Chapter Seven #2
She felt the sudden burst of Rain’s Change only instants before he spoke, and she turned, heart racing, to find him standing
in the doorway of the hall. Magic glowed bright around his tall Fey form, his eyes still more tairen than Fey, and despite
the serenity of their surroundings, she felt her own tairen shift and tense in response.
“After I returned to sanity, I would come here from time to time, seeking peace and solitude.” He had finished his hunt, but
tension still swirled around him—as did a hunger his hunt had not assuaged.
Her mouth went dry. “And did you find it?” She cleared her throat. “The peace you sought?”
“A measure of it.” He began to walk towards her, his steps long and deliberate, his face a gleaming pale mask that appeared
carved from Silverstone, his eyes searing jewels. “More so than tonight.”
Her heart slammed against her ribs, and despite herself, she took several steps back. A wall covered with a tapestry depicting
elves at the hunt stopped her retreat. “Rain, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize what I was doing to you . . . what toll my healing
the rasa would take on you.”
He reached her, stopping with only the barest handspan between them, not touching her, but so close she could feel the swirling heat emanating from him, the tingle of great magic scarcely contained by his flesh.
“Do not blame yourself. You made your choice, and I made mine.” His voice was a low scrape of sound that combined with the
steady, burning gaze of his eyes and the electric throb of his magic to make her tremble from head to toe. “I could have stopped
you or simply taken you away from Chakai to a place where you could no longer feel the rasa’s pain.”
She wet her lips. The answering throb of her own magic was rising again, quick and hot. “Why didn’t you?”
“You needed to save them from death. I needed to save them for it. When the Eld strike, I will need every Fey blade I can find to defend the Fading Lands.” He put his hands on either side
of her head, palms flat against the wall. “I also knew you would not easily have forgiven me for stopping you. You already
trusted me so little you felt the need to sneak from our bed. There are enough obstacles in the path of our bond without creating
more.”
“I . . .” Her voice trailed off. What could she say?
“So I allowed you to do what you felt you must, Ellysetta. I knew the price of my choice, and I paid it.” His head lowered,
his glowing eyes fixed upon her, holding her captive. “But there was a price for your choice too, shei’tani, and that must be paid as well.”
A strand of his hair slipped free of his shoulder to brush her cheek, and the ends of it tickled the top of her left breast.
Her womb clenched tight, sending a bolt of pleasure shuddering through her. Just that one tiny touch and she was ready to
explode.
She swallowed hard. “P-price?”
“They touched you. Fey after Fey, unbonded males.” The edge of his lip curled up, baring the white gleam of teeth. “You let
them put their hands upon you, their scent upon you.”
All the air evaporated from her lungs. “I-I . . .”
“I’ve done all I can to exhaust the tairen and drain myself of magic, but I can wait no longer.” His pupils narrowed to slits, then disappeared entirely, and his eyes began to whirl with tairen radiance. “We will wait no longer.”
Heat poured off him in waves, and with it came the heady scent that belonged solely to Rain, a complex, multilayered aroma
that combined the fresh fragrance of the Fey, the tang of powerful magic, and the rich, dark, earthy scent of tairen. He still
had not touched her, yet that wave of fragrant heat enveloped her so completely it hardly mattered. She dragged a breath into
her lungs, and his scent came with it, filling her nose, her mouth, her throat, permeating her body.
He lowered his head to hers, his lips hovering above her own. The bright whirl of pupil-less tairen eyes, blazing a fierce
purple, held her transfixed. “Forgive me, shei’tani. I do not think I have the strength to be gentle.”
She took a shallow gasp of breath. “Then don’t be—”
Her voice broke off as his body pinned hers to the wall. Lean Fey muscle, burning with heat, pressed tight against her softer
shei’dalin curves. He caught her wrists, clamping them over her head at the same instant his mouth captured hers in a ferocious kiss.
At the first touch of his skin on hers, the threads of their bond came screaming back to life. She cried out, but the sound
was consumed by the ravenous dominion of his kiss.
Emotion and power flooded her senses: Rain the shei’tan’s fury over allowing other males to touch his unbonded mate. Rain the tairen’s driving need to claim his mate and eliminate
all trace of another male’s scent from her. Hunger. Oh, gods, such hunger. An ache so strong, Ellysetta nearly wept with need
herself when she felt it.
All the pain and fear of the last day burned away like mist in the sun. Nothing mattered—nothing existed—except Rain and Ellysetta
and right now.
“Ve sha kem’tani. Kem’san. Kem’reisa.” You are my mate.
My heart. My soul. He growled the words against her lips, sending them on Air to her ears, on Spirit to her mind, singing them on their bondthreads in the shatteringly vivid tones of tairen song.
With hands and words and lips and teeth, he laid claim to her, declaring possession, marking her with his touch, his kiss, his breath, the scent of his skin rubbing hers with hot friction, singing to her soul.
He tore his mouth from hers, and she dragged in great gulps of air. A rapid weave held her wrists locked over her head and
freed his hands to trail a searing path down her body. As he’d warned her, there was no gentleness to his touch. There was
only fire, the burn of flesh on flesh, the scrape of teeth dragging down her throat and over breasts stripped bare with a
wave of hot magic.
“Aiyah, Rain, yes. As you are mine, so I am yours.” She wanted him, all of him, only hers, forever hers, from the skeins of night-black
hair swirling like silk torment across her skin to the wild, whirling purple blaze of his eyes to the hot groan of breath
panting from his lungs and the searing hardness of his body wrapped around her like ropes of steel.
Hands and mouths of flesh and magic moved over her body, caressing every inch, laving her in moist, erotic heat. She cried
out again as his teeth closed over one taut nipple and his tongue flicked out, teasing the sensitive flesh to diamond hardness.
She screamed as he bit down just hard enough to send her shuddering towards the crest of orgasm. His hand dove between her
legs, fingers delving into her curls. Fire exploded, flooding her with hot moisture as the flick of his nimble fingers sent
her over the edge.
Rain went to his knees before her, his mouth tracing a burning path down her belly, the flare of her hip. A deep growl rumbled
in his chest, vibrating in his blood. The threads of their bond pulsed with energy. The wild, fiery magic of their newest,
sun-bright thread cracked like whips of lightning in his flesh as he gazed up at her, naked, her arms locked above her head
in bonds of magic as if she were one of the virginal sacrifices ancient mortals made to the immortals they once considered
gods.
Trembling. Naked. Helpless.
His.
The tairen roared in triumph, and this time when the primitive, savage rush of power filled him, he allowed it. “Ve sha kem,” he snarled. You are mine. His teeth nipped at her thigh. His fingers continued to flick and torment, her flesh already
enticingly slick. The scent of her arousal filled the air with musky sweetness, making his sex swell to painful hardness.
“Bera.” Ours.
She sobbed her agreement. “Aiyah, Rain. I am yours. Only yours.”
It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. His hands cupped her buttocks, and his mouth dove to claim the soft, heated flesh between
her legs. He held her mind and gaze locked to his and devoured her until she screamed his name and flew apart in his hands,
her body shaking in helpless abandon.
He rose in one swift motion, discarding leathers and steel with a flash of Earth. His hands closed around her hips. His own
hips thrust close, and the long, hard column of his sex pressed against her belly. She gasped and bucked her hips. Already
his fierce hunger was calling to her again, rousing her own.
Her eyes squeezed shut, but in the darkness, her other senses only seemed more acute, and threads of multicolored light flickered
against the backs of her lids. Fey vision, she realized instantly, the magic sight that did not need eyes to see. Instead
of black hair and blazing lavender eyes and the graceful beauty of Elverial, she saw the glowing threads of magic that made
up all things, Fire, Water, Earth, Air, and Spirit—and the blinding, burning flame that was Rain standing before her, enveloping
her in fire and light.
And all around him, emanating from him and lit by threads too bright to identify, the incandescent form of a tairen spread
wide its wings in a fearsome show of strength and dominance. Its eyes were the same glowing wells of power that Rain’s were.
As she watched, it roared, and golden red flame erupted from its mouth and swept over her.
Her eyes flew open as heat and hunger whipped through her body. Magic and need swelled inside her, so hard and so fast her skin burned, as if stretched to the breaking point.
“Rain . . . Rain, please . . . I need—” Her voice broke off.
“What?”
She squirmed, wriggled, the ache so fierce, her need so great. But he would not relent until she gave him his answer. She
cried it in desperation, “You!”
“Then take me, shei’tani.” His fingers dug into the soft swell of her hips, lifting her high, then bringing her down hard and fast. Her legs locked
around his waist, and she flung her head back on a scream of pleasure as his body surged into hers in one powerful, claiming
thrust.
“Ver reisa ku’chae. Kem surah, shei’tani.” The driving rhythm of Rain’s hips punctuated the growled words of shei’tanitsa claiming, and with each hard pulse, Ellysetta cried out his name as his sex swelled inside her, stretching her, filling her.
Ah, gods, with Rain inside her, his skin pressed tight against hers, she felt his every shuddering pleasure as clearly as
her own. The breath was driven from her lungs as wave after wave of heat washed over her. Fire danced behind her eyes, and
searing blue-white flames mingled with a sea of billowing red-orange heat as another shattering orgasm consumed her.
Rain groaned as Ellysetta’s body clenched tight as a fist around him. Her inner muscles gripped him like steel, rippling so
forcefully the pleasure bordered on pain. Thought dissolved in a fiery wash of sensation, and a cry ripped from his throat
as his own release tore through him. His legs trembled and he staggered back, barely staying on his feet.
A quick weave released the bonds holding Ellysetta’s hands, and she slumped against him, clinging to his neck, her body still quaking.
Two steps brought him to a long chaise covered in dark purple velvet, but even before he could lower Ellysetta to her rest, the tairen growled again and a shaft of re-kindled heat speared through him.
The arms holding Ellysetta tightened as his spent body filled with renewed strength.
Throughout the night, the tairen drove him, relentless, ravenous, refusing to release him. Time after time, bell after bell,
with an insatiable passion that outmatched even the night of Ellysetta’s carnal weave, he staked his claim. He took her on
the chaise, on the floor, bent over a small table, on her knees leaning back against his chest so his hands could have unfettered
access to her breasts and the soft, slick folds between her legs. He took her until there was no finger span of flesh she
had not surrendered to him, until her voice was hoarse from her cries and her body so sensitized a single flick of his tongue
or the slightest breath of Air could make her sob his name and start to shake.
Only as the darkness of night faded in the face of the approaching dawn did the violence that had raged inside him abate and
the fierce roar of his tairen finally fall silent. And then, with a whispered prayer of thanks and a sigh of relief, Rain
collapsed on the chaise beside Ellysetta and slept.