Dark Refuge (7 page)

So far, he was keeping her with him. She’d not gone away this time. Her arousal had become a living, breathing entity, so powerful he felt it looping back at him. He wanted to link, to tie himself into her thoughts, her sensations, but not yet. Not until she was totally lost in the pure carnality of the two of them together. He wondered if she’d let him in, if she’d block his attempt to share what the two of them did together. If she’d not had sex with many guys, he could assume that was something she’d never done before. He didn’t want to frighten her. He didn’t want to assume too much, either.

Lying prone the full length of the bed, he slipped his hands beneath her buttocks and lifted her to his mouth. Licking and nipping, he lost himself in her exquisite flavors, in the scent and taste of her, the slickness against his tongue, and the clench and release of muscles on the edge of orgasm.

She bucked against his face, and the whimpers and soft little moans had become the background music to every move he made, to every response he wrenched from Emeline. She was so close and it was time. Opening his mind, he sought her out, but there was nothing but a swirling maelstrom of wordless need, as if he’d reached that primitive part of her brain that responded to sensation alone, without conscious thought, without any need to understand, but only to experience. The sense of her was addictive, this level of arousal so far beyond anything he’d expected, and he found himself falling into it.

Falling into Emeline. Her body undulated in his grasp and he flowed with her, holding her in his palms, controlling her with his mouth until he knew he had her, knew she’d reached that pinnacle and there was no going back. He wrapped his lips around her clit and used the tip of his tongue to chase her over the top. Screaming, she arched against him, her body shuddering, her thighs clasping the sides of his head as he continued to lick and taste until she finally relaxed enough to draw a great, shuddering breath.

Gabe didn’t give her time to think. He moved forward over her body, sliding his erect cock between her thighs, up against the wet heat between her legs. She was warm and so slick, and he expected his entry to be a simple thing, but she was much smaller than he’d expected. Much tighter. And instead of a single, slow thrust, he pressed against her gently, with just enough pressure to slowly part her engorged folds, and even more slowly to work his way inside.

She arched her hips, pressing close to help, but he didn’t want to hurt her, didn’t want what had been a totally pleasurable connection to go south for either of them. “Are you okay, Em? I don’t want to hurt you.”

“More, Gabe. I want more.”

“Put your arms around my neck.” She did, and he rolled with her to his back. “Now you’re in charge.”

She tossed her long hair back and clasped his shoulders, positioning herself over the smooth crown of his cock. Bracing her hands on him, she slowly worked her way down his erection. Very slowly. So damned slow he was afraid he’d lose it before he was all the way in because he’d never felt anything so perfect in his entire life. He was gasping each breath and struggling for control by the time he bottomed out against her cervix and her warm little bottom rested on his thighs.

“Are you okay?” He palmed both her breasts. They were absolutely perfect. Not overly large, but nothing about Emeline was all that big. Except her heart. Damn, but she seemed to have such a strong sense of honor. She honestly cared about people. She was beautiful, she was so not what he’d expected when he’d boarded the plane last night.

“I am.” She smiled and ran her fingers through his hair. He kept it short most of the time, but it had grown out over the past couple of months. In fact, he’d not cut it since early in the summer, before he and Jace took off on their annual survey of wild wolves. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with hair this long. I like it.”

“I was thinking I needed to cut it, but if you like it longer, guess that’s something I won’t have to worry about.”

She cocked her head and frowned at him. “You’d let my opinion sway your decisions?”

She looked so cute when she frowned that he laughed. “Sweetheart, you are currently sitting on my dick and I want to move so badly I ache. At this point I’ll do whatever you want.”

She snorted. Then she covered her mouth and blushed. “That wasn’t very sexy, was it?”

“Actually, it was. It made all your inside muscles tighten around me. I hope you realize you’re killing me here.”

She wiggled her butt against his thighs and tightened her inner muscles, teasing him. “I think I like the power of this position. I could sit here all day and have you at my mercy.”

He wrapped his arms around her and had her under him before she even had time to squeak. “We were discussing mercy?”

“Oh. Yeah.” She linked her fingers behind his neck and pulled herself close. Kissed him with a little tongue and a whole lot of hip movement.

“Let’s talk about it later.” He thrust his hips forward, careful not to hurt her, but her eyes went wide. He did it again, and then again and she got a dreamy look on her face that assured him she wasn’t in any pain.

He picked up the rhythm, filling her with every thrust, and then he opened his thoughts once again.

And found absolutely nothing. She was locked so tight that nothing was getting out. “Open to me, Em. Let me feel what you feel. Sense what you sense. You’ll get the same from me, I promise. It’s the best part about sex, sharing what we experience.

She frowned, but he sensed her thoughts, the gentle stirring in his mind that told him she was trying. Why was it that Em, a woman who’d known from birth that she was Chanku, would have so much trouble knowing how things worked? Something was wrong. Missing, as if she’d missed a whole section of the learning process of who and what she was.

Definitely something to look into, but not now. Now it was all about feeling. About wallowing in the smooth slide between those velvet walls clasping him on every thrust, holding him as he pulled back to drive deep again. He adjusted his angle, trying to hit her clitoris on each advance and retreat, and he felt her arousal growing once again. The good thing about worrying about Em’s pleasure was that it helped delay his own. He was still hanging on, still giving her the ride of her life and it was good. It was all good.

And then it got even better as he caught the first tentative contact of her mind with his, the sense of his thick erection sliding within the tight clasp of her vaginal muscles, the fullness that thrilled her so completely. He gave it back to her—the heat with each stroke, as if he plunged into liquid fire, the rippling slide of her powerful inner muscles enclosing him in a solid grip of surprising strength. He shared the feelings he had when her breasts rubbed against his chest and the taste of her flavors on his tongue when he leaned close and drew her nipple into his mouth.

She returned the favor, sharing the shock of sensation from nipple, to womb, to clit when his lips surrounded her nipple and he sucked the tip into his mouth.

All of it, Gabe’s sensations and Em’s, shared and shared again until there was no ending to Gabe, no beginning to Emeline. Until their thoughts fused in a maelstrom of sensation and texture, of desire and fulfillment. Gabe knew he couldn’t last, wouldn’t last from that moment when the coil of heat at the base of his spine exploded, encompassing the ache in his balls and the squeezing pressure encircling his cock. He gave it all up to Em, every sensation, every bit of touch and reaction, of arousal and need and the lightning-fast journey from impending orgasm to completion.

Em screamed and her back arched as she forced him even deeper. Her mental climax was a veritable firestorm of color, of heat and light and pulsing shadows and stars, shared with Gabe, as she hovered for one brief moment on the precipice.

But when they leapt, what should have been light and completion, a sense of the sublime, was scarred by darkness. By a roiling cloud that followed Em over the top and buried her in the deepest shadows of despair.

He lay on top of her, gasping for air, holding her close, protecting her from whatever that thing was that seemed to intrude on her climax. On his. A dark shadow unlike anything he’d ever experienced, but he’d also known this was something Em lived with. Something she’d always lived with, or at least for as long as she could remember.

He wrapped his arms around her and rolled to his back, taking her with him. She trembled against him, and he wondered if it was fear or the aftermath of what had been—up to the intrusion of that dark something—a most remarkable sexual and emotional experience.

• • •

She couldn’t look at him, wouldn’t look. It had been so perfect. Everything she’d ever dreamed, better than she possibly could have imagined. What she’d always thought of as okay sex didn’t even rate as bad sex compared to what Gabe had just shown her, what he’d shared with her. It had been absolutely perfect, until the darkness.

Obviously there was something terribly wrong with her. Something that must have disgusted Gabe. He still hadn’t said a word. Hadn’t done anything but cover her with his big body, pressing her into the tumbled blankets so perfectly that he made her feel safe even when she knew she wasn’t. That she hadn’t been for a long time. Would most likely never be, but why? What was the darkness that haunted her? Was it the reason her parents were so overprotective?

Gabe nuzzled the sensitive spot beneath her right ear and then kissed her cheek. “I hope you realize things can’t go on the way they were.”

She froze. Had it been that awful for him? Was she that awful, with her mind suffused in some unknown . . .

“Because I am not letting you go. Ever.”

He rose up on his forearms and kissed her, but her mouth was open in shock and he took the kiss so much deeper than she knew he must have intended, but that didn’t stop her from kissing him back, even though her mind was absolutely flooded with questions.

“What do you mean? That darkness in my mind. You had to feel it. It’s always there, it’s . . .”

“It’s something we’re going to fix if it’s the last thing we do.”

He cupped her face in his big hands and forced her to look at him. His dark amber eyes sparkled, and he had that sexy little half smile on his lips, and Goddess but his lips were sexy. Warmth surged between her legs and all her internal muscles clenched. All from Gabe’s smile.

Well, that and the realization that he was growing hard again, still locked deep inside her where she could feel the subtle stretching as his arousal made itself known. Except she didn’t want to be sidetracked. Not now. “How, Gabe? How can we fix something if we can’t know what causes it?”

“We ask Eve.” He kissed her nose.

“Eve’s busy. She’s a goddess, Gabe. We can’t ask her stuff like that.”

“Why not? Lily does, and she gets answers.”

“Well, Lily’s special. She also goes on the astral and has some sort of weird celestial wine and catches up on gossip with Eve because they’re friends.”

“Weird celestial wine?” He cocked an eyebrow and thrust his hips forward at the same time. “What brand is that? And what’s the vintage? Astral date nine billion and twelve?”

“Ah!” She lifted her hips on a gasp of pleasure. How could he carry on a conversation when he was doing that? “Does it honestly matter? Oh . . . Gabe! Again . . .”

It was some time later when she was near her third orgasm of the morning that Gabe linked with her. She wasn’t sure if it was a very smart idea, but what he was doing felt so damned good that she let herself go. Shared the sense of his rigid cock plunging deep and hard, the amazing shock of contact as he slid across her sensitized clit. This time she would see what was behind the darkness, discover what horrible thing lay hidden in her subconscious, rising up when she was vulnerable, when her defenses were down.

She felt the crest of pleasure rising, opened herself to whatever it brought, though she knew the darkness was there, knew it would somehow taint the sweetness of Gabe’s loving. As she reached her peak and flew, the shadow leapt with her and so did Gabe, but he wasn’t lost in sensation. Fascinated even as her body convulsed in pleasure, Em saw the darkness fade beneath a glowing light.

Gabe’s light, pushing it back into the corners, lighting the darkness and rendering it powerless, shrinking it back to nothing more than a pinprick of impotent fear. Nameless fear, ineffectual for the moment, but not gone. No, it waited. If only she knew what it was, where it came from.

Why it waited.

Blinking against dawn’s sunlight streaming between the window blinds, Em stared up at Gabe, lost in a sense of absolute disbelief. She’d seen it but still couldn’t describe what he had done. Yet, whatever it was, she felt lighter, freer than she’d been for as long as she could recall.

“What did you do? You sent it away, whatever it was.”

“Is. It’s still there, but smaller. Weaker.” He rolled off her and scooted back against the headboard. Then he easily lifted Em, pulled her up against his side and tucked her within the curve of his arm.

She snuggled close and wrapped her arm across his chest. “But what happened?”

“A long time ago, I asked Jace if he could teach me to heal injuries the way he does, going inside a person’s body as pure energy and fixing what’s broken.” Gabe laughed and kissed the top of her head. “Let’s just say it’s a good thing you’re not bleeding anywhere, because no matter what he tried to show me, I couldn’t do it. But I remembered something he said, that sometimes what needs to be done to fix something that’s wrong isn’t at all complicated. It’s common sense—following your gut instinct to do what feels right. Whatever it is in your mind that’s messing you up is dark. I mean it’s physically dark and noxious-looking, and no, I haven’t got a clue what it is, but I figured that if it’s dark, maybe all we need is light.”

He shrugged and kissed the crown of her head. “It seemed to work. It didn’t make it go away entirely, but I’m hoping it won’t pop up next time we make love. Which reminds me. Did that feel as good for you as it did for me? Good Goddess, Em. I’m never going to see you as little EmyIzzy again.”