Pleasure (4 page)

Sagan heard a chorus in the back of his brain warning him of doom and gloom like something out of a Greek play, but there was a much stronger voice drowning it out, demanding he taste his pretty little forbidden fruit.

Just one small taste.

The priest rubbed his mouth over hers, taking a moment just to feel her soft, warm lips and the increasing excitement in her breaths. The faster she drew for air, the more it aroused him. Because he knew what it meant. He knew it was a harbinger to what would come to all his other waiting senses. First it was taste. The gentle intrusion of her flavor as he kissed her in small, brief meshes of their mouths; the promise of something sweeter and so succulent he couldn't take any more time to wait. He sought her tongue quickly, insisting on the deepest intimacy so he could know all of her on his palate. She made a little humming sound in her throat, the vibration and meaning of it seeking out his spine in a hot instant. Her fingers flexed into his skin, and her body melted
back into his with a willing curve. He settled his hand into the small bow of her back immediately, allowing himself to be so close to all that sweetly rounded flesh she harbored.

Sagan's heart seized as she warmed quickly to him, shyness dissipating and eagerness to explore overtaking her. She became instantly more aggressive, one of her hands spearing into his hair to hold the back of his head. She was preventing him from leaving before she was ready to let him go, and that excited him beyond reason. He was going raptly numb with the shock of sensation that exploded over his entire face as their mouths toyed together again and again. It spread outward and down his whole body until the numbness disappeared and fire arose in its wake, sizzling all the nerves under his skin. It was as if he were swallowing sweetly toxic and forbidden light. Not any light, but pure sunlight. The strongest and deadliest beauty known to his kind.

His Greek chorus drowned a tragic death and went silent. Wrong? What could be wrong about anything that felt so gloriously good? The tragedy would be to stop…or not to push his advantage further. Taking the advice to heart, Sagan slid his hand down over the swell of her bottom and took a serious hold, using the grip to jolt her entire body tighter against his. It drew her pelvis into direct contact with his and announced to her just how she affected his body as the bath towel around his hips did nothing to disguise his hard arousal.

Valera released an adorable little squeak of surprise at the rough jogging of her body, and followed it with a gasp and a sharp break from his mouth when she became aware of his body and its loudly announced state of interest. But despite the shock of her actions, she rose up on her toes to follow his urging as he rubbed her tightly against him.

“And this just from a kiss,” he ground out against her stunned lips. “How is it you have done this to a man who prides himself on his control and discipline? Explain it to me.”

Valera couldn't explain anything because he engulfed her in another string of burning-hot and increasingly erotic kisses. Sagan's kiss was like engaging in raw sin, only without the shame or guilt or any of the rest of it. He sipped and sucked at her mouth, then was devouring her with such a keen hunger that her breasts went heavy and taut where they were crushed against his bare chest. She could feel the heat of his naked skin through her sweater, her blouse, and her bra as if she were as naked as he was. His hand on her ass was decadently close to such private places, and it awoke every last one of those places to feel him there.

“Tell me again I don't like you,” he groaned as he rubbed himself against her restlessly.

“You don't know me!” she gasped, her hands gripping him all the harder.

“That doesn't appear to matter,” he breathed heavily. “To either of us.” He smiled against her mouth then, drawing away slightly and stopping his urgent crush against her body, though they remained locked close from the hips down. He slid his hand down from her neck, flattening his palm against her chest as he went. “But if it will make you feel better, Valera, I will tell you that I know a lot about you.”

Val didn't know how to take that, other than with surprise. She still didn't know exactly what he was. He could have any number of supernatural abilities. He could be a telepath who could read her mind. Then he would find out…

“No!”

She yanked free of him hard and fast, taking him completely off guard. Cold hit her body hard, like a cry of anguish as she left his heat. She had to protect herself, she thought wildly. She had to keep distant and…and…and cool. Efficient and friendly. Feed him, get him well, and get him out! And she had to do it without giving herself away. The closer he got, the more he probed her personality or her thoughts or even her body, the higher the risk he would learn
the truth, and without meaning to, it could erupt into a battle of survival against him. She couldn't let that happen! He was too beautiful…and too vulnerable. All it would take was…light.

 

Valera stumbled to the kitchen sink, bending over it as her belly soured with the very idea. Why, oh why, was this happening to her? She had done everything she could to avoid everyone! Human and non-human alike.

“Valera?” It was a question, but it was even more a reprimand for leaving him. She felt him come closer once again and she turned on the water to muffle the sob that choked her. She began to wash her face, forcing back her emotions.

She straightened up, turning off the water and grabbing a towel to dry her face. She gathered herself together and turned to meet his eyes with a boldness she didn't feel.

“I'm sorry,” she said stiffly, “but I am not a part of the hospitality I am offering you. Don't think that just because I live out here all alone I will take any advantage to come my way. You are welcome here in every other way, but not for that.”

Valera turned from his justifiably shocked expression and busied herself taking baked goods from her oven. He hadn't moved a single millimeter by the time she turned to face him down. He didn't strike her as a man who would meekly let someone dictate terms to him, and she was right.

“I do not touch you out of convenience,” he all but hissed with the fuel of his fury. “In fact, Valera, I am a priest with very distinct boundaries I must obey, and I promise you I never cross them lightly. Did you not hear the heavy fall of the step I took when I kissed you? You are forbidden to me, Valera, and my legendary discipline was nothing in the face of your effect on me.” He clenched his hands into tight fists. “So do not ever imply I would treat you with so little value and so much disrespect.”

Valera couldn't respond. She was in shock at his revela
tion. He had broken the rules for her? All she had to do was look at him standing proud and fierce before her and she knew he did not break rules, but instead he would be the one to enforce them on others. But what he said—it implied that she was some sort of temptation. Something magnetic and irresistible. God, it had certainly felt that way. It had felt as if he would devour her if he could.

Who had ever wanted her like that? Who had ever wanted to break the rules for her?

“I'm sorry,” she whispered, hot tears rushing out of her before she could control it. “I was feeling so much and it was wonderful, but I'm…”

He took advantage of her hesitation to step up to her and firmly draw her close. He lowered his head and spoke softly against her ear. “Afraid?” he asked quietly, accepting her immediate nod. “Yes, Valera, there is too much unknown between us and the unknown is fearful. What I don't tell you,” he tried to explain, “is what protects thousands and thousands of people. People who are precious to me. Even more precious than the vows I have betrayed just by touching you.”

“You shouldn't,” she hitched out softly, trying to brush his hold away.

“Never fear, sweet. I will pay penance for my sin. But I will do it gladly and with pleasure just to have known the taste and the feel of you.” This last came out low and intensely erotic, sending shivers down her breasts and tightening her sensitized nipples. “Can you imagine, pretty little Valera, what I would be willing to pay for the chance to immerse myself in the sin that you are?”

Oh, but how could he ever sincerely repent of something that felt so magnificent? Just holding her rocked him with astounding sensation and need. Her vulnerable tears and ridiculous surprise that he would find her so irresistible were too enchanting. He sensed she was a strong woman. She had to be to survive so bravely alone in so harsh an environment,
but she was equally sensitive and this, he suspected, was why she had hidden herself away from the rest of her race.

“I won't let you get punished because of me,” she balked, trying again to draw away from him. But this time Sagan was well prepared for her resistance. She finally stopped struggling when she realized she wasn't the smallest bit of a challenge to his strength and will. “Why?” she asked weakly as she relaxed against him. “Why, when you know it's wrong for you?”

“You're right,” he breathed. “I should control myself better. However, Valera, I find a serious lack of desire to turn away the first woman to stimulate my interest in a very long time. Too long a time. For all I am a devoted priest,
Drenna
knows I am a man as well. And either this is the cruelest temptation
M'gnone
could ever dangle before me, or there is another reason behind it. What are the odds I should come here, to this remote little place and this extraordinary woman, only to so suddenly feel this way? And then to have you feel the same in return. No, don't deny me, Valera. I can feel it. I…”

Know it. Without any doubt, the knowledge burst into his brain with brilliance and satisfaction as his innate telepathic power flared to life inside him. He soared through her wonderful mind, facts and details about her suddenly flooding him, familiarizing him with her, telling him what she held so reluctantly secret.

Magic.

To one of his kind, the word was a curse and a danger. Those hunted and caught by necromancers were maliciously destroyed by those befouled creatures. The black magic that stained their souls was easy to detect on them, as the foulness emanated from them in a disgusting odor any Nightwalker could smell even from a distance. To the point where it was almost unbearable. They reeked like gasoline and fetid garbage, and their power was deadly and dangerous.

And Valera had been one of them. She had fallen in with them a decade ago, corrupting herself.

However, Sagan only needed to breathe deeply of the clean purity of lilies and sunflowers to know she was not of that evil ilk any longer. Indeed, she had never intentionally meant to be a part of such corruption. When she had learned what they were all about, she had bolted from them as fast and as far as she could, hating herself for her small deviation from the way she really was.

What astounded the priest above everything else was the realization that she still used magic. In fact, she had used it
to protect herself from the two who had intended her deep harm. Anger flushed his body as he recalled the threats made against her using her memories of the encounter. She had been so quietly brave, tapping into the part of herself she still half feared to protect herself, her home, and him.

Yet, in spite of having recently toyed with what he deemed to be a dark art, it had left no stain behind itself. There was nothing to mark her as tainted or evil, and he knew that was because she was the farthest thing from it. Indeed, she was something so strong that she had been able to pull herself away from the brink of the addiction the magic she had been using had become to her. Sagan saw and felt it clearly in her mind and memories, the clarity of the understanding so sharp.

Evil magic became an addiction. Like cocaine or methamphetamines, one taste was enough to corrupt the whole person instantly. It cascaded downward from there. But Valera had broken away and saved herself, her moral fiber so strong she couldn't bear what she had seen them do to his kind so punitively. Feeling how compelling it had been to drown in the high that was black magic, he was shocked at what it must have taken for her to save herself.

However, Sagan had never heard of good magic-users, and he was mystified by the anomaly she was. He was also very aware of her terror that he would find out and try to hurt her for it because of his universal beliefs against her kind. But…it wasn't “her kind.” She was something very different than those the Shadowdwellers had fought against in the past. Not that it was ever much of a fight. Necromancers had a terrible advantage over his people, as she had recently found out for herself. Just calling her power emitted a brilliant blue energy that would hurt him just like any other light would. Or so he understood. He didn't know for certain, and he didn't have time to filter through her every memory of every spell in her repertoire.

“So,” he said softly, “you are even more of a surprise than I thought.”

Valera was looking into his eyes as those long moments of thought passed over him, and so she knew when he said that exactly what he meant. She jolted in instantaneous fear, trying to jerk away from him. “No! I'm not! I'm not what you think! Let go!” she cried when he held her all the tighter. She sobbed harshly in her panic. “Please don't hurt me,” she begged him. “I don't want to hurt you!”

Sagan gripped her tightly, drawing her flailing body up close so he could hush softly against her ear.

“Shh, Valera,” he soothed her. “I know. I know what you are and how different you are from those we call our enemies.” He smiled with bemusement as he pulled back to look at her. “And you know what I am, don't you?”

“No,” she breathed, her entire body still trembling with her post-fear adrenaline. “I mean…not exactly. I think you are a Nightwalker, but I don't know which kind. Can you read my mind? Are you a telepath? Is that how you know?”

“Yes. But telepathy is not so selective as you might think. What made you think I would only learn of the magic, but not of the person behind it and her good intentions? What you must think of my people to feel we would come after you without discretion? And clearly you know nothing of Shadowdwellers or you would never have chosen this place to hide in.”

That remark baffled her, but she focused on one part of it.

“Shadowdweller? I've never met a Shadowdweller before. Thank God.”

He knew she meant that if she had, that would mean her past associates had gotten a hold of one to imprison and torture. But all it had taken was seeing them capture a Demon and watching it go through its tortured transformation to convince her that something was very, very wrong with those who had taken pleasure in its pain and terror. While the others used the end result to prove to themselves that the
creature they held was evil, Valera had known that nothing that caused anything to suffer so much in the process of stripping it of its beauty and civilization could ever be called good or righteous as they would have her believe. In the end, the transformed Demon monster left in the magical pentagram had been nothing to her compared to the magical monsters waiting with avarice to force the imprisoned thing to use its power for their benefit.

“As you see, your magic can easily kill us, intentional or not. You radiate light when you call your power, and it sears us almost instantly.”

“Not always,” she said quietly, turning her eyes down as her lashes dampened. “The light only comes with certain spells. Usually aggressive ones. But I can…”

Rather than explain, she turned in his embrace slightly and with a simple sweep of two fingers she sent the muffins popping out of their pan and let them drift onto the plate nearby in a neat little circular arrangement. He could see how simple it was for her; how effortless.

“It's a harmless telekinesis,” he noted. “You are using it in a passive capacity. Peacefully.”

“Although the use of it for household chores is a bit of a gray area on the good and evil scale. Too much of it for convenience's sake is considered abuse. I'm perfectly capable of doing that without magic. If I were sick or disabled, then it would be different. It would be necessary. But there's no harm in a small demonstration.”

“Not as long as light isn't involved,” he mused with an expression that teased. She grinned finally and playfully pushed against his chest.

“Quit it. I'm just glad you don't want to kill me.”

Sagan lifted a brow at that, even as his mind turned back to what he
did
want to do to her. Valera obviously saw the change in his thoughts and intent because she tried to press away from him again.

“You should eat something,” she said awkwardly, her
cheeks turning pink. Then she gasped and looked up at him when she placed a double entendre to her own words and her whole throat and face began to burn bright red. “I meant muff—muffins. Or I can make you some eggs.”

Sagan laughed at her, unable to resist the impulse at all. She buried her face behind her hands as he hugged her reluctant body close. He enjoyed her softness and warmth, but more than that he delighted in the opportunity to laugh. Not that Sanctuary was an unhappy place to be, but like any job it had its heavy responsibilities and its definite complications. As one designated to hear the confession of sins and given the responsibility to dole out proper penance, it made for a constant flow of seeing his people commit negative acts. Most were minor, of course, and there was the enjoyment of teaching to break it up, but the serious sins were very serious indeed and few who sinned with such depth would repent, forcing him to make final judgment on them.

“Ah, Valera,” he sighed with genuine feeling. “I will let you feed any appetites you wish.”

With that promise to her, he let her escape his hold. She turned away and he saw her rub her knuckles against her blushing cheeks as she reached for one of her skillets. The height was easy and obviously designed for her specifically. Sagan leaned back against a counter, folding his arms across his chest as he watched her. She moved by rote, her actions quick and practiced as her mind worked on trying to sort out her feelings and her needs.

He felt her need.

How long has it been,
he wondered,
since she last was with a man?
Cloistered away from the world as she was and taking her insular personality into account, he imagined it had at least been nine years…the amount of time he had gleaned from her thoughts that had passed since she had moved here. The priest found it strange that of all the places in the world she could have chosen, she had picked a spot that was all but on top of the Shadowdweller city. Knowing
that
Drenna
and
M'gnone
both worked in very convoluted ways sometimes, he couldn't dismiss the idea that he had been meant to find her. But who had led him there? The pure and insightful
Drenna
, or the mischievous and tempting
M'gnone?

Perhaps it was a little of both. Or perhaps that was simply what he wished it to be. Was he looking for any excuse to brush back the consequences of his rule-breaking behavior? He had never before been so tempted, and that rang of troublesome sin. He needed time to think more clearly on this. At the very least he knew it was of profound importance to his race as well as the other races of the night that he had found a creature of
good
magic. Others must be warned of this. It meant that they could no longer kill necromancers with a totality of purpose. It meant there could be repentance. She had proven it. She had proven there could be reclamation of a stained soul with time and guidance.

It meant she would change everything.

 

Valera was hurrying through the house, pulling down window shades and tacking fabric tightly to windows that had no shades. Anything to keep out the light. Luckily, most of the windows had storm shutters to protect them against the ice storms and blizzards of the northern territories. Sagan had gone into her darkened bedroom to protect himself, and when she returned from out of doors, she suspected he was still there in spite of the sufficient darkness throughout the house. Diffuse light still hovered close to the windows, but he had said that would be harmless so long as he kept a safe distance from it. She nervously kept checking her work, terrified it would not hold and he would accidentally be injured. She had never been so grateful for the endlessness of Alaskan darkness. It would fall again within just a few hours and he would be perfectly safe.

She walked into the back bedroom and knew instantly
that he had gone to sleep. Valera knew he needed the rest very badly, his vibrant body working on borrowed energy as it recovered from the deadly poisoning that had nearly killed him. She had yet to ask him how he had come to be the way she had found him, but she had also realized that the nature of his existence deemed he be very careful about what he revealed to someone. Even with her good intentions, she could slip and give away knowledge his people could not afford others to know. Now she understood quite clearly what he had meant by his evasiveness being necessary to protect a great many others. It protected an entire culture.

But Valera wished so badly that she could learn about his society. Her hunger for familiarity with all things magical and supernatural begged her to plumb him as the valuable resource she knew him to be. Not only about his own race, but about the other Dark Cultures as well.

Still, she was realizing he would no more risk their safety and well-being than he would his own. So she spent a few hours combing through the information in her office, searching for anything she had that could tell her more about him. Finding herself unsuccessful, despite the presence of the three feline musketeers, she left the work area, shutting the door behind her in spite of the fact it was a bit like closing the barn door after the horses had already skedaddled.

She crept into the bedroom to check on her guest, stopping short in a breathless instant when she realized his restlessness in sleep had divested him of all cover, his towel missing and the bedclothes kicked away. Valera covered her mouth as she took in the surreal picture of all of that intensely naked male in her blue gingham sheets. He was lying on his stomach, his head under the pillows as if he instinctively burrowed beneath added protection from any light. However, the broad expanse of his back, the accentuated path of his spine leading down to the finest ass this side of the Mason-Dixon line were all perfectly exposed. He had the
most incredibly developed legs, the obvious power of his thighs making her flash hot from head to toe. He had a single knee drawn up slightly to the side, and from her perspective at the foot of the bed, he was left with very few secrets.

And Valera was left with absolutely zero impulse control. Almost as if she were in a trance, she moved up closer to him and reached out to touch his fine, dark skin near his ankle. She trailed her fingers up along his calf, feeling just how smooth his skin was and delighting in the contrast of her pale white coloring against the rich mocha of his. She pulled away, nibbling on her nail and peeking around to try and see if he was still deeply asleep. Nothing seemed to have changed so she took the risk and touched him again, starting where she had left off on his thick calf muscle.

“Oh, Val, you're a bad, bad girl,” she whispered to herself as she swept the very tips of her fingers up past his knee. She wondered if he slept like a Vampire did. According to her information it was true that, as in the myths, they slept in a nearly comatose state while the sun was out. It made them very vulnerable and very little could wake them until darkness fell. But she didn't just know this because of her books. She had seen necromancers kill a Vampire, leaving it staked out for the sun to destroy, the daylight keeping it asleep until the rays of the sun had begun to burn it. It had been horrifying, but she had excused the cruelty of it by convincing herself Vampires must be the essence of evil as she had been taught and told over and over again.