Charlotte Boyett-Compo- WIND VERSE- Hunger's Harmattan (5 page)

“When the time comes, it will fit,” he told
her.

“I’m not so sure,” she said breathlessly.

“I will stretch you on me, little Amazeen,”
he said. “And I will seat myself so deep in your cunt you won’t want me to
withdraw.”

She had no doubt of that. Just staring down
at that magnificent rod made her insides quake with a need so powerful she
thought she well might come with him in her hand.

“I’ll never get all of this down my
throat,” she said. He was so long she could put both hands around him.

“Probably not, but you can try,” he said
with a wag of his thick black brows.

And try she did, bending over him to take
the head between her lips. Her jaws reacted to the stretching as she suckled
him. She relaxed her throat and slid him as far into her mouth as she could
without gagging and didn’t begin to touch the base of that huge shaft. She pulled
him out, swirled her tongue over his slit, suckled him, drew on his head and
lowered her lips over him once again with her hands twisting gently,
alternately in opposite directions.

Ailyn cupped her head between his hands and
lifted his hips so she didn’t have to bend over too far. He bent his knees and
pressed them against her shoulders, widening his legs even farther for her.

He tasted salty and spicy at the same time
and she wondered what he had eaten to give his juice that piquant flavor. It
was not in the least offensive but rather aphrodisiacal and it was playing hell
with her need to have him inside her.

“Easy, sweeting,” he whispered. “It has
been a long time since I’ve had a woman pleasure me and I am ripe to bursting.”

She pulled away from him and looked up.
“Then come, my warrior,” she said. “Come hard and come long. I am ready for
you.”

Ailyn’s body shuddered at her words and as
soon as her mouth closed over him again, he spilled his seed into her waiting
mouth, flowing down her relaxed throat, and shivering as though with the ague
as she swallowed his essence—her tongue and the roof of her mouth milking him
of every last spurt. He experienced such a strong climax, such a thoroughly
exhilarating fulfillment, he doubted it could have been any better.

It had been over twenty years since Ailyn
Harmattan had lain with a woman. The last time had been on his father’s ship in
a stolen moment with a yeoman whose name he could no longer remember. He had
been young, virtually inexperienced, and the only memory of that quick,
clandestine foray into carnality had been the young woman’s eagerness to suck
his cock though she hadn’t wanted it inside her. He had yet to know the
pleasure of sliding between a woman’s thighs and he looked forward to the
moment he could claim Shanee Iphito as his mate.

He shuddered again as she straightened up
between his legs and licked her lips, her eyes locked on his.

“You are more man than this woman has ever
seen,” she told him.

He held his arms out to her and she
stretched out atop him, turning her head so her cheek rested on his muscular
chest.

“And you are all I have dreamed of for two
decades, little Amazeen.”

“I want you inside me,” she whispered.

“And you will have me there,” he said,
caressing her shoulder, stroking her hair. “Give us a few more days and I’ll be
pouring myself into you.”

His words sent tremors through Shanee. Her
hand was on his pectoral, her fingers twirling the hair that grew thickly over
his taut muscles. “I don’t know if I can wait a few more days,” she said.

His arms tightened around her. “I can
pleasure you with my hands and my mouth,
ionúin,
until I can pleasure
you with my cock. Be patient. Anything worth having is worth waiting for.”

She fell asleep there on top of him with
his strong, powerful arms wrapped around her, her lower body securely
positioned between his long legs. His chin rested atop her head and as their
breaths became one in unison and rhythm, the waterfall gently lulled him into
slumber beneath her.

Chapter Three

“I have no intention of ever seeing my
mother again,” Ailyn told her two days later when she’d finally dredged up the
courage to ask him. They were reclining on a large flat boulder behind the
cascade of the waterfall. The bright light spearing down from the ceiling was waning
and he had lit several torches that were ranged along the walls.

“General Strom believed that might be the
case,” Shanee told him.

“Is he better than Morrison?” he inquired.

She nodded. “A good man, I think.”

“If she really is dying,” he said, his gaze
clouding, “it makes sense why she would want me home.”

“For the money in the
an Éilvéiseach
bank account?”

His head swiveled toward her, his brow
furrowed. “I’d forgotten about that,” he said. “No, I doubt she gave that a
moment’s thought. Felix might have but not our mother.”

“Then why?” she asked.

He held her gaze for a moment. “Think about
it,
ionúin
.
What one thing can she get from me that no one else
would or could give her?”

Shanee shrugged. “I can’t imagine. I didn’t
believe for a minute that she was being sincere with her crying,” she said. “I
got the feeling that was simply for show.”

“My mother never loved any of her
children,” he stated. “She was always too self-centered to care for anyone
other than herself. We all grew up with wet nurses and nannies and myriad
servants. I spent most of my life with my father’s parents before being sent to
military school when I was seven. We all went to Soraniline Military Academy as
soon as we were old enough and then on to the Fleet Academy. It was rare we were
allowed home even on high holidays. My holidays and summers were always at my
grandparents’.” He wiped a hand over his face. “That was why I was so excited
to be assigned to my father’s ship when I got my commission. I was able to
spend two months with him without my mother demanding his attention before it
went down in flames.”

“You were the only survivor,” she said.

“Aye and I’ve prayed many a night that I
had died with the rest of the crew.”

“Your time on R-9 must have been hell,” she
said softly.

“Hell doesn’t even begin to describe it,”
he told her. “But it’s the reason my mother wants me after forty-four years of
not giving a damn if I lived or died.”

She looked at him. He didn’t look at day
over twenty-five and she said as much.

“And I won’t,” he said, before sliding off
the boulder and into the depths of the pool.

She watched him swim across the milky green
water then leave the coolness of the pool for his pallet. She pushed away from
the boulder and swam underwater to the point where he’d left the pool then
stood up, shaking her long white hair behind her. She waded to the shore then
knelt down beside him. He was sitting with his knees drawn up, his arms
encircling them.

“Reapers don’t age as you know it,” he told
her as she took up a towel he’d given her earlier and began drying her hair.
“For every year you age, I will age less than an hour.”

Shanee had not read that in the report
she’d been given on the Reapers. She knew they could live well past two hundred
and even beyond but it had not occurred to her that a Reaper’s physical
appearance would change so little over time.

“If you cut me, I’ll heal instantly. Stab
me and the wound will close right before your eyes. If you burn me, the flesh
will rejuvenate and my body will re-form itself to look as I did before the
flames touched it. The only true way for me to die is to have my head severed
from my body and the queen destroyed.”

“At that rate, you could live forever,” she
said.

“Now do you see what it is she wants from
me?” he asked.

The knowledge came like a sharp blow to her
solar plexus and she stared at him. “One of your revenant worms!”

He nodded. “She may think she does but she
has no idea what it is she is asking, what having a hellion inside her will do
to her. All she cares about is not dying, living for as long as she can and
having people cater to her every whim. She craves attention, thrives on
wielding power over those she considers lesser beings. She is not a good
woman.”

“That was my impression,” Shanee admitted.
She reached out to run a hand along his bare shoulders. “Do you want to talk
about what happened to you on R-9?”

He lowered his head. “There are only two
people I’ve ever discussed it with and one of them is Tariq. When we spoke of
it, we weren’t face-to-face. He has such power within him,
ionúin,
it is
hard to fathom it. In our minds, he would speak to us all without our guards
knowing. Without him encouraging us to hold on, most of us would have gone
insane.” He closed his eyes. “Some of us did and had to be put down.”

Shanee flinched. He spoke of those poor men
as though they were animals.

“They were,” he said, easily reading her
mind. He opened his eyes and turned to look at her. “I am.”

“I can’t begin to imagine how you felt when
they gave you…” she frowned. “What did they call it?”

“Transference,” he said. “They cut you open
and drop the revenant worm on the cut. The fledgling wiggles down inside you
and takes hold. It hurts like hell, believe me.”

She thought of General Strom and his
comment that it was not pleasant. “What did you feel when you Transitioned for
the first time?”

He drew in a long breath and looked away
from her, centering his gaze across the chamber to the far wall. “I don’t like
talking about it.”

“At least tell me how you reacted to it,
Ailyn. How you…”

“I had no idea what they were going to do
to me that day,” he said. “They came to my cell, shackled me and took me to one
of their laboratories. They shoved me facedown on a stainless steel table,
lashed my hands and legs to the corners. Since I was naked to begin with—we
weren’t allowed clothing—all I remember was shivering violently because that
damned stainless steel was cold as ice on my bare flesh. When they came in with
this jar, I couldn’t see what was in it. Someone grabbed a handful of my hair
and jerked my head up. Someone else poured a thick fluid down my throat. I
remember gagging, realizing it was blood, and the next thing I knew, they were
slicing my back open. I felt the blood running down my hip and then hell opened
up and swallowed me whole.”

“There was a revenant worm in the jar.”

“Aye,” he said, “and the pain was so
intense all I could do was lie there and scream as she ate her way through my
kidney. You can’t imagine the agony, Shanee. No one can.”

Shanee shuddered at the image.

“Everyone hurried out of the room. It
seemed to take forever but I know it was only a matter of moments before I
began to change. When the Transition was complete, I broke free of the
restraints as though they’d been made from paper. I rolled off the table and
slammed myself against the wall, snarling and spitting. The only thought that
kept going through my mind was that I was going to stay that way. That I would
be a beast for the rest of my life. All I could do was crouch there and howl
with despair.”

“You must have felt so alone,” she
whispered.

“At the height of the agony I heard Tariq
speaking to me but I thought I was going insane. I was hearing voices, I was no
longer human. I just wanted to curl up and die.” His shoulders flexed as though
he were reliving that horrible time. “Eventually I wore myself out and just
collapsed on the floor, foaming at the mouth, whimpering. At some point I slept
and when I awoke, I had reverted back to being human. I heard Tariq speaking to
me and he explained what had happened to me, what would continue to happen to
me every three months for the rest of a very long, unnatural life.”

“Did his speaking to you help?” she asked.

“Not at first,” he replied. “At first I was
sickened and enraged that this had been done to me against my will. I never
knew such creatures as Reapers even existed and here was this strange,
disembodied voice telling me that the entire race came about because a goddess
and demon were at war with one another. I just couldn’t get my head around
that, but he didn’t give up. He talked to me until I really started listening.
If it had not been for Tariq, I could not have survived close to twenty years
of being locked in that containment cell every moment of my life without
companionship or anything else for that matter. It has taken me two years in
this paradise to begin to feel human again.”

“By the gods, Ailyn,” she said, feeling
tears building in her eyes. She had not cried since she was a babe in arms but
his pain touched her as nothing ever had. “How awful for you.”

“And now you know why some men’s minds were
ripped apart by the experience and they had to be destroyed. A man with the
powers of a Reaper who cannot reason or know right from wrong is not fit to
walk among humanity. He is a living, breathing danger to everyone with whom he
comes into contact. They called them rogues and simply terminated them.”