Horn of the Unicorn Read online

  Yes, her only regret was him.

  “My bright, beautiful phantom,” she whispered huskily.

  The only one who held the power to make her burn from a fire not forged in hatred. The one with the power to make her body twist with need, her soul hunger for his touch and the searing reality of his possession. Was he truly nothing but a figment of her scarred psyche? Had she become so pitiable that she’d created him from nothing but sheer desperation? Lonely, wrenching desperation for a soul who could make her feel something worth living for?

  And he was worth living for. He was brilliant and blinding and the power she felt beneath the need of those beautiful blue eyes when they stared at her, taking her in, consuming her, was nothing short of pure and sweet and wondrous. Like a breath of fresh, spring-scented air after years of stale reality. God but did she long for him. Was she insane for this crazy wanting churning through her soul, pulsing to the rhythmic beat of her heart, as if her hunger were an entity living within her, beating in time with the life-giving pulses of her body? Pumping through her veins. Breathing through her lungs. A small, helpless laugh broke from her tight throat, and she shook her head beneath the heavy fall of water, tasting the salty wash of tears as the water slicked over the surface of her lips.

  The laughter and tears bled together, until finally her strength failed her as the choked sounds evolved into cries that became harder, like a low, trembling fault line buried deep inside as everything within shattered apart. She slumped against the side of the shower and crumpled to her knees with a painful thwack against the pale, gold-veined marble, the water falling hard against her scalp, slightly stinging, and yet, she did not move. Closing her eyes, she turned her face up into the pelting spray, welcoming the tiny pinpricks of pain if for no other reason than they proved she could still feel. Proved she had not yet lost everything.

  And then…she felt it. Something so light and spellbinding that her breath jerked to a sudden, halting stop within her chest, at the same moment her heart leapt in mindless hope and panic.

  Her one, bittersweet secret. That tiny part of herself that no one but she knew was hidden within her heart. Her guilty pleasure—the one thing that could unravel the threads of her resolve to do what was right. Just a whispered word past the beautiful, utterly masculine line of his lips and she would be lost. And not only her…but Emily.

  “My sweet, soft little beauty. Damn, but you are even more lovely in the flesh than I ever imagined,” a deep, rough-silk voice murmured above her head, a seductive tremor of emotion shivering through the husky words, and she nearly choked on a startled cry of surprise.

  No…no…no, she’d been wrong to wish for this tonight. He was a dangerous weakness she could not afford, even within the blissful luxury of her dreams.

  And yet, Tess realized with a jolting, bursting twist of awareness within her trembling stomach, she was not dreaming now.

  Dear god, he’s here! She could hear the slow, sensual cadence of his breathing, smell the musky scent of his fresh, woodsy, purely masculine scent—had heard the erotic, melting sound of his voice—and she was awake! He was not just a hovering apparition meant to drive her insane with longing—she sensed him before her in the flesh, sensed the sheen of his golden skin, the long, strong bones and powerful muscles of his magnificent body. She did not need to open her eyes to believe. No, she could feel the hot, vibrant heat of his presence as he stood before her, tall and broad and animal warm, and she knew it was him.

  “Since the first moment I saw you, I’ve sworn that I would give anything for a moment like this—a moment with you—where I could hold you,” he rumbled softly, the roughness of his tone teasing her senses, and she could have sworn a large hand hovered near her face, waiting, as if afraid to touch her. “And now that I’m here, all I can think is that I never want it to end. That I’d give anything to take you back with me—to keep you forever.”

  She licked her lips in terrified anticipation, even though they were already slick with the tears and water. It was nothing more than a nervous gesture, meant to calm her, though her heart beat so rapidly against her ribs that she marveled how she could not hear it over the raining water and steady, sexy rhythm of his breath.

  Sweet Jesus, she had heard him speak twice now! Could even hear him breathing! A low, masculine rumble of air, like distant thunder on a humid, storm-ridden night. Sultry and hard and provocative.

  And then he touched her. She squeezed her eyes tighter, terrified of breaking the spell, as the slightly calloused, possessive heat of his big hands grasped her slick shoulders and settled her gently, though commandingly against the bottom of the tub. Her hair cushioned the back of her head, breath catching sharply as he trailed one palm down the side of her hot face, the column of her throat, down between her breasts, across the quivering nerves of her belly.

  “Oh god, I can’t believe this. I must be crazy,” she whispered shakily, trembling, and wanting so badly to open her eyes and look at him as she’d been longing to do only moments before. To touch him. But what if it broke the spell, for surely this was some kind of unexplainable magic that had brought him to her?

  “Not crazy, little one,” he groaned, and Tess could have sworn she heard the smile in his guttural words, could picture that carnal, sin-sculpted mouth as he spoke. “Just perfect. The most beautiful, vibrant thing I’ve ever seen.”

  He paused at the top of her mound and a low, tremoring growl filled the air, making her shiver with awareness. Then his other hand joined the seductive mapping of her body, and together they moved down her thighs, sliding inward, parting and raising her legs until she lay on her back, her knees raised and her sex thoroughly exposed, while the water splattered against her face in a fine mist—no longer directly hitting her. No—her phantom’s body was blocking the heavy, stinging spray of the shower, and she squeezed her eyes tighter against the painful ache to open them. Now brutal, relentless fear kept them closed. Not of him—but of the thought that looking upon him might destroy the magic. Might send him spiraling away from her before she could embrace the wonder of having him here. With her. Touching her body with hard, powerfully masculine hands that trembled with hunger and want.

  “Gods, woman, how I’ve ached to be right here, with this beautiful little silken cunt spread open and bare, waiting for my touch. Seeing you in naught but my dreams was driving me out of my fucking mind. It was worse than my prison—more painful than my curse.”

  Tess moaned a ragged sound of need, and unwilling to waste the precious little time with him she had, she arched her back and spread her thighs wider, feeling the hot, deliciously tender flesh of her sex pull open. Another growl greeted her ears this time, and her face, even her throat and earlobes, pulsed with heat as she felt a kind of smile that she’d never known before spread across her tear-stained lips. It was a wanton, womanly smile. A smile of feminine power and triumph. The kind of smile a woman would wear when she had her man down on his knees, his body and expression aggressively hard and hungry, while the energy surrounding him pulsed in deep, dark waves of violent red, sexual and raw and consuming. The kind of smile that said she understood she was the focus of his universe, his very soul, and that she reveled in the power he gifted her with by allowing his need for her to shatter his foundation and control.

  Never had Tess thought she would embrace such an expression, and yet she did. One more sweet, precious gift her bright, silver angel offered her.

  God, but she loved him, even if he was nothing but a bloody figment of her imagination.

  A low, rumbling sound filled her ears, riding along the pulsing spray of the water and the heavy, hazy mist that blanketed them. Words unknown to her, flowed from his lips, drifting like mist through her senses. A lyrical, beautiful language that stroked her as seductively as a lover’s hands, trembling across her sensitized skin. Stark and brutal, yet poetically impassioned, the words stole into her mind. She did not need to know their meaning. No, the low, tense, trembling tone with which he
spoke them told her everything she needed.

  He wanted her. She hoped he could want her with even a fraction of the longing that she carried for him. The painful, eager twisting within her flesh and bone, within her very soul, for the mere sight of his hard warrior’s body and breathtaking face—the consuming craving for his touch and taste that had always been denied her.

  And then his open mouth pressed against the slick heat between her splayed thighs with a sizzling, jolting burst of sensation, and in that instant, Tess knew that his want for her went far beyond anything her naïve experience could have fantasized or dreamed.

  He hungered with animal wildness and savage intent, and she was all that would ease his impossible craving.

  “Yes,” she cried out as brilliant, erratic splashes of blinding color exploded against the backs of her eyelids. “Oh god, that’s so good. Please, don’t stop. Don’t stop…don’t stop…don’t stop…”

  He answered her desperate pleading in that same evocative language, the deep, lilting litany washing over her moist folds like a prayer, his breath shivering deliciously against her naked sex. Awareness of a strange heat deep inside blossomed, as if a blaze of sensual urgency had burst to life within her, the kindling flames stoked by those powerfully provocative words. She writhed as the flames grew, blistered with her need, nearly screaming when she felt his strong thumbs stroke the swollen pads of her labia with a touch that felt oddly like possession. Once. Twice. On the third pass they pressed and parted, spreading her lips ever wider, revealing all the inner secrets of her most intimate parts. Another rumbling growl washed over her, this one vibrating and harsh against her exposed vagina.

  “You’re like fire, little one. Red hot and burning with beauty,” he grated in a rumbling voice that crackled like winter leaves crushed beneath heavy boots. “So tender and pink and pearly with your cream. Such a beautiful, hungry, lush little cunt. And I’m claiming it—taking it—every drenched, lusty little piece of it.”

  She moaned in response to the guttural words of dominant possession, and felt the cool slide of his thick, silky hair against her thigh, a slight scratch of bristle from his chin, as if he were stroking his face against her skin—and then a shocking, wrenching meltdown as his warm, wet mouth latched possessively over the inner heat of her sex. The jarring, electrical brilliance of it nearly stopped her heart and she choked back a rough, sobbing shout.

  “I could fucking eat you alive,” he growled against her wet flesh, lips and breath moving against the swollen lips of her pussy, making her insane with wanting more of that wild, wicked mouth. “Could live off you, woman. Keep my face buried in this tiny, melting quim whenever it isn’t crammed full, packed tight with my cock. Whenever I’m not fucking into your delicate cunt and making you scream and claw me, begging for more of me. For all of me.”

  Wide and open and unyielding, his mouth pressed harder against her, breath sharp and searing against her screaming senses, and she choked again on the cry fighting to burst its way out of her throat as savage sensation engulfed her. Never could she have imagined such heat, such blinding, white, electric awareness, melting and fierce and violent in its pleasure as he ate at her with an avid, gently bruising hunger—those viciously sexual, provocative words still burning within her mind. Her mouth opened and silent screams broke from her chest as her back arched. Her arms slammed into the sides of the tub as she struggled for a handhold to brace her in this world. Then the rasping, scratchy stroke of his tongue swiped through the thick cream of her folds, and she bucked against him, sure she felt him laugh a low, arrogant sound of satisfaction, of primitive male triumph, against her. It almost made her smile again, but he swept her along on another sinfully intimate caress, tilting his face to the side, stroking and lapping and dipping…consuming her with that wickedly clever tongue.

  As if he read her mind, he drawled in a raw voice graveled by need, “I warned you, lass, that I could eat you alive.” He paused, breathing hard, like a stallion pushed to its limit, then stroked his tongue against her clit in a slow, thorough glide that made her shiver. “I’ve never had anything sweeter than this precious cunt—than this rich, honeyed syrup slipping from you, so creamy and hot. It fills my mouth so perfectly,” he added thickly, dipping his tongue into the tiny opening of her body, laughing a throaty chuckle when she pushed up against him, seeking more. “That’s right, pump your hips, little one, and fuck my face. Oh lass, that’s so fucking beautiful. Show me how much you want me. Just…like…that.”

  His thumbs spread wider, opening her more, his shoulders forcing her knees hard against the sides of the enclosure. A warm waft of breath blew against her pussy as it pulled farther open, her clit feeling like a pounding heartbeat at the top of the tingling cleft…on the verge of explosion. Tess moaned at the feel of her entire being focusing at that small point of sensation, the anticipation so keen it sliced through her, twisting and sharp. And then hot, silken lips closed around the engorged bundle of nerve endings, a wet tongue lashing it repeatedly like a smoldering, sin-kissed lick of flame, and her back arched sharply, her hands all but clawing at the marbled sides of the tub for leverage. He suckled her, pulling more of her clit between those perfect lips, and she felt the moisture flooding from her body, slick and warm, pooling from the quivering mouth of her slit, slicking across the burning heat of her pussy.

  “Uhhnn,” she moaned, the hoarse sounds breaking from her body jagged and raw with emotion.

  The feel of his hot, damp mouth, vibrating with hunger, so possessive and intense, undid her—and Tess heard as well as felt the sharp intake of his breath, the tightening of his broad shoulders and powerful arms wedged between her thighs, almost as if he scented her deepening arousal. Then there was the soft brush of warm, silky hair against her thigh once more as his head turned and that wicked tongue stroked greedily along her open folds, lapping at her puffy vulva, then dipping possessively inside—proving he had every right to the moist, cream-covered tissues hidden within. His animal growls vibrated up through her body in lusty, pounding waves of pleasure, and with strong, sure strokes, he began fucking his tongue into her sex, breaching the small opening with wild, bold plunges that told her just how much he wanted her—how badly he needed to be right there.

  “Open your eyes, Tess.”

  The guttural voice, speaking perfect, accented English, came deep and dark, raspy and harsh with need. The ragged, raging voice of sin—of pure temptation—and she shivered beneath its commanding power.

  It was a dangerously seductive voice that could lure her away from her responsibilities far too easily, and Tess knew she had to find the strength to resist.

  “No,” she gasped, shaking her head, refusing to risk the loss of such provocative pleasure, and somehow knowing he would disappear on her if she were to look upon him tonight.

  “Yes,” he drawled with a deep, rich, laughing rumble of sound, shocking her as one slippery thumb dipped lower and pressed boldly against the tight pucker of her backside, sending a cascading wash of blinding stars popping like charges through her brain.

  “Dear god,” Tess whimpered as her lungs ground to a full, painful stop, gleaming, explosive colors burning against the thin flesh of her eyelids as he deftly thrust his thumb through the clenching ring of muscle, forcing her to accept the strange, darkly forbidden, vicious feeling of brutal pleasure that slammed through her system. “I can’t…damn it…it’s…too much—”

  “And not nearly enough,” he promised darkly in that same guttural, husky tone that melted her deep down inside. His thumb pulled back, then slid deliciously deeper, the sharpness of the pain blending somehow beautifully with the searing pleasure, twisting her with confusion, making her want to pull away and shove him deeper all at the same time. “No, my sweet Tess,” he rumbled. “Not nearly enough for either of us.”

  His thumb teased her with shallow strokes while his silken lips brushed the quivering skin of her thighs, and then suddenly his teeth nipped her in a hot, blistering flas
h of ecstasy. The small mark left wet by his mouth burned on the inner flesh of her thigh, and yet, it hadn’t hurt so much as tantalized. She shivered from the primitive sensation, and already his mouth soothed the sting, soft and sweet, nuzzling the exact spot.

  “Gods, woman, what I would do to you if I could,” he groaned, his strong voice shaky with need, and she writhed with the pleasure of his words while his mouth reclaimed its brutal passion and he sucked savagely at a sensitive, cream-covered patch of skin just above her clit. The intimate kiss was nearly bruising in its intensity, deliciously intimate and untamed, and Tess could do naught but revel in its possession.

  And then he pressed his face lower, licking a lusty path through her soaked folds once more, his feral growl vibrating wickedly against her sensitive flesh. He licked upward again on a long, strong stroke, and then nipped playfully at her clit, before suckling it into the moist, searing haven of his mouth. His tongue flicked and pressed, working her clit as she imagined a man’s mouth might work a woman’s nipple, while all the while that wicked thumb continued to ream her backside, and she lurched against him, uncaring that she was pumping her wet, open sex against his face, her ass onto his thumb, demanding he give her more and more and more.

  “I said open your eyes, little one.” This time, his voice came hard, brutal in the way that only a man’s voice could sound. Firm and demanding immediate compliance. She’d have refused that intimidating snarl ‘til her last dying breath, if it weren’t for the sharp edge of need she could hear buried within the words. And yet, she still couldn’t obey, certain she would lose him if she did. “Now,” he growled against her clit. “If you want my mouth eating at this perfect little treasure, you must watch me take it. I want your eyes on me, woman. I want you to know who’s eating your secrets. I want you to accept who’s making you come—making your tender little cunt cream until we’re both soaked with it.”