Laura Kinsale (15 page)

It happened in the deepest chasm of his body and mind, a force beyond decency and civilization. Her clinging to him, her fragile shape, the darkness: her fear, and his, that suddenly, acutely demanded life and fusion in the face of death.

He pressed her back against the column behind her, opened his arms and put his thumbs beneath her jaw. He pushed her face up, turned it up to meet his lips. He kissed her hungrily, angrily, deeply. He could not bear to face eternity having been so close and never part of her.

Zenia held to him, allowing his body to press her hard against the stone. She wanted him to touch her; she wanted it this way, roughly—his gentleness was near to shattering her into tears and fragments, and she wanted to meet fear bravely; she wanted him to be proud of her. He had not said he was, but she knew he was, and she was so close to collapsing into clamoring, babbling fear that she wanted his mouth hard and fierce upon hers. She pulled him closer, to stop the fear, as close as he could come, his body heavy and the rise of his breath crushing her. Beneath her fingers about his neck she could feel heat and the hard beat of his pulse—his life under her hands.

He made a sound of anguish and pushed back. The room had grown entirely dark, so that she could not see him but as a dim blur.

“Don’t,” she said, clutching with both hands at the drift of his robe. “Don’t leave me.”
 

“I won’t,” he said.

They stood unmoving, his hands upon her shoulders, as if some spell held them.

“I want to be brave,” she whispered. “I don’t want to cry.” She swallowed. “I’m going to cry if you don’t hold onto me.”

“It’s no matter.” He sounded angry. “Cry, then! What difference does it make if you cry?”

“Please hold me!” she said desperately.

His hands rested on her shoulders. He tightened them. His fingers pressed into her.

Zenia reached up suddenly and pulled his head down to her. She thrust her lips against his, seeking.

Arden felt the edge perishing beneath his feet, his last honor crumbling. “I’m a blackguard,” he said against her mouth. “I want you. I want inside you.”

She understood him. He felt it in the way she stilled.

“Stop me,” he said, his lips on her skin. “Damn you.”

In his arms, she was perfectly motionless. He could feel her, every inch of her, fragile as a glass statue of a girl; so slender that he wanted to weep.

“Go on,” she said calmly. “What difference does it make?”

Tomorrow they would not be alive. So what difference would it make?

He thrust away from her. He prowled into the darkness, feeling caged like a beast, and threw himself facedown on the rugs. He had always thought condemned men must be numb to feeling; they always appeared so. But how many of them had been locked up with the woman who was to die with them? To torment them, body and soul?

She had asked him to hold her. It was a plea for comfort. He could give her that, at least—he could hold her. Only hold her. He rose on his elbow, and suddenly she was there, falling to the carpet beside him, snuggling to him as Selim had nestled to his back for so many nights.

He held her tightly. He lay on his side and pressed her face into his shoulder and strained her body into his. Comfort. Comfort. He stroked her hair. “Go to sleep,” he muttered. “Go to sleep.”

Her arms were thrown about him. When he relaxed a little from the taut embrace, she moved to come closer. She pushed her hips against him, a slow squeezing pressure against his arousal.

It felt exquisite. It felt like life. His breathing quickened, and he spread his fingers into the mass of her hair. She smelled of sand and camels and woodsmoke and woman. He recognized it now, the source of all those taunting dreams in the desert where his body had known what his mind had not.

Unbearable. He was afraid he was the one who was going to cry.

What difference does it make?

None, but that he wanted her to want him. He did not want to take only. He wanted to give. But in a few hours all scruples were going to be nothing. “Go to sleep,” he whispered again.

“I don’t think I can sleep,” she said in a small, muffled voice against his chest.

He drew his fingers through her hair. “Do you want me to help you sleep?” He ran his hand down her back, and up to cup her small breast through the rough fabric. So small, so slender, so soft. Like living glass. “I can help you sleep.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Please.”

He leaned over her. He knew how to pleasure a woman. That he had taught himself. He was always uneasy with other people, always aloof, but women were not people. They were an alien race entirely, one he could speak to with his body. With pleasure and sweet simplicity. With ecstasy.

He grazed his mouth over the tender skin behind her ear, touching it with his tongue. He could see nothing, but his hand slid up the curve of her hip. He crushed the crude cotton in his fist, drawing it up. The first touch of her skin was a shock, it was so smooth and cool. It ignited the fire in him, like a cool dry leaf thrown on hot coals, bursting to flame.

“Zenia,” he said, as if her name were a foreign word, so strange it felt on his tongue.

“Yes?” she asked faintly. She was cradled in the hollow of his arm and shoulder. He seemed large and powerful enough to hide in. From the beginning she had wanted to sleep beside him, sheltered from the world. But the world was going to kill him too.

“I want to make you sleep,” he murmured. His fingers tugged at the strings that tied her shirt at her throat. They had taken her rope belt with her dagger. The loose cotton moved easily as he lifted it above her waist.

The touch of his hand on her bare skin was new, the texture and life of his palm, roughened by the desert, and yet gentle. She was glad of the darkness, shamed and aching. She knew that he lifted her clothing so that he could go into her as a man went into his wife. But she was not his wife. And still she longed to have him touch her and hold her and kiss her as if her body was honey.

“Zenia,” he said softly. “Like that flower, the one with all the queer little sharp petals, that grows anywhere.” He touched her bare breast as he said it, stroking his finger across the tip. “Little pointed petals. Like this.”

She drew in her breath with the sensation.

“A stupid thing to say.” He gave a slight, wry laugh, burying his face against her hair. He bent his head down and kissed her nipple, drawing it between his tongue and his teeth.

She said, “Oh!” in a breathless gasp.

His arm beneath her pressed her upward in an arch. His mouth tugged hungrily at her breast. She gave herself to the feeling, gave herself to him.

And he gave her back pleasure. He gave her back oblivion. He made her forget her fear. He made himself everything in her universe, driving out terror with the circle of his tongue on her skin, with the heat of his breath at her ear. With the hard smooth substance of himself, muscle and male life, for he knelt beside her and pulled the loose Arab shirt over his head, and she could see the starlight on his shoulders.

Tomorrow—oh, but she would not think of it, she could not, it was beyond believing or knowing.

She reached up to him as he braced on his arms over her. She put her hands about his neck and felt his blood beating beneath the skin. She felt his jaw and the prickling of new beard, different and strange and yet himself.

He was looking down at her. She could not see him, but she could feel it.

“Am I like honey?” she asked, shyly, half beneath her breath.

“No,” he said. He leaned down and kissed her, his whole body pressed against her. He pushed his hands up into her hair and held her face between his palms. “You’re like water. Like bright water.” He bent his face to her throat. “Oh, God, so bright and cold and clear that it hurts to drink.”

She felt him, his body ready to mount hers. He was heavy, lying atop her. She had never seen a man unclothed, though she had lived among them, for the Bedu were painfully modest even among their own. But she had seen animals, and boy children, and she knew. It frightened her a little, but the terror that lay beyond, outside this small circle of their bodies locked together, was so huge that her fright seemed like elation.

“Is that a stupid thing to say? I could live without honey,” he said, muffled against her throat. “I can’t live without water.”

Strangely, happily, she began to weep. She put her arms around his shoulders. “No. It is not stupid.”

He was silent, his breath on her skin. Then he said, “You’re crying.”

Zenia slid her hands down his bare back. All of his strength seemed poised beneath her palms in powerful curves and suppleness. She touched his loins, her hands flat, learning his shape.

He groaned, pressing downward. A sweet thrill of sensation spread through her blood. He raised himself. And as he came into her, as he hurt her, thrusting painfully against her barrier, still she arched up to receive him. He held still a moment, his mouth locked over hers, his hand sliding down beneath her hips. He moved aggressively, forcing into her as he pulled her body up to meet him, rupturing her maidenhead.

She whimpered a little, becoming a woman, truly, completely, for the first time in her life, and he held her face and kissed her and stroked her cheeks and said, “Don’t cry. Don’t cry.”

He was deep inside her, heavy on her. A sob of joy and pain escaped her. She wanted him here, a part of her. Impaling and stretching and invading her. It was enough to keep away the terror. She thought
I can sleep now. Like this.

But sleep was not what happened. She stroked her hands languidly down his back, and as if they held some message, the same message they had held before, he made that sound low in his throat and pressed hard into her, slowly, driving the sweetness again to her heart. Slowly, and again, as she caressed him. Slowly. She could hear him breathing through his teeth, the end of each breath and deep thrust a groan of pleasure. Her own breath was half caught in her throat, her body flexing in answer, reaching for the peak of delight that rode at the top of each aching penetration.

She began to whimper again, in eagerness. The pain faded as he filled her wholly. Her body clenched, holding him, holding his shoulders and his legs, holding him hard within her.

“Oh God. My God!” His hoarse whisper filled her ears as his body filled her, raw cadence.

Yes,
she thought wildly, it was that, it was the tight clasp of her own body on him, as if she would not, could not let him go; it made him come deep and pull and come hard again, until she was sobbing for breath, her head thrown back as he kissed her throat and her breasts, arching up to heaven and to him, shaking and shaking and shaking like a mindless thing, until the trembling gripped her in one long ecstatic moment, blinding sweetness, his pulsing life upon her and inside her and all around her.

He relaxed with a shudder and soft groan, lying over her, breathing hard. “Thank you,” he said into her throat. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He laughed silently. She felt it in his chest. Except that there was a little wetness on her bare shoulder where his cheek lay against her.

They said nothing more, beyond that strange courtesy to one another. After a long time, as Zenia lay unthinking, only feeling him heavy and slack upon her, he lifted himself away.

She didn’t beg him to come back, though she wanted it. With careful movements, he rearranged her shirt, drawing it down over her nakedness. Another courtesy, silent and sweet. He sat up, and she could hear the fabric rustle as he pulled his robe back over his head.

“Can you sleep now?” he asked, lying down beside her and drawing her close to him.

“Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”

He kissed her temple, and lay with his mouth against her skin, his arm around her. Neither of them slept.

CHAPTER NINE

Arden sat bolt upright at the first sound. It was pitch dark, long before dawn. He did not think enough hours had passed—it could not be this soon.

His heart beat in his ears. He felt her hand curl about his at the quiet scrape of the bar being drawn back outside the door.