When a moth loved a bee, p.48
When a Moth loved a Bee, page 48
“Ahh.” I shuddered as the shadow pressed possessively between my legs.
Only for a moment.
Just a single stroke.
But it was enough to make my entire body glitter with stardust.
He growled under his breath as the shadow dissolved. “It seems I can manipulate darkness to do anything I wish, but what you don’t know is…” His nose nuzzled mine, his breathing shallow. “What I touch with my shadows, I feel as if it were my own flesh and blood.” He cupped my cheeks with trembling hands. “And what I feel when I touch you, Runa….” His mouth crushed mine, his tongue not asking for permission to sweep inside. “…is life.”
I moaned as he tipped my head back.
“You make my mind swim.” He kissed me. “You shatter my self-control.” He bit my bottom lip. “You make my useless heart stop beating.” His tongue hunted mine.
I opened and submitted.
I gave myself entirely over to him as he stepped into me, dropped one hand from my cheek to my lower back, and pressed my belly against the rigid heat of his arousal.
With recklessness borne from fear of being torn apart, I placed my hands on his hips and tugged at the wolf pelt keeping him hidden.
If he took me, then Aktor couldn’t. I would already be claimed. Already be mated and happy.
Happiness.
I craved to live in that word.
I tugged again, searching for a way to undo the pelt.
Darro froze.
With another groan, he released me and clamped a hand over mine, stopping me from revealing him. His forehead pressed hotly to mine, his head bowed and spine slightly arched to lower his height to reach my mouth. “Runa…” His fingers flexed. “You have no idea how much I want to—”
“Take me,” I whispered. “Please don’t let anything else come between us. If we’re together…in that way…it might stop the bind.”
Nightmares filled my mind.
The warnings from the fire of a future filled with death.
The troth to Aktor, granting him permission to touch me. Kiss me. Undress me. Mount me—
Tears shot to my eyes. “I can’t be his, Darro. I can’t.”
His eyebrows slashed into a furious line. “You’ll never be his.”
“Prove to me that I’m yours.”
His teeth ground together. “Not here.”
“Yes, here. Now. Be with me. Then maybe everything will stop trying to keep us apart.”
“But I need to get you somewhere safe.”
I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him. “I’m safe in your arms.”
He tried one last time to cling to decency. “Runa—”
“Don’t stop,” I whispered into his mouth, searching for his tongue.
The moment I licked him, he snapped.
His arms whipped around me.
Our kiss turned heathenish.
His leg hooked around mine, tripping me backward, lowering me to the ground with effortless power. The moment the grass cradled my back, he fell on me with a savage grunt. His hands were everywhere. Fisting my breast, kneading my hip, hitching up my deerskin until it bunched around my waist.
With his knee, he spread my legs apart roughly. His hips sank between them, his wolf pelt soft on my exposed skin.
Resting on one elbow, he kissed me hard, all while his hand fumbled at his coverings. A tangled growl escaped him as he fought to get free, his arousal pressing temptingly stiff against my throbbing centre.
I scratched at his shoulders as he yanked at his furs, loosening them, pushing them aside.
We moaned together at the blistering sensation of his bare thighs between mine.
My back arched as his lips trailed fire down my throat. Something cool and sharp landed on my belly, feeding the faintest lifeforce of an omega wolf who’d stalked death and fallen gratefully into its mercy.
Darro paused, breathing hard.
Pulling his mouth from mine, he looked down.
I followed his stare and shivered.
My deerskin was pushed up to my belly, leaving every feminine part of me on display. His furs were open at his hips, revealing the desperation of his desire, the glistening tip, the ropy veins, and the twitching hardness.
With tender fingers, Darro plucked the wolf fang that’d fallen from his furs off my stomach. He held the wicked sharp tooth, his gaze locked on where our bodies were so, so close to joining.
All it would take was a shift of his hips, an angle of mine, and we could finally, finally be one.
Fisting the fang, his sterling gaze met mine. “Do you trust me?”
Nerves scattered down my spine. “I trust you.”
Planting a fierce kiss on my lips, he shot to his knees and worked his way down my body. His mouth locked over my nipple still encased in my wrap, his teeth closing with primal claiming.
I bowed in his hold.
But he didn’t stop.
Releasing me, he slid down and down, not pausing until his mouth hovered where his hardness had been: directly above my core, his breath hot and gusty on every sensitive, wet part of me.
“They bound you with blood,” he murmured, his gaze bleeding to black as he drank me in. “But we’re already pledged in that way.”
I quaked as his fingers skated over my upper thigh, drifting over the dried blood from my sunshine mark. The mark came alive. Burning and blazing, scratching with so many things I couldn’t remember.
With a hitched inhale, Darro leaned forward, pressing a worshipping kiss on the sunburst. His hair tangled over his forehead. His sheer imposing presence overwhelmed me as a cloak of night bled from his back and his mouth hovered exquisitely close to where I was desperate for him.
My heart turned wild as his face twisted with violence. “They can carve their ash into you.” His pressed the wolf fang to my mark. “They can promise you to another and bind you as kin.” He pressed down, making me cry out. “But what they can’t do is erase the tether we already share.” He cut me with the tooth.
He looked up, his eyes blacker than I’d ever seen. No smoke. No silver. Just dangerous, lethal midnight. Slowly, sensually, he followed the lines of the flickering sunburst, making me bleed.
I struggled to catch a breath as my blood glistened ruby-black in the moonlight.
Raising his chin, he caught my gaze. “We bleed together; we belong together.”
I opened my heart entirely to him. I held nothing back.
My spirit tangled with his as the bridge between us flared bright and true.
“We belong together,” I whispered through the heartlink.
He jerked on his knees. He cut me one last time. And then, with a heady, greedy groan, he lowered his head and pressed his mouth to my freshly bleeding mark.
He drank.
A bolt of heat and blazing light rocked through me.
My hands landed on his head, my fingers tangling in his hair. Mouthful after mouthful, he pulled lifeforce from my veins and into his belly. Into his heart. His spirit. His ever after.
My body came alive.
My skin began to glow.
The night sky was no longer sullen-silver but falsely lit with sunshine.
Syn and Zetas gleamed gold; the willows were gilded with pretty white light.
I lost myself to him.
I wanted him.
All of him.
I needed—
I cried out as his teeth scraped sensitive cuts. His mouth remained locked on my upper thigh all while his hands moved. Using the fang to slice open his palm, he hissed under his breath as his skin tore. Crashing to his belly between my legs, he raised his scarlet-gleaming hand.
Droplets of his blood trailed my stomach as he presented himself to me.
With unsteady fingers, I claimed him. I held his wrist. I brought his blood to my lips.
While I prepared to feast, his mouth kissed my upper thigh, my inner thigh, my—
A sharp cry escaped me as his tongue found me.
I writhed as he licked my centre, hot and wet and devouring.
I saw stars.
I shone with sunlight.
His shoulders kept my legs from snapping closed as he drowned me beneath exquisite torture.
“Drink, Runa.” He spoke between my legs, his teeth nipping sharply, his voice humming against my core. “To hell with visions and omens, warnings and premonitions.” He dipped his tongue inside me. “Become mine.”
I swam on a sea of lust.
I quaked and spasmed with his every lick.
I couldn’t breathe as he raised his bleeding hand to my mouth again, all while his tongue dove deep, deep—
“Stop,” a begging, frantic command. “Please…stop.”
Darro froze.
His head shot up, yanking his hand from mine. With a snarl, he leapt to his feet, snatching at his wolf pelt, wrapping it tight around his unsatisfied arousal. “You.”
Jack-knifing upright, I shoved down my deerskin. My cheeks became twin flames as the wetness from Darro’s tongue mingled with the wetness that he’d drawn from me.
Tingles and heat pulsed between my legs as I scurried upright. My glow winked out. My mark trickled with blood that Darro had drunk.
“Solin…” I hugged myself.
“Please tell me you didn’t drink from him, Runa.” Solin tripped forward, his arms wrapped around Natim. “You’ll become ill—”
Zetas roared from where she was still trapped by shadow.
Shades whipped into a frenzy, slithering through the grasses toward the Spirit Master. With a flick of his wrist, Darro released Syn and Zetas from their leashes and muzzles. Zetas glowered at him, moving loyally to his side, all while Syn trotted toward Solin with a whine.
“I don’t want to hurt you.” Darro balled his night-laced hands. “But I will if you’ve come to stop us. We’re leaving. There’s nothing you can do to—”
“You leave, and she dies,” Solin said blankly, sadly.
“What?” Darro snarled. “What do you mean, she’ll die?”
Solin dropped his chin. His necklace of beads and two raven feathers seemed overdressed out here, away from the naming ceremony.
It felt like an age had passed since I’d walked with him in the fire and woken with his vows of always caring for me. That he would keep me safe and teach me everything he knew.
How could he promise such things, then smash that fledging trust by binding me to Aktor?
My heart pinched as Solin caught my gaze. “Return with me back to camp and I’ll explain.” His dark eyes had black circles beneath them. His ebony chest rose and fell, the silver scar of his own Quelis brand over his heart noticeable, now I knew where to look.
My stomach turned over. “I can’t go back there.”
“I’m so sorry, Runa.” His voice was sticky with shame. “So sorry to betray your faith in me.”
“How could you?” I asked with ice shards in my mouth.
“I didn’t have a choice. Aktor deserves to rot for what he did to you. I condemn his actions and would give anything to make him pay, but…this is bigger than him. Bigger than all of us. It’s the only way—”
“The flame’s way.”
He looked at the ground. “The fire knows things I do not. It guides me in what needs to happen. I did it to protect you—”
“Protect me?” I fought tears. “He hurt me, Solin. He hurt Darro. Aktor would’ve killed—”
“Undo it,” Darro snarled moving to my side as fury poured through his shadows.
“I do not have that power,” Solin admitted. “The fire granted me its magic to bind them. It will not grant me the same to revoke it.”
“Why do you obey it?” I asked despairingly. “The fire is lying to you—”
“It might withhold certain things, Runa, but it never lies,” Solin murmured, clutching Natim tighter. The fawn bleated, his glossy black eyes locked on mine. “You are my kin now. You are my blood. My heart—”
“You speak of hearts, yet you force her into a mating with her enemy,” Darro hissed. “You’ve condemned her, yet you still believe—”
“I believe what the fire showed me.” Solin shuddered. “It’s showed me such terrible things. Things that can never be allowed to come true.” His eyes met mine, clouded with pain. “I’ve seen you scream in horror, Runa. I’ve watched you bleed at the hands of enemies. I’ve seen your heart shatter into irreparable pieces and the goodness inside your golden spirit turn black as the very night who stands beside you.”
Darro stiffened.
My voice remained cold as snow. “I can’t mate Aktor, Solin. I won’t.”
Solin stepped forward, Natim’s ears bouncing with his every footfall. “You don’t have a choice. Just like I didn’t. I’ve seen a future where death rules. Every heart will stop. Every life will end. Runa…you have to believe me…I never wanted this to happen. The thought of betraying you and binding you to Aktor makes me wish I could turn my back on the fire and all its doomsday whispers. I didn’t ask for this gift. I didn’t ask for the task of breaking not just one heart but two.”
His gaze landed on Darro as he bowed his head in respect for the shades billowing behind him. “The fire struggles to see past your shadows, but they have shown what will happen if you continue down this path. It’s a path with no end. A path of nothing but destruction. That was why the blood bind between Runa and Aktor had to be invoked. We rarely use it anymore. Not since Karfe lost their chief to a scorpion sting and his mate—healthy and heavy with their second youngling—died beside him. It’s a curse to have lifeforces bridged into one. To always have to be near. Always have to be aware of the other in case your actions end up killing them.”
Darro looked as deadly as a wolf. “Please tell me you’re lying. Please tell me you didn’t just condemn her to a lifetime—his lifetime—of misery.”
“It was the only way to keep you from—”
“From what? Falling for her? Remembering who we are? Learning how to control the powers we were born with?” Darro bared his teeth. “It’s too late for any of that. I’ve already fallen. I’m starting to remember. And as you can clearly see…I know how to use my powers.” A wall of blackness rose behind Darro, rustling like black wind through the tall grass.
Solin bent down and let Natim go.
The fawn immediately bounded toward me. Ducking, I gathered the tiny creature, needing to touch him, hug him, use him as a bandage to stem my bleeding heart. Syn came to my side too, nudging my thigh with her nose.
I couldn’t speak.
Words were as thick as the clouds Darro had summoned.
“You might know how to use some of your strength, Darro, but that is just the beginning.” Solin clasped his hands together and inhaled a fortifying breath. “Just like Runa has only just begun to dabble with her potential, your power is beyond imagining.”
Straightening his spine, he raised his chin again. “Tral has offered to let you stay. Leca has opened his lupic to you. If, in a moon’s time you wish to learn if you are Quelis, I will invoke the fire’s trance to reveal which element you wield. If you are Quelis, you may stay and mate a willing female—”
“Runa is mine. She is my mate. No one else. Vision or no vision. Warnings or no warnings. Her. And only her. Nothing will change that. No binds. No threats. No—”
“It’s not a threat but the truth.” Solin kept his tone cool, even as his eyes churned with pain. “If you take Runa farther than she already is from Aktor, her heart will start to fail. If you try to kill Aktor and succeed, she will die the moment he takes his last breath. If you try to bind yourselves together—like I saw when I first arrived—it will only make her sick. Her body will refuse the blood—your blood—because she is already bound to another. Her heart now beats with his. They burn with the same flame that needs each other to stay alive. Nothing you do will change that.”
“You can,” Darro hissed. “You cursed her. Uncurse her.”
“I told you. I do not have that power.” He sighed and pinched his brow before lowering his hand. “If I could revoke the blood bind, I would. If I could bless your union, I would do it without hesitation.” His eyes landed on mine, tight with honesty. “I only want you to be happy, Runa. I want you safe and—”
“You want her to be you,” Darro interrupted. “To carry your burden as Spirit Master.”
“I want to protect her from suffering. And the suffering I have seen…” Solin’s face blanched. “It gives me nightmares. I can’t get the images out of my head. If you care for her the way you say you do, you will let her stay with the Nhil. You will watch over her as a friend. You will love her as a sister and nothing more—”
“Sister?!” Darro laughed with black dripping ice. He stalked forward with Zetas glued to his hip. The wolf revealed her fangs, her back rippling with aggression.
Standing to his full height, Darro loomed over Solin. Shadows whipped around the two males, circling them like a night-frothed hurricane. “You will soon learn, Fire Reader, that I do not do well with commands. I won’t accept what you say, and I will never settle for Runa as my sister. For you to even suggest that shows how much you don’t understand. You don’t see what’s before your very eyes. No matter what binds and curses you place between us, I will break every single one. I will find a way to kill Aktor if he lays a single finger on her. I will find a way to take Runa far from the Nhil where the only hearts that matter are our own.”
“Do that, and you’ll be the one with her death on your hands, not me.” Solin stayed stiff and brave in the face of Darro’s wrath, but he couldn’t hide his sorrow.
In all the time I’d spent with the Nhil, Solin had always been fair and wise, just and kind. He wasn’t lying now, and he wasn’t gloating about winning. He spoke the truth, no matter how much it hurt.
“Darro…” I whispered, pressing my chin on Natim’s knobbly head.
Even so soft, my voice cut through his shades and whipped his head to me. His eyes glowed with a ring of silver; he looked as ferocious as the halcyodon I’d seen all those years ago.
“Enough.” I trembled as tears ran down my cheeks. “Don’t hurt him—”
