them like an impenetrable wall, she couldn’t have explained that she’d
felt
the agony of his tormented soul to the depth hers and it wasn’t anything she’d ever felt before or wanted to feel. She’d run to escape the weight of it, unable to handle emotions more powerful than anything she’d ever known. She’d run to escape the shattering of dreams she hadn’t even realized she had been nurturing.

“No cry,” he said huskily, nuzzling his face against hers as he dragged in several ragged breaths.

Finally, he eased her away and sat up. When he released her to stand, Riana mopped her eyes and nose with her hands, wiping the moisture on her jeans for lack of anything else. He caught her hand, hauling her to her feet and then brushing at the sand that clung to her clothes and skin while she wavered and tried to find her balance. Slipping an arm around her waist when he’d brushed the sand off, he dipped and hooked the other beneath her knees and hefted her against his chest. She looped her arms around his neck instinctively. “You don’t need to carry me. I can walk,” she said on a shaky, snuffling breath.

“No argue,” he said tightly.

She was too tired to argue. If he wanted to risk a hernia carrying her as if she was child, she was in no mood to quibble. Sucking in a shaky breath, she dropped her head to his shoulder and enjoyed the nothingness that had settled over her as her tears swept her clean of emotion, left her feeling empty.

Dread began to filter through the emptiness as they reached the front lawn. She hadn’t run far enough or fast enough to escape the pall of sorrow that hung over the mansion. It shamed to her to realize she’d been too insensitive to notice before.

But she had, she realized in the next moment. She’d just misinterpreted it. She’d thought they were all cold and unfeeling when the truth was they were hiding from the raw emotions they didn’t want to feel or deal with any more than she did, probably didn’t
know
how to deal with any more than she did. No wonder they all looked as if a smile would be enough to make their faces crack like fractured ice.

Simon was standing at the head of the stairs as Audric began to climb them. Raina caught no more than a glimpse of his boots before she knew who it was. Tensing all over, she tightened her arms around Audric’s shoulders and burrowed her face against the crook of his neck. When he stopped, she hunched even closer to him, wishing she could become invisible. Audric’s arms tightened on her, but she didn’t know if that was because she was strangling him or not. She relaxed fractionally when he started moving again and she could tell by the change in direction that he’d turned toward the room she’d been using. The temptation assailed her to peek over her arms to see if Simon was watching. She quelled it. If he was, she didn’t want to know badly enough to risk meeting his gaze.

She didn’t want to see
that
again, ever. It had been hard enough to deal with the other things he’d made her feel, desire so powerful it wasn’t even recognizable as desire, need that threw her into so much turmoil all she could think about was escaping its grip on her. She felt, suddenly, as if she’d lived her entire life up until the moment she’d first seen Simon in an emotional desert. All the pain, happiness, sorrow, anger, desires she’d experienced had been nothing, mere bumps in the road, so insignificant she wondered that she’d even noticed them now.

She didn’t want to let go of Audric when he shouldered his way into her room and settled her on her bed, partly because she wasn’t ready to give up the comfort of his closeness, but mostly because she’d finally emerged enough from her self-absorption to realize he was tense all over, to feel the rage boiling out of him and threatening to explode in violence. “Stay with me, please?”

He peeled her arms loose in spite of her efforts to hang on to him. Fear squeezed her heart when she saw his face. She’d never seen that look on anyone’s face before, but she knew what it was.