The Paradise Gate

Ch.3 A Better Fate Than Wisdom

Why did he have to make that sound so salacious? Dalli wondered, hating how easily he cracked her composure, and not even certain what it was she thought he was implying.

Lycinder crooked his finger in a come-hither motion, and, after a brief hesitation, Dalli stepped forward so they were only at arm's length apart.

"Closer than that, mistress," he cooed.

When she inched forward, Lycinder rolled his eyes, snaked an arm around her waist, and drew her flush against him quite before she'd even read his intent.

The solid heat of him was shocking, and Dalli realized how very much larger than her he truly was. She felt like a doll, and he'd certainly moved her as if she weighed no more than one.

She was abruptly reminded of that live-wire feeling that had possessed the room just before he'd crossed the veil, only this time it wasn't pain that accompanied the buzzing shivers slipping through her veins. No, this was something quite different.

The grip of Lycinder's fingers tightened experimentally on her waist, as though the feel of her was somehow unexpected, and then she remembered: she wasn't wearing a corset. Her cheeks burned as she met his glittering eyes, his crooked smirk and arched brow saying, "Aren't you just full of surprises?" as clearly as if he'd spoken the words.

His free hand came up to sink into the sunlight-on-mahogany strands at the nape of her neck, the pleasant tickling sensation of his fingers threading through her hair failing to presage the frisson of heat that would bloom between her hips as he closed them into a fist and pulled her head back.

With his already lazy eyelids slipping to half-mast as he leaned over her, he smiled gently and dropped his gaze to her lips.

Dalli, too stunned to follow the natural impulse to close her own eyes at first, was fully aware as he dipped his face to hers. Until, that is, he pulled back at the very last moment, flicking his eyes back up to hers.

"This will be easier if you relax," he said, not unkindly.

Dalli bit her lip, but nodded and tried to steady her racing heart.

He gentled his grip on her hair to trace soft circles on her neck with the pad of his thumb, and she focused on that, letting her eyelids grow heavy and feeling the tension begin to bleed out of her muscles in spite of her nervousness. This time, when he leaned in, her eyes fell shut at last, and her lips parted of their own accord.

She didn't see it when, at the last moment, inky shadows once again overtook his twilit eyes.

Expecting the press of Lycinder's lips on hers, Dalli was shocked when instead white lightning abruptly struck the back of her throat and spread throughout her body.

Her eyelids struggled desperately to fly open, but it was as if they were glued shut by the same current that locked her now rigid limbs in place.

She did everything in her power to clamp her teeth closed against the intrusion, but suddenly the hand that had been so sweetly soothing her took her jaw in a vise grip, the same thumb that drew such tender patterns on her skin just moments before now digging mercilessly into her cheek and forcing her mouth to open wider.

Despite the involuntary shuttering of her eyelids, behind them she saw.

What she was seeing was another matter: it was like staring into the flashing brilliance of a dying star, its peaks searing, and the valleys just as blinding for their darkness that was beyond the lack of light. 

What brightness was missing from those lulls seemed to be suffusing her, and violently, from the inside. Every nerve ending wailed in unendurable agony as those flashes radiated from her center where Lycinder was forcing that terrible light to land.