Pleasure (6 page)

But he refused to make a disappointing show of himself with her. Grinding his teeth for control, he settled into her completely and they both exhaled in pleasured relief. Sagan remained still, recovering himself slowly as he minimized the awesome stimulation she was to him. He took those moments to pay tribute to her kiss-swollen lips and drifted soft kisses across the lashes of her shimmering oceanic eyes.

She caught her breath just long enough to ask him, “Why me? Tell me, Sagan. Why are you defying your vows because of me?”

“Because no other has ever made me want to, Valera,” he breathed in gentle reprimand against her cheek. “If you are a sin,
jei li
, then I am a sinner with all my soul. Nothing so sweet should ever be dangled before a man only to be denied. It would be cruelty, and I know my gods are strict, but they are never cruel. I will not believe that of them. I knew you were a gift the moment I first saw you. This…” He lifted himself from her and reached to stroke the curls where they were joined. “This is a gift. For however long I am blessed with this gift, I will embrace it with all that I can. I am so vibrantly alive in this moment, Valera. Can you feel how magnificent and vital it feels?”

She could, if for no other reason than the power of his words sent her soaring. Valera was so incredibly full with him inside her, years of loneliness and emptiness melting away as passion bloomed in their place. She had never felt so special. So treasured. And all of it given to her by a man she'd known for what seemed like instants. Yet, somehow she knew that he knew her well. Maybe it was his telepathy, or maybe it was pure fate. Who was she to question it when he refused to do so?

Valera curved sensual hands up over the back of his shoulders, drawing him back down along her body. She kissed his mouth in a slow, seductive connection, plunging them both back into the physicality of their union and all of its ramifications. She felt his weight shift, resting on her heavily for a moment. She basked in the feeling, the sheer size and power of him, as well as the obvious craving she saw in his eyes for her, making her feel light and wondrously sexy. All of her doubts and flaws, real or imagined, flew away. He saw her as a most perfect beauty, and so she became one.

The change that came over her was stunning to Sagan. She had already had the power to make him a little crazy, but when she came alive with an all-consuming confidence of sexuality and feminism, she pushed him to a whole new level of insanity.

“Move,” she breathed in temptation against his lips. “I want to feel you move.”

Sagan couldn't obey her fast enough. He withdrew from the clutch she had on him in a slow glide of astounding sensation. He watched himself draw free of her grasping, hungry little body, his cock slick with her juices. He couldn't get back inside her quick enough to suit his need. He groaned loudly as he hilted deep inside her and she exhaled a sigh of pleasure that resonated through him.

“More,” she coaxed without need, but the instruction had the desired effect on him. Sagan gave her more, each thrust a little more emphatic than the one before, the pace quickening in large leaps. She stroked his chest and back as he became slick with sweat. She stared up into his eyes so she could see the ecstasy that was building within him. He reached out in a sudden, harsh movement and grabbed the headboard of the bed, rising up slightly to change his pitch into her body.

Suddenly Valera saw any hint of control spinning away.
The feel of him changed to something amazing. There was victory in his eyes as he snatched her up into the storm he was feeling.

Sagan knew he was hitting her g-spot just right by the look in her eyes. She became wild beneath him as she reached harder and harder for his every in stroke. She was so unbelievably wet around him, her heat hugging his pumping cock so intimately it was mind-blowing. Val threw back her head and began to cry out in a rising crest of lusty sounds that went right through him. It sought out all of the nerves in the seat of his testicles and he knew he was going to lose control completely. He swore harshly as he forced himself to keep his cadence within her. She was so close, her body clutching tighter…tighter…

Valera burst like an overfilled balloon. It felt as though she were seizing, the way her body locked and clenched in total spasming pleasure. And then she cried out Sagan's name, and she flew. It was like soaring out from inside of her own body. The rapture of it was profound and devastating.

Sagan rode every moment of her release with her, his teeth grinding as her body suckled him in strong squeezes. His entire body screamed for release, the imminent approach of it making him lose all control as he pounded into Valera without measure or care. When the rushing force of climax overtook him at last it was blinding. He vocalized, a long loud shout that sounded savage. And why shouldn't it? The potent ejaculation he was feeling felt so incredible that it all but hurt.

He held himself tight and deep within her even when he had spent himself to the last drop. He gasped for breath, and his strong arms that had swung heavy swords night after night for years began to tremble under the hold of his weight. Sagan couldn't stop staring at her as she tried to recover from her climax. Her skin shimmered with sweat, her flesh reeking of
their lovemaking, and her gorgeous eyes dazed with the remnants of ultimate ecstasy. She was so beautiful, and he wanted to burn the image in his mind for all time.

He shoved back thoughts of their uncertain future. It was better to bask in the here and now.

They only had the here and now.

Valera sucked in oxygen in great big gulps. She couldn't open her eyes to save her life, and her entire body was depending on the strength of the one that held her in place against the wall. Her every muscle was overworked and her nervous system was numb with satiation. She felt Sagan, just as breathless as she was, with his face burrowed against her neck beneath her hair and dropping intermittent kisses onto her sweaty skin.

She had never conceived of such an incredible lover ever entering her sphere. She'd reconciled herself very easily to her hermit's existence, not bothering to waste time on fantasy when reality had proven more than difficult enough to deal with. And maybe this was about convenience or maybe it wasn't, but when Sagan was working himself into her body with such passionate focus as he just had, how could it possibly make a difference? Differing species, vows and rules, and time and familiarity made no difference. The world outside of her cabin made no impact as he riddled her with ripping orgasms, one after another, until she was literally blind with pleasure.

And Sagan's powerful physique made things possible that had not been possible for her before. Like being held hard against a wall, her weight so incidental to him…except that he seemed to get off on it. She had realized it fully some time ago when he'd had her on her hands and knees, thrusting into her in punctuation, and she'd understood that he was enjoying the way the impact shimmied up her body. At first it had embarrassed her, but he'd flooded her with his poetic descriptions of why he found her so delightful just as she was. That, and the fact that he had quickly lost control of himself in the process as her body and his own expressions about it excited him beyond his capacity to contain it, had erased her concerns permanently.

Two days later and with almost every surface of the house having been utilized for their insatiable need for each other, Valera feared nothing so much as she feared that their time was running short. As the stamina and strength of his lovemaking improved, it told her he was healing at a phenomenal rate. In fact, she suspected he was entirely well now. His hands were certainly free of any signs of damage as they skillfully wrought responses from her body, to the point where she didn't even recognize herself in this passionate, multiorgasmic creature she had become.

As for Sagan, he was all too aware of how deeply mired in trouble he had become. He had expected an intense interlude between them, an appetite that would eventually reach a point of satisfaction. Except it had only grown more and more intense as reservations and societal expectations fell away from them both. She stopped caring that it had only taken him a matter of hours to “get in her pants,” and he stopped thinking of her as “human,” with the differentiations that used to imply to him.

It also stopped being just a matter of sex; if, indeed, it had ever been that at all. Her studious and quiet ways were so opposite to his physical ones, yet she took as much pride and pleasure in her cooking as he did in his swordwork. It had
fascinated and amused him at first, but as she fed him creations of both complexity and simplicity, he truly came to appreciate the art and effort in what she did. He suspected she made the same effort when it came to her magic, although she never once showed him use of it again.

But now he felt the press of time and responsibility creeping up on him urgently. Even now, as he tried to catch his breath and was flooded in the wondrous reek of their sexual activities, he realized that there were those at Sanctuary who would be distressed by his absence. They would be looking for him. He didn't want them to find him here, and he certainly didn't want them endangering themselves in their efforts to pursue his whereabouts.

Then there was the unknown factor. The one that told him the things his trauma had caused him to forget were very crucial to those he loved and respected. Also, if he had been attacked so boldly, what had happened to the rest of the religious house? Was it safe, or had it been overrun by whatever force it was that had hurt him? This was the least of his worries, of course, because he had faith in
M'jan
Magnus's potent abilities and his sheer determination to guard and guide the house he ruled.

Still…

Yet the draw and magnetism of this woman he held was all-consuming, and once he left her, he could never come back. Knowing that made leaving her all but impossible. Not after only two days. Sagan was paralyzed betwixt his choices and his desires, and the one that was most immediately satisfying and so astoundingly pleasurable was the one that won out.

“Mmm,” he heard her hum with soft contentment into his ear. “I'm exhausted. I can't move.”

He resolved the problem by gripping her luscious backside and holding her weight against him as he drew her back from the wall. He enjoyed her lazy, sated giggle as he walked her down the hall and dumped them both into bed with a hard
tumble. She ended up beside him, her sweet shape instantly clinging all along his left side as she pillowed her head on his shoulder.

He very much shared her feelings of contentment and intimacy.

This was the part that truly astounded Valera. Perhaps it was because he was limited in just how far he could go away from her on a moment-to-moment basis, but she hadn't been the one to start these postcoital cuddle sessions. Sagan had all but tackled her to keep her ass in bed the first time she'd tried to ditch him after sex…which had been the first time they'd gotten intimate. She had still been thinking he was going to come to his senses or something and that she probably wouldn't want to watch it happen at the time. But as it turned out, her Nightwalker lover barely let them come up for air, food, and water…never mind “alone time.” Now she was confident she wasn't dreaming, misinterpreting, or even just a convenient fluke. But she was very aware of his inner conflicts as time passed and he grew more and more introverted in his thoughts.

The harassment of these thoughts became apparent by a week later. The dynamic between them evolved into change. The harder he worked to keep his divided concerns to himself, the more desperate his interactions with her became. He never grew short-tempered with her, his patience and placidity always so remarkable, but it seemed that what he didn't express outright found its way into their lovemaking. There was suddenly an element of punishment woven within. Not that Sagan would hurt her, but he began to torment himself. He fixated on her pleasure and denied his own release, sometimes for hours, until she was too exhausted to be of any use to him and he would take the suffering of his incompletion into his sleep. He would dream fitfully, began to eat sparingly and with less pleasure than he had at first.

But when he held her close, keeping her tight in his arms, she felt his need for her in the strength he used to keep her
there. She would wake in the same embrace she had fallen asleep in.

And she knew every day that it could be the last time.

Finally, the inevitability of it became too much for her to bear.

It happened at the most innocuous moment. She was standing over the sink washing dishes from the meal they'd just finished. Usually Sagan offered to do the chore, but he had left the meal halfway through, claiming to be tired. He'd teased her for being the source of his worn-out state, and she had laughed at his playful remark, but now as she stood with her hands in warm soapy water she realized he was more right than he knew. Sagan, she had comprehended early on, was used to extraordinary physical activity within his day. He was used to a great many things that he was now being kept apart from; a lifestyle full of habits that were 160 years inured into him. So sudden a change, so direct a flout in the face of all that he was…

He was homesick and he was depressed, she realized. Whether he knew it or not, recognized it or not, or showed it or not, it was a fact. No being of his health, breeding, and power needed as much rest as he had come to need. She didn't care how athletic they were in bed. She had seen a progression and had denied it attention because she didn't want to see it. She didn't want the end result of it.

Valera didn't want to send him home.

She knew he would never come back if she did. It was selfish, she realized as tears clenched like a chokehold on her throat. He would never be happy here. She wished that he could, wished that she could somehow be everything he needed, but it was an unrealistic fantasy. She was human and she was mortal. She would grow old and die and he would be just as young and beautiful as ever. Outside of their physical chemistry, she had nothing to hold him with…and no reason to deserve having him at her side. Sagan could stay no more than Valera could follow if he went.

When he went.

Val dried off her hands and walked into the back bedroom. He wasn't asleep, but sat on the end of the bed clearly heavy with his thoughts. So much so that he didn't notice her there. She watched him in silence for a moment; saw the bow of his head as he studied his own hands. It was when she realized she knew what he was contemplating that she hurried forward to fill his empty hands with hers, squeezing them tightly and with all of her heart as she knelt between his feet and looked up into his troubled eyes. Since she had caught him off guard, she saw everything he had tried to keep concealed from her etched in his redwood gaze.

“Here,” she said with a hitch of oncoming pain, “they can only be filled with me.” Valera looked at his hands, stroking her palm over his. “But there…there they can be filled with so much more. A sword. Work. Friends and family. All the responsibilities you treasured and all of the life you lived before something decided to snatch you out of it like plunging you into a surreal dream world. But Sagan,” she said, holding down her selfish emotions until she was shaking with the repression, “the dream has lasted much too long. It's time for you to awaken back in your real world. You have to go. You don't belong here.”

Val had wanted to say it straight, with wisdom and selflessness, but her tears and the chasm of loneliness she was reopening overcame her. But she realized he was much too special and far too beautiful for just the human world. Her life was too simple and too unspectacular to hold any interest for him. How she had managed to catch his attention in the first place, she would never understand.

Sagan's fingers tightened around hers almost painfully as he stared into her swimming eyes. He brought her trembling fingers to the kiss of his lips.

“I don't want to leave you,” he said with such low intensity that it seized her by her heart. “I can't imagine an eter
nity of never watching you cook again, or of never touching you.”

He had her head in his hands instantly, drawing her mouth under his for a kiss of such poignant desperation it broke her heart even as it made her soar with pleasure to know he felt that way about her.

“I don't think I can live on only nine days of memories of you, Valera. I say that to myself each day and push for another and another, but I don't even know when it would ever be enough.”

“You can't survive here,” she argued. “You need more than a woman in a cabin in the wilderness. Don't you think I know that? Feel that? I could never be happy knowing that staying with me is hollowing out who you are and always have been. You can't even tell me who you are and who you have been.”

“What I need, what gnaws at me relentlessly, is to know…to know everyone I left behind me is safe and well.”

“And what if they are? You'd come back? To do what? Hide inside when the white nights come to surround you? You can't do that any more than I can live forever. There's nothing to argue about here! We've always known this was wrong in so many ways—”

“No! Not wrong!” he exploded, jerking her hard between his grasp. “Never again say such a thing, Valera. You are perfect. We are so spectacular together that it cannot be labeled wrong. It defiles the beauty of what we have had and I will not stand to hear you disparage it. Do you understand?”

She nodded and then completely crumbled apart. She realized her stupid heart was breaking for someone she couldn't have. She knew so little about him, but also knew everything that mattered. He was benevolent and gentle, intelligent and sweet with humor, and he was as dangerous and severe as he needed to be when occasion demanded it. He made love to her in so many ways both lewd and loving, but every time—
every single time
—he held her hard against his heart and spoke to her just as he was speaking to her now. Treasuring her. Treasuring them.

“But you have to go,” she rasped softly, “and you know that as well as I do.”

Sagan closed his eyes, his expression pained as he touched his forehead to hers.

“And they will want me to repent my sin with you and demand I pay penance for it. What will happen, Valera, when I refuse to do it? You are no sin and I will not let them tell me to treat you as such. I will lose my position for it; the work you think I long for will be taken from me because they will deem me a hypocrite to my faith. As a priest committing what they see as a gross sin and refusing to repent? I will be ejected as an example, and they would be right to do so. To let it slide would invite chaos into an institution already riddled with difficulties. I will defy them on the issue of you, sweetness, but I will not destroy my faith because of it.”

“And what of your family? Your friends? Your culture? Will you pretend they don't matter? I feel you and hear you when you dream. The fear you have for the welfare of your people is choking you. You don't have to tell me anything for me to know without a doubt that there are people you love in danger. And despite so much I don't know about you, I do know you could not rest idle with me here when you would crave to be helping them there.”