Lyra's initial feeling was not terror, but surprise at the overwhelming scent of pine and age-old stone and the heat of another body.
Her lids opened to a vast moonlit room, its stone walls pierced by quartz embedded in it, and to the man-the beast-the creature hunkered down beside the fur-banked pallet she lay on. He was an enormous, clenched knot of muscle and putrid strength, his amber eyes holding a world of loneliness and uncontained, wild strength. A white scabbed line marred from his temple to the hard set of his jaw, the topography of some previous fury.
This was Kael, the cursed lord of the deserted mountain, and she was his special key.
"You're awake." His voice was a low rumble, like stones grinding deep within the earth, but there was no threat in it. Only a profound, aching weariness.
Lyra propped herself on her elbows, the robe of satin silken rustling against flesh. The memory surfaced, a sack over her head, masked men, the ride. But the fear that should have enveloped her was a distant echo, drowned by the thud of her own heart and the senseless tug to the creature facing her. She was taken, yes, but not to a dungeon, but to a sanctuary. To him.
"You kidnapped me!" she said to him, and her tone tightened more than she'd expected.
"I had no choice," Kael replied, his gaze never breaking from hers. He stayed back, like a hunter holding back from the impossible. "The curse that binds me to this form, that binds me to this mountain between the moon's crest can be broken by only one thing."
"Passion," she breathed, the syllables hanging between them, weighty and sticky as honey. She had heard the tales. Passion freely given.
He nodded, a small, almost imperceptible tilt of his head. "Not taken. Not forced. Given." The emphasis was a prayer, a nod of his own powerlessness in this intimate combat.
Lyra's eyes swept over him, the span of his chest, the fists that could tear steel but were tucked in gentle fists on either side of his body. This was not a monster. This was a king trapped inside a prison of his own flesh, and her body, wickedly, deliciously, knew its ruler. Sizzling, searing heat started to build low in her belly, like a liquid heat that slid into her blood. Desire, sharp and unflinching, became her anchor. Her weapon.
"Then why," she said, kicking up off the pallet and standing before him, the cold stone digging into her bare feet, "are you way over there?"
The air in the area surrounding the room shifted. The eyes of Kael darkened, the gold devoting its last remnants of brown to the shadows. A rumble of growling awakened in his chest, not of anger, but of pure unadulterated hunger. "Because as soon as I lay my hands on you, Lyra, the beast that I keep bound will break free from its chains. My restraint is weak."
"I'm not asking for your control," she said, taking a step toward him. The space between them crackled. "I'm asking for you."
It was all the invitation he needed.
With a single fluid motion, he closed the distance between them. His fingers lifted to settle on her face, his pressure firm yet gentle. The calluses of the inner surface of his palms brushed against the softness of her cheeks soothingly. He looked at her as though she were the moon itself, as though he was a man without light now gazing upon its source.
"You undo me," he breathed, his forehead to hers. His heat enveloped her, his scent, night and trees engulfed her so she was staggered by it.
"Then let me mend you," she whispered, and she went up on tiptoe to bridge the final inch, lips to his.
The kiss wasn't gentle. It was fire.
It was like a match flung onto dry tinder. Kael's mouth shaped over hers in a starving hunger that stole her breath. His tongue pushed past her lips, possessing her, savoring her, and Lyra returned his heat with her own. She dug her fingers into the heavy, dark hair at the nape of his neck, drawing him closer, yielding to the demanding pressure of his mouth. There was no negotiating; there was only a shared surrender.
He let the kiss track to follow the line along the path of her jaw, down the shape of her throat, his teeth scraping against the thudding pulse there. Lyra's head fell back on a gasp, her body bending to his. The worn silk of her shift was a weak barrier, his enormous hands encircling the neckline, ripping it apart with a soft rip that jarred indecently into the silence of the room. The fabric dropped away, settling at her feet, revealing her shivering and nude, not with cold, but with anticipation.
Kael stood frozen, his eyes devouring her. "By all the gods," he swore, his own voice gravelly. "You are more beautiful than any dream that has haunted my centuries of isolation."
His fingers mapped where they had traveled, cradling the heavy weight of her breasts, his thumbs tracing circles around the nipples until they puckered into hard, thudding buds. Lyra cried out, the contact so sharp it was almost painful.
He dipped his head, and his lips enveloped one peak, his tongue laving, sucking, pulling a shuddering groan from the midst of her body. He worshipped her breasts with his lips and fingers, giving both breasts equal attention until she writhed against him, her nails scoring into his muscular shoulders.
She tugged on the zipper of his leather pants, her hands grappling with desire. He helped her, shoving them down his hips, and then he was free, his erection springing forth, proud and massive and velvety steel. Lyra was breathless. He was marvelous, terrifying, and she was hungry for him with an eagerness that hovered on the edge of madness.
He placed her gently on the furs, the coarse fur a maddening stroke against her sensitized skin. He leaned down with her, his body pinning hers, heat burning her where they met. He leaned forward on his arms, but Lyra's legs around him, ankles crossed behind his spine, pulled him down until the head of his cock was laid against her moist center.
"Look at me," he commanded, his voice harsh.
Lyra's lids flew open to find herself trapped in his unyielding amber gaze.
"This is your choice," he said, every muscle tense in his trembling frame under the effort of being completely still. "Your passion. Your right to give. Tell me you want this. Tell me you want me."
"Take me, Kael," she panted, raising her hips, attempting to take him in. "I want it all. The man. The beast. All of it, just fuck me already!"
A half-triumphant, half-relieved bellow ripped from his chest. With one fierce, unyielding thrust, he buried himself deep inside her.
Lyra cried out. It was a squeal of sheer pleasure. He filled her so completely, he stretched her, filled her out in ways she didn't even know she could be filled. He remained still for a second, deep inside her, his body shaking above hers, letting her get used to his enormous size.
Then he began to move.
He set a rhythm that was primeval and primal. Pulling out almost completely, then thrusting back again, each thrust finding a place deep inside of her where she went wide-eyed. The air was heavy with their joining: the ragged intakes of breath, the slick, wet slide of body against body, the bestial growls torn from Kael's body with each jack of his hips.
Lyra took the stroke, her hips colliding with him, her inner muscles closing around him, milking him, drawing him in. She was a quick study in the dance of their need and she used every trick that came to mind. She raked her nails down his spine, her motion bringing out a growl of raw animal pleasure. She nipped at his shoulder, her tongue extracting salt and power. She filled her lungs with the air of sex, saying exciting things into his ear, telling him how good he was making her feel, how filled up she was, how she never wanted him to ever leave her.
Her words shattered his final restraint. His desires intensified, quicker, harder and more possessive. He circled his arms around her knees and pushed her legs back onto her shoulders, giving herself to him completely at his ravenous pace. The adjustment in angle caused him to stroke against that secret, puffed-out bud of flesh with each thrust, and Lyra felt the spool of her orgasm tighten tight, excruciatingly tight.
"Kael… I'm… I can't…," she cried out, her back arcing across the furs.
"Let go," he growled in her ear, his words low and rough with his own release building. "Cum for me, Lyra, share your passion, break my chains."
His coarse, desperate command was her ruin.
The climax burst inside of her, a shockwave of pleasure so powerful it blinded her, took away her hearing, all but the feeling of him thrusting into her, creating the contractions that wracked her body.
She moaned his name, a scream of pure release and ecstasy.
The feeling of her tightening around him, the sound of her moaning his name as she broke apart, was Kael's destruction. With a final brutal shove, he shoved with all his might, and his own orgasm boomed through him. He tossed his head back, a deafening bellow ringing through the stones of the room as he emptied himself into her, pulse after burning, endless pulse.
He leaned on her, his huge body a gentle weight, his face against the bend of her neck. Their hearts pounded against each other, a desperate, rhythmical thud slowing down gradually. The air was thick with the scent of sex and spent passion.
They simply lay there, contorted, laborious breathing slowly returning to normal for what seemed like centuries. Lyra ran her fingers through his sweat-drenched hair, a profound feeling of rightness, of tranquility.
Then she felt it.
A golden, warm light started to glow from where their bodies were connected. Kael tensed on her. He moved back on his arms, eyes wide with shock and a hope so fragile it ached to see.
The light grew, encircling him. The yellowed scar on his face began to retreat, leveling out into unblemished skin with no memory. A sigh, the gentle rustling of leaves in springtime, exhaled within the room. The burden of the centuries, the strangulation which had hung about every breath, simply disappeared.
The curse was removed.
Kael looked down at her, his eyes glinting like burnished gold, full of a wonder that loosened his war-worn face.
Free.
He was free, because of Lyra. He bent to kiss her once again, but this time the kiss was soft, and slow. It was a kiss of thanksgiving, of awe, of a future now accessible.
When he leaned back, he smiled, a real, unforced smile that widened across his whole face. "It seems, my hot, fierce captive," he panted, his voice filling with a fresh, effortless warmth, "that you have made me whole."
Lyra smiled and pulled him back down to kiss her again, aware that this was only the beginning of their story.