by Vela Roth
She put her hands to her waist and pushed her gown to the floor.
He could not take his eyes from her. This was Cassia, unbound. Her chin high, her gaze on his face, her whole body shivering. Her fists clutched at her sides, only drawing his gaze downward to the triangle of dark curls at the apex of her thighs. His gaze halted there a moment, but soon plunged downward still to her locked knees and slender ankles and, at last, her bare feet.
“You do have freckles everywhere,” he said.
Her breath hitched. She didn’t understand.
“Cassia,” he tried to explain. “I lay awake at night thinking about kissing each and every one. I’m going to be busy for a very long time.”
Her response struck him, a bolt of light to the chest that radiated to fill him. She had no name for it. He suspected she had forgotten what it was called long ago. But he knew it well—happiness. He could not help but beam at her. He realized how that must make his teeth look, but only smiled more.
Her fists uncurled. She reached for him. She started at his high collar and made her way down his robe, unfastening the clasps with one compulsive caress after another. Self-control would be marginally easier with one last layer of fabric between them, but he would have to manage. She wanted to see him, as he had seen her. It was only fair. It was entirely wonderful.
He wondered if she would subject him to the brush of fabric and her touch all the way to his ankles. But when she had him bared to the waist, she took fistfuls of silk and embroidery and pushed his robe over his shoulders, banishing it to the floor.
Air and moonlight and her gaze struck his bare skin, and his straining arousal surged to pain. He blinked to clear his vision, to see the look on her face.
Thank the Goddess, no fear in her eyes. Not even a hint of alarm at the evidence of his desire. She had learned to fear men’s lust. Apparently his lust was in a different category. In fact, she hadn’t yet taken her eyes off of it.
“You must tell me Hespera’s word for this. What Tenebrans say is entirely insufficient.”
“Rhabdos,” he blurted, giving her the metaphor they favored without a detailed translation. He was out of lessons. In fact, running low on intelligible words altogether.
Not so with Cassia. Her tongue emerged to wet her lips. “You are beautiful beyond imagining,” she said again. “But I have dared to imagine. Now I shall dare to do more than imagine.”
Such a gaze. Such a flow of words from her. Lio tried to appreciate it, but his entire world seemed to shrink to her hands reaching out to touch his stomach. His skin and muscles tightened at the contact, and his breath halted in his throat at the sensation needling through him. And Cassia hadn’t even touched his rhabdos yet.
He had never felt like this. This was how it was supposed to feel. This was right.
She traced upward with her fingers and fondled the modest growth of hair on his chest with great concentration. He didn’t sport the pelt of which her countrymen could boast, but she gave no sign she was disappointed. She stroked the line of hair that ran down the length of his stomach. Past his navel. And kept going along the path he had been absurdly proud of ever since it had grown in.
He caught her hands in both of his. “Cassia. Your pleasure first.”
Her gaze lifted. Her eyes were wide. Trusting.
“Cassia,” he said again, without other words now. His entire language, just her name.
He stepped onto their blankets and knelt before her, still holding her hands. She followed him down, and their mouths found each other again. He eased them back onto their bed amid the rose petals.
Then he was touching her everywhere, and she was welcoming him. He put his hands where his gaze had been moments before, everywhere her freckles marked the way. Sight and fantasy realized into touch.
He came to know the shape of her breasts he had barely met the night before. Where all the little buds and ridges were in her dark areolae. Precisely which way she liked best for him to drag his tongue across her small, hard nipples, and how often she liked for him to pause and tease them with nothing but the tip of his tongue, right at the center where they were so sensitive.
He discovered her small feet fit perfectly in his long hands, and that she had never imagined the pressure of his thumbs in her arches could make her squirm with pleasure. He discovered it pleased her well indeed to have her knee tucked up close to him, her foot in his hand while he licked her breast.
She made no sound other than her swift, uneven breaths. He found himself panting with her, as if he too must breathe to survive. Scent brought him the fragrance of her arousal, and their Union brought him her arousal itself.
He wanted to thrust into the wetness he could smell, let the grip of her body push back against the pain of his need. But that look of trust in Cassia’s eyes sustained him. He mastered himself and bade his body wait for hers.
He dare not attempt to touch her mind, not yet. Thelemancy was like the Drink. It didn’t always inspire desire. Between them it would. She was not ready yet.
She was panting hard now, her hips rocking as if begging for him. He caressed his way from her foot to her thigh and slid his hand between her legs.
For the first time, she found her words again. “Yes. Lio. Touch me there again.”
Wonderful. They had established a precedent for her voicing her desires, and she didn’t intend to stop.
He slid a finger inside her krana as she had liked the night before, only to find her much tighter. The heat of her body sank into his skin, and he wondered when his finger had developed ambitions to be as sensitive as his fangs.
“More than your hand,” Cassia clarified.
Oh yes. If only it were more than his hand. “We don’t have to do it quite this way, Cassia. You could have me under you instead.”
She blinked glazed eyes. “Will it not please you this way?”
He spared a breath for a laugh that almost came out as a groan. “Every way will please me. But is this what you want?”
“Yes. Just like this.”
He heard and felt her certainty. She had decided. She would be under him tonight.
“Your pleasure first,” he said again, through gritted teeth.
“Lio,” she protested, but the motion of his hand seemed to preempt whatever else she would have said. With his other, he kept playing with her foot. She moved her hips eagerly, with all the passion he had been so delighted and astonished to discover in her. He had not been wrong. She was so tightly chained within herself, but once she threw off her shackles…
She arched off the blankets with a gasp, pushing herself against his hand. One sigh after another passed her lips as the contractions inside her clutched at his finger. He supported her where she braced her foot against his palm. Her blood rejoiced in her veins, and saliva pooled in his mouth. He wanted to drink her climax. But that would mean not getting to watch her.
She relaxed back on their bed, wet and hot and pliant upon his hand. He tucked her foot into a warm fold of the blanket. Now was the time.
He eased his body down, bracing his forearms on either side of her, and opened his mind to hers. At the first rush of her thoughts, he gasped. He could taste her satiation and her longing, her eagerness and her reticence. The sight of her face, the sound of her buttocks shifting on the blanket, the warmth of her skin under him inundated his senses with every facet of her.
He gave her mind a probing caress. No instinctual barriers rose against him; she was not aware of his presence yet. He put one hand on her head, another at her waist, his teeth at her neck. She tilted her head back, baring her throat, laying his feast out before him. A nudge from his leg on the inside of hers, and she slowly, hesitantly, parted her legs too.
He stilled himself above her, breathing with her, and eased not his body, but his inner self against hers. No object or direction, simply mind upon mind. Pure Cassia touched him for an instant, and a groan caught in his throat. Her thoughts soughed and shifted in welcome.
&nb
sp; Lio focused on the precise, intuitive techniques of thelemancy, reaching for another measure of self-control. He must go deeper. No doubt she would feel this intrusion. This would be when her mind mounted resistance.
He must enter gently. As he had with his teeth in her neck, he must prove to her this too would feel good to her. If he succeeded, he would finally get to feel what it was like within the ramparts of her mind.
Lio braced himself and slid his thoughts into her own.
Cassia gasped and breathed him into her. Her mind swept open, dragging him deep, and he plummeted. No control. No precision. Just him in her, her in him.
Lio fisted his hands in the blankets and braced the muscles in his back to keep from thrusting into her body as well. He felt the chill air on his back and the hot, damp fabric under hers. His arousal throbbed, while her satisfaction weighed heavy and relaxing on his loins. Thirst scoured his veins as wonder infused hers. She could feel him inside her, and she was not afraid. The sight of his own face flashed in his vision before he felt the touch of her fingers on his cheek, which brought him back to himself.
Blood of the Goddess, what was this? Not thelemancy. Not magic. More.
Cassia took Lio’s face in her hands and guided his mouth to her neck.
He buried his face against her shoulder and ground his teeth. He had promised her no pain. He dared to move his mind within hers. Her thoughts parted for him, then closed around him as she clutched at his shoulders. With a gasp, he delved into her mind. The way was sure and ready for him, all the way to the tender place he sought. Lio found the tipping point between pain and pleasure and carried her over the sweeter edge.
Cassia arched beneath him and threw her head back. With his mind buried deep in hers, Lio sank his teeth into her throat and his rhabdos into her krana.
Her body wrapped tight and wet around him. Her blood welled hot where his teeth pierced her. At last. Exhilaration jolted him, gripped him, and tightened in his back until he instinctively thrust deeper inside her.
They both went utterly still.
He knew what she felt. He knew what she needed. Lio reassured her with a shaking caress upon her hair. He began to suckle her vein, giving her the one pleasure she never feared.
Natural Union
So this was what it felt like to have a male’s flesh inside her. The last barrier was torn, the most secret part of her body exposed and penetrated. She was open to him, her body and mind and blood. Trapped on her back beneath him, at his mercy.
That flesh was hard and filling. That male lay still and patient upon her, his back rising and falling under her hands as he gasped in air, not out of survival, but because he wanted it. Only his mouth and tongue moved, drawing at her neck with hunger he could not hide.
This was what it felt like to have Lio inside her.
He was a warm fragrance under her skin, a bright caress within her. She felt him in her heart and heard him in her thoughts, a presence in the dark she could not see, a voice in the night to which she answered. There was no name for the sense that told her Lio himself was inside Cassia herself, as surely as his body was inside of hers and her blood was in his veins.
She lay shaking beneath him and held him close. What was this sweet, raw thing? She felt it on her skin where he lay upon her, inside her where his flesh was lodged. In her chest where her heart thudded against his. In her mind, where he touched her in a place more sensitive than anywhere on her body.
It was intimacy.
A warm ache began in her throat and threatened to spill out in tears. Was this the Blood Union? She didn’t know. But it was their Union. It was trust made into ritual. Their Oath made into pleasure.
She felt so much. She wanted so much.
The pressure of his teeth at her throat filled her with familiar, uncontrollable excitement, an undertone to the throbbing between her legs. His hand caressed her head again, and his tongue stroked a trail of blood from her skin. She knew what he was saying. Relax, Cassia.
She uncurled her hands and lay back, letting her legs slide apart. But in one place, the tension refused to drain from her. Her flesh deep within was so tight around his.
When he pulled back and slipped out of her, she could not restrain a gasp. As her chest lifted, his arm slid beneath her. He held her, cradling her against his mouth, and pressed his rhabdos into her again. Solid warmth glided through the need within her.
The grip of his bite tightened, as if by reflex, then eased. His jaw was rigid with tension against hers. She caressed his face, tangling her fingers in his hair.
As if he had been waiting for that sign from her, he began to move between her thighs. He withdrew, then slid within her again, suckling her throat in time to his retreat and advance. Each time he drove a little deeper than before.
His presence in her thoughts heated and grew in intensity. Pleasure scathed her, and she gasped aloud. His power pulsed to the rhythm of his feast, and Cassia moved her hips with each rhythmic, hypnotic stroke.
The tears slid down her cheeks at last. He steadied her in his embrace. She held onto his shoulders, shifting beneath him to seek relief from the torturous pleasure. If she just angled her hips a different way…and perhaps pulled her knees a bit higher like this…
It could get better. It did get better. Just like the first time he had pierced her with his teeth. Now she found herself parting her thighs wider to make way, to allow him deeper. Her blood rushed in her veins and swelled into his mouth.
His gentle invasions became thrusts. His power took her breath away. His smooth, limber body moved on her. Inside her. For her. She had not known. She had thought his hands alone had woken all the raw, forbidden places she had, but this was more.
There was no place within her he did not touch. There was no part of him she did not hold.
Cold air struck her damp throat as he lifted his head. For the first time, she saw blood on his lips. Dark liquid trailed down his jaw and dripped onto her breasts. His eyes locked on hers, gazing into her as his lower body bore down and he penetrated her again.
No, it didn’t frighten her.
His swift, forceful thrusts built up the unbearable pleasure inside her. She curled her hips closer against him, dragging her feet down his back. It was going to happen again.
His head descended, and his mouth closed around her vein to suckle her into her peak. Her back arched, and she held on tight to him as her hips began to jerk, thrusting her onto his rhabdos. The deepest places within her gripped, not empty this time, but finding him to hold and suck.
Her mind, her heart, her Will held fast to him. His presence waxed outward to fill the darkness all around her and inward to the deepest reaches of her. An ephemeral wave of pleasure overtook her. Not hers. His. But her body responded, and the end of her climax became the beginning of another.
His fangs sank deep into her throat and clenched hard as his rhabdos drove into her one last time. His whole, powerful frame went rigid, trapping her shivering, bucking body under his. Sudden, unexpected warmth streamed into her. She was drinking him.
When at last he went still, his lips felt soft on her throat, still covering her where his teeth rested in her flesh. He did not withdraw from between her thighs. She kept her arms and legs close around him.
She was lying in the night goddess’s shrine in the forbidden reaches of the woods, utterly naked and entwined with a well-fed Hesperine. The feeling clawing its way out of her was fierce and wonderful. It drowned out all the names men called a woman like her.
As long as she lived, when she thought of lying on her back with a male body upon her, this was what she would feel and remember. No man could ever touch her the way Lio did. It was not in their power.
The truth was, she still had no idea what it felt like to endure a night in a man’s bed. She had no desire to find out. It was a Hesperine who had taken her maidenhood, along with her blood. And given her his virginity and this…this moment…this feeling in return.
Hours Before Da
wn
When he parted their bodies, Cassia discovered she had to make herself let him go. But the deed was done.
He collected himself, untangling from her. Then he stretched out his long, lean frame beside her and wrapped one arm around her middle.
He seemed to want to pull her closer. She obliged, and he pulled her very close indeed. It seemed his plan was to hold her now. She found she approved this plan wholeheartedly.
His embrace felt like the comfort he had offered her at her worst moments. Except he was naked, and she had just bedded him. She didn’t know what to do with that concoction of safety and excitement. She only knew his body was the warmest thing in the room. After a moment’s hesitation, she slid her feet against his legs. He didn’t pull away. In fact, he reached down and retrieved the blankets, covering them both.
She became aware she was sore. She ached in all kinds of places she never considered relevant to the act, not to mention the more obvious ones. She squeezed her thighs together. They slid damply against each other.
Under the privacy of the blankets, Cassia touched her fingers to the wetness on the inside of her thigh. She brought her hand close to her face and gazed with heating cheeks at the milky mixture. His and hers.
Lio propped himself on one elbow and looked at her hand, then at her. He was the picture of satisfaction, his eyes hooded, his body languid and relaxed, his smile holding the secrets they had just committed together.
“I thought you didn’t—” she tried to explain. “That is, I didn’t know you have—”
“My dearest Cassia, are you trying to ask me to explain the mysteries of corrupt Hesperine seed?”
That surprised a laugh out of her, although she blushed. They had just made love. How could she blush over this? Why was this the first thing she had said to him after what they’d just done?
He fondled her hand. “Yes, I do and I have, although what my body spills in you cannot get you with child.”