“Oh gods, Violet,” I whimpered. “Oh gods, it won’t take long for me.” I trembled even as I spoke. Just being inside her was enough to make me want to come in a torrent.
She laughed, and the sound sparkled and dazzled my senses. “Fast now. Slow later.”
I yanked back, breathing hard as I gazed hungrily at her dusky-rose-tipped nipples. “Will there be another time?”
Giggling like a schoolgirl, she shook her head. “Are you daft, wolf? Of course there will be another. And another. And maybe, if you’re a real good boy, another one after that.”
“Bloody hell,” I grunted and then swiveled my hips. Just once, and that was it.
I remembered the feel of her tight, slick flesh and how welcoming she’d always been for me.
She tipped her head back, grunting and clawing like the wild woman she was, and I couldn’t hold it in any longer. With a roar that sounded a lot like a howl, I came and came and came, feeling as though I literally bled my soul through my seed. Panting and sweating all over, I planted my forehead against her, breathing her in, feeling at peace but far from contented.
And it seemed as though I wasn’t the only one.
“Oh, I don’t think so, beast,” she growled, and leaning forward, she sucked my bottom lip between her teeth and bit down hard.
I howled and immediately felt all the blood in my body flood through my still-hard cock.
“Take it then, Red. Take all of me,” I whispered with a sharp growl as I rounded my hips and pounded deep into her. This time I knew I would be able to last for a while, and her slick, firm flesh squeezed me so expertly, wonderfully.
As though no time had come between us at all, she bit me exactly where it felt best and licked the base of my throat until my head buzzed with the madness of spiraling lust. I wrapped my beefy hands around her perfectly shaped breasts, kneading them just the way my body remembered she liked me to, squeezing hard enough to bring a small hint of pain, but mostly a bloom of exquisite and agonizing desire. This time it was her turn to groan deeply.
“Oh, Wolf. My Wolf,” she moaned from deep inside her chest, spurring me on excitedly. The sound of flesh slapping flesh was a beautiful ballad in my ear. The air smelled of us, thick and ripe with passion and desire.
Her nails dug into my arse, shoving me down harder and harder between her thighs as she rose up and moved on me almost violently. Her entire body quivered, her eyes squeezed shut, and a look of total concentration was on her face. I might have chuckled to know that I was the one bringing her to this type of madness, that only my touch could do this for her. But I was feeling a spiral of my own beginning to sink its dark claws inside of me, and all I could do was grunt and move into her harder and harder still.
“Ewan. Oh… oh… right… there. Ohhh!” she cried out, and the sound of her yell echoed all around us. I joined her again only a minute later, feeling as though I might die from this orgasm, as my world turned completely and totally black.
When I finally came back to myself, I was coated in sweat—hers and mine—and breathing like a bellows. I felt her fingers gliding gently over my skin. Finally, I was able to open my eyes. I felt lethargic, but only in the most wonderful way.
She smiled at me. “Gods, I missed that,” she whispered with a shiver of heat that made my skin prickle with goosebumps.
I’d come twice and was completely sapped. But judging by the twinkle in her expressive eyes, I knew she was hungry for more. Violet had always been highly passionate with me.
Growling, I rolled over her and stole her lips for a searing, slow, and passionate kiss. I tasted her, suckled her, laved my tongue over and over her until I was drunk on her.
“Oh wow,” she moaned when I finally pulled back.
Her lids were at half-mast, and her lips were swollen from my touch.
“The sun will set soon,” she whispered, and I shook my head.
“I don’t give a bloody damn right now, woman,” I grunted, moving my lips down her neck and across her collarbone, taking my time with every inch of her delectable, sweet form.
“Dear goddess,” she whimpered before sliding her fingers through my hair.
I was suddenly ashamed of how unkempt I must look to her, but she didn’t seem to mind, and at the moment, the only pressing concern in my head was reaching the dainty pink jewel between her legs and suckling it until she screamed my name.
I made love to her, and she let me. She was a willing partner in every sense. I took my time, sensing that once the sun set, we’d be right back in that same damned cycle of death. But right now, this moment was for life.
Touching.
Tasting.
Exploring her curves all over again. Refamiliarizing myself with every dip, every glide of my tongue over her smooth, tender flesh.
She was so yielding to me in every way. Holding no part of herself back from me. And when my tongue finally found the jewel of her passions, I sucked it into my mouth and swirled my tongue around it, sucking up her sweet juices like a man starved.
“Ewan. Oh goddess, oh gods, oh… ohhh!” She was arching up again, trembling violently as she gave all of herself to me. I lapped up her honey, rolling the essence of her taste around in my mouth before finally leaning up and kissing her.
She and I kissed for what felt like hours after that, slow and languorous. Content to hold and be held, neither of us speaking much as the light began to dim inside our temporary haven.
My heart sank because I knew what would come next, and I wasn’t ready for it. I would never be ready for it.
Finally, she kissed me one last time and whispered, “Come here, Ewan.”
She held her arms open to me, and I did, resting my head against her breast and breathing her deeply into my lungs.
“I don’t want to forget, Violet. I don’t ever want to forget you again,” I said with a heavy shudder, fighting to hold back the tears.
“Oh, my beloved, wolf,” she whispered and rubbed at the back of my head with her long, delicate fingers. “No more of that. Just hold me, Ewan. Hold me and remember.”
I did as she bade me. Both of us stayed silent as we watched the sun set, wrapped up in one another’s arms. Dread filled my chest, my heart.
Violet
* * *
He strummed his fingers over my arms, his heat pervasive and moving through me like a slow-moving tide. I clung tight to him, squeezing my eyes shut as I fought the need to reach for my blade.
The previous night, I’d dared to break the cycle. I’d still stabbed him, but it hadn’t been an instant death blow. He’d clearly died since time had reset itself, but I’d changed things.
And if I’d done it once, then by damn, I could do it again.
I could break the cycle completely. I knew I could, but there was a piece still missing, the final puzzle piece that would tell me exactly what I should do.
We lay in a bed of petals that’d been created by magick. My magick. I’d learned one thing—I didn’t just create darkness. With him by my side, I could create beauty too.
Light. I could weave light.
I could break our curse.
The horizon line was growing deeper with shades of navy blue. Soon, we’d be at the crossroads again, either victorious, or failures.
“Penny for yer thoughts,” he whispered into the heavy stillness as I brushed a lone curl of hair out of my face.
I shivered, loving the sound of his deep drawl, knowing there would never come a day when I wouldn’t fall madly under his spell. Even trapped in darkness as we were, being with Ewan was fixing me, saving me. Just as being with him had saved me all those years ago.
“Ewan, you saved me,” I whispered. “You always saved me. You pulled me away from my own dark heart. How did you do it? Why did you never give up on me?”
He shifted, rolling onto his back and tugging me with him. I could see the play of fur rippling just beneath his skin and knew that soon we would be forced to endure our curse all over again.
r /> But for now, we were safe.
For now, we were one.
I splayed my hand over the warmth of his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart like a song through my palm.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Steady.
Loyal.
Devoted.
All the things he was, and all the things he would ever be.
His golden-eyed gaze was searching, penetrating, and full of hidden emotion.
“I see our past scroll like a reel through time, and all I can say is destiny, Violet. You were always my destiny. Ye say I saved you. But you saved me, lass. My darkness matched yers. My heart was a twisted and terrible place. I can no recall with clarity my past, but I remember the feeling of abandonment. Of pain and emptiness. Until you. Until ye breathed your fire and spirit into me and I felt that spark, the pulse of you. I dinna ken if we can ever leave this place, but so long as I can remember who ye are and ye can remember who I am, I dinna think this is hell anymore.”
I trembled and hugged him tight to me. I loved him. I would always love him.
But even so, I felt the desperate tug of the curse pulling at me. When I moved to stand, he didn’t fight me. He only looked at me with remorseful melancholy. He knew what I was about to do, and though I read clear as day his desire that I not do it, his own skin grew dark with the wash of black fur ripping through his pores.
He fought his own demons.
I didn’t grab my cloak or my clothes, but I did reach for my blade. And as I walked down the trail, I hung my head and prayed like I’d never prayed before in my life that tonight, I would overcome.
Tonight, I would not do it.
But I failed. This time the pain was too great even for me to move my hand half an inch. Misery gripped me as my knife sank deep into his chest, between his ribs, and pierced his heart.
He gasped the dying gasp and stared at me, looking not at me with hate or vengeance, but love as profound as my own.
“I am so sorry, my wolf,” I whispered and then leaned my neck forward so that he would have easy access to it.
His fangs sank in deep, and I shuddered with both pain and the rightness of knowing that so long as we endured together, we were not alone in that madness. With the last of my strength, I rested my bloodied cheek against his barely beating chest, closed my eyes, and drifted into the languorous stupor of death’s embrace.
Twelve
Rayale
I’d sensed they were not quite there yet, but their death throes had been perverse beauty. They’d killed each other, but without the violence in it, there’d been tenderness. Devotion. The kills had been clean, making certain there’d be nearly no pain for either of them apart from that initial breaching of blade and fangs.
I sailed with their dark spirits through the funnel. They were so close now, the both of them, so very close to rediscovering themselves, to breaking free of the curse within the curse that they’d been cast into.
My heart banged loudly within me, drowning out all the possible scenarios that caused me to fail. Hope was a tremulous, delicate-winged thing within me, but I felt its light growing fuller, deeper, hotter.
One more time would do it. I knew it in my bones. Violet was already so close. She was remembering, and soon she’d have all her memories restored to her. So I reached for a thread of time where I suspected the answers to this mystery might finally be found, to the seconds just before Blue’s curse was flung wide into the world. To that instant that all of Kingdom sensed the change, and to the very point when those of us with power enough to stop what might be done had acted.
I did not know what I’d find when I got there, and I was almost too afraid to look.
But I knew this part had to be done. We needed to go back to the beginning, back to the time when the world was as it should be.
Closing my eyes, I tugged on the strings once more and screamed as time demanded its final due of me.
Violet
* * *
This time when I woke, I knew what to expect. I knew I was inside another time, a different world.
Sitting up, I glanced to my right. Ewan was not a beast now, but a man, and he was holding tight to my naked foot just staring at me, his golden eyes full of wisdom and intelligence.
I smiled.
And he did too.
“We came back,” he said simply, and I nodded.
“Yes, Wolf, it appears that we did.” Crawling to him, I reached for his chest, delicately brushing my fingertips over the lines of scars he’d received when he’d been but a mere boy, ages ago in another time.
“I am… gods, Ewan, I am so desperately—”
Hooking a finger under my chin, he lifted my eyes to him and shook his head. “Nay, lassie. I’ll no have it. Not from you.”
His fingers were so soft, and yet I felt their checked strength and power. I remembered vividly all he’d done to me last night, how he’d held me, moved inside of me. Heat centered in my lower belly and made my thighs tingle.
He chuckled, even as his fingers played against the pulse in my neck where he’d given me death’s bite just a while ago.
“How we can hurt each other so, and yet still feel this need? This awareness? It is madness,” he whispered darkly, and I shivered, nodding my agreement.
“Madness,” I repeated back to him.
Around us the scene began to shift and move with breath and fire, the blazing colors of life, the ghosts of things that’d once been.
I wiggled onto his lap, and he let me, curling his big frame around me as we watched the gathering scene coalesce before us. His nose rested in my hair, and every so often, he’d kiss me right where his fangs sank in each and every night, as though in apology. I smiled. I didn’t blame him for any of it. Not anymore.
We were in another hut. But this one was different from the others we’d visited before. This one was full of laughter and the smell of freshly baked bread, roasted meat, and fire-grilled vegetables. Nutty, aromatic cheeses had my belly rumbling.
My Ewan chuckled, his big frame vibrated through my own.
“Ye always did like strange foods, lassie.”
I laughed, remembering it too. “Yes, and you always liked your flesh extra raw.”
“Mooo,” he murmured into the shell of my ear, lighting me up and making my entire body quiver with heat and want.
Soon, the colors shaped themselves into a massive dining area with a large hand-hewn table and both men and woman were seated around it.
My heart clenched, and tears burned my eyes as I studied their faces.
A dark-haired male with a white stripe down his head, and one wearing spectacles, whose upper lip bore a long, jagged scar that reached midpoint to his cheek. A female with radiant blond hair, high, slashing cheekbones, and eyes of pure gold, shaking her head at the other two, who were explaining rapidly over each other how they’d bagged the bigger buck.
Another girl with black hair and bright blue eyes was seated at the end, popping a dark grape into her mouth while she held a dog-eared and well-read book in her hands, rolling her eyes at the rest of them as though she were too good for their nonsense.
And there were more yet. At least twenty sat around the table, some eating, others laughing, but all of them friendly and full of obvious pride and love.
“Are these—?” my Ewan breathed, and I nodded.
“I… I think they’re ours, Wolf. I think this is our family.”
As I said it, I was flooded with even more memories. They surged through me like a tsunami, one on top of the other.
In one, I saw the skunk-striped boy as a child, climbing large trees and hanging by his knobby knees, dangling precariously and fearlessly from the twenty-foot drop.
The tree was full of other wild children hopping from one branch to the other, playing games of chase or tag.
A tall, handsome one who’d not been at the table and was maybe all of thirteen sauntered up and cupped his ha
nds around his mouth.
“Dinna fall, Uriah, or t’will be yer head mum will mount on a spike, no mine!”
Uriah laughed, and the sound made me dizzy with overwhelming, desperate love for him.
“Och! Ye worry o’er much, Lleweyn, mum will no—”
But Uriah didn’t get a chance to finish his taunt, for just then, another one of the children ran past, causing Uriah to lose his grip on the branch. He twisted, trying to reach up to steady himself, but his knees slid out and he screamed as he flailed wildly.
Lleweyn, with his blond hair and deep-blue eyes, sprang immediately into action. Running swift as a wolf, Lleweyn grabbed Uriah right before cracked his head open on the ground.
“Llew, Llew,” the eight-year-old Uriah whispered repeatedly as he clutched at his brother’s neck. “I was so scaret.” He sniffed. His breathing was ragged, and his body shaking.
Lleweyn kissed the boy’s head three times, hard, before growling and saying, “Ye foolish, wee scamp. I told ye. I told ye. Bloody hell, child.”
Uriah began sobbing, clinging like a baby chimp to his brother’s neck, and nodding. “I’m a terrible person.”
By this time, several of the other children had gathered around the brothers and were patting Uriah’s back, the girls asking if he was alright and the boys looking at Lleweyn with obvious pride and admiration in their eyes.
Lleweyn, looking grave and less upset than terrified, hugged his brother so tight that Uriah winced.
“Ye gave me a fright, lad. Dinna do it again. But you’re no bad. Do not ever think it.”
“Thanks, Llew,” the little Uriah breathed with worshipful awe before finally wiggling out of his brother’s clutches.
Lleweyn watched his little brother scamper off, looking lonely and separate somehow from the rest of the pack that had resumed their playing.
I frowned, wondering how it was that I should know this memory. I did not see the other me walking through the trees or standing within the woods anywhere.