by Zoë Archer
“Not enough,” he muttered. He shoved the del off of her, onto the floor, and tugged at her camisole until, impatient, he tore it right down the middle. Her aroused gasp was alive on his skin. Soft scraps of fabric drifted down to the ground, but he didn’t notice, he was licking her, swirling his tongue over her breasts. Her hips surged against his. Gabriel swore. He didn’t want to swear, not at that moment, but he’d no other way of expressing this, this tidal wave of sensation and emotion that her unrestrained response awoke in him.
As he nipped gently at the tip of her breast, Thalia moaned again and began to pull at his clothes.
He broke away from her and was next to one of the mattresses in an instant. Another instant, and he’d tossed the mattress across the ger so that it lay beside the other sleeping mat, doubling the size.
“Now,” he said, turning back to her with a feral grin, “we’ve got a proper bed.”
Chapter 13
An Expanding Knowledge
She’d known that when Gabriel turned his mind to something, he gave himself up to it completely and with a thoroughness that would shame most men. When he was a soldier, he was the consummate soldier. When he took the field in battle—or horse racing, or wrestling—he was unstoppable, ferocious. And when he was preparing to make love to her…
Thalia was stunned, a little giddy, as Gabriel stood by the large bed he’d just made and systematically removed his clothing, all the while holding her gaze with his own. First his jacket. Then his waistcoat. Braces, next, pushed off his shoulders. And when he unbuttoned his shirt, he revealed that he wore no undershirt beneath it. His chest, an expanse of tight golden muscle, marked here and there with puckered scars like a treasure map. Earlier that day, she had marveled at his masculine beauty, not marred but made more perfect by the numerous scars that crossed his flesh. New marks had been added since then, put there because he helped fight for her cause. And as each bit of his skin was revealed to her, sharp, greedy desire flowed in her own body, until she felt gathered dampness soaking between her legs.
When he started to pull off his boots, Thalia realized she was wasting valuable time, and shucked the remainder of her clothes with no thought to where the garments would land once she’d taken them off. What did she care of tidiness when Gabriel was now standing completely naked but two yards away?
Fully nude, fully aroused, Gabriel could not have been more beautiful. Thalia did not stop herself from staring at his erect penis. The head gleamed as it reached toward his navel, and there, at the very tip, a slight glisten of fluid. He was thick, but not frighteningly so. It was a marvel of perfect shape, perfect for being inside of her, claiming her. Thalia tore her gaze from his erection and looked her fill, all over. He was the essence of Man, a warrior who would possess his woman. And his woman, at that moment, was Thalia.
She was naked now, too. His jaw tightened, while his eyes glittered like dangerous magic. She watched as those eyes moved up and down her body, and everywhere they looked, she blossomed and blazed.
“You’re too far away,” he rumbled. He pointed to the bed. “Lie down.”
That was an order she wouldn’t disobey. Thalia hurried to the bed and lay down upon it. He stretched out beside her. Their bodies touched.
Perhaps they might, at some future date, be tender with one another, slow and deliberate, taking their time to learn and explore with the patience of scholars. Not today. They wrapped arms around each other, tight enough to bruise, as their mouths, demanding and urgent, met. His fingers tangled in her hair. Their tongues touched, stroked, and Thalia opened for him, as much as she could, trying to take him in all at once and be drowned in him.
Leaving the chaotic mass of her hair, his hands skimmed down her neck, down her shoulders and arms, then returned to the delicate place beneath the hollow of her throat. This was so far beyond what normal touch ever felt like, to Thalia it seemed as if she’d been given a fresh, new body that just now learned the world. And when his large, rough hands curved over her breasts, possessing them, she could not stop the febrile moan that rose up in her throat. He knew precisely how to touch her.
Then one of his hands moved over her breast, down across her belly, and slid lower. Already damp and ready, when his calloused fingers brushed between her thighs, her lips, Thalia arched up from the ground with a choked scream. One fingertip rubbed against her opening whilst another stroked her most sensitive place. Thalia could not set two thoughts beside each other. All she knew was that Gabriel, this man who was an expert shot and had waged brutal war, touched her and gave her pleasure as though he was born to do only that.
“I have to—” she said on a moan, then reached out and took him in her hand. The words that poured from his mouth were a combination of the foulest curses and the highest of blessings. He filled her hand. Her thumb and forefinger could not meet as she circled him. He felt satiny and rigid and exactly right. As Gabriel touched her, his fingers delving just inside her opening, she slid her own hand up and down the length of his shaft, using the drop of moisture from the tip to glide her progress.
“Ah, Jesus,” Gabriel breathed. “Too good. Too goddamned good.”
He took her mouth again. Just as he did so, one long, blunt finger entered her as the heel of his palm pressed against her pulsing nub. Thalia bucked and cried out, gripping him tighter. Before she could draw another breath, one finger became two, widening her. She gasped and flung her legs apart.
Gabriel pumped his fingers into her, all the while rubbing against her clit. Thalia had heard that word before, knew there was something wicked and crude about it, but just then, in her mind, that’s what that sensitive bit of flesh had become, as base and sinful as anything in creation. Names for parts of her body fled as Gabriel continued to work her, and she couldn’t keep hold of him any longer. She threw herself into the blinding pleasure and it hit her, all at once, breaking over her like a tidal wave of fire. She bowed up from the mattress as she cried his name.
The world shimmered around them, growing vaporous and gleaming. She felt her skin tighten and become, if possible, even more receptive.
Panting, barely coherent, Thalia watched as Gabriel took the fingers that had been inside of her, and slid them into his own mouth. “I want to taste you, sweetheart,” he said, licking them clean, “but later. Now, now, I have to get my cock inside of you.”
“Yes, now,” she urged, opening her arms to him. A gilded haze enveloped them, sparkling like a shower of coins, but to Thalia, it seemed natural, right.
He was between her legs in an instant. His weight settled over her as the head nudged at her opening. Thalia looked up into his face, dark and tight with desire. Love saturated her. She wanted to brand him into her mind, into her body, for now and tomorrow and all the days that followed, whatever they might bring.
The thrust of him into her sent her up from the bed, bending into an arch. At the same moment, the world dissolved. The ger disappeared and became, instead, the canopy of the night sky. But the stars took on a shine beyond their normal glitter. Instead, they had the crystalline perfection and sharpness of diamonds.
He drew back, sliding, then drove into her again. A wordless syllable jumped out of her as he groaned. God, to be this full, to envelop him like this—almost too pleasurable. And with each stroke, with each fevered kiss they shared, more and more of the world shifted and changed. She didn’t know if the change happened in her mind only or if there was something more.
“Gabriel,” she moaned. “Gabriel…look…”
Lifting his head, his forehead slick and his hair damp, Gabriel took in the protean landscape, which had changed again. Night was gone, day was gone. Instead, it was as if the skin of the world had been peeled back to show the magic beneath. Everything pulsed with it, in different colors and tones. The earth itself hummed with rich green energy, and each tree, every drop of water that coursed across the surface of the land, gleamed and sang.
He didn’t stop thrusting, rubbing himself along h
er. “What…?” he panted.
“I don’t know.” Yet she wasn’t afraid.
The earth was covered in a webwork, a net of power, from each animal, each human and flora, pinpointed with bright, heated loci that revealed the hundreds of Sources scattered across the globe. Thalia could see them all, wanted to reach out to them and hold them in her hands. But she would not release Gabriel. She gripped his shoulders tightly.
“Beautiful,” he breathed. His hips drew back, then forward, another plunge, and the Sources gleamed brighter. “I want to see. Everything. You. Beautiful Thalia.”
She mewled a protest when he slid out of her. Rising up onto his knees, he rolled her over, onto her stomach, then gently pulled her up so that she was on her hands and knees. As he maneuvered her, the landscape dimmed, the Sources began to fade. But when he took hold of her hips and pumped into her, everything blazed brightly again. Thalia could watch the swirling, living planet while Gabriel claimed her, took her without restraint, embedding himself in her dark secret places. Mating, like animals. She began to expand with ecstasy.
He was a clever animal. One hand left its grasp on her hip to reach forward, finding the flushed, full nub that nestled in her sex. His fingers stroked, rubbed. All the while, he kept his strong, sure pace. Thalia was consumed with limitless pleasure. She heard the insistent sounds of their flesh meeting, his hips to her buttocks. And as she neared closer and closer to the pinnacle, the energy of the world and the Sources grew brighter and brighter.
It hit her, the culmination. Her scream couldn’t be stopped. She felt herself completely torn apart, but in the best possible way. The frame that contained Thalia Burgess disappeared and was replaced by pure sensation. Moments later, Gabriel followed, stiffening, groaning her name. And she came all over again, hearing her name on his lips, feeling him pulse within her.
And as they both careened into fulfillment, everything expanded to dazzling, blinding brightness, until they were swallowed by it. All Thalia could think was, Yes, this is right, and even more so because my love is inside me.
Then, in the darkness that followed, she and Gabriel slept, two slick bodies twined together as if nothing could ever separate them.
It was the best morning of her life, and also the strangest. Thalia awoke in the warm shelter of Gabriel’s arms, both of them quite naked under the covers. Feeling the firm heat of him, nestled close behind her, she recalled the events of the night before. Every moment of their sex came back to her with such vibrant clarity, she shivered.
For a long time, Thalia had wondered what it would be like to go to bed with a man. She’d known since adolescence the mechanics involved, but even the frantic groping she’d had with Sergei hadn’t prepared her for what it would truly be like to have a man fill her with his body, and not any man, but Gabriel. Whatever old ideas Thalia had about sex were gone, destroyed in the wake of the pure wonder they had shared. Though she’d enjoyed their sex outside the nadaam feast, within the sanctuary of their own ger, they’d been able to let themselves fully go, and go they did. Into a place she could not describe.
Had she imagined it, the dissolving of the tent, the revelation of the Sources? Could it have been an enchantment?
His voice behind her came as a husky surprise. She’d thought him asleep. She should have known by now that his soldier’s senses were too sharp to let him sleep deeply.
“It wasn’t a dream,” he rumbled, and she felt the low vibrations of his voice everywhere. His hand pressed low and warm on the curve of her stomach. She responded immediately to his touch as heavy desire tumbled through her. His words alone dampened her.
Thalia rolled to face him, and in the faint haze of dawn light that filtered in through the top of the ger, the planes of his face were slightly smoother, less hard. To lie with him like this, skin to skin, was an intoxication she had never imagined. And his smile, sweet Heaven, was an intimate promise.
“You felt it, too?” she asked.
She moved so that one of her legs draped across his, and she could feel the heat and soft skin of his genitals brushing against her thigh. He wasn’t fully erect, but she vividly recalled the feel of him in her hands, in her body.
His arms tightened around her. “I felt everything,” he said, gravelly with morning. Within moments, he was almost completely hard, pressing into her skin, hot and ready. “Your mouth,” he said, nipping at her lips, “your neck,” he continued, trailing his tongue down and then over her collarbone, “your delicious, delicious breasts”—large, warm palms covered them, her nipples stiffening into sensitive points, then his hand moved lower, between her legs, which she began to spread without thinking—“and your silky, tight—”
“No,” Thalia panted, trying to keep her mind clear, which was nigh impossible when he touched her. “The…other part…the stars and the…Sources.”
His hand stilled, and he rested his head in the curve of her neck. “That, too,” he said.
“What was it?”
“I can’t figure.”
“Maybe the ruby.”
He rubbed the slight bristle of his beard against her, and the abrasion was exquisite. “The birds didn’t react to it,” he murmured. His fingers caressed the back of her leg in slow, liquid strokes that gathered heat in her sex.
Thalia’s eyes began to drift shut, but she forced them open. “Gabriel, please, you have to stop. I can’t concentrate when you…oh, God…do that.”
Unfortunately, he listened to her, and rolled onto his back with his hands behind his head. “Can’t seem to help myself,” he admitted ruefully, “where you’re concerned. But you’re right,” he continued. “We need to figure out two things. If the ruby isn’t a Source, what is, and what happened to us last night.”
He sat up, a tight focused expression on his face. “I need to question Bold and his family. They must have fed us something. Maybe our food was drugged.”
“Drugged?” Thalia repeated. “They ate exactly the same food we did. Drank the same tea.”
Gabriel threw back the covers and rose to his feet before starting for his clothing, which, Thalia noted, was strewn around the ger as if wild animals had attacked their luggage. But no, they had been the animals. She recalled his taking her from behind, like a stallion. Ah, she’d have to keep her mind away from last night, or else she’d forget everything and demand he return to bed immediately. Gabriel seemed to transition well enough, she noted dryly. He’d returned to the role of soldier, and while Thalia again drank in the sight of his superb nude body, he paid no attention to his state of undress. Instead, he quickly gathered his garments and put them on, muttering just loud enough for her to hear. “They could have taken some kind of antidote beforehand,” he said, dragging on his trousers. “So they wouldn’t be affected.”
“Why would they do that?” Thalia asked, also rising up from the bed. The covers fell away, and the cool morning air inside the ger touched her nakedness. Her nipples tightened.
In the middle of buttoning his shirt, Gabriel glanced at her, and his fingers stilled while his eyes narrowed. He growled—there was no other word for it. A primitive thrill coursed through her.
Focus, Thalia, she commanded herself. She hunted down her clothes. Trousers, drawers, del, socks and…scraps of cotton? She held up the pieces and realized that the fabric was all that remained of her chemise, which Gabriel had torn off her body. He recognized the chemise, too, judging by the flush creeping up his neck.
Gabriel returned to the buttons of his shirt, which for some reason seemed a difficult task for his agile fingers.
“Maybe,” he began, but his voice was too full of gravel, so he cleared his throat and tried again. He busied himself with the last of his shirt buttons, then pulled on his waistcoat. “They didn’t want foreigners guarding the ruby, getting close to its magic, using it.” Gabriel checked the ruby’s case and was satisfied when he found it safe.
“They could have just prohibited us from entering the nadaam,” Thalia pointed out.
“Probably, they didn’t think we could win,” he said, rumbling. He pulled on his boots, strapped on his revolver and knife, and donned his jacket. “The Heirs might have had a hand in it, too.”
Thalia plucked a fresh chemise from her pack and finished dressing, shaking her head. “We should talk to Bold and Oyuun,” she said. “Not question or interrogate them. They have been our generous hosts until now, and I cannot insult them.” Fully clothed, Thalia faced Gabriel, placing her hands on his chest as he started for the door. “I will do the talking.”
He grumbled at this, but saw that she would not be dissuaded. “If there’s anything suspect,” he vowed, “then I’ll be the one breaking bones. You stay out of danger.” Thalia started to protest, yet his will matched her own. “Is that clear?”
Seeing that there was no way around him, she answered dryly, “Yes, sir.”
He looked down at her hands on him. Gone immediately was the toughened soldier, and his expression turned to something much more warm, and so incredibly wonderful it felt like pain. He picked up her hands in his own and kissed the backs of each, but it wasn’t exactly gallant, not the way his golden eyes glinted with undisguised sexual hunger. For her.
“I like this very much,” he said, nibbling on the tips of her fingers. “An army of two.”
“Who’s in command?” she answered as she fought for breath.
What a wicked smile he had. “Let’s take turns.”
There was no way to make her questions sound anything but accusatory, so Thalia figured the best approach was to be as straightforward as possible. Naturally, Bold and Oyuun both denied having put anything into Thalia or Gabriel’s food or drink. Oyuun, particularly, looked hurt by the questions, and Thalia could not blame her. Mongols took their hospitality quite seriously, and their guests had cast doubts on one of the most important tenets of their culture. It wouldn’t take much for word to spread from herdsman to herdsman that the white Mongol woman was one of those strange and foul creatures known as an ungrateful guest. Thalia and her father would not be welcome anywhere.