Lord's Fall (30 page)

The back of her nose prickled and her eyes grew damp.

He watched her face with a shadowed gaze. “It hurts to see things through your eyes sometimes,” he said quietly.

She looked at him quickly. “Is it harder on you that I came?”

He took a deep breath. “I don’t know. Maybe in some ways, yes. Gaeleval said through his mouthpieces that I’m vulnerable in ways I’ve never been before, and he’s right. But in other ways, I’m stronger and better with you than without.” He gave her a small smile. “And there’s an added benefit. I don’t have to miss you.”

She couldn’t smile back. “So I wasn’t wrong to come?”

“No, Pia,” he said. “I still don’t like it that you’re here, but you weren’t wrong to come.” He paused. “I suppose this is partnership.”

“Yes,” she said. “This is partnership.”

She leaned forward then and kissed him, openmouthed, and he sank a hand underneath her hair to cup the back of her neck as he kissed her back. His breath ghosted over her as he licked the corner of her lips. “Dammit,” he murmured. It was the barest thread of sound, yet it still carried the force of his frustration.

Her breasts felt heavy and full, and she throbbed with emptiness. “We could be really quiet,” she breathed.

A corner of his sexy mouth lifted. “Well, I could be but I don’t think you could. You tend to get a little noisy at times, lover. Not that I’m complaining in the slightest, as it speaks to your enthusiasm. I merely point out the fact.”

She walked two fingers up his arm as she leaned forward. “We would just have to find a way to keep me muffled,” she murmured against his ear. “Got any bright ideas?”

“You know I do,” he told her. Then he lifted back his head to give her a serious look. “As long as you’re sure. The conditions could hardly be any less ideal.”

“I’m sure.”

They were so lucky they could share stolen time together and draw comfort from each other in a warm, dry place. She was so incredibly lucky that she could relax against his inexhaustible strength and feel the two most luxurious things of all, love and safety. So many people would endure that night feeling neither love nor safety, and many of them might be in the valley. Dragos might not believe that the enthralled knew much about what was happening to them, but she wondered if something of their spirits knew. She had to wonder what Beluviel felt that night, or the children.

Dragos reached overhead and clicked off the flashlight, throwing their tent into darkness. A dim light from the campfires and the blazing passageway showed through the tarps. As her eyes adjusted, she saw the outline of his head and broad shoulders. He hugged her close, his big hands running down her back.

“My fingers are cold,” she warned in a whisper.

“You know that doesn’t matter.” She could hear a smile in his murmur.

She gave into temptation and slipped her hands under his black silk sweater, and all the starch melted from her spine as she came in contact with his bare, hot skin. He sighed and shifted closer, slipping his hands under her own sweater to cup her breasts.

Are you warm enough?
he asked, as he ran his fingers along the edge of her bra to the fastening at the back.

Mm. I’m plenty warm now
. She reached over her head and pulled her sweater off as he unfastened her bra.

He bent his head, and she wondered what he saw, as he massaged her bare breasts gently.
I always thought I was a leg man,
he said, his voice filled with lazy sensuality.
Until I became acquainted with your truly outstanding breasts.

Were they outstanding? She tucked her chin in and looked down at herself, but her body was just as shadowed as his was. She remarked, doubtfully,
I’m pretty sure they’re just boobs.

They’re exquisite works of art,
he told her. He pulled off his own sweater and set it aside on top of hers.
And since you have the most remarkable legs I have ever seen, I get the best of both worlds.

She smiled against the satin skin covering the hard muscles of his shoulder. She teased him about her changing body, partly in an effort to cover up how she occasionally felt self-conscious at her thickening waist and growing breasts, but he never left her in any doubt that he loved everything about how she looked, not only before the pregnancy started to show but at every stage since. She simply couldn’t hold on to her self-consciousness for long.

Aren’t you a lucky man,
she said.

He bent his head further and licked along the swell of one breast.
I am a lucky man, and you know why? While I find everything about your body unutterably sexy, the most sexy thing of all is your mind. When you talk to me telepathically and I’m in a conference, sometimes I get a hard-on and I have to leave the room.

Is that why you’ve shown up for a quickie when I thought you were busy?
She scratched his flat, hard nipples lightly with the edge of her fingernails.

Of course.
He hissed and grabbed her hands.
Dammit, woman, hurry up and get your jeans off.

You say the prettiest things,
she told him.

He exhaled a silent laugh as he helped her to wiggle out of her jeans. Then he tugged at the fastening of his fatigues.
Get over here,
he said. He coaxed her into sitting on his lap, facing him.
I’m not going to spend half the night pulling splinters out of your ass
.

Ooh, my hero,
she crooned, full of sensuality and happiness. She raised her arms, lifting her hair off her neck as she arched her back, and she felt the breath leave him. He fitted his hands on her rib cage, and before she could stop him, he lifted her up to suckle at her nipples.

He must have forgotten the low tent ceiling. She cringed to avoid it, but she still smacked one of her raised elbows along with her head against the long pole that formed the top of the A-frame.

“Ow!”

“Shit,” he snapped. He lowered her onto his lap immediately and hugged her.

She draped her arms around his neck and collapsed against him, dissolving into hiccups of laughter.
So much for trying to keep what we’re doing quiet and private.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, cupping the top of her head and rubbing at the spot where she had hit the pole.

Straddling him brought them into alignment, and the length of his cock pressed against her hypersensitive flesh. She lost her laughter as escalating hunger sank its claws deep into her flesh. “I’ll let you make it up to me,” she mouthed against his lips. At the same time she flexed her hips, rubbing herself along his hot, stiff penis.

“Gods, yes, let me make it up to you.” He gripped her by the back of the neck, and as he kissed her hard and deep, he eased one hand between them and probed gently at the folds of her moist, sensitive skin until he found her clitoris.

A lightning bolt of pleasure jolted through her. As she moaned, he fisted his hand in her hair, held her in place and swallowed the sound with his mouth. She broke into a light sweat and started to shake as he stroked her, holding himself so tightly, the muscles in his chest and arms were rock hard.

She could feel the moisture of her arousal pouring out of her and coating his fingers. She rocked against his hand while she gripped his cock and fitted the thick, broad head against her entrance.
Come on, come on.

Not yet,
he said tensely in her head.

She growled, and he swallowed that sound too as he pierced her deeply with his hardened tongue, fucking her mouth with the same kind of rhythm he used as he stroked her. The lightning built, stronger and stronger, and she tried to twist, tried to impale herself on him, but he held her imprisoned with his fist in her hair and his hand between her legs. When she couldn’t get what she wanted, she whined and clawed at his arms.

You’re impossible. You make me crazy.

She didn’t know if she just thought the words again, or if she actually said them telepathically. Her mind was glazed, her body filled with light. Just when she wanted to scream at him, the lightning peaked. She arched into her climax, gasping, and that was when he finally penetrated her. She was so ready for him by that point that his cock slid smooth as butter inside her, a liquid penetration that brought her pelvis hard against his and she peaked again, every muscle in her thighs shaking.

He clamped one arm around her hips and pumped up into her, once, twice, as he ground his mouth against hers. She gripped him with her inner muscles while the pleasure twisted her up and wrung her out, all their laughter and sexy talk burning away to rippling intensity.

Then it was his turn to make a sound, a quiet, shaken groan. She felt him climax deep inside of her, the outpouring of his pleasure beginning in the echoes of her own, and she wrapped her arms around him, holding him tightly as he rocked into her.

Breathing heavily, he loosened his grip in her hair at last. She pulled her mouth away from his to rest her head on his shoulder as he cradled her.

“My gods, you burn me up,” he said against the skin of her neck. “I go up in flames every time.”

“I do too,” she whispered. Lucky, she was so, so lucky.

She felt limp as a dishrag as she draped on his chest, and he shook out one of the blankets to wrap it around her. She didn’t even bother to move when he lay down on his back and tucked her pack behind his head; she just went down with him.

She wasn’t exactly comfortable. Her pack felt rough and lumpy against her cheek, and she would probably have to move off of him soon. But she was so tired. She didn’t think she could get more saturated with a sense of his presence or his vitality, and she didn’t want to lose any shred of the comfort that it gave her.

Which made it even more of a pity that she couldn’t take any of that comfort with her into sleep, or into her dreams.

SIXTEEN

T
he man had such compelling green eyes.

She didn’t know how she could see the color when he sat in silhouette just outside their tent. Behind the man, the passageway blazed with black flames, while every living soul in the camp shone white as the stars. The man’s outline was immaculately still.

“Won’t you join me?” he asked gently. “Your soul has a light like no other. Together you and I could transform the world.”

“You can’t get in here,” she told Amras Gaeleval. She peered out from underneath the flap at him. Somehow she had dragged her clothes on, but she didn’t remember it. Dragos had to be in the tent with her. He was here the last time she looked. Cold sweat broke over her face. She did not dare take her eyes away from Gaeleval to check.

“No, I’m afraid I can’t,” the man said. “Your camp’s defenses are not perfect although they are working somewhat. But I can ask you to come out here, Pia. That is what you like to call yourself, isn’t it? Pia Giovanni.”

Dread bled through her body. She gripped the edge of the tent flap tightly. “You can’t compel me with that name.”

“No, like all the Wyr, you have another Name, don’t you? A true Name. Wouldn’t you like to tell me what that is?”

She wanted to so badly. He was, after all, her closest and best-loved friend. Why, if she hadn’t met Dragos first, he might even have become her mate. Maybe he could still become her mate. She and Dragos had, after all, only been together for seven months.

NO.
Everything inside of her threw that concept out violently. She yanked her gaze away from him to look at the towering flames that shone so black they burned against her retinas.

She said coldly, “That was a mistake.”

“I’m sorry you think so,” Gaeleval said. “I could have meant it, you know. You are unlike anybody I have ever met. I believe you may be unique. I could even consider giving up all the others, if I could only have you.”

She felt better once she looked at something other than him, and she realized that his eyes were a focus for his persuasion. Now if she could just find a way to get out of the dream. She had been so upset when she dreamed with Dragos that waking up had been easy.

“Do you know what I think is sad?” she heard herself asking.

“No, I don’t. But I want you to tell me everything you think and feel.”

She thought of the tall man she had seen so briefly in the apartment behind Beluviel, of his striking features and the autumnal spark of his chestnut hair, and how all the other Elves had looked to him. She thought of the sentinels, of even Aryal in her own abrasive, infuriating way, and how they all projected such unending strength.

“I think you must have been a good man once, a strong man,” she said. “You were a Guardian of your people, and you were put in a position of trust and power. I know you’re a gifted one, or you wouldn’t have been able to do all that you’ve done.”

As Gaeleval leaned forward, the small light from the campfire fell on his beautiful face. He stared at her and whispered, “I have always done my duty.”

Were there tears in his eyes? She didn’t dare look too closely. He was too deadly.

“Calondir said you are an ancient and an adept,” she said softly. “What makes me really sad is, I think you’ve become a monster, but I don’t think you’re evil. Numenlaur didn’t honor the pact and cast out its God Machine, and the responsibility for that betrayal of trust lies on your Lord. That’s not on you.”

“Camthalion was convinced that we must be strong and hold to our original course,” Gaeleval said. “All the other Elves had been mistaken, led astray by their lesser gods and inferior desires. Only Taliesin was worthy of grand purpose, and the god’s message was clear in the shape of the crown that Camthalion held. So he convinced all the others to leave and he ordered the passageway barred so that they could never return.”

“The God Machine was a crown?” she asked. If Camthalion had held a crown, how had Gaeleval gotten it? Had he taken it, or had Camthalion died? Was Gaeleval his heir? “You don’t wear a crown.”

His expression turned bittersweet. “I never wanted to rule,” he said simply. “I only wanted to serve.”