Лорел Гамильтон - A Kiss Of Shadows

I worked the silk of the nightshirt out from under my back, then pulled it over my body, over my head. I raised up, sitting above him. That dark knowledge in his eyes was gone, chased away by sheer need. It was so raw on his face, I knew I'd taken the game too far. I held the nightshirt in front of my breasts, not sure how to apologize without making things more awkward than they already were.

"No," he said, "don't cover them. You surprised me, that's all."

"No, Doyle. We can't finish this, and for you, especially… I'm sorry." I started to slip the shirt back on.

His fingers tightened painfully around my thighs, fingertips digging into the skin. He made me gasp and look at him with the shirt only on my arms.

His voice was dark with command, a barely contained rage that made his eyes shine like black jewels. "No!"

That one word froze me where I was, left me staring down at him with wide eyes and my heart beating like a trapped thing in my throat.

"No," he said, voice only a breath less severe, "no, I want to see them. I'm going to make you writhe, my princess, and I want to watch your body while I do it."

I let the shirt fall to the bed and sat up, as close to him as I could get. His grip on my thighs had passed the point of pleasure and become simply pain, but that, too, under the right set of circumstances, was a kind of pleasure.

His fingers eased back just a little, and I saw that he'd left the marks of his fingernails in my thighs. The little half-moon marks filled with blood as I watched.

He started to move his hands out from under my thighs, but I shook my head no. "You're down there, and I'm up here, remember."

He didn't argue, just settled his hands back around my thighs, not hurting this time, just solid enough that I couldn't move away. I ran my hands over my stomach, upward to cup my breasts, then lay down propped against the pillows so he could see me.

He stared at me for long seconds, as if he'd memorize the way my body lay among the dark-colored pillows, then his mouth settled against the wound. He licked it with thick, slow movements of his tongue. Then his mouth locked over the wound and he began to suck. He drew on the skin so tightly that it hurt, as if he were sucking some deep poison out or the wound.

The pain raised me up, and he rolled his eyes to me full of that dark knowledge that he hadn't earned. I laid back against the bed with the pressure of his mouth on my thigh, his strong fingers digging into my thighs hard enough that I knew tomorrow I'd be bruised. My skin had started to glow, glimmering in the soft bedroom light.

I stared down at him, but his eyes were turned downward, concentrating on his work. The warmth began to grow under the pressure of his mouth, to fill the wound like warm water poured down the hole in my skin.

Doyle began to glow. His bare skin shone like moonlight on a puddle of water at night. Except this moonlight was coming from inside him to shimmer in black shapes of light and dark underneath his skin.

The warmth of the healing beat against my thigh like a second pulse. His mouth locked against me, pulling at that pulse, as if he'd suck me clean and empty. A warmth grew in the center of my body, and I realized that it was my own power, but it had never been like this before.

The warmth in my thigh and the warmth in my body grew outward like two pools of heat, out and out, larger and larger until my body was eaten with heat, and my skin glowed white and pure with a dance underneath like water. The two powers flowed against each other, and for a heartbeat Doyle's healing warmth floated on the surface of my heat, then the two powers spilled into one another, merging into one rush of spine-bowing, skin-dancing, body-tightening magic.

Doyle raised his face up from my thigh. He cried out, "Meredith, no!"

But it was too late, the power poured through us both in a rush of warmth, of heat, that tightened things low in my body until there was no breath. Then the power spilled outward like a fist flinging open, straining for something it could not grasp. I cried out, and the power flowed out of me in a glow that left shadows in the room from my skin.

I saw Doyle as if through a haze. He was on his knees. He had one hand up as if to ward off a blow, then the power smashed into him. I saw his head snap back, his body raise high on his knees as if the power had arms to lift him. The dance of moonlight under his skin grew until I could see a nimbus of black light, shining like a dark rainbow around his body. He stayed for an impossible second lifted, straining, a shining thing, so beautiful that you could only cry, or go blind as you watched. Then a scream was torn from his mouth, half of pain, half of pleasure. He sagged onto the bed, catching himself with his arms. That wondrous glow began to fade as if his skin were absorbing the light, sucking it back into the depths from whence it came.

I sat up, reached for him with a hand that still held a hint of that soft white light.

He jerked back from me, fell off the bed in his haste, looked over the edge of it at me with wide, frightened eyes. "What have you done?"

"What's wrong, Doyle?"

"What's wrong?" He got to his feet, leaning against the wall suddenly as if his legs weren't quite steady. "I am not allowed a sexual release, Meredith. Not by my hand, or anyone else's."

"I never touched you there."

He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall. He spoke without looking at me. "Your magic did. It ran through me like a sword." He opened his eyes, stared at me. "Do you understand now what you've done?"

I finally did. "You're saying that the queen will count this as sex."

"I never meant for it… My power has never been like this before."

"Was it like this the night you were with the roane?"

I thought about that for a moment, then frowned. "Yes, and no. It wasn't exactly like this, but—" I stopped in midsentence and stared at his chest.

My look must have been astonished, because it made him stare down at himself. "What? What do you see?"

"Your chest wound, it's gone." My voice was soft with amazement.

He ran his hands over his chest, searching the skin. "It's healed. I did not do this." He came to the edge of the bed. "Your arms."

I looked down and saw the claw marks were gone. My arms were healed. I ran my hands over my thighs, and they weren't healed. The nail marks, filled with their small bits of blood; the red marks of his teeth; the press of his mouth that had brought a red stain to my thigh where the wound had been. "Why is everything else healed but these marks?"

He shook his head. "I don't know."

I stared up at him. "You said that my initiation into power healed Roane, but what if it's not just that first flush of power. What if it's part of my newfound magic?"

I watched him try to make sense of it. "It could be, but healing by sex is not a gift of the Unseelie Court."

"It is of the Seelie Court," I said.

"You are of their bloodline," he said softly. "I must tell the queen."

"Tell her what?" I asked.

"Everything."

I crawled forward on the bed, still half-naked, reaching for him. He moved out of reach, clutching at the wall as if I'd threatened him. "No, Meredith, no more. The queen may forgive us because it was accidental, and she will be pleased that you have more powers. It may save us, but if you touch me again… " He shook his head. "She will not have pity on us if we come together again this night."

"I was just going to touch your arm, Doyle. I think we should talk before you go tattling to the queen."

He moved back to the edge of the wall, just before it turned the corner out of sight. "I have just had the first release in more centuries that you can imagine and you sit there like that… " He shook his head again. "You would just touch my arm, but my self-control is not limitless—we've proven that already. No, Meredith, one touch, and I might fall upon you and do what I've been wanting to do since I saw your breasts trembling above me."