Thief of Light (37 page)

Erik stopped so abruptly Prue banged her cheek on his collarbone. His arms loosened, then tightened, catching her before she slipped to the floor. “What the fuck
is
this?”

“I told you, the Bruised Orchid.”

Still staring over her head, Erik let her slide down the front of his body until she was steady on her feet. A ruddy flesh swept up over his neck and cheeks, his eyes blazing. “Lord’s balls!”

What, in the Sister’s name—? Frowning in puzzlement, she turned to follow his gaze. Everything shone with luxury and good housekeeping, from the dark wood of the four-poster bed, to the tall, burnished doors that hung open on the far wall, revealing serried rows of whips, paddles and cuffs. The plugs and strange, erotic devices Rose had purchased from the Technomages at enormous expense sat in neat rows on shallow shelves, scrupulously clean and ready for use. The wooden whipping cross had been specially crafted of polished cedderwood, the weight of it heavy enough to withstand the struggles of even the strongest man.

And if he was restrained facing out, his wrists stretched above his head in the fur-lined manacles, he’d be able to watch each stripe bloom on his body, observe every gasp and wince, because the opposite wall was mirrored.

“Don’t you like it?” she said. “It was the only pavilion free.” Lightly, she patted Erik’s chest, just above his pounding heart. “I didn’t mean for us to use the . . . um . . . equipment. But this is the top of the line. The bed’s huge.”

He’d stopped breathing, every muscle rigid against her. Erik wet his lips, studying the bed, the items on the shelves. His big body jerked against her, just once. Prue glanced over her shoulder. What was he staring at? It could only be the sturdy canopy of latticed wood above the bed, with its attachments of plaited silken ropes, light chains and cuffs.

“Not fair play, my Lady,” he muttered, so low she could barely distinguish the words. “Ah, hell.”

“Erik?” Her belly fluttered. “I don’t understand.”

He nuzzled her temple. “It’s all right, love. I’ll manage.”

When she glanced the length of his body, if anything, he was stiffer, larger than before, the head of his cock flushed a deep urgent pink.
Manage?

The room swung dizzily as Erik picked her up and virtually tossed her into the middle of the bed, coming down over her like a great bird of prey. Before she had a chance to open her mouth, he had covered her body with his, stealing the breath from her lungs, addling her wits. Grasping her thighs in his strong hands, he splayed her wide, surging into her, a single thrust taking him halfway home.

Prue shrieked into his mouth in shock and pleasure. In the last few moments of confusion, she’d lost the high edge of her arousal so he stretched her almost unbearably, her satiny, internal walls fluttering around his girth in mingled terror and delight. But, oh Sister save her, he felt sumptuously good!

More slowly, he withdrew, only to shove in again with a grunt of masculine satisfaction, a little farther this time. His fingers dug into her buttocks. Prue tilted her hips, wrapping her legs around his waist, and he slid all the way to the root, his testicles pressing warm and insistent against her folds. The wonderful breadth of those massive shoulders more than encompassed hers, his weight pressing her deep into the mattress. He was sealed against her, wrapping her up, all unyielding muscle, breast to breast, belly to belly, hot and damp. Water dripped from his hair onto her face and neck. Her fingers slipped on his wet skin and she gripped hard.

“Gods, I want you,” he mumbled between drugging kisses. “Good . . . ah,
fuck
. . . it’s good.”

“Yes,” she panted, twining her tongue around his. “Yes!”

Erik grabbed one of Prue’s wrists and then the other, arranging her arms over her head, curling her fingers into the elaborate fretwork of the headboard. With a final lick and a soft swipe of the tongue, he freed his mouth. Panting, he stared down into her eyes, his own a brilliant, blinding blue. His expression was so focused, so compelling, she couldn’t have looked away to save her life.

When she opened her mouth, he said only, “Sshh.”

His hands slid from her buttocks to her thighs to her calves. Quickly, he lifted her legs over his shoulders and leaned right into her, tilting her backward, supporting his body on powerful arms. It put her in the most vulnerable position imaginable, spread out beneath him, crammed full of the hard bulk of his cock, completely at his mercy.

Helpless
.

The instant the thought entered Prue’s head, every muscle in her lower body convulsed with lust, clamping down so hard she could swear she felt every vein and contour of that magnificent shaft. Erik groaned as if she’d reached out and torn the heart from his chest, still beating.

His hips flexed as he drew back. An instant’s pause, hanging on the edge, and then he was thundering into her, the bed shaking. Because of his size and the acute angle, it was an extraordinary sensation, on the borderline between pleasure and pain. Prue gripped the headboard with manic strength, thin whimpering noises escaping her with each gasping breath. Jabs of lightning hit her clitoris with every jolting stroke. Within seconds, the high, tight friction had built to a pleasure point so fiery it felt agonizing.

She tried to writhe, to reduce the awful, wonderful pressure, but he was everywhere. She couldn’t move. Her arousal lifted another excruciating notch. “It’s too much!” Her head thrashed on the pillow. “I can’t take it.”

“Yes, you can.” He drove into her powerfully, deep, then deeper still. “Not long.” A shuddering breath. “Stay with me, love.”

Amazingly, she found she could. Because there was nothing left to do but to trust, to follow where he led. Higher and higher he took her, until she was keening her pleasure aloud, flying, soaring on a burning wind to a high, airy place, where she rode the lightning in truth.

The spiraling intensity of it quivered on the very cusp of culmination, a summer storm heavy with the potential for utter destruction. Prue forced her eyes open. Erik hung above her, his face fierce with passion, his shoulders and chest sheened with sweat and water. “I have to—” she gasped. “Gods,
please
!”

“Yes. Ah, Prue, you’re . . . perfect.”

A final twist of the hips, a long, hard stroke, and she was gone, the swell of sensation shattering, a hot, rushing wind that flashed up and down her spine, digging deep into her pelvis, her ass. She shrieked.

“Fuck!” Abruptly, Erik grasped her calves and let her legs slip to his waist. He dropped to his elbows, gripping her head between his hands, and she heard his long groan as he jammed himself high and hard inside her, his buttocks clenching with the force of his orgasm. The deep, formless sound morphed into words, rumbling out of his chest, echoing around the chamber like thunder in the mountains, strong and imperative, a masculine command.

“
Love me, Prue. Gods, love me!
”

The Necromancer sat propped up in bed, a bank of pillows at his back, listening to the rain. Scowling, he reached forward to rub his knee, and his back twinged. He’d done his best to control his temper, but he had to admit he’d failed. He let out a breath, gusty with irritation. The Technomage Primus should have known better than to provoke him.

For a start, she’d panicked all over him, and he couldn’t abide that. Flapping and wailing—faugh! She hadn’t even had the courtesy to say thank you. He’d relayed the singer’s story about the seelies out of the goodness of his heart, because he thought she’d be interested. All the more information for her Scientific mind. What did she call it? Data.

But oh no—she’d gone pale, swaying where she stood. Then she’d begun to babble like a lunatic, spewing statistics and calculations like one of her own machines gone mad, darting from one end of the room to the other, gathering up sheets of transplas, putting them down again. Shouting at him, by Shaitan!

He had to close the palazzo immediately.
Right now!
Her equipment, her records, her
data
. How could they be moved safely? The Technomage Tower would know, she said. They’d told Nasake—

She’d bitten the words off, her face going a ghastly shade of gray, but it was too late.

The Necromancer had smiled, inhaling the sour-sweat stink of fear. “My dear Dotty,” he said, “I
own
Nasake, soul and body, in this life and the next. Whatever made you think you could bribe him to run your silly messages?”

The Technomage had braced herself, one hand on the back of her chair. “How do you expect me to work in isolation?” she demanded. “They don’t have to know about you.” Her eyes blazed with the intensity of her feelings. “But they could help, with the seelies, with the Magick reservoir. With everything.”

“No.”

“For Science’s sake!” She thumped the chair with her fist. “Why won’t you listen? I was right about the seelies, wasn’t I? I told you so!”

Not the wisest thing to say to any man, particularly a tired, aching Necromancer at the end of his tether.

He’d very nearly killed her, there and then. As it was, he wasn’t entirely sure she’d be in her right mind when she came around.

Poor, foolish Dotty. She’d meant well.

The Necromancer tipped his head back and closed his eyes. How old had he been the day the original Dotty brought the healer for his mam? Seven, eight?

Slowly, his hand closed and the thick silk of the coverlet bunched under his fingers. Much good it had done, she’d died anyway—because neither of them could read the healer’s instructions on the drug vial. Between them, they’d dosed her to death. The smell of poverty and damp assaulted his nose. And he was there again, lost down the dark tunnel of the years, mired in memory, his life divided into before and after.

He gritted his teeth. As always, he was grateful for the reminder of what ignorance truly was, what it meant—fiercely, bitterly grateful. Without it, without that pivotal moment, he would never have become what he was—a usurper whose very existence threatened the gods. His smile grew grim.

“I cain’t let you stay here, lad,” Shima had said, all those years ago. “Not less’n you earn your keep.”

When at last he’d raised his gaze from his mother’s limp body to meet the innkeeper’s eye, Shima took a step back, sucking in his breath. In his thin treble, the boy had said, “Teach me to read an’ I’ll do whatever you want.”

But Shima had shaken his head. “I ain’t good enough. Anyways, I ain’t got the time. You need a man who knows his letters. Lemme think.” His face cleared. “Tolaf’ddo it. He’s a drunken sot, but he’s clever.” He hesitated, but only for an instant. “You know what he’s like. He’ll want you fer his bum-boy.”

The child shrugged. It would hurt, he knew, but nothing came free in the slums.

The Necromancer shuddered, and a silken pillow slipped out from under his arm and flopped to the floor. He sank deeper into the soft embrace of the mattress.

Casting a final look at the still shape on the ramshackle bed, he’d trotted out of the room, hugging his treasure box to his chest. Knowledge was the key. The cost didn’t matter.

Once he knew everything, everything there was to know, there would be no more mistakes.

Inside the box was a pretty pebble, the skull of a cat and a live scuttleroach. It was quite a big one, blue brown and shiny. The day before, he’d touched it, cold and smooth and wriggly, and snapped off one of its legs to see what it would do. As it blundered around the box, careering off the walls, he’d come to the conclusion that scuttle-roaches were not very bright.

By Shaitan, he could still hear it!

The Necromancer shot bolt upright, his heart thumping.

Someone was tapping at the door. “Master? Master, you said you wanted a report.”

“Come in, Nasake,” said the Necromancer grimly. He had a bad feeling.

Frozen with horror, his balls still pulsing with the last spurts of pleasure, Erik stared down into Prue’s vivid eyes. The richness of her soul was laid out before him, clear to the depths, like the clean, crystal beauty of a tropical sea.