Soul Dancer Read online

  Soul Dancer

  By Aurora Rose Lynn

  Resplendence Publishing, LLC

  http://www.resplendencepublishing.com

  Resplendence Publishing, LLC

  2665 N Atlantic Avenue #349

  Daytona Beach, FL 32118

  Soul Dancer

  Copyright © 2010, Aurora Rose Lynn

  Edited by Michele Paulin

  Cover art by Les Byerley www.les3photo8.com

  Electronic format ISBN: 978-1-60735-140-5

  Warning: All rights reserved. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Electronic release: April 2010

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and occurrences are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places or occurrences, is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Planet of Manitee-a, Becutan Villa

  2975 Common Era

  “Dance with me like we used to.”

  Clenching her hands into tight fists, Kierra Vonne searched the room behind Jamar. Was there anything that appeared out of place or was anyone eavesdropping where they shouldn’t? The antechamber was empty.

  Returning her haunted gaze to him, she whispered urgently, “Please. You know we can’t be seen together.” They could if he were ordering her to perform some lowly task but treating her as an equal was forbidden on Becutan land.

  He took a decisive, graceful step toward her. With her heart pounding, she backed away. He was the most devastatingly handsome man she’d ever known with his black skin in sharp contrast to the whiteness of her own.

  “Lord Jamar,” she said, stating his formal name with the hope of distancing him from her, “my station is far below yours. If you would like a cup a caya tea, please don’t hesitate to tell me.” The soft-spoken, meaningful reminder should deter him until she found a way to flee, but the antechamber’s sliding doors were behind him and impossibly out of reach.

  Jamar faced her, as rooted to the polished floor as a thirty-foot caya tree with its stately fronds undulating in the still, humid air. Except caya trees didn’t have sizeable hard-ons. “Kierra,” he said, breaking the tense, expectant silence, “the music is empty and meaningless without you.”

  “Don’t,” she pleaded, her voice breathless and hoarse to her own ears. She moistened her lips, unwilling to run past the handsome man who’d once been her best childhood friend. Age and the dictates of society had placed a sharp, divisive line between them that neither could cross. If her heart could bleed dry, this would be a good time while Jamar observed her from heavy-lidded, gold eyes. Every time he came within a few feet of her, her heart danced in imitation of an erotic and fast-paced samba.

  He moved forward several inches. “We can dance again,” he murmured, his hot gaze never leaving hers. “We can drive the butterflies into a frenzy and the birds to sing in our honor.”

  Like we used to.

  Emphatically, Kierra shook her head. “Those days are over,” she said quietly, her heart shattering into a million pieces. If only he was white like she was, not so devastatingly sexy with black skin and short, onyx hair she’d tenderly run her fingers through countless times.

  The small room that served as an antechamber to his bedroom was closing in on her, sending her into a panic that left every muscle in her body quivering. He’d come a step closer and towered above her with his magnetic and charming presence.

  “You know you’ll give in and dance with me,” he warned, his eyes flashing with sensuous heat.

  Kierra sensed her world slipping away. She knew better than to allow him closer, and yet he’d cornered her as if he’d known she’d be here dusting and vacuuming. Had he arranged this meeting? She hadn’t seen him in almost three years. No, that was an outright lie. Without his knowledge, she’d watched him several times as he bathed in the cool blue waters in the enclosed courtyard.

  He was the most attractive man she’d ever seen. His arms rippled with muscles, as did his thighs. She’d even allowed herself to wonder what would happen if she’d lain between his thighs, his hot shaft pulsing with fierce longing and her wet pussy spasming with need.

  She gave a shuddering breath. She shouldn’t have looked, but the sight of his nude, virile body left her weak and helpless. Kierra could never have him. Sex with a Jaquill was punishable by death.

  With a jolt, she brought herself back to the present. “No, I won’t give in. All we’ve done together belongs in the past.” The distant past when they were barely more than children, growing up in a world filled with strict rules where the ruling class, the Jaquill, weren’t allowed to associate with the kattanee, their slaves.

  “No one needs to know, Kierra,” Jamar muttered, his gaze locked with hers.

  She shook her head, swift words of rebuke poured from her lips. “Let’s face it, Jamar. This is your world.” She waved a hand toward his bedroom, then in a sweeping arc. “If they find you in bed with a white girl, you’ll go unpunished. I’ll face the penalty of death. So what do you have to lose?” Her words sounded harsh and bitter.

  “You’ve never spoken to me like that before.” He pressed his lips together, and his gaze told her how incredulous he was.

  “Because we’re grown up. We’re not children anymore. You can never recapture those days. Not ever.”

  He closed the distance between them so quickly that Kierra took a reflexive step back. The wall behind her stopped her dead in her tracks.

  “I’m not talking about the things we did when we were children,” he said, his tone languid and filled with meaning.

  A tingling tremor ran down her spine. Was he hinting there could be more between them, like sex?

  “No.” Kierra pushed at his chest with the flat of her hands.

  Jamar seized her wrists in his large hands, black skin against white. “No what? Am I not your lord and master?”

  He’d never before hinted at the distance their society placed between them.

  “You can’t force me to do something I don’t want to,” she said softly, hoping her eyes didn’t betray her. She longed for Jamar in every way a woman longed for a man. At times, Kierra had awoken with her nightclothes drenched with sweat and her skin damp with perspiration from the erotic dreams she’d had, always with Jamar, his dark skin a blinding contrast to her light skin. Now, she sensed he was reaching into himself to retrieve the music that had haunted her since she’d first met him fifteen years earlier.

  Jamar was the only one she knew on the whole plantation who was so gifted. He could align himself with the harmonics of the universe, the music the ungifted seldom, if ever, heard.

  “Don’t, Jamar,” she whispered, as she choked back the tears welling in her throat. “Don’t do this to me.” Was he hedging on the truth? Did he want more than a simple dance?

  “We’ll just dance, Kierra, nothing more. Who would find anything wrong with that?”

  If anyone chanced upon them, they’d more than likely call the authorities and have her hauled to jail where she would languish until the day she was forced to drink the poison that would kill her. Yet to be in Jamar’s strong arms, to feel his hard chest pressed against her soft breasts and his rigid cock thrust against her stomach, wasn’t that bliss?

  Was it worth death?
r />   Jamar shifted one hand to the small of her back. With his toes, he gently kicked open the door to his bedroom. Every part of her body trembled with curiosity and anticipation. Dancing with Jamar was a thrilling experience that bound together their souls and their bodies. Resistance, in any form, was futile. It was as if his heart reached out to hers, regardless of the color of their skin.

  “No, Jamar!” Kierra tensed and her eyes darted nervously from his face to the front entrance to the antechamber.

  “Shh… No one will see us, and I promise I’ll play the music quietly.”

  She knew he kept his promises. One gaze into his golden eyes was all it took to lose her flagging willpower. When the music began, coming from his mind into hers, a slow tempo to which passionate lovers could gradually dance, she heaved a sigh.

  “Just this once, Jamar,” she whispered, running from him all but forgotten.

  He nodded, causing her to wonder if he would keep his promise and if they’d only have this one dance. Pressing her body against his, he took slow steps with her, his full lips close to her ear and his warm breath fanning her flushed cheek. She felt safe and protected in his arms. If only they could be together until everlasting death took them, but that wasn’t ever to be. His skin was black and hers white; she kattanee and he Jaquill. Nothing would ever change that.

  If only she could rid herself of her morbid thoughts, but her mother, although her intention had been kind, had warned Kierra when she was ten not to become attached to Jamar or anyone else with black skin. It was the Manitee-an way. She’d looked around their small, cramped house and told her she’d have to work hard all her life just for a pittance and that she should never expect to live in the same luxury as the ruling class.

  Kierra turned her face up to Jamar’s at the same time he moved his head to gaze into her eyes. Her breath stalled, and she felt his heart racing in his chest. He said nothing as he lowered his soft lips to her mouth and gave her a lingering kiss fraught with subdued but rising tension, arousal and deep hunger. She closed her eyes against the blast of furious longing that rattled her to her very core. She parted her lips and, trembling, allowed him to ravish her mouth as she secretly longed for him to ravage her body.

  The soles of her shoes swept the floor in tight circles moving in rhythm with Jamar’s bare feet. She longed to tell him she loved him, but deep within her heart, she knew he’d instantly rebuff her. There was no such thing as forever love between a black man and a white woman. Love as in friendship, yes, but without commitment.

  Jamar lifted his head and gave her an earnest appraisal that made her suddenly shy. “I’ve never kissed you before,” he said in a breathy whisper. The music continued in the background. His eyes sparkled.

  Kierra couldn’t match his frank gaze any longer. “Jamar,” she began, watching the rise and fall of his chest. “You can’t ever kiss me again, and this dance, it’s all wrong.” Although it felt so wonderfully right.

  He slid his thumb under her chin and tipped up her head. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Don’t.” She averted her eyes, wondering how she could stop this madness. Words weren’t working. Maybe if she just kissed him one more time, his insistent questions and the pleading expression would vanish in a puff of misty air.

  “I want you in my bed, Kierra. I know you want the same thing.” His feet moved slowly, back and forth, as if laying down a foundation of blind trust allied with magic.

  Jamar wants me? That isn’t possible.

  “No.”

  Yes, I do, but I don’t want to pay the frightening price after you’re finished with me.

  “You know I can order you to take your clothes off, don’t you?”

  “Stop!” she told him, irritated, jarring to an abrupt stop. She huffed a breath and stepped away from him, feeling vulnerable and alone. Still, intense longing coursed through her. “When they haul me away to prison for sleeping with you, what are you going to do? Will you even care?”

  Abruptly, the fine strains of music stopped. Jamar released her. Pain etched his features. “I’d come with you.” He spoke softly, as if he were amazed she’d question him.

  “To jail? To death? You’re messing with my head, aren’t you?” She’d had enough. If she didn’t save herself from this insanity, no one, including Jamar, would bother. She took a few steps forward and lifted her hands to push him out of her way. In less than a heartbeat, he propelled her against the wall. Her spine touched the brutally cold stone.

  “We grew up together, Kierra. Did you think that after we were adults, I’d simply turn my back on you as if we’d never had anything between us?”

  She cringed at his terse words.

  “We were children. We didn’t know any better,” she burst out, her heart racing with fear and, oddly, elation. Niggling suspicion began to erode the joy. What did he really want? A fling in bed then leaving her to take the consequences alone?

  His thickset eyebrows arched upward.

  “We didn’t know any better,” he repeated on the threshold of her hearing. Setting his hands on the wall to either side of her head, he blinked several times. “I don’t think you understand. I want to make love to you. I want you lying naked on my bed, your nipples puckered into tiny pleasure spots and your thighs open for me so I can lick your clit and fuck you. That’s what I want.”

  In an edgy whisper, she said, “But you never asked me what I want.”

  Had Jamar changed into a monster she no longer knew? Had he been blinded by his power over the kattanee?

  His lips curled in a thin smile. “We’ve always wanted the same thing. Always.”

  As if that explained everything.

  She opened her mouth to retort. Nothing but a moan came as his lips claimed the soft curve of her throat. Her hands rose of their own accord, and her fingers twined in the short strands of his onyx hair.

  Her panties under her uniform dampened and her heart beat faster than pounding rain. He tilted back his head and gave her a wicked grin. “I know you want me as much as I want you.”

  Jamar acknowledged they were much too alike not to share the same desires. Kierra knew each small detail about him as he knew all about her—how her dark eyes flashed when she was upset. How she became irritated or troubled but never angry.

  Now Kierra was in his room and very close to being in his bed. If only he could show her how much he loved her. If only his parents and Kierra’s could look the other way and forget the division that existed on Becutan. He could hope, but it was a foolhardy hope that everyone would continue to look the other way. Jamar considered telling Kierra about his thoughts, but she’d changed in the last few years. She’d become more distant and inexplicably afraid of what she couldn’t directly relate to. Not that he’d seen too much of her, but he’d missed her more than he cared to admit. The few times he’d encountered her in the villa, she’d been frightened and fled as fast as she could.

  As she toyed with the fine hairs at his nape, he shuddered with the thrill of her tender touch. I want to make you my wife, Kierra Vonne, and make you Mrs. Q’ellan. We won’t care as heads turn and gossip and rumors swirl around us. No matter what happens, we’ll have each other. Nothing can come between us.

  He couldn’t voice his thoughts to her, the woman he couldn’t stop thinking about, the woman who tormented him in his wet, erotic dreams.

  “I want you,” she whispered suddenly, breaking the hushed silence.

  “I hear a ‘but’ in there somewhere,” he murmured, unfastening the button at her throat. The bland, white uniform did nothing to enhance her natural beauty. Her face was startlingly pale.

  She nodded and slapped his hand from her collar. “But we can’t. I know the luxurious, privileged world you come from protects you from everything bad, but my world,” she said emphasizing the last two words. “My world is bad. Period. You don’t belong in mine, and I don’t belong in yours.”

  Her melancholy expression told Jamar just how much she hurt.

>   “Maybe you and I should start a revolution,” he said half-jokingly. “We need to get married and show our world how happy a Jaquill and a kattanee can be. That it’s not unethical.”

  “No! Marrying you won’t make me Jaquill, will it?” she thrust at him.

  This time she didn’t run or push him away. Was he making progress and getting through to her? Did she understand he wanted her but not just for a brief fling. Forever and damn the consequences?

  “No?” he demanded. “But it will make you mine.”

  “You can’t do that. You can’t marry me. Manitee-a might never be ready for the kind of wedding you’re proposing. And I refuse to be a seshan pig you can test your theories out on.”

  She ducked around him and turned her back on him to flee, but he wouldn’t have her running away on him. He caught her around the waist and spun her around. “Kierra. I’ve always loved you. From the moment we met. I love the way the sun glints on your blonde hair. I love the way you laugh when I make a joke. I love the wonder on your face when I show you a hidden lake or a night sky filled with stars that glitter like a million jewels. I love you.”

  Her hands came up in tight fists, and she pummeled his chest. “No, Jamar! You can’t say that! You can’t even think it! It will never, never happen.” Her cobalt eyes were bathed in fear. And tears.

  Seizing her wrists, he pulled her to him. “Maybe not at a macro level, but we’ll change the world at a micro level. Ours,” he told her, willing the hurt and pain to disappear from the eyes he loved so much.

  “Let me go. You can’t do this to me.”

  They’d gone full circle. If he couldn’t reason with her then he’d take her to bed and show her how much love he had for her. Releasing her hands, he scooped her up in his arms and strode toward the bed. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about the brocade bedspread and tossed Kierra on it, coming down on top of her with a vengeance.