ReluctantConsort by Lora Leigh Read Free Book Online

Consortress’s
magick.
    “Shadow Hell,” Daelan cursed, his entire body tight, tense
with a need unlike any he’d ever known even when her magick had touched them in
the Vale. The touch of her unconscious magick had his shaft harder than the
obsidian stone of the fortress and his body as sensitive as a babe’s.
    He prayed as he never had before that somewhere within him
he could find the strength to hold back the hunger raging at him until they
reached safety. And for the first time in all his decades of war, he was
uncertain if that were possible.
    As twins, he and Caedan had not known hungers this powerful
to sweep through them. As all magickal twins, they were wont to share their
women, even to take a single magickal female as a lover should they not be
opposed. But this hunger to share a woman, to mark with not just their body but
the magick surging inside them like a storm was near more than they could
believe. It was much stronger, much hotter than all the times they’d touched
her, prepared her in the Vale for their possession in the past.
    And a Sorceress? A true Sorceress. This fierce little thing
whose pride had held back her tears, whose sense of belonging to her brother,
and wild, tempestuous magick within a hidden realm was like a call to the very
depths of what he had not realized was his and his brother’s lonely hearts for
such a radiant soul—this being of female heat and magick most beloved by the
One.
    Holding to her tightly, he rushed to the huge, surefooted
horses they had called to them as they stepped from the mists the past eve. As
Caedan swung onto the first jet-black beast, Daelan relinquished his burden to
his brother, aware of Caedan’s indrawn breath as the magick pulsing beneath her
skin took him unaware.
    There was no time to acknowledge it, nor to truly enjoy it,
for the sound of the humans’ mounts beating upon the path leading to the falls
could now clearly be heard.
    Gripping the beast’s mane, Daelan swung himself onto the
animal’s back, gripping its powerful sides with his knees as he pushed his
leathered feet into the stirrups of the light saddle.
    Without sound, the animals moved swiftly the short distance
to shallower waters before splashing across the wide stream to the forest on
the other side.
    The Ogre warriors disappeared into the forest just as the
humans’ mounts were galloping to the banks beyond.
    They had escaped, though how the king’s guards had known to
search first a place well removed from the fortress, he would know soon. There
was a traitor among the Ogre, they had known this for many years. How else
could the human hunters slip so easily, so quickly across the Causeway to steal
away with the magickal beings that had obviously been drawn to a place where
they could be taken?
    Even the little goddess Muse was not exempt from treachery,
though knowledge of her origins was limited. Not but a fortnight past she too
had confronted human males intent on removing her from the Causeway to the
human stronghold of Alistair the Perverted.
    She had escaped without showing her power only by chance.
    As the horses tore through the forests, instinct guiding the
magick they possessed only when the Ogre rode them. They were as swift as the
once-plentiful Pegasus, and as surefooted as even the mountain werecats.
    This day, Daelan and his brother both knew it was not just
their lives they owed to the beasts, but the life of their Sorceress as well.
    * * * * *
    As the mists of the Causeway enfolded them, the mounts were
brought to a stop, the warriors dismounting quickly and moving to the
four-legged, broad-muscular mounts of the Causeway, the Torc.
    Torc, resembling the small-winged dragons or the enchanted
dragon form of the Sorceress protector Garren, though without the ability to
walk on two legs or speak with disrespectful mockery. For that, the Ogre
thanked the One.
    The Torc were large, with blocky bodies, carnivorous
appetites for human flesh and excellent hearing and