Pleasure (18 page)

Unable to keep still, he lifted himself against her lips, cursed harshly as she toyed with him. He reached to close his hand over the one wrapped around him and showed her the way with a squeeze that interlaced their fingers. He groaned as they stroked him together and finally she started to suck him deep and hard into her gorgeous mouth.

“Laya! Oh, my sweet honey…Oh gods! I'm coming for you. Now! Now!”

He threw his head back and roared with helpless pleasure, his whole body reaching flashpoint all at once, forcing him to tense so hard it was utterly consuming. The sweetest agony pulsed through him and burst from his cock in violent glory. He ground his teeth together the whole time he watched her nurse from him with sensual enthusiasm. Nothing in all the 'scapes of the world could ever have felt so relieving and so blessedly perfect.

Guin barely took a moment to catch his breath before he reached for her and dragged her up into his lap. She came eagerly, straddling him tightly, and he reached to frame her face with both of his hands. He was still dumbfounded by the entire situation, his head reeling as it tried to wrap itself around the concept of Malaya being in his arms this way. He pulled her to his kiss, this time making the connection softly. He had bruised her, her lips swollen with his abuse, but instead of making any complaint of it, she met him with a deep, sensual appetite that stirred up a hunger she hadn't even begun to touch.

“Guin? Guin, are you all right?”

Malaya and Guin both froze, locked together at their lips as Rika's query filled the sitting room. Guin disengaged from Malaya and they both turned to look at the vizier, who stood just outside her bedroom door. Guin held a finger to Malaya's lips.

“I'm fine, Rika,” he said, his voice severely roughened by the circumstances, and he saw Malaya's whiskey eyes light
with brilliant amusement. He cleared his throat. “Go back to bed, Rika. You've got a hard day tomorrow.”

“But…I heard you yell,” she said suspiciously.

“Yeah,” he replied as Malaya buried her face against his neck to keep herself from laughing. “I just hit my shin on the table. Hurt like a bitch.”

“Oh!” Rika laughed softly in relief. “For a minute there I thought…well, you should put some ice on it. Must be bad to make you yell that loudly.”

“I'll take care of it. Good morning, Rika.”

“Good morning. Sleep well.”

She finally slipped back into her room and Guin grabbed Malaya by the hair and pulled so he could see her amused expression.

“Think that's funny, do you?” he demanded of her. “She'll figure it out once she hears you start to scream, too,
K'yatsume.”

“Hmm, is that a threat? My bodyguard wouldn't like it if I were being threatened.”

“Yeah. He'd keep you really damn close and see that you were properly taken care of. The way it ought to have been in the first place. You ambushed me, Malaya.”

“Well…maybe a little.” She chuckled. She narrowed those darkly exotic eyes on him. “I can do it again if you like.”

“Mmm…Actually, I am going to bring you to a bed and ambush you for a little while.” As he spoke, he reached to remove his boots and the dagger against his calf. She clung to him, giggling as he struggled to reach around her.

“I could get up,” she suggested.

“No fucking way. You sit right where you are. I've waited long enough to get you here and you are keeping put.” Guin punctuated the sentiment by pulling her up tight to his chest and locking an arm around her hips as he kicked away his jeans.

“Why?” she asked him softly. When he looked at her in
puzzlement she said, “Why did you wait so long to get me here?”

Guin couldn't be anything but completely honest with her. “Because I shouldn't be here, Laya,” he said.
“You
shouldn't be here. Why in Light are you here like this with me,
K'yatsume
?”

“Because I want to be. Very much.” She ran soft, drifting fingertips down either side of his neck. “I think I've wanted to be ever since you tried to bully me with a very inappropriate touch on my breast several weeks ago.” She leaned in to brush a whisper suggestively into his ear. “I should have taken you up on your offer to guard me from the inside out. I don't like to make mistakes. Luckily, this one is easily rectified.”

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.”