Parallel Fire (4 page)

She focused on the rocks along the shore, tossing them into the water one by one.

“You shan't do that forever, I hope?” he called to her, ever his formal self.

“Yeah? What else you got in mind, sir?”

At first she thought he wasn't going to answer, but then a wicked grin filled his face and he rose to his feet, beckoning her toward him with the crook of his index finger. “Come over here, Anna.”

“Oh—I better not.” She laughed nervously, sliding backward on her bottom.

He took another step closer, to the very edge of the embankment. “Anna,” he told her intensely, leveling her with his midnight gaze, “I said to come over here to me.”

She shook her head, a soft sigh blowing across her lips. “Why?”

“I need you to understand something.”

Slowly she stepped to her feet, and surveyed the flowing water below. It was shallow, but she'd get her boots wet.

“Wait!” he called, and swung his legs over the edge, dropping down onto the damp rocks. With a bold leap, he crossed the water, stopping just beneath where she stood. “I forgot my manners for a moment. Forgive me.”

He had to squint as he gazed upward because of the late day sun, and he lifted a hand to shield his eyes. With his other he reached for her. “Jump down to me,” he urged huskily. “I'll catch you so you won't get wet.”

She slid, more than jumped, into his arms, and found herself braced between a pair of powerful, bulging biceps—pinned against an even firmer and more powerful chest. Frozen for several bottomless seconds, she could only stare into his thick-lashed eyes, aware of the intense beating of his heart, of the feel of heat radiating off of his body.

Then with a slight laugh, an almost self-conscious one, he swung her down beside him onto the rocks where he stood.

She smoothed her uniform out—as if anything could help it after the hiking and desperate climbing—and then looked up into his eyes. “You wanted to show me something?”

Without a word he bent his head, lowering it until his face was pressed right up against hers, until they were cheek to cheek. She felt the rough sandpaper of his unshaven face, smelled the woods on him and she stiffened. Waiting. What the hell was he going to do? He moved his lips right up to the tickling spot behind her ear and sucked in a long, staggered breath; then blew it out, whooshing right into her ear. He was scenting her! The bastard hadn't asked—he'd tricked her.

She lifted both hands, ready to shove him away from her. But he reached out and pulled her palms tenderly against his chest. “Wait, Anna. Give me a moment. Please.”

It was all in the way he said please. As if everything in his world depended upon her granting the request, as if he couldn't live or take another breath if she wouldn't just let him stay close to her for another moment. She could have melted into the earth right on the spot.

“Oh-okay,” she whispered, and once again he drew in a long, hungry breath, pushing his mouth right up to the side of her face, moving it upward along her hairline, then back down to her cheek, nuzzling. He gasped when he finished, making a tight, barely controlled noise in the back of his throat.

“Now me,” he urged in a voice she hardly recognized. Its timbre was that of pure, unmitigated lust. “Scent me, Anna.” Then he added, almost with a touching innocence, “It's all right.”

Reaching upward, she clutched both of his shoulders and with a nod of understanding, she pressed her face against his chest and gave a light, tentative sniff—just the shortest little burst to test his scent. It was the very first of the Refarian mating rituals, that need to drink in your potential lover's aroma. To see if it aroused you.

That one light burst and he totally infused her, sent fire into the deepest part of her being; burrowing closer, she took a longer, deeper drink of the man's aroma—and her entire being exploded into thousands of particles of desire. A wave of such keen need and longing swept over her that her knees almost buckled. Sliding a hand behind the small of her back, Nevin steadied her.

Oh gods, it was the pheromones. He was covered up in them, so heady it was all she could do not to jump him without another word. It had to be the hormones from his recent maturity change.

“Y-you should have warned me,” she hardly managed, pressing her face into the folds of his uniform shirt—but instead her lips met warm, soft skin where his shirt had fallen open.

One large hand skimmed along her back. “Warned you about what? That our scents would be such an explosive”—she heard him swallow—“maddening mix?”

“About your gods-forsaken pheromones!” She bunched his uniform in both fists, yearning for another inhalation of his scent. Frustrated to an almost painful level. “Your hormones are at a fever pitch…you should have said something.” She twisted his shirt in both hands, a plaintive cry of frustration escaping her lips.

He pulled back, staring down into her eyes and gave a light shake of his head. “I don't know what you mean.”

“I
felt
what happened! When I scented you! I may be inexperienced, but I'm not stupid—I know about men in their maturity, how compulsively sexual you are.”

One corner of Nevin's full mouth turned upward in gentle amusement. “Anna, I hate to break this to you—but I'm not emitting any pheromones. What you felt?” he cupped her cheek meaningfully, tilting her face upward until her gaze locked with his. “That was just me.”

She shook her head, intending to back away, but instead tightened one hand about his upper arm. “That's not possible.”

Wrapping both arms about her, he fixed her against his chest. “What have you heard, exactly, about men in their maturity?” He wasn't mocking her; the question was gentle. Genuine. At utter odds with his purely masculine body, his intense and arousing scent that had almost leveled her to the very ground beneath them.

“That you rut like fucking stallions,” she blurted, then, wincing in embarrassment added, “Is that true?”

“I wouldn't know,” he whispered against the top of her head. “I've not been given the opportunity to find out.”

She shoved at his chest, stepping backward. “Oh, just stop it, Nevin.” It seemed ridiculous to call him “sir” or bother with their military formalities. “You must think me a stupid little fool.”

He cocked his head sideways, watching her. “Do I strike you as a man with much time for relationships? For any sort of emotional entanglements whatsoever, Anna? Truly?”

She blew out a breath, staring at the ground between them and wishing that her face weren't blazing so hot.

“Anna?”

Slowly she shook her head. “I've never known you to have any women in your life.”

“I won't lie to you,” he said softly. “I think you'd know that about me by now.”

“Do you think the speculations are true?” She barely dared to look up at him. “About men of your…well, um, your age?”

He scowled. “How old, precisely, do you think that I am?”

“Thirty-eight,” she volunteered easily. “You told me that day in the meeting room.”

“You remember that day?” His voice deepened, filled with emotion.

She closed her eyes, hands trembling slightly at the memory. “Of course.”

“Yes, thirty-eight, and perhaps truly too old for you. In my maturity now, as you can plainly see.” He raked his fingers through the silver spiking hairs atop his head in order to drive the point home. “You are still so young, full of energy and time, whereas I”—his voice broke off and he seemed to struggle with something—“I have lived too many lives already. So you're absolutely correct to be wary, Anna. Back away from me.”

Perhaps it was his awkward denials and attempts at reversing their moment, but she felt suddenly very certain about what he meant to her. What he would mean, what he had already come to mean over the past day and months.

She placed a palm over his heart, felt its urgent, steady beating. “You aren't an old man, Nevin. Look at you! You're so handsome!” With her fingertips, she reached upward and traced the slight lines about his eyes. “You wear your maturity like the virile man that you are. I know what maturity is about, don't think that I don't.” She laughed, reaching her hand to the top of his head, stroking it, feeling the scratch of the close-cropped hairs, running them under her hands like
zia
grass back home, all prickly and tickling. “You are in your sexual prime, it's obvious.” He stiffened beneath her touch, shaking his head slightly.

“Not…true.” He drew in a shuddering breath.

“No?” she teased, pulling back slightly to study him. “Then why are you trembling so badly when I touch you? Because you're dead inside? Because you have no life left? And why did you insist that we scent each other?” He said nothing, kept his face unreadable. “Because you know,” she finished, leaning up onto her tiptoes so she could meet his gaze head-on. “Because you understand this thing between us.”

He released a rumbling, low growl from the back of his throat, like a Refarian tiger in heat. She had friends who had lovers like Nevin, sexy, unstoppable men in their post-change prime; everyone said such men were volcanoes in bed, unable to suppress their ever-increasing needs.

Nevin fit those descriptions to perfection, both physically and emotionally. Mentally. His stamina was undeniable—they'd hiked these mountains for hours and he'd never tired. She loved that in a man, someone who could keep pace with her boundless energy. She knew what he'd be in bed: that same tiger in heat.

“I-I am not the man for you, Anna,” he stammered, lifting his chin proudly. But he could do nothing to dampen his distinctive, sexual scent. It was palpable, strong as she breathed him in and his aroma kept tantalizing her. Why All had put the Refarian men in their prime of heat
after
their fertility faded, well this much she'd never understood. Was there some mystical secret to it? She had no idea for certain, but the man before her shook with barely contained lust—lust so profound it gave off a scent that kept her entire body tethered to his like a chain of reflexive Antousian metal.

“I can still scent you,” she told him at last, running her tongue over her lips. “It's intense, Nevin. The aroma of heat and fertility and gods-only-knows what all.”

With a tremor, he lifted his hand to her throat, stroking the slight indentation at the base of it, running his fingertips across her bare skin. “Anna…back away. I was wrong to invite this. You're much too young, too innocent. Nothing right can happen here.”

“
You're
not backing away.” She gave a defiant lift of her chin. “You're touching me.”

“One of us must…break this hold we seem to have”—he hesitated, his breathing growing heavy as he wrestled for words—“upon each other. This lusty hold. Must stop, Anna. Must.”

“Then do it. Do it, Nevin. You make the break.”

He dipped his fingers lower, tracing the edge of her collar. “I don't think I'm capable.”

“Then make love to me—here, now, beneath the sun and sky!” She lifted both arms upward in proclamation. “Take me,
N'vsai
!” she cried, invoking his Refarian name. “Take my body beneath yours and prove to me just how alive you really are.”

His black eyebrows drew together in a querulous V-shape. With his mouth he blew out agitated, hot breaths against her face. “You have no idea what you ask, Anna.”

“I have every idea,” she fired back coquettishly, wrapping both arms about his neck. She draped herself upon him, working her hips up against his, forming around his body. “Whatever you want, Nevin, I'll give it to you. Just relax. Feel it. Don't hold back so much.”

 

 

Chapter Four

He was at a perilous moment of indecision. This woman, this Madjin, had tested his will and his discipline; she'd unmasked every fear in his heart about his manhood and virility. She'd awakened slumbering memories of what it was to love a woman, to feel young and randy and high on sex play. “You say you know about men like me. Mature men, men filled with this-this”—he held out his hands by explanation—“this kind of want.”

“So you're thirty-eight. So you need sex—a lot of sex. Guess what, Nevin? I need it too.” Anna's wide smile spread across her face. He'd never seen a more radiant, beautiful smile on any person, so filled as it often was with unmitigated joy and happiness at some discovery or another. In this case, the discovery being…him. “And I need you, Nevin—not later, but now.”

His entire body grew taut and ready; at the slightest touch from her, there would be no more constraining himself. With a voice that quavered, he held out his last excuse, the only real reason he held back at all: Their significant age gap. “When I was serving Jared's father, you were still toddling.” Quickly, he did the math. Yes, he'd come under the king's guidance at the tender age of seventeen. She would have been just seven years old.

“Hardly!” She snorted gracelessly, sliding against him, running both hands up and down his back. “I was almost eight. I remember seeing you—did you know that?”

He gaped back at her, unable to fathom that she told the truth. “What?”

She nodded. “I was at the palace still, with the other Madjin,” she explained. “It was just before Jared's parents were murdered.”

“Yes, that was when I came to serve the king.” Nevin thought back to those early years. “A few months before.”

“I'd been a naughty shapeshifter,” she told him throatily. “I pretended to be a grown woman—got in much trouble for that, by the way. I talked to you in the hallway. I thought you were…so handsome. Totally mysterious.” She actually released a dreamy little sigh at the supposed memory.

“You are lying now, Anna,” he cried. “You must be.”

“No, it's true. It's always been true.”