“In my time. I’ve watched you these past three nights, Lilia, you and the boy you waste yourself on.”
“How dare you.”
“You gave him love, he gave you lies. Both are precious. Tell me, how would you like to repay him for his gift to you?”
She felt something stir in her, the first juices of vengeance. “He deserves nothing from me, neither he nor any man.”
“How true. So you’ll give to me what no man deserves.”
Fear rushed in, and she ran with it. But somehow he was standing in front of her, smiling that cold smile.
“What are you?”
“Ah, insight. I knew I’d chosen well. I am what was before your weak and rutting gods were belched out of the heavens.”
She ran again, a scream locked in her throat. But he was there, blocking her way. Her fear had jumped to terror. “It’s death to touch a temple priestess.”
“And death is such a fascinating beginning. I seek a companion, a lover, a woman, a student. You are she. I have a gift for you, Lilia.”
This time when she ran, he laughed. Laughed still when he plucked her off her feet, tossed her sobbing to the ground.
She fought, scratching, biting, begging, but he was too strong. Now it was his mouth on her breast, and she wept with the shame of it even as she raked her nails down his cheek.
“Yes. Yes. It’s better when they fight. You’ll learn. Their fear is perfume; their screams music.” He caught her face in his hand, forced her to look at him.
“Now, into my eyes. Into them.”
He drove himself into her. Her body shuddered, quaked, bucked, from the shock. And the unspeakable thrill.
“Did he take you so high?”
“No. No.” The tears began to dry on her cheeks. Instead of clawing, beating, her hands dug into the sand searching for purchase. Trapped in his eyes, her body began to move with his.
“Take more. You want more,” he said. “Pain is so…arousing.”
He plunged harder, so deep she feared she might rend in two. But still her body matched his pace, still her eyes were trapped by his.
When his went red, her heart leaped with fresh fear, and yet that fear was squeezed in a fist of terrible excitement. He was so beautiful. Her human lover pale beside this dark, damning beauty.
“I give you the instrument of your revenge. I give you your beginning. You have only to ask me for it. Ask me for my gift.”
“Yes. Give me your gift. Give me revenge. Give me—”
Her body convulsed when his fangs struck. And every pleasure she had known or imagined diminished beside what rushed into her. Here, here was the glory she’d never found in the temple, the burgeoning black power she’d always known stretched just beyond her fingertips.
Here was the forbidden she’d longed for.
It was she, writhing in that pleasure and power, that brought him to climax. And she, without being told, reared up to drink the blood she’d scored from his cheek.
Smiling through bloody lips, she died.
And woke in her bed two thousand years after the dream.
Her body felt bruised, tender, her mind muddled. Where was the sea? Where was the temple?
“Cirio?”
“A romantic? Who would have guessed.” Cian stepped out of the shadows. “To call out for the lover who spurned and betrayed you.”