The Bargaining

by Christine Warren

  She struggled hard against the restraints of lingering unconsciousness and managed to get her arms off the bed to wrap them around his neck. She cradled his head to her breast, enjoying the slightly rough texture of stubble-covered skin, and her other hand gripped his shoulder to keep him in place. It was reflex, because he didn’t seem inclined to go anywhere.

  On the contrary, she felt him shift to cover her more fully and she whimpered in excitement. Her legs shifted and parted to let him settle between, then lifted to twine about his to grip him close. He rumbled in pleasure, and she felt the vibrations all the way down to her toes. They traveled through her nipple to her belly to the aching space within her and her hips arched in an effort to assuage the nagging emptiness. It wouldn’t remain empty for long.

  The frantic tugging at his shoulders, the restless arching of her body beneath his, the urgent tenor of her whimpers and moans seemed to finally be getting through to him. Lifting his head from her breast, he shifted above her, settling more firmly between her legs. The width of his torso urged her thighs further apart until she felt his hips settle just where she wanted them, pressed up against the burning ache at her core.

  With her eyes still shut, there was nothing to distract her from him, from the feel of him above her. Her breath caught in her chest as she waited for his next movement. She wanted it more than she could ever remember wanting anything before. She needed to feel him enter her, possess her, make her his. In the back of her mind, she had a vague feeling that this need should surprise her, that it was something different from anything she’d ever experienced before. The feeling threatened to niggle at her, but Kili pushed it aside. She had more important things to think about. More pleasant ones.

  Tossing her head on the pillow beneath her, she moaned again and let her nails bite into the hard muscles of his shoulders. He didn’t even flinch, but growled instead and slid his hands down her sides, over her ribs and hips and thighs before snaking beneath her to grip the round fullness of her bottom in his large, warm hands. She gave herself up to him, let him place her as he wanted her and just held on with all her might.

  The unexpected tenderness of a kiss to the base of her throat provided the last rush she needed to force her eyes open. Blinking against the dim light of the room around her, Kili found herself looking up into the warm, smiling eyes of Eric Deacon just as he pulled her closer and entered her for the first time.

  It felt like a miracle.

  Kili could tell her eyes had gone wide and unfocused at the first slick, slow glide of Deacon’s cock inside her. He entered not with a heavy thrust, but with an inexorable push, opening her up to himself in a way that was entirely new to her. In that moment, it didn’t matter what she had done before, who she had done before, none of it. The only thing that mattered was that this was Deacon, and for him, she had been made brand new.

  He pushed deeply inside her, stretching her, filling her more completely than she had ever felt. When he finally came to rest against the mouth of her cervix, his pelvis cradled tightly against hers, Kili felt as if she were overflowing with him. The part that surprised her was how beautiful the feeling was.

  Before, this act had always made her feel used and inhuman. It had been about power and subjugation; but this time, with this man, it had become something else, something about beauty and sharing and communication. Communion, between two souls.

  She felt herself blinking away tears as she stared up into his beautiful dark eyes, and she saw him frown in concern.

  “Are you all right, baby?” he asked, his voice rough and low and tender. “Is it too much? Do you need me to stop?”

  Struggling for control, Kili shook her head. She still couldn’t speak, so she did the only thing she could think of. She brought her hand up to his cheek and cupped it in her palm, guiding him down for a kiss full of all the wonder and affection and passion and love she had discovered with this man. She gave it all to him and smiled when an echoing look of wonder and love shone in his eyes.

  The dam broke. Groaning in unbearable pleasure, Deacon braced himself on his forearms and, eyes still locked with Kili’s, began to thrust slowly and carefully in and out of her body. She met his every turn. Raising her hips in welcome, she took him into her body, experiencing for the first time the wonder of this union, the way it could lift both of them above the realm of ordinary experience and into a place of exquisite pleasure.

  Still, as close to paradise as Kili might have imagined herself, the demands her body began to make had a decidedly earthly feel to them. A coil of tension began to wind deep inside her, tightened with each heavy stroke of Deacon’s cock within her. She shifted restlessly beneath him, not because she wanted to get away, but because arousal had her wound so tight she was unable to keep still.

  Her legs hitched higher up his flank, pulling him closer with unmistakable demand. She heard a rough chuckle, one that quickly faded into a groan as he quickened his pace. He moved much faster now, his thrusts an uneven rhythm of in and out, spreading her wide, allowing her channel to collapse as he withdrew, then forging ahead again, stroking each of a million nerve endings.

  Her own whimpers seemed to echo in her head, filling the air around them with a soundtrack of urgency. She urged him on, encouraging him to thrust harder, deeper, faster, more. She wanted another of those glorious explosions of feeling she had experienced earlier when he used his mouth on her. She could feel it building up, looming on the horizon, and she stretched her hands toward it. She wanted everything he had to give, needed it, would find a way to have it!

  Even as her own thoughts hit her, so did the climax. Deacon thrust forward with a mighty growl, stretching her wide, giving her one last fraction of an inch, finding one last nerve ending against which she lacked any power to struggle. Her eyes flew open on a wave of ecstasy and an epiphany of thought.

  She was taking what he had to give!

  She, a lowly woman, a sex slave, was taking what she wanted from a man. And not only was Kili taking it, but Deacon offered it freely. Her newly opened eyes searched his, saw the lust and the kindness and the love shining from them, and as he too tumbled over the cliff with a groan, Kili said the only thing she could think of. The only word in her mind or heart, the only thing she thought would ever matter to her again.

  “Deacon.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Kili awoke for the final time that night, from the smile down. She felt better than she could ever remember feeling in her life, warm, drowsy, and very thoroughly satisfied. Stretching like a sleepy kitten, she rolled to her side and found herself bumping into a very solid, immovable object. Her smile widened.

  “Ah. She lives.”

  His voice rumbled against her ear, warm and gruff and amused. Kili’s smile turned into a grin and she snuggled closer against his broad chest. “Was there much doubt left in your mind?”

  His arms snaked around her, pulling her closer and carrying her with him as he rolled onto his back in the enormous bed they shared. “The last few hours helped a little, but you gave me a hell of a scare on the shuttle.” He tilted her chin up and gave her a very stern look. “Don’t you ever do anything like that ever again. Understand?”

  “I understand,” she said, smiling and reaching up to place a soft kiss on his chin. “But honestly, I don’t think you have to worry. I don’t remember what happened on the shuttle. I doubt if I could reproduce it if I tried.”

  “Damn right you can’t.”

  The fierceness of his answered startled her, and Kili shifted her gaze back to his face. “Deacon, what happened? Was it really that bad?”

  “I thought you were going to die.” His arms tightened around her in a bruising grip before he got control of himself and loosened them again. “We had no idea what was happening. None of us guessed those bastards had been poisoning you, and even if we had known, the shuttle wasn’t equipped to deal with that sort of emergency. We nearly lost you.”

  She heard the anxiety in his voice and s
troked a soothing hand over his chest. “You didn’t. I’m right here.” Something had her confused, though. “What makes you think I had been poisoned, though? Surely I would have been sick earlier if that had happened. After all, I had not eaten or drunk anything other than what you shared in nearly a whole day. Is there a poison that could have waited so long before taking effect?”

  “It wasn’t waiting,” he growled. “You’d been feeling the effects for so long, I doubt you noticed when they first started.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m calling it poison, Kili, because that’s what it is. It’s something called histiopolycantharadine. In the real world, it’s considered a very unpleasant toxin. But apparently that’s not what they use it for on Ankhar.”

  Killi watched him, clearly confused. “What are you talking about?”

  “HPC was developed from a number of very, very old folk medicines,” Deacon explained. “It started showing up available to the general public about five years ago. It’s used as an aphrodisiac.”

  Kili felt Deacon watching her and shook her head slowly. “What are you talking about? An aphrodisiac?”

  Deacon nodded, his expression grim. “A drug used to induce sexual arousal. In an infrequent, small dose, it was used as a date rape drug when it first hit the market. After all, you can’t call it rape when she was begging you to fuck her, can you?”

  His expression of distaste made his feelings on that subject quite clear.

  Kili digested his words very slowly. “You mean, someone gave me that drug so that I would want to have sex with you? But why?”

  “No one wanted you to have sex with me, Kili, and this was not a small, infrequent dose. The doctor on board here estimates that you’ve been given increasing amounts of the drug for the last six to eight years.”

  Her mind went blank, completely blank. Every single thing she had been preparing to say disappeared as she stared slack-jawed at the man beside her. “Eight years? Someone was poisoning me for eight years and I never noticed? How is that even possible? How was I not dead long ago?”

  He ran a soothing hand down her back, whether for her benefit or for his, she wasn’t sure.

  “We’re not sure, but the doc is guessing that they cut the HCP with another drug to buffer the toxicity. In your case, all you would have gotten was the arousal, not the brain aneurysm.” He watched her carefully. “Do you understand what I’m saying, baby? This was just another way they kept you prisoner on that shithole. They drugged you so that you needed sex -- an actual, physical need, and they used it against you to keep you under their thumbs. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Kili gave him a lopsided smile. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice quiet. “That must have been why I used you so poorly at the prison. I had no idea what I was doing; I just felt as if I needed you so desperately ...”

  Deacon nodded, his hand still stroking. “That was the drug. It’s also why you had the seizure in the shuttle. Do you remember what you were feeling just before you blacked out?”

  She blushed. “I was hot. And restless. And I couldn’t stop thinking about earlier, in your cell. When you ... touched me. It felt so good. Even though I knew how much danger we were in, I just wanted you to do it again.”

  “The drug. It’s counteracted by the release of endorphins and other chemicals in the brain during an orgasm. That’s why you felt better after you came but why the need came back on the shuttle.”

  Kili heard the carefully even tone of his voice and felt the new tension in his body. She lifted her head to gaze up at him. His expression was blank, but she saw something in his eyes that made her frown. Was it unhappiness? Doubt? Fear? She gazed at him for a long minute before the light dawned and a slow smile spread across her face. “Do you think that’s why I wanted you this time? Do you think this is still because of the drug?”

  She heard his breath hiss in between his teeth as she reached down and closed her hand around his semi-erect cock, bringing it to full hardness in the space of a heartbeat.

  “The doctor -- he said ... no,” he panted, his eyes squeezing shut. “Says you ... you’ve been off it since at least yesterday afternoon. You should be ... ah ... almost clear.”

  “Right,” she said. Smiling down at him, Kili slithered her way across his chest, twining her legs with his under the warm blankets, her hand stroking slowly up and down his impressive length. “I feel pretty clear. How about you?”

  She heard another hiss of air. Her mouth curved into a smile as she pressed it to his shoulder, then his chest, then the first of his ribs.

  “I’m ... I’m ... clear.”

  She flicked the tip of her tongue over his nipple and felt more than his voice tremble. She loved it, loved the idea of giving him pleasure. Suddenly sex had become something fun for her, something in which she could have power and control, something that could give her as much pleasure as her partner. For the first time, the man in her bed felt like a partner and she found herself enjoying what she could do to him with the stroke of her hand or the brush of her lips. This was no longer a duty; this was an enthralling new game.

  Her smile stretched into a grin as she worked her way down his chest, leaving a trail of warm, wet kisses behind her. “Good,” she purred, kicking their blankets aside so she could feast her eyes on him, taking in every inch of his big, muscular body and sleek, dark skin. He was glorious. “Because I think I need someone to teach me the difference between drug-induced arousal and the real thing. Think you’re up to the job?”

  There was a brief moment of silence before Deacon’s head fell back to his pillow and his chest shook with a deep laugh. Reaching down, he squeezed her fingers tighter around his erection. “What do you think? Do I feel up to you?”

  Kili giggled, the shared laughter in their shared bed like the last bandage over an old, healing wound. “I think there’s only one way to tell, Deacon. What do you think?”

  His teeth flashed white against the darkness as he suddenly grabbed her and rolled, shifting their positions until she lay on her back beneath him, laughing up at him. “I think,” he growled playfully, “that if I teach you the difference between drug-induced arousal and the real thing, you’re going to have to give me something in return.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “I teach you about arousal,” he said, his smile fading and his expression growing suddenly serious, “and you teach me about love.”

  The world opened up inside Kili’s chest, or at least that’s what it felt like. She heard his words and suddenly her heart seemed to grow twice the size it had been before. All she could do was stare up at him, surprise and wonder shining from her eyes.

  So this is it. This is what joy feels like.

  Deacon lifted a hand, gently brushing the hair away from her face. “Well?” he prompted. “What do you say?”

  With a smile fit to light the world, Kili wrapped her arms and legs and heart around the man above her and vowed never to let him go.

  “I say you have a bargain.”

  Christine Warren

  Since her early days of hiding the luridly covered paperbacks under her pillows so her parents wouldn't catch her reading past her bedtime, Christine Warren has suffered an addiction to romance novels. After penning everything from poems to short stories to screenplays, she discovered her real calling in erotic romance and happily penned her first ebook about a sexy Russian vampire and a woman with too many friends.

  Christine spends most of her time thinking about sex-which is really no different from what she's always done-but now she puts those thoughts into her computer screen and hopes her audience enjoys reading them as much as she enjoys writing them! She loves to hear from readers, who can email her through the website, www.christinewarren.net, or directly at Christine@christinewarren.net.

  * * * * *

  Read on for a tantalizing glimpse of

  Mine

  by Jill Noelle

  Available Now from Loose
Id

  Mine

  “Lovely,” Michel whispered. “Come here.”

  Gabriella tentatively placed her hand in his outstretched palm, and then gasped as he jerked her forward, bringing her up flush against his chest. She tipped her head back, searching his face for some clue as to how she should react. She met his steely gaze and shivered as he lowered his head and brushed her lips with the softest of kisses.

  “Tonight, you are mine,” he told her, his breath hot against her cheek. “All mine.”

  “Yes,” she replied on a sigh, wrapping her arms around his neck. She arched forward and rubbed her breasts against his chest.

  With a low growl, he scooped her into his arms and carried her to the bed, gently depositing her in the middle of the soft mattress. Gabriella scooted back, resting against the mound of down-filled pillows. Through lowered lashes, she watched him remove his shirt. She devoured him with her eyes, her breath catching just like it always did when faced with his finely toned beauty.

  Unashamed, she let her gaze roam down over his firm abdomen, biting her lip to stifle a sigh of pleasure when he slipped his thumbs into the waistband of his pants and slid them down over his hips.

  “Gabriella.”

  His voice seemed to come from far away.

  “Yes?”

  “Look at me.”

  “I am looking at you,” she said. Hell, she couldn't stop looking at him. He was magnificent. From his broad, tanned shoulders to his well-shaped calves, he appeared more god-like than human. Her fingers itched to touch him, to explore the texture of his skin and gauge his response.

  “Gabriella.”

  With a sigh, she raised her gaze and met his eyes. “Yes, Michel?”