Pure Surrender

by Aja James

  “In the records both written and oral, left by soothsayers, historians and wise men, there is evidence of dragons in every corner of the world. Those that live beneath the sea. Those that crouch in caves. Those that ascend to the heavens. And those that can do all three. But they never stay long in the mortal realm, these penultimate creatures of magic, both Pure and Dark. They only appear when needed, serving their purpose with terrifying power, before returning from whence they came…”

  —From the secret journal of the Vampire Sorceress Circe

  Chapter Eleven

  Aella exhaled through her nose and shuddered in relief when Yun increased the pressure of his perfect mouth on hers.

  He had the softest, juiciest, most beautiful lips of any male she’d ever known. Even when he held them firmly together in his usual serious impassivity, or pressed them in a frown of disapproval, he couldn’t disguise their plumpness and shape, the gorgeous light plum shade that enthralled her.

  In Aella’s experience, the color of a man’s lips harkened the color of another organ farther south. But she didn’t want to dwell on her “experience” right now. In truth, as he tentatively swept his tongue between the seam of her own lips, she might as well have had no past, because nothing prepared her for the experience of him.

  He moved his hand from her heart to cup her jaw with both palms now, holding her where he wanted her as he deepened the penetration of his tongue and took complete possession of her mouth.

  She knelt on the soft grass between his spread thighs as he sat on the rock, her hands braced on the hard muscles of his legs right where they joined his hips. She rubbed her thumbs slowly along the crease of his groin, but made no move to touch him where he was hottest, hardest, and hurt the most for her.

  Other men would have grabbed her hand and put it there themselves, make her squeeze the ache away, or make it hurt even better, a delicious burn on the path to ecstasy. They would have wasted no time aligning their hardness to her sex and plunging in to take their pleasure.

  And she would have given as good as she got, because women sure as hell had urges too.

  She’d take them as hard as they’d take her, harder even, because women had more stamina, more control. Men were simpler, their instinct to rut when aroused nigh irresistible. For a woman like Aella, they were no challenge at all.

  Yun was… different.

  What an understatement that was!

  Even now, when he was naked before her, the cloak draped loosely around him, his body hard and ready, his sex pulsing with need, he didn’t grope and he didn’t pillage.

  He was practically vibrating with his desire, but it went beyond sexual. Everything he did was with an exact purpose—the thoughtful way he looked into her eyes, the deliberate way he touched her.

  The concentrated way he kissed her now.

  He wasn’t simply taking what he wanted to assuage a base need. He was giving her himself. All of his purity and innocence, juxtaposed with an ancient wisdom and an unbreakable will.

  And Aella knew that Yun himself would be the greatest gift she could ever receive.

  He plunged his tongue into her mouth over and over, tangling with her own, mating in a sensual dance that left her breathless for more. She let him own her mouth, let him explore and stake his claim.

  She drank in his passion with every lap of his tongue, every suck and lick. He tasted like nothing she’d ever known. She was hopelessly addicted to it.

  Addicted to him.

  Hours might have gone by and she wouldn’t have noticed. He kissed her endlessly and focused solely on the connection of their mouths, his hands still holding her face.

  He hadn’t touched her anywhere else, except when he palmed her breast, though she knew that even then he’d been feeling her heart instead of copping a feel.

  But just his mouth on hers, his tongue undulating inside, was more intimate than anything she’d ever shared with another person.

  There was a connection between them that couldn’t be defined. He made her feel weak and strong at the same time. He made her want to crawl inside of him, fuse with him and never be apart from him.

  This wasn’t a one-time rutting to revel in the moment and never think of it twice. This wasn’t even about having him stud for her, though that was the most honored position a man could hold with an Amazon warrior, however temporarily. This was…

  Permanent.

  This was a mating of body, heart and mind. A merging of souls.

  There would be no her or him afterwards. There would only be them.

  This would change everything.

  As that understanding dawned, Aella was the one who pulled back from their kiss.

  They were both breathing heavily by that point, aroused beyond comprehension and care.

  He stared down at her with passion, possessiveness and unflinching honesty. He was letting her see inside of him. He was letting her have him.

  “Aella,” he rasped in that low, rumbling voice, like thunder rolling through stormy clouds.

  “Yun,” she answered, loving the sound of his name on her lips.

  “Will you ever tell me what your name means?” she asked with a tilt of her head and a teasing smile.

  “Or shall I guess, and be rewarded a prize if I choose right?”

  He probably didn’t understand everything she said, but he smiled his gorgeous shy smile back at her, having caught on to her playful mood.

  “Let’s see,” she mused, tapping a finger to her chin in consideration. “Does your name mean stallion by any chance?”

  He huffed a chuckle and shook his head.

  She pretended to be disappointed and pouted a little.

  “What a shame. Stallion is one of my favorite words. I might have to keep calling you that anyway.”

  She stared pointedly at his fully erect manhood, jutting past his navel, wrapped with tantalizing veins, and glistening with pre-cum, the head plump and ripe, just begging for her to suck it.

  “No ‘pony’ there,” she stated quite happily, her eyes glazing over with gnawing need and savage lust.

  “Fully-cocked stallion is what you are.”

  When she kept staring for an inordinate amount of time, he tipped her chin up with his hand so that she had to look back into his eyes.

  She saw the humor that swam in the obsidian pools, but there was heat there too.

  Blazing, raw, sexual heat.

  Heavens. She could actually feel herself melting into a puddle at his feet.

  “Does your name mean warrior?” she continued her game, leisurely stroking her hands over his hips, up his lean sides and ribs, to his defined pectorals and wide, strong shoulders.

  “You are certainly the finest warrior I have ever met,” she said, “as well as lost to in combat.”

  She smoothed her wandering hands down the ropes of his biceps to his bandaged forearms and hands, lacing their fingers together.

  “So much power and grace in this body. Even covered beneath all those confounded layers, it was lust at first sight at the trading post. I can hardly believe you’re here with me now. My obsession and my dream.”

  And then she grew quiet, no longer teasing, her words spoken aloud but not at him.

  “You’re everything I’ve ever wanted,” she murmured, “everything I never even knew I wanted. How am I supposed to let you go after our time together is done?”

  She looked into his eyes then, confessing truths to him that she knew he didn’t understand.

  “Amazons don’t keep men,” she whispered. “It is our law. It is what binds us together against all odds. I love my people, my queen, my sisters, and the little girls who will grow up into fine women warriors one day. I love our way of life. The freedom. The passion. The independence to do as we please.”

  She drew in a breath and pressed on, “I have never wanted anything else, though I have met other peoples and experienced other cultures through my travels. I do not want to be a man’s possession. I am not a mer
e receptacle for his seed. I do not wish to be tied down to anyone, to any place.”

  She swallowed and stared intensely into his eyes.

  “But…but… I want to be yours. I want you to be mine. I don’t want anyone else to have you, to touch you and taste you as I do. I want to own all of your kisses and smiles and looks. I want to devour you, consume you, drink you up and soak you in until your essence fills me from the inside out, and when I sweat I smell of you, because every part of you has mated with every part of me.”

  He must have noticed her increased agitation, because he was gripping her upper arms firmly as if to hold her body together, even as the rest of her spiraled out of control.

  Her hands clawed into fists upon his thighs reflexively.

  “What am I to do?” she asked him. “I don’t even know what your name means, but already I can’t imagine living my life without you. Always beside me, inside me, a part of me.”

  “Yun,” she beseeched, “what am I to do?”

  *** *** *** ***

  Cloud didn’t know what she was asking him.

  He only knew that she was torn.

  There was a soul-deep sadness in her eyes, as if she was saying goodbye forever even though she was still kneeling in the grass in front of him. Right there where he held her, his hands on her silky skin, his eyes gazing into hers.

  One day, perhaps far off into the mortal future, heaven willing, they might be saying goodbye when they reached the end of their lives. But right now, and for the foreseeable future, he intended to stay with her, and keep her with him.

  Attachment.

  He finally knew what it meant. And now that he was tethered to her, he would follow her to the ends of the earth. Only death could stop him.

  And even then, he’d look for her from the heavens. He’d watch over her through all of her soul’s incarnations. If the universe laid her spirit to rest instead, he’d keep her safe among the stars.

  He comforted her now the only way he knew how, by pulling her into his embrace.

  He held her tight as he kissed her again, deeply and possessively, filling her with his strength, giving her his promise.

  Giving her forever.

  She clung to him with desperation and need, her hands digging into his hips.

  He angled her head back and gave her more, his tongue, his mouth, even his teeth, as he nibbled and nipped at her swollen lips before thrusting back into her sweet, wet warmth.

  One of her hands moved inward across his lower abdomen, scratching the sensitive skin there with her nails. But she purposely avoided touching his throbbing, stone-hard shaft, which bounced against his drum-tight belly, demanding her attention.

  She ignored it still as her fingers dipped lower into the thatch of hair at his groin, until her palm cupped his full, heavy scrotum, hard and tight beneath his root.

  With a raw groan, he plunged his tongue deeper and harder into her welcoming mouth, while he covered the hand that held him with his own. He moved her hand until it gripped his sex fully and squeezed her fingers tight.

  The unbearable ache within him subsided only for a moment before redoubling with a vengeance, making him shake with a primal, savage need.

  She pushed his hand away and held him with both hands now, squeezing rhythmically up and down his staff, circling around the swollen head of him to spread his moisture around.

  Fuck, he needed release. He needed it more than air.

  But he didn’t want to come in her hands. He wanted… He needed…

  She pulled her mouth away from him in that moment, even though he didn’t want to let her go.

  “Let me,” she said, pushing at his chest, making him loosen the vice of his arms.

  “I’ll take care of you, baby. I’ll make you feel so good.”

  She was smiling at him again, albeit still a little sadly. But the passion and desire in her eyes eclipsed her earlier doubt.

  He didn’t know what she said, but he nodded nevertheless.

  He trusted her.

  Everything he was, everything he would ever be—in this moment and beyond—was hers.

  Keeping her sapphire eyes on his, she dipped her head slowly, opening her swollen, pillowy lips around the fat, weeping crown of him.

  Cloud gasped helplessly when her mouth finally closed over the tumescent head. The wet, silky heat around the most private part of him was something he’d never, ever, felt before, never even dreamed he could feel.

  And then she began to suck.

  Lightly at first, languid and leisurely, as if she was savoring the sweetest fruit and wanted it to last. She moaned with pleasure around his sex, swirling her tongue just under the mushroomed cap where he was most sensitive, making him tangle his hands in her hair involuntarily. She licked delicately at his fluids, probing at his slit with the tip of her tongue.

  On command, he leaked more essence to satisfy her taste buds, and she took him as deep into her throat as he could go, humming with appreciation, swallowing hard.

  One of his hands tightened against her scalp, holding her to him, while he braced the other on the rock as she took him deeper and deeper down her throat, sucking and swallowing whenever he hit the back of it, squeezing his cock so deliciously tight, massaging it just right.

  “Aella…” he growled in warning.

  She was going to make him come. His iron control was melting into butter. He couldn’t hold back much longer.

  She held his gaze all this while, staring intensely into his eyes while she ate his cock, owned it completely with her mouth.

  Come. He could almost hear her command in his mind.

  She wanted him to let go. She hungered for his release.

  And so he did, with a tortured groan, deep and guttural, primal and raw.

  He shook with the force of his climax as he shot thick ribbons of cream continuously down her throat, coating her tongue, flooding her mouth, until the fluids overflowed her lips, and a milky white pearl slid toward her chin.

  She swallowed him down voraciously, as her hands squeezed his base and kneaded his scrotum. She kept working her throat around him, applying almost painful pressure, as his tender skin became too sensitized, and he hurt from coming so hard for so long.

  Finally, when she’d milked the very last drop from him, she released his sex with an audible pop. And just when the single pearl that had leaked out of her mouth traveled to her chin, she swiped it up with her thumb and sucked it into her mouth, not letting a single drop go to waste.

  And still, she held his gaze. Possessive and triumphant.

  “You’re mine now, gorgeous,” she said huskily, licking her tongue around her lips, cleaning up every bit of him, drunk on his essence.

  “You taste divine.”

  Was this what wives did with their husbands, Cloud wondered. Or was this simply what Aella did with him?

  They’d shared an intimacy that surpassed anything he’d ever known. He might have been naked, but he’d never been laid so bare.

  He pulled her up roughly to kiss those savage, conquering lips. He tasted himself on her tongue, in her mouth. The knowledge filled him with an unreasonable pride, and his cock hardened again in her grasp to fill more of her.

  All of her.

  “Aella…” he said her name over and over, intermingled with words in Chinese that she didn’t understand.

  Words of devotion, surrender, joy, and desire.

  How he needed her! Craved her.

  He wanted them to become one. He wanted to live inside of her.

  “Baby…” she whispered back, devouring his mouth and tongue as he did hers.

  “I want you too. You will never know how much. The universe isn’t big enough to contain my desire.”

  She pulled slightly back to gaze into his eyes again, her pupils blown with undiluted passion.

  “But if we do this…” she paused and searched his gaze, trying to communicate something important.

  He concentrated hard, wanting to understand
her, but he could only listen to her tone and take in the strange sadness in her expression.

  “I can’t keep you,” she told him. “You will have to let me go. I wish everything was different…I wish I could be the one for you…I am a selfish, selfish bitch, because I don’t want anyone else to have you…”

  Her eyes filled with tears, but she held them in check.

  Cloud wished he could understand. How he wished he had his powers to comprehend any language, any Kind!

  Instead, all he could do was hold her, kiss her tears dry and pull her into his lap until she straddled his thighs.

  Her core was hot and wet against his erection; he could feel her softness even through the fabric that separated their naked skin beneath her tunic. She’d soaked through the material, her juices dripping down her thighs.

  Blindly, he shoved one hand between them and pushed the scrap of cloth to the side, baring her core to his searching hand, feeling her pouty nether lips against his knuckles.

  “Yun,” she moaned, grinding herself on his fingers, taking his mouth with hers once more.

  Instinctively, he parted her folds and reached his long, middle finger inside, needing to penetrate her with more than just his tongue.

  Silken heat clenched around him, and her juices slicked down his hand to his wrist, soaking his bandages.

  He thrust another finger inside her tight, throbbing sex, making her practically claw him to get even closer, as she rode his hand to take him deeper.

  This was where he was meant to be, Cloud knew on a basic, primal level. Even though he felt as if he was tearing her apart with just two fingers, and his maleness was much, much larger. Harder, thicker, longer. He knew they would fit.

  They were made for each other.

  He played with her pussy leisurely, the way she’d played with him, though he felt anything but casual. He learned her body by the sounds she made, the quickening of her breaths, the fluttering pulse in her throat when he put his lips there to feel it.

  He crooked his fingers and spread his thumb across a hard little button at the apex of her folds and felt her convulse around him, her moans growing louder in his ear, and he knew that he’d made her feel good. Perhaps almost as good as she’d made him feel.