Malakai (4 page)

Yes, please, she thought. Make this another
night to remember. She had never before experienced such intimacy
with a man. Seriously. Sex had been sex, because—it had become her
necessity.

Rissa opened her eyes and met Kai’s delving
gaze.

“Yes,” she murmured, “kiss me, wolf.”

And the sparkle moved from her stomach to her
mouth as his kiss struck her as if a fallen star, a blissful
explosion of wondrous sensation. Strong hands moved along her arms,
caressing, not forceful but exploring lightly, seeking her
truths.

Ah, but her truths were buried so deeply he
would not excavate them this night. She would make sure of it.

“I can hear the festival drums again,” she
said, and pressed a palm over his heart. “Music entrances me.”

“Me too. Especially the drum jam. It's
transcendent. Makes me go to another place.” Another kiss ventured
from her mouth and along her jaw, to nuzzle and taste her neck. "I
like this place better, though. Right here."

Rissa tilted her head, and stretching her
neck made the flesh there more sensitive to Kai’s tongue, his
pressing kisses. When he slid to her clavicle she surprised herself
with a long and languorous moan. The man was unraveling her.
Breaking open her preconceived expectations that sex should be a
chore with one melting kiss after another.

"I want to dive under all this pink and get
to the real pink of you."

Mercy. "Yes, please."

His mouth closed over her nipple and sucked
gently, then more firmly. Each lash of his tongue drew up a quiver,
a desperate wanting, the need to chase stars to their bursting
point.

Subdued, as compared to their previous
frenzied pairing, he lingered at her breast, giving it the utmost
attention. This connection spiraled out to her extremities and
lifted her. Well, not literally. She'd need her wings out for that,
and she wasn't about to unfurl them. Unless he wished it. Would
he?

No, not if he didn't like faeries.

The man didn't even like her and yet, here
she was a willing player in this seductive game. Oh, why had she
chosen this one?

Kai could not resist her powerful pull. Her
muse must have already gotten under his skin. She wondered briefly
if he were a creative sort, and when she was about to ask, he
tugged the shirt over her head and tossed it aside. He did the same
with his shirt, and as Rissa's eyes fell upon his physique she
forgot what she'd been about to ask.

His hard muscles flexed as she glided her
fingertips over the hard-as-iron (but never so deadly) chest. If he
were iron, he could kill her.

Such a sweet death, that.

He studied her gaze with a sensuous tilt to
his lips. "You make it difficult, Rissa.”

“Difficult?”

“Yes. To avoid…things.”

"Things?"

"Something I'd rather not discuss right
now."

"It's about faeries, and you not liking
them."
"If I didn't like you, you wouldn't be here right now."
"So
you hate me but you like me?"

"I never said hate, I just… Hell, let's stop
talking and do this."

And he kissed her deeply, dipping his tongue
into her mouth as if to claim a prized and ancient elixir. Wrapping
her legs around behind his hips, she was crushed against the wall.
Trapped. And happy for it.

Whatever it was he found difficult to talk
about, she didn’t want to explore. Because it seemed so easy right
now. And easy didn’t come often.

Already she could feel her energy increasing.
Sex with Kai would make her stronger.

Rissa pushed him away and held out her hand,
stopping him from his return approach. "On your knees, big boy. You
want it? Crawl to me."

He stood there, taking in her bared breasts,
waning daylight falling soft and blue upon his gorgeous physic.
With a flick of his fingers, he unbuttoned his jeans and shrugged
them down and off. He wore boxer briefs, and they hugged his
erection jealously. With a bend of knee, he landed on his knees and
hands. And the beast began to stalk toward her, slowly, head raised
and eyes on hers. A snarl lifted his mouth on one side.

Rissa shivered. The look in Kai's eyes
devoured her. And that arch of his dark brow? Mercy. If she hadn't
known he was wolf, she would have labeled him panther for his
stealth approach and dangerous prowess.

Deciding she didn't want to do this on the
cold kitchen floor, she dashed around him and scampered up the
steel stairs to the bedroom. When she turned to look down, Kai sat
back on his haunches and spread out his arms. A man willing to
serve her desires.

"Come to me," she said in a sure tone.

"As you command, sugar cube," he growled,
giving the words an extra dose of sexual syrup.

The silken predator crawled toward the stairs
and took them like the panther she'd imagined him. Stealth and
silent, yet focused on getting to what he wanted.

In one smooth move, he rose to sweep her into
his dangerous clutches. She clung, wanting her lover to do things
to her she could only dream about because the good kind of pleasure
dreams had been few and far between lately.

She wouldn't allow one moment to think how
wrong this connection really was.

Lacing her arms about his neck she kissed him
soundly as he stopped before the bed, rumpled and unmade, the white
sheets begging for them to nestle in for a long and vigorous
coupling.

Laying her down, he buried his face in her
hair and found her earlobe, kissing it, tugging it with his teeth.
Rissa slid her hands over his hips, and tucked them under the boxer
waistband and slid them over his hard, sculpted derriere.

His cock jutted up for attention, and she
squeezed it. Kai hissed into her mouth. A 'do it hard and fast and
as long as you like' hiss.

She slid her hand up and down his length. It
was so thick her curled fingers did not touch. The head of him was
already wet with pre-come and she slicked through it to make the
glide easy and faster.

The world slipped away and she held a
treasure in her hands. A beastly monster of sex and sinew was
Malakai Saint-Pierre. She couldn't have walked away from him in the
grocery store for all the crystal in Faery.

Her fingers moving rapidly, she sensed his
crescendo building to a tense, shuddering race for release. But he
wanted more. He needed more. And she would not disappoint.

"Inside you. Now," he growled. "Want to come
inside."

Without waiting for her to agree, he pushed
aside her leg and teased her open with a finger, followed by the
hot, thick head of him. He eased in slowly, growling, and she could
feel the tense and release of his ab muscles with every inch he
gave her.

He nuzzled his mouth against her neck as he
pumped inside her furiously, seeking the bliss. Suddenly the wolf
jerked up his head and met her gaze. Kai cried out as he came, hard
and powerfully, slamming his hips against hers and hilting himself
again and again. He clasped her to his body, hugging her, burying
his face within her hair.

With a cry of triumph, he rolled off her and
spread his arms wide as he landed on the pillows at the head of the
bed. His legs tangled within hers, his stomach panted as he rode
the climax.

Rissa's turn would come, and she wanted
it—needed his energy to restore hers. But more than anything she
now grew desperate to find a way to break her curse. She couldn't
conceive walking away from this man again. But the more they made
love the weaker he would grow, until finally, he died.

She turned onto her side and glided her hand
along his thigh, which tensed under her touch. Her wolf chuckled
softly and tangled his fingers in her hair.

There was only one way to change the future
she wanted to make with this man. And that required she kill the
Unseelie king Malrick. The man who had cursed her a vampiric
sidhe.

Again, he woke alone in bed. Sneaky little
faery.

But for the best, Kai thought as he rose and
showered, and put on his jeans and a fitted tee-shirt and headed
out to the shed.

He'd not expected to run into her yesterday
in the grocery store, and once he'd laid eyes on her lips and those
nipples, resistance, as they say, had been futile. Right there in
the store he'd wanted to slide his hand up her thigh and bury his
fingers in her sweet, wet warmth and bring her to orgasm.

He was not going to be stupid about this.
Already, he'd stepped too far into the curse. To avoid the curse he
simply had to avoid faeries. As well, there was the falling in love
detail. Not that Kai thought he could ever fall in love with a
woman after having sex with her twice. Hell no. There was a big
difference between a woman a man took home to fuck and a woman he
could love.

But there was something about Rissa that felt
as though she'd burrowed under his skin and every time he brushed a
hand over it he thought to smell her sugar scent and feel her lips
upon him. All of which made it difficult to get her out of his
head. But as well, he almost thought to hear her whisper. An
unintelligible whisper—but he understood, and it led him
outside.

Damn, if he wasn't raring to go this morning.
The shed door squealed open and he wandered into the cool shadows
across the dirt floor. Sunlight beamed through a few holes he'd
drilled in the tin walls when building the thing. The smell of
charred tinder and metal pleased him.

It had been weeks since he'd picked up the
hammer and pounded metal into form. The last sword he'd made he'd
given to his father, Creed. His father had once slain werewolves in
medieval times. That was so wrong when Kai thought too much about
it, so he tried not to think about how many wolves his dad had
killed.

But since gifting his father the sword, Kai
had been in an inspirational funk. Feeling sort of at odds and
cringing inside his own skin at the thought of designing something
new.

Until now. This morning he felt alive and
eager, ready to take up the hammer and forge something amazing. The
muse had returned, and she was whispering in his ear with Rissa's
candied voice.

His father had encouraged Kai as a teenager
to take up the swordsmith's hammer after his parents had realized
Kai was allergic to iron. Creed had been insistent what didn't kill
a man, if mastered, could make him stronger. Kai's sister,
Kambriel, had the same allergy. It had to do with the fact they had
been conceived courtesy of faery glamour. Iron killed the sidhe
dead.

But not wolves, or vampires, for that matter.
Which was fortunate for Kambriel, since she was full-blood
vampire.

Kai was an anomaly in a mortal world and he
was fine with that. Malakai Saint-Pierre walked this earth
confident and proud of his ancestry (yes, even the
battlesword-swinging antics from his father's previous centuries).
He wanted to own his place in this world. And he did.

But not completely. He'd yet to start a
family, and that was the one thing he suspected could most fulfill
his quest for belonging.

Yet he wasn't barking up the right tree by
sleeping with a faery.

Strolling into the shop, he donned work
leathers, and fired up the forge. Today, he would begin something
special.

***

Two days passed quickly, and Kai barely
noticed the moon rising or the sun setting. He spent most of the
time in his shop, only pausing to eat when his stomach growled. On
the second night he took a midnight swim to clean off the soot
grime and refresh his thoughts, then returned to the forge.

The sword was nearly finished, and everything
about its creation felt instinctual. When normally he planned out a
design in advance on paper, then made changes as he forged the
weapon, this time he simply followed the hammer and the metal. And
his muse's whispers.

And with that instinctual method to craft
also came a
knowing
. This was a weapon a faery warrior would
covet, yet why it should be so, he couldn't fathom. He only knew
this blade was not to be wielded by a mere mortal or any of the
paranormal breeds, save the sidhe. But if Rissa was his muse, as he
liked to think, then it made sense.

Kai stood away from the forge and swiped his
sweating brow with an equally sweaty wrist. He'd stripped off his
shirt and his suede overalls hung about his hips. His feet, in the
heavy leather boots with steel toes, were itchy.

"Time for a break," he muttered.

Though it was difficult to set the sword
aside. The steel flashed with the fire's reflection, and then it
emitted a canorous note as if voicing a desire for him to remain.
The metal had changed over the days. Into something remarkable, an
indiscernible metal he'd never known or seen before.

Something magical.

Indeed, faery.

"Maybe a little longer," he decided, taking
up the sword again. Inspiration was so ineffable he wanted to go
with it while it hung around.

It wasn't until well after sunset on the
third day that Kai's grumbling stomach forced him to cool the forge
and clean his tools for the night. Besides, he'd hit a block: the
whispers had stopped. He set the hammer aside and tugged off his
shirt. Shrugging down his suede work overalls to bare his chest, he
strode out of the shop to take in the not-so-cool August breeze
that wafted off the stream.

Rissa's image filled his thoughts.
Need
you. Miss you
. Why hadn't he thought to get her phone
number?

Beneath the shade of an oak tree, and before
the stream, stood a cool, tall vampire who wore his dark hair down
the middle of his back.

"Dad!" Kai walked up and hugged Creed
Saint-Pierre. "What are you up to tonight?"

The nearly millennia-old vampire had a soft,
sure smile that creased at the corners of his eyes. "I was in the
area and thought I'd stop by. Haven't seen you at the house for
weeks. Figured you'd be secluded in your shop. Working on
something?"