If Wishes Were Horses (2 page)

trembled  deep  inside  her,  begging  to  be  immersed  in  this  moment  of  strong  connection between two bodies, between the people and  the Beings they were revering, between all

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the polarities in the world. It was a yearning  for belonging so strong she felt it not just  in the imagined touch of lips on  her breasts, but in every vulnerable energy point inside her body.

When the deer-man stood, he was taller than the priestess, even discounting the  headdress. He took her hands and the drummer's tempo increased, the chants of the circle becoming more insistent, building until the ground vibrated.

Two of the circle stepped forward, and Sarah saw they were all unclothed. Each took a gentle hold of one arm of the priestess and lowered her to the earth. The antlered  man stood over her, firelight dancing across  his skin, etching the shadows of his tense shoulders, his upright cock, the intent set of  his jaw. The two assistants returned to their places, and the priestess lifted her arms and  opened  her legs, inviting him into her  body.

He is worthy

Lord of the Sun

Consort to the Moon

His Seed placed in the fertile Earth

brings nourishment to us  all.

Birth, growth and death

All begin again in Their joining.

As above, so below

As above, so below

As above, so below

The chant and the drums matched the pounding of her heart, the rushing of her blood, the heat of her loins. Sarah watched,  mesmerized as the man knelt between his lady's legs and slowly laid himself upon her,  holding his upper body with the strength of his arms. His hips pushed her thighs  wider and she undulated, a sensuous movement taking him  into her  willing womb.  Sarah heard the priestess's soft moan, hismasculine grunt, and her own moist entrance  contracted, weeping with the desire for total fulfillment.

The priestess caressed  his face  with her hand  as she raised her arms and laid  themover her head, opening herself to  him fully. His knees dug into the earth as he  increased the power of his strokes, his flanks quivering with each penetration, his head  droppingto rest just over hers so their eyes  were  locked, though his were shadowed by the mask, his shoulder muscles corded to take the increase in forward weight.

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If Wishes  Were  Horses

The Lord and Lady become one

As we are all One

To renew our spirits

Our Earth

Ourselves.

This joining  is the transformation we  know

This is the moment we transcend who we have been,

but we do not forget the path we have traveled.

We grow above it, along  the spiral

So below becomes above

then below again

And life never ends because death never ends.

The strong voice of the soloist singing  carried above the increased power  being placed on the drum and the stamping of  the circle, which now  matched the rhythm ofhis thrusts. Sarah's own hips pressed into the earth in time with the priestess's, her thighs loose as if  she too were open to this  joining. Her fingers clenched the earth and she realized when salt touched her lips she was crying. As the fire illuminated each face, she saw most in the circle were weeping.

She did not know when she had shifted from a cop's suspicion to  immersion in aritual she knew nothing about, but understood  like an instinctive response to a mother's touch. She did not think of herself as a spy  any longer. She simply was a part of what was going on below her.

A harsh moan tore from the man's lips  and he threw his antlered head back,keeping his thrusts in  even measure with  the furious pounding of the drum. The woman beneath him  exposed her lovely throat, her heavy breasts wobbling back against her  sternum as she lifted her hips higher to match his power, taking him deeper, her face eclipsed by delight, an ecstasy as much spiritual as physical.

Spots of light clouded Sarah's vision. Staring too long at the two etched by the roaring flames might have caused them, or  her own lightheaded state, but the flashes were there, and a wave of heat roared over her. She gasped at the beauty of the lightsthat obscured the bodies of the participants, as if they had burned away all but thepurest essence of every person.

A moment later, or it could have been an  hour, Sarah became aware of the crackle of the fire,  the return of cricket and frog  song. A light breeze touched her face andmoved the trees above her. The antlered man and the priestess were gone.

Sarah raised her head, blinked and studied the clearing below. The drummer beatout a soothing cadence, like a mother's recorded heartbeat for a baby's lullaby. The

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other six sat in their circle around the fire, passing around a goblet filled with liquid

and tearing chunks off of a round of bread.

Had she actually blacked out? Or had the two inside the circle been there at all?

Oh, Sarah. Get a grip.

She  couldn’t  deny  the  Indian  part  of  her  blood  was  thrumming  on  high  alert.  Itknew that just because she couldn’t explain something, it didn’t mean it had not been there, a real part of an existence beyond  human understanding. Cops liked intuition,trusted it. Her partner in Chicago had told  her several times he thought her spiritual roots gave her an edge she was too willing to  discount. He claimed they were there in ways she didn't even notice because they were so much a part of her.

In this case, those roots were so shell-shocked she hadn’t noticed the disappearanceof two wild naked people, one with a  stag head's strapped to his skull.

Okay, Sarah. Enough trespassing and eavesdropping for one night.
 
She slithered back down the  incline, made it to  shaking legs, and staggered for home with a full and confused mind.

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If Wishes  Were  Horses

Chapter 2

Despite that, she slept better than she had in a long time, as if her inadvertent participation in the ritual had cleared some  crap out of her worry closet and given her a night off. She didn't wake until nearly two in  the morning, surprised to find her hand drifting  to touch herself, her mind absorbed  with thoughts of the antlered man. Soaring over those flames, the woman opening to him,  his buttocks tightening with each thrust into her. In her drowsy  state, Sarah imagined  herself beneath his body, her thighs open to him, her arms around his slick and powerful shoulders.

She rested her fingers on her clitoris over  her underwear. She twitched just a bit, and the nerve endings  stirred. It had been so  long since she'd done this. God, he'd beenso…male. Just pure  male. Muscle,  sweat, cock, testosterone, broad shoulders, tight ass. She had noticed everything, because a cop did,  but she felt like she could describe it all in perfect detail. From  the curved lines of  his collarbone to the way his muscles slid smoothly over his ribs  as he turned, the flex  of his thighs as he crouched, the way hisheavy testicles hung at the base of his cock  as it jutted up attentively. The tilt of his head, the glitter of his eyes, while he  watched the woman he would worship.

That was what had been  so moving, so mesmerizing. He  had revered and possessedher at once.

Sarah let out a soft whisper of breath, almost a moan as her legs quivered and

opened wider, inviting one of her hands under the band of her panties.

Yes.
 
Her body sighed in relief.
 
Girl, we've needed this. Where have you  been?

She knew the answer, but before  she could frantically stave it  off, it  was in her head.  Her ex-husband's cruel comment that she had become  a  dead  fish  in  bed,  not  just  in  herenthusiasm, but in the rasping dryness of her pussy to his advances.

Asshole. Asshole. Asshole.
 
She pressed her fingers harder against herself, the way she might press them against her eyes to hold  back tears, but the moment was lost. Herdesire had fled.

A floorboard squeaked.

Sarah rolled, pulled her nine millimeter and its holster from the nightstand. She had the gun in  her hand  and slid her  butt on the  floor, her back against the mattress, beforeher mind had disengaged from the previous thought. As a result,  she wasn't sure if her mental reaction -
 
Shit
 
- applied to her aborted attempt to rouse herself or the fact she

had an intruder. Both possibilities seriously irritated her.

Silence settled over the house, but whether it was that sense her partner had  referenced or something else, she knew the intruder was still there. Lilesville had very  little violent crime, so it was likely she  had a burglar who didn't realize she was at

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home. She tended to jog from home to the  station, the five-mile  morning and evening run keeping her in condition, and she  kept her squad car at the station.

She leaned over, peering around the corner  of the mattress. Whoever it was, he wasn’t in her bedroom yet. Taking herself to  a crouch then straightening, she padded to  the door on  silent feet, the gun held pointed upward in a two-hand grip,  her finger on the trigger guard.

She could have called out to scare  off whoever it was, but if he was light-fingering  her house, he was hitting others as well, and she wanted to catch the bastard rather than  giving him the chance to run.

She moved into the hallway, glanced into the one-room guest bath, and eased up to the corner that led into the living room, listening for a telltale rustle or breathing that would indicate someone was waiting on  the other side. Nothing.

She stepped squarely into the doorway,  the gun steady and  pointed straight at a

man.

He sat in her wingback chair, his profile slightly toward  her, the opposite side of hisface bathed in moonlight from the window  so  his features were outlined in silver, but the part facing her was in shadow. He had his legs crossed, one hand on the chair arm, the other resting with casual elegance on his  leg, both hands where she could see them.

He was as still as a woodland creature. His eyes, deep  set, dark and large, shonethrough the darkness of her living room.

“If you get out of that chair, I’ll shoot you. I’m a police officer.”

“I know that. It's why you can see my hands, Chief Wylde.”

Deep, cultured and smooth, all the right syllables soft and rich like the first bite of chocolate cake. Sarah did not lower the gun.  “This is breaking and entering, asshole.”

“I broke nothing,” he said. “You left your back porch door unlocked. You've gotten too used to country living. It's safe here. “ His head cocked and she saw a dark eyeglitter, almost black. “But not that safe.”

“Trespassing is still an  option,” she snapped.

“Wouldn't that be the  pot calling the  kettle  black?” His teeth showed in what she supposed he called a smile. “That was my land you were on tonight, and you invaded the privacy of a sacred religious ceremony. Hardly the law  abiding thing to do,  wouldn't you say?”

Sarah stepped forward, returning the gun  to a point-up position, though not  relaxing her guard. The change in position  put her where she could see his countenance  fully. Moonlight glinted off his skin as it  would off marble. Her cat purred on a cushion  behind him in the window seat, unconcerned  that she could have been massacred in her  bed.

Justin Herne had an  elegant body that  suggested a runner's health regimen rather than a  weight lifter's. He had strength, she felt  it,  but  his  face  bordered  on  gaunt,  givingit a pale sharpness and hunger. The hunger  unsettled Sarah, and made her think of

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what she had been doing right before he came into her  house. At least, she hoped it  was before he came into her house and had been  able to hear her rustlings and soft moans.  Otherwise, she
 
would
 
shoot him.

She couldn’t get a good  sense of his eyes,  so  she snapped on the light switch, which  turned on the dim buffet lamp by  the nearby couch.

He did have  dark eyes, the rich tone of  mahogany. When  he smiled that feral smile  as  he  did  now,  it  made  them  more  focused,  like a faceted gem placed under light, made  more hypnotic and overwhelming by its brilliance.

Many handsome men embellished their countenance by choosing a hair style that  framed their face. Few men had the sculptured features that Justin Herne had so that they could pull the hair back into a queue,  showing shining wings of chestnut brown  hair molded  against a  finely shaped skull.  His eyebrows were perfect curves, from his high brow to the bridge of his straight nose.

Men with rugged faces had always appealed to her. She preferred a Harrison Ford  to a Brad Pitt. Justin Herne was neither pretty nor  rugged. Like the statue of a Roman  god, his smooth alabaster muscles and features were perfectly defined, all extraneous  material chiseled away. The hint of gauntness gave his artistic perfection a haunting, human touch.

He stood up, and her gun came back down. He was taller than she was, morephysically powerful. In her profession, she was used to that,  and knew that her training evened the odds. But there was  a power working here that had nothing to do  withwhether or not he could beat her in an arm  wrestling match. Nothing she had learned inpolice training had prepared her for it.