Noah (50 page)

And keep the magic going with ELIJAH,
the sexy warrior captain…

The cold of another breeze rushed up from behind her, blowing at the brief skirt of her dress and whipping through her hair. It surrounded her, engulfed her, forcing her to come to a halt just as muscled arms appeared around her waist.

Siena sucked in a startled breath as the cold vanished, replaced by the warmth, the heat, of a familiar male body. She was drawn back against his chest, his hands splaying out over her flat belly and pushing her deeper into the planes of his hard body.

“Elijah,” she whispered, her eyes closing as a sensation of remarkable relief flooded through her entire body. Every nerve and hormone in her body surged to life just to be held in his embrace, and she was light-headed with the power of it all.

He put hands on her hips, using them to spin her full around to face him. The warrior dragged her back to his body, seizing her mouth with savage hunger just as she was reaching for his kiss. She could not have helped herself. Not after the deprivation of all these days. But still, the weakness stung her painfully, leaving frustrated tears in her eyes.

It was all just as she remembered it. The vividness of the memories of their touches and kisses had never once faded to less than what it truly was. It was all heat and musk and the delicious flavor of his bold, demanding mouth. His hands were on her backside, drawing her up into his body with a movement she could only label as desperation.

Elijah had not meant to attack her in this manner, but the moment he had sensed her nearness, smelled the perfume of her skin and hair, he could not do anything else. He devoured the cinnamon taste of her mouth relentlessly, groaning with relief and pleasure as her hands curled around the fabric of his shirt and her incredible body molded to his with perfection. He pulled her hips directly to his own, leaving no question about how hard and fast her effect on him was. He felt her swinging perfectly with the onslaught of his pressing body and adamant kisses.

Everything was perfection. Top to bottom, beginning to end, and he had been starving without her. He also knew she had been just as famished without him.

She was the first to put any distance between them, by breaking away from his mouth, letting her head fall back as far as it could as she drew for breath hard and quick.

“Oh no,” she groaned huskily, shaking her head so her hair brushed over the arms around her waist.

Even those strands betrayed her, reaching eagerly to coil around his wrists and forearms, trapping him around her effectively, just in case of the outrageous scenario that he might want to move away from her. She lifted her head and opened her eyes, their golden depths full of her desire, and her anguish.

“I did not want this,” she whispered to him, her forehead dropping onto his chest when the heat in his eyes proved too intense for her to bear. “Why will you not let me go?”

“Because I can’t,” he said, disentangling one hand from her hair so he could take her chin in hand and force her to look at him. “No more than you can.”

“I hate this,” she said painfully, her eyes blinking rapidly as they smarted with tears of frustration. “I hate not being able to control my own body. My own will. If this is what it means to be Imprinted, it is a weakness I will abhor with my last breath.”

Then she pushed away, defying every nerve in her body that screamed at her to step back into his embrace. She could only backtrack a couple of steps, however, because her hair remained locked tight around his upraised wrist, pulling him along with her…as if he wouldn’t have followed her anyway.

When she realized her back was to a window, she felt a moment of panic. However, she realized no one was likely to see them, because they were over three stories up from the houses and people below.

“You call it weakness, and yet as affected as I am by it myself, I choose to call it strength.”

His rich baritone voice echoed around her, making her heart leap in alarm. She grabbed his wrist and pulled him farther down the hallway, the dark shadows enclosing them as they reduced the potential for echoes.

“Why are you here? And do not blame it on a holy day that will not arrive for two days.”

“I do not intend to ‘blame’ anything. I don’t believe I need an excuse to see you, Siena.” He reached for her face, but she jerked back and dodged him. “And it is because of that holy day two nights from now that I am here. We need a little bit of resolution between us before that night comes, Siena.”

“I am not in need of resolution. If you are, you must come to it on your own.”

She turned to walk away from him, but she forgot he was just as quick as she was. No one could outrun the wind. His hand closed easily around her forearm, pulling her back…and snapping the temper and pain she had been holding in tenuous control for days.

She released the cry of a wounded animal and flew at him. He saw the flash of claws and felt the sharp sting of their cut as they scored his face. Shocked by the attack for all of a second, Elijah reacted on instinct. He had her by her hair in a heartbeat, wrapping it around his fist in a single motion, turning her around so her back was to him and her claws pointed in a safer direction. She grunted softly and then screamed in frustration as she found herself trapped face first against the stonecutter’s art.

His enormous body was immediately flush against her back, securing her to the unforgiving stone as he caught one hand and pushed it against the stone as well.

“Let go of me!” She struggled in vain, unable to move a micron in any direction. “You’ll have hands full of a spitting-mad cougar if you do not release me this instant!”

“I highly doubt that,” he purred easily into her ear, his mouth brushing over the lobe of it in a way that made her shiver involuntarily.

The story continues with DAMIEN,
available now from Zebra…

“You risked your life for mine as if you had no responsibility to an entire race of people! It was a foolish and ridiculous thing to do!”

“It would have been my mistake to make,” he countered sharply. “I am not used to people criticizing my actions, Syreena.”

“Well, perhaps they should! I would never have allowed Siena to do such a foolish thing!”

“Oh, really? Just as you prevented her from almost dying for the sake of her husband?”

It was a twisting knife in a very tender spot for her, and he knew it instantly by the expression in her eyes. It was only then that he realized she did indeed blame herself for her sister’s near encounter with death that recent October.

“Was I supposed to let you bleed to death, Syreena?” he asked quietly, trying to take back the pain he had caused her with the balm of his words. “Why are you so eager to value my life above your own?”

“Because I am not so special that an entire people should be deprived of their monarch for my sake!”

“Lucky for you, I disagree with that assessment.”

Damien understood, however, that there was baggage beyond her statement other than the immediate disagreement. Still, it did not measure up for him. She had never struck him as the type who devalued herself.

She looked at him as if he were completely insane for a long moment, her confused eyes searching over him for an answer and a logic that just was not within grasp. Then, without knowing why, she leaned in and kissed him.

Damien was shocked for a moment at the forward and illogical act, his hands reflexively circling her arms as her warm mouth pressed gently to his. Her unbandaged hand came up to lie against the side of his face, her contrary eyes sliding closed for a long, painful moment.

He felt, and then tasted, the salt of her tears.

She pulled away, only a couple of inches, her body trembling beneath his hands as he looked into her eyes with a confusion of emotions and sensations struggling through him.

“Why did you—?”

“Because,” she interrupted with a sob catching at her words. “Because it is a fairy tale, Damien. And in a fairy tale, the Princess always kisses the Prince who rescues her.”

It was an enchanting and ingenuous thing for her to say. She was a woman of great learning, amazing strength, and a sense of logic that negated any illusion of naïveté, yet she was willing to expose herself as a hopeful idealist in order to express her gratitude. He realized that it was a preciously protected streak in her makeup that very few people were allowed access to. It subsequently meant more to Damien than the most profuse and eloquent words of any language.

“Syreena…” He paused to clear the coarseness in his throat. “I am no hero,” he told her with rough quietness. “You should not make me into one.”

She defied the statement by forcing it into silence with the cover of her mouth.

This time Damien saw it coming, but it made him no better prepared. This time it was not a quick and simple expression of impulsive gratitude she was reaching to express. This was a little different, and on an instinctive level he knew it.

Completely in spite of the soundness of reason that rang stridently in his head, Damien allowed himself the luxury of the feel of her lips. Caught less off his mark and having had a moment to think about it, he returned the intimacy with equal warmth and measure. From one heartbeat to the next, his hands found their way into the hair at the back of her head, his fingertips sliding with careful languor, mindful of all she had suffered and been through and in no way wanting to cause her even a moment of additional pain.

Syreena was also sliding her fingers into a position that held his head to her, just in case he thought to argue with her any further about her desires in this matter. His darkening eyes were looking directly into hers, seeking for things beyond both their comprehension. She met his searching gaze with eyes full of surety and strength. She knew what she wanted, amazingly enough without a single doubt or second thought. This moment, those fascinating eyes messaged to him, was to be precious for them both. The next moment would come soon enough. But this moment…

This moment was for thanking, for gentleness, and, most of all, for feeling something that had no pain, struggle, or immediate ramifications to it.

It simply would be what it was.

And get excited about Jacquelyn’s newest book,
the first in the SHADOWDWELLERS series,
coming in January 2009.

Turn the page for a sneak peek!

She had been the lonely, isolated sort even when there had been other people milling all around her, so she knew the meaning of desperation quite well. When that kind of solitude became too much to bear, that was when she would cut herself away from her normal routines and take a wild chance on something, like going to a New Year’s party even if it meant driving on the most frightening night of the year.

Like a subconscious trigger, a wild rush of sudden illness overran her body the moment the thought entered her head. Chills and queasiness overwhelmed her and she had to stop and brace a hand against the wall for balance as her head spun nauseatingly. Her knees seemed to disappear and in an instant she was sinking toward the ground.

She nearly screamed when strong hands abruptly halted her collapse, their warm power drawing her back against a muscular and sturdy body. Even though she was dizzy and sick, she looked up over her shoulder and into curious dark eyes. His brow creased with clear concern as he jogged her a bit more firmly into his hold, a solid arm crossing her ribs to pin her tightly to his frame.

“I’ve got you,” he assured her in a richly rumbling murmur that seemed to vibrate against her ear and all down her neck. She couldn’t seem to help the little shiver the sensation provoked, her fingers reaching to grasp his forearm instinctively. The crisp feel of male body hair at his wrist tickled her fingertips, and Ashla was suddenly overwhelmed with a strange sense of intimacy. Discomforted, she tried to squirm loose even as she snatched her hands off him and made fists of resistance out of them.

“Be easy!”

It was a command, plain and simple. The sharp jerking of her body in his grasp made that quite clear to her. And that was to say nothing of the dark heaviness of his voice and the way it seemed so obvious that he was used to having his commands obeyed at every turn. Considering his talents with a sword, Ashla could see why no one would be compelled to argue with him.

And there it was, beneath the long black coat he wore, the thick buckle of the belt that held its sheath impressing itself into her backside from where it was slung at a low angle across his hips. This was what made her realize her feet weren’t touching the ground. There was no way otherwise, with their disparate heights, that she should be finding herself within such intimate fitting with him. Ashla’s face was washed with an upward wall of heat and embarrassment, her complexion burning as she gasped in a breath.

Coincidentally, as her thoughts were occupied by all this input that pushed aside her slightest memories of New Year’s Eve, her feelings of illness were quickly brought to heel. She took a deep breath, wanting so badly to demand he put her down, to get furious with him, to just explode with all the stormy emotions she’d been besieged with ever since she had encountered him.

But she didn’t do any of it. Ashla simply turned her face away from him, her hard, stressed breathing the only thing being freely expressed as she said softly, “Please, let me go.”

“Really?” he asked, his richly resonant voice a prelude to his breath washing warmly over her face. “Because a moment ago I would have sworn you couldn’t wait to get your hands on me.”

Ashla gasped in a soft breath, trying to twist around in his hold so she could see his face. The way he said that…it was almost as if he were suggesting…

She squirmed angrily. “Let go!”

“I would,” he mused, “if I wasn’t worried you’d collapse to the ground. Also, I think I rather like you this way. It keeps you in one place long enough for me to get some questions answered.”

The truth of the matter was that Trace was enjoying the way her temper seemed to swell and grow with every wiggle of her body and every denial he handed her. Not that he was being mean or anything, but it was intriguing to see the streak of fury that ran through his frightened little mouse. It fascinated him that, as angry as she clearly was, she refused to unleash herself on him, as he no doubt deserved.

“Please,” she begged him, suddenly relaxing into a limp little creature of defeat. “Please don’t.”

“Don’t?” he questioned. “Don’t what?” Trace reached up to cup her small chin in his palm, his fingers sinking into the softness of her cheek with such ease that, for a moment, he feared he would bruise her unintentionally. He tilted her chin up, her head falling back against his chest until her pale blue eyes were blinking up at him. The shine in her overbright gaze warned him she was near to tears, so he was infinitely gentle as he looked down on her. “I’ll not hurt you,
jei li
,” he promised her. “What makes you think I would repay my debt to you in such unfriendly ways?”

Ashla laughed at that, fully aware of the edge of hysteria in the sound just by seeing him frown darkly at it. “Because I saw you use
that
sword to kill someone,” she countered with a shudder as her eyes flicked down to the location of the weapon on his hip.

“Is that what worries you,
jei li
? That I am armed?”

Trace reached down immediately for the buckle of his weapons’ belt. He slid his hand between their pressed bodies, and he found himself by incident gliding his knuckles along the curve of her backside.

She was wearing another dress, but this one was light and thin, some sort of calico or gauze cotton that barely provided a barrier to his touch. The impression was validated when he realized he could feel every stitch of the fabric of her panties. Trace unbuckled his belt and let it, the sheathed katana and the slightly smaller wakizashi sword fall with a careless clatter to the pavement. Had Magnus seen him treat his weapons in such a disrespectful manner, Trace would have gotten an earful and, potentially, a hard refresher on the subject. The priest had forged the weapons himself, signed his name to them, and honored Trace with the gifts. Magnus very rarely bestowed his masterful weaponry on others. This one had even been specially designed for Trace’s unique left-handed style.

But all of that importance faded away with surprising speed as the vizier’s full attention became quite riveted on the sweet warmth and shape of her provocatively nestled rear. The charge of sexual awareness that crashed through him so suddenly simply took his breath away. He was no stranger to sexual magnetism and all of its energizing benefits, but to find it so unexpectedly in so muted a package completely amazed him.

She was Lost, he tried to remind himself. By all rights, he shouldn’t even be able to feel her in any depth of dimension. Anomalies notwithstanding, she
was
a ghost; merely the apparition of a woman who most likely lay in a human hospital somewhere connected to those brutally cruel machines that kept bodies alive well beyond sense and grace. Far beyond all dignity.

But it was so hard to reconcile all of that with the lushly heated woman he held against himself; the one that squirmed provocatively whether she knew it or not; the one whose scent changed abruptly under the attentiveness of his keen senses, telling him he wasn’t the only one affected by all this.