Healing Eden

by Rhenna Morgan

  A marauding, almost feral need to claim and possess clawed past the last scrap of his reason. She was his to taste and touch, to consume. He ran the halved fruit along her lip and tossed the fruit aside. “My turn.”

  Her pupils dilated and her warm breath fluttered against his face.

  He lowered his head and licked, her full, soft lips slightly parted and coated in the sweet, delicious juice. Her wet heat and fruit drenched taste sucked him in, overriding everything but the need to claim and dominate.

  She moaned into his mouth and stretched back, cupping the back of his head and arching so her soft ass ground against his cock.

  He nipped her jaw and cupped her breasts, her beaded nipples teasing his palms through the fabric. He tweaked the taut points. “I want you naked.” He grazed her neck with his teeth. “Right here, right now.”

  Her husky groan wrapped around him, and her hands covered his and squeezed in encouragement.

  “Tell me, Galena.” He ground his hips against her, prodding her with the pulsing hardness she’d created. “Tell me you’ll take what I give you.”

  She urged his mouth back to hers and whispered against his lips. “Everything.”

  * * * *

  Galena’s fingers tangled in Reese’s bound hair, his chest against her back, her neck craned to meet each slick lash of his tongue against hers. The position was awkward and limited the depth of how she answered his kiss, but no way was she shifting from the firm clasp of his hands on her breasts.

  He pinched the tight peaks and she gasped.

  His voice rasped against her lips. “Here all this time and you haven’t asked.” He nipped then sucked the sting he’d left behind. “You noticed my hair. Why not ask me why it’s bound?”

  She’d more than noticed, had actually volleyed back and forth between thrill at the thought he’d done it for her, and utter rage he’d bound it for someone else. In the end, she’d been afraid to mention it.

  “Ask.” His thumbs flicked her nipples.

  “Why?”

  His lips skated the shell of her ear, and flutters danced down her neck.

  “You.” He growled, a delicious vibration. “I can’t think beyond you. Can’t want beyond you.” He spun her, throwing her off center so she fell against him, his heartbeat against her palm furious. “Free it.” Not a request, but a command thick with need.

  Quivers rippled through her belly and her thighs tensed. She wasn’t sure what provoked her more, the intimate act or the dark demand. “You’re too tall.”

  He traced the exposed curves at the top of her bodice, drawing slow, tantalizing patterns and leaving gooseflesh in their wake. The corner of his mouth lifted, a smile of sorts, but wicked as he eased to his knees and trailed a hand down her leg. “You’d better hurry, Lena. My mouth’s that much closer to heaven.” Slipping his hand under the hem of her gown and coiling it around her ankle, he slid one sandal free. “Once my tongue’s between your thighs, I might not stop.”

  His words jolted through her, and a steady ache centered at her core. She fumbled with the knot holding his hair in place. Already he’d removed her other sandal and she’d barely managed to breathe, let alone release the tight strands.

  He tugged the ties of her over-bodice, unwinding the laces while his other hand skated up, up, up the back of her leg beneath her skirt. “Focus, Sweetheart.” He teased her thigh, ghosting his fingers to the inside, then out along the seam between her leg and ass. “Free me so I can make you burn and beg.”

  She jerked at the band holding the mess in place and it snapped against her fingers. It should have hurt, should have brought a curse to her lips, but every neuron focused on his touch.

  He pulled the bodice loose, leaving only the crimson underslip. “I think you want to burn.” He rose, towering over her like a wild god, the tawny mass of his hair no more tame than a lion’s. “Do you want to beg? To scream?”

  God, yes, she wanted that. No propriety, and no formality, just raw, uninhibited passion.

  Not waiting for an answer, he turned her and worked the buttons along her back. Open to her waist, warm greenhouse air brushed her bared skin as his knuckles circled the small of her back. “I love your skin.” He nudged her hair to expose her neck and nuzzled behind one ear. “The color and the way it tastes.” Torturously slow, he eased the fabric past the curve of her shoulders. The slip swooshed to the stone floor and left her bare. “Perfect.”

  Every nerve ending pricked to attention, craving his next touch. The leather from his pants whispered along her thighs. “What do you want Galena. What do you crave next?”

  “Your voice.” The answer ripped free before she could overthink it, and her skin tingled in anticipation. “The things you say and how you say them.” She leaned back, gaining what ease she could from the hard press of him. “I feel them everywhere, like a touch from the inside out.”

  Reese inhaled slow and deep, a sound so sensual it ricocheted along her flesh. He gripped her hips, one hand sliding in to span her abdomen. “You feel it here.”

  She whimpered, his touch so blatantly possessive she nearly wept.

  “And between your legs.” His fingers dipped, stopping at the top of her cleft. “Is your pussy wet, Galena? Will you be slick for me? My tongue?”

  Her legs shook, close to giving way.

  “You do like the words.” He kept teasing her, so close, and yet forever away from the building thrum at her clit. He ground his cock against her ass, thick and hard as stone. “I like them too. Give them to me. Tell me where you want my fingers.”

  If only she could. The words sat on the tip of her tongue, erotic images fueling her unspoken vocabulary, all of them wrong and horribly improper.

  His tempting whisper tickled her ear. “Tell me. You’re safe with me.” One hand pinned her hips in place, the other teased her thighs. “Nothing you can say…nothing you can want or do is wrong. Not with me.”

  God he was close. A breath away from where she needed his touch.

  “It’s only us.” His voice stroked her everywhere, low and sultry like velvet sin. “Let go.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut and gripped his forearms. “Please.” Every part of her shook, desperate and demanding she obey. “Touch me.”

  “More.”

  Her lungs burned and her breasts ached. “Your fingers, I want to feel them slide between my legs.”

  “Where?”

  Oh, God. He wanted that word. So damned wrong, but exactly what she wanted. She didn’t want safe. Isn’t that what she’d told him? Her hips flexed forward, seeking the contact he withheld. All she had to do was say it. “My pussy.” Heat rushed to her cheeks, but a spear of pleasure rippled through her core. “I want your fingers on my pussy. Inside me.”

  Reese growled, the slow-rolling animalistic call of a predator who’d sighted its prey. He dipped his fingers and stroked exactly as she’d asked. “You’re drenched.” He teased her entrance, dragging the moisture up to circle her clit. The steady rhythm reverberated along her arms and legs. “What else? Lift your breasts, show me how you want them touched and tell me what you need.”

  It was too much. She opened her eyes and the environment crashed in on her. They were in the open, exposed where anyone could walk in.

  “Look at me.” Reese cupped her chin, urging her to face him with one hand while the other kept its enticing pattern. His emerald green eyes were nearly black with passion. “You’re safe.”

  He’d die to protect her. Where the thought came from, or how the certainty landed at such a moment she didn’t know and didn’t care, but he’d give her anything and everything she asked, even what she craved and feared the most.

  “Let it out.” He swiped his tongue along her lower lip. “No judgment.” He sealed his lips against hers, and undulated his hips against her ass in a rhythm to match his fingers.

  Something savage built inside her, a powerful and ruthless force that sent fissures t
hrough all the weighted rules that had governed her life. This was her chance to fly, free from everything but the sensations crackling between them. She cupped her heavy, aching breasts and widened her stance to give him better access.

  The pad of his finger circled her entrance and his thumb brushed her swollen clit.

  Head thrown back on Reese’s shoulder, she cried out, and her eyes flashed opened to the midday sun pouring through the greenhouse panes above.

  “There she is.” Reese thrust his finger deep. “So fucking sweet.” He added a second finger, and her sex clamped around him.

  Ah, God, sweet wasn’t right. This was pure rawness, everything carnal and wicked she’d ever wanted. “Reese.” She slanted forward and sent three tiny plants flying from the workbench. He’d said he’d make her beg and he was right. She’d do anything. Hips lifted, she pushed against him. “Please.”

  With a ragged groan, he shifted, fingers slipping from her entrance. “Finger yourself.”

  She was already on it, her damp and swollen labia scalding as her pulse pounded beneath her skin.

  Cool air gusted along the back of her thighs and leather rustled.

  His rich, husky voice wrapped around her, a dirty and primal sound that made her belly flutter. “Look at that.” His fingers brushed hers and his velvet hardness teased the curve of her ass. “You need more, sweetheart? Ready to spread those wings?”

  A garbled groan clawed free, every muscle from her toes to the top of her head stretched taut. “Now, Reese.” She writhed against his length, mindless of anything but the edge of bliss dangling before her.

  His cock nudged her entrance.

  “Now, what?” The tip of his glans pressed her opening, a merciless tease that left her pussy quivering. “Say it, sweetheart. Look at me and tell me what I want to hear.”

  She tried to push back, to take what she needed.

  He tightened his hold on her hips.

  “Reese.” She angled her ass higher, instinctively aiming for what he offered. The flared head slipped inside, but it wasn’t enough. She whipped her head around and glared over her shoulder. His eyes burned as wild as the fire blasting through her. “Fuck me.” It rolled off her tongue, the most sensual tone to ever pass her lips. She let her head fall back, her hair an erotic stroke around her ribs. “Fuck me like I need it, hard and wild.”

  He impaled her in one thrust, scattering her words and thoughts with the slick, delicious stretch of his perfect shaft. His calloused hands stroked her smooth flesh, and damp air kissed her sweat-slick back. Skin slapped against skin, each strike of his balls against her swollen folds spurring a maelstrom of sensation.

  She was so close, a gut-wrenching finish bearing down so hard she wasn’t sure she’d withstand it, let alone comprehend.

  “Lena.” Barely a whisper, Reese’s voice curled around her, his touch decadently descending down her spine. “Hang on, baby. Let’s see how high you fly.”

  His hand kept moving, her own gripping the workbench in front of her for dear life. His thumb grazed the cleft at the top of her ass then slid down, slow and torturous.

  Oh, God. He wouldn’t.

  He circled her anus, a simple brush, followed by a subtle push that shoved her past the edge.

  Her cries filled the greenhouse and her sex clamped his length in fierce, pulsing grasps.

  “Fuck.” Reese’s hips rammed home, and his cock jerked inside her core’s tight fist.

  She arched and curled one arm back to bury her fingers in his hair, the other digging nails deep into his flank. Her hips writhed against his, milking every pulse of his shaft. She’d never felt anything so perfect, such a heady connection with a euphoric haze.

  His arms coiled around her torso, one slanted across her breasts to collar her throat, the other angled across her hips, strong and protective. “Talk to me.” He nuzzled the space behind one ear, his breath still hot and fast. “Tell me you’re all right.”

  All right? The word was too shortsighted. Woefully inept for the feminine power coursing through her veins. He’d cracked her shell before, but today he’d freed her, rearranged her perspective to the point she’d never fit inside the cast she’d worn before.

  She let her head lull against him and a languid peace billowed along her muscles. She was safe with him. If she fell, he’d catch her, a fact her body had registered long before her mind.

  Forcing her heavy eyelids open, she cupped his cheek. “I’m better than all right.” She tried for a smile to match the lightness in her heart and her cheeks trembled from the strain. “I’m alive.”

  Chapter 20

  Galena stared at herself in the mirror, naked. Soft morning light spilled from tubes overhead, the muted pinks a compliment to the blush across her neck and chest.

  She traced her collarbone. When was the last time she’d really looked at herself, not a stitch of clothes on and openly studying her curves? Yesterday the act would’ve made her blush. Today it was her memories. Even separated by an entire floor, the mere thought of Reese and all they’d done through the afternoon and night left her heated and short of breath. The shower they’d taken this morning was nothing short of nirana.

  His room was quiet now. Level with the curve of her hip in the mirror’s reflection lay the tangled white sheets on Reese’s bed. She wanted back in those sheets, the crisp fabric rasping her bare skin with Reese’s heat nestled close.

  “You don’t have to go.” Reese stood in the doorway with a plate full of fruits and cheeses.

  Her stomach grumbled. Something more substantial than water, sex, and exhausted sleep was probably a good idea. Her breasts tingled and tightened at the sight of everything else.

  Tanned skin stretched across Reese’s defined muscles, marked indentions she’d outlined with her mouth and fingers through the long, delicious night. He’d thrown on leather pants, the fastenings left partially undone. He might as well have drawn an arrow and added the caption, Lick here.

  His hip muscles flexed and released as he sauntered her direction. She’d grown fascinated with the way they moved, particularly when pistoning against her core.

  The plate clicked against the dresser’s surface and his warm fingers curled around her hips.

  “You could stay.” A hint of forest and spice tickled her nose as he nuzzled close behind her. She wanted it back on her skin, as it had been when she’d woken. A sensual reminder of all they’d done and all he’d given her. “Let me indulge in your wicked fantasies a while longer.”

  Her hips rolled and a sigh slipped past her lips. Praise the Great One, he was addictive. Already her entrance was slick and ready to take him. The woman staring back at her in the mirror was a stranger, so erotic, open and free. “I can’t let you have all my fantasies at once. We have to save something for tomorrow.”

  “I could have a million tomorrows and it wouldn’t be enough. Stay. Let me pleasure you a little longer.”

  Her gown lay across the oversized chair in the corner of the room. Stay here, or head back home to all of her responsibilities? Back to the pieces of her life that didn’t make for a nice, tidy fit. A shiver wracked her. “How do we do this? Us?”

  “How do you want to handle it?” His emerald green eyes stayed locked on hers in the reflection, no pressure of any kind.

  “I have no idea.” She settled her hands on top of his. “I meant what I said. I’m not looking to keep things a secret. I just—”

  “Don’t know the best approach?” He released her hips and combed her nearly dried hair with his fingers. “You do what works for you. Until you’re ready, I’ll be here.”

  He worked the strands in small sections, each pass given patient, devoted attention. He’d offered her so much and still asked nothing in return. If the roles were reversed, could she be so forbearing? So willing to wait in the shadows until he found the strength to own what burned between them?

  “Bind it.” Her voice shook and a tremor snaked its w
ay down her spine.

  Reese hesitated, attention shuttling between the lock of hair resting between his knuckles and her reflection. “That’s a pretty strong statement. Your brothers—”

  “I’m not asking for my brothers. I’m asking for me. For us.” Something she hadn’t realized until the words slipped free. “If my actions lay the ground work for a conversation between me and my family, then so be it.”

  He pulled the strand the rest of the way through, a cautious, pensive expression on his face. He brushed it toward the center of her back, eyes locked on hers.

  Stepping to the dresser, he opened the top drawer. He shifted a few items and drew out a mahogany box carved with an emblem on top she couldn’t quite make out. Inside were a handful of beads the size of her knuckle, each a pale gold so smooth they glowed nearly white. He rolled one between his fingers, thoughtful, before he turned. “Hold out your hand.”

  He placed the sphere in her palm and cupped either side of her neck. The rasp of his indrawn breath sent flutters through her belly.

  He gathered one side of her hair, then the other, reverent. The tugs along her scalp as he sectioned the mass into thirds rippled to her toes.

  “Your commitment means everything.” Back and forth the tension shifted as he worked her hair into one long braid. “No matter what happens, no matter what actions you might need to take in the future, I’ll do all I can to be worthy of your gift.”

  What actions she might need to take? Did he think she’d take it back?

  “Give me the bead.”

  She held out her palm and met his gaze over one shoulder. The respect and warm appreciation in his eyes shook her soul.

  He lifted the tip of the braid so she could see and slipped the bead in place. His fingers shifted as he warmed and altered the metal with his mind, tightening it to hold the braid in place. “Until fate or your heart chooses otherwise, you’re mine.”

  Something in her stirred. Something foreign, but comfortable and profound. The possessive tenor of his words should have struck a nerve, or made her push for distance. Instead she nearly purred, the need for intimacy coming from some place so deep she doubted it could ever be defined.