Light of Kaska (27 page)

Myelle rose to her feet. “It’s not as it seems, dear. I’ll explain later, but right now we have the Goddess to attend.”

Keza faced him again. “Out,” she said in a flat tone.

He matched her tone exactly. “No.”

Her chin went up again, amber fire sweeping over him and nearly burning away his control. But before she could start the fight that Stryker anticipated so lustfully, Myelle touched her arm and said, “He thinks the statue has your face.”

All the fight drained out of her as if Myelle had pulled a plug. Stryker wanted to kill the interfering bitch. Or at least kick her ass a little. Keza blinked, turning to stare at her mother blankly. When Myelle nodded, she shot Stryker a quick look without meeting his eyes, a baffled line drawn between her brows.

Disappointed and irritable, Stryker snapped, “I don’t think it. I can see it. Looks just like her. See for yourself.” He flicked a gesture at the statue behind the women with suppressed violence.

All four women turned to gaze at the statue. After a brief perusal, Liss glanced over her shoulder at him with a sly smile and Nade coughed gently into her fist. Myelle sent her eldest daughter a faint, questioning smile. Keza didn’t look at him again but gave a small nod to her mother.

When she turned, Stryker could see delicate color kissing her cheeks and throat all the way down her chest. Hunger leapt like a wild animal inside him and he leaned forward, bracing elbows on knees with a predatory flex of his thigh muscles and shoulders. He desperately wanted to put his mouth on her and feel the heat under her skin, taste the emotion surging to the surface. It was all he could do not to pounce.

The four women ranged around the fountain and knelt, cupping their hands in the water and splashing their faces. Then they dipped their fingers in the water and stroked a line down the inside of each arm, murmuring in unison soft words that he couldn’t hear. They rose, stepped around the fountain, and knelt again to repeat the water bath and prayer then did it a third time, addressing all three sides of the goddess. Their low voices and graceful, practiced movements created an atmosphere of quiet feminine assurance, making him very aware of his large, male intrusion.

He bared his teeth in a flash of masculine satisfaction.

Myelle stepped back then, sinking down onto the bench next to him. Her expression was serene, a faint smile pulling at her lips as she watched her daughters. The three began with a song, obviously a well known, well-rehearsed one, because their voices rose and fell as one as they moved in what looked like formal dance steps around the fountain. It sounded like a hymn, but Stryker didn’t listen to the words. His eyes, his body, his entire self was riveted on Keza, the turn of her body, the twist of the fabric around her legs, the way she moved on the balls of her feet.

The three women had begun stiffly due to their audience, but this dance had to be one they’d performed a million times, because they quickly loosened, their muscles easing into graceful flowing lines. When they slowed to a gradual stop and ended the song, the three stood facing the statue at each of her aspects. There was a silent moment while Stryker tried to breathe through the pounding heat rushing through his veins.

Then Liss said, “Cue the music,” and pointed something at the Goddess. Music poured through the temple, a fast tempo with a throbbing backbeat, and a very familiar bluish smoke began to drift up from the base of the fountain.
Haze.
Stryker blinked in surprise.

“Liss!” Keza cried, sounding scandalized.

But Liss shrugged her sister’s objection away. “Screw that,” she answered. “I don’t care who watches—it’s our party.” And the youngest sister began to move with a toss of her head, her body lithe and liquid as she started the dance again.

With a throaty laugh, Nade joined her, tossing a teasing grin over her shoulder at Keza. “Our party, our rules.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Keza made a sound like a strangled laugh and joined her sisters. That’s when Stryker realized he was really in trouble. The dance steps were the same, but the three women moved very differently, the graceful reverence replaced by sultry abandon. Keza danced with her eyes half closed, lips parted in a small smile, her whole body moving as if she was being caressed. She looked almost as transported as she had when he’d made love to her.

“Kessu,”
Stryker hissed through clenched teeth, all the muscles of his body clenching in reaction.

He heard a faint chuckle next to him and sensed Myelle’s departure, but he didn’t pay any attention. He endured the torture of watching his Keza writhe before him for all of ten more seconds. Then he rose abruptly and stalked forward.

Nade saw him, grabbed Liss, and dragged her giggling sister out of the temple. He hardly noticed. Keza whirled to a stop, watching him through her lashes, chest rising and falling with her rapid breaths. Smoke curled between them, sweetening the air.

He tried to fight it, tried to remember the cage, the bars. “What do you want from me?” he grated.

“Only what you want to give me,” she whispered.

“Stud service?” he ground through his teeth, clenching his fists while that indescribable need clawed him to pieces from the inside out.

“I would love a beautiful, black-eyed baby.” She took a step forward, lifting her chin to look at him with clear amber eyes. “But what I want is you.”

Half a heartbeat later he held her, lifting her off her feet and crushing her against him, his hand cradling her head while he slanted his mouth across hers.
Yes.
Every part of him soaked her in and hungered for more. She tasted just like he remembered, better than he remembered, nectar and smoky, hot sunshine. And she was softer than he remembered, hot silk and sweet, giving flesh. She wrapped her arms around his neck and legs around his waist, and he groaned his approval, sliding a hand down to cup her bottom and settle her where he needed her the most. His breath hissed in at the friction against his unbearably hard erection.

She whimpered.
Kessu
, he’d forgotten what that sound did to him. He bore her to the ground, pinning her to the marble floor and pressing hard against her in a frantic effort to get closer, to climb inside her skin. She gripped him tight as if she had the same need, her nails pressing dull pinpoints of pain into his shoulders. He made a sound that he’d never made before and lowered his head to her throat, tasting her skin and pulling fabric away from her flesh. Her breasts were bare under the cloth and he groaned, reaching down to slide a hand up her thigh. As he’d guessed, she was bare everywhere else as well. He sank his teeth into her neck and she bucked under him, crying out and fisting her hands in his shirt.

“Chase, I need you, get
naked,”
she said in a near growl, yanking ineffectually on the cloth.

The demand in her voice almost sent him over the edge. No, this woman wasn’t afraid of him—she was hot, passionate, wild with need, but not afraid. He jerked the cloth over his head one-handed, nearly tearing it, before he sealed his mouth over hers, going deep, deeper, but not nearly deep enough. Her hands swept down his back and slipped under the edge of his pants, and he tore his mouth away with a gasp, the tantalizing flame of her touch burning his defenses to ash.

“Damn it, Keza...”

“What part of
naked
are you not—?”

With a growl, he kissed her again hard, pushing up and yanking violently on his clothes. He was shaking, his whole body was shaking, out of control, and he needed to be inside her more than anything in his life. He’d done no more than shove his pants down enough to free his arousal when she began pulling him back to her.

“Keza,” he panted, trying to remember that she was small and fragile. “Wait, don’t know if you’re ready—”

“Oh,
so
ready,” she moaned, taking him a hairsbreadth to explosion. Cupping his face in her hands, she whispered against his mouth, “You watched me
dance.”

He sank into her to the hilt and she wasn’t just ready—she was hot, wet, and greedy, her inner walls coiling around his shaft in a tight grip that demanded more and promised heaven in return. But he ignored the roaring demand of his body to drive into her hard and fast. He didn’t want it to be over so quickly, needed it to last. Muffling her cries with his mouth, he ground his whole body against her, chest, abdomen, pelvis, feeling her silken body twist and writhe under him with savage pleasure. Lifting his mouth, he trailed a path down her throat and over her chest, laving each of her nipples and teasing them with his teeth.

“Chase,”
she repeated over and over, driving ripples of heat and surging pleasure through him with every sound, with every slide of her skin and clench of her body.

“Keza mine,” he answered in a voice that was barely human, lifting his head to stare into sultry amber.

“Yes,” she said, as if acknowledging his claim on her. “Yes.”

He thrust and thrust again, the pleasure sudden and fierce, gripping him like a vice and ruining any control he might have had. He suddenly remembered that she was
naeva,
that this act might produce a child. The thought of planting a baby deep within her womb seared him from the inside out, a blaze of passion and possession that turned his world incandescent. His body pounded into hers with wild abandon. He felt her contract around him, and his universe ruptured as if hammered by a god in a flash of blind, pure-white pleasure.

Chapter 14

Keza stared up through blurred vision and heavy lashes, saw the sun-dappled Goddess standing over them, and concluded that she must have died and been transported to the Goddess’ Garden. Only paradise could feel this good. Pleasure sparkled through her, from her sweetly throbbing body all the way through to her soul. Joy and peace hummed from her glowing center to fill the air around her like a shimmering cloud.
Thank you, sweet Goddess. Oh, thank you for this man and this moment, for however long it lasts.

The thought brought a bittersweet thread to her joy, but she didn’t cry this time. Nothing lasted forever and this kind of sublime gift surely wouldn’t last any longer than a fleeting rainbow or a glorious sunset. She would enjoy it while she had it.

"Impossible," he muttered close to her ear and she smiled dreamily at the rough velvet of his voice, before the meaning of the word sank in. Then reality started to slip back into focus, banishing paradise. "Told myself I wouldn’t do this," he added, not lifting his forehead off the marble floor.

Keza felt her smile slip away and let out a silent sigh of regret. It hadn’t even lasted as long as a sunset. Stubbornly, she tightened her grip on him, feeling his hard muscles and sleek skin with a sense of wonder. He had one of her hands trapped beneath his, and he flexed his fingers between hers in response. "I didn’t force you," she whispered.

He made a sound that could have been disgust or amusement. "Don’t take much. I could barely keep my hands off you when you were bundled from neck to toes in flannel. Watching you dance in this silky thing damn near blew the top of my head off."

She shivered with pleasure at the memory of his dark eyes, hot and primal, watching her move under the Goddess’s approving gaze. It may have been a dance celebrating seductive passion, but she’d felt like the one seduced, his midnight gaze licking her with tongues of fire. But he’d just said
impossible
like a denial of all the things she yearned for. "You could have walked away."

"No, I couldn’t. That’s the problem." He raised his head, staring down at her with a faint frown on his sweat-dampened brow. "How do you do it?"

"Do what?" she whispered, slipping her fingers up his spine to stroke the back of his neck, enjoying the soft prickle of wet hair she discovered there.

He shuddered, his eyes narrowing on her and his muscles tensing. "That," he growled through his teeth, his pelvis arching so she could feel the length of him hardening again inside her.

She gasped and tightened her trembling legs around him, her vision going hazy and her body pulsing with renewed desire.

He plucked her hand off the back of his neck and trapped it as he had the other one, his expression grim and determined. "No petting. I’m not done talking."

A spurt of humor curled the edges of her mouth even while her breathing accelerated. "A man who wants to talk instead. You’re a miracle all the way around," she murmured, watching the dark fire in his eyes through her lashes.

"Trust me, Keza mine, we’ll get there. Sooner than later, if you keep looking at me like that."

The hot, possessive silk of his voice and the hard throb of him inside her made her want to writhe under him like a cat in heat, but his hard expression kept her still. She tried to focus on what he’d been talking about, not an easy task when all she wanted to do was purr and stroke him until he stroked her back. Clearing her throat, she said, "Haze is a euphoric."

He shook his head, bending to brush his mouth against hers, leaving a tingling trail of heat. "Built up a tolerance. Doesn’t work on me anymore."

"The dress?"

"Your sisters wore the same. Didn’t want them." He repeated the kiss, lingering long enough to scatter her thoughts all to hell. "It’s you, and I’m damned if I know why." He lifted his mouth and looked down at her with such intensity that it stopped her breath. "Your mother said you brought me here to be your mate."

She reveled in the deep midnight of his eyes until she realized that he was waiting for a response. She sighed and tried to make her brain function. "You want me for here and now. That’s enough for me," she lied. But telling him the truth would be ridiculous. He was wild, strong, and beautiful in ways that made her throat ache with longing, but such a glorious male creature wouldn’t choose someone like her for a mate. He might want her now, but she was sure it wouldn’t last very long, certainly not the forever her heart wanted. He was too used to freedom.

A faint crease formed on his brow as if he wasn’t pleased with her reply. "I’m sorry," he said abruptly.

She blinked at him. "For what?"