Malakai (8 page)

"Killing me…" he muttered as she moved to
kiss the head of his cock. "Sweetly."

Could he know? She'd not revealed her curse
to him. She should confess all. He would kick her out of bed and
his life, and perhaps have a chance for survival.

But resist the pull of his body, the call to
her soul to bond with him as intimately as possible?

Kai's hand moved over her head, directing her
to the motion he loved. She licked up and down his shaft,
worshipping it. The way he growled and shifted his hips spoke
satisfaction. If he were going to die, she would give him a happy
death.

Taking him into her mouth, she suckled and
laved at him until she could feel he would not grow any harder, and
the thick vein on the underside of his cock pulsed. Gripping his
testicles and squeezing gently she rocketed him to climax and drank
it all, licking him clean as he grew semi-soft.

When she looked up he propped onto his
elbows, staring at her with that blessed-out heavy-lidded
expression she recognized all too well. He was growing weaker.
While she was growing stronger.

"More?" he asked weakly.

She nodded, even as her heart broke into more
and smaller bits.

Kai settled against the headboard and the
multitude of pillows piled there. "Let me watch you until I'm ready
to go another round. Three orgasms takes something out of a
guy."

"Casanova isn't claiming defeat?" she
teased.

"Never, sugar cube. But you know why I'm
weak."

Rissa sat up on her knees, her mouth dropping
open. He did know. Maybe? How he knew, she couldn’t guess at. But
it was too heavy a conversation to have right now. She wanted to
continue to make love as if their worlds were perfect and nothing
could ever part them.

"Then you just watch," she said, and drew her
hands up her stomach, tweaking her nipples with her fingers. She
pinched them, and cooed at the pain. "You like that, don't you, big
boy?"

"Yes," he gasped, and gripped his cock. "Show
me how you like me to touch you, Rissa. Hard or soft?"

"Mm, both."

Biting her lip, she squeezed her nipple
again. The pain was sweeter when he was lashing and nipping at her,
but to have his eyes on her as she demonstrated what she liked was
equally as erotic.

Kneeling, she spread her legs, and glided a
hand to her moist folds. Achy and swollen from his vigorous
attentions, the slightest touch hummed throughout her system like
shock waves. Slicking a finger over her clit, she gasped and
murmured in tones that sang her pleasure.

"Yes," he encouraged. "There is where I like
to put my tongue and lick you until you scream. Faster."

Focused on his hand gripping his cock, Rissa
dashed up her pleasure to the next level with her hand. Arching her
back, she leaned forward and nipped at his knuckles, wrapped about
what had become again an erection. He splayed out his fingers and
put them in her mouth, so she sucked them as rapidly as she
fingered herself.

Scent of his skin and sex and the cedar walls
and steam from the shower he'd taken earlier mingled in a heady
perfume that coiled about her skin and permeated on a scintillating
mist. She wanted to mount him, but when she tried to pull away from
his hand, he gripped her jaw and held her close to the head of his
cock. But not close enough to lash out her tongue and lick him.

Rissa moaned in protest, wriggling her hips
as she felt climax creep upon her core. Kai's thumb pressed her
bottom lip and she bit down until she thought she'd break skin, but
did not.

And then he gripped her hair and pulled her
forward, her palms slamming against his chest and her legs
straddling his hips. He rammed his cock up inside her, and she
continued to finger her clit as she rode him. His body shuddered,
his shoulders plowing into the pillows. His jaw tight, he growled.
When orgasm flashed in her center, Rissa cried out at the same time
her werewolf lover howled into the night.

***

It was nearing dawn, the time of the faeries,
the time betwixt night and morning. Kai had slipped out from under
Rissa's arm and leg as she lay sprawled in a sweet sleep. He'd
difficulty standing. Had felt as if he'd run a marathon. Then he'd
stretched out his arms and breathed in deeply and recalled the cold
kiss from Ooghna. That had brought up enough strength to pad
outside naked, and watch the sun rise.

It was dark yet, though the stream glimmered
with dawnshine. Fragile-legged insects skimmed the water's surface,
darting here and there. Being in nature, unclothed and bathing in
the air, the light and sounds and scents always restored Kai in
ways that only an animal shifter could understand.

While he was human, he was also animal. His
nature was that of the wolf, a predator fiercely protective of
family and his own.

"Family," he muttered, feeling that dream
long lost now.

He'd succumbed to the leanan sidhe again, and
could only guess his death drew near. The fix Ooghna's kiss had
provided would not last much longer. He wondered if he could still
even lift a sword in one hand?

Yet thanks to the deal made with Ooghna both
he and his sister would be free of the curse the moment he gifted
the sword to the warrior. Then, he could love a damned faery if he
chose to.

Stupid choice, eh? He smirked at his idiocy.
And then it didn't matter. Love was a weird muck of desire, hate,
and chance all roiled together. He'd not asked for it, but now that
he had it, he wouldn't give it up until the soul bringer arrived to
claim his newly departed soul.

Lifting his head, he smelled her the moment
she walked out of the back door, silently closing it and padding on
bare feet up behind him. Sugar and fruit. Sex and fiery desire. And
death. He'd never give her up; never stop making love to her.

What a hell of a way to die.

Stopping behind him and slightly to the side,
Rissa didn't speak, perhaps as captivated by the dawn as he had
been. She touched his shoulder and Kai gripped her fingers. He
wanted to slip inside her again, to lose himself in the inevitable
death. To run his hands over her skin. To kiss her everywhere. To
learn her. To make her family, his own, to bond with her as only
werewolves could bond with their mates.

Such a bonding required he shift to his
werewolf form. Mating with faeries was usually a delicate thing.
But he would be careful with her, just as he knew his werewolf
would be. The most incredible bonding would occur with her in true
sidhe form.

“Will you show me your wings?” he asked.

“You haven’t seen wings before?”

“A few times, but only in social situations.
Never privately.”

When he thought she might cringe from his
touch, he couldn't stop the urge to make the connection and swept
his fingers through her hair. Soft and long, it spilled over one
shoulder, revealed by the wide neckline of one of his tee-shirts
she must have found in a drawer. “Show me, Rissa. Unless it
embarrasses you?”

“What? Showing my wings?” She tugged at the
hem of the shirt. “I don’t want to drop my glamour completely.
There are things…”

“I'm aware of the differences in faeries to
other breeds. Longer fingers, longer torso, delicate, pointed
ears.”

"Just my wings, yes?"

"Please," he breathed.

With a nod, she pulled the shirt over her
head and handed it to him.

Kai could feel the change in the air as Rissa
straightened and closed her eyes. It grew sharper, more defined.
Crisp, like a brisk January morning, yet without the chill or snow.
A shimmy of her shoulders then unfurled wings that brushed his face
with a grass green scent. Emerald and fuchsia and azure designed
the gossamer appendages that resembled a dragonfly's wings yet with
elaborate laced edges.

“They’re lovely. So deeply colored. Can
I…touch them?”

A brow quirked above her bright violet
eye.

“I’ve never touched a faery’s wings before.
They look so soft.”

Rissa smiled, almost compliantly, he thought.
“Yes, I'd like that.”

He sensed she wasn’t comfortable, perhaps
nervous. But not embarrassed. He looked over the wings slashed
through with iridescent glimmers of pale violet. Long filaments
stretched from the tips of each quarter section. Each moved like an
appendage, and one curled loosely about his ankle.

Eager to touch, but not wanting to frighten
her, he lowered his fingers over the suede-soft thin membrane.
Carefully, he traced along the hard cartilage-like section that
ribbed the upper wing. It was warm and flesh-like. And yet he
sensed it might be scaled as if on a butterfly wing, and so he did
not retrace over his path for fear of damaging a portion.

Rissa's approving murmur softened his
apprehensions and he spread his hand wide, pressing a palm against
the thinnest part. Ichor must flow in veins he could not see
because he could feel the vigor of life beneath.

Did he give her that life when they made
love?

She curled back a wing, and the filament
coiled loosely about his wrist as if a curious sea snake then
slipped away. Cool. And not at all disturbing. In fact, it turned
him on, and—yes, he got a hard-on.

Drawing his fingers toward her spine, he
stepped closer, positioning himself directly behind her, and leaned
to kiss her at the nape of her neck. The wings beneath his touch
shivered. The gorgeous smell of summer meadow filled his nostrils
and dizzied his brain.

“You do know what it means to touch a faery’s
wings?” she asked.

“No, what does it mean?”

“Your parents didn’t teach you that?"

"I was only warned to stay away from faeries.
The last thing my father would have ever done was to condone
touching one."

"It’s a sexual thing, Kai. It
feels…exquisite.”

Sexual? He’d had no idea. Kai retracted his
fingers from the highest wing bone, but then, he clasped the
thickness of it firmly. He couldn't deny his own desires had
surfaced. “You want me to stop?”

“What do you think?”

Her hair sifted across the tops of her wings
and tickled his face. He leaned in to kiss the glossy hem of it all
and swished it aside to reveal her spine where the wings joined her
body. A kiss at the base where the strongest, thickest parts of her
wings rooted lifted a shiver through Rissa. Goosebumps spotted her
skin. Kai smoothed a hand across her neck to warm them away.

The tickle of her touch along his back clued
him she’d wrapped both wings about him. It was a sexy kind of loose
hug, enveloped in gossamer and summertime meadows.

He stretched out both arms, gliding his
fingers across the fabric of her wings. Rissa's sigh prompted him
to press his erection against her derriere. Slipping one hand
around to clasp across her waist, he drew her up tightly. Her feet
left the ground. A kiss to her wing felt the ichor rushing against
his lips.

“Oh, Kai. Every touch to my wings brings the
ichor rushing to my breasts and core. It’s incredible.”

Incredible was putting it lightly. He’d never
before stood wrapped within a faery’s wings, feeling so close to a
climax, and yet without a single kiss or stroke to what were the
usual sexual hot zones.

Sliding an arm over one wing, he spread his
fingers across it and pressed the wing against his face. His breath
permeated and heated his palm, and stirred a delicious moan from
his lover.

And he felt her shudder within his arms.
Wings fluttered minutely but madly. Her summer scent gushed into
the air, along with a glitter of faery dust, and he breathed the
taste of her climax, sweet, soft and sensual.

“Did you just come?” he whispered, noting the
fall of dust onto the stones at their feet. “From me stroking your
wings?”

“Yes,” she gasped.

And without thought, Kai spoke his heart. "I
love you, Rissa."

Her exhale was audible. And he thought he
heard her heartbeats thunder as if racing toward the edge of a
cliff. A wisp of her hair brushed his elbow and shivers rode his
skin.

"I wish you did not," she said quietly.

Stepping away from him, with a shiver of her
shoulders, suddenly Rissa's wings furled and they receded into her
skin. It happened quickly, so fast as when Kai shifted to wolf,
that he would not have believed it had he not witnessed it.

"I know what you are," he said. "Leanan
sidhe."

"And still you can love me?"

He nodded. "I understand you must have
sex—you literally drain a man of his life—to survive. I wish my
love was returned, but it's not important. What is important is
that I have known love."


"But I—"

"Kill me slowly, sugar cube. I want to make
love to you as often as possible, and die in your arms as I come
over and over."

"I hate you," she gasped. "I hate that you
can love me."

Despite how painfully her words cut across
his heart, Kai pulled her into a hug that she initially struggled
against, but then she calmed and her arms banded about his back and
her legs found hold about his hips. Locked together in a wicked
bonding neither could fight.

"I don't mean that I really hate you," she
whispered against his ear. "I love you too, Kai. I tried to walk
away, to give you your freedom. But this part of me that demands
life will not relent. It's a curse."

A flash of hope grabbed him by the heart. "If
it's a curse, it can be broken?"

Her eyes searched his then she breathed out a
heavy sigh. "Only by killing the Unseelie king who cursed me. An
impossibility. I've not the strength or a weapon powerful enough.
What of your curse?" she asked. "You'll lose your heart if you love
a faery."

"I made a deal with Ooghna, the faery
champion. She will release me from the curse in exchange for the
sword I've made."


"Really? But, don't you forge weapons from
iron? Why would the champion…?"