That was neither here nor there, he thought impatiently. He was not a sit-and-wait kind of guy. He was a go-and-get-her kind of guy. Well, okay, maybe he was both. The ETF had taught him patience and aggression. It had taught him how to apply both and how to determine when each was called for. So why was waiting for her now so damn difficult? Bronse growled out a sound of frustration between his gritted teeth.
It wasn’t as though he would make Ravenna do things she wasn’t ready for. She could come here and feel as safe as she needed to feel.
Patience. He was an expert sometimes. When he had kissed that delectable mouth of hers and she had started to drive him crazy, he’d still managed to withdraw and keep his wits about him. He would just have to convince her how much she wanted him.
That was aggression, and he was definitely an expert there. Of course, he would understand if she didn’t show up at all tonight. Perhaps for her last night here in her home territory, a place where she felt safe and secure, she didn’t want to disturb the image of her childhood home with such a clear transition into womanhood.
Patience would absolutely be called for in that case. So he needed to quash his urge to storm out of this room and drag her beneath him so he could teach her about the feel of his deeply thrusting body transitioning in and out of hers.
Or perhaps such aggression would be a needed spark in this case?
That does it! There was only one thing he could possibly do. Bronse burst out of his room and went to find Lasher so he could either get some advice or have his longtime friend help him find a way to get moderately drunk. Masin had provided both services since officers’ college, and he would hardly fail Bronse now.
Bronse made it as far as the antechamber that served as a sort of crossroads to the four distinct wings of the temple, where they intersected and could be most easily traveled between.
There stood Ravenna, pacing just as energetically as he had been doing, the train and skirt of the bright redorange gown she wore skimming back away from her legs at the thighs. Long sleeves dropped to the floor from her wrists and were cuffed in a beautiful white fur, and they too swept the stone mosaic laid so intricately and patiently a great many centuries ago. Her shoulders were almost bare, the neckline cocked at the very edges of her shoulder joints. Around her neck she wore a single bloodstone teardrop on a Delran platinum chain, the metal spun into a twisted rope that caught the light with every shift her body made.
She was a vision. A confection floating just out of his reach. He could see her every curve, her thrusting nipples against thin Yojni silk attesting to the chill in the night air, the silhouette of her navel evident, and the tempting shadow of dark curls just beneath that. She cleaned up magnificently, he realized, feeling the understanding clawing through him with physical pain. Her face and body were glowing from a fresh bath, and her hair, no doubt still damp from that bath, was twisted into a single roping braid to keep it managed. She wore three thin bands of platinum on her right hand, one ring to a finger among the center fingers, the elegance of the metal sparkling as she slid that restless hand up over her breastbone and throat with agitation, finally ending up at her neck, where she rubbed at it with a grimace.
Watching her, knowing that she struggled just as much as he had struggled, gave him a measured sense of calm and security. As that sensation of restfulness fell over him, he abruptly understood the single most important factor about his need for Ravenna. As physical as it was, it was nothing compared to the swirl of emotional upheaval he was being swept into. He recognized it simply by its strangeness and its absence from his life to date. It was probably why he had such a hard time controlling it, he realized. What experience did he truly have with feeling emotions of any real depth toward a woman? This idea disturbed him in just the same way that the approach of an unknown opponent would disturb him. The questions were the same, actually, in both instances. Would he measure up to the challenge? Did he have the skills he needed? Was it a friend or a foe? When he persevered, what were the advantages to be had?
Bronse’s adrenaline oozed through him as he considered all these questions. Ravenna was not an opponent to be battled. She was a precious, remarkable woman, and he would never find anyone like her anywhere else in the entire galaxy.
He knew. He had been just about everywhere in the galaxy.
There simply was no one he would ever consider her equal. To him, she was that extraordinary. And for all his confidence, he still feared that he wouldn’t deserve her. She was everything he wanted and so much more than he would have ever considered for himself. Surprisingly, though, he found that he wasn’t inclined to balk at the idea of an intensive attachment. This in spite of his scars at Liely’s hands. It was a potentially intimidating realization for a man whose only real attachments in life were his outwardly untouchable crew.
Bronse was admittedly daunted by his and Ravenna’s individual responsibilities. They were both highly positioned and crucial to their own specific societies. Where and how would these things ever mesh? It would be easier to bring their bodies together, he thought, than to enjoin their worlds.
He knew what she was thinking as she paced into yet another circuit.
If I begin this, I will risk everything. I will risk family, friends, love, pain—everything. Why? Why should I walk into his arms when my eyes are so wide open to the enormous hurt that could be awaiting me?
He knew what she was thinking because he wanted to know the answer as well. There were a great many answers he wanted. But none of them, he realized, would ever change the one answer he simply could not escape.
The answer to the question Why?
Because he wanted her with all of his heart and soul, and never before in his life had he known such a perfect need. Never had his very spirit sparked as if it had been touched by lightning, as it did when it recognized that her spirit was close by.
He could only wonder if the answer was the same for her, and if she thought it was important enough to lay the rest aside to be worked out in its own time.
Bronse pushed away from the wall that he had used for shadow and concealment.
“Ravenna.”
Ravenna’s pacing braked to a halt as the object of her obsessive worrying seemed suddenly to be conjured to life by the intensity of her own mind. Oh, but he looked real enough, she thought, her tongue darting out nervously to moisten suddenly dry lips. He was so tall, so robustly healthy, she marveled as he began to cross the mosaic toward her. He was so real, and it was overwhelming how his presence filled even this enormous stone intersection. She trembled visibly, quickly clasping her hands together to try to hide it. To try to hide from him how her very blood sang with joy when he came close, as he was doing now. It reveled and danced in her veins as if in the midst of a wild carnival. More! More! Always wanting more. Wanting him closer. She was looking for satiation, and she knew it with instincts as inherently feminine as giving birth.
Bronse closed the distance between them until he stood an arm’s length away. She twisted one hand in the other as she realized that all of her courage had fled her, and she couldn’t make herself so much as lift a single eyelash toward raising her gaze to his. Then that infernal burning on the rises of her cheeks began, and she knew she was fully flushed with color, the tide of it creeping toward her hairline.
“Are you afraid to look at me?” he asked, his whisper reverent in this place that was built to worship her gods, created to make her the child of a deity, as she no doubt deserved to be. Bronse could easily believe her to be divine in that moment, for all her submissive shyness.
“I don’t think I could ever be afraid of you,” she told him breathlessly.
“Then look at me, Ravenna,” he beckoned softly.
She did so, but by the time her eyes finally touched on his, her breasts were heaving with wild breaths and her fingers had squeezed each other to whiteness. Now he could see her body trembling in entirety, and he couldn’t fathom why it made him smile. Perhaps it was becau
se she had no concept of her power over him. She had no idea of how she took his breath away, made him shudder just as much as she did in anticipation, turned his knuckles white on the crests of his fists as they clenched in order to strive for a control that he feared had abandoned him. The difference was, he’d been trained to appear calm in the face of a storm, and she had not.
She didn’t know the tempest that she was.
But he would show her.
“You’re so incredibly beautiful,” he said gruffly, his hand reaching for her face and closing the distance between them at least that much. He swept her chin in hand, making sure she kept her eyes on his as he stepped closer to her. It brought them nose to nose, breast to breast, and thigh to thigh. At last. A collective sigh seemed to shudder through their bodies, and he tilted up her chin so her mouth grazed his very lightly.
“I … I had my first real kiss today,” she told him softly.
Bronse closed his eyes briefly, remembering far too keenly for sanity how he’d been driven to devour her with that kiss. Her first real kiss. A budding young woman in this way alone, for she was already “mother” to a brood beneath her. Cloistered. Sheltered. Far too pristine for the likes of him. He would have to do something miraculous in his future to make up for such a gift.
“I was so very glad to give it to you,” he said, rubbing his mouth over hers and thrilling in the way her lips parted and pouted so eagerly for him. “Should I give you another? You seem to like them.”
“Yes. Yes, you should, and yes, I do!”
He chuckled at her enthusiasm, and her blush heightened, but she smiled beneath his lips just before she added to her invitation the stroke of her tongue across his lower lip, sealing the deal as far as he was concerned. He caught her up and unleashed his hunger. He hadn’t intended to. He’d meant to treasure this time with her and savor it, but he couldn’t help himself. The taste of her flowed like premium wine over his tongue, the warmth of her mouth mulling her flavor perfectly. She was so receptive, so welcoming as she coaxed him into her mouth with her sweet little tongue that he groaned with deeply surging need.
Ravenna felt him shudder and knew a rush of fabulous understanding. She was only half certain of the details, but the feelings were clear as crystal. Her hands slid up to rest against his chest, and she could unexpectedly feel everything. The pounding of his heart as it crashed madly against his rib cage, the fine shimmers that coursed through him with ever-increasing intensity to match the increasing lust of their kiss, and—she thought with sly satisfaction as she leaned just a little more forward, settling her hips against his—the incredibly evident thrust of an erection that made no mistake of his desire for her.
Her little wriggle in search of telltale signs caused a sudden rigidity throughout his entire body. There was a heartbeat of utter stillness, even his mouth freezing in its lock against hers. Then his hands were snaking around her, grasping her tightly by her bottom and dragging her in an enthusiastic grinding of his hips against her. She gasped, and a shiver of pure excitement swiveled madly around inside of her, a dollop of melted fire splashing into the core of her body and sending a slick invitation into the very heart of the expectant place between her thighs.
“Interesting,” he murmured against her stunned lips.
“How so?” she managed to squeak out.
“Oh, just taking a few personalized notes, sweet. I’m learning all kinds of things about you with every passing second.”
“Can I learn things about you?”
She didn’t wait for an answer and went right for what she wanted to know most. Her hands slid over his hips, her fingers curving over the taut musculature of his backside and thighs, her sweeping touch fondling him thoroughly until she could feel the burn of his skin right through his clothing. All the while he was alternately kissing her and breaking away to catch his breath. Her hands swept forward over the frame of his hips and both slid directly to the huge swell of his arousal, as if she’d done it a hundred times before.
The widening of her eyes as she touched him tattled on her. She hadn’t done so even once before. He wanted to speak, say something to ease her into the familiarity she was achieving wickedly quick, but he could barely keep his legs under him, never mind form coherent sentences. She was so curious and thorough, and she was going to kill him, he thought madly. Either that or he was going to come like a rocket right then and there.
Since this wasn’t at all how he wanted it to go, he fell back on training and knew that it was time to regroup.
He reached out to grasp her by her upper arms as tightly as he dared and dragged her the full distance of his reach away from his maddened body. Surprise lit her eyes, and she had the temerity to pout, damn her, as she was forced to relinquish her task of intimate exploration. It took a very long minute, but he finally was able to find his speech.
“This is not …” He had to stop and clear the growling pitch from his voice so she wouldn’t mistake arousal for displeasure. “I need to take you somewhere more private than this,” he explained roughly. “I’m not about to make love to you in the middle of the most public hall in the temple, Ravenna.”
There it was, he thought with ridiculously instant delight. That hot little blush that was everything innocent about her and everything passionate as well. He was dying to explore these contradictions, and she would never know what this walk toward privacy was going to cost him in sheer levels of torture.
Ravenna couldn’t understand what had come over her. It was, she sighed to herself, what always came over her when Bronse came into her sight. Responsibility and propriety simply melted away, and the world would narrow only to the two of them. Privacy would become complete, even if it was only in their two minds. At least it felt that way to her. She decided it must be true for him as well.
“Of course,” she murmured, honestly grateful that at least one of them was showing a sense of self-preservation. Living in the temple made it nearly impossible to have any life one could call truly private, but she was used to that. And she suspected that a military lifestyle would have made Bronse just as easily able to dismiss exterior disturbances. However, maintaining as much of an illusion of privacy as possible was essential and, of course, wise.
Bronse reached for her hand and grabbed it tightly by lacing his fingers with hers and pressing their palms snugly together. Then he led her back toward the guest quarters where he and his crew had been situated. She had known all along which room was his, had honestly made a great deal of progress toward it, but as she had reached the crossroads she had panicked.
Now, as he led her inside and released her hand in order to draw the door closed, she tried to remember why she had hesitated. Hearing the slide of the privacy bolt clicking soundly into place, she felt her heart jump with a thrill. How long, she thought in a rush, had she been longing for this moment of being alone with him? It felt like a lifetime, yet it had been no time at all in reality—and out of reality. She suspected that they had been in contact through dreams even longer than she had been recalling it, building a bridge between them. But how and when it all started had not mattered and would never matter. She pressed a hand to her breast, trying to keep her savagely throbbing heart from bursting out of her. She had known him forever. She knew that now. And, one day, so would he. He sensed it deeply, reacted to it strongly, but he hadn’t accepted the real truth of it because he was rooted in the logical, not the spiritual.
But he was learning.
Feeling more secure in their privacy, Bronse turned from the door and faced her with a ready smile, unaware of the wolfish tilt that the grin acquired when he coupled it with a long, thorough perusal of her. She was flushed and breathless, pressing an elegant hand to the rapid rise and fall of her chest. He smiled a little more broadly, unable to help himself even though it was caddish of him to be tickled by her heightened nerves. This was an extraordinary adventure for her, he realized. Something she had never done before, had never chosen to indulge in for w
hatever reasons, though he suspected that the most likely of causes would be too much responsibility, not enough time to explore her own needs, and a highly limited selection of men from which to choose. A brother, a cousin, and a youth were her most intimate male acquaintances. There were the servants, but someone who couldn’t meet her on an intellectual level would never suit a woman like Ravenna.
It had occurred to him that possibly he was a man of infinitely lucky convenience, but that didn’t suit this woman, either. He pushed away from the door and stepped across to her, his eyes trained steadily on her ravishing face, all of its sweeps and hollows coming together to make her so exquisite. Some might find her coloring simplistic, but he saw richness in her hair and gorgeous glitter in her eyes that could never be plain, or ever be described as merely brown. When he neared her, he reached to stroke her face, along the line of her jaw from her chin to the soft, sensitive spot just before her ear. The way she was looking at him, her eyes so wide and her breath so wild, told him she could plainly see the hunger in his expression. Afraid she was going to hyperventilate, he smiled again and leaned forward to place a simple, gentle kiss on her burning cheek.
“Shh,” he soothed her softly. “Listen to me, Ravenna,” he murmured as he pushed her hair back to expose her ear. “I want you to listen and know something that’s very important to me.”
He had her full attention, her gears shifting from a frightened and overexcited little bird to an attentive mother hen, so that her breathing slowed down as he pulled away to meet her eyes.
“Most of my crew came from very difficult backgrounds,” he said quietly, touching her cheek briefly before letting his hand fall away to catch hers in his grasp. “No details, but needless to say they bear the scars and, though they have all risen above it, it shaped what they are … who they became.”
“This is true of all of us,” she said, her head tilting, curiosity evident in her eyes. He smiled, knowing she was trying to figure out this choice of topic and the seeming shift in his mood.
Three Worlds 01 - Seduce Me In Dreams Page 17