Page 31 of Forbidden Desires

His hand went to her ass, caressing it, and then he bent at an awkward angle and kissed it. Amelia gave a small gasp, and he rejoiced. His mate was with him. He could feel the connection between them even with the Tan-ge trying to tear it apart. They were stronger together than they would ever be apart.

“I’m going to spank you; between every smack, I’m going to caress your ass and kiss where I spanked. This way, you’ll know that it is me and that you’re loved. While I’m doing that, you’regoing to weave a stronger shield. It won’t be the best, strongest, or prettiest. Right now, we want him out. Your shield and my abilities will drive him away. Do you understand?”

Her head jerked before flopping back down, giving him the only indication that she could. His hand came down on her ass. He flinched at the sound of the smack echoing through the cabin of the shuttle. He caressed her ass and then kissed it. When he spanked her a second time, the sound was louder, reverberating as if he had hurt her.

“It’s just my imagination,” he mouthed the words. Then he spanked her again and the sound of it almost cleaved him in half. It was a fight to caress her ass and kiss where he spanked. It was also a revelation that opened his understanding. The Tan-ge was inducing and pushing these feelings that made it seem like he was hurting and abusing his mate.

The unknown and unnamed Tan-ge wanted Amelia dead sooner than later, and he was pushing for it. Why? What did he want to hide?

Amelia choked, struggling to breathe. Zylar no longer wondered about the Tan-ge; his mate’s life was on the line.

He spanked her hard and fast. “Work with me, love, he demanded.” He could hear his voice, but it was also in her head and sent back to him. They were one, growing closer together every minute of each day. His heart pounded at the revelation that he loved his little prickly lotus flower. He should call her a rose because she came with thorns.

“Fight love, it’s you and me together. It’s us against the world and only together can we overcome it. If you want every human on the planet and that includes your family to bow down and kiss your feet, I’ll make it happen. Anything for my mate, but you have to fight. Together we can defeat the Tan-ge.”

He heard a soft chuckle come from her. Zylar was amazed she could make a sound with the attack they were under. Then hesaw it. Amelia was trying to build a shield; except she didn’t know how. They were going to have to do this together. Not once in any of the sacred scrolls he read had a healer, and his mate built a shield together. His planet had never experienced a time like this, so that made sense.

“We’ll do this together, love.” He was going to come up with thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of names to call her. That would always remind her of the love he had for her. Did she love him? His best guess was no, not right now. He’d wait. She was worth waiting for.

Zylar maneuvered Amelia and himself until he was lying next to her on the shuttle floor with her on top of him. With one hand, he stroked her poor abused ass. With the other, he guided her head to his. He took her lips, kissing her with a silent promise in the kiss that he would always place her life above his.

His soul met hers, watching as she tried to build a shield, only for it to collapse repeatedly.

“Why are we here?”

“Welcome.” He could hear the smile in her voice laced with frustration.

“Shields,” she gave him shield 101. “Can be built in two places. One is the mind, the other is the soul. The mind is the most fragile of the shields. It has nothing to power it but the strength of the body. We know the body is easy to defeat. There is illness and general wear and tear and that’s without getting into a physical confrontation. I believe my shields were initially formed in my mind. It was like I was walking around with a blinking neon sign that said abuse me.”

He watched as she attempted to build another shield and it broke apart between her hands.

“I think you’re being too literal. Right, I’ve never built a shield before, but I deal with power every day. When I first learned to channel my healing abilities, Zalla, the healer I was studyingunder, said I would feel the greatest concentration of my healing power in my hands. I would stare at them, willing them to light up. To prove to the world that I was a healer and not a fake born as a royal. Nothing I did worked. One day, Zalla said I could stare at my hands forever and nothing would happen. This wasn’t an instance of mind over matter. If I wanted my healing ability to happen, then I had to be willing to open myself to it, to become one and then it would flood my body charging me with its essence until the only other place for it to go was my hands.”

He stopped to mourn his teacher. He was fated to his mate. When she died, he followed her quickly, as if there couldn’t be one without the other. Zalla was a great healer, and many have said he should have fought harder to stay with them. Now that Zylar was mated to Amelia, he couldn’t think of a place he wouldn’t follow her to. How could Zalla, who had been mated for thousands of years, not follow his love into the next adventure of life?

Amelia dropped her fragile shield.

“That makes sense.” Amelia dropped the shield, not sorry to see it dissipate into nothingness. She turned her attention to the kiss Zylar was planting on her. She loved his lips. They were the quintessential silk over steel that she always dreamed about as a teen. She sank into his kiss, forgetting about building shields. When she felt pressure at the base of her spine, she thought it was an orgasm coming for her out of the blue. Then it spread through her body. There was a tingling in her hands and feet. Her limbs felt numb while also feeling on fire. This wasn’t like any orgasm she’d ever felt before.

When black-hot power coalesced in her soul, her body arched and trembled with the strength of it.

“Why is my power brown?” She watched it with wide eyes as a shield emerged that was greater than anything she could have made on her own.

“Why should your powers, abilities, and essence be anything other than what you are?”

Just like that woman, she was validated. Not because some man said you are, thus you are. Nope, that wasn’t it.Someone had taken the time to remind her in a world that would undermine her, that her power came from inside and it was just as glorious as she was on the outside.

The Tan-ge sent his final battler strike and her soul shield, a magnificent bronze in color, rose to meet it. She used her shield to send it back to him.

“I’m coming for you,” Amelia screamed. “You can hide, but I will find you. Please hide while I seek. You’re a dead male walking.”

Chapter Eighteen

Amelia reluctantly pulled away from Zylar. She wished they could stay that way forever. It was unrealistic, but their future held too much uncertainty for her to walk casually into it. Someone was going to have to pull her kicking and screaming into the great unknown.

“Meowrrr.”

“What the heck?” She looked at Zylar hoping her eyes were saying tell me that’s not who I think it is.”

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