A Witch's Beauty (Daughters of Arianne 2)

"Come without moving. Milk me inside, with your muscles. Let me watch your body shudder and quiver. I want the intensity of seeing you come, bound to stillness only by my word."

Oh, gods. How could he make her even more aroused with such words? She tightened, and that glorious contraction came again. When she did it, she saw the flare in his eyes. Noticed his cock wasn't the only rock-hard part of him. Arms, stomach, chest, thighs. All drawn tight, held just as still. She contracted again and again, until she couldn't help it. It felt so good, and oh, Goddess, she was coming.

"Keep doing it," he said between clenched teeth.

So she did, and the release, restrained as it was, was an avalanche that exploded through every nerve ending, one long, slow slide to the end of each one before leaping to the next. Somewhere in the middle of the exquisite torment, his cock convulsed inside her, and she felt the flood of seed. Hot, a geyser that seared the sensitive, spasming walls and tore a shriek out of her that was all female, no Dark One.

He'd put his hands over her wrists, but somewhere along the way, their fingers had become entwined, hers biting into his.

When they stopped together, shuddering, his touch eased. Hers didn't. She couldn't seem to let go, and her mind was overcome with the frightening need to hold on to him forever, knowing she'd never had such a desperate thought, which meant it was fraught with peril.

It was he who pried her loose, but only to ease her down to his chest, folding his arms over her. She pressed her cheek over his pounding heart.

"David," she said quietly after several moments.

"Hmmm?" His arms tightened on her back.

"I can't be happy. Because of the imbalance thing. But this is the closest to it I've ever been. No matter what else happens"-she hitched over the words just a bit-"thank you for that."

David turned his face to her hair, pressed his lips there. "I love you, sweet witch. Sleep. I'll be here when you wake."

She closed her eyes, heart tightening as his words tipped the scales a little further into that well of happiness. And because of that, as she descended into dreams, she braced herself to pay the price.

Twenty

SHE couldn't remember what she'd thought as a child, the first time she dreamed of the Dark One world. It had always been part of her sleep, as the ocean had been the world of her waking hours.

Crimson sky, like their eyes, so familiar. Shadows across the barren landscape, formed by shards of lightning. Constant roaring wind, jumping fires. Suffocating heat amid ash that seared the lungs and eyes of any creature. Rocks, naked trees, even the steam that rose from the ground, held poison if they made contact with the flesh of something that didn't belong there, raising festering boils.

Forged of clay and ash, human existence started in that Hell, but the Goddess had spirited them away to Earth. The Dark Ones would not rest until humans were brought back under their control. But the original parents of the human race were creations of pure feeling, driven by hate and violence. They could only destroy.

To Mina, though, with the Dark One blood within her, it was a world of chaos that made sense. An order that couldn't be explained, but she felt it in the deepest part of her Dark One soul. She also picked up early the symbiotic relationship between the humans and the Dark Ones, and knew the nightmares in the landscape were shared in the dreams of the humans and the reality of the Dark Ones.

You belong with us. You are ours. Ours.

You will destroy him. You would destroy it all. You can't escape your blood.

She woke thrashing, clawing. David's voice was distant, on the other side, and she had a sudden panic that it hadn't been a dream. She was there. And he was there with her. No.

"Mina? It's all right."

David, his arms firm and hard, closing around her, holding her as she gasped, shuddered.

The spasms went beyond her trembling body, just as they would if they were caused by the cracking of the Earth's crust or the thunder of the firmament. The dreams were an elemental force. They were always waiting. They knew. It hurt so badly, just as she knew it would. Take two steps forward, and you would be slapped back thousands of miles, into Hell. She couldn't rebuild it all again. Time to return to reality. To push him away before she destroyed him.

A flash of silver and gold. Screaming from deep inside a dark void. The Abyss. A stone wall, salt water rushing with blood. Not her blood. Blue. David's. Strong, dark eyes as a head drifted by in the water with chestnut hair. Too late.

"No. No!" She struggled back out of the dream again. David's hands were there still, his seeking eyes, the heat of his living body. Living.

"It's all right. I'm here."

"No. No, it's not all right. Something's happened. Somebody-"

David stiffened abruptly, his expression turning inward. "It's Jonah," he interrupted her. "He's calling all of us. The whole Legion. The Dark Ones took-"

"The Resurrection Trumpet," she finished his sentence. "I just saw it. Dreamed it. They used my portal to escape. Somehow they figured out how to go through the portal. That's how they escaped Jonah's angels. Yours..." She forced herself to say the words. "They've killed them. The three angels watching the cave."

His expression hardened, his eyes darkening, the whites swallowed in the time it took her to feel the blade of loss pierce her heart.

"I have to go report to Jonah."

"I'll go with you. I could help. I-"

"No." He said it sharply. "Stay here. I'll tell him and then, if there's time, I'll let you know what's going to happen."

And he was gone.

She stood on her knees on the mattress, swaying, staring at the now empty room. A chill ran up her bare back; the sheet fell away. Less than a minute, and everything that had been built in the past few hours was gone. The intensity of their joining, the promises that had been implied or made, her tentative belief. It mocked her in the silence of the house, the uneasy tendrils of Schism energy drifting like dust motes through the air. Particularly in the warmth of his body lingering on the bed but unable to penetrate the cold which had returned inside her.

As she'd drifted off, she'd even imagined what it would be like to wake up with him still around her, as he'd said. Lay there and talk about the next meal. Watch a sunrise. Share anything they wanted to talk about as they touched each other. A simple, astoundingly arrogant fantasy, thinking she'd ever deserve something like that, be given something like the tales those books spun. They were not her stories.

Nothing was "always" in her world. She'd had those few precious moments. That's all she'd asked, all she'd been given. That was that.

She left the bed and began to walk. From room to room, from the upper level to the lower, then onto the front porch, then the back. Looked at every corner of this marvelous house, felt the sense of belonging it pulled from her. Tearing her to shreds on the inside, the way her body looked on the outside. It wasn't for her. Not the welcoming warmth or the inviting sway of the empty tire swing.

Get over it. Numbing her mind, she went back inside and made a tidy bundle of her clothes and few belongings. Making sure the strap she used was long enough, she stepped out into the front yard again and forced herself not to look back. As she stripped off the splint and tucked that into the bag, she pushed away the memory of how capably his hands had moved over her finger, setting it, wrapping it in tape. The way his gaze had flickered up to her face to make sure he wasn't hurting her.

She thought of their time on the sand spit, and what he had said when he wrote I love Mina in the sand in that charming adolescent fashion. No, they'd never really had the chance for first love like that. But if there was any comfort she could grasp to help her breathe better over the pain in her chest, it was that she knew, for a brief moment in this house, they had both found it. She certainly never had expected such a gift. Or the agony of losing it.

As she began to shift into the dragon, she estimated she could be back to her caves in less than a couple of hours.

&nb

sp; "THERE is no way they made it past us into a rift. We found no open ones. They've gone to ground here on Earth."

"But they can't stay here that long. We know this. And why can't we detect the Trumpet? It's an object of enormous energy. You think we're just overlooking it?"

David paused at the opening to the Citadel's Shamain keep. Jonah's gaze found him immediately, he was sure because of the thought he'd just shared with him.

I know where they are.

He stepped out as they all quieted. They'd accepted him, every one of them. Angels, while proud, were not egotistical. They believed in the greatest good, serving the Lady. But the Legion were also military-minded. He'd made a terrible mistake. The best way to deal with it was to figure out how to solve it. But that didn't abate his sense of shame as he faced the angel whom he'd let down the most.