Rogue's Pawn (29 page)

Chapter
Thirty-Five

In Which I Find a Way to Surrender

“Lady Sorceress—don’t move.”

I sagged at the sound of Liam’s voice behind me. A miracle that he wasn’t dead already, but he would get himself killed for sure now.

The Dog turned, growled, eyes bleeding into red. He bared his teeth, flashing in the night.

“Liam,” I said in an even voice. “You need to back away. Go back to your horse and ride to camp.”

“I cannot leave you. I’ll protect you with my life. That creature, you don’t know—”

“Yes, I do.”

The Black Dog blinked, one slow, satisfied gesture of agreement.

I stood, keeping an eye on the Dog. Liam laid a warm hand on my bare arm. The Dog’s hackles shot up, and the low growl grew into an openmouthed roar. I shook Liam off. Stepped back and laid a hand on the Dog’s glossy head.

The Dog’s hackles lowered and he rubbed his head against my hand with a soft whimper.

“Go, Liam.” I thought it at him, too. Fairly loud.

Liam was covered in sand, bleeding from nicks in a few places. He stared at me, astonished. Horrified, even.

“What are you?” he breathed.

I didn’t bother to point out that I was the same woman he’d put his mouth on. It wouldn’t change what he now saw. I wasn’t really human anymore. Time to face what Rogue had known. I stroked the Dog.

“Just go.”

Liam backed away. I watched his careful retreat up the sand until his dark shape disappeared into the shrouding shadows of the grass-covered dunes. I listened to the frantic whirl of his thoughts as he found the horse and rode away.

I could see myself there, soaked, the dress barely hanging off my breasts, my hair in ropes, spattered with seawater and Rogue’s black blood, my face wild with tears, the massive Dog beside me, my eyes glowing with unnatural light. I couldn’t go back to being what I’d been, mild-mannered professor, frozen in my own life. The changes I’d gone through were too deep, too wrenching. You can’t go home again, they say. Now I knew what they meant. More. I knew I didn’t want to.

It couldn’t be too late.

I knelt beside the Dog. He tilted his head at me, eyes shadowed. Clouds were gathering around the moon, deepening the night.

“Rogue?” I whispered it, reaching for any sense of him inside.

The Dog’s tongue lolled out, pleased as any puppy. I let my hand slide around to his thick chest, feeling the strong heart beating beneath.

The Dog’s thoughts flowed formless, like Felicity’s or the hawk’s. They swirled with fierce motion. The surf, the smell of blood and me. The race of aggression and the hunger for the shreds of flesh beside us. Veils between worlds shredding, flying into tattered remnants. I dug deeper, the Dog still under my hand.

Raven’s wings swept across my vision, shrieking whispers. Hot blood in my mouth, tearing flesh and tears, howls and water. Rogue, drowning in black and blue magic, the Dog tearing scarlet chunks out of his chest until Rogue’s howls became blood themselves. I wrenched myself away.

I had seen this before, in Rogue’s mind. Before the fireplace. But I couldn’t find Rogue himself.

Thunder rumbled again. The moon shot through the tumbling clouds, now lighting them, then succumbing to their dark whirl. Legs of lighting walked across the ocean’s horizon.

Falcon’s transformation hadn’t been like this. It seemed gentle in comparison. I felt a sickening fear that Rogue had somehow irrevocably lost himself.

The fear that had ridden him. The hope that had surrounded the idea of me. The despair that finally dragged him under.

This was the center of why I was here. The Dog had brought me, chasing me through nightmares until I ran to Devils Tower, helping me to cross that boundary. But it was Rogue’s need that drove it. Watching me. Waiting for me.

Somehow I hadn’t seen that he was at the center of it. I had made the blood sacrifice to reach him, understanding on a subconscious level what my conscious mind had never grasped. He was the one I’d been looking for all this time. Not a happy, easy love. But one who recognized me for who I was.

I pulled the glass marble out of my pocket.

Had I forgotten it was there? Perhaps. And yet, part of me held on to it, had reached for it as I left the tent and brought it out now. The same part of me that had driven the knife into my finger half a year ago. The part of me who belonged here. With him.

I focused on the sphere, dipping into it, allowing the macabre dance inside to entrance me. It was inimitably Rogue in a way the Dog was not. Sharp, sensuous, deadly seductive. Obsidian through sapphire.

I rolled the marble in the cooling blood of Rogue’s remains, then wrapped my left hand around the sword lying on the sand, just like Liam had shown me not to do. My blood welled up, hot against my chilled skin. I held the crystal in my hand, letting our spirits mingle.

I sank into memory. Of how I felt when Rogue held me.
I know who you are,
he’d told me, but I hadn’t believed. The touch of his skin, the sardonic twist of his eyebrow. The scent of mace and Stargazers. The lily I’d destroyed in order to tear myself away from this connection. My stubbornness and fear.

Instead I let the lust boil up. The sex and magic filled me.

I gave it all up and let myself drift.

I stood at the edge of the pool. Naked, my hair flowing down my back and sliding over my shoulders in a silky caress. I knew it was black now. Even in my dreams. Shining like the inky water before me. The arches of my feet were warmed and stretched by the curve of the worn stones, just at the edge of the water, not quite touching.

The angel hairs on the back of my neck lifted, so I knew the Dog had arrived. That he sat behind me on the stairs, as if carved from obsidian, but alive with hunger.

There he sat. Glossy, shimmering night against the paler shadows. Flash of white fang, glistening with saliva. He shimmered. Shifted.

And Rogue uncoiled. Long hair streaming like ink spilled on leather. Cloak swirling around him.

He descended the steps with that uncanny elegance, stalking on long legs, effulgent eyes so intense that the sapphire was lost in ebony. As he paced toward me, he held something in his hand. The green silk cord. Longing in his beautiful face.

I quailed but held the marble in the palm of my hand. An offering.

Rogue stopped in front of me, sleek as a cobra, the pattern on his face once again still and cool. He slid the bloody sphere from my unresisting fingers. The eyebrow on the clear side of his face arched, Rogue held the glass sphere up to the misty light, turning it to see the bruised swirling within.

His eyes glittered like mica as they ran over my face. His elegant fingers folded around it. When he opened his hand again, it was gone.

Then he held his other hand up to me, the green silk cord trailing across it. A challenge. A question.

My breath caught and a tremor ran through me. I couldn’t bear it.

“Do I have to?” I whispered. I searched his eyes. Regret and triumph chased each other through their depths. He trailed a long finger down my cheek and I shuddered.

“Beautiful Gwynhwyvar. You are both the omen and the fulfillment of it. You have seen how fighting this will only shatter us. Please. I need you.”

Rogue sank to one knee, his cloak settling in a sensuous swirl. He held up the silken cord like an engagement ring.

“Gwynn, I cannot survive without you. Will you accept my bonds?”

My heart thundered, my brain swimming in heated blood, my breasts tight and sex throbbing. I couldn’t think. But I didn’t need to. I’d already made the choice.

It mattered that it was my choice.

I held out my wrists.

Without rising, Rogue knotted the green silk. First around one wrist, then the other. I trembled to feel it tighten around my skin. The sensation arrowed through me in helpless arousal. The ends dangled down, a twisted bridal bouquet.

My breath escalated. Excitement spiraling out of control.

Thrilled to the core, I let it go.

Weaving the dangling cords between his fingers, Rogue drew me down to bend over him. He offered his mouth to me and I kissed him, starving, insatiable. I dropped into his hot, sweet lips, my wrists tethered to his hands.

I sank to my knees, reveling in the heat of him against my naked skin, my nipples unbearably teased by the velvet he wore. I let him plunder my mouth.

When he raised his head, brilliant eyes fired, I tilted my head back, exposing my throat to his teeth in surrender.

With a growl, he slid his lips along my throat. I moaned, my thighs slick with moisture. He trailed nipping kisses down my neck and I sparked to his touch.

When he sank his teeth into the junction between my neck and shoulder, I convulsed. Rogue released my wrists, pulled me tight against him with one arm, slid his elegant fingers between my thighs into my swollen sex.

I convulsed again, screaming, and his mouth closed over mine.

My climax poured into him and he drank me in. Inhaled me, and poured it back.

This was right. This was how it should go.

Drowning in the volcanic tide, I was filled with Rogue. My heart swelled, pounding through me, burning through the sky in supernova.

On a crescendo of longing, I wished for him to live.

And collapsed into darkness.

Chapter
Thirty-Six

In Which It Rains

I awoke in Rogue’s arms.

Dawn was breaking in a gray light. A misting rain fell over us, where we lay on the sand, wrapped in his cloak.

Rogue gazed at me, eyes quiet. The black pattern spiked over the left side of his face in more branches, more complex swirls, a thicket of blackthorn twining around his exotic indigo eye. But it seemed docile again, still and quiet. No longer feral. I trailed my fingers over it and felt only his skin.

Then I raised my hand to see no cord bound my wrist.

He raised an eyebrow at me, waiting for me to ask the question. Unaccountably, I blushed. Did he remember it all?

“What now?” I asked, instead.

“Whatever you wish for, beautiful Gwynn.”

“I’ve learned to be careful of that.”

“And in this case?”

“I think I don’t know what to wish for.”

“Wish for simple things. That’s best.”

Rogue shrugged and sat up. I shivered, bereft of his cloak and warm presence. The sodden dress still barely clung to me. He uncoiled to his feet and held a long hand down to me, just as he had under the dryad’s tree. I slid my hand into his, trying not to think of how those elegant fingers had driven into me. Then and in the dream last night.

Tried not to think about how much I wanted all of him inside me.

“Dreams are just a different reality, lovely Gwynn. You should understand that by now.”

“But our bargain…”

“Valid still.” His lips twisted. “You are still safe from having my child. For the moment. Or until you change your mind.”

I wrapped my clammy arms around myself.

“Allow me.” With a flourish, Rogue produced a dark cloak out of thin air and wrapped it around my shoulders. The cords on it were knotted green silk.

I studied the shockingly gorgeous planes of his face, the dianthus-edge of his lips. The inky lines on the patterned side of his face seemed as if they could run in the rain.

“Why?” I finally asked him.

He sighed. Taking my hand, he drew me beside him. We walked along the sand, the soft rain falling, the surf quiet. The beach curved around the grassy bluff, disappearing in the mist. I felt curiously at peace, despite it all. As if we might head back to a cozy home soon and settle in with a glass of wine before the fire.

“You gave me the gift of your trust last night.”

“Did I?”

Rogue glanced at me and wrapped his fingers around my wrist. I shuddered and he smiled.

“So I’m putting myself in your power. To balance the scales.” He drew in a breath and laced his finger with mine again. “I need you.”

“To fight Titania?”

“One doesn’t fight Titania. One struggles not to be consumed by her. She drives us, pushes us toward our darkest natures until we have nothing to resist with.” His profile was stark against the gray sky. With the unmarked side of his face toward me, he could be almost human. “So I called you. I dreamed about you, in your world. I needed you to keep me from losing myself. If you hadn’t been close to losing yourself, too, you wouldn’t have heard me.”

I pondered that.

“But it was the Dog who came to me.”

“I can’t control him.” Rogue said it quietly. State secret.

“Isn’t the Dog, well, you?”

Rogue laughed. “One aspect. He’s part of me and yet not. Both older than I and younger.” His indigo eyes flashed at me, hair sleek in the rain. “I believe you know what it is to have parts of you that aren’t entirely in your control.”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to.

“Exactly. But he—it—that part of me responds to you.”

“That’s why he came to me. And why I could pull you back out of him.”

“Yes. You’re learning, clever Gwynn.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me this before?”

He stopped. Turned me and pulled me to him. Now I could see both faces. The man and the wild creature. In front of me all this time.

“Aren’t we the same, Gwynn? Both wanting the power? No—you had to choose it and I didn’t know how else to make you face that choice. Only something truly felt could break Titania’s grip.”

I laughed, the feeling bubbling up through me, chasing away the dark shadows. “Are you saying that love triumphs over evil?”

He searched my face, almost with childlike curiosity. “Do you believe in love?”

“I don’t know.” Maybe I did. My heart thumped. “You ask me what I wish for? I want this. I want to learn and grow. I want to be happy. I want the best part of what we are together—the back and forth, the partnership.”

“I can give you that.” He smiled that cat-in-the-cream smile. “You belong to me now.”

“Only one part of me,” I whispered.

Rogue smiled, eyes dark with triumph and something more. “True, my bold student. But in time, I will have all of you. Every part.”

“I’ll take every part of you in return then.”

Rogue threw back his head and laughed in sheer delight. He pulled me tight up against his lean chest and dropped his face close to mine. I could feel the heat of his breath, the scent of mace twining through my blood, his lips were so close.

“Powerful Gwynn, I shall savor every moment of it.”

Strangely enough, I knew that I would, too.

* * * * *