by Jean Johnson
He caught her hand when she would have hit him again. Lifted it to his mouth. Suckled her palm like he had her breast. When her breath caught and her soft gray eyes went a little softer, borderline dazed in just a few bare seconds, he released her skin. “I’m not upset. In fact, I’d say you learned your, ah, lessons a little too well. But it’s just as well we did what we did, because now I can take my time with your first time.”
Alys frowned in confusion at him. He was talking in the double-speak of innuendos, and she wasn’t even really getting the first half of their conversation, let alone the second half. There was only so much Cari’s lessons could do for her until she figured them out in full for herself, after all.
Sighing at her confused look, Wolfer shifted his hands to his waist, unlaced his trousers, and caught her wrist. Before she had time to protest, he was sliding her fingers down inside. Against his half-aroused, wet shaft.
“What . . . ?” Pulling her hand back when he released it, she looked at the milky white fluid on her fingers. Milky? Oh, my! Blushing bright red, she looked down where she hadn’t dared to look moments before. “You . . . um . . . ?”
“You blew my self-control right off the island,” he confessed, gently catching and returning her hand to the loosened front of his breeches. She touched him tentatively and Wolfer groaned. Her timid exploration turned him on far more than any touch of his own would have done. Blood pooled in his groin, stiffening the flesh she was caressing with feather-light fingertips. Finally she gripped him fully, and a shudder of painfully hot pleasure passed through him.
Alys jerked her hand away. “Oh! Did I hurt you?”
“Do it again,” was all he could manage verbally. His hands fumbled at his trousers, pushing them down farther and baring him to the tops of his thighs. Wolfer closed his eyes and tipped his head back slightly. “Please, Alys.”
Returning her hand, she gripped him. He was hot, and silken-soft, hardening, lengthening, and throbbing with each beat of his heart. What Cari had said to her about it not tasting at all like milk made her curious suddenly. His eyes popped open in confusion as she slipped once again to her knees on the floor, this time bending over a little as she gripped him, bringing her head close to the head of his shaft. Cari had also told her that it was common for the elder-born of male twins to be “cut,” and the younger-born to be “uncut”; in other words, that their foreskins had either been removed or left intact as soon as they were born, to be able to differentiate between the two, especially for purposes of determining the heir. Wolfer was definitely the younger twin.
“Alys!” he squeaked, actually squeaked, shocked by her bold, suggestive position.
The sound of his voice breaking made her laugh and made her very brave. “You sound like a virgin, now!”
“I—you—I—oh, Jinga!” Dead—he was dead—no, he was gloriously alive, except he flopped back onto the bed like a dead man as those lips—Alys’ lips!—touched him. Tasted him with an inquisitive flick of her tongue. Enveloped and suckled him as he had suckled her breast, while her fingers played with the loose skin beneath the head of his shaft.
She liked the salty taste of his flesh more than the bitter-ish taste of his seed, but it was his seed, a part of him; it wasn’t all that bad, she supposed. Gently cupping the egg-like spheres in his soft, manly sack, she used her lips to play with the loose cowl of skin near the tip of his shaft, then ran her tongue around the exposed rim. Experimenting with the things her briefly met friend had told her about just a few days ago, she enjoyed the way he shuddered and groaned. Alys definitely liked doing these things with her Wolfer; she even thought briefly that she should send a letter of thanks to Cari at some point in the future, before returning her full attention to savoring her Wolfer intimately.
“Enough! Alys, enough,” he added firmly, pulling her away from him, though his body certainly demanded more. He couldn’t let her continue, though. Her disappointed uncertainty made him explain his reasoning. “Much more of that, love, and I’ll release all over again. Next time, I want to be inside you . . . so no more. For right now,” he added, since he wasn’t about to deny himself that particular pleasure in the future. “Later, definitely. I . . . ah, I think we should get our boots off, and everything else. While we’re both still capable of thinking.”
“Oh.”
The suggestion turned her shy again. While he lifted his foot to unlace his boot, she clutched the bedcovers, which were hanging over the side of the bed, protectively to her breasts, and worked one-handed at removing her own footwear. Wolfer saw what she was doing and wanted to laugh and bang his head against the bedpost at the same time. She was doing it again, driving him crazy with her vacillating, timidity-bravery thing.
Alys looked up in time to meet his bemused, pained expression. “What?”
He smiled wryly. “I love you, Alys.”
TEN
The whole world stilled around her while she absorbed his words. She soaked in the warmth of them, the tenderness in them. Alys didn’t think she would ever get tired of hearing him say that. It gave her enough courage to release the bedding and simply pull off her boots.
Wolfer groaned as she turned brave and bare-breasted once again.
Alys stilled at that sound. “What now?”
“Never mind.” Standing up, he peeled off his breeches. Then caught her staring up at him. It only stiffened him even further. As he was now naked, his physical interest was quite blatant.
Wolfer held out his hand to her. When she took it, he felt like howling again. This time in the cry of a wolf accepted by his mate. Not yet in the eyes of the law—such as it was, on the isle—but soon. Very soon. Pulling her up, he surprised her by dropping to his knees in front of her and helping her remove her own loose-cut trousers and under-trousers. As soon as he helped her to step out of them, he tossed the last garment aside and wrapped his arms around the backs of her thighs, burying his face against her soft, feminine belly.
“Wolfer! That tickles!” Alys added, a little unnerved by the intimate position, with so much of her bare skin pressed against so much of his own. She shivered as his tongue came out and tasted her navel. “Wolfer . . .”
He tipped his head back and looked up past her breasts. “You said I could do anything to you that you’ve done to me.” Reaching out with one hand, he muttered and enchanted the bedcovers, sliding them to the foot of the mattress. Keeping one arm around her thighs, he slid the other around her back, then stood, picking her up. As she looked up at him, he smiled slowly. A wolf-dining-on-lamb kind of smile. “I intend to do just that. Right now.”
She had only a moment to guess his meaning before he was laying her in the middle of his bed. Parting her thighs gently but ruthlessly, he settled himself between her knees and dipped his head. A moment later, as her memories of that client-man and Cari flicked through her head, Wolfer did the exact same thing. To her.
Soft, firm, warm-hot wetness caressed the folds of her femininity. The incredible intimacy made her gasp as he probed the entrance of her core with his tongue, then ran the tip of that tongue up around the sentinel that was her pleasure pearl and back down again. His lips nibbled, his teeth nipped, deliciously, delicately, and his tongue—his tongue!
Within a very short time, she was panting, then moaning, then writhing, because it was something very good—hot and wet and soft and excruciatingly good! And frustrating, as he paused to rearrange his position, moving his hand into the fray. Something nudged her, pushed into her, stroked a little, and made her pant and lift her hips instinctively, even as she clutched at the sheets from uncertainty at the unfamiliar, probing invasion.
Having never deflowered anyone before, Wolfer was expecting some tightness. And he’d once overheard his brother Trevan talking about virgins needing “gentle widening” with fingers first, to become “accustomed” to a man. He’d never heard his younger brother mention how those inner muscles would tighten around his finger, how her flesh would contract and quiver, ma
king his own tremble in enflamed sympathy.
Sweat beading on his brow, he eased a second finger in with the first, and did his damnedest to remind his body it had already achieved release outside of her once. He wasn’t going to allow it to happen a second time. Not this time around. Her breath hitched when he tried a third finger; she was too tight for that. So he went back to easing two fingers in and out, and suckled on that little sentinel near the gate his fingers were playing in.
When she tightened all over, he stopped, leaving her quivering on the edge of another pleasure-peak. Her pants matched his own heavy breathing, but hers just escaped into the air. His puffed against her nether curls and the slick, pleasure-swollen flesh they sheltered. She whimpered as he leaned in and licked her. A slow, full lick of his tongue that caressed every part of her down there. A rapid flick of his tongue against the little peak of her pleasure, and her breath hitched again; the blatantly sensual act kept her balanced right on the edge of aching bliss.
“Wolfer!”
“Alys,” he rumbled in breathless acknowledgment, pushing himself up onto hands and knees as he moved into position over her. His manhood slid up the inside of her thigh, hot and throbbing. It met and pressed against her slick core as she parted her thighs to accommodate him over her. Wolfer closed his eyes, focusing on breathing, just breathing for a few moments. She squirmed against him, and his eyes snapped open. “Hold still! All right? Just . . . hold still. This is, uh, going to hurt a little—but I swear I’ll make it feel good afterward. Trust me?”
“I do,” she sighed. And squirmed against him again. “Wolfer, I want you. Inside me.”
“So do I,” he breathed, and balanced on one elbow just long enough to make absolutely certain he was in the right spot. Shifting his hand to her hip, he pressed into her a little, then a little more. He wasn’t even really inside of her, but she was already wincing and stiffening with pain. He backed off, tried to go slower, but there was no way he could do that. He was simply too large, and she was too small. Lowering his forehead to her chin, he let her kiss him, let her clutch at his shoulders and try to hitch his hips closer, while he thought desperately for some nonpainful solution. There was none; not a single one his highly distracted mind and body could come up with and agree upon. “Alys . . .”
“Make love to me, Wolfer!” Alys demanded. She tugged on his shoulders. The feel of him, despite the way he made her feel tight and painful with pressure, was driving her crazy with the need for much, much more. She needed to be irrevocably a part of him, to join with him. It was pure instinct, and it was driving her past her discomfort.
Wolfer managed a shaky laugh. “I’m trying! But this is . . . I can’t . . . Put your legs around my waist, sweet.”
She complied, parting her thighs even wider and hooking her knees over his hips, curling up into him. It pressed him even more against her . . . and it hurt. She winced a little.
He lifted his head, saw her flinching expression clearly in the sunlight coming in through the northern-facing windows of his room, and kissed her. “I’m sorry, Alys. Quick and fast, all right?” he added against her lips, gold eyes meeting gray with regret for the hurt he had to inflict on her. “Do you remember that time back when we were kids, back in the spring when you were eight or nine, and you jumped into the Pawna River, when it was so cold it was a shock?”
Distracted by his words, Alys frowned slightly, then nodded as the memory came back. She had been nine, back when he and his twin were fourteen. Saber had dared Wolfer, Wolfer had dared her, and she had been the first one to jump into the freezing water on the first “warm” day of that spring. Just to prove she was brave enough for Wolfer to admire.
“Do you remember the feel of the water?” Wolfer asked, tightly reining in the need to plunge straight into the slick flesh he could feel against the head of his manhood. “How it swirled around us and caressed us right through our clothes. If you did it right now, your nipples would get all tight and cold, but this time . . . this time, I’d heat them with my mouth, and you’d heat my body inside of yours to keep it safe from the cold.”
Alys shivered.
“We’re going to jump into that river together,” Wolfer warned her, bracing his weight on his knees and one elbow, his other arm holding her lower back and hips firmly so there would be no escape. He kissed her again, then pulled back and looked into her trusting gray eyes. “Right now.”
His thrust was hard, direct, and relentless. Her face scrunched, and her mouth opened—but only the tiniest sound escaped from a throat locked tight with pain. Not a scream of agony, which he had expected, flinching in anticipation.
A bare heartbeat later, her features smoothed and went oddly bland, completely expressionless, for all that her body was still tightly stiff, under and around him. She breathed smoothly, steadily, each deep breath flowing into and out of her nose. Her gaze wasn’t even focused on him, but past him, on some indefinable point behind his ear. Wolfer panted and tried not to let his body explode before the rest of him—namely, his heart and mind—knew she was ready to enjoy the feel of him buried deep in her hot, wet, blessedly tight womanhood like this. Her pleasure was far more important than his own was to him, however imminent his was.
The pain ebbed slowly, as Alys controlled it in the way she had learned to control it after years of living under her uncle’s temper. She stopped resisting his presence. Her lover shifted slightly, sinking farther in, as her thighs slowly relaxed and opened wider under the weight of his flesh. There was a little stinging, stretching, sharp pain . . . but not as much as his initial thrust had caused.
Tender lips brushed at her own, at her cheeks and chin, her forehead and eyelids. She could feel Wolfer’s heart pounding in his chest, thumping where it was pressed to her breasts. Sweat slicked the shoulders under her fingers as he held himself as still as possible inside of her. He was full and hard; it felt like he was trying to meld into her . . . and as more of the pain faded, the pleasure returned. The feel of him pressed into her was what she still wanted. Everything her body had craved seeped slowly back into place, now that the pain was almost completely gone; the gentle salutes of his kisses added their reassurance, while she finished assimilating the aching change wrought in her flesh.
After a few more moments, her body decided it would tentatively agree with his reassuring kisses, and Alys relaxed. Then lifted her knees a little, relieving the pressure on the small of her back. He let loose a soft sound, too loud to be a breath, too soft and quiet to be a groan. Releasing his tight grip on her hips, Wolfer shifted that arm up past her shoulders, trying not to move inside of her—it was sweet of him to be so careful, she thought—and cupped her head with both hands, bracing his larger body over hers with his elbows. Trying not to squish her with his greater weight. Alys opened her eyes to see what was keeping him so carefully still.
“Are you all right?” Wolfer asked tightly. He could barely breathe, he wanted to thrust so much. At her brief, thoughtful pause, then a tiny nod of her head, he kissed her lips and rested his forehead against hers, closing his eyes. “Do you forgive me, Alys?”
“I love you, Wolfer.”
Her whisper was his absolution. It was exoneration, vindication, everything a man in his position could want, and doubled at that . . . for it was not only forgiveness in four little words, it was the whole world in those four, seemingly meager words. Incredibly erotic words, given that he was buried inside her tight body. He felt himself swell a little more and moved involuntarily, pushing into her even more, needing to be fully within her, as far as he could go. Her lips parted on a soft sound, and he quickly stilled, opening his eyes, afraid that he had hurt her. Soft gray eyes focused on his concerned, golden gaze.
“Why did you stop?” Alys asked, confused. He was so thick and hard inside of her, his brief movement so natural, she wanted to know why he wasn’t doing anything.
She wanted him to . . . ? “Thank Kata!”
His heartfelt groan made her smile; Wo
lfer was normally one to swear by Jinga, as she remembered things. It pleased her that he knew exactly which aspect of Divinity—the female one—was providing him so much pleasure this day in his bed. He pulled out a little and pushed back in, slow and gentle out of consideration for her sore flesh; his gentleness provided more intriguing pleasure than lingering, stinging pain. Alys shifted her arms and trailed a finger down his spell-shaved cheek, then covered his lips with the pad of her fingertip.
Still smiling as he rocked smoothly, slowly into her body, she murmured, “They say that, once each generation . . . Kata and Jinga come down to the world and possess two lovers: one soft and gentle, one strong and fierce.”
She snuck a look up at him, her fingertip resting against his lower lip. He nipped her digit, suckling on its tip as he had the peak of her breast. The rhythmic pull matched each surge of his turgid flesh into her softening body, igniting desire between the two places. Her knees lifted and hips tipped into his thrusts. That made him growl and gently take her finger between his teeth. Alys managed another smile and continued breathlessly.
“So . . . on behalf of the goddess . . . should She choose to drop by . . . you’re welcome.”
Releasing her finger, grinning fiercely, Wolfer surged more strongly into her. Giving her a taste of what he really wanted to do. Desire rose through her in a surge as sure as his thrusts, making Alys groan and twist and writhe under him, wanting what he was doing to her and growing desperate to let him know it with her increasingly eager body. It hurt; it still stung a bit, but the rest of it felt so good. Exactly what she needed.
He caught her hips with one hand, showed her how to meet him with encouraging tugs even as he devoured her mouth with teeth and tongue and lips. Greedy for everything he had, everything he could give, Alys returned his kisses, letting him hitch her knees higher on his hips, letting him thrust into her deeply, fully, over and over, until her head arched back with a wild, groaning cry that was almost, almost like a howl. Her fingernails dug into his back, then her fingers slipped instinctively to his buttocks to clasp him closer and closer with each burial of his flesh in hers.
