His nearness sent liquid heat to her fingertips and toes. "Please, Alex," she begged. "Don't do this. We’ve managed to keep things platonic these last few weeks. Don’t start-"
Calloused fingers coaxed her lips. "Tell me how to say ‘woman.’"
The sound of his voice was hypnotic, the pitch seductive. "Kadin," she whispered, her eyes locked on his intently.
"And 'beautiful'?"
Glee's eyes closed briefly and she groaned. He was so close now; she could feel his coffee-scented breath on her face. "I - I..."
His lips brushed her ear. "In my language, there are many words for a woman such as you -- linda, bella, preciosa -- they all mean 'beautiful'."
Glee could feel the lukewarm trickle of water as he pressed the bandana to the back of her neck, holding her head in place. A sudden dreamy weakness in her knees caused her to place a steadying hand on Alex's chest. Frissons slid over her skin at the touch.
"Taş," she murmured.
"¿Si? And that means?" His tongue flicked over the tender lobe of Glee's ear and tickled beneath.
She groaned before she answered. "Hard as stone, Alex. Your muscles are like granite."
He laughed low in his throat, the sound reverberating through Glee's bones like a rolling tremble. "And you, bella, are as soft as rose petals." His fingers trailed underneath the demure collar of Glee's dress, raising gooseflesh wherever they went. "I have waited too long to hold you in my arms again."
Glee's body told her to relax into his arms, to return his caresses and whispers; but her mind was still cautious, still burdened by so many worries and past hurts.
"Alex," she said, the tone of her voice causing his eyes to lock on hers. "Alex...."
To his ears, she said his name with the softest caress. "¿Querida?"
"I'm so sorry for doubting you. Will you please forgive me for my stubborn refusal to see the truth?"
His hands slid down her back and came 'round to cup the supple globes of her breasts. "You believed me when no one else would, Glee. And even when you faltered in that belief, I think in your heart you knew the truth."
"Yes!" she whispered, a tear of regret sliding down her cheek. How could she have done so many hateful things to him?
Alex's thumbs rolled the small buds of her nipples until they hardened and swelled against his fingers. "I think, sweetheart, that no one has taught you how to use your passionate nature on things more suited to you than hate and revenge. I will teach you this."
Glee's head lolled back on her neck, as Alex's strong fingers stroked her chest and the long exposure of her throat. It occurred to her, fleetingly, that he could kill her so easily with his powerful hands at that moment... And she would die happily in his arms. She moaned as cool air flowed into her bodice, inch by inch, as he unbuttoned each pearl closure slowly.
"Yes, sevgili. Darling. Teach me."
"Sevgili," he murmured, rolling the unfamiliar syllables on his tongue just before he licked her collar bone. He could feel the shivers coursing over her skin against his lips. "Tell me how you say..." He laved a tender nipple.
Breathless, Glee answered. "Meme basi." Her hands moved into the thick, dark mat of fur on his chest until his masculine nipples came to her fingers. "You tell me now."
"Pezón."
"Pezón," she repeated softly.
He'd never thought such a simple word could arouse him so completely. His shaft felt like throbbing marble. Patiently, he removed Glee's bodice and then her skirt, leaving her in a thin chemise, pantaloons, stockings, and boots. The tiny ribbons of her undergarments seemed to be screaming at him to be loosened.
"Muy linda, mi corazón," he said, his voice a low growl, as held her at arm's length with hot, eager fingers.
Blushing, Glee looked at the dirt floor, her shoes...any place but into Alex's glimmering golden eyes. He tilted her head upward gently, but her lashes remained lowered against him. "Why are you so embarrassed to be beautiful, niña?" When she didn't answer, he added, "Perhaps I should not notice the soft copper color of your hair, or the translucence of your skin. Perhaps I should ignore my body's reaction to the curve of your breast." His hands gently smoothed the chemise over the gentle swell of her bosom. "Or, the way your waist fits into my hands." A soft moan escaped Glee's lips. "Or, the firm roundness of your hips and bottom."
"Alex," she whispered, finally looking up at him.
His lips touched hers as he spoke. "Do not hide these treasures from me anymore, mi pequeña tigresa."
With a soft exhalation, and a sigh of surrender, Glee opened her heart and her lips to the tall, mysterious Californio. Their tongues met, hers with shy curiosity, his with bold exploration. She felt his hands on her back, as her fingers combed the curls that now reached his shoulders. Soon, his strong palms were cupping her bottom, pressing her hips onto his, and she could feel the burning heat of his passion against her belly.
Somehow, her underclothing and shoes melted away from her body, like snowflakes on her tongue, and Alex was naked and brazen, too. He turned her away from him, nuzzling the union of her neck and shoulder, nipping at a tender earlobe. But the sensations all seemed to be centered at the throbbing liquid heat in her belly. Shamelessly, she rubbed her bottom against his thighs, seduced by the bayonet-sharp poke of his hard manhood just above. His fingers roamed over her flat belly, the sweet curve of her waist, finally pausing to cup her breasts.
Glee moaned his name as he began to ply the tender pink peaks with thumb and forefinger, rolling, plucking, gentle and harsh all at once. She felt her nipples swell and ache with pleasure, a sensation she had come to associate with his touch.
Glee's hands found Alex's hips behind her, then slowly, carefully, moved between them to the small of her back where his anxious masculinity prodded her. When she wrapped her soft palm around him, he growled into her ear, the sound bringing goose bumps of excitement to her skin.
As though reading her mind, Alex seemed to know where the burning pit of her anxiety lay. His fingers dipped down her belly to the red curls at the juncture of her thighs. Just the brush of them over her swollen femininity was enough to cause Glee to gasp with burgeoning pleasure.
"Ahh," he whispered. "So sensitive, so needy. Do you know what you want, amor?"
She shook her head, gasping again as he slid a finger the barest fraction of an inch between the wet lips of her sex.
"Yes, you do, Glee. You remember the pleasure you had once with me, si?"
She nodded, gasping now with each tiny movement of his fingers, anxious for him to find the center of her pleasure and detonate the volcano that bubbled and frothed there. "Yes!" She squirmed, trying unsuccessfully to make the contact that would explode her senses, but he resisted. "Oh, Alex, don't be cruel!"
He laughed quietly against her neck. "You must tell me what you desire, Glee. You must want it enough to say the words."
"Oh God, oh God, oh God..."
His fingers stopped abruptly and she squeaked with indignation.
"Alex! Alex, don't stop! Oh, please, don't stop!"
"What do you want, Glee?" he whispered, his fingers hovering over her super-sensitive lower lips.
"Touch me, Alex!" Her shaking fingers found his hand and pressed it to her mons. "Here! Please, Alex, please!"
"Si, mi pequeña tigresa." He slipped two fingers between her dripping lips and parted them to expose the tiny button of flesh and nerves which practically screamed to be touched. The tip of a forefinger rubbed that button gently, and Glee gasped and rose to tip-toe, straining with tension, moaning softly. "It is good, querida, that you take this pleasure. Share it with me now..." A few quick strokes of his forefinger and Glee screamed with joy, her body throbbing with release as liquid pleasure pooled and then moistened her inner thighs.
He held her there until her trembling had quieted and her breath seemed more normal. But he did not remove his fingers from the moist valley between her thighs immediately.
Time seemed to slow and stretch infi
nitely, as Glee felt the wet tips of Alex's fingers making a slippery path up her belly to her swollen, hard nipples. There he paused, daubing Glee's liquid pleasure onto her eager little buds, leaving them shiny and obscene with moisture. Quickly, her lithe body was turned toward him once more, and his mouth descended to lick and suck the feminine flavor off again. Glee's head fell back, her spine arching to force her breasts further into his mouth. Tiny cries of pain and pleasure shuddered from her mouth, as he alternately nipped and sucked.
Combing her fingers roughly through his hair, Glee moaned a mantra of sensation. "Oh Alex! So good, so good!"
A rumbling, muffled chuckle from her lover was all the response she got audibly, but his mouth moved more forcefully, his tongue flicking over her nipples, giving no quarter. His big hands slid up from her hips to cup her breasts, pushing them together so that neither eager bud would have to wait for attention.
The snake of impending climax began to uncurl in Glee's belly once again, and her cries became near shrieks of anticipation. Alex, however, was not above teasing her unmercifully. Taking each of her hot, red nipples between thumb and forefinger, applying just enough pressure to keep them aroused and imprisoned, he stood and ravished her panting mouth.
The kiss was long, filled with waves of sweet, delicious pleasure from his searching tongue, and piquant with tiny pricks of sensation from his sometimes pinching fingers. Glee felt breathless and dizzy by the time Alex released her gently and took her trembling hands into his.
"I want to show you, sweetheart, how perfect the union of man and woman can be. I want to make you feel things you have never felt before, with no other lover, either male or female."
Glee's vision was swimming ecstatically, her mind completely overcome with the need to explore, to find more of the treasures Alex seemed to be offering. She nodded her agreement, catching a glimpse of his rampant maleness at the same time. Her eyes widened, her knees quivering with fear and instinctive need.
His smile fairly lit up the smoky cave. "Touch me, Glee Montrose," he whispered low, pressing her hand around his burning flesh. The tip of her little tongue peeked out to wet her lips, and her innocent gesture made Alex's hard flesh bob against Glee's shaking fingers. He bent and almost caught her tongue with his teeth, pressing himself firmly into her palm as he moved. Feeling her hand automatically close and caress his steely rod, Alex moaned, his lips coaxing her tongue back out to merge with his.
He eased himself down onto an open bedroll, and, unwilling to let go of the prize she'd found, Glee moved down with him. Within seconds Alex had positioned himself between her parted knees.
Realization of what was in store flickered momentarily in Glee's mind, making color rise to her cheeks. "Alex... Alex, I think you need to know-"
One, long, brown, calloused finger pressed her lips closed and then moved to caress a pointed nipple. "Shhhh.... The past is past, and there is no one here who knows that better than I." Both hands moved to her upthrust knees and began to press them back toward her chest, opening her most vulnerable secrets to his penetrating gaze. "Ahhh... so beautiful!"
Feeling the first gentle prods of his hardness against her pouting nether-lips, Glee tried once again to warn him. "Please, Alex, you must let me-"
"No need, amor," he grinned. "Believe me, he knows where he is going!"
The opportunity to tell him of her innocence was lost almost before he'd finished speaking, as his phallus slid truly into Glee's pristine sheath. She was tighter, hotter, and more irresistible than he could have ever imagined; Alex pushed home.
His mind registered the tearing and Glee's rigidly tensed muscles even as his passion filled her fully and stretched her forgiving flesh into a new shape.
Their eyes met—hers open wide with a mixture of pain, shock and anxiety; and his blinking rapidly as though not quite believing what he'd done. She hadn't given in to Manuel. She'd been telling the truth. "Glee?" he said, his voice sounding odd. He felt like an idiot.
"I tried-"
"-to tell me. Si." His hands let go of her knees, allowing them to relax around his sides, and the movement contracted Glee's inner muscles, causing him to groan with need.
"It's all right, Alex. It's beginning to feel better already." She wriggled, testing, and he groaned again, his face a grimace of suppressed passion.
"¡Por Dios! Lo siento, mi amor!" he whispered passionately.
Her discomforts lessening with each passing minute, Glee grinned wryly at the strained expression on Alex's face. "I hope you just told me that you've never felt so good before." Her hands found the matted fur on his chest and her fingers stroked those coarse curls. She was unable to look at his face. "Because, that's how I feel, too."
Alex crushed her to him with an expletive. His lips roamed her face, his hands holding hers against the bedroll. "I said I was sorry, sweetheart." His hips began a slow roll against hers, making her gasp with pleasure. "Though, in truth, I am not." Deeply he thrust, feeling her begin to match his rhythm shyly, and then more confidently. "Do you hate me very much?" he whispered into her ear.
Hate was about the furthest thing Glee was feeling at that moment. Her body arched beneath Alex's, her answer a nearly inaudible, "Never, Alex! Never!" on a sharp exhalation of air.
Alex allowed himself to relax then, though his primal urges were anything but restful. "Wrap your legs around me, darling," he whispered hoarsely. "That's it, hold me tightly. Ahhh... Dios!"
"Alex, I- I-" she started, unable to finish the thought before a wave of pure pleasure crashed over her, plunging her to a depth of feeling she didn't realize existed before.
A groaning scream as she arched up against his hips, the exquisite pulsing of her body's slick passage, told Alex all he needed to know, and sent him hurtling into the sea with her.
The awesome sensation of Alex's flesh pulsing life into her hotly, intimately, irredeemably, brought tears to Glee's eyes. It seemed to her as though all the happiness and feminine power in the world rested within her breast and womb. There was nothing else but her and Alex. There was no other place or time but here and now. Tangled together on a thin saddle blanket on the dirt floor of a dark cave in the midst of a snowstorm was perfection.
Alex felt the soft sigh before he felt a tiny, warm, tear touch his nose. He raised his head to look down at the girl whose life he'd just changed forever. "Are you hurt?"
She shook her head, smiling with the inner radiance of a woman in love. "Oh, no, no, no. I - I just had no idea it could be so... so...."
He chuckled. "Si, I know." Alex braced his arms and began to slide himself from within the heated silk of Glee's body.
"Don't go, Alex!" she insisted, reaching for his hips to pull him back down and inside. Grinning, Alex complied with her request.
They lay there nuzzling, breathing deeply of each other's scent and the piquant sweetness of their lovemaking for some time. The white noises of blowing snow outside, softly snorting horses in the cavern nearby, and the quiet crackle of their warming fire soon became a lullaby, and they slept contentedly.
Chapter 27
Glee awoke first, a vague dream of running barefoot through sun-warmed spring fields of clover and dandelions fading from her mind. To her delight, however, the spring warmth was Alex's big body pressed up against her side. The brush of dream-clover and dandelion petals against her legs was simply the soft fur of Alex's legs against her own. Although their "sky" was the dark shadows of their cavern shelter, it was enough.
It seemed so very odd, and yet quite natural to awaken with this man next to her. Certainly Raymond had been right in predicting her reaction to "marital relations." It made her blush and squirm just to remember!
Alex's big hand stalked across her belly and ribs, capturing a slightly jiggling breast as a prize. "Exquisito," he sighed, his fingers kneading gently as Glee's nipple ruched and hardened at his touch.
Her blush deepening, Glee began to roll away from him but was stopped quite easily.
; "So bold a few hours ago, and now the sweet, shy, virgin again," Alex said with some wonder. "Kiss me, my Glee."
Eyes closed, Glee complied with his request, the gentle ardor of their lips renewing both her energy and her burning desire to learn more of Alex in all ways. For an hour she explored, finding the ticklish spot on the back of his knees, and the birthmark near the top curve of his left hipbone.
Laughing, wrestling, their playfulness became passion once again. Spoon-cuddling gave Alex a different sort of access to Glee's tender body, and when he entered her that way, her gasp was both surprise and delight at the sensation.
"Arch your hips back, mi pequeña tigresa. Ah, yes," he moaned, fully sheathed within the heated moisture of her body.
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