Excerpt:
“Halcyon, what will we do?”
His answer surprised me. “There are two ways we can handle this. We can
try and hide it. Or we can try the opposite—not trying to hide it.
Diverting them instead from the real reason for your demon-like change.”
“If I have a choice in this, I’m all for not trying to hide it. I
think I would fail in the endeavor to hide it,” I said honestly. Fail and
die. And now that I knew I would not be enjoying a long afterlife, I sure
as heck did not want to depart this life anytime sooner than I had to.
“What do you propose?”
“That I claim you publicly as my mate ten days from now at the next Council
meeting. Others will presume that any changes, any strangeness you
manifest, even those of becoming more demonic…they will assume that it comes
from our union.”
Diversion. Creating smoke elsewhere to hide the true cause. “I think
that’s a brilliant idea, Halcyon.”
Turmoil flashed in his eyes.
“What is it? What’s wrong, Halcyon?”
His voice, when he spoke, was pitched low. “I do not want it just to be
false diversion. I want it to be true. I want you to be my mate in truth.”
“Oh.” One little word to express everything that I suddenly understood.
He loved me. Wanted our union to be not just official but real, and feared
that it would not be so. That I would agree to it simply to save my life.
Where I once would have hesitated, here I did not. Because I’d come to
learn that life could be fleeting. That love was precious where you found
it, something to be cherished. Something to grab ahold of with both hands
and one’s entire heart. “Yes, Halcyon. I will be your mate. In truth, in
love, with everything that I am…even the demon part of me that is you.”
He looked into my eyes, deep into me, and laughed joyously. I was suddenly
in his arms, and that remaining thirst for blood that throbbed in me still,
became channeled into hunger of another kind. One that involved flesh,
yes. But not to eat it. Well, at least not literally.
I felt the tide of need shift within me and welcomed it with
delight. With eager hands that roamed and sought and found smooth skin,
muscled flesh. With trembling heart that wanted, wanted, wanted him. His
love, his laughter. That look in his eyes as he caressed me gently with the
back of his knuckles.
“Mona Lisa.”
“Yes, love me.”
“I do.”
“Show me,” I said, my fingers flying, unbuttoning his clothes,
unzipping mine. He stood there docilely, letting me undress him, watching
as I shed my own clothes. But his eyes…his eyes were anything but docile or
tame. They burned with need, with sexual heat, with heart’s desire.
Naked, we came together. And that first touch of flesh to flesh
shuddered a cry from me, a sigh from him. He laid me upon the ground, came
down on top of me, and I opened my heart and body to him.
“You are mine,” he said, his chocolate brown eyes burning down into mine,
watching me, connecting us that way. Watching me as he pushed slowly into
me and connected us that way, too. He entered me, slid luxuriously in, and
we both groaned. My eyes fluttered shut.
“No. Look at me, Hell-cat. Let me see you. Let me know you. Let me
inside of you. Yes,” he whispered as he stroked within me, his face, his
body, his eyes a breath above mine, giving us an intimacy that was as deep
and poignant as how he felt moving within me. “You hold me so tight, so
warmly. My home,” he said, and with another wet slide, pushed back into
me. “You are my home.”
Gentle, so gentle he was. And then his eyes slid down, fell
upon the side of my neck. Then, and only then, did I become aware that his
strokes in and out of me…they were timed to the flux and flow of my heart.
As my blood pumped within me, so did he time his movements within me. My
pulse quickened at that realization. At the knowledge of where he looked,
what he desired. As it did so, his own rhythm accelerated.
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