What was it again?
Oh. Yes. “It wasn’t the spell.”
She found his length and squeezed. Keeshan’s thin control
began to dissolve. But at his words, she froze. He placed his hand over hers
and resumed the delicious motion.
His gut lurched, his soul howled when she stepped away. The
cool breeze went suddenly cold as an abyss between them opened.
She crossed her arms and glowered at him. “What do you mean,
it wasn’t the spell?”
With great effort, he searched for his train of thought.
Which was…
Ah yes. The spell.
“I only used the incantation on you one time. The first
time.”
Aimalee shook her head. Her brow puckered into a frown. “No.
You must have used it again.”
“I did not.”
“Then why do I still want you?” She stepped even farther
away. He longed to follow but didn’t. “I mean, really want you. I think about
you, about your body, about the way you feel inside me. Your taste. Your scent.
I ache for you when you’re gone. That is not natural.”
Keeshan grinned. He couldn’t help it. “It is very natural.”
“Not for me. I never felt like that.”
“Not even for Carter?” A thrill snaked through him at the
thought.
She opened her mouth to answer but no words came out. Her
thoughts, however, were stamped on her delicate features. Shock. Horror.
Surprise. “Oh my God.” She put her palms to her flaming cheeks. “Oh my God. No.
It was never like this with him. Never.”
“Aimalee.” He stepped forward. He could not stop himself.
Not now. He had his confirmation. She wanted him without the damn spell. And
she had never loved Carter, not really. She had probably never even
wanted
Carter. Perhaps she’d been in love with the idea of love. And that was fine
with him. So long as it was Keeshan she wanted.
Because, may all the gods help him, he wanted her. With
every fiber of his being.
He tugged her into his arms and she melted against him.
“Aimalee. It’s all right. I feel it too.”
She buried her face in his chest. “But…” She glanced up.
Tears again. Damn.
“But what?”
She cupped his cheek. “But for you it
is
the spell.
It could be any woman and you would want her. It could be Sorcha, for God’s
sake.”
He choked back a mortified laugh. “Never say it.”
His expression must have been pretty horrified because she
laughed as well. And then she sobered. “You know it’s true. This passion you
feel for me—it’s been the same with all the other women the lamp has brought to
you.”
“No. Not really.” The emotions Aimalee evoked went far
deeper. For instance, before he met her he would never have bothered to resist
seducing a woman simply because she was upset. Not when the enchantment was
upon him. He would have drawn the incantation upon her and taken what he
wanted, needed.
With Aimalee, he could resist. It nearly killed him but
could resist. Hell, with Aimalee, he wanted to try.
Blind, mindless sex simply didn’t have the same allure as
holding her tight in his arms, knowing that alone gave her pleasure.
Clearly, she did not believe him. She skewered him with a
suspicious frown. “How? How is it different?”
He stared down at her beautiful visage, her perfect features,
the crinkles at the corners of her eyes, the wry quirk of those lovely lips.
And he couldn’t help but kiss her. It was a delightful kiss though a short one.
Because she eased away.
“How is it different?” She was damn insistent.
He shrugged. It was so difficult to put into words.
“I…care.”
Her brow furrowed. “Didn’t you care before?”
“Yes. I cared about finding release. But that was all. With
you, I care about so much more. I care about your happiness. I care about your
safety. I care…” He swallowed. “I care what you think of me.”
She smiled then and somehow all was right with the world. “I
do think well of you,” she said. “I do.”
He suddenly no longer cursed his internment in the lamp.
Because it had brought her to him.
“Ah, Aimalee.”
He wanted her so much. Wanted to kiss her, hold her, sink
into her and make her come but he hesitated. She had just gone through
something terrible. Discovered Carter’s perfidy. He should give her space. Give
her time. It was wrong of him to want to leap upon her now. It was—
He stilled.
Was that her hand? On his thigh?
She shot him an impish grin paired with a naughty wink and
his heart hitched. “Aimalee?”
“Keeshan?”
Bone-deep relief bubbled through him and he let go a little
laugh. “Are you asking me for permission?”
She peeped up at him in the most enchanting way, the minx.
He loved this playful side of her. “Do I need to ask permission?”
Never! “My lady, you can have me any time you wish. Any way
you wish.”
“Truly? Because there is something I have been thinking about.”
“Really?” His heart hitched. “What is that?”
“You remember when you showed me the bathing room?”
“Yes.” His pulse thrummed. Everywhere.
“Ummm.” She rubbed against him. “I would love a bath.” But
the way she said it, he knew it was not the bath that was on her mind. Or his.
“Come along.”
She laughed when he grasped her elbow and ushered her,
posthaste, back along the balustrade to the third door. It opened for them and
a coil of steam roiled out. He steered her inside.
But once there, she hesitated. Doubt flickered across her
features.
With an instinctual knowledge, Keeshan read her uncertainty.
He pulled her into his embrace. Into his kiss. He soothed her with his lips and
tongue. And only then, only when she was warm and willing and pliant, did he
nudge the sleeves of her lace dress from her shoulders.
When she would have stopped him, he lowered his mouth and
feasted his way along the neckline, seducing the dress from her body one tiny
increment at a time. She lost all sensibility when he found her nipples—thank
all the gods—and allowed the dress to fall, unheeded, to a pile on the floor.
Keeshan, however, continued his work.
It was very serious work. He’d had yet to explore her so
completely and he relished it. He tasted her breasts, like ripe fruit, sucking
and nibbling. He worshiped at the small of her back, licking and dabbing the
two entrancing dimples there. Tasted the cream between her legs, laving her
again and again, filling himself with her taste, her essence until she clutched
at his shoulders, trembling with strain.
“My. That was selfish of me.” He stood before her, holding
out his arms. “It is your turn, my lady, to disrobe me.”
It delighted him the way she stared at him. Like a child
offered a multitude of treats and unsure which to taste first. He decided to
help and removed his belt. Then he placed her hands at the hem of his tunic and
helped her lift it off.
She made a feral little grunt as his chest was revealed. He
couldn’t help the lash of pride her admiration engendered. But then he forgot
about all of that because, just then, she began to explore. From his collarbone
down to his pectorals, swirling around a nipple until he thought he would
expire and then down again, lower, to ripple over his abs.
A shudder shot through him, tightening his cock, sending a
tingle through his balls, as her attention drifted lower.
He shifted impatiently as she neared the target and then
drifted away. “Aimalee,” he groaned. And then he lost all capacity for speech,
because she knelt—knelt—before him and hooked her thumbs in the waistband of
his breeches and eased them down.
His cock, not shy in the least, bounded forward.
Her eyes widened and her lips parted. His knees went weak at
the sight but then they almost failed him when she touched him.
Ah, the bliss. The superb bliss of her fingertips. He thrust
his hips forward, unable to stop himself. He wanted this, needed this, ached
for this.
When she fisted him, stroked him, he nearly lost
consciousness. He was glad he did not, for the next heartbeat her breath wafted
over the throbbing head of his cock like a zephyr straight from heaven.
He pressed forward again and—bless her—she took the hint and
drew him into her mouth. Her tiny tongue dabbed at the sensitive slit and her
lips came around him and she sucked ever so slightly. He held himself as still
as he could, wanting to prolong this agony, prolong this bliss.
But when her nails scored his length, he knew he could tarry
no longer. An instant more and he would be finished.
So he stepped back.
It was the most difficult thing he’d ever done.
But he stepped back and helped her to her feet.
They were both naked now so he led her step by step into the
water. The pool was heated, the water a delight. She moaned as it lapped at her
thighs and then, with another step, at her clit. Tiny bumps rose on her skin,
screaming her delight.
He led her deeper.
And deeper still.
He brought her to a little stone seat that had been built
into the pool. It was a place where one could relax and enjoy the caress of the
waters or the caress of another. He settled her and then sat beside her.
She opened her mouth to speak but he kissed the words away,
sucking gently on her tongue and nibbling at her lips, teasing her much as she
had teased him. And with similar effect. Soon she was quivering and cooing in
his arms, clutching him as he found her slit and delved within.
It did not take much to rouse her. What a relief. Rising
arousal, twined with desperation, played over her features as he traced her
crease, circled her clit then slipped lower and deeper and in.
His heart stalled at what he found. She was slick and hot
and ready.
He slid his finger out—much to her chagrin—and then slid it
back in with another beside it. And he groaned. That easily, he filled her, so
tight was her cunt.
The ripples of sensations battering his body dissolved into
manic shivers as need crept higher and higher. His balls tightened into little
nuts. His cock wept. Saliva pooled in his mouth at the thought of sliding into
her. Taking her. Having her.
He had promised to please her. To see to her pleasure. And
he was determined to do so. He wanted to bring her to bliss before he entered
her.
But he did not know if he had the strength.
Fortunately, she had other thoughts.
She
took control, bless her. She grabbed a hold of
his shoulders and lifted herself in the water, turning to straddle his lap
and—all the gods—to straddle
him
.
She took his cock in her hands again and eased down on him.
He hissed, throwing his head back. She was hot. Hot and tight and slick. One
stroke might do him in.
His balls throbbed. The insistent little pulse at the base
of his cock went wild. Pressure, insistent and intense, built. It was all he
could do to hold himself still.
She rose above him, disimpaling herself, clutching at his
captured cock with the walls of her taut cunt, massaging him with that slick,
velvet glove. Her fingers, fisted in his hair, distracted him, but deliciously
so. When she bent her head and nibbled at his nipple, he could not resist a
thrust of his own. She liked that and wiggled a little, clenched his cock until
he thought he might lose his sanity.
And then he did.
She did something with her internal muscles—he had no idea
what it was—but she did it and fire ran riot through his body and he lost his
mind.
He stood and, holding her in his arms, flattened her against
the tile of the pool and impaled her. She cried out and threw back her head,
arching into the thrust, sending him even deeper. He thrust again. And again.
And then a mindless series of rapid lunges.
The water slowed him, frustrated him, but its resistance
enhanced the sensation. As he moved more and more frantically, little waves
lapped at him, lapped at her. They washed over her straining breasts and when
he lifted her lapped at the tight button of her clit. Fascinated at the sight,
he circled that nub and was rewarded when she came around him.
She was tight. So tight. The sucking sensation of her spasm
nearly unmanned him but he gritted his teeth and clenched his ass and forced
himself to hold back.
He wanted more. Needed more. More for her.
She wept and writhed. Each thrust into her engorged flesh
sent spirals of hellish shivers dancing through her. Through him. The sensation
traveled down his cock to nest in his balls. A heavy weight descended, a
tightening, an increasing tension that delighted and tormented him.
His cock swelled, strained inside her.
Her eyes flew open. Their gazes met, melded. And he
surrendered. Cum thundered from him to her in jet after jet of aching, burning
bliss. Even when he was empty, he continued to thrust, because with each plunge
she came around him, gripping, sucking, massaging the life from him.
Eventually he slowed.
Eventually he stopped.
He lifted her from the water in a boneless mass, wrapped her
in a toasty towel and curled up with her on the plush divan. And he held her in
his arms as she sobbed and moaned against him, until she drifted into a
peaceful sleep.
And as she slept, he held her. And stared at her beautiful
face.
And ached.
After the transforming passion in the bathing room, they
were both somewhat subdued. When she awoke, they went to the banquet hall and
had a simple meal of cheese and bread and wine. Each feeding the other.
And then they took a walk along the balustrade and Keeshan
led Aimalee along the path that snaked its way down the hill to the beach.
They walked in the surf and splashed each other and laughed
until he kissed her again. Then they made love in the cool sand with the
glowing moon as their only witness.