Heart of the Flame (36 page)

He, the man of reason, the student of logic and patterns, had been bested by pretty lies and false embraces. He should despise her, and in truth, a part of him did. That she was likely teamed with his enemies at this very moment was enough to fuel his anger ten times over.

She
was
his enemy, he reminded himself harshly on those occasions when he felt his heart soften toward the woman who had seemed so lost when he found her, so vulnerable and in need of his protection.

By day he forced his heart to harden and shut her out, but at night, when he closed his eyes and saw her there with him--fiery, sensual Haven, as she had been before he knew the truth--it was all he could do to keep from reaching for her. All he could do to keep from pulling her close and tasting her deceitful kiss one more time. He should have learned, for in the end it was always the same.

Even in dreams she proved him her fool, laughing soundlessly as she faded to mist and slipped away through his grasping fingers.

On this night, with Rand on watch in the tor chapel and Kenrick having made camp outside, Haven came to him in sorrow. He felt her touch brush softly against his cheek, drawing him into the dream. His slumbering mind saw her as clearly as ever, kneeling beside him on the soft grass, her mane of flowing auburn hair and graceful shoulders limned by silver moonlight.

He would have thought her an angel if not for her tears.

She said nothing as she gazed down at him, her eyes welled and glittering with moisture. One fat tear spilled over, rolling down the delicate slope of her face. He might have caught the errant droplet, but he willed himself not to reach out, not to touch, lest he lose her so soon after she had arrived.

Her sadness confused him. It moved him, registering somewhere deep inside him, but she gave him no chance to question her.

Slowly, silently, she bent down and brushed his mouth with a tender kiss.

It had been just days since they had parted at Clairmont, a few scant nights since the last one they spent together, but to Kenrick, feeling her lips so warm against his own, it seemed he had gone a lifetime away from Haven's kiss.

His hunger surged at once, desire arrowing through him like a spark igniting parched fields. But he did not let it rule him. He dared not rush the dream that felt so real, so right. He kept his hands at his sides, rigid in his control, as the midnight vision of Haven drew back to look at him in thoughtful silence.

His breath caught as he gazed upon her and realized she wore nothing but the dark velvet of the evening around them. The tips of her breasts peeked out from beneath the fiery veil of her hair, which tumbled about her in long coppery waves. Her skin was pale, ethereal, luminescent. Her fingers were just a bit unsteady as she reached out to pull away the cloak that blanketed him on his makeshift pallet on the ground.

She leaned into him then, slipping her flattened palms under his tunic and up his bare chest. Her touch was feather-light, but it inflamed him like a brand. She stroked every inch of his skin, as if memorizing him by feel, her nails grazing across the discs of his nipples, her palms curving around the bulk of his shoulders and down along his biceps.

Already he was growing hard, his manhood stiff and straining in his braies. When she bent down to kiss his mouth again, Kenrick could not contain his groan of animal need. But he did not pull her to him as his want for her would have him do. He let the sensual dream proceed at its own pace, fearing it would not last, and praying it would never stop.

Through the lustful daze of the kiss, he felt Haven's fingers stray down his belly, trailing over the muscles that ribbed his abdomen, and lower still. Her palm smoothed over the top of his breeches to the thrusting ridge of his arousal. She stroked him wickedly, knowing his body's rhythm, stirring his desire toward the breaking point.

Kenrick arched his hips to meet her sensual caress, willing the dream to take him further. He needed Haven's touch. He wanted her, even now, despite her betrayal.

He felt the ties of his breeches, then his braies, tug loose in her fingers.

"Criste... yes..." he heard himself hiss as her warm hand curled around his unfettered shaft. "Don't stop."

She said nothing, but continued to stroke his fevered flesh. God help him, but she did not stop, not even when he was full to bursting, shuddering under her hand and not a hairbreadth from spilling his seed in her palm. He had never known such raw need. No woman had ever commanded him as Haven did--in his dreams or waking. And he cared not which this was before him now. He knew only that he needed her, that he had to have her.

"Please," he begged the moonlit witch who had since poised herself astride him in the dark. Her naked thighs straddled his hips, a few cruel inches separating him from the paradise of her warmth and the release that only her body could give him. "Haven," he whispered, "sweet witch...take me inside you. Let me feel your heat all around me."

Her smile was wistful, sweetly sad. With her teary gaze locked on him, she slowly seated herself, sheathing the full length of his sex inside of her. God's love, but for a dream, she was searing hot and wet as she contracted around him, coaxing him into a pleasurable tempo as she rode him in the quiet darkness of the glade.

Kenrick watched her move atop him, each grind of her hips, each subtle withdrawal, tightening the leash of his control. The tether she held him on was thin and growing thinner. She knew it, the crafty witch. She knew how close he was to losing his hold, and she delighted in the wicked torment.

He felt his climax building, rising, bunching at his core. Haven held his gaze and took him deeper. The tight glove of her body clenched hard around him, contracting, the quickening of her release demanding his own.

He could hold it back no longer.

With a throttled moan of pleasure, he spent himself, surrendering all control to the midnight vision of his lady of fire. Trembling with the force of his release, he needed to touch her, to hold her, to know the softness of her skin pressed flush against his own.

In defiance of the rules of the dream, Kenrick reached out to her.

His hands settled on hips that were warm and pliant under his fingers. He squeezed her tighter, waiting for her to dissipate to vapor as she had every other night she had come to him in his dreams. But she did not fade away. She did not mockingly leave him in silent laughter and mist.

"Haven," he said, disbelieving as he came up off the ground and caught her in his arms where she yet straddled him. "I thought I dreamed you here."

She made a desperate sound in the back of her throat and tried to move away, but he held her firmly. It should not please him so to be holding her again, but it did. Too much, he thought, when the sting of her deceit was still so raw, the ramifications of that deceit yet undetermined.

But she was truly there with him, not a dream, though she lay under the dark skies like heaven in his arms.

And the tears that glistened like starlight on her cheeks were not illusion, either. They, too, were real.

She swiped at them with impatient fingers, struggling beneath him. "I must go. I should not have come here, not like this."

Kenrick rolled aside to let her up, watching as she hastily dressed. She glanced back at him, her gaze meek, apologetic.

"This was a mistake--"

"If it is, 'tis but one among many we both have made," Kenrick replied, feeling no regret for what they had just shared.

"No, this is different. Each moment I delay here puts you in greater risk."

He laughed at that, finding it ironic that she would be concerned with his wellbeing after all he knew about her now.

"It is true," she said quietly. "I don't expect you to understand."

When she turned away as if she would leave him there without a further word, Kenrick got to his feet with a curse. He grabbed his breeches and tugged them up over his hips, then caught her by the arm before she could take another step. "What wouldn't I understand? That no matter what we have shared, you are sworn in deadly service to Silas de Mortaine? Or that you are playing me still, even now?"

Her downswept gaze was not swift enough to hide the note of regret in her eyes. "You have every right to hate me, I know that. But know this too: I am here not because I mean to deceive you in any way. That was never my intention. Nor did I come here to make love with you."

"Why, then?" he asked, cautious to see what seemed true emotion in her clever shifter gaze.

"Please--Kenrick, I am a danger to you. Now more than ever."

"Now I at least know what you are. That is a benefit denied me all the time you were deceiving me in my keep...and in my bed."

She wrenched out of his hold with a small cry. "Let me go."

"What is your hurry, sweet witch? Does your clan await word from their spy of where I am?"

"'Tis nothing like that--"

He scoffed. "What makes you think I'll believe that you are not prepared to lead de Mortaine and his minions to this very spot so they can finish me once and for all? Mayhap they are already here, laying their trap while you seduced your fool one more time."

"Can you really think so little of me?" She looked up at him with earnest, tear-filled eyes. "I would give anything to take back what has come between us--all of it. I would never betray you to anyone, not for any reason...because I love you, Kenrick. I love you with all my heart."

How cold would that heart have to be to tell so deep a lie with such evident conviction? Kenrick let her claim sink in for a long moment, saying nothing to accept or refute it. The very last thing he needed was to involve himself with Haven again--not when he was this close to finding another of the Chalice stones.

And yet...

How hard it was to look at her now, when his body was still warm from loving her, her scent yet clinging to his skin like the most exquisite perfume. How hard it was to see the distress in her soft features, the sorrow in her eyes, when time stretched out and he remained rigidly silent, unable to decide how he felt in that moment.

"I cannot go back to my clan now," she said quietly. "I am changed because of you, Shadowed by the love I feel for you. There is no turning back. I have betrayed a covenant of my kind, and that betrayal is what puts you in danger when you are with me. I came here tonight to say good-bye in the only way I knew how. But more importantly, I came here to return something that belonged to you."

He frowned, uncertain at her meaning until his eye strayed over his things and caught the faint glint of moonlight on metal. He bent down and reached for the satchel he had been using as a bolster while he slept. Sticking out from beneath the flap was an object he thought never to see again. He picked up the item and held it under the pale glow of the moon.

"The seal," he said, astonished to feel it as real in his hand as Haven herself had been not a short while ago, pressed against his bare skin.

"Le Nantres had it."

"Jesu...how did you manage to get this back from him?"

"Aye, wench. How did you manage?"

Kenrick glanced over his shoulder to find Rand standing but a few feet away from them, his sword gripped menacingly in his hand, a murderous look simmering in his eyes.

Chapter 30

The last time Haven had seen so lethal a look in Randwulf of Greycliff's eyes, she had been stuck at the killing end of a dagger, her throat all but closed off by the punishing grip of his hands as he sought to squeeze the life from her.

That she was standing before him again, facing his thunderous rage, made her stomach coil with fear and a pained acceptance that she deserved all the black hatred he would deal her now.

"You," he snarled. "I thought you dead. By the blood of Christ, I had hoped you as dead and gone as my beloved wife and son, murdered because of you."

"What I did to you and your family is unforgivable," she admitted. "You have every right to wish me dead."

"Wish it?" His bark of laughter was short and rife with loathing. He took a menacing step forward, raising his sword. "Nay, shifter. I'll do more than wish it now."

Haven forced herself to remain where she stood, prepared for Greycliff's wrath. But to her surprise and Rand's obvious confusion, Kenrick stepped in front of her. He guarded her with his body, placing her behind him in a protective, sheltering stance.

"Step aside, Saint. You cannot know who--or rather, what--it is you mean to defend. This black-souled beast brought my family's deaths. She crept into my home like a vermination, befriending Elspeth with her witch's potions and binding spells. She is a shifter, as vile and treacherous as they come."

"I know who she is," Kenrick answered soberly. "And I know what she has done."

"You...know this? If that be true, then how can you put yourself near her? God's blood, Saint. How is it you can move to protect her?"

Kenrick's voice was stern, unyielding. "Put down your weapon, Rand."

"I will have retribution for my family's lives--not even you can stand in the way of that. This shifter wench will pay."