Serpent's Kiss

SIXTEEN

Carling stared at the monster crouching over her. His face blurred from the tears that had filled her eyes that she refused to shed. His feral gaze tracked every telltale flicker on her face. He knelt over her prone body, his knees on either side of her hips. His bones were all wrong, in his face, across his wide chest, in the sinewy muscular arms. He looked more lion than eagle in this half shift. She could feel his claws against her jugular as he pinned her by the throat. He had driven the claws of his other hand deep into the mattress beside her head.

The monster’s powerful body vibrated with violent tension, but while he held her in an unbreakable grip, the heel of his hand pressing down on her collarbone, he hadn’t caused her so much as a paper cut.

When Tiago had been like this, he had gutted himself for his mate.

She had done this to Rune. They had done it to each other.

She stroked his strange, beautiful half-lion face, and he snapped at her. His strong white fangs closed around her hand. He could have crushed every bone in her hand in his powerful jaws, but he held her so gently, those sharp fangs would not have cracked an eggshell.

“You know very well I’m not lying to you,” she said to him. She had no idea how she kept her voice calm. “We have been on a weird, wonderful journey together. And I am privileged that you chose to stay and experience it with me, but you must leave, Rune.”

Do not presume to tell me what I can and cannot do, the gryphon whispered in her head. I have not given you the right to send me away.

I have not given you the right to stay, Carling said, very softly.

An infuriated growl ripped out of him. With a snap of his head, he gave her hand a quick hard shake in reprimand. Tough shit. I’m not your servant that you can dismiss when things don’t suit you. I’m your lover, Carling.

“And I’m still dying,” she said. “I promise you that I will fight and look for a cure until the very last moment I can, but the fact remains, I still might die.”

His gaze was fiercely determined. I get to share this part of the journey with you too. I get to fight for your life too. I get to tell you what I think about it, and how I feel. And if it ever comes to that, I get to hold you at the end and share every last precious moment with you.

To hold on to him and never let go, no matter what. The thought was so beautiful and terrible, and it caused such a huge swell of feeling in her, she closed her eyes. Two tears slipped away. Once the dam in her emotions cracked, there was no stopping the leaks. Cry me a river.

It always happened, by the river.

She felt the rigid tension in his body soften. His jaws loosened and he let go of her hand, and the pressure at her throat eased. He stroked her temples, wiping the tears away gently with the backs of his fingers.

She twisted at the hips, slipped a knee between them, and rolled to heave him off her. He landed with a crash on the floor against the closet door. She leaped off the bed and strode for the living room. “We fucked,” she said between her teeth. “That’s all. It was a lot of fun and a nice diversion, but you need to get over it and move on.”

Sure he should, just like she had moved on so easily every time she had encountered him. All she had gotten was one kiss, one promise from him back in the distant mist of her youth, and she had never let anyone kiss her again. Not for thousands of years, past all logic or reason. Even when she had moved on in every other aspect of her life, she had held on to that one thing, because he had once looked into her eyes and said to her, I am waiting for you with everything I am. Now, no matter how she wanted to, she should not let him stay.

A freight train hit her in the back. It sent her into the wall in front of her with such force she cried out. Before she could react in any other way, Rune had yanked her hands over her head, holding her by the wrists as he kicked her feet apart. He pinned her body against the wall with the hard length of his own, his feet braced between hers, and just like that he had her caged, using only leverage, and his superior speed and strength. His pulse beat pounded against her senses like a sledgehammer, and the blaze of his heat surrounded her.

Shocked arousal roared through her. It pooled between her legs in a liquid gush. She looked up at his hands shackling her wrists and fought as hard as she could to get free. No matter how she struggled, she couldn’t budge him.

As long as her mouth wasn’t covered, she was not helpless. She could whisper a spell that would at least freeze him temporarily, if she didn’t choose something more offensive that might cause actual injury.

And he knew it. He remembered how angry she had been when he had pinned her down, and so he caged her but he left her a way out. The realization that he took such care with her, even in his frenzy, even after she had been so violent with him, pounded in her head. She opened her hands wide to push at the air, as she strained to find the strength of will to whisper the spell that would stop him for those few critical moments while she slipped away. The words were gone, her mind a blank. The sirocco had taken them away.

He was breathing heavily. The thick heavy length of his erection pressed against her ass. As she struggled, he emitted a harsh groan and shoved his hips against her, and another wave of intense arousal sideswiped her. Normally so cool, she felt feverish and started to shake.

He put his lips to her neck and nuzzled the sensitive skin at the nape of her neck, and the strength left her knees. If he hadn’t been holding her in place, she would have fallen.

“Here’s the thing,” he whispered. “I love you. I didn’t want to. I fought it. I put up barriers, and they all came crashing down one by one. It wasn’t just one thing. It was everything you did, both here in the present and back in the past. It’s everything you were, and everything you are. So I just fucking love you, and you are going to have to fucking deal with it. You got that?”

She started to shake her head. She realized she was breathing hard too, great gasps of air as if she had been running hard for a long time.

Rune sank his teeth into the back of her neck, pinning her even further so that a raw incoherent sound spilled out of her. Her mouth tingled again. She bared her teeth. She needed to bite him back and get drunk on his rich, ruby liqueur, but her goddamn fangs wouldn’t descend.

He said in her head, And here’s the other thing. I know you love me too. You had a good hand but you played it all wrong, so you might as well admit it.

“I don’t have to admit anything to you,” she said.

“Yes, you do,” he growled. She had given him all the clues and taught him all her tells, he just had to use them, because she really never did go gently anywhere, and if he had to claw and tear his way into her life, why then, so be it. She needed both his dominance and his tenderness; he knew it, like he knew his own soul. It was just another way in which they fit. “If you don’t owe me anything else, you owe me the real god-damn truth.”

She cried out again as he yanked her wrists together and held them locked in one hand. She twisted her wrists, trying to break his hold, but his long fingers were like iron. Hunger was not the ache she remembered. Or maybe she had never felt this before, this searing, driving force. She didn’t recognize her own voice. She didn’t recognize anything about herself. He put his hands on her, and she turned into a crazy person.

With his freed hand, he stroked down her body. He massaged her breast and pinched her nipple hard enough to sting. Then he cupped her crotch in a strong grip, where the need in her spiked the worst, and he yanked her back against him as he pushed his hips harder against her ass. He kissed the graceful bone just behind her ear and whispered, “What we did was more than just fucking. Say it.”

A sob came out of her, all the more shocking because she had no control over it. “Yes.”

He found the fastening of her jeans and undid them. His voice was as rough as his hand was gentle. “You love me. Say it.”

She leaned her hot cheek against the wall. “Yes.”

He held still, crushing her back against him, his face pressed into her neck. Then he let her go. She almost slid to the floor but then she managed to lock her knees into place. Leaning against the wall for support, she turned to look at Rune in confusion.

He leaned his forearms on the wall, on either side of her head, his hard, intent face angled down to her. “I know what you’re doing,” he said. “You’re still preparing to die.”

She put her hands on his chest. Half-angry, half-despairing, she said, “You can’t mate with me and hope to live. I’m trying to save your life!”

The irony of the moment was not lost on him. She was trying to drive him away to save his life, just as he had tried to save Tiago from mating with Niniane. Tiago had said to him, One of these days, you’re going to find your mate. And maybe she’ll be Wyr but maybe she won’t. Then you will understand just what you almost did to me.

I get it now, T-bird. I understand.

An eternity of life didn’t matter, if he lost her and it became an eternity of desolation. He would trade all of that time away for one day with his mate.

His gaze burned. “I don’t want you to save my life. I want you to give me yours.”

“Rune—”

He interrupted her. “Do you remember what I told you? For you that happened so long ago I’ll say it again. If you fail somehow—if you die—I will search for a way to walk through time to find you. No matter where you are. No matter when. I swear it.” He had tried so hard already, but as her last episode faded he lost the connection and the past melted away again.

She closed her eyes. Those words he spoke. She remembered every one. She had held on to them for so long, they had grafted to her bones, until they had spun on an enchanted spindle into a fairy tale of devotion that happened rarely to other people in other lives. To hear him say them again after so long . . . She shuddered. “You can’t promise that.”

“Shut up,” he said. “I can promise any goddamn thing I want.” His voice was quiet, even. He watched her put a shaking hand to her forehead, but he was not tempted to relent in the slightest. His long, lean muscled torso moved as he took a deep breath. He fingered the short, untidy hair at her temple and stroked her devastated face. His expression was clear, determined. He looked as steady as a rock, and just as moveable. He said softly, “I will never leave you. I will never let you go. I will not let you fall, or fail. I will always come for you if you leave, always find you if you’re lost. Always.”

She looked more vulnerable than he had ever seen her as her beautiful mouth shaped the word in silence. Always?

It was as if she were too afraid to say the word aloud. Everything inside of him wanted to pounce on her, to cover her vulnerability with his strength, to take her until she screamed with pleasure again. His instincts strained against his self-control.

But she was also a predator. If he did not engage those instincts in her too, no matter how he tried to hold on, eventually he would lose her. And he could not let that happen. He would not.

He whispered back, “Always. But you have to want it too. You have to own up to it and admit you want me.”

Own up to it. Like she had taken ownership of her own life. Own it, take it, claim it.

He backed away from her until he reached the bed. His hands went to the buttons of his shirt as he toed off his shoes. His gaze held hers as he stripped off his shirt and tossed it into a corner, and that was when he began to lie. “You have to take me,” he said, “or I really will give up and go find someone else.”

“You wouldn’t,” she breathed. Her gaze was riveted to the bare expanse of his broad, tanned chest. The unsteadiness left her as her body went tense. Her beautiful lips parted. She did not look hungry. She looked starving.

It was the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen. He wanted to growl in triumph. It was his, that expression was for him. But it wasn’t enough. He hadn’t pushed her hard enough.

Come on, baby. Get cranky. “I would,” the gryphon lied to his witch. His hands went to the fastening of his trousers. Then they came open. He wore nothing underneath. He pushed them down over his lean hips, the long heavy muscles of his thighs flexing as he kicked them off. “There would be nothing to stop me.” He cocked his head. “Maybe after all these years, I’ve discovered I have a type. Maybe I’ll find another dark-haired, beautiful woman. One who doesn’t argue about wearing pretty fashionable clothes or wearing makeup.”

Carling hissed, and her eyes flashed that pretty, scary red.

He put his hands on his hips and stood there nude, that insouciant alpha male, and he dared to taunt her while the sight of his body drove all the reason out of her head. Her hands fisted as she stared at him. He was built for both speed and power, wide in the shoulders and long, without an ounce of extra flesh anywhere. Washboard abs rippled down to his large erection. His large, tight testicles had drawn up underneath his penis. He was beautifully formed everywhere, with a hard warrior’s body that was poetry in motion.

Rune gave her his sleepiest, most disingenuous smile. “Maybe I’ll find someone who bites.”

A scorching image flashed in her mind, of him caressing an unknown woman who took his vein. She bared her teeth and launched at him.

He fell back on the bed as he caught her, and then she was on top of him, hands planted on the bed on either side of his head as she straddled him. His hard, wild face was flushed with arousal, and lit with a bladelike smile. Carling snarled, “Do you think I don’t know you’re playing me?”

“My give-a-shit button’s broken, baby,” Rune said. He cupped the back of her head and coaxed her down toward him. “Kiss me,” he whispered. “Take me. Don’t let me go—or I’ll go.” Then he said telepathically the same words he had said to her, so very long ago. But this man who is in front of you—I am waiting for you with everything I am.

She looked at him with such feral bewilderment he might have laughed if the stakes weren’t so high. “You have legions of women, and I don’t share.”

“There’ll be no one else, ever again. I’m all yours,” he murmured. “Body and soul.”

The Vampyre sorceress, who had been Queen, hissed in his face, “Swear it.”

“I swear it,” he whispered, stroking her hair. In this one thing they mirrored each other, for he needed her dominance and tenderness too. He opened his eyes wide again to take all of her in because he didn’t want to miss a single moment of this gorgeous, deadly woman.

“I tried to be good. I tried to set you free.” But she was a bad woman, of course. It was something she came to terms with centuries ago. His Power roared against her senses, even as he lay stretched out underneath her. She was so slick from wanting him, she felt drenched.

“Why would I want you to be good? I want you to be you.”

“If I take you, I will never let you go.” Her gaze grew heavy-lidded as she came down to his lips. “Never.”

“I will always hold on to you,” he said against her mouth. “Always.”

He slid his hands under her silken flowing T-shirt, and his clever fingers found their way under the camisole underneath. He eased the material up, and she held her arms up so he could pull it over her head. Then she was naked to the waist, and he almost groaned aloud as her gorgeous full breasts swung free. He fingered the dusky aureoles, watching as the nipples stiffened with pleasure. She caught her breath, and his cock pulsed at the telltale, ragged sound.

Then she lifted off of him. The beast who had been lying in wait for her to take him lunged to the surface to snatch at her, but she was only shrugging out of her jeans. Her hands were shaking so that she could hardly manage it. He sat to help her yank her boots off, and then her jeans were gone as well. Her curved body was unbelievably gorgeous, bearing the twin scars of the whip and flowing with the sinuous grace of a cat, and it was Carling’s naked body, Carling’s most private places that were revealed, Carling who looked at him with the feral red gaze that was yet still delicate with need, and the luscious, plump, frilly flesh between her strong slender legs was so beautiful, it sent him into a meltdown.

He came down on top of her. She was already wrapping her legs and arms around him as his mouth drove onto hers. His hands were shaking, everything was shaking, and the sound that came out of him was harsh and guttural and completely inhuman. She felt between their bodies and grasped his cock, her palm massaging the broad thick head, and he felt huge and full and in so much goddamn pain, it was like he had never taken her. “Oh fuck, I wanted to take my time with you,” he gritted between clenched teeth.

“We don’t have time,” she whispered. Her head fell back as she guided him to her slick entrance, and as he felt her soft moist cushion of flesh embrace the tip of his cock, he lost the last shred of control he had and came inside of her.

It was torturous, beyond pleasure. He felt huge and burning up, and she was such a tight, wet fit. Need drove him deeper into her. He shoved one arm underneath her waist to clench her lower body more closely to him. He cupped her head with his other hand while simultaneously bracing himself on the elbow, an instinctively protective position. He couldn’t get far enough, deep enough inside, and he pushed harder until he was slamming into her.

She raised her hips for every thrust, hands fisted in his hair, and he was so completely sure she was with him the entire way that when she made a miserable, shaking sound, very suspiciously like a whimper, icy shock ran over his skin.

He froze, his heart pounding, and searched her face. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Her face contorted with frustration. Her eyes watered. She looked like she was in actual pain. “I want to bite you. I need to bite, but my damn fangs won’t descend.”

The image of her sinking slender fangs into his neck as he took her ran through him like a live wire, and he almost came right then and there. He slipped his hand under her slim neck and lifted her head. He said huskily, “Bite me anyway.”

“I’ll bruise you with these dull teeth,” she whispered.

“Promise?” he growled. He was on fire everywhere. In his body. In his soul. He was blind with it.

She keened, lunged up and bit the strong cord in his neck that ran down into his shoulders. At the same time, she clamped down on his cock with her inner muscles, and his climax exploded out of him with such force he groaned with it. He ground his pelvis into hers, spurting hard, and she made a muffled sound, her whole body shuddering as he sent her over the edge. He could feel the rhythmic pulsing in her body, and holy hell, it was more than he ever imagined it could be, but it wasn’t enough—it could never be enough—

He rocked with her and clenched her to him with everything he had, and when the pulsing of her body eased, he started to move again. She let go of his neck and fell back to look at him with eyes gone wide in surprise.

“Rune?”

He hissed, “Don’t stop.”

Then he was beyond seduction, beyond enticement, deep in that place where language had been new and strange, and his need ran like lava, pared down to its purest sense, a hot primal scream.

“You’re mine,” the gryphon snarled at the witch. He took her by the back of the neck and shook her to make the words go in. “You’re mine.”

Whatever she saw in him stripped her raw. She looked young again and transfixed with wonder. “Oh God. You’re so beautiful.”

The compulsion drove him into her. It was so exquisite he tore his claws into the bedspread. She held him tight, her knees high so that she cradled his whole body. She gripped his wide flexing shoulders as his hips moved and moved, and her garnet eyes were filled with some kind of epiphany. Her lips were moving as she made strange sounds. Much later Rune would recognize she had been swearing in ancient Egyptian, and the realization would make him laugh. But that was later when he had recovered the layers of civilization that were now stripped away.

Then she stretched underneath him, and reached above her head with both arms as she lifted up with her strong, graceful hips and legs and he felt it again, felt her inner muscles begin their gorgeous spasm. She climaxed with a shaking gasp, and he hurtled forward again, spilling into her.

And again. This time he flipped her onto her hands and knees. She was mewling into the bed and shoving her ass back to him as he took her from behind. He wrapped his arms around her, his wise and wicked woman, and slammed her into the headboard. She braced herself as best she could and reached up behind her head to clutch at him, and he wrapped an arm around her neck, and this time she was the one who groaned it through clenched teeth. “You’ve gone and done it now—you’re so mine, Rune Ainissesthai—Rune—Rune, oh God—”

Three times, the witching number.

“That spell’s already been cast,” he said into her hair. And he gave himself to her, spilling everything he had into his mate.

She could not let go of him. He propped himself against the headboard and pulled her into his arms, and she went willingly. She rested her head on his shoulder and only realized she was clenched on his arm when she caught sight of her hand out of the corner of her eye and saw that her knuckles were white. She forced her fingers to loosen and saw that she had left a red imprint on his tanned skin. If he had been one of the more fragile of the Elder Races, she might have broken his arm.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, stroking his bicep.

“Don’t ever be sorry,” he said. He kissed her forehead. “Bite me, mark me, claim me in any way you wish.”

That was when she realized he held her just as tightly too. He rested his face in her hair, and his chest rumbled. It had a low, deep, rough cadence that vibrated against her cheek. She ran her palm across the broad muscled expanse wonderingly. “Are you purring at me?”

“I might be,” Rune said. His deep voice was rougher, and lazy with intimacy. “Unless you’ve done something wrong. Then I’m growling at you again.”

She tightened her lips to try to keep the laughter in, but it spilled out anyway. “Just because I’m laughing doesn’t make it okay,” she warned.

“The purring?” He threaded his fingers through her short hair.

“No, the growling. I will not be chastised by you growling at me every time you think I might have done something wrong.”

“Then I will definitely be purring from now on even when I’m growling.” He captured her hand before she had the chance to smack him, and he brought her fingers up to his mouth to press a kiss on her knuckles.

She refused to laugh again. She clenched her jaw against it until the impulse eased. Then she cleared her throat. “About what just happened.”

“What about it?” He sounded calm, his purring steady and quiet. It was remarkably soothing.

She looked out the French doors at the wrought-iron balcony they would most likely be too busy to enjoy. The sun had almost set, and the red and gold streaks across the sky were starting to fade. Dr. Telemar would be arriving at SFO soon.

“It was—more than I expected.” As old as she was and as much as she had seen, she found herself unexpectedly at a loss for words.

“You mean when we mated.”

That was what they had done. They were mating. He was mating with her. She had taken him into her body as she had taken him into her soul, and he had wrung her inside out. Everything ached, pleasantly, although that would fade soon enough as she healed with Vampyric speed. “I didn’t know it would be so intense,” she said softly. “How could you trust me like that?”

He was silent for so long, at first she thought he wasn’t going to answer her. Then he stirred and said, “It just happened. The more I learned about you, the more I cared, and the more I trusted you. Your research, your dog, the way you looked at me and said you took responsibility for how we might change things. You think I don’t know you said that to make things easier for me, when I might have been the only one to remember what happened? Then this last time when I went back, I looked at you and panicked at the thought of losing you. I know I told you too much, but I couldn’t stop myself. And so you knew all this time that I would come to you some day, and you said nothing, did nothing.”

She buried her face in him. “I had a lot of time to think,” she whispered. “I thought about time looping back on itself, and about how you said you were from the future and how every time you came back, you changed things in the past. You said it was incredibly dangerous, and I believed you. When I finally met you again and realized who you were, I thought about getting in touch and telling you what had happened. Then I realized that if I did, I might change you too so that you never came back in time to see me. And I didn’t want to risk losing those memories, so I waited to see what would happen at Adriyel River, and beyond.”

He pushed her onto her back and came on top of her, covering her with his body while he held her tight, pressing his lean cheek against hers. “You thought it through and held steady,” he said. “You closed the time loop we created. You held your ground when I don’t know of anyone else who would have. Then after all of that, you tried to send me away this afternoon, and it was so goddamn loving and extravagantly stupid, how could I not want to mate with you? Of course I trust you. I knew if you laid claim to me, you would hold on no matter what.”

“No matter what.” She swallowed hard, gripping him as tightly as he held her. They were wrapped around each other, torso to torso, skin to skin, Power entwined with Power, so that she was not sure where one ended and the other began. “I think I can see what my life must have been like before you went back, and everything feels truer now.”

He nuzzled her neck. “All the pieces interlock. The thought keeps running through my head that it’s like a keystroke password to an unbreakable code. It opens a vault door to a strange new country, and even though it is strange and new, it is all still familiar. All the colors are brighter and more fierce, the song notes more piercing.”

She kissed his temple and ran her fingers through his hair. The weight of his body sent his purr vibrating through her chest, and she felt a sudden rush of adoration for him so intense it made her feel drunk, insane. “It’s a more beautiful, deadlier world because there’s so much more to lose,” she said. “Rune, you can’t go back anymore. We have to protect what we have.”

“There’s no reason for me to go back now,” he murmured. He kissed her collarbone. “I think I can hold my own and not get caught up in the episodes when they happen. We’ve warned your younger self to take care, and I also think we’ve learned everything we can. The most important thing now is to guard you and keep you safe when you’re caught in them, while we figure out how to get them to stop.”

“You sound so optimistic,” she said.

“Are you still the glass-half-empty kind of girl?” he said. “You know, the more things change, the more they really do stay the same.”

She shook her head and exhaled a silent laugh. She loved how he could make her laugh.

The more things change. A sudden wave of fear had her clutching him tighter again. She had embraced the changes that had happened to her long ago, but what if something else changed in the world because of what they had done? She would never know, but Rune would. He said he remembered everything. What if they had done something wrong and had somehow destroyed something that should have existed? What if she had decided to do something she shouldn’t have, something that she hadn’t done originally?

She felt again that sense of hurtling forward, faster and faster, in time. She wanted to turn her racing brain off, to close her eyes and rest against Rune’s strong body in a true sleep. Then something else occurred to her.

“I just realized, right after I talked on the phone I went into the fade. I haven’t had the chance to tell you,” she said. “I’m pretty sure Julian’s turned against me. I can take him if we’re one-on-one, but as King he commands the support of the whole Nightkind demesne. We need to tread carefully.”

Rune came up on his elbow to look down at her. His gaze was sharp, his lean features focused. The fine lines at the corners of his mouth deepened. “Dragos left me a message to call him as soon as I could,” he said. “Of course I haven’t had time yet. I wonder if he was calling about the same thing. I need to call him back to find out what’s going on.”

“We have a hell of a lot to untangle,” Carling said. “Just set aside the whole dying problem for a moment. Nobody’s going to be happy when they find out what’s just happened between us. Not the Nightkind demesne, not the Wyr, and certainly not the Elder tribunal.”

They were both silent for a moment as they absorbed the enormity of the challenges in front of them.

Then Rune kissed her cheek. He blew a little in her ear, and she cringed away from how it tickled. “It’s always something.”