Mistral's Kiss

He pushed just the tip of himself inside me, and the wind changed instantly. It felt almost hot. I could still smell rain, but there was also a metallic smell. The scent of ozone, lightning. The air was hot and close, and I knew in that moment that it wasn't that I wanted Mistral inside me when the storm broke, but that the storm would not come until he was inside me. He was the storm, as Abeloec had been the cup. Mistral was the heavy press of the air, and that neck-ruffling promise of lightning.

I raised up and shoved my body onto him. He actually stopped me with his hands on my hips. "No," he said, "no, I will say when."

I went back to pressing my upper body to the dry ground. I said, "Mistral, please, don't you feel it? Don't you feel it?"

"Storm," he said, and his voice seemed lower than it had been, a growling roll, as if his voice held an echo of thunder in it.

I raised up, but not to try to control him. I wanted to see him. I wanted to see if there had been other changes besides the growl of thunder in his voice. He still glowed with power, but it was as if dark grey clouds had moved in over that glow, so that I saw only the shine of his power through the veil of clouds.

He stared down at me, and his eyes flashed bright, so bright that for a moment his face was half obscured by that white, white light. The brilliance faded, leaving afterimages in my vision. But without the lightning, his eyes weren't the grey of rain clouds; they were black. That blackness that rolls across the sky at midday, and sends us all ru

I shivered, gazing down my body at him, shivered, because I wondered…was I too mortal to survive this? Was his power going to burn along my flesh, and hurt me in ways that I did not want?

It was as if Abeloec heard me thinking. He spoke, in a low, soft voice that made me look at him. He was still kneeling in front of us, but it was as if his pale skin were fading into the growing dark, as if he, himself, were dissipating into the circle of power. His hair was shot through with lines of blue, red, and green, and those lines traced the circle that held us, and on into the dark to the men beyond. His eyes held sparks of all those colors, but it was as if his power grew. He began to be that power, and not be as much Abeloec. I could tell that if he were not careful, he would become only the lines of power that traced out into the dark.

"Earth and sky is a very old dance, Meredith," he said. "Do not fear the power. It has waited too long for you to allow you to be harmed now."

I found my voice in a hoarse whisper. "Look at him."

"Yes," Abeloec said, "he is the storm come to life."

"I am mortal."

I thought he smiled, but I couldn't be certain. I could not see his face clearly, though I knew he was only a few feet in front of me.

"In this time and place, you are the Goddess, the earth to meet the strike of the sky. Does that sound like someone who is merely mortal?"

Mistral chose that moment to remind me that he was there. He bent over my body, and bit me on the back, as his body shoved inside me. The combination of the two made me push myself tighter against him. He bit me harder, and I writhed against him, trapped between his body and his mouth.

His mouth let go, and he wrapped his arms around me. His weight lay along the back of my body, in a warm, solid line. I was supporting most of his weight, for his hands played lightly over my breasts and stomach. He was inside me, but as he had done the first time, once he was in, he had stopped moving. He spoke with his face next to mine. "It has been too long. I will not last if you move like that."

I turned my head, and he was close enough that when the light flashed in his eyes, I was blinded for a second. I closed my eyes and saw white and black explosions against my eyelids. I spoke with my eyes still closed. "I can't help moving."

He sighed, and didn't so much push himself farther inside me as writhe while he was inside me. That made me writhe, and drew a sound from him that was half pleasure, half protest.

Thunder rolled through the cavern, echoing against the bare rock walls, like some gigantic drumroll that seemed to thrum across my skin.

"Hush, Meredith, quiet. If you move, I will not last."

"How can I not move with you inside me?"

He hugged me then, and said, "So long since anyone reacted to my body." He moved off my back, so that he was again on his knees, still with his body sheathed inside mine. But he pushed his hips against me and let me know that, bent over my body, he had not been completely sheathed inside me, because now the tip of him found the end of me, and I realized he might be too long for this position. If the man was too long, entering from behind could hurt. It didn't hurt yet, but it held the promise of it as he pushed gently against the i

He pushed the head of himself inside me, gentle at first, then more firmly, as if he were trying to find a way deeper. He pushed slow, and firm, and tight, until I made a sound of protest.

Thunder rumbled again, and the wind gusted. I could smell rain and ozone, as if lightning had struck somewhere near, though the only lightning had been in Mistral's eyes.

"How much do you like pain?" he asked, and his voice held thunder the way that Doyle's could hold the growl of a dog.

I thought I knew what he was asking, and I hesitated. How much do I like pain? I decided honesty was safest. I gazed back over my body until I could see him, and whatever words of caution I was about to utter died in my throat. He was something elemental. His body still held an outline, a solidness, but inside that solid line of skin were clouds, grey and black and white, boiling and writhing. The lightning flashed in his eyes again, and this time it rode down his body, a jagged line of brilliance that filled the world with the metallic smell of ozone. But it didn't affect my body like real lightning would have. Instead it was just a brilliant dance of light.

His eyes glowed in his face, lit by strike after strike of bright, white light. About every third flash, the lightning shot down his body and decorated his skin. His hair had come free of its ponytail, and that grey sheet of hair danced in the wind of his power, like some soft grey blanket trapped on a wash line as the storm thunders closer.

As many times as I'd made love to warriors of the sidhe, to creatures of faerie, the sight of him behind me still stole my words. I'd seen many wonders, but nothing quite like Mistral.

He asked again, "How much do you like pain?" But as he spoke, the lightning flashed, the glow filling his mouth and pouring out with his words.

I said the only thing I could think of: "Finish."

He smiled, and his lips held an edge of that glow. "Finish; just finish?"

I nodded. "Yes."

"Will you enjoy it?"

"I don't know."

His smile widened, and his eyes flashed, and that line of light sparkled down his body. I was blind for a moment in the brilliance of it. He began to draw himself out of me. "So be it," he said in that deep, rolling voice. Thunder echoed him along the roof, and for a moment it seemed as if the very walls thrummed with him.

He shoved himself inside me as fast and hard as he could, and he was too long. I screamed, and it wasn't all pleasure. I tried not to, but I began to writhe, not closer, but farther away, crawling away from that hard, sharp pain.