Passion Untamed (Feral Warriors #3)(7)

The heady musk of her arousal thickened in the air, and he knew he wasn't the only one feeling the desire. She lifted her gaze, heat a living thing in her eyes. The woman was a potent, dangerous blend of false innocence and a siren's temptation. His body burned to possess her again.

She bent down, her mouth trailing soft, damp kisses along his hip to his thigh, her lips inches from the base of his hard, throbbing shaft. He wanted her to touch him, to take him into her mouth with a need bordering on desperation. But he would never admit it. Never.

What is she doing to me?

A flash of dark light near the ceiling jerked his thoughts from the pleasure arcing through his body. He frowned at the dark, pulsing sphere that clearly wasn't a lightwick. His eyes narrowed with recognition. A power orb. Scanning the ceiling, he saw others nestled high against the ceiling, pulsing with light, throbbing to the beat of his pounding heart. As if they were somehow feeding off him.

Or feeding off the passion riding him.

"You're collecting power," he accused.

She looked up, her lids heavy, her lips damp. Sexy as hell. "That's the reason you're here."

He stared at her, unsure if her words relieved him or infuriated him more. His only purpose for being here was to fill those orbs with his lust? To be chained and petted by a beauty of a witch until he was out of his mind with wanting?

No way in hell. He knew the Mage too well to believe for a single moment the answer was that simple.

"What are you going to do with the energy once the orbs are filled?"

She raised up and sat back on her heels, shrugging delicately even as her chest rose and fell on rapid, shallow breaths. "I don't know. It's for Birik. All I know is that if we don't raise enough...he won't be pleased." Her gaze rose to the ceiling, as if studying the orbs and measuring the results of her play. "It's not enough."

As one soft hand moved back to his thigh, she reached up and covered her breast, squeezing the small mound through her dress. She gasped, her back arching as her head tilted back. His c**k jerked with a hunger of its own.

The scent of desire swirled around him. Heat rushed through his blood, pooling in that one part of his anatomy until he was thick and throbbing and nearly out of his head with needing her.

He struggled to turn his mind elsewhere. "Who's Birik?" Even his voice strained against the driving desire to feel her tight around him.

Slowly, she released her breast and lifted her hand off his thigh to rake both sets of fingers through her short hair. With a shuddering breath she said, "He's the archsorcerer in charge of this stronghold and ruler of all who reside here. He reports to the Elemental himself."

"And he wants the power from these orbs?"

"Yes."

Power from passion. He'd never heard of dark power raised in such a way, but he knew little about Mage orbs. Less still about the use to which they might try to put that energy.

What if they were making some kind of weapon to use against the Ferals? The thought made him ill. What if he'd somehow become the instrument of the destruction of his brothers?

Goddess, he couldn't live with this. He couldn't let this happen.

She looked up at the ceiling again and sighed. "It's enough."

With a last featherlight pat to his thigh, the beauty climbed off the stone and walked to the door with a natural, barefooted grace, leaving him hard and distended and throbbing.

Witch. Fury burned inside him. But as she disappeared out the portal, it took every ounce of control he possessed not to call her back.

Chapter Two

Skye fled the cell that served as her bedroom and hurried through the passages that twisted and turned through the rock following eons of water erosion. The open areas and passages of the cavern remained in their natural state, though Birik's extensive quarters and most of the bedchambers, kitchens, and ritual rooms had been transformed into comfortable living areas complete with furniture, carpeting, wallpaper, and more.

Only Skye lived in an unadorned cell within the rock, though she spent as little time there as possible. Most of her days she stayed outside in the woods, or wandering among the unused parts of the cave, where she headed now.

Low in her body, unrelieved passion made her throb and ache. Regret for her part in the capture of the beautiful shape-shifter ripped at her heart.

At last she reached the dagger fields, the raw, uncleared part of the caverns where the daggerlike stones, the stalagmites, rose from below as their counterparts hung from above. The air smelled of cool, damp limestone with the only trace of lightwick smoke from the single flame that floated behind her, lighting the darkness. Few Mage ever ventured this deep into the caves. It was here she came to think when she wasn't in the forest. Lowering herself to a small, dry patch of stone tucked into the curve of a low wall, she struggled to gather her wits, wits that had scattered to the winds with the first touch of the man's thighs beneath her palms.

Pulling her knees tight against her chest, she buried her face in her skirt and shook. Her body wanted, it needed what she'd found with him in the woods earlier. That temporary, explosive quenching of the fire that had burned inside her from the first moment she'd seen him in the Market two days ago.

Birik had warned her that shape-shifters would be coming. He'd sent her to watch for them, ordering her to choose one for her own. Nothing good would come of it for either her or the shifter, she'd known that. But she'd long ago quit fighting her fate and accepted that she could never thwart one of Birik's commands.