Dark Magic (30 page)

"I already know you believe this, Gregori," she acknowledged softly. "But I also know you are wrong." There was purity and honesty in her voice.

His throat was raw and burning. "You cannot even see what I am, Savannah. I could never hide what I am from my true lifemate. I try to show you, but you cannot see reality. You have an illusion in your mind, and nothing can replace it."

Her fingertips deepened the massage, never faltering from their purpose. "And you are supposed to be our most learned ancient. My love, you are the one with the illusion of yourself. And, I might add, of me. Yes, I'm young—compared to you, a child—but I am first a Carpathian. And I am your true lifemate." Her hands fell away, and he was instantly bereft. Warm water took their place, rinsing away the shampoo.

"I remember before I was born, a terrible pain, both my mother's and my own. You came to me when I would have chosen to free myself from the pain, and you surrounded me with your comfort."

"Savannah." He moaned her name again, covering his face with his hands. "With my will, I bound you to me."

"You gave me your blood to save my life, you healed my wounds, and you talked to me of the wonders of the night, of our world. When I was just beginning to crawl, you came to me in the form of a wolf. We shared our minds constantly, nightly. As I grew, we reached for each other and shared all that we were."

"You accept me only because I did these things."

"That is the illusion, Gregori. I have been in your mind. I see what you are, perhaps better than you do. It took me a little time to put things together, because I was afraid of our bond, how strong it was. I was afraid of losing who and what I was to a stronger personality." Her hands began to soap his back. She made small, lazy circles with the suds. "I didn't put it all together at first. My memories from before my birth and my memories of my beautiful wolf, my companion that made me so complete. I didn't think about how easily and naturally we merged our minds. I didn't think about why I never needed or wanted anyone else. It didn't come to me until I realized how completely I merged with you, slipping in and out of your mind. Neither of us noticed it. You didn't even notice it. You failed to notice that in those years of my childhood, you had a semblance of peace in the time you spent with me. But I felt it. I saw it in your mind. It is there now, for you to examine in your memories. That was why it was so hard for you when I felt the Continent and ran away like the child I was. You see colors, Gregori. You have not seen them in centuries. I see how vivid and brilliant they are to you. Only your true lifemate could provide such a thing for you. Your silly guilt is blinding you to reality."

Warm water streamed down his back. Savannah moved around in front of him to kneel beside the tub. As she bent forward, her silky hair framed the perfection of her face. The shirt parted to reveal enticing glimpses of her curves. The rosy tip of one breast tempted him. He found it hard to control the direction of his gaze. She soaped his chest. "I am with you on the hunt. With you on the kill. In your mind, sharing your thoughts. No other could ever do what I do because I am the only lifemate you have. I am a shadow in your mind, so familiar to you, you do not know I am there."

She poured water over his chest, then rubbed the soap between her palms again. Tilting her head to one side, she gazed lovingly at his harshly set face. "You go perfectly blank when you hunt. I know this not because you tell me, but because I am there with you in your mind. What do you want to feel? Sadness? Remorse? You have hunted for nearly a thousand years. You have been forced to kill friends and relatives. You have been isolated and alone for years, without your lifemate. It was impossible in that barren world to feel anything, at all. Only your code and sense of honor and your loyalty to my father kept you going."

Savannah's hands searched below the surface of the water, found the thick, hard length of him, and began a slow, intimate massage. Her fingers were magic, sending waves of pleasure surging through him. "I would not want you to think of anything while you hunt, especially not of me. I would hope that would be too distracting." Her smile was frankly sexy, her hands moving with recently acquired skill. "You can't feel at such times, Gregori. It would slow you down, cause you to make a mistake. Do you really think you can change a thousand years of training? You programmed yourself centuries ago."

His body was raging at him, the beast inside writhing in need. His silver eyes opened wide to look at her. Hot. Hungry. Wild. Untamed. She smiled at him and sat back on her knees, her secret smile turning erotic. Savannah stood up and allowed the shirt to slide from her shoulders to the floor. "I'm with you in your mind, and you don't even know it, because I'm your other half, and I belong there. Who else but a true lifemate could have called you back from the darkness when it spread like a stain across your soul? You would not have answered anyone but me. Who else could go with you on a hunt, when all of your senses are on full alert, and you not be aware of it?"

His breath was audible in the stillness of the room. She moved back, her body a sensuous invitation, blue-black hair caressing her creamy skin. Gregori stood up, ignoring the water streaming off him. He wanted her, and she belonged to him. As he stepped from the tub onto the floor, she inched backward. Her eyes were half closed, desire in her mind, her body calling to his. She moved restlessly, one hand pushing at the silky fall of hair sensitizing her nipples into hard peaks.

"Come here," he growled, his body so heavy with need that he was afraid he would explode into fragments if he took one step.

She shook her head slowly, her tongue deliberately moistening her full lower lip. "I only want my true lifemate. I hunger tonight. My body is hungry." Her hand drifted slowly, enticingly, over her satin skin, and his eyes followed the graceful movement while his body raged at him.

Gregori covered the distance between them in a sudden surge, catching her up, the momentum taking them to the wall. He held her prisoner there, his mouth fastened on hers, commanding her response, feeding, devouring, his hands claiming her body for his own. "No one else will ever touch you and live," he snarled, his mouth burning a trail of fire down her throat to her breast. He fed hungrily, his teeth grazing the creamy fullness. "No other, Savannah."

"Why, Gregori? Why can no other touch my body like this?" she whispered, her mouth on his skin, her tongue lapping at his pulse. "Tell me why my body is only yours and your body is only mine."

His hands cupped her bottom, brought her hard against him. "You know why, Savannah."

"Say it, Gregori. Say it if you believe it. I won't have lies between us. You have to feel it in your heart as I do. You have to feel it in your mind. Your body has to burn for mine. But most of all, in your deepest soul, you have to know I'm your other half."

He lifted her, set her up high on the rim of the sleeping chamber, his hands parting her thighs. "I know I burn for you. Even in my sleep, the sleep of our people where there can be no thought, I burn for you." He bent his head to taste her, his wet hair bathing her inner thighs as he dragged her body closer to him.

Savannah cried out at the first touch of his mouth, the rush of hot desire turning her into a liquid, living flame. She bunched his hair into her fists and held him to her. "Say it, Gregori," she bit out between clenched teeth. "I need to hear you say it."

I am saying it, lifemate. Can you not hear me
? He didn't lift his head, wanting to feel her body pleading for his, needing to feel her press harder into him, trying to alleviate the building pressure. She tasted like wild honey and spice. Addicting. Her response was addicting, the way she moaned and writhed, pushing into his assault. She was rippling with life, with fire, and he took her higher and higher until she cried out for mercy. Only then did he lift her into his arms. "Put your legs around my waist." He slid her down his burning body until he held her poised over the hard, burning length of him.

The feel of her, moist and hot and so ready, set the jackhammers tripping in his head and his body clenching with need. Still he held her, poised at her hot, beckoning entrance so vulnerable to his invasion. "Put your mouth on my neck, Savannah," he ordered. "Drink from me as I take you."

"Hurry," she pleaded, a little catch in her voice. Almost blindly she obeyed him, her tongue caressing the pulse beating so strongly. She pushed aside his wet hair, and as he thrust upwards, stabbing into her tight, velvet sheath, her teeth pierced his skin, so that he flowed into her, body and soul and mind.

Gregori cried out hoarsely, already in ecstasy, taking his lifemate as he was meant to, without reservation, without restraint, without barriers between them. Her mind was filled with wild images, and his mind matched and inflamed hers. He didn't have to compartmentalize his thoughts or worry she would find something that would take her from him. He allowed himself to simply feel intense pleasure. Flames, arcing electricity, white-hot lightning, the friction building and building.

She had always been in his soul; this time he took her there, needing the freedom of her total acceptance, her unconditional surrender, her complete faith and trust in him. Savannah swept her tongue across his neck, closing the tiny pinpricks. She arched away from him, offering her perfect breasts to his mouth. "Now you. Feed. Take me into your body the way I take you."

She was small and light in his arms, so little compared to the size of his body, yet when he thrust into her, his hips frenzied, burying himself deep, driving as close to her soul as he could get, her body accommodated his. First he took her mouth, tasting the power of his blood from her lips. Then his teeth scraped along her throat, lower, to find the valley between her breasts.

Savannah was riding him now, her body finding a perfect rhythm with his, urgent, frenzied, her hands catching his head to force his mouth to her.
I need you
. There was such an aching plea echoing in his mind, he waited no longer. He felt his incisors sharpen, lengthen, as they sank deep into her breast.

She cried out, her body clenching around his, rippling with such intensity, with such a firestorm of pleasure that she felt her self exploding into fragments. Savannah dug her nails into his shoulders for an anchor as his hips thrust into her, wild, untamed, uninhibited. Then they were both exploding together, Gregori lifting his head to cry out hoarsely, unable to contain the savage pleasure burning inside him.

Savannah clutched at him, her head on his shoulder. He waited a heartbeat to make certain he was still on earth. Something moved between them, and he saw the thin trickle of blood running down to her stomach to drop on his own body. He bent his head and closed the pinpricks on her breast with his tongue.

"I love you, Gregori," she whispered softly against his throat. "I really love you. The real you. Do you understand?"

He waved a hand to extinguish the candles, plunging the room into complete darkness. With Savannah's body locked around his, they sank into the embrace of the waiting soil, the richness of their homeland. Instantly peace settled into their beating hearts, into the wildness of their minds.

"You are mine for all eternity, Savannah, until we grow weary of this existence and choose to go together to the next." Reluctantly, he freed his body from hers, bent his head to remove the thin trail of red marring her skin. Gregori settled her into him so that his head rested beside her breast.

Her arms crept around his damp hair, cradling him to her, the sleep of their people calling to her. He shifted her slight body so that he could drape one leg over her thighs possessively, so that his hands could shape the length of her body at will, know it was imprinted there in the soil beside his.

The chamber door slid noiselessly shut to seal them inside at his thought. The safeguards were many and all of them deadly. Anyone disturbing their rest would be in mortal peril. Gregori stroked her long hair, contented. At peace. "You are so small,
ma petite
, to bring such pleasure to a man." The warmth of his breath teased her nipple, and his tongue followed in a slow, leisurely caress. "I have made love to you each time I have taken you into my arms. There can be no other for either of us, Savannah."

She stirred with drowsy contentment, the slight movement bringing her breast against his mouth. Her hands stroked his hair gently. "I am not the one who worries, lifemate. I know there is no other."

His tongue made another lazy, contented curl around her creamy skin. "One who has gone centuries in utter darkness takes a long time to believe he will not lose the light. Go to sleep, Savannah, safe in my arms. Let the soil heal both of us and bring us peace, as Julian knew it would."

She was silent for a moment, but his mouth feeding at her breast was causing little aftershocks, rushes of liquid heat. "I will if you behave." There was soft laughter in her voice, an acceptance of anything he wanted.

He wanted her to sleep and silently pushed at her mind, helping her to grow more tired, but he couldn't quite give up her body yet. He spent a few minutes gently, tenderly, nuzzling her breast. She held him while she drifted in a hazy, erotic dream.

"Sleep now," he commanded softly and gave them both up to the healing soil and the rising sun.

Chapter Thirteen

Gary tried not to notice how pale Savannah was as she fixed him a pot of coffee. Her satin skin was almost translucent. He was groggy from the trance-induced sleep and had a hard time waking up, even after a long shower. He had no idea where the change of clothes had come from, but they were lying on the end of the bed when he awakened.

Savannah was beautiful, moving through the house like flowing water, like music in the air. She was dressed in faded blue jeans and a pale turquoise shirt that clung to her curves and emphasized her narrow rib cage and small waist. Her long hair was pulled back in a thick braid that hung below her bottom. Gary tried to keep his eyes to himself. He hadn't seen any evidence of Gregori this evening, but he didn't want to take any chances. He had a feeling the one thing that could change that remote expression fast was to have another man ogling Savannah.