Burn Bright

Ripers carried her through more tunnels, so many different ones that she lost sense of time and direction. She’d become separated from her surroundings by a mind-mist, but a vague, innate sense told her that they climbed upwards.

When they stopped, she was dimly aware that the Ripers’ shoulders heaved with effort. They collected themselves for several moments before they entered yet another cave, this one kept private by a door.

Incense had played along the rocky passages but now it choked Retra like thick smoke. A Riper coughed with it.

‘Lay her on the bed and wait outside.’

She knew his voice and immediately she felt better.

When his hand touched her, she forgot Ixion, forgot … everything.

‘You don’t have much time – you are bleeding to death slowly. The cut that Brand inflicted upon you will not heal because you cannot sleep. There is only one way your body can recover. I will help you increase the endorphin levels in your body.’

If she could have, she would have asked what that meant. But she had no way to make her tongue work.

When he kissed her, it took time for the pressure to register on her lips. Even then the sensation was dull and without thrill.

‘Come back to me, little bat,’ he whispered.

She wanted to, but his face drifted above her, neither solid nor real. Dimly, she felt the bed move, lifting her body higher in a gentle, floating movement. Not a normal bed but a cloud, she thought.

His tongue found her face, and with delicate strokes he licked her skin like a catling cleaning its hairless baby. His tongue was warm and rough and the trail of wetness tingled and bought her senses to life again. He blew gently down and her skin pimpled with the cool stickiness.

She felt his hand at her thigh, sliding up across the silk. She heard him groan. Disappointment? Revulsion? Or something else? What did the deep sounds in his throat mean?

Retra didn’t know.

She knew only that he licked her wrist now, moving upward to her shoulder, each trail returning sensation to her numb skin, bringing warmth and tingling promise. His hair spilled over her in a shining spread.

Then suddenly his face was up near hers and their breaths mingled.

‘You must know what I do for you and understand that afterwards you will be mine.’

His eyes were neither warm nor loving. But there was something in them. Purpose, she felt … and possession. His hands swept the pillows around her into a pile, forcing her shoulders higher than her hips.

‘Watch!’

Retra watched.

He lowered his body until his face was level with her thigh. With a quick movement he lifted her skirt and peeled away the white cloth that covered her wound. Fresh blood spurted and with another quick movement he fixed his mouth to it.

Retra cried in pain and disgust. Her mind rejected his action and yet, as his lips pressed against the wound and his tongue probed its depth, the pain lessened and a soothing sensation spread through her body.

As he worked, not taking from her, but pressuring with his tongue and mouth, life returned, energy pouring inward. Soon enough, her thoughts became clearer. She writhed, trying to slide away from him, but he levered his body over hers and trapped her with his weight.

The pain she had lived with for so long now diminished to a faint throb and she became light with its absence.

In its place, other feelings began to grow. A strange pressure in her abdomen that made her want to shift again but in a different way. She reached for Lenoir’s hair and grasped a handful, tugging it without concern for him, her breaths quick. The pressure inside her turned to a sensation she had never felt before, never thought could exist. It propelled and exposed her, and she rocked and shivered against him.

The sensation peaked, forcing her body into a high arch.

Her mind unfastened. Her body sparkled.

Then it was over and she collapsed.

As the intensity waned and his hair had slipped from her grasp, Lenoir raised his head, the evidence of her wound emblazoned on his lips.

‘You are now mine.’ He raised his body until their faces were level again. ‘So tell me, baby bat … what is your name?’

She thought about it for a while. There had been another name, but she no longer belonged to it.

‘Naif,’ she said, finally.