Genesis (23 page)

When the surprise passed, she did a mental double take. He’d spoken English! He hadn’t learned that from Consuelo, she didn’t think. It was possible, she supposed, but not likely because Consuelo didn’t have much English herself, and she was way more comfortable using her own language. It hadn’t been implanted either, otherwise he would’ve been able to speak more clearly, not merely piecing random words together.

Obviously, the
Hirachi
had been sharing information themselves. Kole must be the source, but he had no direct contact with Dansk. “Me or you?” Bri asked finally, staring pointedly at his barked knuckles.

This time the blush was more pronounced. He scrubbed a hand over his face, released a harsh breath. “Kole say no hurt little strange ones.”

Indignation, not relief, swelled in Bri. Kole had called
her
strange? “Strange?”

He looked dismayed. “Cute?” he offered hesitantly, obviously having searched his mind for a word she might find less offensive.

Abruptly, amusement hit her. Bri bit her lip, trying to keep from smiling. “The word you’re looking for is beautiful,” she said, wondering where the urge to tease him had come from.

He smiled a little warily. “Beautiful?”

God! What was she doing playing with the monster alien? Five seconds in his company had shown her he was a little bit high strung--far more emotional than Kole. If he realized she was teasing and didn’t take it well she could be in serious trouble.

She’d gotten a really skewed picture of the
Hirachi
, she realized, giving herself a mental boot in the ass for racial prejudice. She hadn’t thought she was, and yet she’d formed a mental picture of all of them being just like Kole--as if they had no individuality!

Dansk might be a nightmare on the battlefield--in fact she would guess just that since it was patently obvious that he did not have Kole’s iron willed self-control--off it he seemed more of a teddy bear. And, now that she thought back on it, she decided she wasn’t giving him his due. He must have a good deal of self-control. Consuelo had cussed him up one side and down the other
and
lit into him and he hadn’t done anything more than thump her on the head. Maybe she hadn’t managed to do any real damage, but it
had
to have hurt.

Realizing Dansk was still holding his hand out and deciding the gesture actually was an ‘olive branch’ Bri pushed away from the wall and approached him. When she placed her hand in his, he curled his fingers around it and drew her down to face him. Caressing the hand he held lightly with his long fingers, he smiled faintly, bringing a dimple into play in one cheek. “No hurt, Kole no say no hurt,” he said in a low voice.

It took Bri’s brain several moments to interpret that statement, but she finally took it to mean that he was saying he wouldn’t hurt her even if he hadn’t been ordered not to.

She
was
reassured, as she was sure he’d meant her to be, but she was more interested in the fact that he seemed to be saying Kole was their leader. She’d wondered at that. Somehow, he’d
seemed
like a man accustomed to leading others, but it had been Kole who’d given her the impression that they didn’t actually have a leader, that they simply worked as a team.

Dansk recaptured her attention by stroking his free hand lightly along her cheek. “No hurt beautiful ….” He broke off. After a fairly significant pause, he added. “Baby.”

Bri didn’t manage to catch the smile that time, but the amusement wasn’t just because he’d struggled so hard and then come up with baby. It was because it dawned on her that he was probably a real Casanova Hirachi where he was from. It was actually kind of sad that his vocabulary limitations made his romancing so difficult for him.

And it was cute.

“No word?” he asked, disconcerted.

Bri chuckled. “Lots of guys call their woman baby. I don’t mind.”

She could tell he didn’t understand half what she’d said, but he seemed to grasp that she didn’t mind. He tugged on her hand, drawing her slowly closer, and the amusement died.

Consuelo hadn’t exaggerated, she thought wryly, trying not to be completely unnerved by the swiftness of his move from stranger to lover. Dansk wasn’t conflicted at all about the breeding business if the bulge in his breeches and the gleam in his eyes were any indications, and she was pretty sure they were.

He was so gentle and careful of her as he gathered her against his broad chest, though, that an inexplicable tightness clutched at her heart. She’d more than half feared he had simply lulled her wariness, disarmed her with that shy smile, and meant to pounce upon her without restraint, without consideration for her fears once he had her within his power. The tightness eased as he stroked his hands over her body almost reverently stirring desire to life within her with so little effort she was almost appalled.

A twinge of guilt nipped at her as images of Kole clouded her mind, the uncomfortable sense that she was betraying both men by responding so readily to both. She pushed it to the back of her mind. This was no commitment anymore than the time with Kole had been. She had not agreed to any of this. If she could take pleasure from it, she had the right to do so, and it was far better to close her mind to the circumstances and take something good from it than to feel violated and abused. Enjoying it might make her feel guilty, but that was preferable to the alternative.

When he eased her away from him and gathered her gown in his hands to remove it, doubt niggled at her again, but she made no attempt to stop him or to try to delay the inevitable. She lifted her arms, allowing him to pull it off. When he’d tossed it aside, he simply sat staring at her. Lifting his hands finally, he explored her bare skin with his palms and fingertips. Faint tremors shook his hands as he molded them to her body and traced the contours of her breasts, her ribs, her waist, and hips.

Catching her hands where they had settled on her thighs, he lifted both, examined each in turn and placed a light kiss in each palm before he settled her hands one at the time on his shoulders. Circling her waist with his own hands, he rose, pulling her to her feet, and led her to the sleeping platform.

She climbed onto it, shivering slightly as she lay back and watched him remove his breeches. He had much the same fighter build as Kole, hard, well developed, and well defined muscle groups all over his body and, like Kole, he was virtually hairless with the exception of the long, dark hair on his head and the small patch of dark, nearly straight hair that surrounded his engorged manhood.

She thought there were as many subtle differences in his body as there were similarities, however. Thought, because she had learned Kole’s body with her hands, not her eyes. When his restraint had finally broken, their coupling had been wild, tempestuous. There’d been no slow exploration of one another.

Dansk, she knew, was somewhat taller, and yet, even so, he seemed broader, had the more mature build of an older man. But perhaps that was merely imagination? She couldn’t see that his face looked older.

He surprised her. Instead of falling upon her at once, he settled on his side beside her and continued the exploration he’d begun before, as if he was determined to savor each moment, each touch.

Or was it only that he was restraining himself to keep from frightening her? His hands shook noticeably as he stroked them over her body in caresses that were soothing and at the same time stirred warm currents through her, awakened every inch of skin to optimum sensation. She began to feel impatient for more as he cupped one breast, kneading it gently, then moving his thumb over the taut tip in a circular motion that sent stabbing quakes of pleasure through her.

As if he sensed the rising need in her, he shifted to gather her closer to his body. His face grazed hers lightly, cheek to cheek. He inhaled deeply as he turned his head slightly to brush the tip of his nose along her temple. “Sweet,” he murmured in his own tongue. “Your scent …,” he paused, swallowing, the sound loud in her ear, “drives me insane. I don’t know what I want most … to claim your body at once and drive into you until I spill my seed or to savor the taste and feel of you until I lose my mind completely.”

He opened his lips over her ear, sucking at her ear lobe for a moment before he explored the intricate swirls with his tongue. Heat washed through her as his heated breath and the moist heat of his mouth teased the sensitive flesh. He moved to the skin just below her ear, sucking at the patch of flesh and then teasing it with the tip of his tongue, then moved to another spot and repeated the action until he had covered the side of her neck with love bites and each time a headier wave of heat flooded her until she was a morass of molten sensation.

He lifted his head when he had reached her collar bone and traced a similar path up her throat to her chin. With an effort, she lifted her eyelids and tried to focus on his face above hers. “I think that I would rather go slowly insane,” he murmured, smiling faintly, “to keep you only a little longer. The moment I give them what they want, they’ll snatch you away from me.”

His words had barely registered when he brushed his lips lightly along hers, nipping, sucking gently. The moment he opened his mouth over hers and breached the fragile barrier of her lips to possess her mouth, however, the tentative exploration vanished. His mouth was demanding, possessive, his kiss filled with fierce, ravening hunger as he thrust his tongue into her mouth, explored it with a thoroughness that almost seemed to stop her heart and snatched her breath from her lungs. His hands, too, became more demanding than supplicating as they roamed her body in a restless quest for full possession of her senses.

Bri felt a sort of madness seize her, as well, felt a mindless fever overtake her. And when he ceased to explore her mouth and began a thrust and retreat of his tongue inside of her in imitation of sexual penetration, her belly clenched with desperate longing for the feel of his cock inside of her. Molten moisture flooded her passage, demanding, not merely welcoming, his full possession of her body.

She had to struggle to catch her breath. Without any awareness at all of lifting her hands, she felt the smoothness of his skin beneath her palms, the tautness of his muscles.

After stroking his hand along her back and side, as if learning the dips and curves of her body, he moved his hand to her belly, splayed his palm briefly over that quaking plane and then slipped his palm over her mound. She jumped when she felt his fingers carefully parting her nether lips. He traced her cleft, teased her clit briefly and then backtracked and slowly pushed one finger inside of her.

Bri caught her breath at the intrusion. Her fingers curled against him. Briefly, doubt warred with desire as she felt him exploring her passage with his finger. A fresh, harder wave of want blossomed inside of her as he stroked her with care, but with purpose. Her belly clenched at the waves of pleasure he evoked, the muscles of her passage closing tightly around his finger.

Breaking the kiss, he lifted his head to watch her face as he slowly withdrew his finger and began to tease her clit, alternating after a few moments between the maddening torture of her clit and delving his finger inside of her until she began to quake all over with imminent release. She was going to cum. Reluctance speared through her and a thread of embarrassment to find herself nearing climax when he hadn’t even penetrated her with more than one finger, and both warred with a burning desperation to allow her body the release it craved.

“Dansk,” she gasped on a shaky breath, arching her head back, squeezing her eyes tightly as she fought the leap, “no.”

“Yes,” he said, his voice hoarse with his own need, moving his hand to tease her clit again until jolt after jolt of exquisite pleasure was running through her almost continuously like an electric current and she couldn’t catch her breath. She twisted her head back and forth, fighting it, feeling as if her entire body was on fire. Abruptly, she lost the battle, reached a point where her body simply couldn’t handle any more pleasure without exploding. A low groan was forced from her as the first wave convulsed through her and then a sharper cry as the next hit her, harder than the first. He played her body, teasing the bud of flesh until she thought she would pass out from the powerful jolts convulsing her body, until she was gasping sharp little cries of ecstasy.

A sense of profound relief and complete and utter satisfaction wafted through her when her body finally ceased to seize in climax. She felt drained of every ounce of strength, felt as if her entire body had melted into a sizzling puddle of wax. Completely limp, barely even conscious, she was only dimly aware of the soothing stroke of his hands over her at first. She made a faint sound of complaint in her throat when he gathered her cooling body against his warm one, vaguely aware that she was the only one who’d come, that he was entitled to take his pleasure, and yet reluctant to be dragged back from her own sated bliss to perform.

Puzzled but relieved when he made no attempt to do more than hold her and stroke her soothingly, she relaxed, allowed her mind to drift aimlessly.

She was scarcely even aware of the point when his touch became more purposeful, when her body ceased to cool and began to grow warm with arousal once more.

Chapter Fifteen

One moment Bri was drifting between consciousness and unconsciousness, and the next she felt a stirring to life of the ashes of her desire as Dansk rolled her onto her back and moved over her. Supporting the bulk of his weight on his side and one arm, he cupped one breast and lowered his head to suckle the nipple he teased with his tongue until it was almost painfully taut. The burgeoning of her body from satiation to taut arousal was so swift, the dizzying rush left her reeling.

A protest died on her lips. She encircled his head with arms that felt so weak they felt almost atrophied, stroked her fingers through his long, silky hair in appreciation, kneaded his back like a contented cat. With slow deliberation at first, he savored the taste and feel of her flesh with his mouth and tongue, teasing first one taut peak and then the other, but his own arousal mounted faster and higher than hers, swiftly becoming a conflagration. Within moments, the faint tremors that began in his arms spread throughout his massive body and became a noticeable trembling and there was a hunger and desperation to his touch that ignited a fire of need in her.