Nights Of Fire

by Laura Leone

  He nuzzled her stomach, pressing his face into the crumpled fabric of her slip. He inhaled deeply, then sighed, rubbing his cheek against her. "You smell... so good," he murmured. "Familiar..." He inhaled again, breathing her in. "I've been here before."

  "Here?" she repeated shakily.

  He lowered his head, nuzzled her hip, then followed the curve of her thigh. "Hmm. Like this. Buried in you."

  She tilted her head back and caressed his still-damp hair, sighing as his hands worked magic on her tired legs. Massaging, kneading, easing her tension as she had eased his. No man but Paul had ever done this for her—tended her, soothed her, nourished her with his touch.

  "I come here often," he whispered against her abdomen while his hands worked the taut muscles of her calves.

  "Hmm?"

  "In my thoughts," he explained, his hands moving up so his thumbs could make exquisite movements around her knees, which grew even weaker and more pliant in response. "I can... well, not remember, exactly." He shrugged. "I can... tell. Feel it." He kissed her midriff. "Well, maybe it is a memory. Everything's all jumbled up in my head."

  "You come here in your thoughts?" She felt dreamy, almost giddy as she looked down at him through half-closed eyes.

  He lifted his head long enough to meet her gaze. "When I'm alone." He frowned as he tried to make sense of whatever was in his head. "When I'm away. Lonesome. Missing you."

  She nodded. "That's when I come here, too."

  They kissed, lips and tongues gentle, warm, slow. Then she pressed her forehead against his and felt his breath tremble into her mouth as he continued his massage, his fingers kneading her inner thighs as his palms rubbed the backs of her legs.

  She started breathing deeper, feeling flushed and enervated. It was as if the air all around them was caressing her now, too. Seducing her. Planting fleeting kisses along her arms and dropping wispy caresses on her nape, her shoulder, her back.

  He kissed her stomach with an open mouth, his breath hot and damp through the thin material. She felt his tongue there, moving languidly, silky and solid through the fabric covering her body.

  "Pull it up," she whispered, meaning her hem.

  "In a minute," he whispered back.

  His slow hands worked their way up her bare skin until they found her panties. She made an incoherent sound when he slid his hands underneath them, all the way to the waistband, claiming her with a confidence which was achingly familiar to her, and then pulled them down. Slowly, so slowly. Slipping the worn cotton over her thighs, tickling over her knees, teasing over her calves and ankles. Trembling past her feet.

  His hands traveled the same path back up her legs, and their eyes met again as he caressed her bottom. "I know your name this time."

  She nodded and kissed his forehead, careful of his bruised eye.

  "But I don't know much else right now," he continued.

  She swallowed and gently traced his head injury, sure that the swelling was going down. Believing that with all her heart.

  "Mon Dieu, they could have killed you with that blow." Her voice broke.

  "I don't want you to feel..." He took her hand and held it against his cheek. "We could stop now. Wait until I remember more."

  "Is that what you want to do?"

  He used his other hand to drag her knee forward until it was pressing against his groin. He was very hard. "I'm asking," he said, "what you want to do."

  "I've already told you," she said softly.

  "I just—"

  "I'm the one who remembers what we are to each other. What has been between us."

  "I didn't mean what I said about a cat in heat," he murmured.

  She smiled. "Yes, you did."

  "You were fantastic." He pressed his face into her belly again, still holding her knee against his groin... moving her leg now so that she rubbed him lightly. "I'm a very lucky man."

  "Then act like my husband." She didn't hide the longing she felt, her need for him to be as he was before. "Make love to me." That was what she wanted. More than satisfying her desire, even more than reaffirming that he was alive and whole, she needed his love now. She needed the open sharing of his heart which he himself had taught her to need from him.

  His grip tightened on her bottom as he said, "Let's make love to each other."

  "Yes," she whispered. "That's what I meant."

  She gasped as he suddenly rose to his feet. Her hands clutched his shoulders as he lifted her onto the rough table behind her. He stroked his palms around her hips and over the tops of her thighs, caressing her languidly underneath her slip as he slid his hands between her legs to push them apart. Then he nestled into her, pulling her legs tightly against his blanket-draped hips as he pressed his groin into the warm juncture between her thighs.

  The rough material was deliciously abrasive. "That tickles," she told him.

  "Oh, yeah?" He wriggled his hips, making her laugh.

  She tightened her legs around his hips to make him stop. He froze and swallowed hard. "Gabrielle..."

  Their breathing gusted softly as their gazes met and held. His injured eye was bloodshot and partly-closed, but looking right at her. His good eye was dewy with tenderness, dark brown and intelligent even in the midst of his passion. She had always found his eyes, with their thick lashes and high arched brows, captivating. The shape of his mouth gave away his sensual nature, despite the self-discipline and austerity he often imposed on himself. His lower lip was still swollen and bruised, and so she was careful as she kissed him.

  His skin was inviting and exciting in its warmth, having lost the alarming hot flush of his earlier fever. All the strength she remembered was in his hands again, which kneaded and massaged her thighs as he held them against his hips. She raised her knees briefly and then dragged them down deliberately, tugging away the already-slipping blanket wrapped around his waist. He drew in a sharp breath through his nostrils when the thick, rough cloth caught briefly on his erection, which then sprang free, bobbing eagerly, as the blanket fell to the ground. Their intertwined bodies shifted slightly as he kicked it away.

  She braced her hands behind her and leaned back to let her gaze travel slowly down the length of his body, following his hard chest muscles past his ribs—a little more noticeable than they'd been ten days ago—to his smooth stomach. A thin trickle of dark hair led her visual quest past his abdomen to the rough nest where his penis and testicles were swollen and tight. His well-muscled thighs shifted in the embrace of her legs and he took a deep breath.

  "You were right." He grinned when she met his gaze again. "I do like you looking at me naked."

  She felt his straining cock brush the tender flesh of her inner thigh. "Yes, I can tell."

  He rested his palms on her legs and nudged his hips closer to her. She looked down at her lap and saw the hard line of his erection burrowing underneath the pale fabric of her slip.

  "Like a U-boat," she mused.

  "Oh, it's not that big," he said modestly, making her laugh again.

  He paused when the tip of his penis bumped into her belly, sighed, and then pushed a little, rubbing himself against her bare skin.

  "That part of you..."

  "Yes?" he prodded verbally while his velvet hard cock prodded her stomach.

  "..feels..."

  "Hmmm?"

  "...so hot..." She looked down again, watching the vaguely defined, shifting shapes of their silent dance against the worn cotton of her slip. "Like you've still got a fever."

  "I do, there." He rested his head against hers and looked down, too.

  They were both breathing harder. Her breasts itched and throbbed inside her slip, impatient with the friction of the material against her aching nipples. His nipples were hard now, too, and darker than before, flushed and excited amidst the brown hair lightly covering his chest.

  She arched her back and rubbed her breasts against his chest. His eyes grew heavy-lidded, and he lowered his head to kiss her neck. Hungry for him, she arched hi
gher, her breath catching at the feel of his warm, moist mouth on her neck, her shoulder, the curve of her breast. His hips moved convulsively, and he poked her sharply in the belly.

  She laughed shakily. "Do you at least remember where it's supposed to go?"

  "It's coming back to me," he assured her, his voice dark and husky. "Somewhere around..." His hand teased her, moving around her skin as blindly as his cock. "No, no..."

  She was giggling now. "Paul..."

  "Don't worry, I'll remember..."

  She closed her eyes and sucked breath through her teeth when his palm cupped her in the right place.

  "Found it?" he whispered.

  "You're..." She pressed herself against his palm and grunted. "Very close..."

  "And you're very...." His mouth was hot against her cheek. "Very, aren't you?"

  "Yes," she sighed, opening her legs wider for him.

  He combed his fingers through the fine curls there.

  "Yes," she murmured. "Yes, yes."

  Then his lips were on hers, his tongue demanding entry. She opened her mouth for him the way she opened her legs, welcoming him, welcoming everything he gave her and urging him to take all he wanted. He tickled the roof of her mouth with his tongue while his fingers tickled between her legs. She shivered and moaned deep in her throat, digging her fingers into his shoulders as she tried to make him stop teasing her. It only made him tease her even more, his fingers fluttering along the delicate, damp cleft while his tongue flickered against hers.

  "Paul," she whimpered.

  "Hmmm?"

  "Now," she insisted. She had missed him so much, been so afraid... she couldn't stand this! "Paul."

  "What?"

  His fingers delved deeper now, but still so delicately, so coyly, that he was making her hungry and crazy and craving. Losing control of herself, she held his head hard against hers for a furious kiss, trying to devour him.

  "Ow," he said breathlessly.

  She saw that she had made his mouth bleed again. She didn't care. Served him right. She kissed him again, even harder, and bit him this time. He grunted, but didn't stop kissing her back.

  "Now," she repeated hoarsely.

  "You said that," he breathed against her throat.

  "I want you inside me." His fingers, dancing in the petals of her flesh... Whatever he had forgotten, he certainly seemed to remember his skills as a lover. She would fall apart if he didn't enter her. "Right now."

  "Like this?"

  She gasped as he slid two fingers inside of her. "That's..."

  "Hmmm?" His kisses were soft and hot.

  "...a good start..."

  "And this?"

  "Oh!" She jerked sharply as his thumb brushed over the hyper-sensitive bud nestled in the slick, secretive crevice he had found.

  He breathed into her ear, "Is that..."

  "Oh... Oh... Ohhhh..." She dug her fingers into his shoulders.

  "...also..." He licked her neck.

  "Mmmm..." She quivered helplessly as his thumb started circling.

  "...a good start?"

  "Ah!" Gabrielle's legs clamped fiercely on his hips as her whole body convulsed with sharp stabs of piercing pleasure.

  She felt like she couldn't get any air, even though she heard herself panting hard. She wanted to look at him, but her eyes kept squeezing shut as repeated thrusts of ecstasy speared her, racking her body without mercy as he stroked and explored her, teased and toyed with her.

  "Paul," she sobbed, her voice high and weak.

  "All that whimpering," he murmured, withdrawing his fingers. He made a fist and pressed his knuckles into her.

  "Unghhhhh..." She pressed back.

  "Is it possible..." He rubbed lightly, much too lightly.

  She bit his neck and whimpered again.

  "...that I'm doing this wrong?"

  "Harder," she muttered, trying to press against his elusive knuckles.

  He took his hand away altogether.

  "No," she pleaded.

  "No, what?" he whispered, massaging her thighs again.

  "Paul..."

  "What comes next? My memory, you know..." He kissed her briefly, pulling away before she could bite him again.

  Trembling with need, she was determined to make him suffer, too. She seized his cock—

  "Ouch!"

  —with all the ferocity welling up inside of her—

  "I only have one of those," he reminded her.

  —and practically yanked it into the position she wanted.

  "Gently, gently," he chided.

  She kept her eyes locked with his as she used the tip of his swollen penis to stroke and soothe the places he had just excited and then abandoned. To her delight, it took only seconds for him to look utterly conquered.

  "You're right," he admitted, his voice distracted and faint. "That comes next. In fact, now I seem to remember..." He moved and tried to enter her.

  She tilted her hips to elude him, then squeezed him punishingly with her fist, making him wince. Her body was crying out for his, but first he had to pay for teasing her so.

  "My turn to beg," he guessed, his eyes limpid and his lips glistening.

  "If you feel like it." She sighed as she rubbed herself with the tip of his erection. "If not, I can wait until you do."

  "Please," Paul begged on an imploring whisper. He pressed his open mouth to her collarbone and sucked on her skin.

  She moved his penis in a tantalizing circle against her labia, moaning at the effect that washed through her body.

  He was trembling now. "Let me inside you."

  She loosened her grip, as if permitting his request, then covered herself with her palm when he again tried to enter her.

  "Gabrielle."

  "I have a headache," she announced.

  Still trembling, he sputtered with laughter. "If anyone here is entitled to a headache, it's me."

  "All the same, I feel—"

  "Then lie down." He gripped her shoulders and leaned forward, using his weight and his strength to force her backwards on the narrow wooden table.

  He brought her hands up beside her head and held them there. His bare chest pressed down on her, warm through her slip, a delicious heaviness against her throbbing breasts.

  The weight of a man, her man, on her body, against her belly, between her legs, stealing her breath, overwhelming her with his size and strength and purpose... Gabrielle forgot their games. Forgot everything but the aching void inside her.

  She brought her heels up to the edge of the table, raising her knees high in the air, tilting her hips to welcome him as he thrust inside of her. He was far more gentle than she had expected, given the hard impatience on his face now and the damp sheen of fevered desire covering his skin.

  Their eyes locked as he pushed into her, fitting snugly and more deeply each time he pressed a little farther inside of her. She drew his head down to kiss him, and his tongue invaded her mouth the way his penis invaded her body. She moaned in her throat, every part of her body and soul alive for him, relishing him, luxuriating in their union.

  When she felt him as deep inside her as he could possibly go, she wrapped her legs around his back, careless now of his wounds, and started massaging him with the muscles hidden deep inside her body. Squeezing, contracting, pushing, pulsing...

  "Ohhhh..." He sagged down on top of her, his eyes squeezing shut and his face contorting with intense pleasure.

  Gabrielle smiled and wrapped her arms around him, glorying in the way he went suddenly limp and helpless as she made love to him. His soft moans and harsh, gasping breaths thrilled her. He was not a man who relinquished command of himself easily, which made it all the more special that he was willing to do so with her.

  She stopped before he came, not wanting this to end so soon. He understood, it seemed, and started kissing her, letting his hard cock throb heavily inside of her without moving his hips or indulging in the friction their bodies craved. Then his hands were on her slip, pushing do
wn the straps and the neckline, until her heaving breasts were naked to his touch.

  "Oh, yes," she sighed when his mouth engulfed her nipple without hesitation, his velvety tongue lapping and rubbing it eagerly inside his hot, wet mouth.

  Gabrielle arched her back, and he responded, taking her even more deeply into his mouth, his teeth sinking gently into the soft flesh of her breast while his tongue worked her aching nipple against the ridged roof of his mouth.

  She suddenly climaxed in hot waves, tears squeezing out of her closed eyes as she sobbed with pleasure and writhed helplessly in his arms. Filled with him, surrounded by him, devoured by him.

  "Paul..."

  Still suckling her, he started massaging her other breast. He was rough, so rough. It hurt wonderfully—so wonderfully that, without even managing to catch her breath, she came again, her sharp cries and ecstatic convulsions bursting through her in exact rhythm with his roughly kneading fingers and abrasive palm.

  When her cries finally faded, he said something.

  "What?" She couldn't hear him over the thundering of her blood and the loud gust of her own frantic breath.

  She was exhausted now. Limp and helpless. Her legs had fallen away from him and were dangling weakly over the edge of the table. Her arms barely had the strength to move, their sole energy coming from her burning need to keep touching him—his back, his shoulders, his head, his arms...

  "More?" he repeated.

  "Oh," she said. "No." She would faint. Or suffocate. Or die.

  "Oh, yes. I think so," he murmured silkily.

  She shouted when he suddenly thrust hard, much harder than she had expected, so much harder than his gentle entry.

  "Paul," she whimpered, already catching fire again.

  "Don't quit now," he urged.

  He moved so vigorously against her that her head bumped on the rough wood. She gripped the side of the table to keep from sliding right off as he plunged recklessly into her again. And again and again and again... She abandoned herself to him. Surrendered everything to his demands. Oh, yes... She reveled in defeat and submission, seized, conquered, vanquished. Ravished and pillaged. Don't spare me... He was pulverizing her, destroying her. Thrusting so hard into her it felt like he might come up through her mouth...