Burning Up (19 page)

Ferran had showered gifts on Amaris, too, in recognition for her efforts to prevent the loss of the kingdom. There’d been gold and jewels and bolts of fine fabric, but more important, he’d given her the pick of his staff. She’d selected a calm, experienced nurse from among them to care for Marin. The woman and Amaris’s sister were now abed in the next chamber down the corridor, in an airy room full of the toys the king had presented to his “little heroine.”

Now, for the first time in weeks, Amaris and Raniero were finally alone, without either the king to entertain or Marin to reassure.

Raniero cleared his throat, looking suddenly uncomfortable. “It strikes me that the king may have made too many assumptions.”

Amaris looked up at him, lifting a brow. “Oh?”

“Yes.” He swallowed. “The fief might have been his to give, but not the Rose. And I would not have you if it’s but a matter of duty.”

Amaris stared at him, incredulous. “Duty?”

He nodded, his eyes serious as he looked down into her face. “I know your sense of honor is strong, but . . .”

She stretched upward until her mouth met his in a kiss that blazed with all the heat and passion she felt down to her soul. His lips parted under the fierce assault, and she slid her tongue inside his mouth.

Stroked, licked, tasted.

When she finally drew back, she saw with satisfaction that Raniero’s eyes looked a little dazed. “Did that feel like duty, my lord?”

He licked his lips. “No. It felt like . . .” He stopped and swallowed.

“Love.” Amaris did not let her eyes drop, though a part of her wanted to flinch at the nakedness of the word.

But she trusted him. She’d learned out there on the battlements that Raniero was not like those who’d betrayed her. He was a man who could be trusted unto death.

So she met his eyes and said it again. “I love you, Raniero.”

Light flared in his eyes, bright with relief and passion. “And I love you, Amaris.”

Then his mouth covered hers, and he hauled her into his arms. As Raniero kissed her with starved intensity, his hands began to explore, cupping first one breast, then the other, thumb playing back and forth over the nipple that hardened hungrily under his touch. She kissed him back, a slow mating of tongue and lip and careful nipping teeth, reveling in the taste of him, male and magic.

“You drove me mad in that cell,” he growled against her mouth, “touching me when I couldn’t touch you, fucking me half blind while I was chained and helpless.”

“Mmm,” she purred, remembering those sweet, wild rides. “As I recall, you were well-revenged by that wicked mouth of yours. That sly tongue touched plenty. I thought I would lose my mind.”

“Serves you right.” Chuckling, Raniero danced his fingers down her torso, following the curve of her belly down to the soft nest between her legs. He rumbled a growl as he found her already growing slick and swollen. “You tasted so sweet.” White teeth flashed. “In fact, I find myself hungering for more.”

Amaris yelped a giggle as he tumbled her back on the bed and began to work his way down her torso, pausing for a nip here, a suckle there. Her breasts drew him into a passionate detour for a sweet eternity that was far too short, his tongue circling each nipple in turn, drawing wet runes that set her blood ablaze. She squirmed and sighed as he stiffened his tongue to flick and tease, then used his teeth with gentle ruthlessness until she quivered.

Finally he continued down her body, exploring the rise of her rib cage with kisses, pausing to swirl his tongue into her belly button. She laughed at the cool tickle, threading her hands into his long, dark hair.

But when he finally settled between her legs, she lost all urge to laugh. The width of his powerful shoulders nudged her thighs apart, and he wrapped his strong arms around her legs as he lay full length down the bed.

Amaris lifted her head to watch with breathless attention as he tilted his head, considering her sex. His dark eyes flicked up to meet her gaze, and he gave her a wicked white grin.

The first pass of his tongue between her swollen folds made her quiver in helpless need. He licked again, slow and lazy as a cat cleaning his paws, each creamy stroke sending jolts of pleasure sizzling up her spine. Gasps and whimpers escaped her lips as he tasted her as though she dripped honey, deliberate, maddening, spinning rapture over her like a spell. She could almost see the golden glow of his magic behind her eyelids.

And still his tongue worked, dancing over her clit, sliding between her folds, thrusting deep into her core. As though that wicked enchantment wasn’t enough, he reached up around her thighs to squeeze and tease her nipples, winding the delight tighter and tighter.

The orgasm stormed out of nowhere, shaking her body, jerking the muscles of her thighs like lute strings. She screamed at the sheer sweet glory blazing through her mind.

When Amaris could see again, he was braced over her on one hand as he aimed his thick, hungry cock with the other. “Oh, yes!” She drew her legs wide in welcome.

Raniero entered in a slow, luscious slide, groaning in delight. “Red God’s Balls, you’re tight,” he panted.

And he felt so deliciously thick, a tunneling pleasure that seemed to reach halfway to her waist. His withdrawal was just as careful, a sweet, silken delight. Dazzled, she looked up at him as he braced his arms to either side of her shoulders, biting his lip as if he fought to control himself. His dark eyes seemed to glow with feral need as he thrust in and out.

A need for something more than sex. A need she felt just as powerfully.

Hypnotized by that need, she stared up into his eyes, admiring the flush riding his high cheekbones, the sensual curve of his mouth, the white tips of his fangs showing between his parted lips.

Raniero picked up the pace, nostrils flaring like a racing stallion’s. Each long thrust jolted her closer and closer to explosion. Gasping, she hooked her heels over his thighs and ground upward, meeting him with rolling hips.

The climax exploded in her core like a blast of magic, primal and savage. As she threw back her head to scream, he bent his arms, lowering himself over her, his black eyes wild and hungry. His lifted upper lip displayed the length of his teeth.

Knowing what he wanted, what he needed, she angled her head to offer him her throat. “Now, oh, now!”

The touch of his hot lips and the cool slice of his teeth kicked her climax even higher. Thrusting heavily, he began to drink. She fisted her hands in the silk of his hair, gasping with the feral intensity of her pleasure.

T
hey lay together in the aftermath, panting, sweat sheening their skin in the moonlight that poured through the window. Amaris stroked his strong back slowly, feeling a sweet contentment she’d never known.

Until he raised his wrist to his mouth and sliced his fangs across the skin. Blood welled as he met her gaze, an odd vulnerability in his eyes. “Will you drink from me?”

Amaris blinked at him in dumbfounded surprise. She’d heard of this in the Garden, but she’d never expected a vampire to make such an offer.

For a vampire to share his blood with his Rose linked them in magic, heart to heart, soul to soul.

“Oh, yes,” Amaris breathed, joy blazing through her like sunlight.

He tasted like love, and she smiled against his skin, knowing neither of them would ever be alone again.

SHIFTING SEA

Virginia Kantra

This one is for Kristen, to read in a hammock.
And to my wonderful readers—thank you!

ONE

Scotland, 1813

M
ajor John Harris squinted between his horse’s ears, willing himself to ignore the throbbing in his knee and the pounding like hoofbeats in his head.

He had survived the bloody siege of Ciudad Rodrigo. He would not die of a hangover now that he was home.

Now that he had a home.

And all his limbs.

He had not expected either outcome. He was a man used to dealing with life’s harsher realities. But he could not be sorry that life, for once, had frustrated his worst expectations.

He lifted his face, letting the wind tatter the remnants of his nightmare and blow his hangover out to sea. The air smelled of earth and sea, brush and brine. Neptune jingled his bridle, bobbing his massive head in approval. The rawboned gray had carried Jack unflinchingly on the winter retreat from Corunna and through the long, blistering march to Talavera, but the Peninsular war against Napoleon had left the big horse scarred and past his prime.

Like his rider, Jack admitted ruefully. At least Neptune seemed to be taking the transition to civilian life in stride.

Lucky beast.

In the weeks since his cousin’s lawyers had found him in a stinking Lisbon hospital, Jack had learned to walk again without a cane and to sleep again in a room with four walls. But he was as ignorant as the rawest ensign when it came to managing his unexpected inheritance.

He was a soldier, not a farmer, determined to carry out his duty to the best of his ability, grimly aware that his tenants’ lives depended on his decisions as surely as his troops’ had. He only hoped his best would be good enough.

The rutted road meandered over hills as worn as his bones. The land—his land, now—swept in a ragged curve around the harbor, anchored at one end by the peaked roofs and chimneys of Arden Hall and on the other by furrowed cliffs. Fishing boats bobbed in the shining flat water. A bleak, spare church, an unprofitable inn, and a score of small dark houses clung like mussels to the rocks, their inhabitants prickly as barnacles and closemouthed as clams.

Jack was used to bivouacking in hostile countryside. But Spanish bandits had nothing on these stubborn Scots. Almost a third of his tenants were Highlanders driven west by the Clearances and carrying a grudge against all things English.

Including their new landlord.

Jack closed his knees, urging his horse onward, leaving the village behind. His thoughts clamored, restless and strident as the seabirds haunting the cliffs. He could hear their plaintive cries slicing the air, the rush of wind drumming in his ears, the waves curling to shore like distant music, like singing.

Actual singing, he registered in surprise.

A woman’s voice, husky and cool, rising and falling with the breeze, tangling him in lines of music, knotting in his soul.

He stopped, searching the shore below for the singer. Just beyond the reach of the tide, in a patch of tangled garden and blowing grass, a cottage nestled in the shelter of the rock.

Jack narrowed his eyes. Who would choose to live beyond the village outskirts, outside the protection of the harbor and neighbors?

A flash of white at the water’s edge caught his gaze, a billow of movement like a sail.

Not a sail. A woman’s skirts, a woman’s hair, flowing loose in the wind, shining like seafoam in the sun.

His breath caught. Her song plucked his heart from his chest. She was all white and gold like an angel in a dream, a vision concocted of loneliness and spray and too much whiskey.

Neptune snorted, his ironshod hooves slipping on the rock.

Jack tightened the reins, collecting his horse, recovering his balance. The angelic vision became simply a girl without hat or shawl, singing a song he’d never heard in a language he did not know.

Who was she?

One of his tenants, he thought, setting Neptune at the descent. A fisher’s wife, a farmer’s daughter, a serving girl perhaps. No gentlewoman went bonnet-less and barefoot on the beach.

At the sound of their approach, the song ceased. The girl turned, pushing back her tumbled hair with one hand. The pose and the wind molded her gown to her body.

Lust slammed into Jack like a bullet.

She was tall and lovely, her breasts high and round, her skin as pale as pearl. Her face was almost savage in its beauty, her broad jaw and level brow balanced by a full mouth and strong cheekbones.

Jack sat like stone, his blood pounding in his head and his groin. Beneath him, Neptune stood like a monument, iron muscles quivering.

He should say something, Jack thought at last. Reassure her. He was a stranger, after all, and she was alone.

“Major John Harris at your service, ma’am.” His voice grated on his ears.

She regarded him without expression, her eyes tarnished gold.

“From the hall,” he said since she seemed not to recognize his name. “And you are . . . ?”

“Morwenna.”

No surname. A servant, then?

He cleared his throat. He was not accustomed to the company of women. But his years of military service had given him the habit of command and some small store of social conversation. “I saw you from the cliffs,” he said.

And promptly plunged down the bluffs like a sailor diving after a mermaid’s song.

She would think him mad.

Perhaps he was.

“You were singing,” he added. As if that explained or excused anything.

“I was not calling you.”

A dismissal, by God.
She did not speak like a servant. Despite the absence of gloves, her hands were tapered and smooth. Her dress . . . Well, he didn’t know much about women’s fashions, but the fabric appeared very fine. Perhaps she was a gentlewoman fallen on hard times.

He should ride on. He could not stay, looming over her like the lord of the manor riding out to debauch village maidens.

She met his gaze boldly, like a woman willing to be debauched.

His blood thrummed. Before he could consider the consequences, he swung from his horse, landing hard and heavily on his right leg. He gripped the saddle and breathed deep and evenly, willing the pain to subside.

“You are injured,” she said behind him.

Scarred.

He turned stiffly. “Nothing to signify.”

She considered him, those strange golden eyes traveling down to his boots and up again, lingering in places no well-bred woman would look. He felt the stroke of her gaze like a smooth gloved hand.

She nodded. “We had better go to my cottage, then. There is a bed there.”