Gideon (29 page)

He loved her, everything about her, and he had done so for more years than he might ever admit to aloud. As Gideon stripped away her delicate dress, he worshipped every inch of her revealed skin with kisses and caresses made partially of fiery craving and mostly of devotion. Legna stretched out beneath him, blinking back the rush of tears wetting her eyes as she finally began to learn exactly who he was... and how he felt.

Who ever would have thought a male so potent and so confident would deem himself unworthy of a girl like her? This understanding made her realize that despite the hundreds of referrals to her youth, she had long ago impressed herself on him as a lady of quality who deserved only the best their race had to offer. So he had never dared come close to her, despite the fact that he was considered the most esteemed of their breed. Deep within himself he had thought that if they"d only known the truth, the Demon people who so highly respected him would shun him as he had expected her to do. He thought a thousand-year-old crime was just as unforgivable now as ever.

Not one of us has the right to judge you, Gideon.

You have every right to judge me, love
.

He raised his head to meet her gaze, turning slightly to nuzzle against the hand she held against his cheek.

“You are my one and truest mate,
Neliss
. If I am going to be the same to you, I must earn my place beside you.”

“But—” Legna broke off with a gasp when she felt him surge forward against her, driving his hips between her thighs until he had situated himself tightly against her, his broad torso hovering over her so she felt cast beneath his shadow. Unlike her, he was still clothed from the waist down, but there was tremendous suggestion and blatant need in the hardness of the body nestling against hers.

“Shall I do it this way? Through your body? Shall I gain every inch of progress with every cry of pleasure I elicit from you? I know it in my soul now that only through your love will I find my absolution. Perhaps I have known it all along and that was why I was forbidding myself to reach for it. But I have waited so long, Magdelegna. So very long.”

She did not need to be an empath to hear the pain breaking in his voice.

“Is it my body that will give you succor? It is yours to take, then, Gideon,” she whispered to him, pulling his head down until her lips brushed gently against his ear. “You are already in my heart.”

She felt the start that jolted through him and readily met his doubting look when he sought her expression for confirmation. He must have seen what he was searching for, because she felt a fine shudder run through him. She felt his hands clenching into the bedclothes at her shoulders as his eyes slid closed.

Unsure if he was arguing for or against what she was trying to give to him, she reached to stroke confident hands over his shoulders and down his back. Her fingertips then glided over the tight cut of his backside and clung hard to him, drawing him deeper into the embrace of her legs as she wound them around his.

“Legna.”

Gideon was amazed he"d managed to get the word past his lips. Everything inside of him felt as if it had become petrified, seized with the solid rigidity of an arousal beyond anything that should be possible. She was past beautiful. She was an inconceivable perfection.

There were no words in any of the languages he knew to voice what he was thinking and feeling as he watched her turn a knowing little smile on him, as if she were flaunting her total power to captivate him with just her existence.

“I am waiting for you,” she said, her voice low and sultry and as tempting as the beckoning curves of her body.

Gidon recovered her hands, catching them in his and pinning them to the bed, his body lurching roughly against her as he seized her lush mouth in a kiss. She was caught between the bed at her back and the unforgiving steel of his hard male body. His unchecked aggression delighted her and she made a noise of appreciation low in her breast. She laced her fingers between his, holding his hands tightly in the implausible event that he might try to withdraw them.

He was bruising their mouths with the ferocious need that burned through him, but she gave as much as he did to the erotic twist of lips and tongues. Her teeth scored his lip again, making him pull back and look into her face with an animalistic intensity. In an instant he crossed her arms high above her head, pressing her hands back against the bed and leaving her bare body vulnerable to him.

He switched his hold on her hands so they were both trapped beneath only one of his. Legna was breathing so hard with the anticipation of his next decision that she became a little light-headed. Then his freed hand was slipping over her belly, a bold, masculine caress that scorched her soft skin. He rested his mouth on the curve of her neck that blended into the crest of her shoulder. She felt his hand coast up her rib cage to embrace the full weight of her breast.

She cried out from the stimulation, her body jolting in response. Legna felt wild, liquid heat pour down her body, the rush of it dampening her thoroughly between her legs. He made another territorial vocalization, making her shudder when he released the hold of his mouth in order to push past her hair and whisper into her ear.

“
Neliss
,” he murmured, his hand sliding away from her breast, down her ribs and belly. “I can smell your scent,” he told her, his breath as hot as the meaning of his words and the path of his hand.

Legna dropped her head back, feeling his hand pressing her back into the bed as it traveled to the southern regions of her trembling torso. His palm was pressed flat against her as he reached the center of the span between her hips.

“Gideon!” she gasped as his touch feathered half an inch closer to her heat and the moist scent that had lured him there.

“Darling,” he corrected her, making very sure she felt him withdraw slightly.

She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, trembling so hard she couldn"t understand how she was still breathing. She understood him perfectly, but instead of complying, she pushed up and into his body. The slow movement rubbed her suggestively over the unmistakable bulge still trapped within the confines of his clothing. Instinctively his hand moved around to the lower curve of her spine, using the counterpressure to keep her against the uncontrollable surge of his hips.

He swore through gritted teeth, giving her a much better idea of what the word meant now that she was hearing it in context for the second time. She laughed, a low, breathy chuckle that reflected her recognition of her power over the desires of his flesh.

Gideon released her hands, his bold touch caressing her breasts, rubbing and pulling gently on the thrusting tips until she moaned and shuddered with the spears of arousal that lanced through her entire body.

She reached to slide her fingers into his hair, holding his mouth and tongue to her neck, which he was feasting on in slow and purposely erotic ways.

Approaching the vee of her hips once more, Gideon could feel the edges of the pool of liquid heat that lay just beyond his fingertips, and he craved the feel of the exotic fluid as well as the sensitive, soft flesh it bathed. He was locked into the excruciating hold of his urgent body, feeling like he had never known such a wholly riveting need. He felt her in his thoughts, felt her analyzing everything he was feeling to adjust the way she rubbed against him, until it was driving him insane.

Suddenly she caught his ravenous mouth with her own, then she moved from his mouth to his neck and throat, learning with delight that the feel of her wet lips in those areas was an incredible stimulant. She felt the swell and pulsing urgency of his erection, so close to her own heat. It sharpened her own hunger, the need to have him deep within her body gripping roughly through her.

Gideon felt her release him from the touch of one hand and was even aware of the slight jerk of her arm.

But he was still unprepared for the strange jolt that accompanied that skillful twist of her wrist. They materialized a half a second later in the center of the bed, her body and his still connected as they had been before the teleport, only this time he was as nude as she was.

That brought him to be unexpectedly sliding through the liquid heat of her aroused sex, making her gasp as he rubbed over sensitive flesh and heightened the cravings of her body for his joining thrust. He uttered a sound of pure primal desire, his hands moving to grip the fabric of the coverlet as he threw back his head and curved back into a full arching of his tormented body.

But he did not give her what she wanted, in spite of it taking every last ounce of control he had left. He moved away from that unbelievable haven she had tempted him with, rising up on his knees in order to do so, pushing her thighs farther apart as a result.

He was wracked with the pulse of his need as he looked down on his irresistible mate. He shook his head in wordless disbelief at her cunning tricks to overpower him. And they had worked, every one of them. Not to her satisfaction, perhaps, but it completely convinced him that he had been wrong when he had assumed sex was too commonplace an act to hold the attention of a creature with a centuries-long life.

And he was feeling the error of his thoughts keenly. Still, he would not deny her equal time. She meant too much to him. It was in her nature to give so wholly to the needs of others before indulging needs of her own. But he was not like others, and he would not be satisfied in that way.

He leaned a little forward, looking straight down into her curious and questioning gaze.

“I want you to say my name,” he commanded her, his voice guttural and powerful. “And if you do, I will give you a gift very similar to...
this
.”

He was suddenly diving past her eyes and into her body. The feedback of the sudden rush of his power entering her, combining with her very own aura, made her struggle for breath. The sensation fired wild chills down her breasts and belly and thighs. He insinuated himself into the rush of her blood with astounding speed, enhancing and altering the chemistry of her physiology until she was bursting with an intense rush of adrenaline.

Then there was the awareness of her most sensitive erogenous zones being filled with the hot pulse of fresh blood and stimulating nerve impulses.

He sent increasing heat through and through her, finishing and beginning again, all the while watching her wide eyes as she rasped for breath. She couldn"t focus on him any longer, her vision blurring as she felt herself falling over backward into a black hole of his artful creation.

Legna exploded, the crystal finally shattering as he hit the perfect pitch within her. She screamed out, her body seizing with her pleasure, her entire being wrenching with indescribable pulsations beneath him.

And he had not even touched her.

She was drawing wildly for breath as she finally dropped from the outrageous crest he had pushed her to.

She was finally able to focus on the hotly satisfied look in his eyes.

“Come now, sweet, and say my name,” he continued to urge her in that superior and coaxing tone.

“You are strong enough now to keep it as well as I do.”

He lowered his mouth to her breasts, laving each nipple with torturous patience and then scoring her across the right one, exactly as she had marked herself on him.

It was like putting a high-voltage current through her, forcing her to arch up off the bed. He took advantage, dragging his mouth over her raised belly, dipping his tongue into her navel as if pushing a magic button inside of her that released a spill of hot liquid over already soaked flesh.

“Say my name,
Nelissuna
, and I will give you so much more,” he murmured against her skin as his lips moved lower and lower.

Legna wondered how he expected her to say even
her
name when what he was doing had her throat locked into a perpetual sound of pleasure. The push of his thighs against the backs of hers left her completely exposed as he rose up and replaced his mouth with the touch of his hand.

This time there was no teasing. His fingers slipped into the wet silk at the juncture of her thighs, touching, exploring, and finding in a heartbeat the way to stroke her into new awareness and heightened response. She bucked, crying out as her hips rose and twisted. She felt him slip his touch inside of her, a skilled intrusion that showed her everything a man was capable of learning about a woman when he had a millennium to do it in.

He already knew her from the inside out, and he made good use of it. As he railroaded her with increasing ecstasy, he continued to ask her for his name. He promised her more, but she could not have even tried to imagine more. When he slid down her sweat-drenched body to taunt her with his mouth, he used the link of their minds to continue the request and the promises of reward.

Legna felt herself wrench into an explosion of forcibly parting molecules, a feeling parallel to how she had felt the first time she had ever teleported. The rush was magnificent and heartbreaking all at once.

Wonderful to feel, tragic to leave behind. Tears coursed down her face and into her hair, a sob tearing out of her throat as he pushed on relentlessly.

If she thought him merciless, she was wrong. He was wholly selfish, her untamed pleasure arousing him to phenomenal heights. She was the cruel one, refusing his one request even as he pleaded sweetly with her, using her delicious body as his begging bowl. He covered her from head to toe with the attentions of his hands and mouth, feeling her squirm beneath him in such wholly erotic movements that it took all of his willpower not to thrust himself deep inside of her and damn everything else to hell.

Demon couples did not share their power names, as a rule, mostly to protect one another from being used by outside sources to betray that precious secret that protected their beloved mates. But he already knew hers, having learned it five months ago when he had heard her former mentor spouting it left and right for all to hear.

So now, she would have his. It was the most profound gift he would ever be able to give her, symbolizing a trust that had to stretch beyond the reasonable. But he would have nothing that she gave him unless he returned it in equal measure.