Come to Me (21 page)

"I'll get it tomorrow. But tonight… just let me stay here, close to you. Please. I'm…"

"You're what?" he asked, when she didn't continue.

"I'm afraid."

"Of… ?" he asked, his voice full of disbelief.

"Going to sleep. I've never done it before."

"It's harmless, I assure you. You won't know it even happened."

"And I…"

"And you?"

She sucked in a breath, then let it out in a rash with the truth: "I'm afraid of Theron."

"Who, or what, is Theron?" he asked incredulously.

"He's an incubus I know. I'm afraid he might try to visit me while I'm asleep, and I wouldn't be able to stop him."

He snorted. "You're afraid of your own kind, and having done to you what you do to others. It's too precious for words."

She scowled at him. "You seem none too trusting of your fellow humans and their actions, either, so I shouldn't talk."

The corner of his mouth quirked in bitter humor. "I'm loath to admit it, but you have a point."

"Then you'll let me stay? And… will you stay awake and make sure Theron doesn't get me?"

He sighed and ran his hand through his hair.

"You could hold the demon book, so you'd know if he was here," she coaxed.

"You want me to stay awake all night?"

She nodded. "You're usually up all night anyway, aren't you?"

"I usually don't have an incarnate demoness running around the fortress all day, getting into trouble." He got up off the bed and went to the table. He came back a moment later with the demon book. "We'll put it between us. Neither succubi nor incubi will be able to touch us if we're both touching it. Then we can both get some sleep."

He was letting her stay in his bed? "Thank you! Thank you, Nicolae! I'll behave, I promise. You won't even know I'm here."

He snorted, tossed the book onto the bed, and went to pinch out the candle on the table. As Samira lay still with her fingertips touching the edge of the tome, she heard him return and felt the shift of the bed as his weight settled on the other side.

Wicked thoughts immediately entered her mind.
But no
. If she upset him, he wouldn't hesitate to toss her back down the stairs to her loneliness and the things that crept and rustled in the darkness.

She lay motionless for several minutes, trying to sense his every movement, all too aware of his presence. When he seemed to settle in preparation for sleep, she felt a sudden fear that he would abandon her to solitary wakefulness. "Nicolae?"

She heard his puff of annoyed breath, almost as if he'd been waiting all this time for her to speak so he could show his disapproval. "What is it now?"

"I've never slept before. What does it feel like, falling asleep?"

"You'll find out for yourself if you cease talking."

"It'll happen on its own?"

"Yes." The answer was brusque, as if he wanted to stem any further questions.

"It's not like going in the shed, is it?"

"No," he said, and this time she thought she heard a hint of laughter in his voice.

"I've never dreamt before, either."

He sighed, and she heard him shift. She guessed he had rolled to face her, and in the darkness thought he had propped up his head on his hand. "I'd never thought to wonder about that. And yet you've seen thousands of dreams."

"Hundreds of thousands. And I've had what you would call daydreams."

"But you've never been carried away by the imaginings of your own mind?" .

"No." An overwhelming sense of vulnerability stole over her, making her muscles tense. "I do not like the thought of it," she admitted. "I feel like a slave to this body and its needs."

"You don't like feeling helpless."

"No."

"Then you're human enough there," he said, with the resignation of experience in his voice.

"I'm beginning to think that being human means being vulnerable to anything and everything."

"Careful, Samira. If you take a few more steps in your logic, you'll begin to understand those wars you find so incomprehensible."

She shook her head, although he could not see. "Never."

"What is the purpose of power, except to control your own destiny and protect yourself and those you love? It is the opposite of helplessness."

"But it's an illusion," she protested feebly. Despite herself, she
was
beginning to feel how very good it would be to be able to say yea or nay as she wished, to anyone or anything. While she hadn't had freedom like that as a succubus, neither had she been so much at the constant mercy of forces beyond her own mind. "Power never helps you in the end."

"Ultimately, perhaps not," he conceded. "Death will fetch us one way or the other. But power works well enough in the day-to-day."

What power did she have left to her? She had thought she had a thousand human lifetimes' worth of knowledge, but it had all been illusion. Nothing was the same in the Waking World as it had appeared through the veil of Night. The only thing that gave her the thinnest shred of confidence was that Nyx had sent her here in this form to help Nicolae. Therefore, there
must
be some power she still held; there must be something she knew or could do that would help him.

She had no idea what it might be.

"Are you finished with your questions?" Nicolae asked. "I'd like to go to sleep now."

"All right."

He rearranged himself and released a deep breath of contentment. She tried to do the same, changing her position, trying to find a way to lie that would bring mysterious sleep upon her with the least difficulty. She hoped, too, that Sleep himself didn't visit in person. She'd never much liked him; his mere presence made her feel tired and grumpy, and he was a notoriously poor conversationalist.

She tossed and turned, the caftan binding her arms and legs, the skirt getting caught beneath her, the fabric bunching up in ridges and lumps. The sash was a cinch around her waist, making it impossible to relax and be comfortable. She plucked at the knot with her fingers but could make no sense of the rocklike knob of fabric.

"Nicolae?" she asked softly into the darkness.

He didn't answer. Had he fallen asleep already?

"Nicolae? Are you awake? Nicolae?"

"For God's sake, Samira! What now?"

So he hadn't been asleep. "I can't untie this sash."

"Good."

"But I can't sleep with it this tight. Most people sleep without clothes, or in something loose. I
do
know that much."

He grumbled under his breath, but then she felt his hand land lightly on her breast. His fingers patted gently over her nipple, then jerked away as he realized where he was touching her.

"Lower," she said softly.

"I know that. Sorry."

"I'm not. You're the first man to touch me there. It's…"

"It's
what
?" he asked gruffly as he patted her hip and then worked his way over her body to the knot. He started pulling and jerking at the fabric.

"It's something I've long wondered about. I don't know what sex is like from a woman's point of view; only from a man's."

His hand on her waist ceased its movement for a moment. "Perhaps you've had the best of it, then. I don't think most women enjoy it."

A tingling warmth was starting in her loins, and she wanted him to do much more than untie the knot. She liked his hand on her, even if only to readjust her clothing. "They enjoy it when it's done right. Theron has told me all about how much they love it."

"Dreams and reality are different things."

"I'd like to find out if they're the same or truly so different," she said, as the knot came undone. For a moment his hand rested on her stomach but then started to draw away. "I can't figure out these fastenings at the shoulder," she said quickly.

"You figured them out this afternoon."

"That was in the light."

He sighed, but she felt him move, then lean up over her, a dark, warm shape in the night. She lay still as his fingers went to work on her shoulder, a chill tingle moving down over her nipples as she imagined him touching her there.

"There. You should be able to sleep now," he said, as the shoulder clasps came undone and she felt a whisper of cool air on her skin.

"I do wonder," she said softly.

"About?"

"About what it's like for a human woman when a man makes love to her. I would give almost anything…"

"Anything… to what?" he asked, his voice quiet and rough.

"To know. To feel it, myself. But I'm not asking you to show me," she said quickly, remembering how he had refused her advances even in dreams.

"Don't ask any of my men, either."

"I won't." Nicolae was the only one she wanted to touch her. "I don't even know, though, if this body is normal."

"How do you mean?"

"If it has all the right parts."

"From what I saw, it does," he said, a laugh in his voice.

"Maybe it just looks normal but isn't. Is this what breasts normally feel like?" She opened her caftan and slid her hand over her own breast. "It's so soft, and yet the nipple is so hard."

"Samira, don't."

"I don't think this is normal," she said. "Is it?"

"I don't know."

"Please tell me."

"I'm sure it's fine."

"Please, Nicolae, will you check? I don't want to stay awake all night worrying about it."

He sighed, the sound lacking authenticity, and then his hand was on her chest, sliding beneath the loose cover of her caftan. She moved her own hand aside as his warm palm came over her breast, cupping it; then he held her nipple between his fingertips and gently pinched.

His touch sent a bolt of sensation straight down to her loins, and she sucked in a breath, her back arching slightly toward his hand.

"I think it's fine," he said hoarsely.

"Will you check the other?"

He did so, moving slowly, his breathing growing rough. His palm made slow, massaging circles over her breast, touching and knowing every inch, his fingertips pinching and playing with her nipple.

She felt a dampness between her thighs, and a hunger for his touch down there.

"Is… do I have a navel?" she asked.

His hand slid down her body, then a fingertip dipped into her navel, swirling in a slow circle. "Yes." The tip of his finger stroked slowly in and out, a rhythmic pressure that created an answering pulse in her loins.

"And… is everything as it should be, down lower?"

She felt him hesitate, felt the playing of his fingers stop.

"Please, will you check for me?" she begged softly.

His hand left her navel and moved down, slowly, over the soft rise of her lower belly, pausing to massage her, and then his hand reached the edge of her curls. She closed her eyes and let her thighs fall open. She was naked and exposed beneath his touch. She felt she was his to touch and explore, and every ounce of her energy focused on the movements of his hand as he did so.

His fingertips made small circles in her curls. She parted her legs wider, inviting his touch lower still, not knowing what to expect but her body telling her it would be good. The folds of her flesh tingled, and a soft moan of anticipation mewed in the back of her throat.

And then he touched her, so lightly that it was barely contact, tracing a shimmering line of sensation over the edge of her folds, down their length, and then back up again. She held her breath, her legs tensed, as he paused at the apex of her sex and stroked rapid butterfly touches against her. Again he traced down her length, and then his fingertip pressed gently against the deepest, most hidden part of her. He played her in short, pressing strokes until her flesh parted around his fingertip and her own moistness slickened his movement.

She heard his breathing grow heavier and felt the beating of her own heart strong in her chest. She lifted her hips, raising herself to his hand, and felt the pressure of his whole palm over her. His fingertip against her opening pressed inward, and she arched her back in pleasure as she felt him parting her, finding his way inside.

"Nicolae…" she whispered, grasping at his shirt with one hand.

His mouth came down on her breast, sucking her nipple into his mouth and playing it with his tongue, his short beard both a soft and rough brushing against her skin. His palm pressed in slow circles over her and he slid his finger deeper.

A jolt of pain cut through her pleasure, making her jerk back from him. He didn't notice, and pressed his finger harder into her. Her body didn't want to let any more of him inside, her opening stretched as far as it would go, and she clamped her thighs shut on his hand. Her hand that had clenched his shirt now fisted, pushing against his shoulder. "Nicolae!"

He lifted his mouth from her breast. "What is it?"

"It
hurts
."

"It's only a virgin's pain. There's nothing wrong."

She twisted away from him, rolling to the side, grasping his wrist and forcing him to remove his hand from between her thighs. She curled into a ball, her back to him, focused now not on pleasure but on the stinging ache between her legs that he had caused, and about which he seemed to have no concern.

He was silent, and then he cursed beneath his breath. A moment later she felt him get up off the bed, and then she heard his footsteps on the stairs.

She pulled the furs up to her nose, found and held the demon book, and closed her eyes against the tears that slipped from between her lids.

Again, she was alone in the dark. Sex hurt. Nicolae could barely stand her.

Being human was no fun at all.