Master of Shadows (17 page)

He gasped, and she smiled around his cock in triumph.

 

The sensation of
Belle’s mouth on his cock was so intense, Tristan shuddered in hard, racking delight. She suckled him so fiercely, her cheeks hollowed as her tongue laved the exquisitely sensitive head. He let his head fall back and gasped. The fountain’s blood-warm stream poured down on his head and rolled along his chest, adding to the stunning sensuality of the moment.

Belle cupped his balls tenderly as she gripped his cock, pumping her fist up and down the thick shaft as she licked and nibbled and sucked. Hot lust and bright pleasure blinded him, and he curled his fists in her hair. His hips rocked helplessly.

Tristan looked down, wanting to watch her. The water splashed over Belle’s face as she sucked him, drops rolling down her shoulders and dancing over cheekbones. She drew his big shaft deeper in an effortless swoop, right to the balls. The sight seared him like a red-hot blade, a delight so intense it was almost painful.

Pleasure hit him, fierce, burning, pulsing through his cock from tip to balls. She rolled her eyes up at him, and they glittered, wild and triumphant.

Suddenly Belle pulled her mouth off him and rose to her feet, graceful as a hunting cat. She stepped backward, one hand still wrapped around his cock, pulling him gently away from the rock face. Dazzled, helplessly aroused, he let her guide him around by his shaft, until his thighs hit the side of the pool.

“Up,” she ordered, her eyes sparking in challenge. “On your back.”

Unease stirred in him, but it was a faint whisper in the roar of his arousal. He hoisted himself out of the pool and let himself fall back on the stone lip.

Belle vaulted out of the water with a Maja’s supernatural strength and straddled him, knees on either side of his ribs, one hand pressing his shoulder as the other reached between their bodies to seize his cock.

She took him into her hot depths in one delicious rush. Her head fell back, the soaked tips of her honey hair tickling his hot thighs. She began to jog, up and down, faster and faster, a fierce little trot that sped into a breath-stealing gallop, each rise and fall of her body slick and tight, a feral pressure.

Leaning over him, Belle slapped both hands down on his shoulders, bracing herself as she rode, her angry eyes bright. “You can go to Sabryn, but you’re not going to forget me.”

She had said once she was always on top the last time she rode her men.
I’m good with a knife.
She looked angry enough to use one on him.

As she had in the dream. The dream where she’d been not Belle, but Isolde.

Reality seemed to warp, dumping him into a searing vision.
His wife rode him, her face twisted in lust and rage. From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw steel flash
. . .

Remembered fury rolled over him, drowning him without a gurgle. Grabbing Belle’s shoulders, Tristan rolled with her and pinned her beneath him. He snarled as his fangs filled his mouth, and he lunged for her throbbing pulse as he’d done those long centuries ago.

Belle gasped in startled shock as Tristan struck—there was no other word for it—right for her throat, his fangs sinking into her skin as he began to drive in long, merciless thrusts.

It should have hurt. It felt glorious.

His hips circled as he drove, screwing her hard in a fierce and delicious possession that shook her and made her breasts dance. Her orgasm thundered out of nowhere in long, rolling pulses that shook her until she screamed, “Tristan!”

Belle went limp, her arms dropping away from his shoulders. He’d come as he drank, and his big body crouched over hers like a predator’s, heavy and warm. She blinked in sleepy pleasure, enjoying the dazed aftermath.

Tristan jerked and froze, his mouth going still against her throat. Suddenly a vision lanced through her brain, bloody, violent.

He jerked away and pushed himself onto his elbows. “Belle?” Panic rang in his voice. “Belle?”

Jesu, that horrific vision had somehow leaped directly from his mind. “Tristan? Are you all . . .”

“Did I hurt you?”
His eyes examined her, dwelling on her throat, sweeping down her body.

She stroked his hair and felt the fine tremble of his body against hers. “I’m fine, Tristan. All you gave me was a howling orgasm.”

He said something Gaelic again as his head dropped against her shoulder in a gesture of sheer relief.

She hesitated a moment before she added cautiously, “Tristan, you did
not
hurt me.” Belle threaded one hand through the gold silk of his hair. “I saw something there at the end. A vision. You and a woman. And blood.”

“Yeah. Flashback. Bad flashback.” He wrapped his arms around her and held on. “When you were riding me with such anger, I saw Isolde. And I . . .” He broke off with a groan of despair.

Being told a lover had thought of another woman while making love to her would normally piss Belle off. But this was a very different situation.

“What did she do to you, Tristan?”

His racking quivers had yet to subside, speaking of the depth of his trauma.

The term “post-traumatic stress” was a very recent one, but the Magekind had known of its effects for centuries. When people go into combat again and again, facing death in a variety of ugly ways, they’re going to end up with personal demons that plunge them into hell without warning.

He still hadn’t answered her. “Tristan?”

“She was on top. The last time.”

Belle went cold. “You were making love when she tried to kill you?”

“Yeah.”

“Nobody told me that.”

“I never told anyone.”

Belle had heard Isolde had turned traitor after she failed Merlin’s test to become a Maja. Tristan had not failed, yet he’d chosen to drink from Merlin’s Grail rather than remain mortal with his wife. She’d been furious, and she’d joined the rebellion led by Mordred, the bastard son of Arthur and Morgana.

The pair hadn’t known they were half siblings when Morgana got pregnant. Merlin revealed their true relationship when he and Nimue appeared to test the inhabitants of Camelot.

Brilliant, proud nineteen-year-old Mordred had been one of those to fail Merlin’s tests. Having been raised as Arthur’s heir, he hadn’t appreciated being denied the power and immortality the Grail conferred. He’d led other disaffected nobles against his father in a rebellion that left the kingdom in ruins. Arthur finally killed him at the Battle of Camlann, after a fight that nearly cost the king his life.

“Just before Camlann, Isolde sent a secret note saying she wanted to reconcile,” Tristan said. “She hinted that if I met her, she’d spy on Mordred for Arthur.”

“It was a trick.”

“Yes.” He said nothing for a long moment, breathing against her throat. “I still loved her. Despite everything, I remembered the girl she’d been when we fell in love as teenagers. We’d been married for twenty years by the time Merlin tested us, and she couldn’t understand why I chose to accept the Grail when I knew she’d remain mortal. I tried to make her see it was a matter of duty. I was one of Arthur’s knights and he needed me, but . . .” He lifted his head and met her gaze, silently begging her for the understanding his wife had denied him. “Some of our best fighters had failed Merlin’s test, Belle. I couldn’t let him go into combat alone against Mordred. We were too badly outnumbered.”

“She seduced you.” Belle’s chest ached, a hard, deep throb that shot from her heart to her fingertips.

“Yes. She was on top, like you were a few minutes ago. I didn’t know about the dagger under the pillow. I’d closed my eyes, coming, and she slipped it out. I looked up just as she buried the blade in my chest.”

“She didn’t know it takes an enchanted weapon to kill one of us.”

“No.” His green eyes took on a tormented gleam. “I dragged the knife out, and I . . . It was instinct.”

He didn’t have to finish. They clung to each other for a long, shaking moment.

Belle felt sick. “Did you think I was going to kill you?”

Tristan’s eyes flashed wide. “No! No, I just . . . saw her. It was a flashback. I saw her face. So many centuries gone, and I saw her face.” He gritted his teeth. “Will I never be free of that bitch?”

Belle felt numb.
The kind of numbness that follows a fatal blow, when you feel nothing but cold.

“I’ve never hurt a woman in bed since then, Belle. I swear it. I never would. But for a moment there, I was afraid I’d injured you with my bite.” His green gaze searched hers, smoky with anxiety. “Are you sure I . . . ?”

“No. I’m fine.”

Tristan looked at her for a long moment, and she stared back, feeling more helpless than she’d felt since she’d watched her daughter die.

“I’d better go.” He drew away from her. With a start, she realized his softened sex had still been inside her.

A wave of her hand cleaned and dressed them both in jeans and T-shirts. Belle scrambled to her bare feet as he rose, every line of his body shouting of weariness. “Tristan, you don’t have to leave. I want to talk . . .”

“I don’t.”

That stopped her dead. She stared at him for a sickly moment. “Oh.”

“I’ve got too many devils, Belle. I thought I’d forgotten, but I haven’t.”

“You’re going with Sabryn.”

His gaze met hers. “I don’t give a shit about Sabryn. And she’ll never care about me. It’s safer that way.”

“Safe can kill the soul, Tristan.”

“And sometimes you can’t afford to care.” He hesitated, slipping his hands into the back pockets of his jeans, his eyes on his toes. “You’re a hell of a partner, Belle. There’s nobody I’d rather have at my back.”

“But not on top.” The words emerged with a bitterness she hadn’t intended.

“Demons just aren’t that easy to kill.” Tristan started out between the mounds of honeysuckle. Then he stopped and spoke without looking back at her. “I wish it were different.”

“Tristan, dammit . . .”

He walked out of the garden.

“Well, Belle,” she muttered to the fragrant night, “you really fucked that one up.”

 

He’d hurt her.
Physically, it could have been worse; Tristan had managed to arrest his dive at her throat like a man pulling back on a collared wolf.

Emotionally . . . the fear in her eyes when he’d told her about Isolde raked at Tristan like claws. It wasn’t the first time he’d had a woman fear him; he’d had a very bad reputation after Isolde. Women had actively avoided him.

But then, he hadn’t sought any out either. Bottles were enough for him then. It had been safer all the way around.

Until the minstrels had started in. Tristan guessed some Magekind’s mortal child had whispered something in a bard’s ear. The silly poet had woven so many lies around that kernel of fact, there was no recognizing it.

Isolde became his lady fair, and they were star-crossed adulterous lovers. Apparently somebody had conflated the story with the mess between Arthur, Gwen, and Lancelot.

And Christ, what bad poetry was born.

Soon the new Magekind no longer feared him, for the true story was something the older ones considered too painful to repeat. So he was redeemed by minstrel lies. Women began approaching him again, and his dick decided it had had quite enough of celibacy, thank you.

Now here he was.

Tristan paused his long stride over the footbridge that arced across the River Nimue. He walked toward the stone handrail and leaned against it, looking down on the water. It rolled along, black as a stream of ink, with the white reflection of the moon dancing spectral-pale on its surface. The current looked almost lazy, as if a man could wade across.

In reality, it could snatch up a vampire and sweep him away between one breath and the next.

Like time. Like love. Tempting and treacherous.

Damn Isolde. She clung to him like a ghost, draining the pleasure from his life with icy, jealous fingers, making him a menace to the first woman he’d loved in fifteen centuries.

Tristan enjoyed nothing more than taunting death, but he’d finally found a risk he wouldn’t take.

He wouldn’t risk Belle.

 

She paced the
garden, swiping angrily at her cheeks.
Damned if I’ll cry for that bastard
.

Her tears felt cold, a slick, wet stream. Revolting.

In retrospect, Belle saw that she was the worst possible partner for Tristan. She killed her blood-mad partners in exactly the same way that Isolde had tried to slay him.

Not that she had a choice. When a vampire went blood-mad, he could rip your throat out before you even saw him move. Belle had learned that the only way to survive that third and final ride was to get on top, ready to pin her lover if he lost his wits. None of her Latent partners ever knew she fucked them all with a conjured blade in her hand.

So she adopted those that survived, treated them more like sons than ex-lovers as she guided them through the process of becoming veteran warriors. She celebrated their triumphs and comforted them after their failures, since not even the Magekind can learn without mistakes.

They never had any idea that she cherished them out of gratitude:
they hadn’t made her kill them
.

She’d thought Tristan was safe. He would never turn on her. He was her equal, not a protégé to be carefully taught survival. Yet he’d turned out to be more vulnerable than any of them. Belle felt vaguely betrayed.

Morgana and Arthur had been right, dammit. Which should have been no surprise. Arthur was Tristan’s best friend, had known him longer and better than anyone. When he said cracks ran through his friend’s granite façade, she should have listened to him.