Pleasure. Jacquelyn Frank

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СКАЧАТЬ her close. He lowered his head and spoke softly against her ear. “Afraid?” he asked quietly, accepting her immediate nod. “Yes, Valera, there is too much unknown between us and the unknown is fearful. What I don’t tell you,” he tried to explain, “is what protects thousands and thousands of people. People who are precious to me. Even more precious than the vows I have betrayed just by touching you.”

      “You shouldn’t,” she hitched out softly, trying to brush his hold away.

      “Never fear, sweet. I will pay penance for my sin. But I will do it gladly and with pleasure just to have known the taste and the feel of you.” This last came out low and intensely erotic, sending shivers down her breasts and tightening her sensitized nipples. “Can you imagine, pretty little Valera, what I would be willing to pay for the chance to immerse myself in the sin that you are?”

      Oh, but how could he ever sincerely repent of something that felt so magnificent? Just holding her rocked him with astounding sensation and need. Her vulnerable tears and ridiculous surprise that he would find her so irresistible were too enchanting. He sensed she was a strong woman. She had to be to survive so bravely alone in so harsh an environment, but she was equally sensitive and this, he suspected, was why she had hidden herself away from the rest of her race.

      “I won’t let you get punished because of me,” she balked, trying again to draw away from him. But this time Sagan was well prepared for her resistance. She finally stopped struggling when she realized she wasn’t the smallest bit of a challenge to his strength and will. “Why?” she asked weakly as she relaxed against him. “Why, when you know it’s wrong for you?”

      “You’re right,” he breathed. “I should control myself better. However, Valera, I find a serious lack of desire to turn away the first woman to stimulate my interest in a very long time. Too long a time. For all I am a devoted priest, Drenna knows I am a man as well. And either this is the cruelest temptation M’gnone could ever dangle before me, or there is another reason behind it. What are the odds I should come here, to this remote little place and this extraordinary woman, only to so suddenly feel this way? And then to have you feel the same in return. No, don’t deny me, Valera. I can feel it. I…”

      Know it. Without any doubt, the knowledge burst into his brain with brilliance and satisfaction as his innate telepathic power flared to life inside him. He soared through her wonderful mind, facts and details about her suddenly flooding him, familiarizing him with her, telling him what she held so reluctantly secret.

      Magic.

      Chapter Four

      To one of his kind, the word was a curse and a danger. Those hunted and caught by necromancers were maliciously destroyed by those befouled creatures. The black magic that stained their souls was easy to detect on them, as the foulness emanated from them in a disgusting odor any Nightwalker could smell even from a distance. To the point where it was almost unbearable. They reeked like gasoline and fetid garbage, and their power was deadly and dangerous.

      And Valera had been one of them. She had fallen in with them a decade ago, corrupting herself.

      However, Sagan only needed to breathe deeply of the clean purity of lilies and sunflowers to know she was not of that evil ilk any longer. Indeed, she had never intentionally meant to be a part of such corruption. When she had learned what they were all about, she had bolted from them as fast and as far as she could, hating herself for her small deviation from the way she really was.

      What astounded the priest above everything else was the realization that she still used magic. In fact, she had used it to protect herself from the two who had intended her deep harm. Anger flushed his body as he recalled the threats made against her using her memories of the encounter. She had been so quietly brave, tapping into the part of herself she still half feared to protect herself, her home, and him.

      Yet, in spite of having recently toyed with what he deemed to be a dark art, it had left no stain behind itself. There was nothing to mark her as tainted or evil, and he knew that was because she was the farthest thing from it. Indeed, she was something so strong that she had been able to pull herself away from the brink of the addiction the magic she had been using had become to her. Sagan saw and felt it clearly in her mind and memories, the clarity of the understanding so sharp.

      Evil magic became an addiction. Like cocaine or methamphetamines, one taste was enough to corrupt the whole person instantly. It cascaded downward from there. But Valera had broken away and saved herself, her moral fiber so strong she couldn’t bear what she had seen them do to his kind so punitively. Feeling how compelling it had been to drown in the high that was black magic, he was shocked at what it must have taken for her to save herself.

      However, Sagan had never heard of good magic-users, and he was mystified by the anomaly she was. He was also very aware of her terror that he would find out and try to hurt her for it because of his universal beliefs against her kind. But…it wasn’t “her kind.” She was something very different than those the Shadowdwellers had fought against in the past. Not that it was ever much of a fight. Necromancers had a terrible advantage over his people, as she had recently found out for herself. Just calling her power emitted a brilliant blue energy that would hurt him just like any other light would. Or so he understood. He didn’t know for certain, and he didn’t have time to filter through her every memory of every spell in her repertoire.

      “So,” he said softly, “you are even more of a surprise than I thought.”

      Valera was looking into his eyes as those long moments of thought passed over him, and so she knew when he said that exactly what he meant. She jolted in instantaneous fear, trying to jerk away from him. “No! I’m not! I’m not what you think! Let go!” she cried when he held her all the tighter. She sobbed harshly in her panic. “Please don’t hurt me,” she begged him. “I don’t want to hurt you!”

      Sagan gripped her tightly, drawing her flailing body up close so he could hush softly against her ear.

      “Shh, Valera,” he soothed her. “I know. I know what you are and how different you are from those we call our enemies.” He smiled with bemusement as he pulled back to look at her. “And you know what I am, don’t you?”

      “No,” she breathed, her entire body still trembling with her post-fear adrenaline. “I mean…not exactly. I think you are a Nightwalker, but I don’t know which kind. Can you read my mind? Are you a telepath? Is that how you know?”

      “Yes. But telepathy is not so selective as you might think. What made you think I would only learn of the magic, but not of the person behind it and her good intentions? What you must think of my people to feel we would come after you without discretion? And clearly you know nothing of Shadowdwellers or you would never have chosen this place to hide in.”

      That remark baffled her, but she focused on one part of it.

      “Shadowdweller? I’ve never met a Shadowdweller before. Thank God.”

      He knew she meant that if she had, that would mean her past associates had gotten a hold of one to imprison and torture. But all it had taken was seeing them capture a Demon and watching it go through its tortured transformation to convince her that something was very, very wrong with those who had taken pleasure in its pain and terror. While the others used the end result to prove to themselves that the creature they held was evil, Valera had known that nothing that caused anything to suffer so much in the process of stripping it of its beauty and civilization could ever be called good or righteous as they would have her believe. In the end, the transformed Demon monster left in the magical pentagram had been nothing to her compared to the magical monsters waiting with avarice to force СКАЧАТЬ