Awaken (4 page)

Ryllio had felt her presence, her beauty, like the pull of a rope anchored to his soul. As she stopped before where he knelt and reached to unbutton her jacket, the pounding echo of his heart shook his stony prison and rushed in his ears.

The need to touch her, learn who she was, was so overwhelming he forgot the spell holding him in place—tried to reach for her although it was impossible. Straining, he imagined touching her face, the sensation of her peachy skin beneath his fingers. When she arched her face skyward, raising her hands to her cheeks, her neck, Ryllio knew she could hear his thoughts, his wishes, although he knew not how.

Oh, the joy of it! The desire! Watching the innocent exploration, her sweet face tight and flushed with need and knowing she could sense all he desired made Ryllio feel alive, truly human for the first time since his punishment began.

Her small breasts were sensitive. It was obvious from the way simply touching them excited her, took her close to the apex of passion. His yearning to enhance her pleasure led him further and further until he imagined her naked beneath him, thighs open, revealing her most secret place to his avid gaze. She shuddered, her little hand creeping beneath her skirts, and he pictured himself lifting her hips, covering her delicious wet flesh with his mouth.

The sound of her release was sweet torture—the sight of her falling back, writhing among the flowers, crying out again and again, brought him to a pitch of need never felt before. As a man he had loved women, taking delight in their charms. As a lump of stone he had seen beautiful Fey, scantily or even sky-clad, watched the royal couplings and known the rush of arousal. But never had he wanted,
craved
, another as he did this woman.

Then she ran away, and Ryllio was left to grieve as he had not sorrowed since the days after Mab transformed his body into rock. Again and again he called to her, knowing she could not hear, or perhaps was too frightened to heed, but unable to stop. Each degree of the rising moon was marked, noted, added to the tally of heartbreak when she did not return. And so would it be with the sun the next day, and the next, he knew, and again with the moon or stars each lonely night for eternity.

He did not even know her name, knew not whose loss he mourned—knew only the prison he was in had never felt as all-encompassing as it did this night. And as the moon rose to tint the hollow silver, and the night breezes rustled through the leaves, over and over he whispered:

“I mean you no harm, beautiful one. Please, come back to me.”

And suddenly, as though in answer to his entreating words, she was there—and his heart almost burst with happiness.

Chapter Four

Exhausted as she had been, Myrina could not sleep. Each time she dozed, the sound of his voice roused her back to consciousness. Nothing stopped it—not the pillow over her head, a recitation of all the verses she knew, thoughts of her mother—nothing. When tossing and turning and a co-mingling of fear and desire rising within forced her from bed, she went to stand at her window. Lifting her flushed cheeks to the night breeze, inhaling the scent of wild sage and pine drifting through the air, she realised the voice had become even stronger, the entreaty much harder to resist.

He called her beautiful, said he meant no harm. The loneliness and longing inherent in every word tugged at her heart and filled her with yearning.

Before she could even think on it, she was downstairs, putting on her cloak and shoes. With one last look to ensure her mother slept, she slipped out the door and ran.

Gottreb said he had searched the woods for the glade, but never found it again. Myrina, who knew only the area around her own house and the path to the village, found herself drawn in an almost straight line back to the hollow. Following his voice, the inexorable pull of her fantasy, was both exhilarating and terrifying. The moonshine turned everything to a study in silver and black, deepening the shadows while making even the smallest stone stand out.

On and on she ran, feeling him grow stronger, becoming breathless as mystic desire gave wings to her feet.
Enchanted
, she thought.
I have been ensorcelled.
But the knowledge no longer had the ability to frighten. Too deep was she in the dream, in the magic. Fear and regret may have their day, but not now. The night belonged to her unknown, untouched, lover.

Suddenly she was there and felt his joy. And something deeper, stronger even than the passion reaching out to caress her in waves. Heart pounding, she stopped at the edge of the clearing, feeling the world fall away with the ease of a cloak discarded. It would be there when she returned—all the sorrow and worry waiting—but here was a barrier it could not cross. In her secret trysting place, it had no power.

“Tell me your name, beautiful one. Tell me what to cry aloud in my passion.”

The words twisted through her, leaving sparks and plumes of heat in their wake.

“Myrina,” she whispered, moving away from the trees, toward the thicket on the other side of the glade. It seemed lighter, less tangled than it had earlier in the day, the stone in the middle of it more exposed.

“Myrina. A name worthy of such loveliness.”

The sound of those deep, passionate tones rolled into her blood, set her very bones singing. Curiosity and the ever-present desire drew her closer to his hiding place.

“Tell me yours.”

“Ryllio.”

“Ryllio,” she repeated, tasting it on her tongue, with her heart, and finding it perfect. Hearing him murmur in approval, she said it again, but slower, letting her voice convey all the secrets she did not yet have the courage to confess. “Ryllio.”

He sighed, a heartfelt sound.
“I never thought to hear my name spoken again, or knew the sound of it would make me so happy.”

Inexplicably, Myrina felt tears sting her eyes. “Where are you, Ryllio? Why can’t I see you? Are you but a spirit?”

“Worse.”
His sorrow was like a living thing, moving in her mind.
“Come closer and see.”

At the edge of the thicket, she stopped and in the moonlight could see what she had thought a rock was in actuality a statue. A beautiful marble representation of a man, kneeling, the lower part of his body hidden in the brambles, with the face she had seen in her fantasy earlier that day.

“How can this be?” she cried, reaching out instinctively, leaning into the thicket, trying to touch the harshly handsome lines of his face.

“Be careful, there are thorns.”

Unable to span the distance between them, Myrina withdrew her hand, sorrow clogging her throat. In her mind he was alive, a creature of flesh and blood. To see him thus, cold and inert, was enough to break her heart.

“How did you come to this pass?”

For a long moment, Ryllio was silent, and Myrina thought he did not intend to answer. When he did, regret weighed heavy in his tone.

“I came upon the king and queen of the Fey while they indulged in love-play. I knew I should not watch, should leave them to their privacy, but I did not. Instead I stayed and spied upon them in their most intimate moments, and in their anger and disgust they condemned me to this fate.”

“Oh, how cruel!” cried Myrina, aghast at so horrible a punishment for the crime committed.

But Ryllio’s voice sounded only resigned. “
Cruel, perhaps, but to them also just.”

Myrina studied the marble face, seeing in it a hint of arrogance, a touch of stubbornness in the firm lines of jaw and mouth. “It was not right, what you did, but I cannot agree the punishment was just.”

“It is done,”
was his only reply.

Pulling her cloak into place beneath her, Myrina sank onto the grass, tucking her legs under, not taking her gaze from his face. “How long have you been here?”

His sigh echoed through her mind like the cry of a mourning dove.
“A very long time—from the days when Paltheius ruled.”

Try as she might, Myrina could not remember an emperor by that name, for history was never a favourite subject of hers at school, and this she confessed to Ryllio.

“No matter,”
he replied,
“for it is all in the past. I am interested only in the now, here, with you. What benevolent trick of fate brought you to me?”

Heat rushed through Myrina’s body at the question, and she knew, even in moonlight, her blushes would be noticeable. Squirming slightly, she looked down at her hands where they lay on her lap and considered how to answer. Ryllio, she thought, had been honest with her, and she wanted to be the same with him, so in a low, halting voice she relayed her conversation with Elawen, and her friend’s advice. But she did not confess her thoughts on being ensorcelled and led to his grove for fear of hurting his feelings. Perhaps she had been enchanted at first, she reasoned, but the return to him now was her own doing.

For a long time Ryllio said nothing, and Myrina began to wonder if he thought less of her, but his next words were reassuring.

“I can’t help thinking your friend was only partly right.”

“In what way?” Myrina asked in surprise.

“There are some things you can learn on your own, but others only a lover can teach.”

“What kinds of things?”

Ryllio’s voice grew low, caressing.
“The touch of your own hands is unlike the touch of another. What you do to yourself cannot feel the same or give the same sensations as when a lover gives you pleasure.”

Myrina shivered, her skin prickling to life, body growing warm and liquid inside. Words failed her, for she remembered the imagined ecstasy of his mouth on her quim, wondered if it could have been even better in reality.

“And,”
he continued in the same low, seductive tone,
“each lover is different, is inspired to do different things, or the same loving actions in different ways. It is only in the moment you can know whether these new sensations are pleasurable or not. But Elawen also was right. There can be no harm in learning your body’s desires for yourself.”

Flushed with arousal, yet also embarrassed, Myrina thought it best to leave, but could not bring herself to go. It was not just the desire holding her in place, but a bone-deep reluctance to abandon Ryllio now that she knew of his lonely existence. There could be no harm in staying for a while, in being with him during this moonlit night, in asking him some of the questions burning in her mind.

It took some courage, however, to finally reply, and her voice faltered from her throat. “Are lovers so different, one from the other, then?”

“Yes, and you will be different with each one too. What one man will do to you without hesitation, another would never consider doing. And what you enjoy with one man, you will find repulsive if another tried.”

Considering his words, Myrina realised he must have had many lovers before his punishment began, and a spark of something akin to jealousy came to life deep in her belly. It made her voice stronger, with a bit of a snap, when she spoke. “What kinds of things would a lover such as yourself never do? Surely there cannot be many?”

But when he replied, his words doused the flame of her anger, even as they ignited a flash-fire of passion.

“For you, with you, I would do everything, give you every liberty over my body, take whichever you would give in return. There is nothing I wouldn’t try in my quest to give you pleasure, to satisfy you, to make your desire burn so hot it incinerates us both with the ecstasy of our joining.”

There was no need to ask what he meant, for in her mind she saw them together, in flickers of images conjured by his imagination. He was bent to her breasts, lips curved to receive her straining nipple—kissing her back, hands stroking her belly—kneeling between her legs, his hair dark against her thighs—curled around her from behind, the head of his cock poised for entry into her hungering body. She was tied, naked, to a bed—then he was likewise held immobilized for her pleasure. He was behind, in front, between—in her quim, her mouth, her hand, her arse. She was over, under, beside him, her hair unbound, trailing over his skin. Gentle here, masterful there—in control and ceding control—kissing, stroking, licking, sucking places Myrina never thought another would touch.

She pressed trembling palms to her cheeks, trying to rise, wanting to flee, but finding her legs too weak. The images were so real they left her gasping, burning—titillated and confused.

“I’ve shocked and frightened you.”
His voice was rueful, but filled with such harsh longing the desire rampaging through her body climbed even higher.
“I’m sorry. You are more innocent than I realised. Please—”
he added, as Myrina once more tried to rise,
“
—
don’t go.”

She subsided, quivering, drawing her cloak closer around her as though it could protect her from the unfamiliar swirl of emotion between them. His words and images were like an iron chain, binding and drawing her further into an unknown world she desperately longed to explore.

But there was also a sense of shame for being so ignorant. Jecil had been her only lover, coaxing until curiosity and the knowledge he would soon be leaving convinced her to accept his attentions. She had been tired of hearing Elawen’s stories and not having any of her own to share. Tired too of not knowing what it felt like to be held, caressed, loved. Now she realised she was still almost as naive as before Jecil breached her maidenhead.

“You think me silly—like the old biddy Elawen accuses me of being.”

“No, Myrina.”
Sincerity gave his words a gentle edge.
“Your inexperience is not something to be scorned.”

“How can you say that when I could hardly understand what you showed me?” Tears prickled behind her eyes, and she hugged her knees beneath her cloak. “When I can hardly understand what I am feeling?”

“What do you feel?”

How could she describe the heated sensitivity of her body, the need washing through her in rough, tempestuous waves? How to explain to Ryllio just the sound of his voice, the vision of his fantasies, had ignited a passionate conflagration within? In its light all other sensation dimmed, cast into insignificance.