He looked vaguely satanic with his scar standing out in jagged detail against his swarthy skin in the penumbra … dangerous, indomitable … displaying also, quite openly and almost defiantly, the terrible marks on his chest. Surgery, extensive physiotherapy and exercise had built the muscles back to normality, but only one nipple remained, which gave his front a lopsided, barbaric look that Oriel found oddly arousing.
‘But your experience is vastly superior to mine,’ she opined quietly.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,’ he murmured, gathering her more closely so that his fully aroused manhood nudged against her thigh. Despite the damage to his torso, his muscled body was magnificent, like steel encased in hot skin, his voice deep and husky. ‘Just watching you lying there naked and beautiful, like a goddess, with your satiny alabaster skin and your moonspun hair, sends my blood pounding.’
If he wanted her so, why wasn’t he touching her? What was he waiting for? Why was he prolonging her agony?
Damian’s head bent, his gaze never leaving hers, his mouth in reach of her lips. His hands now moved slowly, hovering just an inch above her body, following her curves, evocative, arousing; so close that she could feel the heat of his flesh almost brushing hers. His movements were tantalizing, daring her to stretch out and pull his hands down on to her breasts, her stomach and the place between her thighs that was crying out to be explored and plundered; but she managed not to do so, trusting him and knowing by instinct that anticipation would only make the surrender more ecstatic.
Damian smiled as though he had read her thoughts. ‘I’m not a sadist. Really. I’m like an artist surveying the canvas you’re giving me to work on. Where will I begin? Here?’ He brushed a finger against her lips. ‘Or here,’ he murmured, stroking her throat. ‘But maybe you’d prefer to feel me here …’ He placed a hand lightly on one of Oriel’s breasts, then slid it down to her stomach. ‘Or here.’
The caress of his eyes, more than anything else, was driving her wild. Her naked flesh was vulnerable and feverish, awaiting his next move, wanting him to touch her where the ache for him was becoming almost unbearable. Her lips parted, longing and desire flashing through her, pulsing beats that desperately sought release.
Damian’s hand slipped down further and rested on the neat triangle of hair between her slender creamy thighs. She parted them automatically, waiting breathlessly for his next move, her eyes wide and dark with need. The narrow-eyed look of frank and unhurried assessment he gave when she did this told her he knew exactly how she felt; the slow, lazy burn deep in his pupils conveying that he was attuned to each tremor of her skin.
‘Is this what you want?’ There was a soft sensuality to his voice as, with one finger, he parted the delicate petals covering the moist, throbbing core of her desire. Oriel gasped when the tip of his middle finger teased the swollen bud and then retreated immediately; she was actually trembling she needed him so badly. The temptation to pull him down on top of her, to feel his virility press hard against her and await the delicious consequences was excruciating.
‘I want you,’ she breathed. ‘I’ve wanted you for so long, Damian. Please …’
Damian looked at Oriel for several long, lingering moments without moving, seeming to take in everything about her appearance: her pleading eyes, the little vein that throbbed rhythmically in the middle of her throat, the globes of her breasts brazenly inviting his attention, her whole body offered to him in flagrant submission for him to take – a sort of a sacrifice to her pagan Greek god.
And at long last, those silver eyes lifted to Oriel’s full lips, glittering like diamonds beneath his heavy lids. With his hand Damian smoothed a strand of hair from her face before lowering himself down slowly beside her. ‘Your mouth is made to be kissed,’ he said as he covered it with his, teasing it with the tip of his tongue, forcing his way in and delving deep. She didn’t resist, opening it for him, her lips warm and generous as they met his, accepting him, devouring him, feeding her own appetite.
Fires seared through Oriel; she was ablaze, already a mass of tension and desire, prepared by the fantasy Damian had created in his tormenting foreplay. His palms cupped her breasts, his thumbs pressing into the fleshy sides, circling first one, then the other. The caress of his strong wide hands was tender and loving as they rubbed in slow, incredibly sweet circles until the hardening tips showed him just where to concentrate his attention. Leaving her lips, his hunting mouth took into its warm depths one peak and then the other, biting and licking, a sweet delicious torture, making her whimper and moan softly as she felt everything inside her go haywire.
Oriel undulated against him and reached down to the compelling length of his hardness, but Damian pushed her hand away. ‘Patience, ómorfi seirina mou. This is just the mezedes. I haven’t finished with you yet. Relax, agápi mou, let me feed you the food of our Greek gods.’
The glitter in Damian’s eyes intensified before he dipped his head again. ‘So, where did we get to …’ he said as he skimmed over her midriff and smooth belly, moving to the indentation of her navel and licking it, oh-so-erotically with the tip of his tongue. ‘Where do you want me to go next, eh?’ he asked, his eyes searing hers with his question, and he smiled that slow, secretive smile she was beginning to know so well, which lifted one side of his mouth a fraction.
‘Let me see,’ he whispered again, kissing a trail over her smooth skin, continuing his slow journey down her body, lingeringly, loving every inch of her as she shook with passion beneath his fingertips and the exploring hardness of his lips.
Damian brushed two inquisitive fingers against the soft petals of her womanhood, a butterfly’s wing of a touch that drew a moan from her and made Oriel’s legs automatically edge apart in silent invitation, signalling she wanted more … oh, so much more! ‘Yes, I can see, you are so swollen, so moist, so hot, so delicious … is this for me?’
Oriel didn’t think she could speak without crying. The heat flooded her face as she lifted her gaze, searing him with the naked lust she knew was evident in her green eyes. She was not ashamed to show him that his power over her senses had taken over her mind; she was not ashamed any more of this overwhelming emotion flooding every secret part of her. She wanted him to know it. That she – who had always been modest to the point of prudery about her body – should be filled with this desire to have him look at her while in the throes of pleasure was a startling experience but it thrilled her in a way she never thought possible.
Damian seemed to sense Oriel’s silent message, spurring on his arousal. He was trembling and the tip of his manhood was engorged and moist. With a groan he cupped the curved cheeks of her bottom and drew her closer to him. Nudging her thighs even wider apart, his lips found her core, sucking it into the moisture of his hot mouth, wrenching a cry of ecstasy from her throat. He held her hips, murmuring her name as he licked and teased, feasting on the swollen silken bud as he flicked his tongue back and forth across it. Stroking delicately at first, he explored this territory that she was so openly laying in front of him, skilfully applying pressure, responding to each sound she made while massaging the inside of her thighs.
Oriel reeled and moaned, her skin on fire, urging him on, asking for more – always more – wanting the rapture never to stop; and Damian gave, and gave without respite, as though he couldn’t get enough of her taste and texture. More than once he brought her to a cliff-edge before starting all over again.
‘You smell so sweet, so good. You’re driving me crazy,’ he said, his voice dropping to a velvet purr.
Oriel could see his eyes had darkened, his breathing was ragged, his control had reached its limit. ‘I want to be inside you, Calypso, all the way inside you,’ he whispered, his voice husky and slurred, giving each word a sensual caress. ‘You are so voluptuous, so exciting and warm … Let me in, agápi mou,’ he continued, as his hands slipped down her spine, encircling her waist. Then he pulled her up on top of him, parting her thighs so that she straddled him.
As the hard, satin-skinned tip of his shaft brushed against the crest of her own desire a deep almost animalistic groan was ripped from Damian’s throat and she felt him stiffen, his hands squeezing her waist, summoning all his control.
Following his lead, Oriel reached a hand down to the heated nest of his lower belly, between his muscular thighs; she found his virile force awesome, swollen as it was to its fullest extent and so tremendously beautiful.
‘Let me show you how I love you,’ she murmured, encircling it with her long fingers and brushing it against her warm, soft moisture, moving back and forth. ‘You feel so hard, so strong against me. It’s so good …’
She moved slowly on top of him, abandoning herself to sensuality, telling him how he made her feel, what his maleness was doing to her, her explicit words stimulating his desire as much as her own. The longing to taste him the way he had tasted her overrode any remaining shadow of inhibition. Her hands glided swiftly over the length of him, exploring his body with an innocently absorbed fascination, caressing and stroking his deeply muscled chest.
Leaning forwards, Oriel slid her mouth along Damian’s smooth shoulders, following every curve of bone, every hollow in the flesh before teasing his nipple; kissing, biting and squeezing, grazing with her teeth and then soothing with her tongue. All the while she could feel the velvet tip of him growing harder and harder against the silky-smooth wetness of her apex. He groaned with pleasure beneath her, moving to her rhythm, his muscles tensing every time her long flowing hair brushed against him.
Catching Oriel’s chin between his fingers, he tilted her face upwards. ‘Look in the mirror, Calypso, see how beautiful you are.’ Lifting her silken platinum mane away from her face, he pushed it to the back of her shoulders, exhibiting the erotic image of their naked, aroused bodies to her own view.
And as she leaned back and raised her head up to the looking glass, Damian arched up towards her and, cupping her breasts, he penetrated her with one sharp thrust, driving into her with almost frightening intensity. A soft cry escaped from her lips at his abrupt invasion and a deep shuddering seized her, followed by a feral groan that came from deep inside as her muscles began to spasm. She opened herself up for him, bloomed warm and wet, urging him to go deeper as he moved into her with a circling motion, pressing the swollen bud of her pleasure against the base of his hardness with every possessive thrust of his body. She marvelled at how he was stretching her, filling her, and she moaned his name voluptuously, cresting a magic, ecstatic wave of passion, never wanting this journey to stop.
Damian was looking up into the mirror and, through her own erotic haze, Oriel could see and understand the pleasure he derived from watching while touching her. She knew that, aroused in the way she was, she couldn’t help but appear seductive to him; and she drew just as much delight in seeing the effect her caresses had on him – his body glorious in his shameless exposure.
Watching their writhing reflections in the mirror was exciting them both, sending the raw edge of desire flaming within them, inciting them to go further into their carnal adventure. Their eyes glazed with lust, their lips swollen, skin laced with glistening sweat, they revelled in every second of their frenzied lovemaking, stripped of all inhibitions. Oriel let Damian take her in every way imaginable, surrendering to her deepest secret cravings, primitive, dark and wild.
As he pulled back her hair, she tightened her thighs around his waist, urging him on, deeper and harder, while she rasped in his ear, ‘Please, Damian, I want your hot milk to flood me.’ He growled low in response, his muscular shoulders flexing above her. They were building towards shattering peaks of pleasure now, soaring into a world of blinding light, until their torturous tension finally exploded again and again into a sunburst of glorious ecstasy.
And afterwards, when they had kissed, licked, touched, caressed and explored their way over every inch of each other’s bodies, they lay trembling and satiated, trying to breathe again at a steadier pace in each other’s arms as the thunder of their heartbeats dropped to a slow pulse.
Oriel lay nestled in the hollow of Damian’s strong shoulder, drowsy and boneless. The white room with its flickering candles, which minutes ago had been full of their cries of pleasure-pain, was now filled with a silent languor, broken only by the breeze whispering through the open windows, the night sounds beyond and the sigh of the sea.
Oriel’s feelings for the man who lay relaxed and sleeping beside her were both primitive and shameless. Although Damian had made her feel loved, with his lavish lovemaking tender and caring as well as passionate, he hadn’t said he loved her. Those three unambiguous words would have left her in no doubt about his true feelings. He’d spoken of an unbreakable cord of love – was that the same thing as declaring that he loved her or just a figure of speech, uttered spontaneously in the throes of passionate seduction? How far beyond lust for her did his emotional involvement go? How soon would he tire of her? Did it matter, she wondered sleepily.
She turned to look at him, sprawled on his back with outflung arms, unmoving except for the slow flex of his naked chest as he breathed. He appeared peaceful, almost innocent, in repose. Oriel read the vulnerability in his features, but also the strength of him, the pride and willpower. Magnificent …
Was she falling in love? She certainly didn’t think that she would be able to welcome another man into her bed, let alone bare herself to him so candidly. She had only ever been touched by him, she belonged to him completely. Damian had initiated her into womanhood all those years back, but tonight they had travelled a long way beyond that first horizon, lifting them both to a new plane of sensual excitement.
Her mind began to freefall, once again falling prey to her own vulnerability that only he could produce in her. Was this all just rampaging lust? Did he play these erotic games with every woman he bedded? She shivered at the thought. The mirror in the ceiling, the mellow candlelight, the graphic lithograph above the bed, even the bareness of the room itself certainly suggested it. Had Yolanda been able to make him shudder and tremble and sob with pleasure? Had his body come alive in the way it had done in her arms tonight? And his wife, Cassandra? Others? The images of Damian in the embrace of woman after woman burned like acid in Oriel’s brain, bringing tears to her eyes. A faint hollow feeling settled in the region of her heart. She couldn’t bear to think of that …
Moving quietly, she slid from the bed and picked up the pile of clothes that had been thrown haphazardly at the foot of it. She blushed at the memory of the fierce haste in which they had cast them aside, urgent and frantic, the compulsion to be rid of everything that came between them almost violent.
Oriel remembered the stab of lustful heat that snaked through her body as her gaze had fallen on Damian’s nakedness. There wasn’t an ounce of surplus flesh on his body to blur the rippling muscle definition on display beneath his golden skin, gleaming like oiled satin. Her heart thundering, all she had thought of then was to be mated with this beautiful Greek god; but somehow now she wanted more and it tormented her unbearably.
Oriel dressed noiselessly … the last thing she needed was to wake Damian; she was too vulnerable – still under the spell of what had passed between them. She needed to put some order into her thoughts before she saw him again.
She stole away through the arched open window, down the veranda. A draught of pure sea air greeted her, bearing with it the scent of flowers and the smell of darkness, which stretched away over the garden and across the sea towards the looming hump of Typhoeus, the silent volcano. Heliades was sound asleep but for Oriel sleep had never been more elusive.
She walked noiselessly to her apartment and closed the door behind her, but didn’t turn on the light. The moon was all but gone yet the light rimmed the whole of the room with its aluminium glow. In the heavy silence, the only sound she could hear was the enduring murmur of the water down below on the beach. Strange … it was almost too silent. It seemed to her that some other noise was missing, but she was too tired to
think.
Her body was still half drugged with Damian’s lovemaking – her senses still alive with the thrill of his caresses, his kisses, and her mind full of his sensuous words. It was too much … she needed to cool down.
The night outside had the peculiar velvet quality of darkness over water, the sea smooth like an ornamental lake, with curling wavelets at the edge, their gentle foaming crests lapping serenely at the golden sand; so harmless at this moment, yet she had known seemingly quiet seas swell to great choppy waves, smashing violently on to the shore. Such maritime moods echoed Damian’s lovemaking with her, and perhaps even their feelings: wild passion laced with tenderness.
Oriel wrenched her clothes off for the second time that night and scrambled down the few steps to the beach, plunging into the water, clear and cold as chilled wine. Cool though the water was, she lingered awhile, soaking her burning skin and her aching body, washing away the tension that was suffocating her, the sky above all diamonds and black velvet, the air spicy from the pines that grew on the island and surrounded the house. She swam for a few minutes, feeling the pressure in her chest seep gently away. Only then did she wade out of the sea and go back to her room.
Exhausted, she lay on the bed naked, her skin still salty and cold, trying to blot from her mind the rapturous lovemaking she had experienced in Damian’s arms. She gave a contented sigh as sleep began to overtake her, and slipped immediately into a dream where strong, golden-brown arms were sliding around her languid body … arms she no longer resisted but welcomed.
* * *
Oriel awoke in the fresh morning, her bedroom splashed with sunshine. The birds were singing with what seemed to her an almost Edenic rapture. She was still lying naked on the bed, where she had fallen asleep after her nocturnal swim. The view from the open window was sparkling, the sea and sky bluer than any metaphor could express. Her half-opened eyes lingered a moment on a green lizard that had crawled up the shutter and was warming itself in the indirect light of the sun. Its satin throat quivered as if with song and she turned reflexively to the golden canary cage. Her still drowsy mind registered that he wasn’t chirping or hopping about this morning – had he also slept in?
Aphrodite's Tears Page 38