Broken Vision (16 page)

In the next nanonan, before she had time to draw another breath, he was back and, this
time, he devoured.

His mouth pressed to hers, his tongue slid along the crease, demanding she open. And
when she did, heat and sensation invaded her. She was lost. She couldn't possibly stop this from
proceeding to the inevitable conclusion. She wanted it too badly. Had wanted it for a long, long
time. Ever since he had invaded her life. The future had no place here, filled as it was with a deep
uncertainty.

Committed, she slid her hands over his broad shoulders. She met the thrust of his tongue
and pushed against him, reached up and grabbed a thick handful of his hair.

His mouth left her lips and traveled across her cheek to lightly brush her eyelid, then across
to her ear where his tongue began a leisurely exploration of a rim that had suddenly developed an
ultra sensitivity.

Nose buried in his neck, her cheek rubbed against the soft prick of end of day stubble.
Those tiny prickles fed and intensified the excitement racing though her body. Everywhere he
touched, nerve endings were set ablaze. Then he slid his hand over the curve of her bottom and
between her legs and lifted her up against him. His finger, through two layers of clothing pressed
on her
right there
.

Suspended in air, she clutched at his hair and shoulder to anchor herself, and in what was
left of her fragmented thoughts, she wondered if it were possible to have an orgasm on the
spot.

"Too many clothes," he murmured in her ear. "They have to come off." He lowered her to
the floor.

As soon as she steadied herself on her feet, she reached for the flap on his tunic and
yanked. She had him bare-chested in nanonans while he stood, arms at his sides, simmering
sapphire gaze hooded and focused on her. A thrill of unbearable excitement seized her. She reached
for the waistband of his breeches.

His hand flashed out and closed around her wrist. Disappointed and confused, she
instinctively tried to pull back, but he tightened his grip. He held her as he shifted to toe off his half
boots and push them aside. He loosened his grip on her wrist, anchored her hand at his waist and let
her go.

Excitement roared back in a heady rush. She stepped a breath closer. Deliberately, she
moved her hand down across the thick ridge of him.

He bared his teeth. Sapphire turned to dark midnight. She squeezed gently. He grunted and
narrowed his eyes.

"Two nans," he ground out.

"For what?" She stretched up and licked slowly across his lips. Some small part of her was
amazed at her boldness. She was playing a dangerous game in more ways than one. She didn't want
it to end.

He seemed to be having difficulty with a response. A groan rumbled from deep in his
throat. She licked across his lips again, then paused to draw his lower lip into her mouth. Her hand
rubbed at his straining erection.

"Time's up," he rasped, and it was no warning at all. He grabbed her around her waist and,
as if she weighed nothing, bore her in three long strides to the sleeping platform. He tossed her
down. When she bounced back up, indignant at having her play interrupted, he pointed a long
finger at her.

"Stay!"

He reached for the fastening of his breeches. On her knees, she paused, purpose arrested,
and watched in fascination as he jerked open his pants, hooked his thumbs at the waist and stripped
them down his legs.

Her mouth went dry. Her clothes felt three sizes too small and far too heavy for the sudden
heat in the room. A tiny thread of reason screamed that there was no way she could walk away
from this, emotions intact. No way this could be just a casual sexual encounter that meant
nothing.

He was beautiful. A quintessential, highly aroused, barely controlled male creature.

An urge to flee overwhelmed her.

"No," he said. He reached down and cupped his balls, then casually stroked his hand up his
penis. "Take off your boots."

In a daze, she saw her hand dropping her boots over the side of the platform, before she
was aware she had even moved to comply with his command.

He jerked his head. "The rest."

She hesitated. The clothes were her last defense. Her body wasn't pretty. She was scarred
and skinny. But he had already seen all that, and it was clear it didn't matter.

His eyes narrowed and he growled. She focused on that slow stroking hand and shed her
tunic, then the vest underneath. Her torso now bare, she shivered, even though the room still felt
unbearably hot.

The flare of pure predatory awareness in his eyes caused her nipples to tighten and her
womb to clench. His hand stilled.

"Finish," he ground out.

Her courage wavered. "Lights?" she dared to ask.

"No." He stepped closer.

Heat and tension spiraled. She couldn't bear it. Without further thought, she wriggled her
pants down over her hips, and stripped them off her legs.

He knelt beside her, his breath heavy. He curved his hand around her breast, tightened his
grip and swiped his thumb across her nipple. Prickles of sensation exploded out from the spot. He
no longer looked at her face, but focused intently on her breast. Then his attention shifted. His
fingers uncurled. He brushed them across the raw scar on her bicep. His browns drew together and
he muttered something she didn't catch.

In the next nanonan she was on her back, angled across the sleeping platform. His hands
swept down her body, across her breasts, across her stomach, over the vee of legs, down her thighs
to her ankles. He grasped each ankle and moved her legs far apart, maneuvered himself between
them. Spreading his knees, he forced her legs even farther apart, and lowered himself over her.

With a gentle hand he pushed her hair off her face, and ran a finger across the seam of her
lips.

She closed her eyes. His sapphire gaze was too intense.

As his finger made its gentle journey again, she opened her lips and sucked it into her
mouth. She rasped her tongue across the blunt edge of his nail and discovered a callous near his
knuckle. His skin was smooth/rough. His finger, long and thick, filled her mouth. She drew it in
farther, sucked harder. She could no longer hold her hands passive at her sides. The urge to feel, to
touch was too intense. She smoothed them across his hips. His breath, more labored now, fanned
across her face. She didn't dare open her eyes.

Primitive instinct and aching desire drove her to run her hands down his belly, to find his
aroused flesh. He seemed in no hurry now, yet her body burned, begged for completion. She
encircled the hard length of him with both hands. When he tried to withdraw his finger from her
mouth, she clamped down on it.

Searing heat enveloped her as he lowered himself to touch chest to breast, groin to groin,
trapping her hands between them. He nuzzled under her ear. The scrape of his teeth, against a place
she had never paid attention to before, made her arch up against him and release her hold on his
finger as her mind drowned in a flood of pleasure.

He stayed to torment the tender flesh below her ear until she writhed beneath him and was
forced to clutch at his hips to anchor herself. Slowly he slid down and positioned himself over her
breasts. He seemed fascinated with them and content to thoroughly explore with his hands.

All the while the tension in her body escalated. His penis lay hot and hard across her thigh.
No matter how much hip wiggling she did, she couldn't seem to get herself in the right
position.

When he lowered his head and licked her nipple, she almost surrendered to his lead, the
rush of sensation was so intense. In one last desperate attempt, she placed her hands on his chest
and shoved. He went over on his back with a surprising lack of resistance.

She followed, flinging her leg across his hips to straddle him. As she rose above him, a
heady euphoria rushed through her veins.

He watched her through narrowed eyes, compliant for now, as she reached down and slid
her hand around his hard length to position him. His entry into her body was not easy. It had been a
long time for her, and he was large.

His brows pinched together as she struggled to force the plump head of his shaft past her
tight entrance.

"Easy, love," he murmured. He palmed his hands over her breasts and then around her
back to urge her forward across his chest. "You don't have to do it all yourself. Let me help."

He drew her face down and touched his lips to hers. It was a gentle exploration that
quickly became a possession. He urged her mouth open and slid his tongue against hers, then
ravaged her soft contours.

She sank willingly into the siren call of dizzying pleasure. Senses edgy, she felt him adjust
her hips, felt the electrifying touch of his finger against the small bundle of nerves between her
legs. He ran his finger around her taut flesh stretched to accommodate the very tip of him. Suddenly
he was inside. The friction was pleasure mixed with pain, exquisite, unbearable.

He withdrew a fraction, and pushed back in with a shallow thrust. She stretched, burned.
Pleasure spiraled and she moaned into his mouth. His hand on the back of her head held her as she
would have pulled back, overwhelmed by sensation assaulting her body. He repeated the action
and, with each thrust, worked his way deeper into her body.

Fully seated, he no longer held her down. His mouth roamed her face as his hands roamed
her body, stroking, caressing, tormenting. He touched places long ago lovers hadn't bothered to
touch. She didn't want it to end. Nothing mattered. Not the past. Not the future. Nothing but this
moment, this man, this deep, exquisite intimacy.

It had to end.

She reared, hands on his chest, pulled herself almost free, then shoved back down. Her
body accepted his more easily now. Heated prickles raced up and down her spine.

She did it again and a deep groan tore from his throat. His hands held her hips loosely. He
lay compliant. The rush of power was as heady as the pleasure. She twisted and angled and
experimented as her body discovered new pleasure points, but she couldn't quite seem to get
there.

A primitive noise rumbled from his throat. His grip on her hips tightened. In a dizzying
rush, she found herself flipped on her back. He reached down and hooked his arms underneath her
knees to draw her legs back. She was wide open, vulnerable, at the mercy of his greater
strength.

Her gaze locked with his for a split second. Then she had to close her eyes. She had never
seen such an expression on the face of any man before. There was fierce possession and raw
passion, but something else shone from the glittering sapphire depths.

Something that reached out and called to her very soul.

She couldn't bear it.

He leaned over, and slid himself slowly and fully into her. Legs draped over his shoulders,
her hips were tilted at such an angle it felt like he touched her womb. He drew back just as slowly.
She whimpered again, desperate for something more, and tried to grind herself against him. It
seemed to break his control. With a tortured groan, he hammered into her, pulled back and did it
again. From there, she could only hang on, tossed on waves of pleasure that escalated with each
hard thrust.

Just before she shattered into fragments, she knew with certainty that she was lost.

Margaine Confluence:/ Second Rising
Pallas Five

A stinging smack on her bare bottom jerked Maegan from the most restful, natural sleep
she'd had in a long, long time. She opened her eyes and rolled over, automatically reaching for
something with which to cover herself. All she could find was a pillow. She dragged it across her
torso.

Alerik stood by the sleeping platform, legs braced apart, arms folded. He was fully dressed
in casual tan breeches and pale blue tunic. Not an official duty day in the governor's office, then.
She couldn't interpret the guarded expression on his face, but it held no trace of the man who had
ravished her body so thoroughly the night before.

"Ow," she said crossly, for lack of anything better to say.

The corner of his mouth twitched. "Some women would take that as foreplay and ask for
more."

"Then go play with them and leave me alone." She spotted a corner of the cover draped
over the side of the sleeping platform and reached for it. "Pervert," she muttered.

With both the cover and the pillow in her possession, she felt better protected and dared to
look at him again.

His stance hadn't changed but now his dimples were in evidence. "A liberal wife.
How...exhilarating."

"I'm sure there's a reason for this bullying," she said. "But if you've forgotten what it is, I'd
like to go back to sleep."

"Sorry, not today." With an unexpectedness that left her breathless, he yanked the pillow
and cover away from her, and pressed her back against the sleeping platform. "Today," he said, as
he loomed over her, "we're going on a voyage of discovery together, at the end of which one of us,
at least, is going to be highly enlightened."

His blue gaze bored into her. She licked suddenly dry lips. His eyelids flickered; his intent
expression faltered. He glanced down. Heated breath escaped him in a drawn out hiss. He levered
up on one arm and gently stroked a finger across her breast. "Sorry, love. I didn't mean to be so
rough."

She followed his gaze. A pale blue spot bloomed on her flesh. Suddenly, she was acutely
aware of a host of aches--good aches--and an unaccustomed stickiness between her legs. She didn't
have a clue how to respond.

He saved her the effort. He dropped a hard kiss on her mouth and surged to his feet with
effortless, fluid grace. "Ten nans," he said and pointed at the bathing chamber. "Then we eat."

Bathing she could relate to. It was almost a desperate necessity. The eating part she could
skip. A nutro drink was all she needed, but somehow she didn't think that's what he had in
mind.