He strained up and kissed her forehead. “Do not fear, cara. It’s an effect of the way I travel. Normally, it does not extend to…passengers.”
“But I never felt this…effect before.”
“Whatever emotion you’re feeling at the time is magnified. The day Cael rescued you we piggybacked, but you were unconscious. After the incident the other night, you were calm, so you only became more so. This time was different. Your emotions were wild.”
“Will it…abate?”
He let his hands slide down her sleeved arms, hoping to help calm her. “In time. But if you’re feeling like I feel now, it will take a hour or two before the heightened awareness is gone.”
“Dom, are we still going to…”
He closed his eyes to lock out the pulsating throb her words caused. Gawd, he hurt for her. “Yes, cara, I would like to so very much.”
“Me too.”
She was so slight in his arms, so trusting. He needed to be careful with her, that much he knew. But knowing and doing were two separate demons.
The mechanics he could handle. He’d seen it done. He’d read books, overheard gossip, but they were racy books, experienced hoydens in the gossip. Nothing learned from those sources would help him please an innocent like Eden. And he ached to please her.
But, he existed mostly on the outskirts of love, looking in. After all, what gentlewoman would lay with a man who hid his face like a bandit? And no woman, gentle or otherwise, would want him after she’d witnessed his shame. He wished now he’d discussed the matter with Cael or Ethan. Hell, even Stephan probably could have provided some direction.
“Dom?”
He opened his eyes on her, and brought his hands up to hold her face. She laid her hands atop his. The contrast of fine porcelain to his olive ruggedness appalled him. Had his hands always been so large and fearsome-looking? He’d have to take things slow. Gauge her reactions, and see what she liked…what she disliked. Make certain he did everything right. Take care not to harm her.
When her hands fell away to light once again on his chest, Dominic let his migrate into her hair. He applied a light pressure to close the distance between them in a kiss that started off sweet and grew spicy with the melting of tongues. She shifted her position further up his torso, probably to accommodate his blossoming affection.
He liked the weight of her on top of him. But soon just that and kissing her wasn’t enough. He needed more. His fingers combed the length of her ashen mane, spraying it out around their bodies. He strayed down her cheek and nibbled like an adoring pet at her earlobe. His hands found the back of her dress. There seemed to be a million slippery buttons encasing her in the garment. She chuckled softly at his troubles.
“Here, why don’t you leave that to me.”
She moved to sit up but he couldn’t bear to let her go, so he followed her up in a seated position. She slid into his lap. He continued to lavish first her bruised neck then the creamy skin of her shoulder with butterfly kisses and nips. Her intoxicating taste, her bottom wiggling against his most sensitive organ…it was sweet torture.
“Uhhhn…cara, please.” His voice came out thick and tight.
Amazing, Eden managed to reach behind her back and finish undoing her gown. With much angling and shifting, he managed to pull it over her head. The skirts were next. She stood on the bed, dropped the thick layers down, and stepped out of the pool at her ankles for him to fling aside.
Clothed in only her chemise and ruffled drawers, she lowered herself back on him, stocking clad legs folded under at the knee and straddling his thighs. She nestled in his lap, with a wicked expression, surprising him. She knew just what effect the movement had on him. Before he knew her intent, she was teasing at his nipple with a fingernail, playful…eyeing him.
“Is this bothering you?”
“No, cara.” A jolt of dizzying awareness shot through him, as if tiny fibers connected the bronze plug to his lower regions. His groin bulged against his trousers, throbbing and painful until he could ignore it no longer. He covered either side of her hips with his hands, repositioned her so her heat pressed down on him, rocking her back and forth against his erection…stroking it higher while alleviating some of his need.
The little hitches in her breath told him she enjoyed the effect as much as he. Her hips kicked in, undulating to the example he set. She left off teasing him and went for the full-armored attack, lowering her mouth to the erect plug. He jerked when her wet heat latched on to him, and caged her head, encouraging her, eager for her tongue’s suckling and teeth nibbling at his skin. He fell back on the bed, her, the pleasure giver at the moment.
She set him on fire, a soaring inferno. His eyes must be wild again, because when she pulled back and looked down at him, her smile turned to a gasp.
“Dom, your eyes…the left one is-.”
“Yes, I know.” He panted. “They get like this under bright lights or when I am…emotional.”
* * *
Eden stared, mesmerized by the smoldering starburst grey and eerie blue trained on her. His eyes were more than excited. They were greedy, for her…almost predatory. If it were possible, the place between her legs burned even hotter, wetter. The dampened cotton drawers grew uncomfortable against her feverish desire to be rid of them, to rid him of the blasted trousers so she could be skin to skin with the seeking bulge wedged at her thigh’s apex.
He pushed back cascading tresses, and devoured her with another deep kiss, rolling her onto her back in the process. Eden v-ed her legs at the knee to accommodate his girth. She suffered his weight but a moment before he braced himself on an elbow.
A delicious thrill went through her when his other hand migrated down to cover her breast, kneading it, worrying the sensitive peak with his thumb until she panted, arching her back. Her own hands clawed the offending chemise denying her his full touch.
“Shhhh, patience cara. Let me please you.” His voice was a guttural whisper, near the lip of the garment.
Scorching breath wafted across her skin at the place where her neck dipped into cleavage. She felt his lips touch her there briefly, and let her hands fall away to her sides, gripping the counterpane maniacally. Her head shifted to and fro, as he trailed kisses in a path to her heaving breasts, closing his mouth over chemise and all. Unable to stop herself, Eden caged his head against her…one leg coming over the back of him to rub impatiently at his taunt thigh and buttocks.
His tongue lapped at her incessantly, soaking the material, molesting her nipple to a pain-edged pleasure. Her hands got lost in his coal-black waves.
“Ohhhh…” A sigh escaped her when he loosed the satin ribbon securing the garment and drew the satin from the eyelets. Bagging cotton drawn down, the room’s cool air wafted across her buds just before his tongue’s coarse wetness raked maddeningly across it.
Eyes closed, head arched back, panting through her mouth, Eden abandoned herself to the bombardment of sensations and shivers. Her hips began to undulate upward. Her wayward leg pressured his hips, trying to grind the pulsating bulge into her core. Some place in the corner of her mind suspected that he’d deliberately agitated her into a writhing frenzy.
“Dom…” She exhaled his name.
That’s when she felt it, a hand, his hand, inching over her drawers. Her hips jumped as his fingers slipped beneath the waistband, twined in her nether hair and finally sprayed over dew-moistened lips.
“For me, cara?” He lifted from her breast.
She lulled her head to the side. Her passion-fogged mind was slow to react…what had he said? Why had he stopped? Forcing laden eyes to work, she glanced at the ruby pebble he’d abandoned and then turned up to collide with his face. Eyes brimming with awe stared back at her.
His palm, warm and seeking, moved against the delicate flesh between her legs. When his fingers fondled over an especially sensitive nub, she nearly screamed at the burning ache that resounded throughout her entire body. Her hands clutched at his shoulders when
he kept up the movement, worrying her flesh. The minuscule corrugations on his thumb wrecked havoc, feeding her throbbing need. Her legs widened, seeking more. Her hips moved in time with his hand, rising to beg for fulfillment.
“Please…” The roar in her ears nearly drowned out her own strangled plea.
Even when he retreated away, her hips kept up their vigil…she heard a rustling and moments later her dew-soaked drawers were sliding down her legs, his hands pausing just long enough to strip the stockings away as well. The forgotten chemise went next. At last, she lay naked and spread before him. Ripe for pleasure.
He, too, was naked, Eden noted. His magnificent form loomed over her, an olive-skinned Adonis. Taunt rippled chest and stomach muscles shifted just under his skin as he moved over her. His broad torso tapered to sturdy hips. Her eyes wandered lower to the curious appendage that poked out, stiff and ominous, from a hairy place between his tree-trunk thighs. She knew a moment of panic. Is that what had been pulsating inside his trousers? How had she not noticed the monstrous thing before?
The instant his hands were back on her, the fear and the reason for it fled her mind. All she felt was clawing desire for more of him in however form that fulfillment took. He settled between her legs, weight shifted to one elbow…leaving one hand free to part the lips of her hungry mouth.
“Ahh…”
Wicked was the only word she could think to describe what he did next, wedging one of his sausage thick fingers inside her tight mouth.
“Soon, cara, I promise.”
His voice sounded strained, painful almost…a pain mirrored in the tight expression on his face.
“Now…” She moaned, able to stand it no longer. “Do whatever it is, now.”
He eased fully over her pliant body, unsheathed his finger and nudged her entrance with…the thing she’d seen before. Time slowed as their eyes met, his tortured by some nameless anxiety she struggled to identify. Not fear exactly. His expression said that they were crossing over to a new place and once passed no bridge existed to cross back.
Eden’s breath hitched and then she felt it, the thing pushing slow but relentless into her tight moist mouth. A veil of scarlet clouded her vision and her head jerked back against the bed…fingers tore at the counterpane. She felt a sharp, tearing pain at the core of her body and froze, afraid that if she moved, the damage would be worse.
“Dom, it hurts.” Her voice, small, high-pitched.
“I know, cara, and I’m sorry.” She felt a tender touch to her cheek…then her forehead, next her breast. He was kissing her, apologizing with actions as well as words. “Forgive me, please. I would not harm you for the world.”
When the thing in her began to retreat, instinct overtook her and she collapsed her legs around his hips. Her hands shot up to lock in his hair.
“No, please. It will hurt worse if you leave me.”
“Shhh…” His soft lips touched hers, soothing.
She hadn’t realized she was crying until she felt his tongue licking at her temple to catch a falling tear. The weight of his body sank into hers and she felt the thing nudging into her again…this time with less effort and a burning friction that spread deliciously to overtake the pain. Eden relaxed into the evolving pleasure.
His kisses too evolved, from soothing to sensual. His tongue slid unbidden into her mouth just as his appendage slid home a third time, filling her with an edgy bliss that radiated out from her core like ripples in a pond…leaking into her entire consciousness.
The thing inside her was over-large, feverish and quivering. It felt like he had shoehorned a sizzling, straight-from-the-skillet bratwurst fully into her. Nevertheless, the rawness of the act, heat, pulse, and jolt of sensations it set off had her ready for another thrust.
Again and again his came into her, the pleasure building higher, climbing towards frenzy. His hips grinding on hers, his weight a decadent delight. Eden tangled her fingers in his hair and down his back, urging him to continue. She felt as though they were careening towards the edge of a precipice, neither willing to break before they tumbled over the side.
Dominic groaned his pleasure into her mouth, his forceful thrusts quickening with urgency. The same urgency she sensed in herself. Her inner muscles gripped him with rhythm to match her run-away heartbeat. Racked by a sensation so overwhelming that her skin couldn’t contain, her body writhed and twitched, the hot acid-burn of something spewing inside her drove her over the edge…
She splintered into mindless ecstasy, the whole spectrum of fulfillment running its course in the space of a few moment’s bliss. A hail of colorful spangles fluttered above. In her disconnected world filled only with sensations and feelings, it took Eden a second to realize the starburst she saw were Dominic’s eyes…lost in the same wondrous place with her.
Chapter 23
Her body felt weak, boneless and only semi-conscious beneath a pressing weight. Hot breath at her neck, she realized that Dominic lay on top of her…and inside of her. The thing that had given her so much pleasure lay dormant now, its presence warm and filling. She liked the feel of him, hot and heavy, his luscious black hair tickling her throat and shoulder as he turned his face and placed a light kiss against her bruised skin.
His breath grazed her throat when he spoke. “I want Ethan to heal these. I never want to see them again.”
She chuckled at his childish faith in his brother’s medical skills, and laid a hand atop his head to play in the soft waves. “Dom, no doctor can heal a bruise. They will fade with time.”
“Ethan will heal them if I ask him to.”
He spoke with a certainty that struck her as sincere. As if he had some knowledge she did not.
“How?”
When he did not immediately answer, she assumed he wouldn’t. Content, Eden did not press. He took her by surprise when he propped himself up on his elbows and then shifted off her, dislodging himself from her body. Eden sighed at the loss. She didn’t have long to feel abandoned. He was gone from her no more than the time it took for him to pull back the blue-black bedspread and sheets.
“Come, before you catch a chill.”
She scrambled over to burrow beneath the sheets. He joined her there and pulled her flush against the side of his torso. Only when they were propped on a nest of pillows and settled into a snug cocoon, did he speak again.
“There are more bruises than before. Why?”
He must have noticed the lighter bruises marring her hip and thigh. “When I fell from the tub, I banged against the floor. At the time, it didn’t hurt, but later…” She let the words trailed off.
“Hmm.”
She looked up at him, curious, but he eyes stared out over her head, possessed by some unexpressed thought. He didn’t turn his gaze down to her, even at his next words.
“Do you remember that first day you awoke in this room? You had a sore throat and a developing lung congestion.”
She nodded against him. “You were over there sitting in the window sill. I did not notice at first.”
“Ethan healed you then.”
Her rational mind protested. “The doctor gave me a fast-acting elixir to sooth the ache and ease my airways.”
“The liquid you drank was spiced tea imported from the Indies. An exotic expense, but necessary. Ethan is a practiced hand at healing partially, subtly, so as not to draw undue attention to his gift. You assumed the tea to be an elixir because it was strong and spicy and he was a doctor administering it in a healing setting. It helped that he did not clarify the grave nature of your condition. The truth is, Ethan saw the progression of the illness. You wouldn’t have lasted the week. Do you still think an elixir fixed it…in the space of five minutes?”
She wasn’t sure how to react. Her mind writhed first with awe, before settling at last on gratitude. At the time, all she wanted was the peace that death could provide, but now, reminded how sweet life could be she thanked the heavens Dominic and his brothers saved her. Though, the way Dom explained
the doctor’s ruse made her feel like a gullible idiot. Why hadn’t she thought to question her sudden recovery?
He seemed to read her mind without even looking at her. “There is no need to feel foolish. Most folks want to believe that because Ethan is a doctor he has a miracle cure for their ailments. Even those few who don’t, seem content instead to attribute their recovery to the Almighty above. Perhaps they are right to do so, who but God could give such a gift.”
Some of her embarrassment eased knowing she wasn’t the first—and certainly not the last—to be duped. “So, he can heal anything. Your eyes?”
“He’s grown strong over the years, but, no. His ability is limited to injuries and simple illnesses. Complex problems such as inherited conditions, mental illness and age-related degeneration are beyond his scope.”
Fascinated, she could not help but ask, “Consumption?”
“Yes. He is especially good with lung infections and broken bones.”
“What about heart ailments?”
“If it were mechanical in nature, an injury or the result of a physical malady, yes, but a heart that is rotting from age, no. He could sooth the pain if necessary, like in cases of rheumatism, but not fix the problem because aging is not an illness.”
“If he can do all that then why not wipe out influenza, malaria, and all manner of deadly diseases?”
He shifted so that he could look down into her face. The humor lurking in his asymmetrical gaze caused her heart to flip over. “You know, Cael asked me the same question not so long ago. Ethan could no more wipe out influenza than he could the common cold. His healing ability is like my astral travel. It is draining. The more complex the problem, the more energy is required. The more patients he heals, the more he is depleted. Not to mention, the very idea of him having such an ability is sacrilege. He must be careful and discrete. Even if he could transcend all that, he cannot be everywhere at once. Influenza passes from person to person rapidly. He would have to heal everyone simultaneously to eradicate it.”
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