Warrior Rising (Harlequin Nocturne) Read online

And then his hands were around her, covering her breasts, his warm fingers grasping her gently, kneading the mounds and plucking at her nipples. His mouth found her shoulder, placing teasing kisses along the slope, sending tiny chills of pure delight rippling down her spine.

  Arching back, she thrust her breasts more firmly into his keeping, tilting her head to give him better access to her shoulder and the side of her sensitive neck.

  Pleasure ran in rippling waves through her body and down her limbs, creating an inferno of desire like nothing she’d ever known.

  Straightening, he tugged at the ties a slight bit more and the gown slipped down over her hips and away, baring her to the chilly air. Before she could turn around, Harrison’s hands gripped her waist and lifted her out of the gown, leaving her in nothing but the soft boots she always wore. As he set her on her feet again, he turned her in his grip until she faced him.

  His gaze traveled down the length of her body, lingering on her breasts, her waist, the thatch of hair between her thighs, then down her legs and slowly, so slowly, back up again.

  When his gaze finally reached hers, the look in his eyes nearly melted her on the spot. His breaths were labored, his hands shaking where he held her. With a low rumble in his chest, he pulled her against him and kissed her fiercely, one hand holding the base of her head as he walked her back until she felt the cool plasterboard of the wall behind her.

  His other hand slid around the back of her thigh and pulled her leg up, her knee against his hip as he ground his fabric-clad erection against her, rubbing her in exactly the right spot.

  “Harrison,” she gasped against his mouth, sliding her hands up his bare chest. “I need you inside me.”

  One hand pulled off her boots while the fingers of the other slid behind her, between her legs, inside her. As two fingers thrust deep, she flung her head back, banging it against the wall and not caring. His mouth dove for her throat, his lips suckling the curve of her neck. Her fingers dove into his hair, cradling him against her, holding on as pleasure skated through her body, as pressure built between her legs.

  “Harrison.”

  His mouth moved, raining kisses madly along her shoulder like a man possessed. His passion fueled her own, every touch of his mouth sending the fury higher.

  While his fingers worked her from the inside, his lips traveled up the sensitive curve of her neck, his teeth nipping at her ear.

  With a shuddering sigh, he released her suddenly, lowering her leg. With quick, deft movements, he removed her other boot then pulled back, his hands on his belt, his hot eyes melding with hers.

  “I have to feel you against me. All of me.”

  “Yes.”

  He discarded his own clothes, pushing the pants down lean hips, revealing a pair of tight, white underwear that molded his man’s body, imprisoning it.

  With delight, she watched that thick, hard length spring forth as he pushed the underwear down, too. He was as ready for her as she was for him.

  Before she could reach for him, he lifted her into his arms, thrilling her with a strength no full-blooded Esri male possessed. Striding across the apartment, he shouldered his way through one of the doors, then stopped abruptly.

  Ilaria’s gaze swept the room. A bed, a desk and a chest of drawers, just like the hotel rooms she’d seen. But unlike the hotel rooms, this one possessed nothing more. No pictures upon the walls, no curtains at the windows. No linens upon the mattress.

  Harrison’s grip on her tightened and she could feel his frustration.

  “Nothing like having to make the bed to kill the mood.”

  Ilaria lifted her hand, making him look at her. “I don’t need a bed. The floor is fine. Or the sofa. Or standing against the wall. I don’t need comfort or finery.” She ran her thumb along his firm, full bottom lip. “All I need is you.”

  “I’m not making love to you on the floor. Not if there’s an option.”

  “Because I’m a princess?”

  He smiled, a sweet, quick flash that illuminated his eyes. “Because I want it to be perfect for you.”

  Inside her chest something soft set up a deep, pulsing ache. A fullness squeezed her heart until she could barely breathe.

  He turned and carried her to the sofa in the living room. Laying her down with gentle care, he sat beside her, his gaze moving over her face and body like a heated caress.

  She drank in the sight of his broad shoulders and muscular chest and arms, his narrow waist and his full, thick erection. “You’re the finest-looking male I’ve ever seen, Harrison.” She slid her hand over his rock-hard thigh. “Come to me.”

  An intriguing playfulness lit his eyes. “Oh, I intend to, angel. I intend to.”

  Ilaria smiled, delighted with the man hovering over her. But instead of covering her with his body, as she wished, he moved to kneel on the floor beside her, then dipped his head to take her breast deeply into his mouth. She cried out at the exquisite feel of his tongue on her sensitive flesh, moaning as his hand slid up her thigh, parting her, then playing in the damp folds of her need.

  As her hips rocked, she gripped his head, holding him close and reveling in the sweet assault of his lips and mouth, and those clever, clever fingers.

  With her own hand, she reached for him, her fingers trailing across his thigh before finding the part of him she sought. As her hand closed around the thick length of his erection, he groaned, his mouth growing rougher, hotter. In her hand, he was the softest down and the hardest granite. And her body wept to feel the full length of him inside her.

  Never could she remember being so desperate for a joining. Over the long years of her life, she’d known many, many men. Yet never had she felt anything like this excitement, like this man.

  She watched as he showered one of her breasts with attention, then moved to give its twin equal time, equal pleasure. Lifting her hand to his hair, she delighted in the feel of the short, soft strands, tracing her fingers across the curve of his solid head to the strong, corded muscles of his neck. He lifted his head to peer at her with a smoldering gaze before pressing a kiss to the valley between her breasts before his lips began a slow, downward descent, grazing her belly button before traveling lower.

  Heat built inside her as she understood where he was going, what he had in mind. She lost her grip on him as he moved down her body, then caught her breath in anticipation as he slid his hands beneath her hips and lifted her, draping her legs over his shoulders as he raised her hot core to his mouth.

  His tongue brushed against that tight knot of sensation and she cried out with pure pleasure. Over and over he licked her, sipped at her, teased her with his lips and tongue until the pressure built, twisting tighter and tighter and finally snapping in a shower of brilliant, pulsing stars. Her breaths became gasps, turning to tiny moans as the pleasure became so intense it straddled the line of pain.

  At the very moment the words too much formed in her head, he pulled back, as if he knew. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stared down at her, his eyes gleaming with hot satisfaction.

  From somewhere she found the strength to lift her arms to him. “Come to me.”

  And, finally, he did. He covered her, settling himself within the cradle of her thighs. Capturing her gaze with his, he slid inside her with a single perfect thrust, filling her more fully than she’d ever been filled, taking her body and soul.

  Sweet Esria, she was falling in love with him. She’d known this would happen. She’d feared…

  Their gazes clung as he moved inside her, their bodies joined in the most fundamental of ways. Her heart pounded with the perfection of their joining, and with the ripping knowledge that they might never be together like this again. Tears blurred her vision and she reached for him, pulling him down to kiss her so he wouldn’t see. And he did kiss her, tenderly. Thoroughly. Passionately.

  She met him, thrust for thrust, as they drove together toward that last, final, brilliant release. It crashed over her in a beautiful violence. Dee
p inside her, the walls crumbled, her heart opened, overflowing with love and tenderness for this intense, wonderful man.

  And her tears ran freely.

  Harrison collapsed on top of her, sparing her the bulk of his weight with his forearms, but his head dropped, his cheek pressing against hers.

  “You’re crying,” he said, the soft dismay in his voice a tender caress.

  “I’m a woman,” she said simply. She couldn’t explain. Indeed, she didn’t want him to look into her eyes, afraid he’d see the truth—that she loved him. That she was leaving him. Betraying his trust.

  After a few moments, he rose and she sat up, brushing away the errant tears.

  His hand tangled gently in her hair. “I was going to switch places with you. Let you lie on top.” Her stomach growled and tenderness filled his eyes. “How about I feed you first?”

  Her heart swelled and clutched, misery a living thing inside her. For the first time in her long, long life, she’d become one with another and now her heart broke at the prospect of leaving. In a strange way, she felt more alone than she ever had before. Because finally, she knew what true connection felt like.

  More than anything, she wanted to stay here in his arms. But her wishes were of no account. Not when so many lives hung in the balance. And she and Harrison had never had a future. She’d always known that.

  Findris awaited her call. The moment Harrison was fully asleep, she’d escape him, possibly never to return. Whatever relationship had begun to spring up between them would be shattered.

  In destroying Harrison’s trust, she would be destroying the finest thing she’d ever known. But the safety and survival of two worlds mattered more than the breaking of her heart.

  Chapter 12

  Harrison took Ilaria’s hand and helped her to her feet, watching her rise before him like a marble goddess. She was glorious, her body slender yet ripe with curves, her skin alabaster perfection except for the places he’d marked her during their lovemaking—her breasts softly reddened from his mouth, her lips swollen from his kisses.

  He’d known all the reasons he shouldn’t have touched her—that she was Esri, other, that she’d soon be out of his life forever, that falling for this woman felt like a betrayal of his daughter and all she’d suffered at Esri hands—but in the end he couldn’t fight the fact that he’d needed Ilaria…to kiss her, to touch her, to make love to her, and the experience had been a hundred times more exciting, a thousand times more profound than any lovemaking he’d experienced with anyone else.

  Including his wife. Ex-wife, now.

  Guilt kicked at him for that thought, a guilt that he’d never felt what he should have for Gwen. She’d ultimately realized it and refused to take what little he could give. He’d thought she was being unreasonable and asking too much of him, but he was beginning to understand just how little his mind and body had been engaged in their relationship, despite his commitment to his marriage.

  Now, he’d found a woman who moved him, body and soul, and she could never be his. Life was a bitch.

  He grabbed his shirt off the floor and held it up for Ilaria. “Would you like to wear this for now, and to sleep in, or do you want your dress?”

  She hesitated, then gave him a small smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I’ll wear my dress. I’m used to sleeping in it.”

  He helped her into it, then led her to the dining table, where he’d ditched dinner in his haste to get her into his arms. Neither spoke, each reeling, he suspected, from the magnitude of what had passed between them. The aftershocks were still sending lightning arcing through his blood. The thought that, when this was over, once she’d sealed those gates, he’d never see her again, was almost enough to drive him to his knees.

  He should be elated at the prospect that his life might actually get back to normal. That’s all he’d wanted from the moment the Esri first found their way back into this world. Yet the thought of it brought no relief now, only the dull ache of loneliness. How barren his life had become, without him even realizing it. How much worse it would be without Ilaria.

  “What do we need?” she asked over her shoulder. “Plates? Silverware?”

  Harrison pulled in a deep, steadying breath and let it out slowly. “God only knows what we’ll find. Charlie’s kitchen is not what you’d call well-stocked.” Until the Esri invasion, his brother had spent most of his time on the road, working one secret ops mission or another.

  Harrison rifled through the mostly empty cupboards until he found a pair of chipped plates, a handful of silverware and a couple of paper towel squares that would have to serve as napkins. Setting them on the counter that separated the kitchen from the rest of the apartment, he pulled open the refrigerator. Empty, as he’d expected it would be, but for a couple of take-out cartons that no doubt contained molding food, a bag of fuzzy grapes and a lone can of Budweiser.

  “Water it is.” He grabbed a couple of mismatched glasses from the cupboard, smirking as SpongeBob SquarePants grinned at him from one and Mr. Spock stared from the other. This place needed a woman’s touch and attention, no doubt about it. Then again, if he remembered correctly, Tarrys had a fondness for all things Washington Redskins. The glassware selection might not improve much after they were married.

  He filled the glasses with tap water and joined Ilaria at the table, watching as she unpacked the bag, opening each take-out container carefully and sniffing.

  Her eyes lit with interest and pleasure. “Human food is so wonderfully varied and complex.”

  “I guarantee you’ve never had anything like this. Not unless one of your gates opens somewhere in China.”

  She gave him a bemused look. “I don’t know where most of the gates opened. I only ever used two of them until that last time when I came here, and the names the humans used to describe their villages were of little consequence to me. The human realm was the human realm.”

  Harrison picked up one of the containers of rice. “Mind if I serve you?”

  That intriguing mouth kicked up. “Not at all.”

  He started with fried rice, then added sesame chicken and a spring roll with duck sauce. His favorite.

  As he served himself, Ilaria tried the food. “Incredible.” Her eyes sparkled, that wide mouth tipped up, opening, closing, her tongue darting out to lick her lips, and he couldn’t stop watching her.

  After what could have been a minute, or an hour, he tore his gaze away and finished serving himself. “What did you eat in the forest?”

  “In Esria, the land provides food and water to the Esri. We’ve only to ask. We don’t farm as you do, or raise animals for milk or eggs. We eat off the land much as your earliest ancestors did—hunting wild game and eating the fruits and nuts from the trees, though instead of walking up to a fruit-laden tree and picking what we desire, as you can in this world, we must ask the tree to provide the fruit. There are dozens of fruit and nut-bearing trees in Esria, but in the Forest of Nightmares we were limited to the few trees at the edges of that small, safe clearing. And much to our eternal frustration, only two bore sustenance—a colin fruit tree and one that provided bejue nuts.”

  “So that’s all you ate for three hundred years?”

  “Occasionally a wild animal would scamper across our clearing and we’d have meat. If we were quick enough. Otherwise it was colin fruit and bejue nuts.” She made a face. “I never want to see either again.”

  Three hundred years.

  The anger at King Rith that rose in him this time was all on Ilaria’s behalf, a fury over the fact that he’d trapped this pale jewel of a woman and locked her away for the equivalent of four human lifetimes. And now that she was free, Rith would try to destroy her.

  “If we grow thirsty,” she continued, “or wish to bathe, a pond appears if we ask, then disappears within the hour.”

  “That sounds bizarre.”

  Her mouth tilted up. “Only because you’re not used to it.” In her eyes gleamed a knowledge and a wisdom that rem
inded him again that she was no twenty-five-year-old, despite her youthful appearance.

  When they’d finished eating, Harrison cleaned up, then found sheets and made the bed. Taking Ilaria’s hand, he pulled her down with him, covering them with the sheet and blanket. He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close until they were spooned together tightly.

  As they lay like that, her warm flesh pressed against his own, he felt…grounded…centered, as if, clichés aside, he’d found his other half. Content, he let exhaustion sweep him into sleep.

  Sometime later he woke to the feel of Ilaria slipping out of his arms. He tightened his grip, pulling her against him, but she patted his hand.

  “Bathroom,” she said softly, placing a soft kiss on his shoulder, a kiss that warmed his heart.

  He let her go and sank back into his dreams.

  Something woke him a second time, though he couldn’t be sure what. The click of the front door?

  He bolted upright, the thought wrenching him from sleep. In the light from the street that seeped in between the window blinds he saw the bed beside him was empty.

  His memory caught up with his instincts and his heart began to slow its frantic pace. Ilaria had gotten up to go to the bathroom. The sound he’d heard was her moving around the apartment somewhere.

  But some deeper instinct had him sliding from the bed without sound. No lights had been turned on, though enough light filtered in from the street below that he didn’t really need any. The bathroom door was open. And dark.

  And there was no sign of his bedmate, no sound but his own. “Ilaria?”

  He walked into the living room and turned on the light, but he was alone. His heart began to race as he looked at the spot where he’d removed her boots. They were gone.

  Dammit, he had heard the click of the door. He lunged for it now, yanking it open just in time to see the elevator door swish closed on a flash of green.

  She’d left him.

  His mind reeled even as he whirled and grabbed his shirt where it still hung over the back of the sofa. His thoughts spun. Why? Had she been waiting for him to let his guard down all along and had simply taken advantage when he had? The thought twisted like cold steel. His mind shied from the thought that he’d been wrong about her. That she wasn’t who she’d pretended to be and had played him all along as he’d foolishly, foolishly fallen for her.