Chapter 7 #2
His anger at the images she’d stirred within his mind had stolen any possibility of tenderness.
The command of his lips said he knew he’d been played, and he wasn’t happy about it.
It didn’t matter. All that mattered was the press of his strength and heat against her lips, the push of his tongue past her teeth so he could steal her taste while leaving his behind.
That wet touch of flavor set dynamite off in her body, wreaking havoc everywhere until she groaned her delight and her eyes teared with relief.
Both of his hands came up to trap her head, his fingers fanning over her cheeks and his thumbs framing her jaw.
When her tears came, they dribbled over his fingers.
The evidence of her intensity of emotion collapsed Reule’s anger in on itself.
He softened his kiss as he ended it and withdrew from her mouth just far enough to look down into her eyes.
She lifted her lashes as though she knew exactly what he wanted from her, letting him see the need in her soul.
There wasn’t even a hint of doubt. It was as though she believed she had been born to be with him.
This time when Reule took up her mouth, there was nothing but raw desire between them.
Everything was banished except the lust that sprang open within him the instant he permitted it, and the force of it was heady and rich.
Her taste flooded his tongue, a sweetness without compare, a confection he devoured.
His tongue dipped deeper and deeper, and he groaned as she first accepted his aggression and then, grasping thick fistfuls of his hair in her hands, she dragged his head to the side and returned a fever of her own.
A fever that caught his body like a spark in the dry flatlands, a vortex of fire that roared furiously through him and consumed everything in its path.
Mystique broke away from his mouth and threw back her head, gasping for breath as she guided him to the length of her throat.
He obliged her easily and without thought, his lips stroking skin that tasted of sweetness and spice.
He felt the excited vibration of her breathing in her throat and became aware of the wild cadence of her pulse beneath his tongue.
He reached up to cup the back of her head, tilting her favorably.
His fingers disturbed her styled hair, releasing a cascade of bloodred curls.
He felt them all around his face, neck, and hands, their perfume intoxicating as she shifted her body impatiently against him.
Reule tongued the pulse at the base of her neck, near the elegant crest of her shoulder.
She gasped and shuddered when his hand plunged beneath the water to possess the small of her back and drag her up tighter against him.
There was no controlling the sudden stretching appearance of his fangs.
Just as there was no hope, nor any desire, of controlling the violent hardening of his sex.
With this woman, the two reactions were instantly part of one another.
Sex and savagery. The need to claim both body and blood.
This wasn’t always a Sánge norm, despite what outsiders thought.
Oh, the need for a lover’s blood was real enough, but that usually didn’t come into play until just before climax.
What Mystique did to him was a breathtaking anomaly.
“You destroy my calm, shred my command of myself,” he accused her roughly, groaning from his own depths when her small hands slid from his hair and over the too-hot skin along his shoulders and arms. Did she know what she risked?
Did she understand what would happen if this was pushed to the limit?
Reule pressed his lips tightly together against her skin, hiding the sharp edges of his teeth before she could feel them.
He closed his eyes as he tried to steady the tilting careen of his senses.
“You make me forget that you’re injured,” he rasped, hoping she didn’t notice the way a mouth full of fang altered his speech.
He needed time. Time to explain, to help her understand and adjust. To learn if she truly understood what it was she was demanding.
And there was truth in what he’d said. He wouldn’t allow her to tough out pain and injury for the sake of passion with him.
She had suffered too much already, and he wouldn’t be one who added to that pile of abuse.
“Kébé,” he whispered warmly against her skin as he kept his telltale teeth buried against her neck and hair, “take your hands away from me, sweetheart. Your touch drives me to distraction.”
She smiled. He could feel it even though he couldn’t see it. “You’re being noble again. You frustrate me, for all I admire your principles, My Prime,” she murmured in a sexy tease against his ear. But she let her hands fall away into the water without any argument.
Reule finally lifted his head when she let hers drop back and she allowed her body to bend back over his hand and into the water, where she let herself float on the surface, eyes closed and a very smug grin teasing her gorgeous lips.
She was pleased with herself for breaking his resolve and getting her way, the little vixen.
But he let her enjoy her simple victory.
It was a battle he wouldn’t mind losing, provided …
He’d never been faced with this situation before.
He wondered if any Sánge ever had. The one good thing about having a reputation was everyone already knew about the Sánge “depravities.” Since this isolated them from outsiders, what were the odds of having to explain the needs of sexual culmination to a partner?
But Mystique had no preparation, no rumors, and no prejudices.
Though he couldn’t decide if she had more information than he suspected, he knew he could make no assumptions.
It would be wrong to let her face the intensity of Sánge lovemaking without making very certain there was a clear understanding of the details between them.
Reule watched her as she arched her back and swung her hair through the water, her beautiful breasts thrusting up in exaggeration, the tempting tips drawn into taut crests that had him curling his free hand into a brutal fist as he tried to maintain control of himself.
By the Lord, he wanted to taste her there, to suck her between the fangs pricking at the inside of his lips, pulling her nipple against his craving tongue.
“To hell,” he breathed, turning his head aside and closing his eyes as he tried to control his fevered blood and breathing.
It certainly didn’t help that her swaying body caused her bottom to wriggle against his already raging erection.
Reule had half a mind to read the little tease’s thoughts to see if she was doing it on purpose.
She was too sophisticated about her sexuality not to know better.
“Reule? How is Chayne?”
The question snapped his head around and he looked at her with a numb sense of surprise.
He hadn’t thought of Chayne once since he’d walked in the door.
It wasn’t like him to ignore his sense of an injured Packmate.
He absently reached out and swept her straggling hair off of her forehead, his fingers threading into the floating sea of red.
“I think you saved his life, kébé. No. I know you saved his life.” He cupped the back of her head and drew her torso up out of the water, holding her against himself once again as he gazed into her eyes.
“For that, I will be forever grateful to you. My Packmates are pieces of me. Pieces of my spirit, if you will. I’ve never lost one, but I expected to lose Chayne.
I even expected to hurry him on his way.
When you channeled him, you felt what it feels like to be Pack.
When you saVed him, you spared the Pack a pain beyond outside understanding.
Even Sánge don’t always understand what it feels like to be Pack. ”
“I know what it feels like to be Chayne,” she corrected him, giving a delicate shudder.
“Chayne at his most desperate, kébé,” he reminded her, touching his lips to her cheek.
“I know. Trust that.” She slid forward and rested her cheek against his shoulder. He felt the reflexive twinge of sympathy radiating out of her as she recalled the experience of unexpectedly becoming Chayne’s voice. “Why did you ignore him, Reule? He will want to know that.”
Reule stiffened even though he heard no accusation in her voice. “I’m not sure I understand your question, Mystique,” he hedged warily.
“He understands why you all couldn’t enter the room once the decay began.
You trusted the apothecary to care for Him and you couldn’t bear to watch him suffer.
But you were the one in his mind, Reule.
You were the one he was asking for release.
He knew Delano wouldn’t be able to do it, but he believed you wouldn’t refuse him.
How did it go so far without your intervention? ”
The uncanny understanding in her observations told him that she wasn’t speaking from a half-realized concept.
For those few minutes in the dining hall, she’d known Chayne’s heart, and certainly his mind.
But in all fairness, it was the first time Chayne’s wishes for euthanasia had been clearly voiced.
Up until that moment, all any of them had known was what instinct told them he’d want.
Instinct and ages of friendship. But it was true that it would have come down to Reule in the end.
As a Packmate, Chayne’s life was Reule’s to give or take as he saw fit.
It was part of the oath all of his Pack had taken when each had committed himself wholly to their Packleader.