Noah (45 page)

Kestra swallowed hard, turning her face away as tears leapt into her eyes. He was so certain. So fearless. How did he find the courage? After losing his parents the way he had? After the friends and loved ones who had been torn away from him, how did he find the nerve to love so wholeheartedly? So easily? She realized then that she hoped she could learn from his example. That she could move beyond those memories of her parents’ tragic end and the guilt she still felt about it. She knew she shouldn’t blame herself for the actions of a madman, but she couldn’t shake the idea that she’d been the catalyst for the loss of those she had loved so very much. But even that guilt was nothing compared to the gashes in her soul caused when they had been torn away from her heart.

“How do you do it?” she asked him suddenly. “How do you live through the ages like you do, watching everyone you love die? I don’t understand you,” she said in frustration, grasping at him as if she would shake him. “I don’t understand how you can risk loving me! I can still be killed. I can still die. Only now it will likely be a violent occurrence because I don’t imagine you have many natural deaths among your people. Explain it to me, Noah, please,” she begged, leaning all of her weight against him. “Please.”

“It’s so simple a philosophy, baby,” he murmured softly against her hair, pausing to kiss her ear through the soft strands. “Live in the moment. Especially when you live so long a life, you need to know that you cannot put off anything. Too often regret comes in the blink of an eye, as you yourself have seen and pointed out. I would rather live with loving you for a heartbeat of time than having never known the gloriousness of the feeling. How long do we have to cherish one another? I do not know. I will not waste a single precious moment thinking about it when I could be spending that moment making love to you.”

To stress his point he caught her head between his hands and held her steady for his kiss. He covered her mouth, his hunger raw and unaffected. He kissed her as if it was, indeed, the last moment he would ever spend with her. Kestra realized he’d always done so, or desired to do so. Now that he no longer feared her learning about his powerful feelings for her, his kiss was flooded with an intensity she hadn’t felt before. It dragged heat and unsteady heartbeats up from the center of her body. His hand lowered to her waist, catching the warmth of the bared curve against his palm. He suddenly broke away from her.

“Sweet Destiny, Kes, what the hell are you wearing?”

She shrugged. It was her standard nightwear. The white stretchy shirt hugged the wealth of her breasts, but ended an inch or two farther down her ribs than a bra would, leaving her midriff bare. The men’s boxers were rolled over a couple of times at the elastic waistband to help them fit, and they were settled low on her hips.

“Pajamas,” she said, as if he were a little dense. “It’s daybreak, as you see.”

“Pajamas? You call these pajamas?”

She settled her hands on her hips, just below the low line of the boxers.

“Do you have a problem with my choice in nightwear? Er…daywear…uh…sleepwear. Whatever!”

“No.”

“No? Then why—”

He snatched her up off her feet and into his body, clutching her by the bared curves of her waist.

“I was admiring your wise choice,” he growled with sexy intent just before he crushed her mouth beneath a hot kiss. He rapidly worshipped her wisdom by example, his hands skimming easily up under the shirt and cupping the bare weight of her breasts. He caught her nipples between his fingers, toying with the pressure he had learned she was responsive to. She bent backward, moaning into his mouth as she curved deeper into the hard press of his body. “I admire wisdom in a woman,” he informed her heatedly, just as he abandoned her breasts and shot both hands down through the loose waist of the boxers so he could curve them over her hips and then her bare bottom. He used the grasp to drag her hips into connection with his, rubbing himself wickedly against her to show her the effect she had on him, the evidence jutting from beneath his clothes and into her soft flesh.

“Noah,” she groaned, wishing she could tell him a thousand ways how much she loved his aggression. How hot and how wild it made her to feel so desperately wanted, as she was so clearly wanted by him.

“Yes, baby, I know,” he panted softly against her lips. “Would you trade this moment away? Would you rather live in fear than feel this?”

He hauled her off her feet, giving her no opportunity to answer and no choice but to wrap her long legs around his hips and put her arms around his shoulders. He was across the room in an instant, it seemed, and she found herself once again sitting on top of his desk. She was no longer in a dress, but that did not faze the Demon King in the least. He sought for, and easily found, the valley of hot, wet flesh her position opened up to him. She leaned away from the savagery of his mouth at the first sure stroke of his fingers. He had unerring knowledge of her and he used it shamelessly. Kestra gasped, her back arched, thrusting her breasts upward for the catch of his mouth.

The combined sensation was maddening. She burned, laser bursts of pleasure zipping through her, traveling to a center point so near the sure slide of his fingers. Oh, how he touched her!

“No!” she answered him at last, even though he was pushing her to climax with skilled speed and she could barely breathe.

“I know,” he breathed softly, clearly affected by her response. “Tell me what you want, Kes.” She moaned with pleasure, her hips wriggling against his touch. “So many choices for living in the moment, baby love. Do you want my touch?” He stroked deep into her body with a slick finger. “Or can I taste you as you come? Or…” Noah dragged her close to the edge of the desk and removed his touch so she could feel the grind of his arousal against her heated sex.

Kestra was nearly blinded by all the sensations, not to mention the eroticism of his words and taunting actions. In a heartbeat he had dragged her to the border of bliss. She hadn’t expected it, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t crazy for it. This was definitely living in the moment, she realized, and that was exactly the point he was making.

Her head jerked up, her vivid eyes faceted with desire and sexual fury. Her hands grasped his shirt and she dragged it open, heedless of the buttons ripping off and hitting the floor. She ran famished hands over his skin. He made a deep sound of pleasure when her nails scraped up his back and clung to his shoulders.

“Inside me,” she uttered hotly as she licked over the dark pebble of his nipple, relishing the jerk that shot through his frame, and the shudder that followed. “I want you inside me. Deep. Connected to me as if we can stay that way forever.”

Clearly he thought it was an excellent choice. The temperature of his body soared. Obvious pain flickered through his eyes, leading her into his thoughts where she came to understand it was because his clothing was lashing down the rampant need of an aroused body that had responded prettily to her words. They both moved their hands to rectify the situation. He rethought his assistance, closing his eyes as he reveled in the nimble swiftness of her hands and the loving way she surrounded him with her touch the instant she had freed him from his clothing. He had taken the opportunity to divert his hands to her flimsy boxers, shucking them off her just as easily.

Preliminaries were over. Kestra stroked him with a firm, knowledgeable touch, even as she used her legs around his waist to draw him to her. Noah could hardly breathe to make the sounds of ecstatic delight he wanted to as she guided him into her ready body. He made a single thrust, sheating himself inside her in a movement that expressed his desperate need to do exactly as she had asked. Once he was seated deep within her, the heat and honey of her wrapped tightly around him like a fist, he drew her mouth to his.

“I live to serve,” he told her, teasing her lips with a nibbling kiss.

“If only that were always the truth,” she sighed.

“Shut up,” he said smartly, dragging a hand over her fresh mouth and pushing her back until she was sprawled over the desk, her laughter muffled by the seal of his palm. He used his free hand to grasp her hip so he could anchor her.

The laughter strangled into an exclamation of enjoyment as he very slowly drew out of her, then just as slowly returned. Her entire spine squirmed and she shuddered.

“Hmm,” he said. “Liked that, did we?”

She nodded vigorously under the press of his palm.

“What about this?”

Kestra couldn’t understand why all her sophistication and control always got shot to hell by him, but she responded to the clever undulation of his hips with a squeal she couldn’t contain. He had a way doing things to her body that she was sure she’d never comprehend. He toyed with her methodically for several minutes, until in his concentration and distraction his hand fell from her mouth to grasp her other hip. Then she was left vulnerable to the echoes of her own cries bouncing off the high ceilings of the Great Hall.

He reached to press her thighs farther open, leaned over her, and used the hardwood of the desk as a counterpoint to add fantastic depth to his thrusts into her. He growled, seared by the sensation of achieving his goal, fulfilling her request to the best of his ability. He lost himself inside her, enveloped by her again and again, a paradise on earth, and a connection as purely elemental as he was.
Here
, he thought,
is true fire
. And she was its mistress.

In all honesty, there was little finesse to the joining. It didn’t take long before they were both just reaching for the crash of their pelvises. Noah’s exclamations of rising enjoyment quickly joined hers, ricocheting off the arches of the hall. She helplessly clutched his biceps, shoulders, and the edge of the desk, each in their turn as he strove to shatter her.

“Kes!”

It was a warning, and she knew it. She felt the gathering storm within him, knew she robbed him of all control so easily. She smiled, so content with the idea that she let herself fall away from the moment. She felt and heard the crash of his fist on the desk near her head and she had no cause to flinch. She knew he was frustrated because he couldn’t bear the idea of possibly leaving her behind, leaving her unfulfilled. She suspected he knew she didn’t even care.

“Kes!”

This time the cry was more than a warning. It was an exultation. She was so settled inside, so quiet, that she felt every surge, every hot pulsation as he slammed their hips together one last time and jetted into her. The sensation was indescribable, unequivocal, and it was all she needed. Her body flew apart on a primal level, bursting into an ecstasy only his pleasure in her could have ever triggered.

Noah was shocked by the force of her release, her back arching until he thought her spine would snap in two, her clutch on him violent, a powerful embrace that milked him to exhaustion. When they both fell over the desk, he found himself completely bemused. He could barely stand, for starters. But for a span of time there he had thought he had lost her, that he would end up being selfish in his release. Of course, he would have gladly resorted to one of the other methods he had described to her earlier, but he did not like the idea of not being able to bring her to orgasm first, if not simultaneously.

“You worry too much,” she sighed softly, ruffling her fingers through his hair until the light caught the reddish highlights. She smiled when he turned his head and kissed her between her breasts. Then he braced his hands and pulled himself to his feet.

“What you do to me,” he said with a grave shake of his head. He carefully pulled her shirt back to its proper place, making her giggle because she thought it a silly gesture of modesty considering they were still coupled together.

“You just had to get me back on this desk,” she teased him. She took the hand he offered her, sitting up and wrapping her arms around his ribs. She pressed her cheek to his heart as she hugged him.

“Actually, I thought I was making a point.” He paused a purposeful beat. “But now that you mention it…I am going to have a hard time studying at this desk from now on.”

Kestra’s response was to wriggle free of him and leap to her feet. She retrieved her boxers and shimmied into them with easy speed.

“I have no sympathy for you. Frankly, I like the idea of you sitting down here thinking about me, helpless to resist the memory of my delectable body.” She gave her hair an impressive toss and added an equally impressive flirtatious look at him from over a shoulder. It was enough to still him from the action of straightening his own clothing. She laughed when she caught the telltale darkening of his eyes. “You can’t possibly want me again already,” she said with a careless flip of her hand as she walked away from him toward the stairs, her hips swinging in a fetching movement.

“I would not place any bets on that,” he muttered darkly as he straightened his shirt.

She stopped to give him an exaggerated yawn, her humor over teasing him radiating into him like a tide. “But it’s full daylight, baby…” She glanced at him from under her eyelashes when she whipped him with the nickname that she well knew squeezed the breath from his body. “Time to go to bed.”

“Kestra…” Her name was a rumbling growl of warning.

She stretched, giving him a fine view of the line of her back and backside, then began to climb the stairs.

“What are you going to do?” she countered the unspoken threat carelessly. “Spank me?”

“Now, there is an excellent idea.”

Kestra didn’t even need to see him move. She knew his intention the minute it leapt into his thoughts. With a squeak of humor and excitement, she took off up the stairs at lightning speed while he was still gathering momentum with his dash across the Hall.

Kestra glanced over the rim of her fluted glass, letting the champagne bubbles burst beneath her nose for a minute as she took the opportunity to run her eyes over the sight of Noah in formalwear. It wasn’t the only dramatic change she had marveled over these past two weeks. As Samhain faded into the past, she began to see more and more what he had meant when he’d tried to explain the difference in his personality. In essentials, he was as he ever was: honorable, honest, sensitive, and intelligent. His sense of humor had surfaced with a vengeance, though, as well as the patience and diplomacy everyone else had come to know him for. To be honest, she almost missed the more hotheaded side of him. His well-paced and thought-out communication skills could get on her nerves sometimes, especially when she was itching for an argument. However, she’d also learned that it wasn’t that his temper had decreased, so much as he had better tools and control over submerging it. That meant that if she tried hard enough, she could still ruffle him.

Kes smiled against her glass as she took a sip of the sweet, dry champagne. She’d seen the telltale straightening of his shoulders, a sign that he’d sensed her attention was on him. She could easily touch his mind now, and the reverse was also true, but they’d managed the skill in such a way that they tuned out one another’s thoughts until they found a reason to pay specific attention. It turned out that this was actually a necessity. When Noah was working throughout the night, his mind worked at lightning speed. It gave her a massive migraine trying to keep up with him without having context for more than half of the issues he was dealing with. She would learn, of course, just as she was learning her new powers. For the time being there was far too much to handle. Besides, he had just as hard a time concentrating on all of his business if he allowed her rather militaristic thoughts about her training to disrupt his focus.

She had been training with Gideon when not with Noah, one reason being that in astral form Gideon could avoid blast damage, just as she could with her anticipated immunity to her own power. The catch was that she was immune to the energy blast, not the fallout. Debris and projectiles could harm her just as they would anyone else. So she had to either stand at ground zero, or get the heck out of Dodge, a skill that her speed and agility lent her great aid in.

In return, Gideon let her practice her power appraisal on him. The benefit to him? She had unlocked another mystery for him to pursue in his powers: the key to the ability for a Demon to heal a Lycanthrope. It was another power he had been experimenting with for some time, without any real success. It seemed that she was able to find these paths only because he was already close to the revelations. But he had told her that it might have taken decades or longer without her assistance.

She was tired, a little sore, and she hadn’t had a moment alone with Noah for at least thirty-two hours. Not until tonight. Tonight she was showing off her socialite abilities. They were at a small, private dinner party at the Vampire Prince’s citadel. The guests consisted of all those who had had a hand in saving the life of his bride, including her sister, the Queen of the Lycanthropes, and Elijah. Damien and Syreena had concocted the idea as a gesture of thanks.

So Kes toyed with the rope of pearls that Noah had saved along with her life what seemed like a lifetime ago. She wore a breathtaking evening gown she had spent hours shopping for, finding a kindred shopping spirit in the sprightly female Enforcer. Held by the slimmest of straps, the simple dress fell in a sheer silk of dark wine, only an equally sheer but iridescent underdress of the same color making a somewhat subtle mystery of the bare skin beneath it. Even so, the slightly flared skirt was slit to her upper thigh, showing off a very long leg and a pretty pair of sparkling couture sandals in silver.

She held an image in her mind of Noah’s expression as she had come down the stairs to meet him. She’d wondered if her expression had been quite so ravenous as his had been. He was gorgeous in black formal, the stun of his tight, energized body in tailored silk having dazzled her eyes and burned her body. His desire and appreciation had been just as obvious as he’d taken her hand to guide her down the last few steps. He had asked her if she had any modesty at all, the question posed dryly in spite of the burn of his eyes over the easily seen shadows of her body. She had told him she’d been born without it. That had made him laugh.

She smiled at the memory.

Suddenly he turned to face her, giving a backhanded excuse to his host and hostess as he left them and crossed the room toward her. Damien and Syreena exchanged amused glances behind his back, and Kes couldn’t hide the laughter sparkling in her eyes as she took another sip of champagne. Kes had noted early on that there was no sign at all of Syreena’s terrible wounds. She couldn’t help but wonder, though, what was lingering behind the otherwise merry charcoal eyes.

When Noah reached Kestra, he grasped her by the arm and turned her back to the rest of the room, placing himself in front of her so he could watch everyone over her shoulder. “Are you having fun?” he asked, taking his gaze from the other guests long enough to rake smoky eyes down the teasing length of her dress.

“Why, yes,” she said easily. “Your friends are always delightful.”

“That is not what I mean, and you know it.” He leaned close to her ear as he accused her. “You are projecting. It is driving me crazy.”

“Is it my fault you’re a sexual fiend?”

“I?” He chuckled drolly. “That makes you the pot and me the kettle.”

“True,” she agreed breezily, waving the argument off with an elegant hand. “But I can hardly be held accountable for every random thought. Males think about sex an average of once every ten seconds, I have heard. I should remind you, you are above average in all things.”

The little factoid made him chuckle, his heated breath cascading down the back of her neck, bared by her upswept coiffure. She shivered and he noticed. She heard him take in a long, slow breath. He was drawing in her scent, she had learned. He did it often and with relish, and she’d learned to respond to it as the eroticism it was.

“So sweet,” he murmured in her ear, his lips brushing the outer rim of it as he spoke. She made a little sound of feminine pleasure, and it sang through him like a low, throbbing note. “I have missed you,” he said in earnest as he bent to press a kiss to the line of her pulse. He felt it pick up in tempo and he closed his eyes in an attempt to bear her responsiveness.

“You’ve been busy. I’ve been training.”

“We should never be that busy,” he scolded them both. “Now I am near you and I cannot touch you.” In spite of that claim, his hands slid forward to lock around her slender waist.

“I thought Vampires and Lycanthropes didn’t care about modesty,” she countered.

“I care,
Kikilia,
” he retorted. “With the exception of your provocative wardrobe, there is only one man in this room who will see the intimacies of your body, Kestra. Only one who will know them inside and out.”

“That was never in question, baby,” she parried soothingly, kissing him just behind his jaw.

He snagged her chin in his hand before she could pull fully away, holding her for a quick, deep kiss, a reminder of how he was affected by her use of his nickname for her. He drew her close to his body, probably out of pure habit. She knew he hadn’t intended it, but soon she was pressed tightly to him, his hand possessive on the small of her back as he kissed her again, his fingertips splayed toward the outward curve of her bottom.

“Ahem.”

Kestra snickered into Noah’s mouth when Isabella exaggeratedly cleared her throat very nearby. They broke the kiss, but Noah didn’t relinquish the warmth of her against himself as they turned their heads to look down at the petite woman.

“I was wondering,” she began thoughtfully once she saw she had their attention.

Kestra watched Noah’s eyes sparkle as he allowed himself to walk into the baited trap.

“Wondering what?” he asked her.

“Well, I was talking to Syreena about her plans for the citadel’s gardens come the new spring. See, she wasn’t able to do much but instruct in a cursory cleanup for this year, having had so much to do with moving in and getting settled. So we were discussing possible growth for the sandy, rocky soil of the area, though beneath that is a deeply rich and fertile earth, she says.”

“That is lucky,” Noah said helpfully.

“Yes, well, it just reminded me of something I needed to ask you.”

“Yes?”

“What the hell happened to your willow grove?”

Kestra burst into laughter, completely ignoring the abrupt pinch of Noah’s fingers at her waist.

“Willow grove,” he repeated. He didn’t pretend to question it, just parroted her as his eyes shifted up to see Jacob and Elijah listening in with clearly planned attentiveness.

“Yes. Willow. Wisteria? Arbors? Pretty oyster-shell paths? What, you decided a big brown hole in the ground suddenly looked better?”

“As a matter of fact,” Noah said with a handsome smile, “I rather like it. I think I will keep it that way. A reminder of a very good lesson learned.”

“And the lesson being?” Jacob asked dutifully.

“Never underestimate the power of a woman,” he said simply, adding a casual shrug. “Come, sweet, I believe you are out of champagne.”

He swept Kestra away, leaving her breathless laughter in their wake.

When Kestra met Damien he’d been extremely polite, gracious, and grateful, practically overflowing with pleasure when welcoming Noah. Now, some time later, with his wife firmly secured to his hip, the Vampire was giving her a different depth as she watched him with more efficient perception.

Kestra had recently noticed that her ability to evaluate and map power had also left her with a heightened sense of awareness when it came to reading others. She had always been perceptive in taking another’s measure, but now it was as close to telepathy as one could get, without the actual awareness of thoughts.

As she and Noah conversed with the Prince, this awareness kicked into overdrive. There was strain around his edges, ever so faint, and something she suspected only his loved ones would notice. He was tired, physically, his energy depleted in what she suspected would be life-threatening ways should he encounter trouble on a hunt. He was flush and warm, clearly having hunted earlier, so it was not a nutritional deprivation. Emotional? Perhaps, she thought, considering how close he had come to losing his wife.

That sobered her greatly. She did not know if the mating between them was as physically interdependent as the Imprinting was for Demons, but Jasmine had claimed he would never survive the loss of Syreena. She supposed she meant his devastation would have been impossible to endure. Had she been literal, too?

Kestra glanced at Noah from under her frosted lashes, her heartbeat picking up with sudden anxiety. For her and for Noah, it was indeed literal. If anything ever happened to him, she would have little more than two weeks to live. A death sentence she didn’t deserve, nor did she appreciate the lack of control over her own life that it implied. Her existence hinged on his safety.

Kes hid the sudden rigidity of her body and the smarting behind her eyes under the guise of a delicate cough. Her ears were roaring and she tried to breathe and refocus on what Damien was saying to Noah. How had she even gotten off on this morbid tangent? Noah had lived nearly seven centuries. Did she think he would suddenly forget how to survive?

“Without Stephan, I am afraid the network we have been trying to put into place over the world has begun to unravel. Not so much the European sectors,” Damien explained as Kestra’s hearing slowly returned to normal. “They will always be easy to manage with Jasmine and me in such close company. It is the other continents I am concerned with. There were far more than two Vampires acting against us that night. I am afraid the reason we cannot find them, or Ruth and Nico for that matter, is because there is too much room out there for hiding.”

“I agree. They will avoid the Nightwalker regions: Russia, England, France, New Zealand, Alaska, Romania, and, as you said, most of the European continent. At least until things are not so hot for them. But that leaves North and South America, Asia, and Africa open to becoming hideaways. There are less hospitable choices as well, of course, but they will want to lose themselves in a heavy human population.”

“Also, they will want a playground,” Damien added grimly. “Vampires can never go long without games to play. For games to be fun for Vampires of this lawless ilk, I would say screwing around with the lives of humans will be a high priority.”

“On a mildly better side,” Syreena put in, “I believe we can now expect that a slaughter with speed and viciousness through the Nightwalker species will not be easy to accomplish again. The Mistrals and the Shadowdwellers were given an unfortunate clarion call. They will be more on guard, more organized.”

“As will we,” Noah said soberly. “We have been too complacent. Our young will need a new set of rules now. They are the most vulnerable.”

“We should think about it. All of us,” Kestra pointed out firmly, not able to soften it because she felt so passionately on the topic. “Biologically speaking, most females aren’t equipped to attain the strength and power levels that males can achieve. Protecting them will need more than just a strong consideration.”

Damien didn’t even blink. “Female Vampires are as powerful as the males, or can be if they desire it. There are many on the network.”

“Female Vampires aren’t in threat by Vampire rogues, though,” she countered sharply.

“Kestra is right, you know.” Syreena’s hand went absently to her healed throat. “Powerful or not, women are at risk.”

“Who are you charging with the supervision of the network?” Kestra asked.

“I had not…” Damien hesitated, then looked away briefly as he made a soft sound of frustration. “I was caught up in other things and have not designated Stephan’s replacement.”

Grief. Guilt. Pain. Worry. Love. Kestra saw it all swirling around the Prince in a flash. He had indeed been caught up. Now she understood the exhaustion and strain. This had taken a toll in a way Damien was obviously not experienced with. She found it hard to believe he had never suffered great loss before, not after a millennium of life, and Noah had told her that Vampires tended to be emotionally callous. Obviously Damien had changed when he’d fallen in love with Syreena, leaving him more vulnerable than before.