“Laya! I’m going to give you my baby. You hear me?”
This time she was the one shocked with a jolt of rushing excitement. Dizzy, she reached out to brace against his shoulders and looked down into his beloved granite eyes.
“What do you mean?” she gasped, suddenly feeling everything much more sharply and feeling her heart race out of control.
“I mean I should be fertile by now, Malaya. I was due to medicate three days ago. But I figured you might want that heir.”
Malaya pressed against him and stopped. Panting hard, she stared down at him. He was gripping her desperately and she knew he was boiling close to climax, but she needed a second. Just a second.
She sat upright, sharply, her head falling back as her body arched. She closed her eyes and rose up against his hands again. They were back in their frantic pace once more within seconds, but Malaya was somewhere much altered from what her body was experiencing. Still feeling the rise of pleasure, feeling the tremble of approaching the brink of release, she was also watching the flash of imagery flooding her mind. The vision tensed her up, clenching her around Guin so tightly that he cursed in a harsh, blue rush. But the more she saw, the harder she rocked him into herself.
When he came it was with the vibrating roar of a beast. It shimmered into her as she felt hot release jetting deep within her body. And as she shot into orgasm for herself, she saw everything she needed.
She saw the royal wedding that they would have, placing Guin into state with class, respect, and elegance, and she saw crowds of their people shouting out for him as if he were their personal friend and hero.
She saw herself undressing for him one day and the rocketing shock he reacted with when he was the first to see the color change around her navel. And then he was whirling her around in the air with his joy.
She saw herself ripe with child and Guin, as always, close beside her.
Malaya gasped as her entire body jolted with both climax and the relief of affirmation. There was no telling how long it would take for any one of those visions to come to pass, but they all meant the same thing to her. Guin was alive and he was going to stay that way.
Overrun with misfiring nerves and relieving emotion, she collapsed across Guin’s chest and struggled hard for breath so she could tell him all she’d seen. Her eyes were full of tears again, Malaya unable to help the emotional rush of them.
Despite that, she was smiling when she rose up to tell Guin their future.
Did you miss the beginning of Jacquelyn’s
SHADOWDWELLERS series?
Go back and pick up the first two titles today!
ECSTASY
At one with the darkness, the mysterious Shadowdwellers must live as far from light-loving humans as possible in order to survive. Yet one damaged human woman will tempt the man behind the Shadowdweller throne into a dangerous desire…
Worlds Couldn’t Keep Them Apart
Among the Shadowdwellers, Trace holds power that some are willing to kill for. Without a stranger’s aid, one rival would surely have succeeded, but Trace’s brush with death is less surprising to him than his reaction to the beautiful, fragile human who heals him. By rights, Trace should hardly even register Ashla’s existence within the realm of Shadowscape, but instead he is drawn to everything about her—her innocence, her courage, and her lush, sensual heat…
After a terrifying car crash, Ashla Townsend wakes up to find that the bustling New York she knew is now eerie and desolate. Just when she’s convinced she’s alone, Ashla is confronted by a dark warrior who draws her deeper into a world she never knew existed. The bond between Ashla and Trace is a mystery to both, but searching for answers will mean confronting long-hidden secrets, and uncovering a threat that could destroy everything Trace holds precious…
RAPTURE
The Shadowdwellers live in a realm of darkness and sensuality, where order is prized and sin must be punished. Yet for Magnus, the head priest of Sanctuary, salvation rests with the one woman who can entice him to break every rule…
She Was The Ultimate Temptation
Magnus is a man of contradictions—a spiritual leader in a warrior’s body. To him, laws are for enforcing and visions must be followed—even if that means freeing a beautiful slave and making her his reluctant handmaiden. Betrayed once before, Magnus can barely bring himself to trust another woman. Yet Daenaira’s fiery innocence is drawing them both into a reckless inferno of desire…
Daenaira grew up hearing tales of a fearsome priest who seemed more myth than reality. But Magnus is very real—every inch of him—and so is the treachery surrounding them. Beneath Sanctuary’s calm surface, an enemy is scheming to unleash havoc on the Shadowdwellers, unless Magnus trusts in a union ordained by fate, and sealed by unending bliss…
And here’s a peek at her upcoming series!
Asia opened her eyes with a slow, sticky flutter, as if she didn’t have the energy to complete the task. It only took an instant for memory to rush in on her, and fury and outrage bolted into her rapidly afterward. She surged upright into a sitting position…
…and promptly flopped over onto her chest and face, her whole body wobbling in on itself like a tragically overcooked noodle. She found her nose buried into a gossamer fabric of white that clung softly to her face even as she tried to get strength under herself to at least roll back and breathe some fresh air.
It was the touch of smooth fingers around her throat and shoulder that finally made the action possible. The stroke of that touch against her skin made it scream with sudden sensitivity, but Asia gritted her teeth against the unwanted sensation as she was turned over. She didn’t need to look up into those jade eyes to know that the hands belonged to her heartless enemy. Julian Sawyer. He pressed a palm to the bedding beside her ear and brushed aside her wild hair as he leaned over her. Darkest brown curls slid into a loose arrangement against his forehead. She wished she had the energy to reach up and snatch the charmingly obnoxious trait right out of his forehead. Even more, she wished she could knee the bastard right in the crotch. He was leaning over her in a vulnerable enough position, but she simply had no strength.
“What did you do to me?” she demanded, surprised to hear the breathy weakness in her own voice. Then, in the very next instant, she began to recall very vivid snatches of exactly what he had done to her.
Well, not exactly.
But damn well enough to know without a doubt that it had been his manipulation that had caused her loss of all control. He had ripped away all of her defenses in a heartbeat, prying her open and gutting her for his own fascination and inspection. She remembered the waves of unbelievable pleasure, the crippling need as he had tormented her. Asia especially remembered the embarrassing way she had writhed beneath him, all but begging him to do what she would never have wanted him to do.
She fought the urge to cry like some kind of weak, whimpering heroine in a movie who waited around for someone else to save her. Asia had always saved herself. No one would take that from her, especially not the man who had already stolen her dignity away from her. Dignity and oh so very much more.
“I’m sorry,” he said, sliding a hand under her head and slowly rearranging her on the comfortable bedding. The bed felt rather like being cradled in a hammock, only somehow firmer. Certainly a much larger and more stable environment as he knelt halfway onto the surface beside her. “I had no choice. Had it been up to me, I would have done this properly. However, when you drew blood, proper became impossible.”
The memory of blooding him made her smile…until she recalled the color of that blood.
“You’re an alien?” It sounded utterly ridiculous even to her, so she didn’t resent his laughter. But it was the only explanation she could come up with.
“No, zini, I am not. Alien to your world, perhaps, but here you are the alien.”
Panic infused her as her very worst fears were confirmed.
Dorothy wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
“Hol
y hell and damnation,” she uttered. “I’ve been kidnapped by aliens?!” She scoffed and reached up to hit him, push him or, damn it, even flick him. Anything to reflect her fury with him for putting her in this preposterous position. All she managed was a weak flop of her hand against his chest. He made it worse by chuckling again.
“I never would have taken you to have such an imagination,” he mused.
“Get away from me,” she hissed. “When this drug wears off, you prick, I’m going to kick the shit out of you.”
“I thank you for the forewarning. It is most considerate of you. However, you are not drugged. Merely exhausted. To be honest, I am rather surprised to see you awake. It is nothing plenty of sleep cannot cure, of course. Then you will be free to kick my ass if it is what will make you feel better. Experience tells me, however, that it is not likely to help you.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll have fun with it just the same,” she grumbled. She paused in her temper, finding even strong emotions to be exhausting. She took the moment to look around her surroundings. Above her was a sharp, conical ceiling, the shape and material quite surreal. It was as if it had been hand-woven. Some kind of fibrous material turned in progressive, tight patterns all the way up until it reached a perfect point about 12 feet above her. The shape reminded her of the cap to the tower where Rapunzel had been kept prisoner in her storybook as a child. She had always hated those “princess in a tower” stories. She supposed she had been an empowered female even as a child, circumstances making her older and wiser before her time. Kenya had been a little more fanciful. But that was because Asia had raised her to provide her with a little more opportunity to be free to follow her dreams and desires.
“Where am I?” she asked at last, though she dreaded hearing she was on some kind of funky, pointy spaceship.
“You are Beneath,” he said, as if that explained everything.
He looked like that was all he was going to say for a moment, but then seemed to reassess that plan. Asia realized he had judged her capable of handling the truth, no matter how shocking it might be to her, and she couldn’t help but feel surprised that he had intuited what so many men around her could never seem to figure out. Even the ones that had known her for years couldn’t help the constantly annoying urge they seemed to be innately born with to protect her from things that were, in the end, really quite trivial, or to condescend to her because of her gender. It gave her a chill that a stranger seemed to get what they had never been able to comprehend and she’d barely had a real conversation with him.
“I know this will be hard for you to believe, and you will only be convinced when you see it all for yourself. After all, to you I am not worthy of trust and I am a lowlife beneath the capability of truth. I realize this is your perspective. Just the same, I will explain. Earth…” he hesitated when he saw her eyes flinch slightly at the reference to Earth as a place separate and apart from his pending explanation. “Earth is both much nearer and much farther than you may comprehend. We are Beneath. Beneath Earth.” He sat on the edge of the bed and held out a flat hand, palm down. “Think of it as levels of existence. Earth is a plane, or some would call it a dimension. Located here. In this sense, you have to imagine that Earth is actually flat. It’s a flat space running in an infinite line on its particular plane, one dimension within the universe, so to speak. There are planes both above and below the plane you know. Humans have a sense of them, actually, and mistakenly refer to them as Heaven and Hell. Heaven and Hell are actually very different dimensions beyond what I am about to describe, but let’s not confuse the issue. There are three planes above Earth, and three below. Each runs parallel to the one above or below it. You are here.” He indicated a plane far and low from the hand representing Earth. “Beneath. The lowest plane below.”
“Great. I’m literally in the lowest level of hell,” she ground out. “I suppose you are going to tell me it all ‘looks just like Earth’?”
“Hardly that,” he said with a frown. “In fact, I must warn you not to go outside of this house without me at first. It can be very dangerous for one who is unfamiliar with the nature of this place.”
“How convenient,” she said with snide sarcasm. “If I believe you, I might stay here cowering in fear of the unknown and not attempt escape. Nice try.”
“I’m quite serious,” Julian said sharply then. “This is no ploy. I have no reason to keep you within these walls except to keep you safe from outside harm. It is not as though you can run back home or escape to somewhere else.”
Asia couldn’t help but feel a little bit rattled by how off-the-cuff confident he seemed of that.
“And you just happen to speak English here?” she asked shrewdly.
“No, I know English from my time in America and other countries of Earth. Those who are native Beneath speak a language of the mind and of energy. Again, your species has a sense of it in things like body language. It may take a little time, but you will come to comprehend us quite well eventually.”
“Like hell I will. There isn’t going to be any ‘eventually’. I want to go back home.
“You cannot.”
ZEBRA BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2009 by Jacquelyn Frank
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
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ISBN: 978-1-4201-1268-9
Jacquelyn Frank, Pleasure
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