Wicked Paradise (13 page)

Morgan whimpered in an endearing way that spun his world out of control. He touched his tongue to her soft lips. When her lips parted this time, he crushed her mouth with his, possessing it, staking his claim to her body. He thrust his tongue into her inviting warmth and explored languorously. She moaned as her tongue met his in a mating frenzy. Power bloomed, sizzled in the air, whispered in his blood. Shock slammed into him, and he almost sank to his knees, a boneless mass of electric nerve endings.

Without breaking the kiss, Ryan tightened his hold on her, where not even air penetrated. Linking her arms around his neck, she pressed one hand to the back of his head. Her short fingernails bit into his shoulder. He reveled in the pain, wanted it and more as long as she inflicted it with her touch. Her round butt filled his hands and he kneaded the soft flesh. Their kiss became frenetic, and the heated, velvet interior of her sweet mouth unraveled him.

Ryan eased her onto the furs. The sorceress’s fiery power streamed into him, pranced in and out of his magic, spurred them on. She thrust her hips against his, and pained-pleasure ground his hardness into her yielding curves. He sucked in his stomach, gasped. It drove his ferocious need, and he had to hold himself back from not tearing off her clothes and burying himself deep inside her. Quivers spooled through his taut muscles as he fought for control. She smelled so good, fresh like a morning meadow, just as he’d imagined in their dream.

Beyond reason, Ryan eased back and peeled Morgan’s gown up over her breasts. A ragged groan escaped him at the glimpse of the milky-white breasts and dusky rose peaks. His feverish gaze raked the length of her naked body, and he grew so hard, he thought he could drill through the rock walls. Gods, she was beautiful perfection.

Unspoken misery bloomed across her face, and she languidly tried to hide the four scars on her stomach. With light fingertips, he traced the white welts one by one, loathing the thing that caused the pain tinting her face red.

He rested his forehead against hers. “You are beautiful,” he whispered, smoothing his hand over her scars. “Every inch of you.”

Light swirled over her pale flesh, kissing it with the color of fire. She trembled beneath him, her eyes fixed on his. Her fingers feathered over his rune brand, her touch a balm to the stinging pain. Eons crawled by while they died and were reborn in each other’s eyes, until passion compelled him to press his lips to hers in another kiss, tender and hungry at once.

Contact with her silky skin sent currents of desire over him, the friction igniting his natural fire. Her eyes rounded in awe, and he gasped. No one’s magic had ever incited his fire magic. Ryan had never experienced the range of sensations, both physical and emotional, that he experienced with Morgan. And he feared his inability to resist her. Hell, he didn’t want to resist. It maddened and excited him at once. Part of him wanted to explore and challenge those feelings until the day he died. He locked away the dissenting part of his mind and tossed away the key.

Morgan sifted her hands through his hair, raked her fingers across his scalp the way she did in their dream. He burned so hot for her he thought he’d combust. Her breasts mashed against his chest and her heart drummed in perfect sync with his. Aching to enter her, he untied his loincloth, letting it drop away from his hips. He spread Morgan’s velvety legs and wedged himself between her knees.

Her hands froze on his chest, her entire length tensing beneath him. “Ryan, no,” she pleaded in a small voice.

An uncontrollable inferno raged within him. “At least let me pleasure you.” He lowered himself over her, but she pushed harder. A mix of fear and frustration brought back the gentle celadon depths from the darkness of her lust-filled eyes.

Curiously, Ryan studied her. She caused his natural fire to blaze in ways he was dying to investigate. Reluctantly, he bolted her enticing magic out of his body. He refused to do anything she wasn’t ready to do. But if he didn’t at least sample her, he’d send a torrent of unrestrained fire magic into the air, which would only cause him to burn harder for her when it met her magic. “Let me touch you, kiss you.”

Hesitating, she chewed on her bottom lip, brushed her moist lips across his, and nodded.

Electricity sparked in his body. He braced himself on the furry bed to support his weight. Morgan trembled hard in anticipation, an encouraging whimper the final enticement he needed. He licked a path around one stiff nipple, then the other. His hand moved to the upper slope of her breast, then underneath the satiny smoothness. He filled his hand with one breast, suckled the other nipple, bringing her to a writhing frenzy.

Ryan raised his head, drank in her loveliness. Morgan combed her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. Goose bumps crept over his skin in the wake of her delicate touch. He lost himself in the depths of the power and longing he saw in her eyes. The power she held over him, the beginning of his total undoing.

His mouth captured hers in a long slow seduction. Morgan opened her mouth, and he slipped his tongue inside, enjoying her sweetness, tasting their destiny. Their kiss became fierce and demanding as her tongue stroked his in a frenzied duel. Her soft breasts crushed his chest, inciting and inviting.

Before Ryan lost it completely, he ended the kiss and rose between her legs. They both gasped for air. Morgan’s breasts heaved, her hands curled at her sides, face flushed and beckoning.

Ryan kissed the flowery sweet skin between her breasts, flicking his tongue over each pert nipple, unable to escape his panting groans. Then he kissed and licked his way down her stomach, dipping his tongue in her navel. He planted soft kisses on her scars and she quivered against his lips. Her hands twined in his hair, holding his head against her stomach. He chuckled low in his throat. Lust flowed hot in his veins as he tongued the white ridges of scarred skin, wanting to heal them with his touch.

“Ryan. Ryan! Oh, that tickles.” She squirmed beneath him, his name on her lips in her exotic accent sending him off the rails. He smoothed his hand down her hips, his fingers reaching into her wet heat, his erection throbbing for his own release. Not yet, it wasn’t his time. He swallowed down a groan.

“Oh Goddess! Ryan,” she whispered in a throaty voice.

He lifted his head to see her face. Her eyes hazed over, her cheeks crimson and moist. “Fly for me, little raven.” His heart panged with an unfamiliar emotion. A gush of magic escaped him and covered them both in gooseflesh.

Morgan rocked and cried out, clutching at him. The brand on his chest burned a hole in him, and her magic raced to ice the sensation. Suddenly, his internal magic shield cracked, and her power poured into him, mating with his. Her release seized her, and her body convulsed violently, her screams resonating in his head.

Gasping, Ryan slumped into the wall, trying to purge the pain of his lust, breathing in the essence of heaven. It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough until he had Morgan in all ways. In that moment, he realized that whether or not they left the island, he wanted everything she had to offer him. The realization staggered him, rasped up his back in a cold wash.

Morgan eased away, her breasts rising and falling with each gasp. A tremulous smile stretched her mouth. Reaching forward, he dragged her onto his lap, her legs straddling him, wrapping her into his embrace.

“Let me pleasure you now,” she said on a warm breath in his ear, her tongue darting behind the exhale. She nibbled and kissed a path down his neck to the hollow of his throat. She nestled his iron hardness within the heat of her thighs and rocked against his length.

He was about to ease his own pulsing need when reality smacked him. Icy fury and resentment rained on his heat. “No!” he roared. Neither Morgan nor his people deserved his selfish pleasure. Damn the consequences to his body and heart. Gently, he rested her on the furs and clambered off the low bed. Rummaging through his stack of clothes, he found a pair of denim shorts and tugged them on.

Ryan turned, masking his expression. Pain blanched Morgan’s love-ravaged face. He wanted to die on the spot.

She rose from the bed, crumpling her gown over her breasts. Resolve shifted across her mottled face. “You do not want me,” she stated simply.

“No, it’s not...hell, yes I want you.” His gut lurched. “You have no idea—”
I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you
. He scrubbed his hand across his face, wishing to mop his confusion away so easily. “It just cannot be.”

“Because I’m a powerful sorceress from another land, another time?” Her voice rang flat and resigned to her fate.

Softening his gaze, he replied, “It has nothing to do with who you are.”

“Then enlighten me,” she challenged, giving him her black, mad raven glare.

He considered his words carefully. “It’s about my duty to my people. I...we...must find a way off this island. I have a life to return to, people to help, Fomorians to destroy.” He hung his head. “Fucking, lifelong duty,” he grumbled.

“Will you tell me about your responsibilities to your people and your world?”

Ryan warred with the wish to tell her everything versus nothing, spoiling their time together in paradise. All too soon, he must return to that harsh, oppressive life of fighting, running, and hiding. A long pause ensued before he heard the faint rustling of clothing. Ryan lifted his head. Morgan wore her gossamer gown, arms folded over her breasts.

“Why were we sent to this paradise prison?” His step ate the distance between them.

Morgan squinted, regarding him coolly. “Someone must kill WindWraith before it steals more of Avalon’s magic, escapes this island, and completely annihilates both our worlds. She gave him a slow, appraising look. “We were sent to this island to destroy the creature. Together we can defeat it.”

Disgust curled Ryan’s lips. “Who sent us? Who but our worst enemy would do that to us?”

Morgan’s bare soles swept the hardened ground. Their mixed floral and spicy aromas clung to her. He inhaled through his mouth, trying not to let it suck him in again.

Ryan felt a single tremor pass down his spine. “Tell me, Morgan. Who?” He moved a step closer.

Embers in the fire ring threw off a pitiful glow in the darkening cave. Too dark to see, he felt her spark of defiance, the twinkle of challenge.

“My father,” she finally said. She sent a vision into his head, showing her father telling her, verbally and telepathically, about her obligations to her people and Avalon. Once again, Ryan saw WindWraith’s identity and its ages-long path of destruction. She cut off the horror show, depriving him of the ending. Morgan tightened her arms around herself, guarding her body from his venomous look.

“You set me up.” Power leapt inside him with angry flashes of lightning along his nerves. He stalked out of the cave and didn’t look back.

Chapter 14

The revulsion that stormed across Ryan’s face as he stomped out clearly revealed the meaning of his words. Morgan didn’t need a time-traveling interpreter to decipher them. She pushed out a heavy sigh. His reaction wasn’t unforeseen. She still hadn’t resolved the enormity of her destiny in her own baffled mind. Especially, when only two days ago, she thought her life was over.
This second chance at life isn’t my idea of a birthday gift.

“He’ll return when he calms down.” Certainty fluttered in her chest. “To carry out our hellish tasks.” Then what? How much more did she dare reveal without alienating Ryan further or making an utter mess of matters? When should she tell him there was no escape from the island? At least not for her. Would he believe that Fate brought them together? Would the next binding spell join their magic forever as ancient tales foretold? What if she had mistakenly set in motion the other flawed amulet spells? Cold reality seeped into the marrow of her bones and she trembled under its weight. Old magic lived in her father, in herself, in the archaic spells, even here on this timeless island. Many of her father’s dire predictions had transpired, and she had no reason to doubt his other foresights.

Unbidden, the memory of Ryan’s gentle touch and the intensity of his fire coursing down her body weighed upon her. Her heart had almost taken leave of its wits and begged him to take her fully, when her head had already told him no. Bloody hell, she mustn’t falter again! That is, if they managed to slay WindWraith and live another day. She threw up her hands and forced her mind to mundane tasks. After all, she had a home to establish, with or without a moody demon assassin.

Morgan added two logs to the embers, coaxing the fire to life. Flames licked at the wood, creating phantom dancers on the walls, sparkling off veins of quartz mapping the stone. Shadows rolled and rippled, overlapping one another like lovers in embrace.

A depression in a russet-speckled boulder across the cave twinkled in the water dripping down the walls. Firelight glimmered on the shallow bowl’s surface from the bottom of the puddle as though lit from within. Curious, she walked to the roughhewn bowl and peered into it. Diffuse amber light swirled in a wild pattern until water formed a solid amber circle.

Vibrating with excitement, Morgan knelt on the ground, careful not to disturb the liquid. On Avalon, without proximity to a natural body of water to scry with, she used a scrying bowl, but any puddle or container sufficed. The amber color and the swirling pattern belonged to her father’s scrying footprint. Was it possible to communicate with him from this world?

She concentrated on a calling spell. Harmonious air, fire, and earthen energy soared to her fingers. Morgan uttered the divination and swished the water, magic sparking from her fingertips. The shallow depth clouded, and then the water stilled. Tendrils of steam spiraled into the air. She held her breath until the water cleared and her father’s beloved face materialized, a specter rising from the stone.

Tears slid down her cheeks. “Father, is that you? Can you hear me?”

“Darling daughter.” Gwilym’s faint voice wavered. “I wondered how long it would take you to figure this out.”