“Tell me about her.”
“She was a pediatric oncologist. She didn’t want to marry me until her training was complete. But I persuaded her that once she finished her first residency we should get married. And as soon as she had her residency complete, she died.” Lars cleared his throat.
“What’s a pediatric what-do-you-call-it?” Nicole asked.
“Oncologist. She was a doctor who treated children with cancer. She worked at the Children’s Hospital, working out treatment plans for children with leukemia.”
“An important job. You must’ve been proud of her.”
“Oh, yes. She was so smart. Everyone said she was brilliant. She invented a new therapeutic schedule that worked many times better than the old ones had.” He broke off.
“So her death left a hole in the world,” Nicole observed quietly.
Lars nodded.
“You didn’t have any children?”
“She was pregnant.” Lars coughed. “When she died.”
Nicole put a tender hand on his. “A double loss.”
“Yes.” He couldn’t do this. He didn’t deserve this kind and lovely woman. “They died together.” He began buttoning his shirt again.
“You miss her?”
“Every day.” Lars waved a hand. “She died alone,” he confessed.
“What do you mean?” There was only kindness on Nicole’s face.
“I was on maneuvers. She went to bed and was dead in the morning – alone.”
Nicole stood on tiptoe and gripped his forearms. She stared up into his face. “Matteo said she died of bleeding in the brain. How could you have prevented that, even if you had been home?”
“I would have sensed that she was ill. I could have helped her take dragon and heal herself.”
“Surely, she had taken dragon many times? Why didn’t that heal her brain?”
“What do you mean? She had an aneurysm.”
“I mean, if she had an underlying weakness in a blood vessel, why didn’t that get healed when she became a dragoness? She did become a dragoness, didn’t she?”
“She did. And we flew together many times, and danced as you and I have danced.” Guilt made his voice hard.
“Did you ever think,” her hands gripped his arms tightly. “That maybe that extended her life? That perhaps taking dragoness meant that she didn’t die in her teens?”
Lars shook his head. Could that even be possible? He had never thought to look at Annalise’s life like that. “She shouldn’t have died so young.”
“No argument there. Do you think she would have wanted you to blame yourself for her death?” He could hardly hear Nicole’s soft voice.
He pulled one arm away so he could wipe his eyes. “She was everything that was generous and giving,” he said.
“Then she would want you to be happy, wouldn’t she?”
Lars stared down into Nicole’s face. Her hazel eyes were grave. Her beauty was of such a different kind from Annalise’s that he felt a fresh wave of guilt. He did not deserve this second chance at happiness. If he had not left his mate alone perhaps she and their fireling would have lived. “Of course, she would’ve wanted me to be happy. But if I hadn’t been so wrapped up in my own career, I would have been at home.”
Nicole shook him gently. Her hands were too small to really get a grip on his biceps but she tried. “You don’t know that. And it sounds as though she was involved with her career too. Would it have been better to wake up next your dead wife? Would that have made her death easier to bear?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought – part of me always feels that if I had only been home I could have stopped it. Do you understand?” He pulled away and went and stared out of the window.
Nicole spoke to his back. “I do. I often wonder if my mother would have died if I had insisted on going with her to the hospital. I never saw her again after she was admitted. Stan had her cremated. Sometimes I dream that she is still alive. But that’s just foolish. How could a visit from me have stopped her from dying of cancer?”
“You haven’t tried to replace her,” Lars pointed out. The grimness in his voice didn’t seem to affect her.
“Oh, yes, I did. In Tia Luisa and Tia Evita, and even in Dolores, I found not one but three replacement mothers. I transferred a lot of love to them. And sometimes when I was younger I would wake and wonder if this meant I didn’t love my mother anymore. But of course, it meant the opposite. It meant I missed her because she had been a good mother and very loving. She had taught me to love. And eventually I came to realize that she wouldn’t have minded in the least. She would’ve been happy that I had found women worthy of my love.”
“She wasn’t your mate.”
“No. Are you supposed to grieve for your mate forever?”
“Everyone says not.” Lars sighed. “But dragons are a faithful race. When we are bonded it’s supposed to be forever.”
“And yet you just said you thought that we were bonded,” Nicole continued.
Lars turned back to look at her. “Maybe I just want to have sex,” he blurted.
“And you have to be bonded to have sex?” Nicole laughed.
“Yes. No. I suppose that sounds foolish to you?”
“If you just wanted to have sex, why are you talking about marriage and forever?”
“I suppose the two go together in my mind. Annalise is the only woman I have ever made love with.”
“The only one? You never dated anyone else?”
“I was nineteen when I fell in love with her. We did all our exploring together. And after she died – that part of my life died too.”
“Do you think she would mind if you made love with me?”
“I’m being irrational, aren’t I?” Lars knew he was making a fool of himself. But all he saw on Nicole’s face was kindness and concern.
“Grief is an irrational emotion. And we are all entitled to grieve and be irrational.”
“This is some kind of crazy foreplay,” Lars said pulling her into his arms. “You must think I’m nuts.”
“No. Just – conflicted. Do you want to kiss me again?”
He lifted her to his mouth and let his dragon loose.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Nicole had not thought that she would be the one taking charge. Lars was the one who had been properly married and had all the experience. As he had so succinctly told her, she had never made love before. She pitied him quite sincerely for having been widowed. He had spoken of his wife with so much love and affection, that she had imagined that Annalise must have been the most beautiful and desirable and intelligent woman ever born.
But the photographs that Lars had shown her displayed a tall, raw-boned woman with the sort of face people usually described as good-humored. Nicole didn’t doubt the depth of Lars’ feelings for his late wife. Or that she had been both kind and clever. But she was no fashion plate. Just a big, flat-chested, narrow-hipped athlete. From her heavy, bowl-cut, yellow hair to her sensible Birkenstocks, and workmanlike jeans and shirt, Annalise exuded competence rather than glamor.
Yet Lars clearly thought Annalise had been beautiful. Love colored everyone’s perceptions. Just as maternal love meant that she thought the sun shone out of Matteo. And that she remembered her own mother with a halo of kindly memories. Lars’ love for Annalise had rendered a rather plain young woman as sensual perfection, so Nicole had to hope his affection for herself would make her seem desirable and lovely too. She had not doubted his desire earlier. But now he seemed overwhelmed by sadness and guilt.
Annalise had been intimidatingly accomplished. Not just a doctor, not just a pediatrician, but a doctor who specialized in treating cancer. Nicole had never even been to college. Even if she had stayed in the States she doubted if she would have gone. That wasn’t what they did in her family. But Nicole could see that she had something that Lars did not – wisdom. She understood that Lars was not pushing her away so much as trying to honor his late wife by resisting
his attraction to another woman. That made Nicole respect him more, not less. It made him more desirable in her eyes. Not that he wasn’t hot. He was six-foot-six of hard, handsome masculinity.
She gathered her courage. “Do you want to kiss me? You did earlier.”
She was so much shorter than he was, he had to lift her. But he was so strong that his arms didn’t even tremble. She was a little worried. Lars’ kisses were gentle and exploratory and his hands on her waist were firm but not urgent. He held her so that her breasts pressed against his chest. But he didn’t try to grind his hardness into her softness.
“You could kiss me back,” he whispered into the corner of her mouth.
She realized her hands were still braced on his arms as if she wished to push him away. She let them circle his neck and play with the bristly hairs at the nape. She began to match his soft and tender nibbling. And then they were moving into the hall towards her bedroom. He sat down on the bed so she could sit astride him.
She could feel his thick, hard cock against her mound now. But still he didn’t force her against it. He concentrated on her mouth. His tongue traced the seam but didn’t ask for entry. He kissed first one corner and then the other and returned to her bottom lip where she felt the scrape of teeth followed by the soothing caress of his relaxed tongue.
His mouth was softer than it looked. And his beard crisper. It tickled where it rubbed against her chin and upper lip. She opened her mouth with a sigh of pleasure, and still his tongue did not enter. So she did some exploring of her own. He tasted of toothpaste, and sex. Of some indescribable flavor that was uniquely Lars. Masculine, potent, and powerful.
She slid her tongue along his and tempted it into tasting her. And still he did not try to overwhelm her. He kissed her as if they had all night to press their lips together and learn what pleased the other. Something tight inside her began to unwind. She let herself lean more fully onto his body. And his arms moved from her waist up between her shoulder blades and kneaded gently.
It seemed a long time later when he began to kiss her cheeks and eyes and move towards her earlobes. He caught one between thumb and forefinger gently pulsed while his mouth sucked with the same rhythm on the other. She felt his gentle caress down the side of her neck as an electric shock that sparked straight to her breasts. As though he had found a channel to pleasure she hadn’t known existed. She heard herself moan with surprise. Even to her own ears she sounded needy and desperate. Her panties felt wet. That never happened before. She wanted to feel those big gentle hands on her breasts, but she wasn’t sure how to ask.
“Am I going too fast for you?” He asked in her ear.
She shook her head, afraid to speak.
“Do you want me to stop?” Couldn’t he tell how aroused she was? Apparently not, because he stopped altogether and moved so that he could look at her face. “It has to be right for you,” he said. “I don’t want to do anything you that you don’t like or don’t want.”
She could feel the blood in her face as a hot mask. “I’m enjoying myself,” she said primly. “Can’t you tell?”
“It seems that way to me,” he assured her. “But I want this to be perfect. And I know you’ve been dreading this first time. So tell me if you want me to stop. Or if you prefer to stick with necking tonight.”
“Necking! We are married. Married people don’t neck.”
He chuckled. “Married people can do whatever they like. And necking is just part of what we are allowed to do. I want to touch you, Nicole. But you have to want it too. It can’t be something I’m doing to you. It has to be something we’re doing together.” A big forefinger stroked her cheek. “You’re shy, but there isn’t any reason. Everything you’re feeling, I’m feeling too. You’re making my heart race, and my breath pant, and my cock hard.”
Her giggle surprised her. “I don’t have a cock,” she corrected on a gasp.
“When you’re aroused, your clit gets hard. It’s the same. Except it’s more sensitive.”
“Do we have to have the light on?” Nicole asked.
Lars didn’t answer, he just reached for the switch on the lamp. The room plunged into inky darkness. Gradually the windows became ghostly rectangles where the moonlight seeped around the edges of the California blinds. She could just make out Lars’ face as a pale blur above hers.
“Shy?” he asked huskily. A hand found her shoulder and traced a line down to her hand. He brought it to his lips and kissed it.
“I guess so.” Nicole couldn’t keep the defensiveness out of her voice. “I’ve had a baby.”
“And you don’t want to me to look at your body?”
“I’m pudgy.”
Hand gently squeezed her waist. “Luscious,” he reproved.
“I’m fat. And I jiggle.”
“Womanly,” he corrected. “Soft. Curvy.”
“And I have a fat ass.”
Lars chuckled against her breast. Both hands grasped her buttocks and kneaded. “I like that in a woman. Your rump is supple and bouncy. Perfect.” His beard taunted one nipple, and when he spoke she felt the words as a vibration through her whole body.
“And I’m covered in stretch marks.”
“That’s life. I have a few scars of my own. And I’m starting to go gray.”
Nicole’s fingers found the place on his chest where earlier she had seen small, jagged, white marks. “You were injured?”
“A bunch of times. Nothing serious. And dragons heal quickly. But I’m not the man I was.”
She caressed his scars. “Honorable wounds,” she said.
“Those ones were caused by being stupid,” he said. “I should’ve been more careful.” His fingers traced radiating lines from her nipples to her armpits. “At least you have scars that show you had a baby. I have ones to remind me that I’m an idiot in a crisis.”
“What happened?”
“I zigged when I should have zagged. Do you mind if we discuss this another time?”
“It’s not very romantic, is it?” She sighed. “I’m not the romantic type.”
“We can skip romance, and just go straight to having fun. Why don’t you just lie back and think of Sweden?”
Nicole couldn’t help it. She began to laugh so hard she curled into a ball. She’d never thought about making love as something lighthearted that you could make jokes about. Lars didn’t seem to mind that she was convulsed with the giggles. His big hands stroked her back softly, and his own chuckles reverberated against the nape of her neck. “If you won’t let me look at you,” he said, “How about if I just look at you with my hands?”
“Okay.” Her voice was a little strangled.
He returned her to his lap. The edge of his forefinger moved slowly down the tendon that ran at an angle along her neck. His lips nibbled where his touch had left a trail of heat. In the dark she moaned.
“Do you like that?” he asked huffing into the hollow of her throat.
“Hmm.” She had no words for the waves of pleasure that followed his caresses.
He outlined her collarbones with two fingers and tap danced above her breasts. Her nipples tightened in anticipation. Lars buried his face between her breasts and breathed in deeply. “You smell delicious,” he told her.
His beard was tickling the sensitive skin of her breasts through her T-shirt. He used it to draw concentric circles around and around them. He teased first one and then the other, stopping just short of her aching nipples.
“More,” she begged, holding his head.
“I’m in no rush,” he said moving back to her other breast. This time his kisses dampened the fabric which made the gentle brush of his beard even more intense.
“Lars,” she squealed. She never squealed!
“Yes, my dear?”
“Kiss my nipples.”
“Your wish is my command.” He pulled the T-shirt over her head. Her bra followed it into the darkness. His mouth took the whole aching berry of her left breast into his mouth and laved it gentl
y with his tongue. “Hard or soft?” he asked on his way to the right.
“Hard,” she gasped. Her wet nipple felt bereft, but Lars squeezed it between thumb and forefinger. Electricity shot clear to her pussy which began to throb.
He sucked hard on her right nipple, pressing the stiff bud up against the roof of his mouth. Beneath him she began to buck. Waves of contractions spilling through her body caught her by surprise. Lars stopped his suckling and moved his hands to her buttocks. He kneaded them in time with her aftershocks. His gentle massage seemed to make the pulses go on and on. He must have had hands of steel because he didn’t stop. He stripped her shorts away and kept going.
He knelt above her and moved his hands down the backs of her thighs, now stroking, now squeezing. She felt the rhythmic tremors there too, as if her pleasure was extending into infinity. He kneaded the backs of her calves, her ankles. He kissed and stroked her feet, tasting her toes and blowing on them so that tingles ran up the front of her legs and made her vagina clench.
“Lovely,” he whispered against her skin.
By the time he moved to the front of her legs she was writhing with anticipation. He brushed his beard up her thighs, lifted one knee and bent it so he could favor the delicate skin of her inner thigh with a string of nipping kisses. She covered her mound with her hands, suddenly shy.
“Pity,” he murmured into her skin. He moved to the other leg and bit lightly at the junction of thigh and torso. She jerked convulsively. He chuckled and she felt the vibration deep inside. He moved back down to her knee, his hands shaping the outsides of her legs and then returning to cup her hips.
And then he was sucking hard on her nipples again. Back and forth. He stroked her belly in a line that stopped at her panties. And then went back up to her breasts. The combination of gentle caresses on the undersides of her breasts and the suckling on her nipples shot her into another orgasm, stronger and more delicious than the first. Again he caressed her while her flesh quivered and the spasms went on and on.
A long time later, when she was lying boneless on his chest feeling satiated and cherished, Nicole realized she had done nothing to please Lars. She tried to rouse herself, “It’s your turn now,” she said sleepily.
Dragon's Possession (BBW / Dragon Shifter Romance) (Lords of the Dragon Islands Book 4) Page 17