He’d said nothing of what they’d done this morning and Luminesa suspected why.
Stomach churning with a swarm of nerves she forced the terrible words past her lips. “I am...sorry for this morning, Alador. For what I did. For my lapse in judgment that caused the children to come to harm—”
Gripping her by the shoulders, he squeezed. “Luminesa.”
His voice was a harsh growl, but she lifted a hand and shook her head, causing curls of hair to slip down across her left breast.
“It’s all my fault and—”
A throaty sound vibrated through his chest, and then he reached for her breast, cupping her soft swell in his and making her skin feel as though it’d just been lit aflame from the inside out.
Her words died on her tongue and she couldn’t have ripped her gaze from his even if the castle suddenly melted at their feet.
His thumb twined through the tips of her frost blue hair.
“We could not have known. We did all we could to ensure their safety.”
It was hard to focus with his hand on her the way it was, but she tried. “But...I shouldn’t have...distracted,” her words died when he squeezed her tightly budded nipple. “Oh gods,” she moaned.
“Seal the doors shut,” he softly ordered.
He didn’t need to ask her twice, with a flick of her wrist she sent a javelin of ice hurtling at the door, sealing them in and locking her good-natured but pestering maidens out.
The only things she heard now was their increased breathing and the sounds of crackling fire.
Alador’s face was unfathomable and intense. As though he were stripping away her outer layers to reveal the lonely, frightened, and terrified woman she tried to hide behind a case of ice inside.
She licked her lips.
“Do you feel this?” he asked, gesturing between the two of them.
Luminesa knew immediately what he asked. She understood well his meaning. In a land that thrived on tales of happily ever afters, and the concept of fated mates, she knew exactly what he implied.
That what they felt now, this growing bond and awareness, that it was fate. Magical. Predestined. That no power in heaven or hell could keep them apart now that they’d found each other. That they’d been created and fashioned one for the other.
That the reason their connection and bond had been so instantaneous was because he was her other half and she his...
But happily ever afters and fated mates were reserved for the princesses and princes of the tales, not for the villains. Not for evil queens with hearts made of ice.
She hugged her arms to her chest. Aware again of just how warm she’d become in his presence. How alive he made her feel.
“You’re a centaur,” she said simply.
His lips twitched. “And you mostly human.”
She nibbled her lip. “This is forbidden,” she tried again. Not sure why she was denying what she felt for him.
Maybe because it was terrifying and frightening to think that she’d finally found him. “The One.” And that he was nothing at all like she’d imagined growing up he would be.
After what Josiah had done to her, she’d sworn off the male species. Developed a hatred and disdain for them, believed them all to be evil to the core.
That no matter what pretty words fell off their tongue, that it was nothing more than lies and deceit. Vain words said only to get what they wanted from her.
She trembled as Alador scooted out of her arms, got to his feet, and walked around to the front of her. He was a proud male centaur, gloriously beautiful in his raw masculinity.
He made her heart beat wildly, made her remember the joy she’d experienced in his arms this morning, and the desire she craved for even more.
“We would be outcast, yes. Reviled amongst both our peers,” he nodded.
“I have not cared what humans have thought of me for quite some time,” she said a second before realizing that she was actually defending their right to mate.
Her eyes widened as he slowly smiled.
“From the moment I met you, Luminesa, I knew deep down you were mine.” He touched his fist over the spot of his heart and tapped his chest twice. “Centaurs do not mate for life. Centaurs do not want to be shackled down. We are a free species. Prone to go where the wind takes us. Free to do as we will. It is the spirit of the wild stallion that lives within all of us.”
Her heart sank because she’d known it. Of course she’d known it. Everything he said was true, but it didn’t make it ache any less.
Swallowing hard, she nodded because she was unable to speak and took a step back. At least he’d been honest with her, hadn’t filled her head with lies just to get his way...they’d had their dalliance, a little bit of fun. It was good enough.
So why did she feel suddenly so cold and empty inside again?
His hooves echoed loudly through the room as he walked slowly toward her, and though she knew she should not let him touch her anymore because the touching only made her want him more, she was incapable of moving away.
Her feet were like lead, holding her steadfast to the floor.
He palmed the corner of her face and his eyes were startlingly intense as he said, “But I am broken and always have been. For I want nothing more than to be yours and only yours till the end of time. I want to twine my soul to yours and yours to mine. I want to possess you, claim you in every way possible. You own me, body and soul, queen of ice, and whether you know it or not, I am spoiled for any other.”
She gasped, sure that she was dreaming and would wake from this wonderful dream any time now. But the minutes ticked by, near deafening in the absolute silence of the night. Even the wind outside the castle walls refused to howl, as if Kingdom itself held its breath.
The mating of true bond souls was a momentous occasion in this world of magic, and if they did this, if they truly took this step together, there’d be no going back for either of them.
“We hardly know each other,” she whispered.
He nodded. “None of this makes sense to me, but you know as well as I do that in our world when soul mates meet it is a magic far greater than any other. I should never have been so fortunate. My people do not often receive the gift we have been given.”
She lifted a brow. “You mean, Chester and his Kym? Do they regret it, Alador? The life they’ve chosen together? That he has been made an outcast from his herd?”
It was important to her that she find out the answer to that question, because unlike her, a herd was central to the health of the centaurs souls and well-being. Much like shifters, without their packs, they could not survive.
And she would never do that to him.
He stepped closer to her, leaning way down so that he could wrap his arms around her middle, he then lifted her up, so that they were eye to eye.
“I never understood why he didn’t seem unhappy by the herds ostracization of him.”
Luminesa admired the way his biceps bunched as he held her. He was so powerful, her male. Nothing but muscle and steel wrapped in smooth, silky flesh.
She shivered thinking about it. And about what they’d done this morning.
While she wasn’t exactly a novice at the joining of bodies, she didn’t have much practice at it either. She wet her lips.
“You visited him? But I thought he’d been ostracized.”
His crooked grin made her heart skip a beat.
“As I say, I’m not much like my kind. Chest and I grew up as young colts together, he was a favored cousin, and I hated to see him leave. Especially as I found his Kym oddly enchanting.”
She grinned, wondering what Kym might look like. What kind of human woman had been able to turn a centaur’s head enough to make him choose the path he’d chosen?
Luminesa decided Kym must be impossibly beautiful and perfect in every way. Maybe someday she’d visit her, just to sate her curiosity.
“And he was happy?”
Suddenly she was being pressed tight to A
lador’s side, forced to wrap her arms around his neck as he leaned in and pressed his lips to hers as gently as the brush of a butterfly’s wings.
“Deliriously so,” he whispered upon her mouth.
“But I am a villainess, horse, there are no fairy godmothers to give us our happily ever afters.”
His snort sounded decidedly horsey as he said, “Then we do not wait to be given one, instead we make one, female.”
She sighed, going limp in his arms. It was almost terrifying how deeply she’d come to care for him in such a short amount of time. But seeing how he treated the children who weren’t his own, how he treated her, how he treated her staff...how willing he’d come to her defense when the Goblin had shown up...all of those instances were the true characteristics of a man.
They weren’t safe. In fact, if they didn’t find the key, they could all die. Alador had no reason to be duplicitous with her, he gained absolutely nothing from this arrangement.
Running her fingers through his hair Luminesa allowed herself to do something she hadn’t done ever before.
She allowed herself to fall in love.
Closing her eyes, she pressed her lips to his. But what started out chaste, soon turned into something passionate and zealous as his tongue slid along the seam of her lips.
She opened to him, both literally and figuratively. The last of the ice encasing her heart melted away beneath his tender touch.
For so long she’d cocooned herself away from pain, from the touch of others, terrified of ever being hurt again...but there was beauty in the yielding.
Because while there was no one else in all of Kingdom that could hurt her the way Alador now could, there was also no one else in all of Kingdom who could make her feel a tenth of what she felt for him.
She grumbled when he broke away from the kiss and gently sat her down.
“Be still, my frigid beauty,” he murmured. “If we are to do this, then we will do this in the proper way.”
“And that is?” she asked, knowing her eyes glowed blue from the impossible, incandescent joy she felt coursing through every inch of her.
Stepping back from her, he bowed his head and suddenly a brilliant fiery light spilled from out of him. Transforming him from centaur to man.
Her breath hitched as she looked down where his hooves should have been and instead spied strong, sturdy, and hair-dusted legs.
Her heart hammered in her chest, and that cold thread of fear tried to worm through her gut. She loved him as a centaur, but he was a man now...and very human looking.
He grabbed her hand.
She blinked and looked up at him.
And there he was, the male she loved. That long mane of black hair fell down around his shoulders, his green eyes still looked at her as though she was everything.
“I am still me, Luminesa.”
Nodding, she gulped, and tried to be brave. In no way did Alador look or act like Josiah, there were no similarities between them at all.
“What are we going to do, horse?”
He smiled, causing his face to light up and practically glow with pure, effervescent joy.
“Even as a man you insist on calling me a horse.”
“Yes, but you’re my horse.” She giggled.
He didn’t return the laughter, instead, he tugged her into him and very seriously said, “And that is all I’ll ever want to be.”
Chapter 11
Alador
Haxion would not approve of the step he was about to take, but she was a million miles away from his thoughts at the moment.
Being outcast, denied his herd, his people...none of it mattered so long as he had Luminesa.
The soul in him recognized the soul in hers. That he should have a mate was a gift, but that he had one as powerful, majestic, and lovely as her humbled him to his very core.
Her big, beautiful blue eyes gazed widely upon him. She trembled and fidgeted and he had no doubt that it wasn’t merely his nearness or his legs causing her such strain, but the fact that he was completely nude.
She’d briefly glanced down after the transformation, and a bright tint of mauve had touched her pale cheeks.
Goddess she was lovely.
Alador finally understood why Chester had followed his heart. For so long he’d tried to make sense of his cousins willing abdication, and finally, now, he understood.
Because there’d never been a choice to begin with.
“What do we do, Alador?”
Sliding his hand along hers, he wrapped his fingers around her slender wrist and then nodded. “Now you wrap yours around mine as best you can.”
She tried, but her fingers were so tiny and barely made it halfway across. She giggled. “You’re so big.”
“In more ways than one,” he snorted, bumping her with his hip.
That gorgeous blush stole across her cheeks again when she felt the heavy press of him.
“Oh god...dess,” she stuttered, eyes flitting down between them.
She was curious and that made his chest swell with pride. He wanted her to like what she saw. All of him, not just in centaur form, but in his other form too.
Because it was all him, just different sides of him.
Bending his head, he continued the binding ceremony. Odd that his people, known for their free love mentality, should have a binding ceremony, but they did.
All of which let him know that though this was rare, maybe once upon a time long ago, things had been different. Maybe pair bonding had been more the norm then than now.
Grabbing the ends of his hair he wrapped it once around their wrists.
She inhaled sharply.
“Now you do the same to me,” he instructed.
Her fingers shook a little as she took the long length of her now silvery-white hair and wrapped it twice around their wrists, so that it now appeared as though they were matching bracelets of glossy hair, half black and half white.
She looked back up at him. “And now?”
“Repeat these vows after me. We swear by peace and love to stand—”
“We swear by peace and love to stand—” She smiled.
“Heart to heart and hand to hand,” he said, rubbing his thumb along her soft skin.
“Heart to heart and hand to hand—”
A gentle breeze swirled through the inside of the room.
“Mark o spirit and hear us now,” he said.
“—mark o spirit and hear us now—”
The flame in the hearth spiked high, glowed brighter.
“Confirming this our sacred vow,” he said deeply as a powerful emotion he’d never known before rippled through every inch of his body.
“—confirming this our sacred vow,” she whispered back and suddenly a heavy fall of snowflakes rained down upon them.
Snowbees buzzed merrily around her head, and Luminesa gleamed like a frozen lake of arctic blue ice.
Bringing her to him, he took her lips and claimed his bride.
When they finally pulled away from the kiss the snowfall had ceased, the winds had quieted, and the fire banked.
Deep rows of snow surrounded him, but Alador didn’t feel the cold. Not the way he once would have.
All he felt was warmth, and he knew why the moment he felt the pulsing wave of her ice magic flow from her palm into his, causing the snowflake pattern on it to glow a pale blue.
“You’re mine,” she whispered in hushed awe.
“And you’re mine,” he said with a nod. “But we have one final act left before we’re truly consecrated. Can you create a blade of ice?”
He’d barely asked the question before she held her palm up to him with a gleaming sliver of sharpened ice.
Taking it, he set it upon the hair they’d wrapped around their wrists and cutting just a few inches high, sliced through it, shortening their hair by at least four inches.
She touched the tip of a shorn curl that now fell to her waist instead of to her thigh.
Handing her back the
blade, he took their hair in hand and quickly braided them together. As he did their individual hairs began to glow with the final bit of binding magic.
With a few deft flicks of his fingers he created two bracelets from the hair. “Bind them together,” he said, holding the bracelets out to her.
Touching her finger to the edges she bound them in ice.
Then smiling gently, he slid hers on.
She gasped as he did so, staring down at the bracelet in wonder. “It is warm and cool to the touch.”
“That is your soul and mine bound inexorably together. Slide mine on.”
He held out the thicker, larger bracelet to her. She took it and quickly slid it on him. And just like she’d felt the cold and hot, he did too. There was a flash of ice burn and then fire, before finally the gentle tingle of their mating bond settled into his bones.
Wanting to roar with satisfaction, he then wrapped his arm around her waist and yanked her into him. “My woman in every way now,” he murmured.
Then glancing over his shoulder he peeked at the images of the sleeping children.
“They can’t see us,” she said.
He chuckled. “I’m not worried about that, among my kind what we do now is only natural, I simply wanted to make certain they were okay.”
She touched the corner of his jaw with her little hand.
The woman was built of magic, but she was slight, fragile, and felt so breakable compared to the hardy strength of his kind.
But it was Luminesa who could break him now.
He’d taken an unforgiveable action among his people, but he couldn’t find it in him to regret what they’d done.
Then he let his fingers do what he’d wanted them to do from the moment he’d seen her. He unbuckled her cloak, letting it drop in a puddle to her feet.
She wore a thin shift of pure ice that sparkled and danced from the light of her strange flame.
Untying the thin thread that held the garment together on her front, he pushed it down off her shoulders and took his first full look of her naked form.
Drinking her in.
Her body was lush and curvy, her hips slightly wide, her breasts tempting globes that could easily fit into his palms. Her stomach was flat, her neck swan like...but it was her nipples that caused his mouth to water.