Rapture - Jacquelyn Frank Shadowdwellers

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am in control of this, he told himself tightly. That faithless little liar will not have this victory over me! She will not own a single moment of triumph over me for what she has done.

      “Of course,” he said, his voice even and calm.

      She moved forward, her fingertips sliding over the smooth textured fabric of his shirt, the warmth of her touch quickly radiating beneath it and his next shirt.

      Magnus knew the minute her palm came flush against him that he had just made a critical mistake.

      Chapter Three

      “A handmaiden,” Daenaira said speculatively, “bathes her priest, I was told. She dresses him, undresses him, and tends his body and his wounds. She is a maid and a squire, seeing to all of his needs as a domestic wife and an assistant would, freeing him to fight for their beliefs and their people. My mother told me this. She said it sounded so romantic.”

      Dae smiled a little, taking a moment to feel the textures of his shirt, but more importantly to marvel over the absolute hardness of the rippled muscles beneath. He was very warm, almost hot, she could say. He radiated strong heat from even stronger muscles that processed energy and motion at peak efficiency. For male attributes, they were surprisingly appealing.

      Magnus was wrong, though, when he assumed she had had no sexual education. Not formal, perhaps, but a bar rat got to see more than her share of bawdy behavior between waitresses, customers, and even her own mother. She had seen expert methods of flirtation and temptation, not to mention that last-minute flip of denial. What men liked to call a tease. What they loved to call a tease. They stomped and growled about it, but they always hung around for more.

      It wasn’t that she wanted to be that mean or anything, or even that she wanted to play the tease, because frankly she shouldn’t tempt fate when this arrangement was actually beginning to appeal to her a bit more.

      “I am very young,” she noted as she moved a little closer to him, because she was enjoying his warmth and because the rich scent of him reminded her so much of a time when big, brawny men had been really nice to her. “Don’t you think it’s unfair to ask me to decide right now what sacrifices I am willing to make for the rest of my life? Especially sacrificing things I have never experienced? Aren’t you concerned that I will always wonder what I’m missing? Aren’t you concerned I won’t abide by your rules and decisions or I will become tired of them?”

      Dae couldn’t have realized how close to the raw wound in Magnus’s soul she was striking, but she found out instantly when he grabbed hold of her arms with sudden and barely leashed violence. He drew her up so hard and high against his body that she clacked against him like a loose marionette. Then everything settled and there was only the bruising force of his grip around her and the fast, hot rush of his breath against the right side of her face and neck.

      “Oh, yes,” he said softly, his voice so even that she could feel the rage broiling beneath it in each and every breath. “Believe me when I tell you, I have considered this quite a lot. In fact, I agree that you are young and uneducated in some of the ways of the world and that you are in no position to decide loyalties and faith when nothing in your experience seems to have generated either one in your heart. Light, I don’t even know if you believe in our gods.”

      Daenaira felt the touch of his lips then, firm and warm and dry against the sensitive edge of her ear. It gave her a queer and powerful chill that coiled in a rapid spiral along the outer edges of her body.

      “But,” he continued tightly, “my beloved goddess of Darkness, in her infinite wisdom, has plagued me with visions of a girl with strange red hair and the face and form of a beautiful warrior. She didn’t even wait until that…” He swallowed what he was going to say, and she felt the repressed fury shudder through him. “My previous handmaiden was five minutes from death the first time Drenna showed you to me. She wasted no time at all before driving me all but insane with the need for you. You were Chosen, K’yindara, and not by me. And you considered this fate for a week before you agreed to it. Knowing now what your alternative was, I can only imagine you thought very carefully about it if you considered saying no and risking yourself for a few more years in your relatives’ house.”

      “You never asked me a thing!” she gasped.

      “I did. I entered Dreamscape while you slept and I found you there. I made my proposal, and you turned me down quite quickly. You made me woo you, my little K’yindara. Every night I came and spoke with you, quelled your concerns and answered your questions. I spoke to your soul, sweet girl, and all but begged you to come to me. Anything. I would have done anything to ease these visions of you as they haunted me in ways I can’t even begin to describe. I know you don’t remember this, and Drenna designs it this way, so now I will have to woo you all over again here in Realscape where it will count just as much. But make no mistake, this was your choice and you have already made it. The price was paid and I doubt you will ever fully realize which of us bled the most for it.”

      There was pain. Oh, so very much pain in those last words that Daenaira physically felt it shredding through her. Yet his voice and tone never wavered, never changed. She sensed in that moment that, though their worlds were so vastly different, they were far more similar than it appeared.

      “You asked me everything about this before?” she queried softly, unable to resist the urge she had to reach and touch his tension-hardened cheek. She drew back, all but kissing his lips when they slid past so close to hers. She made him look into her eyes and discovered the dark gold of his were filled with what he did not allow his voice to reflect, though she doubted he realized it.

      “Not every last thing, but the essentials.” He eased the grip of his hands a little as his anger came under control. “I asked for your unwavering loyalty in return for mine. I asked if you would give all of your faith to this religion and the gods it represents. I asked if you would help ease the path of a man with a life far more difficult than outsiders will ever appreciate, taking on many of those difficulties with just as much responsibility as I do. I asked everything of utmost importance to us both, and you blessed me with your agreement. Your soul is sure, even if your mind is not.”

      “And what about my body?” she couldn’t help but counter, even though it wasn’t all that important to her in her present state of mind. However, she had never narrowed her mind to possibilities. “Did you ask me if I was willing to sacrifice the needs of my body? And I do not condemn you by saying this, because I am one of those outsiders who has no idea how difficult a path you travel. However, I am smart enough to realize that people are the most trying creatures on earth, and we drain energy from one another in wasteful useless ways, and that would make those who need that energy from you pay a price. So, you see? I can comprehend your reasons, whether I agree with them or not…and I don’t know either way as yet. But did you ask my soul if I was willing to ignore the needs of a woman for five hundred years?”

      Daenaira heard and saw him swallow, and she knew his answer.

      He had been too afraid to ask.

      “I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely, his voice finally reflecting his emotion. “I should have. I filed it under loyalty and faith, though, and thought I could leave it at that. But I should have known better. Gods…and after everything that…I should have known.”

      “All right, then,” she said gently, soothing a thumb over his lips and using her touch to comfort him as she had not done since her mother had died. “Let us say this much then, M’jan Magnus. Let’s say that you have expressed your desires and intentions to me, but at this moment it is merely a suggestion and not a dictate. Believe me,” she added quickly when she felt his jaw lock, “at the moment I have no interest in sexual congress or anything remotely close to it. I clearly will have enough to do as I learn how to be what I agreed to be.

      “But it is wrong for you to hand down a dictate to me for the rest of my days as if you were god Herself. You are a man of power and I respect that, but you are not Darkness or Light, you are flesh and bone. Your rights to deny me are only yours on a moment-to-moment basis, and mine to deny you are the same. Just like everybody else.

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