Remedy Maker (19 page)

Rhycious flicked his thumb along her tiny bud of nerves, and she exploded into shards of beckoning light. The fallout bowled over her, stealing her breath. His naughty fingers never stopped their maddening race and she arched off the bed, pulling against the vice-like grip at her wrists.

She trusted him. He would never hurt her.

Rhycious’s mouth came crashing down just when she would have cried out. Merciless lips worked with an appetite as voracious as her womb, sucking and impassioned.

Her chest was heaving when Rhy released her wrists. Lazily withdrawing his sodden fingers, he twirled them in her juices. Then he sucked his fingers into his mouth and hummed approval.

 Passion pounded the blood through her heart, head, and inner core. He dipped into her wetness again, and then his wet hand wrapped his magnificent cock and stroked her cream from tip to base.

“I’m really . . . .” His breath blew ragged and his head fell back, jaw clenched, eyes closed tight. Sinew and muscle stood out, stretched tight in sexual tension. He swallowed, as if holding raw emotion in check. “I’ll be as gentle as I can.”

She nodded, knowing he would never cause her pain. He had said as much and she believed him. Even after that mind-blowing orgasm, aftershocks still rocking her, she wanted him—

Inside her.

Rhycious shuddered with the effort to control his body, to contain his passion. His eyes darkened. Compelling. Magnetic. He lowered his body over hers, and his warm hand stroked her face. Silky strands of his hair trailed to caress her cheeks in damp tracks. “It’ll be all right. I’ll take care of you, babe.”

His cock notched to her opening and her impatience grew to explosive proportions. He pushed in, slowly, taking it one small agonizing measure at a time. Rhy pulled away slightly and pushed back in, stretching and filling her. His breath came in soul-drenching drafts, arms shaking from his efforts.

Skin to skin, they were one.

Patience welcomed him into her body, desperate to have more of him. When he pushed with his next thrust, she pushed back and plunged Rhycious straight to the hilt in one smooth move.

 She took everything he gave, and arched her back for more.

Fullness bloomed within and her body quickly adjusted, the slick walls easing his way. Rhycious filled her completely. He pulled nearly all the way out, and pushed back in, inch by torturous inch. His movements were slow and calculated. She sensed her body’s response. Heat and fire stoked to burn a raging inferno.

With a sharp cry, he offered her the very essence of what made him male, and it wasn’t nearly enough. She freely gave him her body. Let him sink into her, time and again, faster and faster. His powerful thrusts were a balm to her soul. The muscle beneath her grasping palms a healing prescription for what ailed her.

Rhy’s unique scent of clover and musk rose to surround her, and this time it was she who drove her tongue past his lips. His wild hips retreated and plunged, seeking and longing for something more.

He threw his head back and she saw his agony, the strain that drove his cock into her body, and fought to withhold from ending it all too soon. She felt the inner torment with which he struggled, the ghosts he fought, and it ripped her heart to shreds.

Rhycious was her healer, her remedy maker. And she wanted to heal him, too.

Right here, right now, self-control trespassed. She had nothing to give, except herself and her love—whether he wanted it or not.

Should he reject both, her heart would shatter into a million pieces.

Patience wrapped her arms around his big body and used her hips to urge him on. In love with a man for the first time in her life, she pressed her cheek against his chest and helplessly hung on for dear life.

A wild sensation grew, brighter and hotter. It was more intense than anything she’d ever felt before. The spreading continued to grow like a bubble. It pushed reason and sanity aside.

 Patience strained her neck back. Rhycious rode her body with quick, fast rhythms of delight. If this were all she could have in her life, it would be enough.

“Rhycious!”

“I’m with you, babe.”

Together they flew to the rim of the precipice and with a mighty roar, he leaped over the chasm, holding her tightly, tumbling them both to freefall over the edge.

Patience closed her eyes tight and pretended, just for the moment that Rhycious loved her back.

Fourteen

Outside the sycamore tree, Rhycious leaned against the rough bark waiting for Aleksander and Daisy to arrive. A few feet away sat Alek’s travel bag collecting dirt and ants. Patience warmed his chest where her back rested against him. He wrapped a protective arm around her, keeping her close to his heart. His other hand stroked her velvety throat.

“Don’t forget, drink the tea I made, and be sure to get plenty of rest,” he advised.

“Yes, doctor.” Her tongue outlined each of his knuckles, sending a dick-hardening sensation to his brain. She glanced at him over her shoulder. “It’d be more fun if I had a little company.”

He chuckled, the hard shell of his heart cracking a bit more. The green in her sweater caught the emerald sparkles of her eyes. Well-worn jeans hugged her perky ass. Peace and contentment flowed slow and easy through him. It’d been so long since he’d felt this way. The PTSD had taken it all away.

You’re mine.

The unbidden words crashed into his thoughts with shocking clarity. He waited for the knee jerk reaction to hit, the emotional response of his disorder that would send him screaming in the opposite direction.

And waited.

It never came.

Warmth spread within him, and he embraced the enlightenment the same way he held Patience—tight.

For a mind and body-blowing hour, his little pixie had driven the dark ghosts away, chasing the shadows from his mind. In their place, a new light shined. Dim at first, but it grew brighter the longer he held her in his arms.

Why a Wood Nymph?

Why not?

Good and kind, Patience lived up to her name. She answered his silent, open-ended question in the way her soft hand caressed his arm that banded her to him.

A breeze picked up a few scattered leaves, tossing them like confetti to twirl in the air. Bright green foliage swayed, practicing their dance in preparation for the upcoming festival. He shook his addled head, hiding the motion in a brush of his lips against her hair.

Gamó1to—
dammit. He had it bad.

Aleksander appeared, weaving his way toward Rhy, kicking a fallen branch out of the way with the toe of his laced-up boot. His green fatigues were tucked neatly inside, combat style. Besides the battle rattle and arsenal of weaponry, he wore a mystified expression on his face.

The way Alek glanced at Daisy while they walked together, her mouth yakking and hands flapping, Rhy wondering if Kempor Aleksander hadn’t finally met his match.

Rhycious buried his nose in Patience’s silky hair and inhaled the peppermint scent from her bath. His mind drifted over their love session that followed. Behind his zippered barrier,
Mr. Happy
nudged, reminding
he
was privy to his thoughts. 

It took all his Centaur willpower to not spin his Nymph around, kiss her senseless, and make her beg him for Round Two. He grinned to himself—oh, that suspended rope bed!
It’s not the size of the mattress, it’s the peak you seek.

Patience leaned to look over her shoulder at him, digging her fine ass into his growing arousal. “Do you have to split so soon?”

This naughty girl required a follow-up physical exam. Good thing he worked on call. “Don’t be starting that with me, dreaded Nymph.” Rhy’s free hand caught her hip and held her luscious posterior curves away from his erection to give him some room. “Your smile says you know exactly what you’re doing.”

At her answering wiggle and giggle, he caved in to his longing and turned her to face him. Her hands rested on his upper chest, fingertips smoothing over his Penn State tee. He encircled her in his arms and gazed down into her teasing eyes.

“Yeah, I have to go.” Powerless to resist her temptation, he pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Queen Savella’s expecting a report on my progress, and I’ve got zilch so far. Also, I’m going to nose around about Serenity, see what I can find.”

Rising to her toes, Patience brushed a kiss against his lips and finger-walked her hands upward to stroke the skin above his collar.

His body ached for her touch.

“Thank you, Rhycious. Wish I could come with you and help.”

“Not on your life. I want you here, where I know you’re safe.”

Rhy groaned when she crushed her breasts into him. Her mounds, soft and delicious, speared straight to his crotch. She stoked his banked fire with her caresses; smoldering passion flickered with needy flames once again.

“Get thee from me, wicked woman.” He gave her a playful push and spanked her cute butt.

Aleksander and Daisy drew up and eyed them with upraised brows, darting curious glances between them.

“Ready to go?” Alek bent to retrieve his pack, brushing ants off the canvas material. He shot Rhy a dirty look.

“Just about.” Rhy stepped toward him, and then turned to address Daisy. “You’ll stay with Patience?”

Daisy swung a friendly arm around Patience’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “Absolutely. We’ll have some girl time together while you’re gone.”

A crease marked the space between Patience’s brows. She looked about as happy as he felt leaving so soon, her suffering fresh in their minds. “Be careful, stud muffin.”

He caught her gaze and held it. She devoured him, as if she were photographing him with her eyes. Alek snorted at the endearment, but Rhy ignored him. He was more interested in the way she took to nibbling her bottom lip. Someone worried about him for a change. It was a ridiculous concept, but heartwarming just the same.

“I’d puff out my chest and bang a sword against my chest plate, if I were decked-out in armor.” The military hardware lay at the bottom of his cedar chest back home. Judging by the arc of the sun and length of shadows, and factoring in the distance yet to travel, he pursed his lips at the impossibility of retrieving before the journey.

“Ahem.” Alek jerked his head to get Rhycious in motion. The Kempor seemed twitchy to move out and march—overdosed on Daisy, perhaps.

Rhycious gave short sigh and grasped Patience around the waist, Daisy’s arm fell away to give them space. He dropped a quick kiss on the sexy mole at her temple. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Go inside and stay there.”

A lock of hair slipped over her shoulder to bounce and tease him. He reached to give it a tug, and watched the tendril curl around his fingers as if it, too, wanted to keep him at her side.

Rhy stepped back and watched her hair unwind from his hand. Nodding in her direction, he said, “Go.”

“Aye-aye, mon capitan.” She snapped a tart salute. The saucy wench drooped her eyelids and wet her upper lip in a most erotic manner, but the anxious look on her face told him what he already knew. For his ears only, she added in a whispered tone, “Hurry back, big guy.”

A shocking pink flash lit up the bark of her tree—she disappeared with a pop. Daisy shrugged at Rhy, winked a smile at Alek, and followed Patience. Her own unique spark the color of tangerine.

*    *    *

Rhycious followed behind Aleksander travelling toward their destination, a meeting with Savella. They were alert, surveying between stands of trees growing in the western sector of Boronda.

Springtime euphoria filled the air with the scent of a thousand wildflowers and the chatter of small animals. Two weeks from now, the Festival of the Trees would start the race to rutting season. Rhycious’s groin tightened at the testosterone peaking thought.

A prickling spread across his lower back. The slow descent of the setting sun pulled and stretched his back muscles. Transformation into his true self, the sleek Centaur body, was upon him.

“Alek. Wait up.” He tapped his watch. “Be right back.”

Rhycious climbed over a five-foot wide log lying on its side. He wondered whose tree it might have been, and if he had been the one wielding the saw that had cut the Nymph down.

Been there, done that.

Not going back.

Privately screened, he removed his boots, popped the button on his pants, and unzipped. Seated on the ground, he slid them down his thighs and placed everything off to the side, near his hit-and-run bag.

The sun’s last rays winked out behind the purple Boronda Mountain range, and he changed into his four-legged self.

Rhy stuffed his clothes into the bag and heaved his body upward, forelegs first. The pack slung over one shoulder and he gripped it to leap over the gigantic trunk, legs tucked neat. Alek turned at the sound of his four hooves striking on the ground.

“Ready?” Rhy asked.

“Gods, this brings back the memories.” Grinning from ear to ear, Alek clapped his hands and rubbed them together.

“Yeah, more than I care to remember. Or not remember, as the case may be.” The dossier listing his memories of drinking in bars were not those of jubilance.

Fifty feet in front of them sat an innocuous granite boulder situated between the trunks of two trees. Rhycious eyed the rock, a terrible tenseness in his body.

Beneath the boulder lay the hidden entrance to
The Three Legged Mare,
a notorious bar frequented by Boronda’s most disreputable black market dealers. Dim, dank, and seedy as an underground cavern could get, Rhy curled his lip in distaste. Contained in the subterranean rooms were mythological creatures that would stab first and question second.

He and Aleksander had pulled themselves out of these dungeon-like dregs on more than one occasion, back when Rhy had been a drinker.

Unbidden, an image of Patience floated before him, neck arched and mouth parted in a moan. Her lovely face flushed with a sheen of ecstasy, lips rosy red.