"You like that, do you?" he asked when he withdrew his mouth a second time with the same reaction to its loss. "Then I think it only fair to see which of these ladies likes it more."
It was apparently the second breast because her hands left her sides to press his head more deeply into his research.
When his hand slipped beneath her shirt, she winced, but he let it rest against her stomach until she relaxed once more.
"I will do you no harm, sweet hummingbird," he whispered as he returned to her lips. "Trust in me. Believe in me."
"I want to," she whispered into his mind and her words were music to his ears.
Again he kissed her, long and hard, and when she responded, he moved his hand with feather like touches over the soft skin beneath the tee. He felt faint lines of flesh beneath his fingers and wondered at them until his hand reached its goal and then he stopped, stunned. Her breast was scarred; tiny dots of raised flesh marked the spots where she'd been bitten. Lines from cuts crisscrossed the skin. It was only for a moment, but she felt his hesitation and she froze.
Lucien buried his hardening face in her neck. It took every ounce of his will to quell the Rage that cried for release, but she felt that, too, and he felt her withdraw.
Hide! Faith ran for the door in her mind. It was the only sanctuary she knew. Her worst fears were realized. Another dream had turned to nightmare. Hide! If he was repulsed by the marks on her breasts and angered by her secrecy, she couldn't face his reaction to the other, more intimate scars. Hide!
She began to panic. The door in her mind was closed and locked. It refused to open no matter how desperately she begged. Her heart was racing. Her breath turned to gasps as the air entering her lungs became devoid of oxygen. Her eyes were open, but she couldn't see.
"Faith."
Lucien's sharp voice called her back.
"Faith," he called again. "If you run, I will follow. If you hide, I will find you. I will play this cat and mouse game no longer."
Faith knew he meant it. Lucien ad Toussaint had closed and locked the door to her only place of retreat. She had no choice but to face him. He spoke again, but she couldn't hear anything but her own fear repeating over and over, "He'll hate you. He'll hate you."
"Faith!"
She blinked her eyes and his face came into focus. It was still hard with the remnants of his Rage and yet it was the most beautiful face she had ever seen. His eyes seemed to glow in the darkness, but what she saw in them wasn't hatred. There was anger, yes, but there was something more and it was beautiful, too, because it said his anger was for her, not against her.
"Is he dead?" Lucien asked and there was no doubt as to whom he referred.
Faith nodded. "Nico killed him."
"Then Nico ad Nimeni has denied me the pleasure of hunting the bastard down and killing him myself."
Chapter 25
Lucien lifted the hem of her nightshirt and began to raise it up.
"No!" Faith tried to push it back down. She knew he could see as well in the darkness as she could during the day.
She knew her sister and the others had seen the damage when they rescued her, but Faith was already locked behind the closed door of her mind and didn't have to face their looks of pity and disgust. Since the door had reopened, no one had seen her body.
"Yes," Lucien said firmly, "What I thought was your modesty is really your shame and I won't have that shame between us, Faith. I will see what he has done and we will face it together."
Lucien was determined and when he raised the hem again, Faith closed her eyes and raised her hands above her head and allowed him to remove the tee. She sucked in her breath and held it when he gently slid her panties down her legs and tossed them aside.
The ticking of the bedside clock grew louder and louder as Faith waited for him to speak. She was afraid to open her eyes, afraid of what she would see on his face.
She nearly shrieked when his kiss touched the worst of the scars at her breast. His lips followed a trail up her chest and across her shoulder as he slid his body over hers, his forearms resting on the bed to either side of her to support his weight, his hands tucked under her shoulders to hold her close. Mindful of her size and his weight, he did the same with his lower body, holding his weight on his knees while encasing her legs with his. Somehow in the silence, he'd shed the silken bottoms he wore to bed and was now as naked as she.
He nuzzled her ear and worried the lobe with his lips and teeth. He buried his face in the crook of her neck and held her as if his life depended on it.
In spite of his loving attentions, his silence frightened Faith. Lucien never had a problem voicing his opinion, at least not with her. His stillness began to frighten her too.
Lucien knew his silence tormented her, but he couldn't yet bring himself to speak. There was so much roaring through his mind; shock, horror, pity, disbelief, hatred, and an anger that bordered on Rage. He needed time to calm the emotions churning inside him. He needed to think before he spoke so that his words could not be misconstrued.
He buried his nose more deeply into the crook of her neck, breathing in the cleansing scent of dawn and rebirth. This air of sweetness and purity Faith carried with her amazed him still further. That she who had seen so much pain and darkness could shed only lightness and healing on others made her love all the more precious. He needed to make sure she understood how blessed he felt by her gift.
He'd foolishly thought some monster of humankind had abused her until he saw the repeated three scar lines that marred her body. He'd felt the marks made by healed-over bites, but it was only when she lay naked before him that he realized what had happened to his Faith.
She'd been abused. She'd been tortured. She'd been clawed and bitten and raped by a demon. Repeatedly.
Slowly, he pulled his body down over hers, still supporting his weight on his knees and elbows. With his head level with her breasts, he began to touch each scar, no matter how small, with his lips, kissing each with a reverence that had little to do with sex and everything to do with love.
He moved from one breast to the other, and then, leaving no scar untouched by his tenderness, began the descent down to her abdomen. There he rested his head again, using her scent to cleanse and calm his roiling emotions.
"Lucien?"
He heard her soft voice in his mind and then her hand was on his head, stroking it as if he was the one who needed comfort.
"Lucien, it's all right."
Lucien felt his eyes fill with unfamiliar tears. He'd only shed tears three times in his adult life; for his parents and his sister. Losing his Vigilantes had been painful at first, but they had grown old in the course of human time and had died quietly and ready to receive their heavenly reward. His own loss of their closeness and friendship meant nothing.
Duty held little regard for tears and Lucien's ability to feel pity or pain faded over the years. It happened so slowly, he never noticed the loss. He noticed it now. In such a short time, the tiny, exquisite creature lying safely enshrouded by his body had brought back feelings he'd long thought dead. He wasn't sure yet if he was ready to welcome these feelings of love and pain back into his life, but the choice was taken from him when the little hummingbird beneath him offered her comfort.
"I am humbled by your bravery," he whispered against the soft skin of her belly. "I am in awe of your beauty."
"I'm not brave or beautiful," she whispered in his mind.
"Don't say it. Don't say it ever again," Lucien said a little more forcefully that perhaps he should. "Don't tell me you are not brave. Men twice your size would have fallen under the onslaught of what you've endured. Don't tell me you are not beautiful. You are perfect in my eyes. You have hidden your treasures beneath your baggy pants and tee shirts long enough. I will have no more of it. My woman, my Faith, will not hide from me in shame.
"You are a beautiful woman. You are my woman and these…" He ran his tongue along a ribbon of scar that ran from hip to thigh. "… do noth
ing to detract from what you are and what I see. Do you hear me, Faith? Nothing. These scars are badges of honor and courage. They don't detract from your beauty. They add to it."
"But you don't understand, Lucien. I wasn't brave. I didn't fight. I let him do whatever he chose and sometimes, oh God, Lucien, sometimes… my body… what he did… I couldn't help…"
The anguish in her confession tore at his heart.
"Sometimes your body betrayed you," he finished for her. "That is of no consequence to me, Faith, nor should it be to you. Your body is not the same as your heart."
Lucien had so many old fashioned opinions about how things should be. Faith couldn't believe something like this wouldn't matter. It had to matter.
"How can you say that?" Faith asked and felt a shudder pass through him as he kissed yet another scar below her navel and then rested his cheek against it. His hands tightened about her hips.
"I can say that because of what my mother endured before she died and what my sister was forced to witness. If there was anything my mother could have done or said to ensure her survival, I would have wanted her to do it for her sake, for my sister's sake and for my own. My father would have wanted her to do it, too. She was loved just as you are. That was the most important thing to all of us."
"Your mother would be very proud of you."
Faith whispered the thought and was surprised when Lucien laughed aloud.
"Not at this moment, she would not," he chuckled and put his lips to her belly again with a loud and playful kiss that tickled. "What man in his right mind would talk about his mother with a beautiful and very naked woman beneath him? She would chide me for my lack of romance."
"Then she would be wrong, Lucien, because what you've just shared is the most romantic thing I could possibly hear," she told him honestly, "You make me believe that things I didn't dare dream of are really possible." She closed her eyes and silently voiced the one dream she'd been so afraid might come true. "I want you to make love to me, Lucien. I want to make love to you… but I don't know if I can or even if I know how."
Lucien laughed again. "What a pair we make, you and I; you afraid you can't and me afraid I've forgotten how."
Faith's eyes snapped open. "Oh no, Lucien. You haven't forgotten how," she protested. "Not with the way you make me feel when you kiss me and not …" She closed her eyes again and felt the heat rising to her face, "with the way you make me feel when you touch me."
"Ah, my little hummingbird, you inspire me," he said as he crawled up her body to kiss her lips again. "You make me want to be better than I am. You are mine and you love me."
His words made her brave. Faith smiled and quickly kissed him back. "I never said I loved you," she teased, suddenly feeling as if the world had reversed its course and now spun in the right direction.
"You didn't have to. You wouldn't be lying naked beneath me if you didn't love me. You wouldn't be willing to risk your all on the chance that I could love you, too."
Lucien kissed her then, long and deep and more satisfying than all his other kisses combined. "I have never claimed a woman as mine before." he said, pulling back from her lips only far enough to speak, "and I will never claim another."
He was a man of honor. He took pride in being a man of his word. For the first time in a very long time, Faith Parsons wasn't afraid. For the first time in a very long time, Faith Parsons felt beautiful. For the first time in her life, Faith Parsons felt whole.
She felt as if a weight had been lifted from her and if Lucien hadn't been braced above her she would have floated up from the bed. He was her anchor and she ran her hands along his sides from hips to arms and then over the strong muscles of his shoulders and back and along the tiny bumps that formed his spine.
Lucien raised himself up on his hands and moved forward allowing her reach to extend to his firm buttocks and around his hips again this time traveling beneath his body to feel the erection that barely touched her core. Faith wanted to touch him, to feel the pulse of him in her hand. She wasn't afraid of his size. She expected it and was pleased by it. She ran her hand along its length, felt it harden further and jump beneath her touch. Lucien's sharp hiss of breath emboldened her.
With a firmer grip, she began to run her hand up and back, up and back and when his hips began to move to the rhythm she set, she found her hips moving, too. She wanted him inside her. She wanted to show him that she gave herself to him gladly and would welcome the pain of his entry. She felt the moist bead at the head of his erection and spread her legs, lifting her hips to receive him as she guided him into place.
His hand stopped hers.
"As lovely as your idea is, sweet hummingbird, you are not quite ready," he said gently.
"But I am," Faith protested while at the same time wondered what she was doing wrong, "I want you to take what you need. Tell me what to do, Lucien. What pleases you?"
The way Lucien looked at her worried her until he smiled and spoke.
"You please me, hummingbird, but what about pleasing you?"
Pleasing her? Grace, she knew, enjoyed sex and was quite open about her relationship with Canaan, but Faith had always thought Grace's pleasure came from pleasing Canaan and not the other way around. Grace had loaned her a romance novel once with instructions to read it and Faith enjoyed it up to the place where the couple went to bed. She'd closed the book at that point, unable to continue. She couldn't let herself think about the sex act, much less read about it. Now she wished she had.
Lucien must have read the look on her face because he chuckled deep in his chest and said, "Let go of me, hummingbird, or it will be over before we even begin."
She hadn't realized her hand was still working him and he chuckled again when she quickly snatched her hand away as if she'd been holding hot iron. He lowered himself until they were eye to eye.
"You liked it when I kissed you," he said as he began to shower her face and neck with kisses as he had before. Slowly he moved down her neck and throat.
When he reached her breast and sucked her nipple deeply into his mouth, she nearly lifted off the bed which gave him another reason to chuckle.
"You like this, too," he whispered before going back to the pebbled brown nub.
Oh, she did. She did. She felt her body begin to warm and now it was she who followed his rhythm. A little of her old fear returned when he began to use his teeth, but she heard him in her mind saying over and over,
"I will do you no harm, mi vida, trust me."
He continued addressing her breast with teeth and tongue and lips and true to his word, there was no pain, only pleasure. It was the same with his hand at her other breast, rubbing, kneading, rolling her nipple between finger and thumb but always with gentleness, never with pain. Faith began to whimper, wanting more.
With both hands sending ripples of pleasure through her breasts, Lucien began working his way down her body. By the time his lips reached her hips and thighs, she was moving to meet him. Again, these feelings of want and need frightened her a little. She was losing control.
It had happened rarely with Tyn, but when it did it was always followed by his delighted and satisfied ridicule and her plunging into the depths of shame. Again, she heard Lucien's voice in her mind erasing her fear.
"I will do you no harm, mi vida, trust me."
Mi vida: a term of endearment. Literally translated it meant "my life". Lucien was telling her she was his life. Believing him, Faith gave hers up to him in return.
When his mouth reached the juncture between her legs, she lifted to meet him blocking out all memories of what it had meant before and giving herself over to the sensations Lucien was engendering now. His tongue caressed her nether lips. His lips kissed and sucked at her tender and swollen nub. Her body tensed on a wave of pleasure spiraling higher and higher. This was the place where she had always fought, the place where she was always assailed by the greatest pain, the place where she'd learned about the door in her mind, but she trusted Lucien's pro
mise and she rode the sensations coursing through her body. They were new. They were frightening. They were thrilling.
Without interfering with the delicate workings of his mouth, Lucien's finger entered her, moving in and out, forcing her hips to follow. A second finger joined the first and then a third, curling inside her and finding a spot that sent her soaring out of control and into a brilliant world of light and color and sound.
Lucien's mouth suddenly covered hers, swallowing the sounds of her pleasure. Her whole body shuddered as it came down from the incredible heights to which he'd sent it. There was no ridicule in Lucien's chuckle, though it was tinged with satisfied delight.
"Now you are ready, querida mia," he said aloud.
"Give me a moment to get my breath back," she pleaded, but Lucien refused.
"That would only give you time to think and I only wish to have you feel. Come with me, hummingbird, and we will reach those heights together."
He knelt between her legs, lifted her hips and slid easily into the place where he was meant to be. His greatest fear, because of her size, had been that he might cause her discomfort or pain. He needn't have worried. The Creator in his great wisdom had meant for them to be together.
He'd called her mi vida, a common enough term, but when he said it, he meant it literally. She was his life and when he was seated snuggly inside of her, he had the overwhelming sense that this was where he was meant to be; over her, inside her, around her. She was the heart, the life he'd lost so many years ago.
Slowly he began to move, careful of her size, mindful of her pleasure, matching it with his own. Her head was thrown back, her eyes closed and the smile of pleasure on her lovely face made his new found heart sing. He increased his pace slowly at first and then with more force and suddenly she was curling up and into him, grasping his shoulders and plunging her body onto his.
Guardian's Faith Page 23