Daughter of Fire (35 page)

“The old woman warned me at Amesbury that first day,” Rorke said on a sound of longing, as his hand glided down the curve of her throat to the silken place where her blood stirred beneath her skin.

“She said I had no notion of your power. Ah, but I do, mistress,” he whispered as his head bent low and his lips followed his hand to that soft, vulnerable place that lay exposed above the laces of her gown. His tongue stroked into the soft indentation of flesh, startling her anew. Hands that raised to stop him, curled over the hard contour of muscle across his chest, the tips of her fingers gently grazing.

It might have been an oath, so harsh was the sound of his voice as if forced from his throat. “You have the power to bewitch and beguile.”

The flickering strokes of his tongue were like the velvet beat of a butterfly’s wing at her flesh, making her breath shudder from her lungs as a long-ago memory flashed through her thoughts—of Bronwyn and Ham that day in the glade... of hurried kisses... the frantic tearing of clothing... then the even more frantic joining of their bodies as they thrust at one another.

There was no hurry nor haste in his kisses. It was as though each was deliberate, lingered over, and savored completely before the next was begun, filling her with a sensual madness that she wanted neither to understand nor end even as she felt the gentle tugging of laces at her bodice and then the downward, stroking journey of his lips to other needy places.

“My God,” he whispered. “Your skin is so warm and sweet.” His tongue stroked over a dusky nipple. “You are like sweet fire.”

Vivian gasped at the reaction of her body. Her breasts tingled with each plucking stroke, her nipples taut and hard as he nibbled with his teeth. Then his lips closed over her possessively, and she experienced a gentle, rhythmic tugging as she was drawn more deeply into the dark, wet heat of his mouth in a tender, relentless assault.

Abandoning herself to her newly awakening senses, her head fell back until she was supported only by his arm about her waist, back arched, nails leaving pale half-moons in the skin at his shoulders as she held on to him, her breath caught in her lungs as her body betrayed her. Her breast was taken more deeply into his mouth as each tugging, suckling stroke echoed in some dark, deeply hidden place within her, and she whispered with a fear that came from that hidden place, “I cannot... I must not... Please...”

His hand at her back moved lower, fingers closing over softly rounded flesh to gently squeeze. His own need whispered at her other breast as a new and equally tender assault began, “There is nothing to fear...”

“Please!” Tears of need, uncertainty, and anguish quivered in her throat as her hands found their way into the thick mane of his hair, twisting in the long dark waves.

“You do not understand... I cannot...” The words broke on a soft sob. “I do not know how...”

He had waited for her refusal, certain it would come, so firmly had she held herself against him, even as he repeatedly exposed the need within her. There was no guile or deceit, only an honesty far more alluring than he could have hoped, an innocence that sharpened the need deep inside him.

“Do not be afraid.” His mouth returned to hers, fingers tenderly framing her face, his voice low and thick with the pleasure of a truth far more than any he had expected. “For you please me very well... ”

Her guileless eyes, like twin flames that reflected the brilliance of the clear blue stone, stared back at him with an open wonder of desire. His fingers stroked the length of her neck with an agony of slowness, as if he was learning her, then fanning out along the silken curve of skin to her shoulder, those hard, callused hands grazed silken flesh across the swell of each breast. Then he slowly turned her and pulled her nakedness against him as he had imagined it a thousand times.

“Your innocence pleases me.,” he whispered as his fingers glided back across the top of her shoulders, caressed the back of her neck, creating entirely new sensations.

“Your softness pleases me,” he said as a slow-twisting agony of the desire spiraled through him.

She could not see, could only feel and imagine with breathless anticipation that there must be so much more, as his hands moved to the thick plait of her hair, then felt the gentle tug as damp strands were loosened from the plaited braid that hung down her back. She imagined those strong hands moving slowly through her hair, even as one thick strand after another fell loose about her shoulder, then waited in breathless anticipation as the heavy mass tumbled down her back.

Then, with a startled sound, she felt the heat of his mouth at the back of her shoulder, his tongue flicking across her skin. Her nipples tingled as they once more grew taut as though with a memory, yearning to be taken captive once more in the dark possessive heat of his mouth, and those strong hands capable of wielding death and destruction, tenderly held her entire body captive as he brushed the heavy fall of hair forward over one shoulder, exposing the column of her back, then swept down her arms, the gown pooling at her feet as he swept it from her body.

Other memories of that day in the glade flashed through her stunned thoughts. But this was not the same. There was no frantic tearing of clothes or the eagerness that became almost an animal frenzy to be joined. Instead, he slowly, deliberately, undressed her, rousing her further with each touch across bare skin.

Vivian gasped at her nakedness, then gasped again as his hands closed over both her breasts and she was pulled back against the length of him. His head angled down beside hers, his beard-roughened cheek grazing hers as his teeth grazed down the side of her neck, drawing forth startled sounds with each tender bite.

“The satin of your skin pleases me,” he said with such fierceness that she trembled.

“Please...” she whispered, certain that she must do something, but with no idea what it was.

“Shah.” He barely controlled the agony threading his voice. “Soon you will know,” he murmured, as his hands slid down the length of each arm to slender hands that he imagined touching him as he was about to touch her. Then, feeling the anticipation that quivered through her, sensing the desire within her for things she did not know, he stepped back a half pace and went down on one knee at her feet.

The breathless sound of his name at her lips was like a slender hand closing over his aching flesh. Whatever else she might have said died at her throat as he pressed his mouth low on her back at the place where her spine flared gently to softer, fuller flesh, and he began a new assault of her senses.

“The taste of you pleases me.”

In countless places, she felt the heat of his mouth in tender kisses, in hands locked about her so that she could not flee.  She would not, even if she could have.

Visions of that long-ago day swept over her. As a young girl on the brink of womanhood she had watched that fierce, frenzied coupling, knowing that such a thing was forbidden to her even as she experienced a strange awareness that hinted at some deeply hidden desires that marked her of mortal flesh and blood.

Rorke FitzWarren had awakened those desires, unleashing within her a longing for things forbidden. This once, she silently thought, no matter the cost, she wanted to experience what had caused Bronwyn such pleasure that she laughed in the midst of it. She wanted to know the desire that sent Judith de Marque down darkened passageways to seek out a man she could not marry but would lie with. She wanted to feel the awakening of her other senses in a longing of fulfillment that had joined her mother and father, and created her of mortal flesh and blood.

“And your fire pleases me...” Rorke’s hand fanned down across the taut flatness of her belly, fingers stroking through the fiery silk below, as his teeth gently sank into that tender swell of flesh below her spine.

Her skin quivered beneath his lips and those nibbling teeth that she imagined sinking into her flesh, arching her back like a sleek cat that begs for more. He delved deeper, fingers stroking down over the silken mound, then gliding back through folds of satin flesh.

It began subtly. This new assault that created a breathless agony which Vivian was certain she could not bear. The gentle, warm bites nibbling at flesh that rapidly became too sensitive to his touch, the downward stroke of his tongue below her spine that made her wet. And the stroke of those long fingers, slipping inside her, caressing, gently stretching, preparing her as he drew forth from her body a sweet, slick rain as she wept with both joy and a sort of aching sorrow at the sensations he created.

She softly whispered ancient words. The sound of his name shattered on a desperate sob as her body shuddered beneath his hands and mouth, and the sweet fiery wine of her body drenched him.

When he stood once more and turned her toward him, he was stunned by the wild, look of her. He had said she was no fey, ethereal creature, but at that moment, with desire burning like blue fire in the depths of her eyes matched by the gleaming blue crystal that was all she now wore, she seemed somehow unearthly, as though she was a creature born in fire.

This one night,
Vivian thought, as she laid her hands against his chest.
I will have this one night, for it must last an eternity.

“I want to touch you as you have touched me,” she whispered.

The sweet innocence and fiery passion of her words almost drove him to his knees. He kissed her fiercely, hands thrust back through the thick satin of her hair. It cascaded in fiery ribbons through his fingers as she breathlessly broke the kiss to begin another, pressing her mouth against his chest, tasting him as he had tasted her. As he had aroused her, she now aroused him with sweetness, innocence, and fire.

Her small tongue stroked across all the hard, scarred places—the pale ribbon of a sword’s deadly kiss at his side, the strange wide path as if he had been burned, to then nibble and suckle a flat, male nipple as he had suckled her.

He swore softly. “You are like sweet fire, burning me.” But instead of stopping her, the words encouraged and pleaded for more, a plea she heard in the harsh sound of air leaving his lungs as her fingers sought the laces of his breeches, then felt the taut flesh at his belly that quivered and leapt beneath her seeking fingers.

“I can feel life within you,” she whispered, with that passionate innocence of wonder as she held the weight of him in slender hands. With that same innocence of things only half-known and longed for, with the instinctive yearning deep inside, she closed a hand around him, fingers barely encircling his veined flesh to glide from warm satin tip down the length of him to that dark thicket and back again, a glistening droplet beading at the tip of the engorged flesh.

He groaned. “You make me weep with need for you.”

She could not imagine that this magnificent part of him wept actual tears. She touched a finger to him as he had touched her so intimately, the
tear
of his desire glistening at her fingertip. Then she tasted him again.

The sound he made was feral, like the cry of some ancient creature in agony as he stepped out of breeches and boots. He felt control slip away as he swept her into his arms, no longer certain who was the seducer or who had been seduced.

He had no patience for the time it would have taken to carry her to the bed, and, so, lowered her to the thick carpet of furs spread before the hearth.

It was as if the fire worshiped her, bathing across her naked flesh, glowing in all the soft, satin hollows to set aflame the silken mound that glistened with her own sweet wetness and in the satin of her hair fanned across the thick, dark furs.

“Now let me please you,” he whispered, moving low over her, his breath whispering at her belly, stirring the fiery silk that shrouded the center of her body. “Let me taste you as you have tasted me.”

Certain she could not bear more, Vivian watched both stunned and fascinated as he bent lower still, the heat of his whispers felt at her thighs as he rained kisses across her startled flesh, his lips following where his words led in yet another assault on her senses.

He parted her with the velvet heat of his tongue, slipping past swollen flesh to penetrate her, the sweetness of her like none other. She was as intoxicating and stirring as warm wine that moved through his veins like molten heat.

Fire burned through her. It began at the place where his lips and tongue made love to her, then spread through her like a fire fall tumbling out of control. Her hips rose to meet each thrust of his tongue, seeking a deeper joining. Her eyes were closed as she abandoned herself to pure physical sensation.

The prophecy had warned she must never love as a mortal woman. What might the price be for this night of pleasure? She did not know. She knew only that she could not go back to her lonely existence, comforted only by the magical fire that burned within her. Not after having experienced the greater magic of the fire of Rorke’s passion. Tears of both sadness and joy glistened in her eyes.

This one night.

Just once she would know what it was to be a mortal, even if it meant the loss of her powers. To know what it was to be loved and physically joined with a man. One night to last all of eternity. Whatever the loss, it would be worth it.

The image of a young woman and man in a sheltered glade became nothing more than a shadow of memory as the fire bathed her soul in flaming heat while her bold warrior bathed her body with love. Her skin shivered with heat and the need to experience that deeper love as his hands closed over her knees, parting her.

She shivered with an anticipation of pleasure she could only imagine and, it seemed, had waited an eternity to experience as Rorke slowly moved over her. His hardened, warrior’s body, was magnificent in the gleaming light from the hearth as if the flames paid homage to every curve of hardened muscle and every scar.

“Touch me,” his voice ached in his throat.

Her slender hand moved between them, stroking over him, as his hands closed over her hips, lifting her.

“Take me into your sweet fire.”