At this, Danielle gave a rueful little laugh. "Oh, he treated me just fine. He was kind and sweet and passionate and... and he treated me like you would treat a princess. And I guess that's what I was to him, a princess who could give him what he wanted. Braden treated me like he wanted me, but... he really wanted something from me."
"He did not truly love you."
"He loved what he thought I could give him. What he really wanted in a lover... he couldn't get from me."
"There was another," Dagin said knowingly.
Danielle almost snapped at him, "Yes, there was another! And she... she wasn't like me."
Now they were getting somewhere. "What was she like?" Dagin asked.
A sour expression came over Danielle. "You really want to know? Really?"
"I would not ask if I did not wish to know," he said.
She fixed him with a look as if her eyes were two red-hot branding irons. An edge came into her voice, an edge of hurt and sorrow and despair—and anger, long denied but long and keenly felt. "She was like the women that you must be used to! She was thin. She wasn't built like some kind of... of... moon! She was what men like you always want! The women on Sarma—they're warriors, aren't they? They must all be these gladiator women, built for battle, all muscle! Not like me! I let myself believe I was what Braden really wanted because for someone like me, a man like Braden comes around one time or never! I talked myself into thinking he really wanted me because I didn't want it to be never. I wanted someone like him—and I got what was coming to me."
Stung by her words and the way she spoke them, Dagin sighed and frowned and sat back in his seat. This was something for which he was not prepared. He asked, "If men such as me never desire women such as you, why then did I ask you to dance? And why then did I ask you for your company after the dance?"
"Maybe it's like you said, because I'm something you'd never know if you stayed on Sarma. Maybe I'm part of this great exploration of yours."
Dagin frowned more deeply. "This does not reflect well on you or on me. You make great assumptions, Danielle. You assume that there are no women such as you in a race of warriors. You assume that a man such as I can see nothing to desire in a woman with a body that is not hard and tight. You assume that there is nothing truly to desire about yourself. These things, were I to be less diplomatic, I would call prejudices. Are you truly so prejudiced?"
With frowning eyes, Danielle replied, "Just answer me this: the woman who taught you to dance—was she like me? And did you only dance with her?"
After a careful, considered pause, Dagin answered, "She was not like you. She was as elegant as you, but slender. And no, I did not only dance with her."
Danielle stood up with all the dignity she could find amid what she was feeling at the moment and said, "Well, thank you for the 'elegant' part anyway. And thank you for asking me to join you. I think I'll excuse myself now."
Dagin rose with her, asking, "Why? After a dance and a few moments of talk, do you know all there is to know of me? To see me as nothing but my noble station and the shape of my body is no better than what your Braden did, seeing you as nothing but your wealth and your status and what you could do to advance his place. I thought you were a lady, Danielle Dryden. But I see that you are a most prejudiced young woman."
And now she snapped completely. Her face contorted into a reddened mask that reflected the brokenness of her heart. One hand clenched into a fist, the other pointed an angry finger right at the face of the startled prince. She half-shouted, "Don't you dare talk to me about prejudice! Not until you've had to spend your whole life unwanted, or being looked through like you weren't there, or being looked around for someone thinner who was standing behind you! Or listening to the things men call you and the way they laugh and sneer about your body when they think you can't hear them—or just as bad, when other women do it! Or knowing that the only way someone that you want will want you back is if you have enough money and can give him things, or you have a doctor take his laser and slice away all the pounds that the men you want don't like! My whole life has been one big prejudice, Your Highness. And one big worthless fantasy. Now if you don't mind, I'd like to get back to reality."
Indignant, Dagin shook his head at her. "Very well then," he said. "Return as you like to that which you think is real. But your reality is a very small, sad thing. And take this with you: I think you are too good to be so sad and your sadness is not a life. And take one thing more as well..."
What followed was the single most shocking moment of Danielle Dryden's life. Dagin of Sarma crossed the distance between them with a single stride of his mighty legs, grabbed her, pulled her into his arms, and kissed her with an ardor that made her feel as if she were orbiting Saturn on her own. Eventually he released her from the kiss, took his arms from her, and took one step away. She stood facing him, wide-eyed, feeling as if she would fall like an avalanche before him.
Like a conquering warrior, Dagin said, "There you are, Danielle Dryden. I, a prince with wealth and station of my own, who have no need of your fortune and want nothing from you but to know who you are and how it would be to share with you the sweetest thing that two beings can give one another, salute you and leave you to the reality that you know, which you think is all there is in your very small universe. I wish you a good life, whatever there may be of it."
He spun on his heel and turned to leave. And from behind him he heard the unmistakable and poignant sound of barely suppressed sobbing. In spite of his indignation at being held responsible for the callousness of every desirable man on Earth and Mars, that sound was a weight about his ankles that brought him to a stop. With his back still turned to her, Dagin heard her voice come through tears: "Y-your Highness?"
The prince turned around to meet Danielle's weeping gaze and asked, "Do you not wish to address me as something other than 'Your Highness' at this moment?"
She sobbed again, "Da... Dagin?"
The sound of her using his name and not his title was enough to make him rush back to her and gather up her fullness in his arms again. Putting her arms around him in kind, she buried her head on his broad shoulder and cried. Through her weeping, more voice tumbled out: "I thought I was done with crying."
Softly, Dagin said, "You also thought that you were done with him. You did not need him to come to you again, bringing his false love. It is not the size of the body that matters. It is the size of the heart."
He let her cry it out. At length, he took her head from his shoulder and looked tenderly into her eyes. "I wish you to come with me now," he said.
"Where?"
"I have a yacht docked here at the resort. We shall be alone there. My attendants will know where we are, but they will not disturb us unless I send for them. Come with me. We shall sail round the beautiful rings of Saturn—and I shall take you to my bed. We will lie together and we will share zazansa and gliarra."
"What's that?" she asked.
"My zazansa and your gliarra are exactly what you think they are," he replied. He kissed her, sweetly. "Now, to my yacht and my bed."
Danielle left the observation deck with Prince Dagin, hand in hand.
_______________
Danielle had seen Sarmian ships in the interstellar newsfeed, but they were all war ships and envoy vessels. Dagin's private yacht was different. The other vessels were all formidable-looking things, built either to be intimidating or to project an air of majesty. They had spines and ridges and stalks, protuberances that reminded Danielle of creatures of the sea that had somehow taken to space. The pleasure craft that belonged to the prince was a shiny thing of graceful, swooping lines and fins. It looked like a work of art. It frankly looked like sex. It reminded her of Dagin himself.
Once they were through the airlock of the ship, they slipped into magnetic boots that enabled them to walk the floor in zero gravity. The boots were bulky and cumbersome compared to their elegant party attire, but neither Danielle nor the Prince cared. The interior of the cra
ft was as luxurious as the exterior was sensuous. The cockpit was a sunken area in front, facing out to the forward viewport, and reminded Danielle of theatre seating. He helped her into the plush and comfortable seat next to the pilot's seat and took his own position. The navigation array was a thing of lights that looked like an abstract sculpture. Dagin operated it with casual and practiced ease. The craft slipped out of its mooring along one arc of Titan II and glided out into space, following the flow of glittering ice particles in their orbit around the gaseous planet below.
The ship moved smoothly, just meters above the ring, and at one point Dagin looked over at her and grinned, saying, "Watch this!"
Danielle kept her eyes fixed on the viewport and felt a fluttering in her stomach as the craft went into a long, shallow dive. In the next moment, the ship was skimming the surface of the ring; not descending fully into it, just slipping along the uppermost part of the orbiting icy rime. The viewports to the front and both sides were at once filled with a sparkling cascade of particles, a shower and spray of ice crystals that the ship kicked up as it passed. Startled and delighted at the gorgeous display, Danielle let out a "Whoop!" Then, embarrassed, she raised a hand to her mouth and tittered and giggled quietly as the ship went skimming along the ring and Dagin glanced over at her, enjoying her enjoyment—and anticipating the still greater enjoyment that he would soon give her.
They made one full circuit of the rings of Saturn before Dagin returned his craft to its docking at the resort, where the spin of Titan II lent it a semblance of Earth's gravity once more and they no longer needed the boots. Taking Danielle by the hand, he led her from the cockpit through a passage whose walls shimmered iridescently like mother-of-pearl to a chamber containing a large viewport through which they could see the rotating arc of the resort. Presiding over the master cabin of the yacht, which was all done in gold and burgundy tones, was Dagin's large and sumptuously inviting-looking bed, whose sheets at the moment were shrink-wrapped to the mattress and frame. Dagin called to the ship's systems, "Release bed." At once, with a hissing and rustling sound, the sheets came loose from the rest of the bed and the headboard opened up and two large, thick, soft pillows rolled out. The bed was thus ready for normal-gravity use.
Danielle looked up at Dagin warmly, sincerely, and said, "I think I owe you an apology first."
"For what?" Dagin asked.
"For the way I spoke to you on the observation deck. For throwing all the disappointment I've had from Braden and other men at you, as if you were responsible. I shouldn't have done that to you. I apologize."
"That is done now, Danielle. It is no more. There is only now, and what I wish us to have together in this bed." Danielle stood immobile, barely able to breathe, watching Dagin strip off his longcoat, boots, and everything else. One piece at a time, his clothing came to rest on the floor or on the chair and divan-like cushions fastened to the walls, until the Prince of Sarma stood revealed in all his naked glory. He was even more perfect than Danielle imagined. Every muscle up and down his frame looked as if it had been selected from some celestial shop of bodies. And at the juncture of his thighs, under a silky bush of dark pubic hair, hung something, that was a mighty vessel in its own right, long and thick and veined with a fleshy bottleneck of foreskin. "This is the end of all your disappointments, Danielle," Dagin said. "Take off your clothes and join me in the bed. I wish to be inside you many times."
The next moments passed in a glittering haze like their skimming of the Saturnian ring. One moment Danielle was dressed. The next, her gown and everything else she had been wearing lay draped upon one of the furnishings of the master cabin—and the naked Danielle herself strode dreamily to the bed where Dagin sat on his knees with an arm outstretched and the vessel between his legs aimed right at her, ready to be launched.
Danielle, sitting with him on the bed, leaned back her head and let out a long breath at the feeling of his hands moving up and down the full, soft contours of her body. His hands were so wonderfully smooth and hot that he had her in a state of rapture at his first touch. He whispered to her, "Touch me. Feel me. All of me." And Danielle did. She set her hands free to explore the world of smooth, tight, hard muscle that was Dagin's body.
With their mutual caressing came Dagin's kisses on her mouth, hot and wet and deep, his tongue probing between her lips, his lips sucking at hers as if to devour all the passion and desire right out of her. More incredible than the sensations that her lips drank in were the feelings that greeted her hands. So many times she had imagined touching every part of the perfect man and feeling what true perfection of body was. But her imagination paled beside the reality of Dagin's warm, sinewy flesh. She grasped his buttocks and squeezed, feeling them tighten and flex at the command of her eager fingers. He kissed her harder, encouraging her to know more of his body. He took one of her hands and guided it to the erect ship of his sex, and slurped into her mouth, "Touch my zazansa. And the sac of my briole. Feel of my sex and know what I shall do to you."
She did as Dagin said—and as she so dearly wanted. Danielle took hold of the pulsing, throbbing wonder between Dagin's legs and ran her fingers along it, feeling the hot surge of his shaft in her hands and the slick dribble of his pre-seed onto her skin. Oh, was there any part of him that was not warm to the touch? His pre-seed was like a heated nectar. She savored the feeling of it on her, even as she slid her hand back to the root of his shaft to grasp the round, firm fruit of Sarma that lay behind it. His sac, too, was warm, and she knew it was filled with a white sap of maleness that would soon flow deep into her.
Dagin let his own hand slide purposefully from the ample roundness of Danielle's bottom to the treasure under the wreath of hair between her own thighs, and she sighed in mid-kiss with the feeling of his strong fingers exploring the slick, wet opening of her woman cave. Taking her mouth from his, she began to kiss and lick and suck her way along the cord of his neck down to the plateau of his shoulder, while letting him take her sex with his fingers. All the while she continued to fondle and caress his long, hot, thick hardness, making him grunt and groan with the desire for release. "Mmmm," he uttered, sniffing at her hair. "Your gliarra is so wet. And I know my zazansa will find it tight when I put it inside you. I will shadaal you so many times this night. Over and over I will do it to you, Danielle... over and over..."
Breathlessly, she poured out her response, "Yes, Dagin, yes..." And at that moment, his fingers found the dearest prize that her treasure held. His fingertips, slick with her juices, teased and flicked and stroked at the bud of a woman's most special joy. And at the rising of this newest, greatest pleasure so far, she firmly but carefully squeezed the fleshy roundness of his man-prize. Together, they pleasured one another, stroking and strumming and squeezing, Dagin's fingers growing ever wetter with the liquid expression of her delight that flowed onto them. The elation that Danielle felt grew until she could no longer contain it. She tore her lips from his shoulder and cried out, "YEEESSS!" from the seismic shock of an orgasm that thundered through her flesh. Danielle found herself panting in Dagin's arms, still holding his erection as he rained kisses upon her shoulder. She felt herself grow limp from this moment of ultimate ecstasy, and he guided her down onto her back on the bed for what he was ready to do next.
Dagin gently took his lengthy piece from her grasp, put her hands up on either side of her head on the sheets, and opened Danielle's thighs for access to the wet pink flower between them. In a voice husky with a man's desire, he said, "Now I shall show you how a prince shadaals a woman that he desires."
Submitting completely and joyously, Danielle let Dagin come down on top of her and nestle himself between her thighs, and with a skillful stroke he eased his tool inside her. She moaned at his first penetration, the pleasure rising in her once again. With his hardness sheathed in her wetness and reaching all the way to her womb, Danielle belonged to His Highness. Dagin pumped inside her, grunting in what seemed a truly mad joy, "Ah... ah, yes! Oh yes, I knew you had a tight
gliarra. I will not want to stop, now I am in you. Aaahhh, it is good. So tight... so good..."
Dagin's humping, the quick, deep, and urgent pistoning of his tool in and out of her, filled Danielle not only with his hard and throbbing flesh, but with a feeling that she had never known. It was a feeling of not being merely taken, not merely entered and penetrated, but almost a feeling of reverence from the magnificent manhood humping away on top of her. It almost seemed to her that Dagin's hot, hard, feverish intercourse was not only a thrusting of his meat into her depths, but a thrusting of his spirit, his being, into her own. How could anything feel as indescribably wonderful as this mounting and pounding by the inhumanly handsome and beautiful prince of another world? Dagin's zazansa moving hard and fast in and out of her, the wet and wondrous sliding of his sex inside her tight channel, made her feel as though his mighty and pulsing organ were a totem pole of passion being buried in the soil of her womanhood.
And Danielle had faith that the thrusting, grunting prince driving that piston of pleasure in and out of her and slamming his crotch against her mound, would be as good as his word. He would be on top of her and in and out of her for hours to come. And speaking of coming...
All at once, Dagin matched the ultimate moment that he gave her with one of his own. He came up on the balls of his hands and drove his steely vessel into her harder and harder with every successive stroke, until the walls of the ship's cabin reverberated with the impacts of his pubis against hers and the sounds of her wailing and his shouting: "Uuuhhh... Uuuhhh... UUUHHH YES!" With one last piledriver blow of his piece into her depths, Dagin let go. In his mind's ear, the gush of his seed into Danielle's womb was a sound to match his own voice. It became a long cascade of thick, wet whiteness, shooting and pouring from his glans into her deepest reaches, until he had given her all that he had... for now.
The two of them panted together as Dagin pulled a still half-erect piece from inside her and they curled up together on the bed. They melted into kisses long, wet, and lingering, their warm breath mixing post-coitally. Somewhere in the midst of it, Dagin's fingers found their way back between Danielle's thighs, and she rejoiced in submitting to him. "That was not even the beginning," he groaned. "I will be in you many times, Danielle. Many times, here on my ship and back in your suite. I will shadaal you more than you have ever dreamed any man could. I have not even begun."
Desired By The Cowboy (Love In Collin's Ranch 2) Page 62
