It was a small admission, and it didn’t tell her of the terrible driving need he couldn’t seem to get back under control, but she felt it. Felt his tension rising instead of dissipating. The energy was relentless, demanding every ounce of force it could get from their union.
Dahlia had to tug her hands loose to frame his face. She forced her body to relax beneath his, accepting the way his hands immediately began to stroke her, to claim her body for his own. He was everywhere, touching her, kissing her, scattering her thoughts in all directions while he explored her body with a voracious appetite. He didn’t leave a single spot untouched, bringing every nerve ending to life, tasting and caressing. His touch was so tender she felt close to tears, and then he was almost rough. To her astonishment and pleasure, her body responded to his with rushes of hot liquid. She felt as if she could never get enough of his body, of his touch or his kisses, always wanting more.
He took her a second time, riding her hard, needing everything she could give him so he could find peace in the midst of the whirling energy. It seemed elusive, impossible, as the pressure built inside of him, even stronger than the first explosion had been. Flames danced on the windowsill, and he wasn’t certain which of them was generating the fire this time, but he couldn’t seem to get enough of her. He couldn’t touch her enough, or kiss her enough. He wanted his mark on every inch of her body. It was imperative to know she was there under his body, accepting his possession of her, needing it in the same way he needed to bury himself inside of her.
He built the heat fast and hot, reveled in her urgent moans, kept her hungry for him, wanting him long into the night. He took her the third time with tenderness, so gently, so reverently, she climaxed almost immediately, bringing him finally to some sense of peace, as if they had finally used up all the energy engulfing them from sheer exhaustion. Nicolas pulled her body into the shelter of his and held her tightly. The air around them was blessedly still and a tranquil sense of harmony settled over him. He kissed the top of her head, rubbed her rich hair with his chin. “Are you all right?”
Dahlia looked around the room to see if they’d done any major damage. The windowsill looked a little singed, but there were no fires. She closed her eyes. “We didn’t burn anything down. I’d say that was a major plus.”
“Did I hurt you?” He nuzzled her neck. “I couldn’t seem to get enough of you no matter what I did.” He could see the marks on her breasts, her throat, even on her hip, strawberries that proclaimed she belonged to him.
She laughed softly, but didn’t open her eyes, drifting on a wave of pleasure. “I noticed. Is it supposed to be like that?”
He tunneled his fingers into her hair. “I may have gotten carried away.”
“I was always told a man couldn’t, you know, go more than once.”
“Me too. Guess we proved that myth wrong. Or maybe it was the energy pouring through the room. It can be quite useful.” The drowsy note in her voice tugged at his heartstrings. She seemed perfectly content, not questioning his darker reaction.
Nicolas stroked a finger down her cheek. She was so fragile and vulnerable lying beside him, yet he knew there was tremendous power in her small form. “Do you know how different my life is, how much you’ve changed everything in just a few short days? I never dreamt I’d be lying beside a woman and know that’s where I was supposed to be.”
Her fingers tangled with his. “It’s because I’m so restful.”
The faint twinge of humor in her voice was every bit as potent as her sultry tone. “I’m sure that’s it,” he agreed. “Go to sleep, Dahlia. I doubt if I’ll be able to wait very much longer to have you again.”
“Well restrain yourself. I’m very tired. Too tired to find my own space.” She yawned and burrowed closer to his body. “I never thought I could ever sleep like this, with someone wrapped around me. I read about it in books, and now I know why they do it. They’re so worn out they can’t move. It isn’t an option.”
Dahlia drifted to sleep with his soft laughter in her ear. She dreamed of him. Dreamed of a life with him. The sound of children laughing mingled with his laughter. She felt his arms around her, the warmth of his body close to hers, and she knew she loved him. That she would always love him. That without him, she would never feel alive again. Dahlia woke choking, her heart pounding, a cry torn from her throat.
Nicolas flung himself over her, his gun tracking around the room. “What is it, Dahlia?” He could feel her heart, wild and frenzied. His hand found hers and he pulled it to his own heart in a vain attempt to calm her. “There’s nothing here. We’re safe.”
She tried to withdraw, to tug away her hand, to roll into a ball out from under him. Nicolas was too heavy and there was too much of him. He seemed to surround her, his arms and legs everywhere.
The gun slid back beneath the pillow and he shifted to blanket her body, his hands stroking silken strands of midnight black hair from her face. “It was a bad dream, Dahlia, nothing more. We’re perfectly safe here.” Her eyes were wide with terror and he glimpsed the wounds there, raw, never healed, the wounds of a child without love or family. One that had suffered far too much. Lights flickered and shadows moved. He glanced toward the source, a window a few feet from the bed. Tiny flames danced around the wood.
He framed her face with his hands. “Calm down. Look at me, Dahlia. Tell me what’s wrong or I can’t help.”
“You! Us! What was I thinking? Let me up. I have to get up.” She pushed at his chest frantically, but without any real strength. It was more of a gesture of despair.
“Dahlia.” He said her name sharply, waited until she focused on him. “You have to tell me what’s wrong.” He bent his head to brash kisses across her eyelids, the tip of her nose. To feather coaxing little kisses along the corners of her mouth and chin. All the while he ignored the crackling of the flames along the windowsill. Dahlia had to calm her mind or the fire would spread.
“Don’t do that. Don’t make me care about you.” She pushed at him with frantic hands, her dark eyes very black and liquid with sorrow. “I can’t care about you and survive.”
“Breathe with me. Calm down so we can just sort this out together.” He kept a tight rein on his emotions, the burst of fear that he might lose her. Dahlia. Slipping through his fingers like water once again.
She calmed beneath his touch and the soothing tone, lying there looking up at him with utter terror on her face. “I can’t need anyone, Nicolas.”
“Of course not,” he replied. “We’re the same. We don’t need anyone. We’re choosing to share our time together. There’s a difference.”
Dahlia dragged air into her lungs, heard the crackle of flames and swore softly. “I have to put that out. I’m going to end up burning this cabin down yet.”
“Let it go. It will go out if you stay calm. You had a bad dream, that’s all.”
She shook her head. “I had a good dream. It scared me more than all the bad dreams in the world ever could.”
He brushed back her hair, his fingers lingering against her skin. “Do you think this is usual for me? I’ve never spent the entire night in a woman’s bed. I never wanted to. I didn’t like sharing my space with anyone until I met you. I’m not using you, Dahlia. I’m not going to say I don’t love your body, because I do. I could spend a lifetime making love to you and I’d never get enough.” Before she could answer him he bent to take possession of her mouth. Her beautiful, perfect mouth. He’d had a few dreams himself and they all had revolved around her sultry lips. His hand buried deep in her hair anchored her head so he could explore the rich taste of her. For a moment the room spun as if she were so enticing she made him dizzy.
He lifted his head. “Better?”
Dahlia touched her lips with her fingertips. “I honestly don’t know.” She glanced at the windowsill. The tiny flames were gone, leaving behind only black scorch marks. “How do you put out fire with fire?”
“One consumes the other?”
“Ma
ybe, but why didn’t I ever discover that? I’ve tried a hundred ways, maybe a thousand ways, to neutralize the energy, but it never occurred to me that I might mix it with another kind of energy. I thought it would just grow in strength.”
Nicolas fell back against the pillow laughing. Dahlia sat up and glared at him. “What’s so funny?”
“You. You’re so funny. We just shared hot sex, awesome sex, the kind of sex a man can only dream about, and you’re analyzing it all like a scientist. So much for my manly male ego.” He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her down onto his chest. “I think you’re good for me.”
She found herself raining kisses over his face, teasing the corners of his mouth and sliding her tongue along the seam of his lips just to watch desire flare in his eyes. There was a lot of power in being a woman, she decided as her hands caressed his chest and slid a little lower just so she could feel him catch his breath. Immediately she felt the hard, rigid length of him growing along her thigh where she wrapped her leg over his. It was happening all over again. She started out in control and then she was melting inside, wanting to please him, wanting to watch his eyes grow from icy cold to fiery inferno.
Gasping, she pulled back, sitting up, her thigh still over his. Her hair was wild, spilling around her shoulders and tumbling down her back. “I don’t want to feel this way about you.”
“What way?” He reached out and cupped the weight of her breasts in his palms, his thumbs brushing her nipples gently. “I want you to want me.”
“If it was just that…” she trailed off with a small gasp of pleasure as he dropped one hand to the enticing triangles of curls, his fingers burrowing into intriguing crevices and hollows. She shifted, her bare bottom rubbing over him deliberately so that he responded with a soft groan.
“You’re doing that woman thing, Dahlia. The thing you didn’t want to do.” Nicolas felt more relaxed than ever, leaning back, his head on the pillow, his body coming to life and Dahlia sitting so close to his groin he could feel the damp heat beckoning to him. She looked beautiful sitting there with her hair all over the place and her skin gleaming at him, looking soft enough to eat. He stroked her breast and ran his finger along her ribs to the indentation of her waist. “While you’re sitting there, maybe you could just reposition yourself a little to the left.”
“What woman thing?” she demanded, tossing her head, sending the curtain of silky hair swinging along with the tantalizing sway of her breasts. Her fist curled around his erection, tightened, loosened, fingers dancing and teasing, robbing him of his ability to think for a moment.
He watched her through half-closed eyes as she lifted her hips and with painstaking slowness, lowered her body over his. He didn’t move, allowing her to be in control while she mounted him, while she took him into her body. He could feel the way he pushed through her tight folds, the way her body was tight and slick and hot, welcoming his. He lay there, wondering why he had found her after all this time, why she connected to him, and how she was capable of sending such sensations of pleasure forking through his body when she began a slow, sexy ride.
He ran his hands over her skin. Her unbelievably soft skin. He traced the curve of her breast, the tuck of her waist, and the small curve of her hip and leg. When it wasn’t enough to watch her, to see her body sliding up and down his, he caught her small hips and took over, relentlessly driving them both to the brink and then slowing down to allow them to catch their breath. She was flushed, her eyes bright, her head thrown back. Dahlia loving sex with him. The sight of her like that sent an explosion welling up from somewhere deep inside him, gathering with a great force and pushing through his body like a wall of fire. She cried out as her muscles gripped and squeezed, and rippled with shock from her own release.
Dahlia bent over his chest to lay her head on him. He wrapped her in his arms and held her while their hearts raced and their lungs burned for air. Nicolas wanted her to stay there, right on top of him, her body still a part of his while he held her close. There was something comforting in having her so close to him, skin to skin. An intimate connection.
“I want you to take notice, Nicolas,” she pointed out, not bothering to lift her face from the warmth of his neck, “I refrained from whatever woman discussion thing you were accusing me of. You can’t throw it in my face.”
“Yes I can,” he objected, capturing her hand as it smoothed over his skin. He nibbled on her fingers. “You were definitely headed toward a relationship discussion. See? As a woman you couldn’t help yourself.”
“Is it in the manual?”
“Yes, page ninety-two I think. Right there in bold print, it warns men about the relationship discussion all women,” he bit on the end of her finger for emphasis, “that would be you, must have with their poor unsuspecting man.”
“I see. This relationship manual certainly has a lot of information in it.”
“It’s thick,” he agreed.
“I’ll bet it took you a long time to read it and commit it to memory.”
Her tone was mild, but he sensed a trap. He looked at her carefully, but she had her eyes closed and was nearly purring while she laid on top of him, her hair spilling around them like a silken waterfall. “I knew it would come in handy one day.” He couldn’t help the smile in his voice or his mind.
Outside the bedroom window, an alligator began to bellow with love, calling loudly for a mate. The sound reverberated through the room, making Nicolas nearly jump out of bed. As it was he brought up his gun and swept Dahlia onto the side of the bed with one arm. She collapsed into a small heap, laughing at him. “You’re saving me from an alligator.”
“If you don’t stop laughing, I may feed you to the thing. What the hell is that racket?” He glared toward the window as he sheepishly slipped the gun back beneath the pillow.
“It’s an alligator lovefest. Go to sleep. They’re just beginning a sweet serenade. I hear it all the time out here.”
He rolled over to come up on his elbow. He propped up his chin so he could stare down at her. “Tell me something about yourself. Something you don’t share with others.”
The smile faded from her lips. “Nicolas, I don’t share anything with anyone. Jesse was my closest friend, and I only saw him when he needed me to go out on a mission. When he came to give my orders we played chess once in a while, that was pretty much the extent of our time together. Milly and Bernadette took care of me, in fact, Milly’s always been with me, as far back as I can remember, but I didn’t share my innermost thoughts even with them. I didn’t dare.”
“Why not?”
“They didn’t encourage that sort of thing, and I knew they reported to someone. I didn’t want that, so I was careful. Even as a child I was careful.” She sat up, the long fall of hair cloaking her in mystery. In the dark, her eyes took on a haunted look. “I’m still careful. I don’t know how this all happened with you. I try not to think about it too much or I want to run.”
He glanced toward the door where the alligator nearest the bedroom seemed to have a caller waiting. “I wouldn’t suggest it at the moment. I think we’re surrounded.”
She paced across the floor on bare feet, snagging the shirt that had been discarded many hours earlier and shrugging into it. “Were you ever lonely when you were in the jungle, or did it seem like home to you, Nicolas?”
“It seemed like home. I knew the rules and relied on myself. I liked the sounds and smells and it was all familiar to me.”
“That’s the way I feel about the bayou. It feels safe to me. It’s the only place that does. I understand the rules here, and I wasn’t lonely.” She turned her head to look at him over her shoulder. “I might be now that I’ve met you and got a taste of how other people live.” Her smile was sad. “I should have thought about it before I let myself get in too deep with you.”
“What’s too deep, Dahlia?” She was doing it again. She was so elusive he felt nearly driven to desperation. Nicolas took a deep breath, centered himself, and f
orced down the unfamiliar panic. “Come here, honey. Don’t get so far away from me.” There were a thousand secrets in her eyes, a thousand wounds. A lifetime of distrust and betrayal. Isolation. How did one overcome such things? Nicolas padded after her and drew her gently into his body.
Where before, the potent combination of Dahlia and sexual energy had sent him into a frenzy of need, of desire, now he felt tenderness, a need to comfort her. His kisses were gentle, coaxing, completely undemanding. “We don’t have to think about this too much, Dahlia. We both know we’re in untried territory. We have no idea what’s going to happen between us in the future. I know I want to be with you, and I know myself. I’ll find a way for us.”
Her hands came up to cover his. She was trembling. He knew she was afraid to face what must lie ahead for them. She’d taken steps out of the safe world that had been created for her. There was safety in not caring too much, not being involved too deeply. Dahlia had strict limits she set for herself and she stayed within those limits. He was dragging her further and further out into the open.
He brought both of her hands to his mouth and kissed her fingers. Kissed her palm. He wanted to make it better for her, take away the sting of not knowing love for all those years. He wanted her to recognize the real thing. He didn’t dare speak of it, he knew she’d bolt. He was getting to know her now, the sudden spurts of terror that woke her in the middle of the night. “Where were you going?”
There was a small silence. “The roof. I always feel better when I go up to the roof.”
Why did he hate the thought of her spending so much time in the middle of the night sitting out on a roof? He hugged her closer to him, scattered kisses through her hair. “Stay with me, Dahlia. Just lie in my arms and let me hold you. I’d say we’d leave the door open, but our friendly alligator is getting more and more passionate out there. I don’t want him to visit us.” Nicolas drew her back toward the bed. There was some resistance, but not much. She went with him, one slow step at a time, almost as if she were testing herself.
GhostWalkers 2 - Mind Game Page 23