Serpent's Kiss

THREE

Her eyes narrowed further. “What do you mean, that wasn’t a real kiss?”

Rune drew back a few inches to consider her more closely. She had to know, didn’t she? She was far too old and sophisticated not to. She had, after all, spent her youth in human-kind’s earthy past. She must have taken countless lovers. The lion in him bared its teeth and hissed at the thought.

Sparks of temper had begun to flicker in those long almond-shaped Egyptian eyes of hers. Rune widened his own gaze. He was greedy to suck in every detail of this gorgeous deadly woman. He didn’t want to blink and miss a moment.

Somehow Carling managed to make the concepts of beauty and perfection seem mundane. He took in the long glossy dark hair that swung free to her slender waist. It had rich auburn glints in the sun, as though she burned with a deep internal fire. He contemplated the graceful length of her neck, plunging as it did to curvaceous collarbones that spread outward toward shapely shoulders like the wings on a dove. He sensed the ripe fullness of her unbound breasts moving underneath the loose black caftan, and snap, the shutter in his mind took him back to the river when he had stared at those bare round voluptuous globes, striped with white scars and crowned with dark nipples standing erotically erect, and when he had looked at her, he had felt a need so stark it had become a physical pain and a spiritual torment.

For as long as he could remember, Carling had been a singularity. Even though she was always accompanied by a retinue of tall, beautiful and deadly elegant Vampyres as attendants, and even though those attendants often included male companions, she outshone every other star in her constellation as she burned with the intensity of a supernova. Women viewed her as a threat, and males looked at her with avarice, and she taught them all the measure of their own limitations.

Rune’s need revved a high-end horsepower engine and took him on a Harley-Davidson ride. He rose to his feet, and her storm-filled imperious gaze lifted with him.

“Perhaps you have forgotten,” he said in a gentle voice. “Let me show you.”

Then it was his turn to frame the pure slender arc of her jaw between his large callused hands, and she let him. Her honey-colored skin was cool to the touch, and her Power thrummed against his palms. Good night, how did she hold all of it in and not fly apart at the seams?

He stroked her lips with the ball of one thumb. Her skin had a silken texture, the soft plump flesh giving way under the small pressure. His hands were too hardened from fighting and other manual labor. The only way he could truly know the depth of that exquisite softness was to cover it with his mouth.

“If I may,” he murmured.

He bent his head toward that incomparable face, giving her plenty of time to react and to tell him no. Then he fought to hide how he shuddered deep inside as he covered her lips with his own, stroking along the unique plush terrain of her mouth, focusing all of his attention on relishing the precious experience.

And she let him.

He took care with her. One should treat the rarest of treasures with respect. He coaxed the tilt of her head into the right angle and adjusted his stance in such a way that he just barely brushed against the front of her body. He laid the length of one of his hands at the juncture where the bottom of her skull curved into the slender flower-stalk of her graceful neck. His fingers were so long they cradled her effortlessly.

He invited her to lean back into his steady supporting hold, leading her into the first steps of an intimate dance. She followed him, shifting just that exquisite amount he coaxed from her and no more, letting her head rest in his hand, which made her spine arch with languorous intent. Holy hell, she would be an intelligent lover, the most ingenious of lovers that understood the intricate nuances of the dance, and when to listen and respond to the tiniest catch of a sigh, and when to let rip-roaring loose with everything one had.

Her flesh warmed beneath his mouth and between his hands, and she took a breath. It was the third breath she had taken since they had met that morning. Each useless, telltale one made him want to growl in triumph.

He dared to take the succulent swell of her lower lip between his teeth and suckle at it, ever so lightly.

Her lips trembled and fell open.

The gryphon inside him roared.

He took his time taking the internal private place of her mouth. He slanted his head sideways and curled his tongue into her. She made a low throaty noise that was so sensual it rocked his soul and shoved him into a paradigm shift. She wound her arms around his neck, leaned full against him and kissed him back.

Rune’s control jettisoned off the planet, leaving him behind to snatch at her in amazement. He crushed her to him, his arms around her waist, lifting her off the ground as he speared into her blindly. His heart pounded in massive sledgehammer strokes, and his skin became a thin veneer that cloaked a pillar of flame. He put a hand to her hip and gripped her hard, then ran his hand compulsively up the length of her torso to the weighted fullness of her breast. The plump round mound filled his greedy palm, and she fit, she just fucking fit, like some keystroke password to an unbreakable code. A sound came out of her. It sounded raw with surprise and he swallowed it down. His shaking fingers sought for and found her nipple jutting underneath the cloth.

She kissed him back with the same ferocity. She did, he would swear she did. Her body trembled too, and arched taut with craving.

Then she wrenched her face away. He reared back his head to look at her in sharp inquiry. Her mouth was swollen, blushed red, and her dark eyes were wide and blank with shock.

In a ragtag shred of sound that was all that remained of his voice, he said, “That was a real kiss.”

Her gaze locked on him. Her lips moved, as if she would try to say something. Then he remembered the stupid bargain his damn fool self had offered.

He eased her back down until her bare feet connected with the flagstone floor, and he went down on one knee again to bow in full reverence to the onetime Queen of the Nightkind. She embodied the pinnacle of what a man desired and what he should fear, and she deserved to have the world laid at her feet.

Carling stared. Rune was down on his knee again where she had ordered him, but this time she could sense from his emotions that he meant it. He gave full sincere, gracious homage to her. She could see it clear all the way through him, only instead of humbling that insouciant alpha male, somehow it ennobled him with the courtly aspect of a medieval knight.

Then she understood what the emotion was that she had sensed from him, because he taught her to experience it again for herself.

Desire. He looked on her and felt desire.

As a succubus, Carling had become an expert on all the flavors and nuances of emotion, but it had been so long since anyone had looked on her with desire, so very long since she had felt any form of desire for herself, she felt as though she was experiencing it for the first time. Then a wild upsurge of reaction like rage shook through her, and it was a dark violent storm. When he lifted his head, she slapped him so hard he rocked back on his heels. She intentionally curved her fingers into claws and dug her nails in cruelly, raking him from cheekbone to jaw. Blood sprang from the wounds.

“We’re done here,” she said through her teeth. “Now leave my home.”

He stared at her, his expression turning hard. Deliberately, calmly, he raised one hand to blot the blood that dripped down the side of his face. She saw that the wounds were already closing over.

She could not stand to look at him any longer. She whirled and stormed away. She barely knew where she was going. Anywhere, away, as the wild upsurge whirled through the cemetery in her head, blowing leaves across gravestones.

He made her feel things she had not felt in a winter’s age. How many centuries had it been since she had known desire? It had been so long she had forgotten. She should not feel such things as desire, or yearning, or to look even for the barest moment at the possibility of a branching off in her life toward something hardly seen and deathly beautiful, for it could never be hers.

Desire was not a gift to someone like her. Instead it was a beautiful agony.

“I am a bad woman,” she whispered to herself. Two tears slid down her cheeks. There was certain symmetry in that as well.

She was a bad woman at the end of a very long, bad life.

Rune stood and wiped the rest of the blood off his face as he watched Carling storm away. Aroused and furious, he breathed hard and fought for control as the predator in him roared to give chase. Tension vibrated through his body and made the world shake.

But we’re done here, she said. And no means no.

I gotta hand it to you, Carling, he thought. It’s never something mundane with you.

He was free to go, his obligation paid. The favor had been wasted with a spendthrift hand, as if she were a spoiled child who had been given too many toys. His lips curled back from clenched teeth.

In the end, it was not the predator, his common sense or his intelligence, but his pride that won out. He snatched up his duffle. He had left the waterproof container Duncan had given him down on the beach. It was time to move on. He could sneak in a few days of R & R before he headed back to New York. Get his head screwed back on straight before he went home to deal with Dragos again. By God, he had earned that much, at least.

He yanked open the arched double front doors and strode down the path toward the rest of his life. The hot blaze from the yellow morning sun was a welcome blast in his face. The chill bite of the ocean when he swam back to sanity would be even more welcome. There were a lot of fun things to do in San Francisco. He would check into the suite at the Fairmont Hotel, get him some of that five-star treatment and go on the hunt for some scotch and a plate of beef bourguignon as he debated how much time he should take for himself before he got in touch with Dragos again. Maybe the Fairmont had beef bourguignon on their room service menu. Hot food, booze, five-star service and a good game on a plasma TV. Or maybe he could find an old Gamera movie on cable. He loved that giant flying Japanese turtle. Yeah baby. He heard it all calling his name.

“Sentinel, wait!” Rhoswen called behind him. Her urgent call was accompanied by frenzied high-pitched barking. “Damn it, you piece of shit, get back here!”

Excuse the fuck out of me? Incredulous, he tilted his head and pivoted with slow precision.

Rhoswen stood in the shadow at the open front door, well back from the lethal spill of sunshine, while a small puffball with fierce black-button eyes and tiny white teeth hurtled down the path toward him.

Rune’s eyebrows rose. If he was not mistaken, that puff-ball was a Pomeranian. He certainly saw his fair share of them, living as he did in New York.

Let’s review.

He looked up at Rhoswen. Vampyre. Then he looked down at the ankle-biter. Pomeranian.

He double-checked. Vampyre. Pomeranian.

He said to Rhoswen, “You have a dog.”

“No,” she said. The look of loathing she gave the ankle-biter was clear even from a distance. “Carling has a dog. I’m just cursed to look after it sometimes.” She hissed at it, “Come here!”

It snarled at Rune as it sank its teeth into the hem of his pants leg.

Rune’s normal good humor resurfaced and he started to grin. “Carling has a dog,” he murmured to himself. “No, Carling has a rude Pomeranian.” He raised his voice and said to Rhoswen, “I don’t think he can hear you over all the noise he’s making.”

“The little freak never hears me,” Rhoswen said. Frustration vibrated in the Vampyre’s beautiful voice. She gave Rune an apologetic smile. “Would you mind terribly bringing him back over here?”

“Not at all,” Rune said. He scooped up the ankle-biter in one hand and held it up for a closer inspection.

All four tiny paws scrabbled in the air as it growled at Rune. He noted two of its legs were crooked. Rune said, “What a little Napoleon you are.” He strolled back to the doorway. “Why does Carling have a dog?”

“I have no idea,” the Vampyre said. “You would have to ask her. Seven months ago we were traveling from a Nightkind function back to Carling’s San Francisco town house when she saw this thing by the side of the road. It had been hit by a car. I was going to snap its neck and put it out of its misery, but then Carling cast a healing spell on it and insisted we take it to a vet.” Rhoswen looked up at Rune in outrage. “She cooks it chicken.”

Rune handed the little Napoleon over to her. Rhoswen clutched the squirming dog to her chest, and her eyes filled with tears.

He frowned. He had never seen Rhoswen as anything but composed. He said, “You’re not crying because Carling cooks chicken.”

Rhoswen shook her head and buried her face in the dog’s fur.

This is the point where you keep your mouth shut and mind your own business, son. This is the point where you turn right around again and walk away. So get your ass moving and roll on down the highway. This is not the point where you lift up your head and realize that you’ve been noticing for a while now that something is off.

He cocked his head and listened. He heard nothing but the sounds of the wind blowing through trees outside, and the sharp cry of seagulls overhead. When had he ever seen Carling without some kind of entourage streaming behind her like a comet’s tail?

He said, “Why are you and Carling the only two people on the island?”

The Vampyre said in a muffled voice, “Because she’s dying, and everybody else is afraid.”

Midnight stillness spread black ink throughout Rune.

He stepped back inside, shut the door and set his duffle bag against the wall. He said to Rhoswen, “I think you had better tell me everything.”

Carling sat in her armchair. It was precisely positioned in front of the window so that the band of morning sunshine fell across the floor just inches from her bare feet.

She looked at the transparent sunshine slanting in the air in front of her. It spilled everywhere, a wealth of light more extravagant than a king’s treasure and deadlier than night-shade. She dropped the protective shield of Power she kept wrapped perpetually around her like a cloak. The shield allowed her to walk in the full light of day. Without it, she would burn to death just like any other Vampyre would.

She did not remember the pleasure of basking in the warm sun. She remembered the fact of it, but not the sensation. Had it been anything like basking in the warm glow of a fire? That was how she imagined it was, anyway.

Now all the sun promised her was pain and immolation.

Setting her teeth, she held out a hand and touched the sunshine.

Agony seared her. She saw smoke rise from her skin and smelled her own scorched flesh. A split second was almost more than she could bear. Any longer exposure and her hand would burst into flames. She snatched her hand away and looked at the blisters that had formed along the fingers and the back. The blisters began to heal as she watched.

She braced herself and bathed her other hand in the molten light.

A deep familiar voice swore nearby. Someone grabbed her arm in a powerful grip and shoved her, armchair and all, several feet back from the sunshine. The chair’s wooden legs scraped along the floor. She blinked until her vision cleared.

Rune crouched in front of her, the long broad muscles of his shoulders bunched. He held her by the wrists. Shaking with pain, her fingers curled, she tried to pull free but he refused to let her go. Strong as she was, he was stronger. Extreme emotion darkened his gaze, and his handsome face was settled in lines of severity. The skin around his taut mouth whitened as he watched the blisters on her hands fade.

Carling regarded him wearily. After her emotional storm earlier and the twin jolts of agony, she didn’t know if she had the energy to face Rune’s particular brand of volcanic energy. His presence blasted her hypersensitive nerves.

“Sorry about that,” Rune said, his voice controlled and even. His rigid grip on her arms relaxed and became gentle. “I had a knee-jerk reaction when I saw your hand burning. Does it help?”

Her weary look turned speculative. His control was not as reassuring as it might otherwise have been, coupled as it was with the violent upheaval she could sense roiling through his emotions. “What do you mean, does it help? Has someone been talking out of turn? I told you to go. What are you still doing here?”

“Yes, someone has been talking,” said Rune. “I know everything, or at least I know everything that Rhoswen knows.” He let his hands slip down her arms to clasp her fingers with care. “Come on, tell me. Why were you burning yourself?”

She looked over his broad shoulders toward the daylight, and chose not to struggle for the return of her hands. His were warm and callused, broad-palmed and long-fingered. “Sometimes the pain helps me to fight off an episode.”

“Rhoswen called it fading. Is that what it’s like?”

“Not really,” she said. “It is a disassociation from reality. Sometimes I go into the past. Sometimes I don’t know where I go.”

Rune eased one of her hands into her lap and released it. He took the long dark fall of her hair and smoothed it behind one of her shoulders.

Her eyelids lowered and she glanced sidelong at his hand. This Wyr had temerity, she would give him that. An impulse to violence flickered through her. She had struck at him once. Maybe she would again. Her gaze lifted to his face. Four pale lines still scored one lean cheek. They would be gone in another half hour or so.

She could see in his eyes that he knew her impulse to violence was there. That did not stop him from reaching higher to tuck a lock of her hair behind her ear, stroking along the delicate shell of flesh. He touched her as he had earlier, as if he thought she was exquisite beyond all words, his expression calm, un-afraid. It bewildered her. Why would he do such a thing? Why did his touch cause her to feel such a dark violent pain?

Why was her other hand still resting in his?

“I do not think you are a very sensible man,” she murmured.

“No doubt you are correct,” he replied. “And I am still here because I have to ask you a question. Why do you have a dog?”

“Rhoswen has asked me that many times,” she said. “I don’t know why. He was hurt badly when we found him. He was down to almost half his body weight, so the vet thought he had been a stray for a while, and then he had been hit by a car. Even though he is so tiny, he has a ferocious spark of a spirit. He was broken all over and he just wouldn’t die.” She shrugged. “And I brought him home.”

Rune’s gaze was too keen as he inspected her face. What did he think he saw in her? “And now you cook him chicken,” he said.

“He’s so happy to eat,” she said. She looked down. Her hand was still in Rune’s. He was rubbing her healed fingers with his thumb. “Dancing fit-to-be-tied happy.”

“I must say, he’s got a point there,” said Rune with a lopsided smile.

“I’ve been trying to remember what it’s like to be hungry,” Carling said. “I cook the chicken, and I smell it and l say to myself, this is food.” She whispered, “I think I’m trying to remember what it is like to be alive before I die.”

Her words ghosted through the silence in the room.

Rune was still crouching at her feet like a great lion. His presence was more intense than a fire’s. He had not only warmed her through, she felt nourished and revitalized. He raised her fingers to his lips and kissed them. “I would far rather try to find a way to keep you alive before you die,” he said.

She stirred. “Rune,” she said.

His fierce gaze captured and held hers. “You threw away that favor I owed you.”

“I did worse than that,” she said. She touched his cheek with a finger. “And I may do worse again.”

He rolled his eyes. What a remarkably handsome man he was. “So what,” he said. “I kissed you and you slapped me. What an utter heroine you are.”

“You have got to be joking,” she said.

“Utter. Heroine.”

She leaned forward, so she could better stare him down. “You wear the most god-awful clothes. Look at you, with your jeans torn out at the knees. Who would want to wear a T-shirt like that, with a hairy man in spectacles on it? It’s ridiculous.”

“Don’t be knocking my Jerry Garcia threads,” Rune said. His strong-boned features were creased in a sharp, catlike smile. “You’re one to talk, the way you run around in those Egyptian caftans without a single stitch of clothing on underneath. Lady, I’ve been watching you and I can tell.”

“You’ve been watching me ever since I walked out of the river,” she whispered. “I could tell.”

“I haven’t been able to look away,” he whispered back, “because you are stunning. In fact, you can go ahead and slap me again if you want. Let’s get it over with, because I think I’m going to have to kiss you again, and it is so fucking worth it.”

The desire was back. It roared out of him, or out of her. She wasn’t sure, she couldn’t tell. He leaned forward, and she sat back sharply and put a restraining hand against the hard broad muscles of his chest. “Rune,” she said again, her voice cold and clear. “Stop.”

His eyes narrowed. “Why? You were totally with me in that kiss.”

“And you’re a fool.” She shoved him hard. It sent him sprawling back several feet, in the full spill of the morning sunshine. He propped himself back on his hands and looked at her in assessment, a great powerful beauty of a man, with rich suntanned skin stretched over a long, sinuous gracefully muscled body. It hurt to look at him.

She stood and stepped right up to the edge of the sunshine, and his lazy smile vanished. He sprang to his feet faster than she had ever seen him move, and he put his body between her and the sunlight.

“Look at us,” she said. Her face and eyes were hard. She gestured at them both, at him standing bathed in the light and her in the shadow. “This is why. And one of us is dying.”

“I take it back,” Rune said. “You’re not an utter heroine. You’re a drama queen.” He smacked her in the shoulders with the flat of his hands and knocked her back a step. She stared at him in shock as he stepped from the sunlight into the shadow. “Well, would you look at that. It’s a perfectly permeable line. You can cross it too when you’ve got yourself shielded.”

“How dare you?” she hissed.

“People always forget I have this side to me. I don’t know why. You might be surprised at what I would dare,” Rune said. He advanced on her, his expression blazing. “What did you think? Were you just going to sit out here on your lonesome island and pass away?”

He looked furious, magnificent. The sight of him clawed at her. She blurred with her deadly speed and struck at him, and she was shocked anew as he knocked the blow away. Holy gods, he was fast.

“I’ve got news for you, princess,” he snarled. “It’s time for you to wake the fuck up and do something about saving your own life.”

“Do you think I have not tried?” she shouted. Rage blinded her. She struck at him again, and this time managed to hit him in the chest. “You impudent son of a bitch. I have been researching this for almost two centuries. I have dosed myself with my own healing potions, and they’ve worked for a while but now they don’t. I don’t know WHAT ELSE TO DO.”

She spun away and drove herself forward, wild to get away from him.

He sucked in a breath and lunged to snatch her against his chest.

She froze as she realized what she had done. She had almost plunged unshielded into the full light of day.

She stared at the line she had nearly crossed. Rune wrapped his arms around her from behind and held her so tight she felt his heartbeat thudding against the skin between her shoulder blades. They were both breathing heavily.

“That was remarkably idiotic of me,” she said. She had to clear her throat before she could get the words out. “Thankfully I am not often this stupid or I wouldn’t have survived for so long.”

She recast the shield spell and Power shimmered over her skin.

He must have felt her cast the spell, but he made no move to let her go. Instead he laid his head on her shoulder.

He said in her hair, “I still owe you a favor.”

She sighed. “You don’t owe me a thing,” she said. “You are perfectly free, as nature intended you to be.”

“Then forget about the damn favor,” said Rune. “I’m still going to stay. We’re going to find a way to make this better, because Carling, I am not ready for you to go gentle into that good night.”

She held herself tense as she considered his words. Could she summon the energy and interest to live when she had grown accustomed to the thought of dying? What could Rune do that she hadn’t already done? She was a sorceress at the top of her game, but no matter how old or accomplished she was, he was still a creature that was far older. He might well know of things or think of options she hadn’t tried.

The tension flowed out of her body, and she rested back against him in tacit acceptance.

“I have not gone gently anywhere,” Carling said as she turned her head to put her cheek against his. “I don’t know why death should be any different.”