The Danu (11 page)

Was he intending to
punish her, or pleasure her?

With an unexpected twist
Katrine felt herself turned around, breaking whatever sultry spell he had been weaving. 
His hands at her waist lifted her and pressed her into his chest, so that her
feet hung loose in the swirling waters, her hands found his shoulders without
any direction from her, and her body was pressed all along the naked hard heat
of him.  More than that, they were now eye-to-eye, and Katrine could see the
fire of determination in blue velvet eyes that crackled with angry fire. 

A little of both,
Katrine
thought, breathless and more than a little confused about her own reaction.

"I might have let it
go, I was convincing myself that I should," he murmured almost as if he
was talking more to himself than her.  His eyes were memorizing her features,
the look of her pressed close in his arms.  Then they returned to trap her gaze
with the heat of his, and she felt the impact of them like a lightning strike
to the heart of her.  "Then they tried to take you from me."  The
blue velvet of his gaze was molten heat and hard glitter that
claimed
everything they touched.  "And then you ran," He gritted out between
clenching teeth.  "
From
me."

Before Katrine could
argue, cajole, or even whimper at the intent she saw in those blue velvet eyes,
his lips were there, claiming her as surely as his eyes had.  It was not the
sweet or gentle first kiss young girls dream of, but then Katrine had never
really been that.  Instead, it was a fiery brand of lips and tongue that gave
no quarter, and offered no softness, only heat and greedy desire.  And Katrine
burned.

Khalon breathed her in,
tasting the sweet tang of her mouth beneath his.  Added to that, the soft feel
of her body giving along the length of his was the kind of surrender he had
craved from this woman from the first moment her green eyes met his in
challenge.   He led her legs up and around his hips so that the naked heat of
her core was pressed against his hardened shaft.  He growled, and could not
stop himself from grinding his hips against the slick heat of her.

Katrine gasped into his
mouth and he sank deeper, plunging his tongue in and winding it around hers and
then again, until her arms were wrapped tight at his neck.  With another growl,
he moved his lips down her arching neck nibbling and sucking while his hands
moved over every inch of skin they could reach.  Then he sank two fingers into
the hot moist heat of her core and she shuddered, her eyes flashing open and
latching onto his.  He growled again, looking deep into her eyes while his
fingers learned the contours of her.  Her eyes dilated with pleasure and
curiosity and Khalon refused to look away while he pulled dripping fingers from
her center that had nothing to do with the water swirling around them.  Then,
his eyes hard and glittering with command and promise, he pushed them back
inside her, again and again, while she bucked around him, shuddering.  Her
slick heat grasped at his fingers, making him crazed to be inside her.  He
battled the need to hammer his cock inside that warm place and finally claim
what was his.

Instead, he teased her
with his fingers and plunged his mouth back down on hers while she was gasping
for breath.  She moaned and he swallowed the sound down.  But there was
something more he needed.  He pulled his fingers from the sultry clinging heat
of her and brought them to his lips trying to catch a taste of her even with
the swirling water washing most of her scent away.  Her eyes opened wide and
dilated watching him in shock as he sucked the taste of her from his fingers.

"Say my name,"
he said low, sounding as tortured as he felt.  He adjusted her until his cock
was right at the threshold of all that heat.  She was open to him and straining
to get closer even as her passion filled eyes clouded with a different kind of
confusion.

"What?"  Her
voice was soft and abraded, full of the passion he could see had taken her by
surprise.  When it looked like her eyes were clearing and words he did not want
to hear were forming on her lips, he kissed her again, sinking into her mouth
as his cock sunk inside her core just that little bit more so that she lost her
train of thought.

"My name, Katrine,
say it."  So close he spoke against her open lips, he saw awareness battle
the passion in her eyes.  She knew he was asking for more that it seemed.  She
said what he wanted to hear anyway.

"Khalon."  She
tried to close her eyes against him then.  He growled and nipped her lips, and
then locked his gaze to hers so that she could not escape.  When he had her
eyes, her attention, and her surrender, he plunged inside of her and took the
rest.

He watched the pain of
his first solid thrust fade quickly as her body adjusted itself to his wide
girth.  He refused to let her close them or look away.  When he saw nothing but
passion and need in those glowing Danu eyes, he pulled almost all the way from
her grasping channel and then thrust back in.  This time his hands on her ass,
he took everything, seating himself all the way inside her until nothing could
come between them.  "Say it again," he hissed, knowing his control
was slipping.  Needing her to say it.

"Khalon."  He
felt her arms tighten at his neck and her hips counter thrust against his.  It
was her eyes that showed how close she was to the pleasure he forced on her,
even as they still had that spark of challenge that told him that as much as
she surrendered in his arms now, he did not own her.  And he needed to own her,
every bit of her so that she would never think of running from him again, just
as he needed his name on her lips.  For now, the last would have to be enough.

He pushed in and out
feeling the shudder of her whole body with each hard thrust inside her.  He did
not want it to end.  At the same time, his vaulted control was deserting him.   Her
head fell back and her eyes closed.  Tightening and pulsing around him,  she
surrendered to the pleasure he pressed on her, but it was Khalon who came with
her name on his lips.

***

"You could just go,
say you never found me."

They were the first words
Katrine spoke the next morning.  They had slept little, at one point they had
left the pool and lay down on their clothes over a mound of moss Katrine had
encouraged to grow thick and wide.  They had made love again, and then Khalon
had gone for the horse and brought back the saddlebags.  Khalon had eaten the
food without a fire, and Katrine had foraged some from the wilds around her
before they settled back down in the bedroll they found.

Khalon had made love to
her again, this time slowly and knowing how limited the time they had would be,
Katrine had reveled in each touch.  More than once, it had been her that
started them up again, touching him everywhere she wanted, while she could. 
Because she knew, even if he did not, that their time would soon end.

The thought was
unbearable.  With the light of a new day gliding over them, Katrine steeled
herself to face what was coming.  Time was up.

Hard arms wrapped at her
waist, holding her back against his chest, tightened painfully, and he sat up
dropping her back to the soft moss so that he could lean over her and see her
face.  "No."

"I am no danger to
your kingdom.  You have to know that."  The frustration of his response
added to the anger that they were and always would be on opposite sides. 
"Just let me go."

"You stay with
me."  He bit out tenaciously.

"So I should just
meekly follow you to my death?"  She was tempted to bite anything she
could reach just to make him bleed.  The man was beyond frustrating.  She tried
reason one more time, taking a deep breath. "Your father will not suffer a
witch to live.  And your brother intends that I never reach Dunsen."

"No one will hurt
you while I live."

"You cannot promise
that when it is the King who you deliver me to," she ground out.  "It
is your
duty
."  She spat out the last word like a curse.

"This has never been
about that, and you know it," his voice dropped lower as did his lips so
that she drank his words as much as heard them.  The heat of his eyes caressed
her.  "Not even my father could take you from me."

She sucked in a much-needed
breath, and all she got was more of his scent and heat enveloping her.  "I
don't trust you."  She said as if that was the end of the matter, and for
her it was.

"Trust that I claim
you as mine," he said.  His eyes hardened to granite at her provocative
words, even as they locked on to hers.  Every word held a hard beat of truth
that hammered at her.  "No one will take you from me, and if you try to
leave me, I will run you until you drop."

Katrine tried to control
her breathing.  It was ragged and hard.  She tried to find her center and shut
out the words, and the heat of his branding gaze, but it eluded her.  "I
could leave you bound in the wilds and be done with this," she said trying
for hard; even as she felt her insides melt.  She tried desperately to shore up
her defenses, not understanding how he could make her feel at once
claimed...and safe when she was anything but.  "I would be free of you
then."

"You will never be
free of me."  His answer was said against the skin of her neck, right
before he reared up and crushed her lips beneath his hard claiming ones.  The
fire he stoked burned out of control then, and Katrine lost whatever fight she
had under those heated lips, and searching tongue.  He opened and filled her
and she whimpered with a need she could not fight.  Each stroke of calloused
hands built the fire between them higher.

It was well into the afternoon
when they finally left their hidden glade.  Katrine wondering with each step
she took out of the wilds and then listening to the clomp-clomp of the horse's
gate as they made their way down the North road once again, why she did not
just make her escape.  She could have at any time, despite what Khalon
thought.  She could leave him twisting in the wind lost in the green and she
would be away.  So why wasn't she doing that?

Katrine sighed, and the
sound had the already steel arm circling her middle, tightening.  He did not
say anything, and neither did she.  They were at an impasse.  He would not let
her go without putting himself in danger storming after her through the wilds
to keep her, and she...well, she did not want to leave him just yet.

We are both fools,
she thought, knowing it was the truth, and still making no move to change
anything.

When they reached the
Southern army coming back the other way, no one spoke.  Ragnar looked them over
but said nothing before he maneuvered Thrax over to his Prince's side.  Katrine
was obviously not going to be allowed her own horse, because Khalon plucked her
off the mare and right into Thrax's saddle before he dismounted and joined her
on his own horse.  Ansgar had eyes only for Katrine and it was hate that hit
her like prickles along her skin until a warning growl from Khalon had Ansgar
grinding his teeth.  Again, he said not a word, merely turned and gave the
command to march, leading the way through the troops as they separated to allow
them through, and then filled in behind his party and formed their escort.

"And we are
off," Katrine muttered low and dry with mockery pointed entirely at
herself.  "Escorted by Ansgar the bloody to meet the witch killer."

"My brother will
come around," Khalon said back just as low, though Ragnar heard him
because he snorted again; clearly in doubt of that statement.  Khalon ignored
him.  "And my father is not who you think he is," he went on, rubbing
his cheek against her hair while the hand not leading his horse stroked softly
up her arm, as if he could not get enough of the feel of her.  "Our people
might have been enemies during the war, but it's over.  Even if that were not
so, we do not make war on women and children."

Katrine did not bother to
remind him the Danu were peaceful when his father attacked them under a banner
of truce.  Nor that his brother would see her dead long before they arrived if
he could.

Khalon seemed to sense
her thoughts anyway, because his hold of her tightened and his voice turned
grim.  "If you can trust nothing else I say, trust that no one will harm
you or take you from me while I breathe."

Katrine closed her eyes
and tried to bury the worry that statement created in her belly.

Would Khalon go up
against his own family to protect me?
 Katrine wondered, hating
the doubts that crept in. 
And which answer am I most afraid of?

***

They made it into Dunsen
tired, road grimy and in need of another nap.  They had passed through three
separate wild weaves after the painful separation from the first one, none of
which Katrine touched but in passing.  Besides feeling Ansgar the Bloody
watching them broodingly from time to time, there had been few incidences that
stood out once they started.  No time to rest other than the briefest calls of
nature.  This time they passed by the glades and markets that squatted on the
side of the road and catered to caravans and travelers.  They did not stop at
any of them.  They arrived at Dunsen nearly three days later and once Katrine
left behind the final weave and started upon the paved stone roads that led to
the city she lost what connection she had that was keeping her going.  In moments,
the painful buzzing in her ear worsened and then with a pop she was on her
own.  She shuddered against Khalon and he pulled her in tighter against his
body.

"What is it?"
he asked low in her ear.

Katrine was so tired she
did not even have the wherewithal to be afraid of what she revealed. 
"There is nothing for me to hold onto here."  She let her head fall
back against his warm shoulder, thankful for at least that connection to
warmth.  She shivered and burrowed back against him.  "It's so cold
here."

Katrine was almost pathetically
grateful when he told her after a grim silence, that she would not have to do
anything but bathe and sleep tonight.  They arrived at the castle too late to
meet with the King regardless, so they rode into the courtyard of the castle
well ahead of the army and, with a few orders, they were escorted with lighted
candles to what were clearly Khalon's own rooms.

"We will clean up,
eat and rest from the journey before I take you before the King," he said
by way of explanation while he helped her out of her clothes.  Katrine was more
than fine with that plan.  At that point, she was just thrilled to be off the
horse.  Khalon touched her face and brushed her hair back and she was forced to
open her eyes to see a fire smoldering in his she hadn’t seen since the last
time he took her by the pool.

"Why do I think it’s
more than a night’s sleep you are after showing me in your big bed?"

That made him smile,
though it was there and gone quickly.  "We will save that for when you are
less road weary."