Uttering a deep, guttural sound, he reached for her, pulling her tightly against his length. She leaned against him, became as pliant and insubstantial as air, melted into him, blended. Her sense of self vanished as he covered her mouth with his own, became nothing more than heat, flame, tension. She caressed him as he filled her with his essence, stroking his tongue along hers in a lover’s most intimate embrace, possessing the ultra sensitive flesh of her mouth. His flesh beneath her palms was heated, silky, infinitely appealing as she skated her hands along the ridge of muscle that bridged his neck and shoulder, stroked his upper arms, his back, the back of his head, traced his ears.
Coolness wafted along her shoulders as he loosened his tight hold on her and slipped his hands upward to push the shoulders of the robe down along her arms. Releasing her hold on him, she dropped her arms to allow it to fall free until she was bare to the waist. She pressed against him then, feeling the skate of the satiny fabric of his own robe, the coolness, and beneath that the hard bulge of his chest muscles, the heat of his body.
He kissed her neck, her shoulder, bent lower, tipping her over the support of one arm as he sought her breasts and teased the nipple of each until it stood erect and pouting for more attention. Abruptly, he shifted, swinging her off her feet and into his arms. Turning, he strode down the hallway into the bedroom, crossed the room and, placing a knee upon the mattress, sprawled atop its cushiony surface on top of her.
She kissed every inch of him that she could reach, enjoying the touch and taste of him on her lips and tongue as feverishly as she enjoyed his kisses. She found herself muttering his name over and over in a mindless litany. “I needed this. I needed you,” she said on a gasping breath as she worked her hands beneath his robe, trying to dislodge it from his body so that nothing lay between them.
They caressed each other, undressed each other and explored every inch of flesh they exposed with the sensitive pads of fingertips, palms, lips and tongues. Elise’s breath became so labored with the pounding of her heart that she swirled in and out of a heated blackness that threatened to snatch her away.
Clumsy fingers struggled with ties and fasteners, but at last they both lay completely bare, entwined, dampened by the heat of their struggles and the heat of their desire. Ja-rael rolled until Elise lay beneath him, stroking her breasts, molding each in turn with the palm of his hand, teasing her nipples with his fingers and his mouth and tongue until she was moaning incessantly with need. She gasped when he skated his hand along her belly and parted the folds of heated flesh between her thighs, arching up to meet his questing finger.
He dipped his head to pluck at one pert nipple as he teased her clit. She groaned, feeling her body clench. Within moments the first tremors of a climax began to spasm through her. She went rigid, gasped, cried out as he slipped his finger from her clit and along her cleft, delving inside of her. Her flesh closed around him, spasming as the echoes of release ebbed away and a new tension arose.
When he lifted his head, she scooted down, feeling his finger slip more deeply inside her with the movement. She explored his male breasts as he had explored her, teasing him with her lips and tongue and the edge of her teeth and as she did so, she slipped a palm along his hard, flat belly and cupped his sex in her hand, gently massaging the globes beneath his cock.
He groaned, tensed all over, held perfectly still as she stroked him and finally slid her palm upward and closed her fingers around his turgid flesh. He began to shake with the effort to remain still as she explored him, caressed him.
A gasp escaped him. He dragged in a shaky breath.
Abruptly, he thrust her hand away roughly. Catching her thighs, he pushed them wide and settled his hips between them, arching against her so that his cock slipped along the weeping flesh of her cleft, became slickened with the dampness of her desire for him.
Elise groaned, arched to meet him, reached for him.
He buried his face against her breasts as he levered himself upward to align his body with hers, sank the head of his cock into the mouth of her passage. Shifting, he studied her face as he slowly entered her. Sensing his gaze, Elise opened her eyes to look up at him making no attempt to hide her desire from him or her love.
That emotion intensified her pleasure in his body and their joining, rushed her upward toward culmination once more as he began to stroke her passage with the heated length of his engorged flesh. She cried out as the second wave lifted her up in a wash of ecstasy, shuddering at the intensity of the spasms that rocked her.
She heard him grit his teeth as her muscles clenched tightly around his flesh, kneaded him like clenching fingers. He paused, holding himself perfectly still as he fought for control, struggled to prolong the pleasure for both of them. After a moment, he leaned down, kissed her deeply.
She sucked his tongue greedily as he thrust it into her mouth in a rhythm that matched his possession of her nether mouth with his cock. Lifting her legs, she wrapped them around his waist, drawing his cock more deeply inside of her. He shuddered, broke the kiss abruptly and began to drive into her with desperate thrusts as he was caught up in the inescapable need to find his own glory. A thrill of renewed excitement spiraled through her at his urgency. Again, she felt the quickening, felt the rise of heat, the coiling of tension as her body rose higher and faster than before.
Heat and the dampness of his exertion radiated from his flesh as he strove, pounding faster and deeper until Elise had to hold onto him tightly to match his thrusts with a counter thrust of her own. His climax was explosive, agonizing in intensity from the growl of repletion that seemed to tear its way from his chest. It detonated a powerful reaction within her own body as it responded with harder contractions of fervent rapture.
Elise went limp with release. Ja-rael gasped, shuddered and struggled for many moments to hold his weight off of her and finally melted bonelessly against her. Despite his weight, despite the stickiness of their skin from their lovemaking, utter contentment wafted over Elise. With an effort, she lifted her arms and wrapped them around him, stroking his back lovingly, soothingly while he struggled to catch his breath. Moments passed while their hearts and breath slowed, reaching for their normal rhythms. Finally, Ja-rael disentangled himself from her arms, slipped his arms around her and rolled onto his back. Elise protested until she realized there was no way he could simply pull away and leave. When he’d settled on his back, she relaxed bonelessly on top of him.
She smiled faintly against his chest when she realized the post coital swelling peculiar to his species that had so horrified her the first time was far more welcome than she would’ve suspected it could be at the time. Now, she was glad because it prevented him from hit and run, allowing her to bask in the aftermath of their pleasure with one another. Now she was glad because, in her mind, she imagined his seed racing to find her own and merge with it.
The hand that had been lazily stroking her back moved upward, cupping her cheek. “A smile?” he asked huskily.
Unable to prevent a wider smile, Elise turned her face into his chest and nipped it. “You’d prefer a frown?”
He rolled onto his side, dumping her onto her side on the mattress. The tug in her nether regions told her neither of them was going anywhere, however. She draped a thigh across his hips, shifting closer, wondering it if was at all possible to arouse him again so quickly.
He studied he face for a long moment and finally sighed. “We should not have this, Elise.”
Elise felt the first prick in her satisfaction. “Why not?” she asked uneasily, knowing the answer even before he said it.
“You know why.”
“Tell me anyway,” she heard herself say, wondering why she was so determined to make him hurt her.
“Because this will not work. Because I do not trust this devise you say will control birth and the risks are not something I want to play with.”
Chapter Twenty Six
Elise lay staring at the ceiling long after Ja-rael had departed for his
couch, fighting the sense of depression and inevitability, and fear, his comments had evoked.
He was not going to be happy when he discovered what she’d done.
Pushing the thought aside, she rolled out of the bed and took a long bath. When she’d dried herself and dressed again, she went in to stare glumly at the meal she’d prepared which neither of them had eaten. Sighing, she fixed herself a plate, heated it and sat down to drown her troubles.
Ja-rael, apparently having heard her, or because he was hungry, too, came in a few minutes later, fixed a plate for himself and sat down to join her. They ate in glum silence, each subject to their own fears, Elise decided, wondering if she should consider tonight a complete route or a temporary setback.
It seemed doubtful he would fall for the slinky clothing again, but she supposed it was worth a try.
The problem was he’d managed to hold out a very long time before she’d managed to catch him off guard. The likelihood was that he was going to go back to avoiding temptation by avoiding her. And, at the rate they were going, that didn’t give her many more opportunities before it would be time to take her back.
Sighing, she finally decided she would spike his guns by avoiding him before he could avoid her. It seemed doubtful that tactic would work, but she couldn’t think of anything else to try.
When she’d finished eating, she got up, tided the work area and, just for pure hard down meanness, turned the lights out as she left. Ja-rael sat in the dark for a good five seconds before he recovered enough from his surprise to command ‘lights on’ again. She slammed the door of her bedroom and for good measure, pushed the screeching, protesting trunk across the floor to barricade the door.
The prod irritated him more than she’d expected. “That is completely unnecessary,” he said in a growling voice.
“Right!” she shot back at him. “Just who started it? Because it damned sure wasn’t me grabbing you!”
Apparently, he didn’t have an answer for that. Just as obviously, he hadn’t figured out yet that the whole thing had been very carefully staged to push him over the edge.
Which was probably a good thing all things considered.
Elise spent the next day moving the walk stones back into the position she’d decided was more aesthetically appealing. As the afternoon dwindled to dusk, she went inside, bathed, fixed a solitary meal and retreated to her room.
She was still awake when Ja-rael came in and sat listening as he paced the living area, moved into the cooking area and checked the cabinets and refrigeration unit for food and finally moved back into the living area to pace some more.
He didn’t come near her door.
Satisfied that she’d snubbed him first, Elise turned her lights out and went happily to sleep. The next day when she went outside to survey her new domain, she was startled to discover Ja-rael directing two young males in paving the stepping stones into a permanent slab. It would take a jackhammer to move it now and Elise retreated into the house once more until they finished and left, torn between embarrassment, amusement and irritation.
The following week when the ‘ladies’ made their trip to market, Elise invited herself along and, after strolling up and down the market for a while finally stopped in front of the stall that belonged to the aging male who made ugly jewelry. “These stones are pretty,” she said almost idly. “I don’t suppose you know where to find larger ones?”
The male tilted his head at her curiously. “How much larger?”
She showed him with her hands.
He frowned. “What would you do with such large stones?”
“I want them to form a border around a flower bed I’m making.”
He scratched his head. “A bed for flowers?”
“Mmmhmm. The yard looks far too plain with only the grasses to carpet it. I want pretty plants that make bright flowers and perfume the air with their fragrance. And I want the stones to place them as a barrier so that the grasses won’t choke them out.”
He still looked puzzled. “What sort of flowers?”
“I don’t really know--just bright colors. And I’d prefer plants that don’t grow very high. If you could bring me the stones and the flowers I can pay you.”
He smiled slowly. “How many do you want?”
Elise thought it over. “Do you know where the healer, Ja-rael lives?”
He nodded. “If you’ll come by tomorrow, I’ll show you where I mean to put them and then you’ll be able to decide how many.”
When they’d settled on a price per plant and per stone, she joined the others and followed them as they slowly made their way around the market and finally headed home again.
The following morning when she went out to sit on the stoop to drink her ‘coffee’, the old man was waiting with a rickety cart pulled by some sort of beast she’d never seen before. It seemed a placid animal, however, and she set her cup aside and crossed the lawn to see what the old man had brought her. Excitement rushed through her when she saw that he’d not only brought a pile of the stones she’d chosen, but an odd assortment of discarded containers that held a variety of plants. She studied the drooping plants while he unloaded the stones for her and finally decided to take them all.
When he’d departed, she went in the house to get water for the traumatized plants. Knowing she needed to settle them as soon as possible, she decided to focus on that task first and set the stones in place later.
It took her almost a week to complete the first bed. She spent the following week trying to coax the plants into flourishing once more. To her disappointment, some died, but she managed to save almost half and they ceased to droop dejectedly and lifted their leaves sunward.
Heartened by her success, she went to the market the following week and asked the old man to bring her more flowers.
The exercise was salve to her wounds, but she discovered it went deeper than that once she’d finally completed the bed and sat back to admire it. It brought back such sweet memories of home--of Earth--that it made her happy and sad all at the same time.
When she sat on the stoop, drinking the hot brew, basking in the morning sun and the cool air, she could almost imagine that she was on Earth once more, staring at her own yard.
She was so enthralled with it that she hardly noticed that Ja-rael had returned until his shadow fell across her. She looked up at him then, surprised to find that he’d returned to the house when he could not have been gone more than a few hours. To her embarrassment, she discovered tears had filled her eyes as she sat staring at the flowers. When she blinked, they ran down her cheeks. She chuckled self-consciously as she wiped the moisture away. “It reminds me of home. I’ve spent the past two years trying not to think of Earth at all, and now I find I’ve spent the past several weeks trying to ….” She broke off abruptly. “Sorry. I guess I’m blocking you,” she said, jumping to her feet as it suddenly occurred to her that she was sitting in the middle of the steps.
He studied her for several moments, then, instead of moving past her, he pulled her against his length in a tight embrace. “I am so sorry, meesha. If it makes you happy, you may transform my entire yard as you please. I will even help you if you like.”
Elise chuckled, but shook her head as she pulled away. “You have far too many important things to do. And--I need to do this myself.”
He looked almost disappointed, but merely nodded and left her on the stoop as he went inside, collected the things he needed and departed once more.
Elise sighed as she watched him go. He was a good hearted man. Despite their differences, despite all the little things she’d done for weeks with no other objective in mind than to tease him unmercifully, he had seemed to sense that she needed the comfort of an embrace at that moment without any pressure for anything more. And he’d given her what she needed without hesitation, as if it was the most natural thing in the world and something he did every day.
The sense of comfort slowly dissipated as she sat again to stare at the tiny pi
ece of home she’d captured in her little flower bed. After a time it dawned upon her that Ja-rael had never, in all the time she’d known him, ‘forgotten’ anything.
He’d come home to see her.
* * * *
Elise didn’t know whether to be more excited, or more terrified when she realized her plan had worked. Her first reaction was disbelief and she realized that, in the back of her mind, she hadn’t really expected it to be possible, especially not on the first try. And she hadn’t been certain she would get the chance of a second try. The shocked disbelief hadn’t worn off when excitement began to take hold. She spent a week smiling to herself and fighting the urge to tell Ja-rael right away, imagining all sorts of thrilling scenarios about his reaction to her wonderful news.
She might not have been able to resist the urge to break the news as soon as possible except that she remained in a state of disbelief herself for so long and the fear tormented her that it was just a fluke. Either she would find that she’d been mistaken, or, worse, it would transpire that the seed hadn’t taken firm root, or something wasn’t as it should be and she the fetus would abort.
The only way she could keep her news to herself was to continue to avoid Ja-rael as much as possible, because whenever she was around him the urge to tell him was nearly overwhelming. Ja-rael made it easy for her since he was trying to avoid temptation and Elise focused on transforming the yard to as close an approximation of the tiny yard she recalled from her childhood home on Earth as she could.
By the time it had thoroughly sank in that she really was breeding and that the fetus had dug in with every intention of staying, her thrill about her condition had ebbed enough for some very sobering thoughts to sink in.
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