DREAM UPON WAKING Read online

  "Shalhevet's Mercy," he murmured. "I am not so pitiless that I can ignore that. Not when it is so clear to me how badly you need release."

  He pitied her, which was something altogether different than mercy. Noa pressed her lips together, then rehooked her cloak. She got to her feet.

  "I don't want your pity, my lord, no matter how much I might deserve it." She turned, humiliation burning in her chest. The tears clouding her vision made her stumble, and she caught herself with one hand on the edge of a table. She paused to blink her vision clear. Her breasts and clitoris ached from unfulfilled desire, but 'twas no different a sensation than had haunted her many nights before this.

  "I did not say you could leave, girl!"

  The thunder of his voice, so familiar, stopped her. Noa did not turn. She straightened her back and clenched her fists at her side, then twisted her head until she gave him her profile.

  "You take my truth and you throw it in my face to shame me?" she asked. "They say you are arrogant, and I've seen they are right. They say you are powerful, and I know that account to be true as well. But no matter what stories they whisper about you after you pass, no matter what tales the older students use to frighten the younger, I have never believed it when it is said that you are cruel. Until now."

  "Take not one step further," he said in warning.

  She whirled to face him. "Or what? What shall you do? Bid me get on my knees again? Bid me to lay down on the floor so you can strip my innocence from me while you mock my desire?"

  "I am not in the habit of deflowering maidens with such lack of finesse," Riordan replied.

  Her anger, spurred by her humiliation, had not abated. "No? From what I heard, you're not in the habit of anything at all!"

  His eyes narrowed. "Now what tales do they tell of me?"

  She allowed the twitch of smile touch her lips, though she'd never felt less like laughing. "They say you haven't brought a woman to your bed in nearly six harvests. Nor a man. That you spend each night alone, no matter how many willing partners you might have. Some say 'tis because you wish not to dilute your magic with excess sexual congress. Others claim your preferences run to the perverse—that the mere flesh of another human can not satisfy your urges."

  He lifted an eyebrow at her. "Really? And pray tell me, pretty one. What do you think?"

  Noa replied calmly, "I think you are afraid of intimacy."

  His laugh was short and cut off abruptly. He sneered and flicked his hand at her dismissively. "Then you are wrong."

  "I asked you to spare me Shalhevet's Mercy. I take back my request."

  Again, she turned to leave, and again his command forced her to halt. She knew he could have used the force of his will to glue her feet to the floor, but it took only his words to keep her from moving.

  "And if I won't let you? If I insist you stay?'

  Noa bent her head for a moment, worrying the soft flesh of her lower lip with her teeth. Everything had gone so horribly awry. She'd been a fool to think he'd want her when even the loveliest women at Somnus Keep hadn't been able to lure him into their beds. She'd asked him for Shalhevet's Mercy because she thought it was the only certain way to get him to agree to be her ahavatara, and she'd even failed at that.

  "You don't even know my name," she whispered, broken, her heart cracking beneath the weight of the love she did not wish to have for him.

  She was at the door, her hand on the great brass latch, before he spoke.

  "You do me great disservice," said Riordan. "Noa."

  Her fingers clenched on the smooth, cold brass.

  "Turn around."

  She did, hope setting her heart to a frenzied beat. He hadn't moved from his chair. His hair looked rumpled, as though he'd been running his hands through it. He lifted his hand and crooked a finger at her.

  "I cry your mercy, Noa. I was unkind because…because I have no excuse. I was cruel to mock you, and I cry your mercy."

  "You shall have it, my lord."

  "As you shall have mine, not Shalhevet's," Riordan said. "Come here."

  She went to him as though upon a cloud of air. Again, he whispered the words she'd dreamed so often, though now they were less a command and more a request. "Get on your knees."

  She did.

  "Slide up my robe. To my thighs."

  Bright sparkles of color flickered in Noa's vision the first time she touched the heavy linen of his black cassock. She heard the soft chuff of his laughter and humiliation stabbed at her. He could see the sparkles, too, and could sense the arousal triggering them to dance around her head. Still, he said nothing, so she continued.

  The cassock was lined with crimson satin. She'd glimpsed the color often as she watched him pace the classroom. When he turned corners, the red beneath the black winked at her. Now she let her fingers slide across the luxuriant fabric and imagined it as his skin.

  She gripped the robe's hem and lifted it to his ankles. His feet were bare despite the cold floor; his toes long and his ankles strong. She lifted the robe over his calves, scrunching the cloth between her fingers. Her thighs shifted as she knelt, and she fought a shudder as the first coarse hairs on his legs brushed her knuckles. She lifted the hem to his knees, then to his thighs.

  Noa stopped, still gripping the handfuls of his cassock. The red satin shimmered in front of her. Riordan hadn't moved.

  She waited, aching to move further, but not daring. Her fingers opened and closed slightly on the bunched cloth. She wanted to feel his flesh beneath her fingers, not the damn robe!

  "Farther."

  She pushed it farther, to the spot where the hair grew sparser and his skin paler. He shifted to allow her to push it higher. Fear struck her suddenly, and she stopped.

  "I didn't give you leave to stop."

  "Forgive me, my lord." Noa had to force the words from a throat gone dry. "I've never… I never have…"

  "Of course you haven't, Noa. That's why you came to me, isn't it? To give up your maidenhead in return for the power I can give you?"

  Noa nodded, thinking he could never know her real reasons. "I've waited a long time."

  "Push it farther."

  She took a deep breath and did as he commanded. He was as bare as she beneath the robe, and she wondered for the first time if he'd been expecting her. Then he lay exposed to her, the part of him she'd dreamed of when she squirmed on the hard desk during spells lessons. She blinked and forced herself not to look away.

  "You are…magnificent," she breathed.

  Her words seemed to startle him, because he let out another low noise. "Take me in your mouth."

  Oh, gladly! But Noa had no idea of how to practically do so from her position. She lifted herself higher by putting her hands on his thighs. Now her face was close enough. She closed her eyes, opened her mouth and slid the first inch of him into her mouth.

  She could not hold back the moan. Instinctively, she rested her belly on his knees and gripped the length of his shaft with her hands. Oh, she had dreamed of this, but even in her dreams she'd not imagined the sensations would shoot through her like comets in the night sky.

  Riordan lifted himself slightly and nudged himself further into her mouth. For one panicky instant Noa tensed, certain the feeling would make her gag. She thought a conforming spell, a calming spell, then could concentrate solely on the pleasure pouring through her.

  Though she'd never done this act, she'd spent enough time preparing for it in Sexual Arts class. She let him slide out, then in again, then suckled gently on the contoured head of his erection. Her hands found the weight of his testicles and she stroked them in time to her mouth's movements.

  Eager to taste and touch every part of him, Noa slid her mouth down the shaft to the swell of his balls. She pressed her mouth to them, then slid out her tongue to run it along the puckered line leading from the root of his cock. His hands gripped her hair harder, and she thought he muttered a curse.

  She slid a hand beneath her robe. She needed no more th