Carpathian 12 - Dark Melody

asking me to take a lot of things on faith."
    "We might come from two different worlds, Corinne, but you know we belong together."
    "Maybe," she agreed noncommittally. "So tell me the ritual."
    He circled her waist with his arm and leaned down to kiss her again. This time he lingered over the simple pleasure, savoring the moment. "When a Carpathian male recognizes his lifemate, he recites ritual words to bind her. The words are imprinted on him before birth. It is much like a human marriage but more permanent. Once said, the words bind the two, heart and soul and mind. She cannot escape him.
    They cannot be apart after that. They must touch one another often, using mind touch or they become…"
    He hesitated, searching for the right word. "I don't know – they need to be with one another or they can be very uncomfortable."
    "He just says a few words and she belongs to him?" She pushed at his chest with her small hand, glaring.
    "That doesn't sound very fair to me."
    "Now, Corinne" – his voice was as soft as velvet and just as sensuous – "I was not the one who created the ritual. It is thousands of years old. I can do no other than what my heart and soul demand."
    "You said the words to me?"
    He shook his head, his thick blue-black hair falling around his face. "I cannot while you are so ill. I do not know if your heart would be able to stand a separation from me during the hours I must sleep."
    "And it's hard for you because you haven't bound us together?" Her small white teeth bit at her lower lip as she struggled to understand what he was telling her. Words like risings and rituals belonged in someone else's world, not hers. She was very practical. When he began to laugh, she frowned at him, trying to look severe. "You were reading my mind again, weren't you?"
    He shrugged, that intriguing ripple of muscles beneath his immaculate shirt. "Naturally. I am your lifemate."
    "How do you keep your clothes so perfect? And your hair. Why don't you have morning breath?"
    Selfconsciously she put her hand over her own mouth. How did he look so perfectly sexy and inviting, when she was disheveled and looking pretty much like a beached whale?
    Dayan really laughed then, he couldn't help it. Her image of herself was so far from the real thing that it was ludicrous. He couldn't imagine Corinne's soft, curvy body looking remotely like a whale. He lay back on the bed with her beside him, real, alive, her heart still beating, and he laughed out loud. It was a perfect moment in time.
    She started laughing too, just because he was so silly, his joy so evident. Corinne thumped him hard on the chest. "Stop laughing at me."
    "I cannot help it, honey. A beached whale? I can hardly tell you are pregnant. That is not a good analogy Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    at all." He put his hand over the mound of her stomach. "And I like you disheveled." He caught her face in his hands and dragged her mouth to his.
    The earth seemed to move beneath the bed, a curious rolling effect that brought dancing whips of lightning arcing through the room. The air vibrated with hunger and need. He lifted his head reluctantly and stared into her green eyes. "I love you as you are, Corinne. Right now, in this bed, while we cannot make love and there is a child growing within you. I love you with your hair all over the place and that slightly confused look on your beautiful face." He rolled over to place his hands on either side of her head, pinning her to the bed. "I love how you look at me as if you want to take care of me, though I am the one who is the male."
    She touched her fingertips to his perfectly chiseled mouth. "We can take care of each other." Her voice was soft and inviting, a temptation he found impossible to resist.
    Aching with love for her, he bent his dark head slowly so that she watched as he came closer, his black gaze hot and hungry and full of terrible need. Corinne circled his head with her slender arms and met his mouth with a hunger of her own. He was heat and light, a symphony of music that lit her very soul. He made her heart beat wildly and her spirit soar high above the clouds. There was no one else for her, whether human or of his species. There was only Dayan with his poet's soul and hungry eyes and dominating mouth. His hard masculine body and his perfect hands that moved over her body with the same talent as they moved over his instrument.
    It was Dayan who pulled away first,