Temptress Unbound (4 page)

I may even have let it flow to its own ends, climaxing as if in a dream, except now I heard the hum of my golden swarm, trapped in their wall of gold, exerting a pulsing pressure on the bonds that held them. After being taunted by my brief dalliance with Terix they were angry, demanding to either be let out, or for the hive to be completed. The feeling of insistence, of something building and about to burst, infected me with their fervor. My hive wanted satisfaction, and I knew only one way to get it.

Maerlin!
I said his name as much a moan as a cry for help. I turned in his arms to face him, holding on to his shoulders for balance as I swung one knee over his hips to straddle him. I reached down for his cock and had just butted its head against my gates when his hands gripped my hips, holding me off. I writhed in his hold, trying to lower myself onto him.

Nimia, wait,
he said, his voice joining me not in my head, but in the nonspace between us where the visions came. Instead of being an invasion of my mind, it was a joining beside me.

It's happening again. Can you hear them? Can you see the wall? They need more. They need to feel you inside me . . .
I barely made sense to my own mind, my sense of myself and of my swarm conflating in my desperate body.
They sense you; they can taste your power. They want you, Maerlin.

I hoped that he could understand my inner babble, for calm thought was beyond me. I felt a flutter of gratitude that I had told him all that I could of what had happened on Mona; how I'd held off my powers as Tanwen had instructed, but didn't know now how to free them. Maerlin's powers didn't come to him like a golden swarm—he'd heard of no other Phanne's that did—but he'd assured me that he understood the channels our powers could take, and how they could get dammed up. And undammed again.

You're afraid of them,
Maerlin said.
It's your fear that traps them, that holds them in the wall.

I don't know what they're trying to do, what they're building, what will happen when it's done . . .

You've got to set them free, or you'll find out.

They've never been like this, so angry, so impatient,
I said.
I don't know what they'll do if I let them out.

They're part of you. You cannot fear yourself.

I can!

Imagine opening the wall, brick by brick,
Maerlin said, his voice a calm certainty in the center of the throbbing hive.
Let them fly out.

They'll attack you!

They're frightened and hungry; all they want is to come back into your light. To be with you, where they belong. Nimia, trust me.
He lowered me onto his cock, my gates stretching wide to accept him.

I moaned and dug my fingers into his shoulders, and the hum of the trapped swarmed swelled, deafening me to all else.

Open one brick
. Maerlin held me impaled upon him, my stamen just touching the base of his rod. I tried to move, to rise upon the sweet thickness within me, but he was too strong.
One brick
.

I whimpered, my thighs flexing to no avail. I
needed
to move.

And one brick was the price to pay.

I imagined placing my hand upon a brick, and feeling the violent buzzing behind it. It would fly out and sting me in the face, I was certain of it—

—and I didn't care, if it meant I could slide myself up his cock and plunge back down again; if I could grind myself on him, my stamen brushing that hard, low belly with its fiery thicket.

The brick vanished under my touch and a hum of power shot down my arm. In reward, Maerlin lifted me until all but the plum-shaped head of him had withdrawn. He held me there, hovering, my gates pulsing and trying to draw him inward.

Another,
he said.

For a moment I did nothing, savoring the ravenous hunger of having him taunt me with this partial entrance. It
was
like being with Sygarius again, when I had given the wrong answer in hopes it would mean punishment . . . which meant it had been the right answer all along.

Gods, Nimia, please, one more brick.

I felt the need in him, in the thick, swollen aching of his staff, the heaviness of his balls. I tightened my gates, squeezing him in a kiss unlike any other. He jerked, his shaft thrusting half-inside me before he could stop himself.

In my mind I lay both my hands against the golden wall and spun in a circle, dragging my palms across the bricks, each one dissolving under my touch and releasing a buzzing shot of power. They came so quickly that they felt like they flowed from a fountain, a steady solid stream into me.

Maerlin groaned and thrust up into me. His hands made no effort to hold me now, and I doubted that they could have if he'd tried. I wrapped my arms around his neck and slanted my mouth down onto his, drawing his tongue into my mouth and suckling on it as my hips took their time with him, rocking in slow arcs that let me feel his whole length.

My swarm hummed inside me, as if they flowed through me instead of blood. There was a quiet ecstasy in their hum, and I knew then that I hadn't been whole while they'd been locked away. They didn't try to drain Maerlin, or create that bottomless pit of need in me. Set free, they were sunlight, not darkness.

Wait, Nimia . . .
Maerlin's hands were back on my hips, trying to stop me.
I'm too close to— We need to slow down. We need to raise the winds first.

I moved a little, to torture both him and myself.

Do that again and I'll spend myself.

Are you asking me to, or not to?

Nimia . . .
With a groan of pain he lifted me all the way off him. I could feel the shaking in his arms as he fought his own desire, denying himself the warm, enclosing wetness of my passage. “Just . . . rest for a moment,” he said aloud, settling me beside him in the furs.

“I don't need to rest.” My hand drifted toward his staff and he grabbed my wrist, stopping it just short of its goal.

“You do, if all you can concentrate on is my cock.”

“It feels so
good,
I can't help it.”

He said something dark in a language I'd never heard. “
This
is what you didn't learn on Mona: the need to keep your wits when your body and your power are begging you to abandon yourself to their wishes.”

That scraped some of the film of lust from my eyes. He was right, of course. I'd gotten into trouble because I didn't know how to do that. “I don't have any wits left when it's like this.”

“No one does. But as much trouble as a normal person will get into when they're too horny to think, at least they can't do the damage that someone like you or I can. You have to keep control, Nimia—or next time, it might not be only yourself you hurt.”

I wrapped my arms over my belly. “If your goal was to douse my passion, you've succeeded.”

“Not douse it. Just . . . slow it.” His voice lowered and took on a rough edge. “You can like slow, I think.”

My sex pulsed. “How slow?”

“Come here.”

With a little more awkwardness than was sexy, I did as he bid and again straddled him, only this time facing forward. I supported myself with my hands on his raised knees as he guided his cock inside me at a steep angle, the hard ridge of it rubbing at new pressure points that made me want to bite him and demand he shove his finger up my ass.

When he was fully inside me, he gently pulled me toward him until my back was arched and my head rested with some strain on his shoulder. I could feel the bending of his cock inside me, the angle nearly making him slip out.

“If you try to move,” he whispered against my ear, “you'll lose me.”

“And if I don't move?”

With the tip of one finger he lightly, delicately, drew a fine circle around my stamen. I shuddered with pleasure. “You'll learn to love patience.”

My swarm hummed. The part of me that had liked being Sygarius's slave buzzed to life. Yes, let me give over control to someone else. Yes, let him guide me, deny me, grant me what pleasures I could find. I'd been warped by what Sygarius had done to me, like a slat of wood left in the rain. Forever bent, never as straight and direct as I thought I should wish.

As always, when the man took control, I felt the greatest pleasure.

Maerlin teased me, taunted me, made me yearn and beg, yet the slightest movement on my part threatened that he'd slip out of me, and I couldn't bear that. So I wrapped my arms behind me and dug my hands into his hair, holding tight as he fondled my breasts with one hand, my upper folds with the other. He whispered words I didn't understand into my ear, and through our contact I could feel the control he exerted to keep himself from thrusting. As much as I wanted to feel him penetrating me, again and again, he wanted to pierce me. Our agony was shared.

Through it all, my shimmering swarm hummed, until the din grew so loud and the light so bright that I thought I would be deafened and blinded.

I heard Maerlin's voice beside me.
Now we call the winds.

How?

Feel the wind against your face. Draw it to you. Yearn for it.

With all the yearning I felt for more completion, I called out to the wind to stroke me. I shoved the furs down my chest and asked it to taste my breasts, to slide into my hair, to reach down between my spread thighs.

Yes, like that.

I felt the wind touching me like a lover, hands soft and firm at once, knowing exactly where I needed a stroke, a lick, a kiss. Maerlin's power joined my own, and together we were caressed by an incorporeal being, first seduced by it, then protected by it as the winds grew stronger. A pocket of air came around us that, while not quiet, was intent on pleasing us. Beyond our nest, the tree limbs thrashed and the clouds tumbled over one another to sweep over the land. Dark, dragging smears upon the sky spoke of rain showers fast approaching, and then above them, a silent flash of white from behind the clouds. Long heartbeats later came the distant rumble of angry gods.

This was no chore, no dreaded promise to be fulfilled. I felt fully alive as I had never been before, my body exposed to the elements, my cunny full, my power coursing through me as rich as blood.
This
is what I had been made for.
This—

A flash in my vision: Tanwen aboard a ship, to the west. I felt Maerlin stiffen and knew that it came through him, through a bond he wished didn't exist.

Tanwen's ship tossed in the gale, near to swamping. I knew that feeling, of timbers bending and cracking, of water coming over the gunwales, of sails furled tight against ripping, and ripping still. I felt it when she became aware of us, a spark of alertness breaking through her fear and misery.

Maerlin!? Is that you? Do you hear me?

I felt the link cut off by Maerlin, the bond broken.

Maerlin,
I said.
It's Tanwen; she's caught in our storm.

So be it.

She's your sister!

As Arthur is my brother. I know who is the more worthy. Don't you?

Arthur's life isn't at stake. I can't continue when it means Tanwen's ship may go down.
As wicked as Tanwen was, I couldn't knowingly cause her death. There could be no joy or rightness in this storm if we sent her to the bottom of the sea. Skalibur wouldn't be the pure blade it should be, with such a hateful deed committed through its making.

Nimia, you must! The sword must be forged!

Not today.
I shifted, his rod sliding free of me, and tried to fling myself away from him even as I released the wind from my powers, telling it
No more
. I heard the drop in the churning air beyond our pocket, saw the slowing of the approaching rainstorm with its flashing lightning.

Maerlin caught me and pulled me back against him. “She can take care of herself—you know she can. She's more powerful than either of us.”

I fought against his hold. “It's not right.”

“You swore to me you'd do this.”

“Call the winds, yes. Not kill your sister!”

“Forget her! She'll save herself. I won't have
her
ruin this like she's ruined everything else she's ever laid her hand to!” He clamped my jaw in his hand and held me still for his harsh kiss. I liked the kiss better for being forced on me, for my being made to recognize that he was more powerful than I. I wanted him to overwhelm me, to conquer me and erase my qualms. Let him give me no choice but to continue, so that I might be absolved of guilt should Tanwen die.

It was cowardly of me, I thought. And necessary. I sensed his anger that Tanwen should intrude into this most extraordinary of days and ruin it. He didn't believe she deserved anyone's sympathy, and I knew he was right.

You'll have to make me do it, Maerlin.
I let him sense my turmoil, and the one path he could take to gain my cooperation.

I told you I'd never take advantage of you again.

In a burst of violent strength I broke free of his hold, clawing and scrambling and freeing myself from both him and the furs. I had climbed halfway up the rope netting when I felt his hand grip my ankle and stop me.

You'll have to do better than that,
I said, and kicked back with both my foot and my power. His hand released me as if burnt and I climbed out of the nest to the oak's trunk, grabbing tight to a handhold and looking upward at the mistletoe. The storm winds now buffeted the tree from side to side in irregular bursts, confused and raging, as if they were our emotions made visible. The protective pocket of air around us dissolved, and steel needles of icy rain struck my skin. My hair whipped high, half-blinding me and getting caught in the branches.