Authors: Unknown
“No!”
Again she screamed, then felt hands on her shoulders, holding her to the bed.
“Kenna!”
Desperately, she tried to break free, flailing out with her arms, hitting him with her fists.
“Kenna.”
It filtered into her mind that it wasn’t Vandar holding her or speaking. When her eyes blinked open, she found herself staring into Talon’s tense face.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice urgent.
“Yes.” She looked from him to her raised fists, knowing she had struck him. “I hurt you.”
“It’s okay. You were having a bad dream.”
She nodded, remembering her terror. “He had me. He was tearing me apart.”
“Who?”
Somehow, perhaps because she was still half awake, his name passed her lips. “Vandar.”
Talon’s hands tightened on her shoulders. “The man who hurt you?”
“He’s not . . .” As she tried to explain, pain seared the inside of her head, and she clamped her lips together.
Talon’s expression grew urgent. “What’s happening? Another headache?”
“No. Just a nightmare.”
He stared down at her, his dark eyes clouded with worry.
Panic gripped her. Panic and the knowledge that she must not let this moment pass. Talon was here again. In her bedroom.
She reached for him, pulling his head down.
“Don’t.”
Ignoring him, she kept up the pressure, and when his lips touched hers, she felt a jolt of sensation.
“Please,” she murmured into his mouth. “I want the same thing you do. Don’t run away this time,” she managed to say, her lips moving against his, inviting him to take anything he desired from her.
“I didn’t run away,” he growled. “I thought it was best for you to stop.”
She knew that was only part of the truth. “For me? Or for you?” she asked, astonished at her own audacity. Or was it desperation?
Where she came from, no woman would challenge a man so boldly. But her short time in this world had changed her. Partly it was seeing the way the people on
Swift River
acted. And partly it was living with Talon. She had compared him to a noble back in Breezewood, but really she had never met anyone like him at home.
Yet he was a man, and she knew that women had ways of getting what they wanted from the opposite sex.
He didn’t answer, but they were still mouth to mouth.
In invitation, her lips began to make little sliding, nibbling motions. He stayed where he was, and her heart began to pound as she waited for him to make a decision. Then a sound welled up from deep in his throat as his lips began to move over hers, like a starving man invited to a feast.
At the same time, his hands traveled over her, stroking down her arms to the backs of her hands, his palms pressing against her and his fingers knitting with hers, raising goose bumps on her skin.
It was what she wanted—so much. For this space of time, if that was all she was allowed. She was only a visitor in this world, and she couldn’t have him to keep, but she longed for these moments with him, longed to make memories to warm her when she was alone again, and afraid.
She had gone to bed in only a T-shirt, and she had kicked the covers away when she’d struggled in the dream.
Talon stared down at her, his gaze traveling from her face, slowly down her body, and back up again.
“Come here,” she whispered.
She smiled as he lay down beside her, gathering her close, rocking her in his arms, his hair-roughened leg sliding against hers, his body naked except for the thin shorts she knew were his underwear.
She sighed and stroked her hands over his strong arms and wide shoulders.
“You feel so good, especially after that dream.”
“It was bad?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“And you’re using me to drive it out of your mind.” When he started to pull away, she gripped him tighter. “I want to be here with you. That’s the truth.”
“Part of the truth. What’s the rest of it?” he asked in a tight voice.
“This is the most important part.” Clasping the back of his head, she brought his mouth back to hers and kissed him with a desperation that welled from deep inside her.
When he finally lifted his mouth, they were both breathing hard, yet his dark gaze questioned her.
“Tell me why we should do this.”
“Because there’s something between us that neither of us can explain.”
“You sense that?” he asked, his voice rough.
“Yes. And you do, too.”
Before he could challenge her or ask her any more questions, she kissed him again, feeling the intensity spiral between them.
Still, she was afraid that she must act quickly, before something happened and he changed his mind.
Although she had little experience with men, she was pretty sure she knew how to push him over the edge. With her eyes squeezed closed, she reached and found his hardened rod through his thin shorts and pressed her palm against him, rocking her hand.
When she felt him shudder, she breathed out a little sigh, stroking her fingers against the firm shaft, listening to his breath quicken. Gods, he was big. Would he fit inside her?
Well, she would find out soon, she knew, unable to keep a small shiver from going through her.
When his hand came down over hers, lifting it away, her eyes blinked open to find him staring at her.
She tried to drag her hand back, but he curled her arm inward, holding it against his chest.
His voice was gritty when he asked, “Have you done this before?”
She swallowed, astonished by the question. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I can tell you’re nervous.”
“I . . .”
“Have you done this before?” he asked again, more sharply.
She dipped her head. “No. But I don’t want to stop.”
“You always stopped before. With other men.”
She couldn’t hold back a nervous laugh. “I never got this far before.”
“Why?”
There was too much to explain about the relations between men and women in her world, and if she tried to tell him any of that, she would get all tangled up in things she shouldn’t talk about at all.
Raising her chin, she stared into his eyes. “Are you trying to come up with an excuse to stop?”
“Yeah. And it wouldn’t be an excuse. It would be a perfectly logical course of action.”
“Then stop being logical,” she managed to say, knowing she had no other words to continue the argument. She could only bring her mouth back to his for a long, passionate kiss. In the middle of it, she knew she had won. He wasn’t going to walk away this time.
She thought it would happen fast now. She wanted it that way, so she wouldn’t have time to think—or worry.
When he rolled up her T-shirt, exposing her breasts, her breath caught.
He raised his hand, sliding his fingers across her tightened nipples. It was only the lightest of caresses, but it made her gasp.
When he closed his thumbs and fingers around the crests, she arched toward him.
And when he replaced one of his hands with his mouth, she thought she would go up in flames. He swirled his tongue around the erect point, then closed his mouth over her, sucking and mirroring the caress with his hand on her other breast.
She stared at him, sure her expression must be equal parts shock and sensuality. She had known about kissing and touching, but she hadn’t known that a man might put his mouth on a woman’s breast, or how wonderful it would be.
She felt her skin flush. Felt her breathing accelerate. Felt an unfamiliar heat gather between her legs. When she moved restlessly on the bed, he lifted his head, looking at her as he slid his hand down her body, playing with her navel, then the crinkly dark hair at the juncture of her legs. His touch in those places felt good. It was nothing compared to the burst of sensation when he dipped into the hidden folds below.
It shocked her that a man was touching her so intimately, and even more shocking when she felt slippery moisture gather there.
She should be embarrassed, but the heat smoldering in his eyes told her he liked her reaction.
She caught her breath when he lifted his hand and licked his fingers.
“That’s good,” he murmured as he kept his hot gaze fixed on her face. “I’d like a more direct taste, but I think that would be a little too much for you.”
She swallowed. Surely he couldn’t mean . . . She stopped trying to figure it out when his hand went back to work and one finger dipped inside her.
“What . . . are you doing?”
“Giving you pleasure.”
“I want to pleasure . . . you,” she managed to say. “Isn’t that what a woman is supposed to do?”
“No more than the other way around. Unless the guy is a total jerk.”
He bent to play with her breasts again, using his lips and tongue and teeth while he slid his hand up and down through her wet and swollen folds in long strokes that dipped inside her, then moved upward to a place that sent tingling sensations radiating outward through her whole body.
As he touched her with such skill, she realized that he must have a lot of experience pleasing women.
“I’m going to . . .” She didn’t even know how to finish the sentence. But she felt like he was pushing her toward some point of pleasure that was too much to bear.
When she began to move her hips, he seemed to know what she needed. Increasing the pressure, he kept up the maddening stroking, until a kind of explosion quaked through her, starting at that point of sensation and making little spasms clamp her internal muscles around his finger.
He stayed with her, drawing out the pleasure of it, and when it was over, her eyes blinked open, and she stared at him.
“What happened to me?”
“You reached sexual climax.”
“You can do that without . . .” She let the sentence trail off.
He answered with a shaky laugh. “Yeah.”
She thought about what had just happened and what she knew about sexuality. “I reached sexual climax. You didn’t.”
“I will.”
He began to kiss her again, caress her again, and she understood that this time it wouldn’t be his finger inside her.
Now more than ever, she expected it to happen quickly, but he surprised her again, kissing and caressing her until she felt that tempting pressure building inside herself once more.
He kicked off his shorts and shifted on top of her, parting her legs with his knee as he kept kissing her, murmuring into her mouth. She felt the pressure of his rod against her and started to tense up. But he surged inside her, and she gasped as he broke through the barrier of her virginity.
He went very still above her. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“I hurt you.”
“Only a little.”
“Do you want me to stop?”
“Gods, no.” Because she couldn’t say more, she moved her hips a little, feeling him slide inside her.
He gazed down at her, watching her face as he began to move above her, slowly at first.
Shifting to his side, he took her with him, caressing her breasts, then reaching between them to find that spot with his fingers.
As he stroked her there, her pleasure built again so that she was soon moving against him as she had before.
He moved, too, stroking in and out of her as he caressed her—until the explosion came again, more powerful than the time before. And while the aftershocks were still vibrating through her, she felt him follow her over the invisible cliff.
She clung to him, pressing her face to his shoulder.
“I’m glad it was you,” she whispered.
“Yeah.” His hands slid over her back and shoulders, and she snuggled into his warmth. She had never imagined this contentment, this closeness, with another human being.
His lips nibbled against her cheek and her sweat-slick brow.
“Will you sleep with me?” she murmured.
“Yes.”
She drifted on a gentle cloud, her body cushioned against his.
“It never would have been like that in my world,” she murmured.
He lifted his head, staring down at her. “What do you mean, your world?” he asked.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
KENNA SWALLOWED. IN the afterglow of making love, the words had simply slipped out of her mouth, and now she scrambled for an explanation that would sound plausible.
“My . . . community,” she managed to say.
Talon pushed himself up, giving her a long look. Moments ago she’d been relaxed and cozy in his arms. But no longer.
“Which is where?”
Her throat clogged. She longed to tell him, but she knew it wasn’t possible.
“We just made love, and you still can’t trust me enough to tell me where you come from?” he said in a rough voice.