The Claiming (21 page)

Finally, he pulled away from her so that he could look down at her, cupping her face in his hand, leaning down to kiss her lightly on the lips. He bent down then, lifted her into his arms and carried her to the bed, dropping her so that she bounced.

He straightened, pulled his shirt from his shoulders and tossed it to the floor, then removed his breeches, boots and stockings, tossing them to land where they might.

Jana watched him with interest, making no attempt to remove her own clothes.

When he’d finished undressing, he reached for her, removing her dress and petticoats, her chemise, her pantaloons, until she was as naked as he was.

He slipped into bed beside her then and pulled her against his length.

To her surprise she felt the flesh of his manhood immediately grow hard and erect.

She pulled away, looked at him questioningly. She had thought he had found his pleasure, as well. Now she wondered if he had not.

He smiled wryly. “A side effect of the Brie.”

Her brows rose. “Does it hurt?”

He chuckled and pulled her against him once more. “I’ll live … more likely, I think, if I ignore it for now. I’m not sure my heart could take any more at the moment.”

Jana glanced up at him with alarm.

He placed a fingertip on her lips.

Finally, she settled back, snuggling against him.

After a while it occurred to her that she liked this part as much as she liked the other—in a different way, but it still gave her a great deal of pleasure. She thought, even if sharing their bodies had not given her pleasure she would have enjoyed this part very much.

She stopped at that thought, backtracking, until she realized she had thought of the sex act as ‘sharing their bodies’, not sharing herself. She wondered if he thought of it as sharing himself with her.

If he had, though, would he have behaved so coolly toward her afterward, as he had this morning? After a moment, it occurred to her that his behavior had not really deviated from her own when she had shared her body with other men. She had performed as expected, but put it from her mind once she was finished and rarely thought of it again, unless it had been particularly unpleasant and the client had returned.

It was her perception that had changed then. Because she enjoyed the sharing so much that she was happy long afterward, felt happy only to be around him? Or was it love, as Marty had said?

He was wrong to think that she had thought of it before. She hadn’t, not consciously anyway. She hadn’t even thought to wonder why she was happy sometimes for no apparent reason, sad others, also for no apparent reason. She didn’t recall that she had ever even heard anyone use the word. If she had, she had dismissed it simply because it had had no significance to her. Why would he believe she thought she felt it?

Did she? Were the years she’d spent in conditioning crumbling around her, leaving her open to learn from her senses, her experiences? Or was she still just reacting to the emotions of others, as Marty had said she had been conditioned to do?

“What thoughts are running through that head of yours?
Jana looked up quickly. She’d thought he’d fallen asleep.

She looked away again. “Why did you share me with that man who came?”

He stiffened. “Doctor Jenk?”

She nodded. He said nothing for so long that she thought he wouldn’t answer.

“What happened?”

She told him.

“Did you enjoy it?” he asked, keeping his voice carefully neutral.

“No. But I never have before. I’m supposed to give pleasure. It is not given to me.”

“Did he enjoy it?” he asked, his voice tinged with anger now.

Jana thought about it. “I couldn’t tell.”

Alain was silent for several moments. “That was not a sharing. And it most certainly was not my intention to share you.”

“No?”

“NO!”

“What was it?”

Alain let out an exasperated sigh. “Are you telling me you’ve never been examined by a doctor before, ever?”

“No. What’s a doctor?”

“A man of medicine. When people are ill….”

“I’m ill?”

He put his hand over her mouth to silence her. “No. He examined you … for something else. He knows the science of the body, and when a body becomes diseased, or injured, he knows what to do to make it well again.”

Enlightenment dawned. She pushed his hand away. “A scientist! I was never studied like that though.”

“Orleans is very different than Earth.”

“I didn’t like that.”

His arm tightened. “I’m sorry. Blane was right. I should have explained. It was thoughtless of me, but I assumed you would be familiar with doctors.”

“I am not ill.”

“No.”

“I mean I am never ill. I have not been evaluated since Marty bought me.”

Alain said nothing for several moments. “You’re stronger than you look if you’ve not been ill in … what? Eighteen years?”

Jana bit her lip, wondering if she should tell him the truth. “I was designed with an enhanced immune system—super-immuno, they called it, to make me resistant to diseases and also to heal very rapidly when … if I am injured.”

“Designed?”

“In the Bondage Lab. I was only de-canted two years ago,” she added apologectically. “I did hear them say, though, that I was fully developed and equal in maturity to a sixteen to twenty year old human.”

“De-canted?”

“Yes. Removed from the development chamber. They began conditioning as soon as my brain had developed sufficiently to begin to assimilate and process thought, though, so I had a full five years of conditioning. In general, they said, they spent ten years, but I had accelerated growth introduced, so they also accelerated the conditioning—Marty said that was why I was defective, that they had rushed conditioning.”

Alain pushed her to her back, coming up on his elbows so that he could look down at her, studying her face. Lifting one hand, he gently brushed the hair from her face, then, with one fingertip, traced the arch of her brows, the slope of her nose, the shape of her lips. It tickled, but Jana remained perfectly still, controlling her breath so that she breathed only shallowly, allowing him to examine her as thoroughly as he wished, though she wondered why he did so.

“I see no defect, only perfection … unless one accepted that you are too beautiful to be real,” he murmured.

The words were strangely hurtful. Jana closed her eyes, tried to turn her face away. He wouldn’t allow it, catching her chin and forcing her to face him once more.

He was smiling faintly, wryly, when she opened her eyes. “That was meant as a compliment, not to hurt you. I had not thought I was so awkward at wooing a woman.”

She looked as confused as she felt. “What is wooing?”

He rolled away from her, chuckling. “I believe I need another drink.”

Jana sat up, staring at him as he strode across the room. “I wish you would not.”

He collected the decanter and looked around for a glass. Seeing none, he drank from the decanter before he moved back to the bed, setting the decanter solidly on the bed side table. He reached for her hand then, tugged until she moved toward him. He placed her hand over his erection, cupping her fingers around him. “Do you feel that?”

She gave him a look, and he grinned.

“This, my darling, is the sword I must use to slay the dragon and win my princess. I can not allow it to … uh … waver. Or I risk losing my princess forever.”

He chuckled when he saw Jana was looking at him as if he’d lost his mind. He thought it was possible he had. Jana had the disconcerting effect of making logical thought nearly impossible for him.

“You have drank too much,” she said accusingly.

“Yes. And it has loosened my tongue, but it’s a small price to pay for a hard shaft, the better to win my lady,” he said, placing a knee on the bed and one hand on her shoulder. He pushed her flat, rising over her.

Chapter Eleven

“What is wooing?” Jana asked breathlessly as his mouth settled over her breast.

He nipped the tender flesh gently and she jumped. “Be quiet,” he mumbled around the nipple he held in his mouth. “I’m saving you.”

Jana chuckled. “I thought this was sharing ourselves.”

He nudged her nipple with his tongue, sucked it and finally, reluctantly, released it, rising up to prop on one elbow so that he could look at her. “Making love.”

Jana’s brows rose. “How do you make it?”

He had been idly drawing circles around her breasts with one fingertip. At that, he looked up, frowning. After a moment, he moved down the bed. Jana watched him curiously as he grasped one of her legs and placed it on his shoulder. He repeated the process with her other leg. “Like this,” he murmured, placing his mouth over her femininity.

Jana’s eyes widened, but as she felt the hot moisture of his mouth, felt the brush of his tongue, a bolt of exquisite pleasure shot threw her, so powerful the muscles in her belly clenched almost painfully. She closed her eyes as a moan seemed to be ripped from her from the sheer intensity of her body’s reaction. She grasped his hair, trying to push him away, but he refused to budge, refused to allow her to escape the sensation that was almost unbearably acute.

Within moments, she’d lost all desire to move away, grasping two fistfuls of the sheets as thundering waves of passion crashed along her nerve endings, rapidly growing harder and more intense until the tension growing inside of her seemed almost to shatter into a thousand tiny pinpricks of rapture, rushing throughout her entire body.

She was barely conscious when he moved over her, pushing his hardened, man flesh into her.

“And like this,” he said, gritting teeth at the sharpness of his own pleasure as he sank deeply, began moving inside of her.

Jana cried out. She felt no building toward release this time. Her body simply exploded again almost the moment he thrust inside of her.

His own culmination was almost as immediate and explosive.

He shuddered and collapsed on top of her, almost crushing her with his weight. She wrapped her arms around him anyway, sinking deeper into oblivion. Finally, he roused himself enough to roll off of her, but sank limply to the bed immediately beside her, struggling to catch his breath.

***

A tapping on the door woke Jana. She stretched, unwilling to open her eyes, then snuggled closer to the warm body next to her own.

A hand came down against her bare buttock, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to sting. Jana sat bolt upright, looking around in confusion. Alain, she saw, was propped up against her pillows, grinning at her lazily. She rubbed her backside, not entirely certain what he’d intended.

“Breakfast is at the door.”

She looked toward the door as the knock came again, wondering if he meant she was supposed to fetch it. Finally, she decided she was and tossed the covers aside. He caught her, dragged her down once more and, grasping the covers, dragged them up and over both of them, covering even their heads. She stared up at him curiously.

“Come!”

She heard the door open, the tread of feet as the servant crossed the room, the rattle of dishes. Alain grinned lazily at the expression of confusion on her face. When the servant had left again, closing the door, Alain tossed the covers off and sat up.

He was acting very strangely, not at all the way she was accustomed to. She wondered if he was still in the grips of the beverage he’d been drinking the night before. She dismissed her thoughts, however, when Alain picked up the tray of food and set it on the mattress between them.

He picked up a thin, crispy piece of meat and held it to her lips. “Eat!” he ordered.

Jana took a bite … bit down on his finger.

He snatched his finger back, sucking it, but chuckled. “Not me. The food.”

Jana felt her face heat with embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bite you.”

He picked up a piece of bread and took a bite. “Take care, I might decide to bite you back.”

For some reason, instead of feeling alarmed, his words sent a thrill of anticipation through her.

Alain gave her a smoldering look. “If you keep looking at me like that, breakfast will go to waste and I’ll be too weak to move.”

Jana realized he was teasing. She chuckled, grabbed a piece of meat and held it to his lips. “That wouldn’t do at all.”

He ate the meat, but when she would have withdrawn her hand, he caught her wrist, closing his mouth over her fingers and sucking the juices of the meat from them. A pleasant wave of heat washed through her. More than a little surprised, Jana glanced from her fingers to his face.

Alain studied her a long moment, then grasped the tray and blindly set it behind him. It caught the edge of the bed side table and landed in the floor with a clatter of dishes. He ignored the racket. “You asked for it.”

He made love to her slowly, thoroughly. Unlike the night before, he did not, at first, seem to feel the urgency he’d felt then, not really surprising since they had shared themselves over and over the night before. He kissed her—everywhere, from the tip of her nose, to the tip of her toes. When she began to feel desperate to have him inside of her, began to urge him to join with her, he surprised her by rolling onto his back and pulling her on top of him. Aligning their bodies, he grasped her hips, pushing until he was buried deeply inside of her, guiding her hips with his hands until she realized that he was allowing her to set the rhythm. She sat upright, rotating her hips experimentally.

He groaned, closed his eyes.

She began to move then, watching his face, feeling her own body respond to the building ecstasy reflected on his features. They reached culmination together, shuddering with release.

When they had recovered from thoroughly pleasuring each other, Alain sat up, looking down at the tray and scattered dishes on the floor. “I fear we’ve made a mess.”

Jana sat up. “We?”

He gave her a look. “It was your fault.”

Jana felt her jaw drop.

He tucked his finger under her chin and pushed it up, then kissed her on the lips. “You tempted me.”