by Jaide Fox
He’d hardly gotten the words out when she’d leapt to her feet to rush over to him. “You must not be moving about like this!” she scolded, pushing against his shoulders and trying to make him lie down again. “If you reopen those wounds, we shall both be very sorry. Try to sleep.”
He was sorry now. “I can not sleep if you mean to sit across the room all night and stare at me,” he muttered irritably.
She settled on the bed beside him, smoothing his hair. “I do not like the thought of leaving you alone. What if you should need something?”
He was about to snap at her again when a thought occurred to him. “I would rest better if I knew you were resting,” he said with cunning.
She looked a little self conscious at the suggestion. “I might disturb you.”
“You wouldn’t,” he responded earnestly.
She considered it for several moments while he held his breath. “All right. I am tired,” she confessed. “But you must tell me if I disturb you.”
It took all he could do to keep from leering at her when she climbed into the bed beside him and lay down. Rolling onto his side to face her, he hooked a hand around her waist and dragged her close, burrowing his face against her neck and breathing in her fresh scent ecstatically.
“You should not do this,” she said pushing at his shoulder. “You will cause yourself hurt.”
“I am very comfortable as I am,” he murmured in a strangled voice, settling more firmly against her.
She subsided after a moment, stroking his back in what he supposed was intended to soothe. Under other circumstances, he might have felt that way about it. At the moment, though, it was more like stoking the embers.
Tiring of merely smelling her skin, he nuzzled his way downward until he had planted his face between her breasts, trying to nudge the neck of her gown a little lower with his chin so that he could actually touch skin instead of the gown. She tensed slightly, but she didn’t attempt to pull away. Deciding that must mean she was open to the idea, after a moment he wound his way up the hillside to the peak.
She hitched in a breath and held it before he even touched the taut bud of flesh and he felt a rush of heated desire at her response. Covering the tip with his mouth, he sucked it through the thin fabric, alternately toying with the sensitive flesh with his tongue and suckling until she began to move restlessly as if she could no longer hold still.
He found he couldn’t either as the fire of need poured through him. Shifting so that he was supporting most of his weight on his side and one arm, without releasing the prize he’d already captured, he slipped his free arm upward and cupped her other breast, massaging the soft globe.
A soft moan escaped her, driving him over the edge of reason. Shifting again, he thrust against her hip and thigh, almost groaning at the bursts of pleasure the pressure against his cock sent through him with each arch of his hips. In a mindless search for more, he released the breast he’d been massaging and skimmed his palm down her body to her hip, and then her thigh, grasping a handful of her nightgown and slowly gathering it into his hand.
“Talin,” she whispered a little shakily. “You should not do this.”
She sounded as if she wasn’t completely convinced he shouldn’t, so he decided to ignore the warning. Shifting over her, he released his grip on her gown long enough to scoop her other breast from the neck of the nightgown and sucked the other trembling peak into his mouth. This time, he touched only flesh, tasted her. He groaned at her sweet taste. His heart pounded with bruising pressure against his ribs. She uttered a choked gasp as he began to suckle and tease it as he had the first. The sound sent him deeper into madness and pushed reason far to the back of his mind.
Grasping the gown he’d bunched around her hips, he yanked it higher and slipped his hand beneath to caress her belly, hips, and thighs, moving a little closer and a little closer to his ultimate goal when she allowed his caresses without protest.
Chapter Thirteen
Aliya was scarcely aware of the mesmerizing caress of his hands. Her entire being seemed focused inward, gathering pleasurable sensations into a collective like drops of rain into a pool of water--or, perhaps more accurately, like molten lava into a fiery pool. She was hot, dizzy, and breathless. Her belly quaked, her woman’s place inside quivering with want, growing hot and achy and damp.
She couldn’t help but clench her inner muscles as he rubbed his hardness against her mound, stirring her in a way no maiden should want.
A sense of excitement and anticipation had gripped her the moment he began to suckle her nipple. Her breath grew short yet heavy, her heartbeat felt erratic. Her desire grew with tremendous, dizzying speed until she found herself reaching for the unspecified ‘something’ the building inside of her promised.
She was so deeply under its spell that she wasn’t entirely certain of how his hand had found its way beneath her gown. She discovered she didn’t care either. Warmth lit her skin every place he touched, warmth and pleasure.
He pinched her nipples with delightful pressure, massaged her breasts until she thought she would burst, and all the while her cleft grew moister.
Something nagged at her, though, something that kept intruding a note of warning into the web of delight he was weaving around her. The ‘something’ didn’t coalesce in her mind, however, until he skimmed his palm across her belly and cupped his fingers over her mound.
He wanted to join with her, she realized abruptly.
Without kissing her lips even once, he had enthralled her, swept every consideration from her mind with the wondrous sensations he created with no more than the light stroke of his hand and his mouth.
She didn’t want him to stop. She found that she was too far gone to fight the desire to continue, that he’d caught her off guard and unaware and stoked the fire inside of her until neediness outweighed any fears that might have lingered.
She felt a jolt go through her when his fingers dipped lower, sizzling along her nerve endings like lightning as he parted the tender flesh and rubbed his finger across a bud of flesh that was excruciatingly sensitive. Her clit pounded like a second heartbeat, becoming instantly rigid against his fingers as they slipped through her cleft.
Aliya gasped, arching her back, unwittingly bringing herself harder against his hand. He groaned, but she couldn’t tell whether from pleasure or pain.
She shouldn’t be doing this.
He shouldn’t be doing this.
“Talin,” she gasped a little desperately as her anxiety for him finally pierced the euphoria she seemed to be drowning in, “you will reopen your wounds. You could die.”
“I would die happy,” Talin muttered as he released the nipple he’d been teasing and plotted a sneak attack to silence her belated objections, nibbling kisses up her throat to capture her lips and then taking a detour to her ear.
“Do not say things like that!” she gasped shakily, grabbing his arm when he slipped his hand lower along her cleft and found the gateway to paradise. He teased the edges of her opening, making her jerk in pleasurable reaction. “I … could not bear it if anything happened to you because of me.”
He plucked at ear lobe teasingly. “I need you,” he said hoarsely, “need this. I ache for you until it is a torment to me.” Ceasing his exploration of her body abruptly, he grasped her hand and guided it to his own flesh, cupping her hand around his distended shaft.
She gasped, her eyes widening, but after a moment she explored him from root to tip and back again with curious fingers, finally cupping his testicles gently.
The pleasure was so intense he uttered a choked cry, grinding his teeth against it as his face contorted with a mixture of pain and pleasure.
She released him as abruptly as if she’d discovered she had fire in her hand. He caught her wrist before she could withdraw, guiding her hand back and curling her fingers around his cock.
“I need you,” he murmured, burrowing his face along the side of her neck as he held her hand firmly aga
inst his flesh and rocked against her palm.
Aliya felt her heart squeeze with empathy at the pain she heard in his voice, the agony she saw on his face. Still, she hesitated, wondering if she would only cause him more pain if she allowed him what he wanted. The moment the thought of his wounds intruded, however, the tide turned in his favor. She found she couldn’t bear the thought that he might die and leave her with the memory of his pleas for succor.
She wasn’t sure if it was her own needs that prompted the thought, or merely the need to comfort him, but she caved in to it. “I am yours,” she whispered shakily.
He tensed all over. Lifting his head to look down at her, he studied her face for a long moment and abruptly covered her mouth with a kiss of such ravening, possessive hunger that it almost instantly ousted the sense of willing sacrifice to his needs and replaced it with the burning need she’d felt before. The rake of his tongue along hers filled her with his taste and scent like strong liquor, devastating her senses in a dizzying rush of pleasure.
He slipped over her, pressing a knee between her thighs until she yielded to the pressure and parted them for him. The moment she did, he pushed them wider still, settling his other leg beside the first and arching his pelvis into hers. His manhood pressed against her nether lips until they parted and she could feel his heated, engorged member caressing her damp, sensitive crevice.
It sent a shock wave through her that was a mixture of anticipation and fear.
Before her uneasiness could gain the upper hand, he broke the kiss and dipped downward, capturing the peak of her exposed breast between his teeth and bearing down until she gasped at the sharp needles of pleasure.
Catching the fabric at the neckline of her gown, he tugged at it until the fragile fabric parted and then moved to tease her other nipple.
Only dimly aware of anything beyond the sharp needles of pleasure that bombarded her senses with every hard pull of his mouth on the tender tip, Aliya responded mindlessly to his insistent tug on the back of her knees, drawing up first one and then the other. She could scarcely catch her breath, gasping hoarsely in her struggle to draw in enough breath and still feeling blackness press closer and closer.
The hard knot of flesh that was abruptly wedged into her womanhood, stretching it almost painfully sent a jolt of sudden awareness through her, however. She tensed all over, her eyes flying wide open as he pressed with slow but determined pressure. “Talin?” she gasped, her voice shaky now with fear as she abruptly recalled that every maiden she’d ever heard speak of this had complained of the pain.
He covered her mouth again, silencing her sudden attack of doubt with another fiery kiss, pressing into her relentlessly, easing away slightly, and then pushing forward again, delving deeper each time. Struggling to adjust to the alien intrusion, Aliya found she couldn’t focus her mind away from it. Slowly but surely, discomfort was edging out the pleasure of before.
He stopped. Breathing like he was dying, he wrenched his mouth from hers and ran a shaky hand over her body, stroking her breasts, massaging them. Arching his back so that he could reach her breasts, he began to tease the tender nipples again, first one and then the other until heat rose in her as it had before, stronger than before and she began to sob with need.
He reached between their joined bodies after a moment, seeking the tiny nub of flesh that had created such need in her before and began to tease it. Aliya gasped at the sharp waves of sensation that raced through her, bucked his hand. In moments she found herself uttering hoarse cries that rose to a higher pitch as ecstasy abruptly burst inside of her. Even as her body quaked with the shock waves of rapture, he slipped his hand from her clit to her hips and thrust sharply, embedding himself deeply. A breaker of stinging pain ruptured the upsurge of pleasure as he withdrew slightly and plunged deeply again, leaping into a frantic, rhythmic pace, driving into her until she felt herself slipping upward, away from his pounding thrusts. She wrapped her arms around him tightly, bracing herself as he moved faster and faster and finally uttered a strangled cry, jerking and surging and washing her insides with the liquid heat of his seed.
A sense of triumph settled over Aliya when he went limp against her, sprawling bonelessly against her. It almost felt as if they were melding together in the heated aftermath of their lovemaking. It hadn’t hurt nearly as much as she had feared it would. In fact, she had felt such pleasure before he’d taken her maiden head, she knew now why so many people were so obsessed with mating.
Her maiden’s shroud was gone now and she was a woman.
Talin’s woman.
The sense of warmth and belonging began to fade as discomfort began to set in from his heavy weight upon her, and then a touch of anxiety emerged, growing deeper as she came to her senses enough to remember he was an injured man.
She was slightly relieved when he finally gathered himself with an effort and rolled off of her, but she needed to reassure herself that he had not reopened his wounds. Raising up on one elbow as he collapsed weakly on his back beside her, she slipped her fingers beneath the wrapping that held his bandage in place and gently lifted one corner of the pad to see his wound.
A frown drew her brows together when she saw only pinkened, healing skin. Sitting up straighter, she pulled the pad all the way back and stared at his chest, feeling perfectly blank when all that met her gaze was new skin.
Talin, still struggling to catch his breath, tensed all over, meeting her dumbfounded gaze warily when she finally transferred her attention from his ‘wound’ to his face.
“There is a simple explanation,” he said warily.
“How simple?” Aliya asked, anger already simmering in her voice.
“I heal quickly.”
Aliya’s eyes narrowed. “How quickly?”
“In beast form, almost at once--as long as there is nothing preventing the flesh from closing--more slowly when I shift to human form,” he added quickly.
“You … bastard!” she snarled, balling her hand into a fist menacingly. “You let me make a complete fool of myself, dashing around frantically to try to save your hide when you were in no danger any of the time!”
“That is not strictly true,” he said defensively. “I was nigh dead when I first arrived in the courtyard. If I had waited much longer before I removed the arrows, I might well have died.”
“So you were already healing even before I had you brought up to your ‘death bed’?”
“I was weak, half crazy with the pain,” he growled.
“Pain? I’ll give you pain,” she growled back at him, looking around for something to belt him with. “If I had a knife I’d put in your treacherous heart, you devil! You tricked me into giving myself to you!”
Suddenly keenly conscious of the dagger he had tucked beneath his pillow, Talin slipped his hand under the pillow and very carefully reached back until he could trust the dagger between the mattress and the ropes holding the bed frame together. “I distinctly recall that you said, I am yours!” he muttered tightly, feeling better once he was certain she wouldn’t find the blade.
Abruptly, she planted her hands on his arm. Strengthened no doubt by her fury, she heaved him onto his side, and rolled him out of the bed. He was so stunned by the move he hit the floor before he could even think to try to catch himself. “Get out!” she screamed, hanging over the side of the bed to glare down at him as he struggled to get to his feet.
“This is my suite!” he shot back at her indignantly, planting his hand on his hips.
Uttering a growl of rage, she looked around for something to throw. Seeing her intent when she reached for the heavy candle holder on the table beside the bed, still filled with six fully lit candles, he whirled abruptly and stalked toward the door with as much dignity as he could muster.
The candle holder sailed past his head as he reached the door, narrowly missing him.
“Damn it to hell!” he yelped, whirling to face her. “You damned near hit me, you termagant!”
“I won’t
miss next time,” she promised, scrambling out of the bed and heading for the water pitcher.
Deciding discretion was the better part of valor, he yanked the heavy door open and went out, slamming the stout panel behind him even as he heard the tinkle of shattering pottery. “Like it or not, you are still mine,” he bellowed at the door.
The basin followed the pitcher, shattered on the door, and then joining the broken pieces on the floor.
He was half way down the tower stairs before the heat of his anger dissipated enough that it occurred on him he didn’t have a stitch of clothing on. He stopped. Grinding his teeth, he glanced back toward the door of his suite, where his entire wardrobe was kept. Deciding that he wasn’t particularly interested in rejoining the battle at the moment, he finally turned and continued down the stairs.
Silence fell as he stalked across the great hall and flung himself into his throne.
The seat, he discovered the moment his bare ass settled, felt like a sheet of ice and he almost came up off of it again.
A couple of the men gathered at one table in a game of chance uttered something that sounded suspiciously like a snicker and then fell into a fit of coughing when he sent a glare in their direction.
After brooding over the fickleness of women for some time, Talin lifted his head and surveyed the hall again until his eyes lit on a maid who was standing stock still, gaping at him. “Find me something to wear in the laundry,” he bellowed at her.
She jumped all over, dropping the pitcher of ale she’d been holding. Nodding jerkily, she glanced down at the mess she’d made and then decided to leave it for the moment and hurried from the great hall.
“Sometimes they toss the clothing after,” Solly said tentatively.
Talin sent him a narrow eyed glare at the man who’d intruded into his dark thoughts. “Then go and look,” he snarled finally.
