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.

They weren’t quite as blue as he’d imagined they would be, but they held a tint of the color just like her lips did.

Between her thighs she was completely bare, exposing the slick pink folds of her most private place.

“Step back,” she said in a voice that was surprisingly strong.

“Anything, my goddess,” he whispered, moving back on knees that shook tremulously.

Her eyes raked him. Starting first at his feet, then moving slowly up his powerful legs, until she came to his cockstand he could no longer hide from her.

He was hard, firm, and painfully desperate to sink himself into her body. To join with her as his one true mate.

“Gods, your big,” she breathed, shaking her head before moving into him and reaching out a hand.

Was she going to touch him?

Just the thought of it had his heart racing, but then she did touch him and he couldn’t stop from groaning as his essence leaked from the very tip of him.

That one slight touch of her fingers on him had his head dizzy and his body ready to combust.

It was all he could do to keep his hands by his sides and let her look her fill.

“Oh, Alador,” she whimpered as she curled her fingers around him, fisting him tight and slowly dragging her hands up and down his hard length.

His legs buckled then and he almost fell, dragging her down with him as he’d wrapped an arm around her waist to hold him up.

Surprised, she moved her hands, planting her palms on his chest and laughing with delight.

“Woman, you make me crazed,” he growled, “take this snow away, I wish to pleasure my goddess at my leisure.”

Luminesa’s eyes sparked with challenge and fire, and to Alador, it was almost like seeing her for the first time all over again. The way her entire body flushed that becoming shade of palest mauve, how the tips of her silvery hair was now a blue so deep it reminded him of an arctic ice tunnel untouched by human hands. How her eyes blazed like dazzling sapphires...the woman before him wasn’t cold, or passionless.

She was the first kiss of frost on a cold winter’s morning, pure and radiant and all his.

With a flick of her wrist, the mounds of snow vanished, and in its place were thick piles of soft fur skin rugs.

Lifting her arms toward him, she beckoned him to her. And Alador was helpless to resist. With a groan of longing, he moved into her body, delighted at the feel of her smooth, icy legs pressed against his hard, muscular ones.

She shivered, wiggling a little and then sighing longingly when his hard length settled between the vee of her thighs.

But he wasn’t ready to go there yet. Not by a mile.

“Look at me, woman.”

Her eyes were clouded by a fog of lust as she turned to him, and his chest beat forcefully with the knowledge that he’d done this to her.

Taking his time, he slowly leaned in. She rose up on tiptoe, as though to attack him, claim him. He smirked, running his hands down her arms, trembling as her skin pebbled beneath his touch.

Running his nose down the length of her neck, he came to the sweet hollow of her throat and pressed a wet kiss to it first. She shuddered. Tiny fingernails scraping into his back as she dragged them across, making him ache and tremble with need.

He circled his tongue along the sweet dip of her flesh, she tasted of frost and smelled of spun sugar. “Do you like this?” he asked between heated nips.

Her only response was a guttural moan.

Alador had always liked to believe himself somewhat of an expert when it came to pleasuring a mare—mostly because his analytical mind found the challenge of pleasing a woman entertaining. Not only physically stimulating to him, but also intellectually stimulating.

Each woman was different, each woman a puzzle in her own right. Some enjoyed a small jet of warm breath puffed into their ears or along the nape of their neck.

Others preferred to have their breasts fondled, their nipples teased to tight buds.

Always he’d performed the acts with interest. Enjoying the sounds of their soft mewls when he’d hear the rapid rise in their breaths when he’d struck gold. But even though he’d enjoyed it, there’d also been a side of him set apart from the goings on. As though a dispassionate spectator watching with a clinical eye toward knowledge, but not one hundred percent fully committed.

So when he slipped Luminesa’s hair across one shoulder, so that he could feast and suck on her tender collar at his leisure, he did not expect the overwhelming wave of lust and tension that shoved like a hot spear through his bones when she began to nip and nibble on him.

She wasn’t even sampling him in a spot he’d thought all that sensitive. Because of his position her lips where closest to his bicep, which was where her tiny teeth had latched onto.

But the textured feel of her tongue playing along his skin that now burned like hottest fire, had his knees shaking and his cock even more painfully erect.

“Gods,” he groaned, dizzy with lust and his need.

Feeling her lips curl up into a momentary smile on him, she giggled. That sound, so carefree and spirited, it did something to him. To his insides, to his heart...and with a shock he realized, he’d stopped tending to her needs, so lost in the excitement of his own.

The analytical side of his brain couldn’t understand, couldn’t fathom it not being in control. Alador was always in control.

But when she flattened her palms on his chest, and proceeded to lower him to his knees with just a soft shove against him, he didn’t fight it.

Because he wanted.

Wanted more than anything he’d ever wanted in his life.

He was not outside of himself watching with clinical detachment when she dropped to her knees beside him and began to pepper his chest with soft, sweet kisses that had his own nipples budding up.

No, he was panting, sweating from the effort it took not to grab her and toss her down, spread her legs wide and feast between her thighs until he’d taken his fill.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he lost himself to the sensation of fire and ice. Lost himself to the sounds of her mewls of delight, to the sounds of his own.

And somehow, before he knew it he was lying on his back and she had tossed her leg around his waist, sitting on him so that her hot, wet center pressed against his navel and his thick hardness pressed against her delectable rear.

She wiggled, causing him to groan long and low when she rubbed her lower half against his painful erection.

“Luminesa,” he moaned, digging his fingers into her hips and gently guiding her movements so that she continued to rub up against him in slow, undulating movements.

“Horse,” she whimpered as her tiny fists dug into his chest as she continued to move up and down rubbing herself on him.

Doing to him as she’d done this morning when she’d ridden his back.

The room began to smell of sugared berries, and swirls of snow suddenly materialized from nowhere. Big, fat flakes of it fell between them.

She began to move faster, rub harder.

He growled, fingers digging in deeper as he rolled her backend more forcefully against him. Bolts of pleasure radiated from deep inside him, letting him know he was close.

This wasn’t how he’d meant for it to happen. He was supposed to guide her in the art of lovemaking as he had with every other partner. Treat her gently and reverently, instead he was pawing at her like a stallion in heat and unable to stop.

Gasping for breath, and taking a hard swallow, he forced his eyes to open. Sensing she was close to her own release, he wanted to watch her, wanted to see her look when she finally came for him.

What he saw tipped him over the edge.

Her eyes were tightly screwed up, her bottom lip pulled firmly between her teeth, and her swan-like neck tipped backward as the tips of her hair danced along his chest.

“Alador!” She cried as her entire body seized up, her thighs trembling mightily as she jerked and spasmed with her release.

With a grunt he could no longer contain Alador fell headlong over the cliff. Pumping out a release so powerful he feared it might never end.

Her giggles of delight was what finally caused him to open his eyes, and it was with wonder that he realized he’d been one hundred percent fully present in the act.

The dawning awareness of that hit him like a tsunami square in his chest. He’d lost control with her. Lost himself to her completely.

Laughter sparkled through the depths of her blue eyes as she glanced down at his chest.

“Horse, I think I may have raked you black and blue,” she admitted shyly, tracing a length of skin that now that he was aware of it, ached just a little.

Glancing down he was shocked to note that she had indeed clawed him most severely. There was even a thin ribbon of blood in some places.

He touched the spot next to his heart with wonder.

She could not understand what it was he was feeling because the truth was he barely understood it himself.

Awe.

Surprise.

Amazement.

All that and more.

Completely unaware of the life-altering emotions playing through him, she framed his face between her cool hands and kissed him soundly upon the lips.

“Thank you, horse, that was wonderful.”

Only once she made to roll off him did he finally find his tongue. Banding his arm tightly around her, he shook his head.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Her eyes widened prettily. Frost-tipped lashes fanned along her cheeks...prettily.

Gods above, there wasn’t anything not pretty about her.

Everything.

She was everything to him.

Nibbling on the corner of her lip, she glanced down between them. “We finished, no?”

The last word came out a confused question.

Chuckling as he asked, “My queen, when you say you’d been with a man before, how exactly where you with him?”

A pretty blush rose in her cheeks. “Well, I...um...he penetrated me.”

Alador lifted a brow. She was so bloody adorable right now. Gods, he’d fallen completely mad for his enchantress.

“And did you enjoy it?”

She pursed her lips. “Not, particularly no. It felt like he’d stuck a stick up inside me and wiggled it. This was much more fun.”

His nostrils flared with suppressed mirth. “Indeed. But what if I told you it doesn’t always feel like a stick being jammed up inside of you?”

Her eyes narrowed. “No?”

He shook his head. “No. If a man knows what he’s doing, no it does not.”

That heat that’d burned through her face while she’d rubbed herself upon him returned brighter than ever.

“But, you just came. I thought men couldn’t—”

“I’m not a man, my love. But a centaur. As I said, we’re very different.”

Her mouth formed into the shape of an O.

Already he was hard for her again.

Alador had lost himself completely during her taking of him, and while he was not at all ashamed to admit that, he also wanted to prove to her that he was a male who knew what he was doing.

But first, he needed to clean up the mess he’d made on her.

A nice, soft pile of snow had formed around them already. Reaching out, he picked up a handful of it and moving off her body, rubbed her thighs and lower stomach clean of his mess.

She lay there staring up at him, one of her arms bent behind her head, as she nibbled delicately on the tip of her other pinky finger.

His muscles shook, snapping and jumping deep inside of him with the awareness that he’d mate bonded to this woman eternally.

She was his now, always and forever. No matter what came. Whether they were destroyed in this world, or shunned by his kind...he’d made his choice and he did not regret it.

That knowledge was freeing, exciting, and thrilling.

He hadn’t realized the shackles of his life until he no longer had them. He would be sad to leave his herd, sad to not be able to visit with his kind as freely as before, but he had his woman and that was all that mattered to him.

“Luminesa,” he breathed her name like a benediction, splaying his hand wide, he flattened it upon her belly.

He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say, he felt words, lots of words trying desperately to break free of the cage inside of him but none of them could come out.

They were too heavy on his tongue.

She nodded. “I know, horse. I feel it too.”

With a sound that poured from the very depths of his soul, he drug her up to his side, and cradled her to his chest.

He loved his sister.

Loved his herd.

He enjoyed life.

Enjoyed the feel of a mare in his arms.

But he hadn’t truly lived.

Hadn’t truly known what it meant to let go and let someone else take over. Trust his heart, mind, and soul over to another being. It wasn’t the centaur way.

This level of passion, of feeling, it terrified him. Left him shaking, breathless. Like he was a top spinning out of control.

But then her hands were bracing him, guiding him back from the madness of losing control.

“This is terrifying,” she admitted softly in his ear. “But I feel as though...as though...” she sighed, turning away, and intrinsically he knew what she’d been about to say.

He felt her words breathing through his heart.

Already the magic of their mating bond beat powerfully inside his chest.

“We were made one for the other. As though we were one whole, split in two, and just waiting to—”

“—find each other,” she finished, staring up at him in wonder. “Yes, Alador. Just like that.”

She planted her palm to his chest and immediately he did the same to her. Smiles split both their faces as they felt the rhythm of their hearts beat in tandem.

“Did you know?” she asked. “Did you know it could be like this?”

He’d read it in journals. The miracle of the soul mate. The miracle of the mating bond, of finding your perfect half.

He shook his head. “I do not think I ever fully understood this. Nor did I want to, Luminesa. I am a centaur. It is not our way.”

She started to look down, the smile fading from her lips, and he knew he’d bungled his words badly. Catching her heart-shaped chin in his hand, he tilted her face so that her eyes met his.

“But I want it now,” he said oh so softly, letting her hear the depth of sincerity in his words, “desperately. You are mine and I would fight anyone or anything to the death to keep you safe.”

She sucked in a sharp breath. “It is hard to believe that this is real. That you are real. That you won’t leave me once this is all said and done.”

“Never, my love. You own me body and soul. You have from the moment I heard your voice whisper to me on the wind.”

She trembled.

And he knew it was time to prove his words with actions. Cradling the back of her head in his, he took her lips.

The kiss wasn’t rough, but it was passionate. Filled with all the longing of his soul. Sweet, and tender kisses. Not practiced. Not skilled kisses simply meant to raise her lust for him, but kisses that came from the very depths of his heart, that spoke of his commitment to, and ardent admiration of her.

She mewled like a tamed kitten, melting beneath his touch once again. The woman of ice had completely thawed to him.

Goddess he adored her.

And once again he found himself falling headlong into her, losing himself completely to the feelings and emotions she elicited in him each and every time she moved against him, touched him, kissed him.

He couldn’t get enough of her. The touch of her. The taste of her. He licked and nibbled his way down along her body, when he got to her navel, he lapped at it slowly like a cat with a bowl of cream, savoring the frosty sweetness of her flesh.

She was unlike anything he’d ever tasted before. Addicting. That’s what she was. Her toes rubbed against his calves as her hips bumped him from below and he smiled, knowing what she wanted though she probably didn’t know it herself.

He could have feasted upon her navel until the sun rose the next morning, but there were other more pleasurable places on a woman’s body to be sure.

Moving down, until he was between her legs, he nuzzled along the soft skin of her inner thigh. She trembled and looked at him.

Her eyes wide, her face flushed that pretty mauve color he’d only ever seen on her. The snow that’d fallen in fat flakes before was now coming a little harder, a little faster.

He grinned, and then with a final kiss to her inner thigh, dipped down and took his first taste of her.

The frosty sweetness of her flesh was more intensified here. Every lick was like diving into a pile of freshly fallen snow face first. His breath steamed up as he continued to feast on her.

“Oh Gods,” she grunted with a voice so deep it caused him to chuckle.

She didn’t join him however, she’d palmed the back of his head with both her hands, cradling him as he continued to sup. Finding the little pink pearl, he gently sucked and rolled it along his tongue, watching as the color rose higher and higher on her, and then she went rigid on him, keening out a cry that shook the very beams above them, causing tiny slivers of ice to drop down like missiles around them.

Dangerous, if not for the fact that the snow and winds she created caused them to fall harmlessly to their side.

After a minute she blinked open her eyes. Her lips were red and swollen from biting down on them so hard. And she breathed heavy.

“Horse,” she laughed, “oh Gods, I adore you.”

He chuckled, but when he moved to rise up on tiptoe so that he could kiss her delectable lips, his cock rubbed against the ground and he groaned. Painfully.

Lowering his head to her belly, he breathed in her sweet essence, letting it fill his lungs as he tried to fight through the burning need raging through him to shove himself deep inside of her.

Josiah had traumatized Luminesa, Alador never wanted her to think of that man when he lay with her. He wanted to go slow for her, wanted her to like it, wanted her to crave him as badly as he craved her.

Her fingers dug through his hair, before giving it a good hard tug, forcing him to glance up at her.

“Please tell me there is more,” she said with a smile.

“What?” He frowned. “Have I not given you two orgasms?”

She lifted a brow. “And here I thought centaurs had more prowess than that.” She shrugged. “Well, I guess you can’t be perfect, can you.”

He growled, shoving up, but making sure to keep most of his weight on his forearms as he pinned her beneath him.

“Take it back, woman. We’ve prowess for days.”

She pursed her lips. “Two orgasms, horse, I’d hardly call that—”

Shoving himself against the outer rim of her wetness he let her feel just how painfully hard and erect he was.

But then a slow as molasses smile curled the corners of her lips as she sighed, “Oh yesss...right there, horse. Right there.”

Wiggling her hips a little, as though trying to force him into her, he was confused. He was trying to take it slow. To ease her into lovemaking so that she’d no longer fear it.

He chuckled in confusion. “Luminesa, but I thought—”

Rolling her eyes, she pounded her tiny fist onto his back. “So help me goddess, if you do not give me what I need, I shall go and find it with another male.”

With those words, she made as though to wiggle out from under him. But Alador growled, and bit down on her shoulder without stopping to think first. Not hard. Never to hurt. Biting was just as sensual to a centaur or centauress as kisses were to humans.

But then he released her, fearing he’d gone too far. That he’d hurt her. Wincing when he saw the crescent moon mark on her left shoulder blade.

Rather than fear it, or tremble away from him as he’d half expected her to she instead traced the mark with a smile and shivered.

Then looking back at him with a challenge in her eyes she whispered, “Don’t stop. Show me everything, horse. Everything.”

With a groan of utter longing, he kissed her. Making love to her mouth the same way he planned to make love to her body. She was wet for him, coating his cock with her honeyed warmth.

“Are you sure, my sweetheart?”

His answer was a grunting nod of assent.

The same instant he slipped his tongue in her mouth was the same instant he slipped his cock between her swollen folds. She gloved him like a fist and he trembled, forehead breaking out in a wash of sweat, realizing he wouldn’t last long.

He’d once made love to a mare for half the night, able to hold onto his orgasm so that the pressure of his climax had built for hours. He’d thought there’d been nothing better than that night.

But here now, where he would surely lose his seed in less than a minute, he knew that night had been nothing compared to this.

She wrapped her lush legs around his, moving in tandem with him. Pressing up as he pressed down. Their groans and moans of ecstasy the only sounds in the room.

Alador planted his toes onto the floor, giving him better access to penetrate more deeply, the first stroke in that new position did her in.

With a scream, she shouted his name. “Alador!”

And that was it. He was lost. Falling headlong into the petite morte he never wanted to end.