Pleasure

by Jacquelyn Frank

  Guin looked at her for a long moment of silence, trying to absorb what he was seeing, hearing, and feeling. It was like a great deal of overload that he was trying to force himself to process. There were so many reasons why this was such a bad idea…and there were so many, many more why it had to happen.

  “And Guin,” she said softly as she leaned forward and kissed the corner of his lips, “let’s drop the K’yatsume when we’re naked, hmm?”

  “Are we going to be that a lot,” he asked carefully, “or just this morning?”

  “I think that we can start with a lot and work our way up to when we need to move on.” She spoke just as carefully as he had, the entire situation such incredibly daring and new territory for them. “Does that appeal to you?”

  Appeal to him? It was more than he had ever expected by a long shot. That was when Guin decided to throw it all away. All the worry and all the awful ramifications that would strike out at him one day for daring to reach for her like this were dismissed for another time. Right now, all he wanted to do was immerse himself in everything he had craved from her. More than that, he wanted to give her everything she could possibly need.

  “Hang on, baby,” he warned just before he lurched up to his feet, holding on to her until she had securely positioned herself around his waist, her wonderful legs clinging to him. He walked her toward her room but then stopped, turned, and crossed to his room instead.

  “But you don’t even use—”

  “Malaya, I’m not making love to you in a bed where I have seen you with other men. I can deal with it, it was my job to deal with it, but this would be asking too much of me. Just the fact that I thought of it is enough. I don’t want any company, you understand?”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  Neither one of them dared to broach the topic of how he would handle it afterward if he were still around. But Malaya wanted him to be around. She ached with the very thought of him leaving. It wasn’t just the friendship and the security…it was more. It was because she could not imagine what a world without him being right next to her would be like.

  The thought made her wrap her arms tightly around his neck and she nuzzled her face against his shoulder. She put everything out of her mind. She didn’t want to think about the Senate and ramifications in the future, she just wanted to live in the moment with Guin and take it for all it was worth.

  Guin entered the disused bedroom and knelt on the bed before tipping her out of his hold and laying her out on the dark scarlet bedspread. She was something to see, all that luscious cocoa skin lying against the royal jewel tone, the black blanket of her glossy hair strewn all around her. He had seen her naked thousands of times, but he had never owned the right to her while she was so beautifully bared. Now he didn’t have to pretend to not see the delicious berry color of her nipples or the way they constantly seemed to be tautly pointed.

  “What gave me away?” he wondered aloud, the question actually offhand.

  “Mmm, a lot of little things,” she admitted. “But mostly it was the bath and what you said. A man does not say things like that just to be charming. I felt the truth of it very deeply. It just took some time for me to face the changes it would make between us.” She reached out to him and ran her hands over the fabric of his shirt, her fingers slipping buttons through their holes. “I was admittedly slow in…well, I couldn’t see the forest for the trees, you could say. I’ve looked at you out of habit for years. The shock of seeing you differently blinded me for a little bit.”

  “But now you’ve seen the light?”

  “Yes.” She laughed. “I’ve seen you.” She took a breath in that was full of obvious sexual invitation. “I’ve tasted you,” she whispered with an erotic little shiver slipping over her.

  “Aye, my honey, you have,” he agreed in a low, rumbling register. “And a fine job of it you did, too. I’m sorry for the juvenile haste, Malaya. It won’t be like that again.”

  “It won’t?” She pouted impishly. “I rather liked it.” She flattened her palms to him and ran them up over his belly and chest beneath his open shirt. “The idea of it—of knowing you wanted me too much to bear, too much for the infamous Guin’s control—it was the finest compliment I’ve ever had.” She reached to draw his dark head down to her lips and breathed against his ear, “You taste so very delicious, Ajai Guin.”

  “Mmm, if that mouth of yours couldn’t wake the dead. And I’m only talking about the things that come out of it, not just the things you take in.” He rose up on his knees and shucked his shirt, showing her a fine view of how well just her suggestive words had revived him. His cock jutted out with fierce pride in itself, as if knowing what a tremendous piece of work it was.

  Malaya reached for him, pretty much the only part of him she wasn’t truly familiar with after all these years, and she ran light, long manicured nails along the underside of him. Guin reached out to clamp a hand on her raised knee, closing his eyes and clearly letting himself ride the pleasurable sensation for all it was worth. Just the same, he caught her fingers just as she was tracing the darkly flushed head. Guin raised her hand to his mouth, trailing a kiss along her palm until he reached the heel of it and bit her. It wasn’t painful or damaging, but it did send a whip of razor-keen feedback up her arm and tightened her breasts and their dark tips even more. He smiled as her breathing quickened obviously.

  “You have to wait before you touch again,” he said against her skin. “Just like I’ve waited to touch you.”

  Malaya watched his eyes fall onto her body, a slow stroking gaze that boiled up to a look of utter hunger by the time he was looking in her eyes again. As she watched layer after layer of inhibition begin to peel away from him, she recognized the barely leashed animal that Guin was, and she felt the power that protected her evolve into something much more ferocious and with nothing near protection on his mind.

  “Oh, what things my mind thinks to see you like this. To know you’re waiting for me,” he ground out in rough confession. “Mostly, it thinks I’m dreaming. But then it figures that since it is a dream, I can do anything I want.”

  “You can do anything you want, Guin,” she invited with a sultry smile. “And the best part will be when you realize this is no dream. I’m for you. For real.”

  “Don’t invite me in such ways without knowing where my desires lie, Malaya. You may want to keep a rein on me.”

  “I reign over you,” she retorted, “and if you try to take me somewhere that I do not wish to go, I know how to call you back. I always have.”

  Guin was satisfied. She would not let him do anything to hurt her or that would make her unhappy. She would speak her mind. He had needed to know this. Taking a slow breath, he reached a fingertip out to touch her belly, drawing over her carefully in a smooth, wandering sweep. Just feeling her passing warmly and flawlessly under his simplistic touch had the power to enthrall him. He felt Malaya watching him with a mixture of amusement and curiosity. He knew she could see the fury of appetite he held leashed tightly for the moment. If she had expected him to fall on her like an animal again, she would be disillusioned. At least, for the present. He realized he could make no promises to himself to the contrary. As long as he had fantasized about this he had always dreamed of making love to her only with the perfection of respect and romanticism she deserved, but he realized now how unrealistic that was just based on the kind of man he was. He had proof of that from his rather horrendous performance with her so far. She simply was too deep into too many places within him. Heart, soul, appetite…anger, passion, and every wild place he owned.

  With that thought in mind, his hand flattened to her and slid up against her ribs. He curved around them, just below the underside of her left breast. He wished he could take back what he had initially done to her, if only because he’d thrown away the opportunity to touch her for the first time with real awareness of what he was doing. Guin tried not to think of what else he would have thrown away if he hadn’t come to his senses in
time. But he couldn’t wish it all away no matter how hard he tried, and he didn’t want to discard the memory of how she had taken him to that astounding moment of bliss. What he did want was the chance to return the favor. Moving over her until he could see down into her eyes directly, Guin let his touch run up over the roundness of her soft breast.

  “When I touched you those weeks ago, I wished so wildly that you’d tell me to stay once more. I would have given myself permission then to take you to bed, using the heat of the challenge as an excuse for it. I think at that moment, it would have taken very little to convince me to capitulate to what I had wanted for so very long.”

  The softly spoken confession and the stroking of his roughly callused fingers began to make her restless and impatient. If he wanted her so much as he had said, why wouldn’t he really touch her already? The way he was looking into her all but burned with real fire.

  “Touch me, Guin,” she encouraged him. “I am not as untouchable as you make me out to be.”

  “For me, you should be,” he sighed, obviously believing every ridiculous word. “But I can’t make myself realize that anymore.” He slid his coarse hand fully over her breast, abrading her already tight nipple and making her breath hitch in her throat. “I will touch you, Malaya, and it will be often. It will take some doing to make me stop.”

  He punctuated the sentiment by lowering his mouth to hers, touching a clinging kiss to her. Malaya reached up to work her fingers into his hair. “I’m just happy you’ve started,” she said. “I feel like I’ve been waiting for this forever.”

  He laughed at her for that and she realized why. Whatever her wait, his had been some time longer. How long was still a question for her, but it ceased to matter within a moment as he moved his head downward.

  “Here now,” he murmured, his breath coasting hotly against her breast. “Here’s a sweet treat, hmm?” He proved it to himself by closing his mouth over her nipple. Malaya watched with fascination as his eyes slid closed and he made a sound of pleasure low in his throat. He continued to react just as intensely to every inch of her skin he discovered with his hands and his mouth. He was slow and thorough, painting her inch by inch with his touch until she vibrated with electric sensation everywhere.

  Malaya never had given any real thought to Guin as a lover, and she had wondered earlier what she would find in his bed. Now she realized she had found both a beast and a bard, a man who could be wild and coarse or sensual and poetic in the way he loved a woman. She had dealt with the beast, and now she was seeing the bard. The stoic man she knew disappeared and his face and eyes grew a softly voracious expression that gave away everything he was feeling in every instant.

  He took her at her earlier words and he worshipped her. She lay stunned and stimulated all at once as his crafty mouth followed the coarse caresses of his hands. He spent as much time on the length of her arms and her fingertips as he did on her belly and breasts. He explored the sensitivities of her strong, fit legs. Guin turned her over then and started all over again, working his way down her spine and buttocks, his teeth nipping at those curves with appetite. She knew in that instant that she would not be allowed to leave his bed until his feast was over. She learned that there was another application for all of that patience and control that he had.

  Feeling more alive than she had since the war, a time when fighting for her life had made her truly learn how to live, Malaya could do nothing he didn’t want her to do, forcing her to simply lie there and take and take and take as he familiarized himself with everything he’d labeled as off-limits. She moaned and squirmed in soft bursts, dizzy from her rapid breathing and from penetrating sensation that buzzed all over her.

  “Guin…” she pleaded as he turned her over again and set his mouth lightly over hers.

  “Yes, my honey?” He smiled with an arrogance and smug knowing that lit his dark eyes. “Feel good?”

  “Very,” she sighed, “but I’m going crazy.”

  “Excellent, that was exactly my plan,” he informed her with a chuckle and a kiss for her lips as she gave a small growl of frustration.

  “Well, change your plans,” she demanded of him.

  “Mmm, I would…except this is one situation where you cannot give me orders. We can try that another day.”

  The suggestiveness of what he said made an erotic chill shudder through her. She was left to wonder what it would be like to spend time commanding this man to give her her pleasure exactly as she wanted it and when she wanted it. Guin as a submissive toy? Oh gods, what an outrageously arousing thought. That he was willing to serve her like that in the future shouldn’t have shocked her so much. After all, he spent most of his time in a role of subservience. Except the sheer vitality of his personality had never made it seem that way. Especially not when he was bullying her around and fighting with her for his opinion.

  “I’m going to take that as an offer of promise,” she warned him with a grin. “I would pay all of my fortune for a day of completely obedient Guin.”

  “I’ll sell myself much cheaper than that,” he admitted to her, “for a day with you as my bedroom mistress.”

  “My, my, aren’t we full of surprises?” she observed on the back of a delighted sigh.

  “That one and many more. I’ve had years to think about what I would do with you once I got you under me,” he said as he rested all of his weight along her body and pressed her beneath him. “It will take some time to span the list.”

  That made her narrow her eyes on him in sharp curiosity. “Just how long do you mean when you say ‘years’?” she asked him.

  “I mean years. And I won’t brush up this vain little ego of yours any more than I have to, so do not push for details. And now, my honey, I want to feel your hands on my skin. I want your nails in my back. I want your pleasure crying in my ear. Let’s see what we can do about that, hmm?”

  Before she could reply, he rolled over with her sharply, leaving her as the cover for his body. She immediately sat up, straddling his abdomen. Her hands fell onto his hot skin instantly and with an exhalation of satisfaction, she began to touch him and shape him to her liking. She stroked over strands and stretches of taut muscle. It was marvelous to see and feel what she had only really taken note of incidentally before. She bit her lower lip in a concentrating nibble as she watched him react with strong sighs of contentment. She didn’t want him content. Not yet.

  Malaya bent forward, her hair sliding over them both everywhere as she touched her mouth to his skin. The initial sweep of her tongue burned like a glorious acid. One touch and the sensation radiated in fierce growing distance over his flesh. When she teased his nipples, each in turn, he couldn’t keep his hands out of her hair as he held on to her and the remarkable feedback flooding through him. She slid against him, the wetness of her aroused sex smearing over his skin and covering him in her scent. Guin reached down to grasp her hips and, with a slick slide, he drew her up onto his chest.

  “Gods, you’re soaking wet,” he rasped roughly as he touched his fingers to the mound of soft flesh she had totally denuded of hair. Over the years she had vacillated between her preference in this; either way, she was beautiful and stimulating.

  “I have been since you first grabbed hold of me, Guin,” she confessed to him, reaching behind herself to brace her hands on his thighs as she leaned back and gave him unhesitant access to her. His fingers slipped into heated, glossy flesh and he swore softly under his breath at the intimate feel of her. It was all about the touch. He had seen every detail of this body time and again for years, but it was the touch that finally crossed him into a realm of full sexual dimension. Full permission. Full pleasure.

  Guin’s hands might have been rough, but his touch was gentle and finessed. Malaya caught her breath time and again as he slowly explored her, just as he had every other inch of her body. He kept his gaze riveted to her as she began to work herself in counterpoint to his caresses. Her torso arched, her breasts attracting his free hand until h
e was pinching and tugging her nipples into screaming sensitivity. Malaya felt as if she were spinning and twisting, everything overwhelming her. She’d never realized how sharply she could be made to feel, just by being brought to this point with methodical and studious attention to the rest of her body. She’d never been very patient or very submissive in bed. Sex had often come as a resort of final measure. She fed an appetite when it began to get in her way, then went back to dealing with her intensely busy and overfilled nights. In his way, Tristan reacted exactly the same. The only difference was that his appetites were far more powerful than hers.

  Or so she’d always believed.

  She could get very used to feeling this way. Her whole body was crying for more from this man of so many surprises. Malaya was realizing just how much she had shorted him over these years. She had made a three-dimensional man into a picture of only two dimensions in her mind.

  He had such very thick fingers, and she was reminded of that as he worked one into the heated hollow inside her. She gasped, arching and twisting down against his hand to ride the sensation fully. He only let her do it for a moment before he withdrew from her completely and grasped her by her hips.

  “Come here,” he commanded her hoarsely, dragging her forward. She quickly adjusted the bridge of her legs until she was kneeling astride his head with her feet under his arms as he pulled her down to his mouth. His tongue darted out to taste her and she gasped at the roaring feedback that immediately rushed into her.

  Guin had wanted to taste of her so much, and now she melted like sensual butter on his tongue. Feeling her react was the world’s most powerful aphrodisiac and his cock was already hard enough to cut diamonds. She bent forward to brace her hands on the headboard, using it to help herself control the motion of her hips as she rode against his mouth. She forgot that he was supposed to be in charge, working herself into a wild little frenzy until her whole body was writhing with rising pleasure. She was crying out in soft, constant sounds of building tension. Guin’s position gave him an incredible view as she flung her head and shoulders back, her face creased with the pain of need. He reached under her and thrust two thick fingers deeply and suddenly into her, his tongue flashing around her clit.