Dark Angel's Ward (19 page)

"No. You didn't." He didn't fight me as I continued to rub. He just slumped forward in a resigned sort of relaxation. Besides, he was still enjoying himself. His muscles rolled under my fingers with the rippling grace of a cat's.

"Tell me you love me," I said after a while.

He flinched. "Why?"

"Because I want to hear you say it."

"You won't get angry again?"

I frowned. "I asked you to, didn't I?"

"Yes." He snuck a glance at me from the corner of his eye. "But I don't want you to believe I've coerced you into the way you're feeling right now."

"Oh." My hands went still on his shoulders. "I suppose that makes sense."

He sighed. "I'm sorry if it upsets you, but it's for the best. I can't trust my voice or my words in this matter." He looked back at me again. A faint glimmer had rekindled in his eyes. "If you wish to know my feelings, I would rather show you."

A wave of pure anticipation tingled through my body. "Tell me," I repeated in a husky whisper, "and then you can show me."

"Very well." He squeezed his eyes shut and bowed his head. When he spoke again, his tone was carefully flat. "I love you, Jandra Maxwell. With everything within me, I love you. I live by your grace and would gladly die at your command."

I guess I'd been hoping those words would frighten me less with his kiss fresh on my lips. No such luck. Still, he'd done as I asked, so I did as I'd intended. I sat back completely and scooted to the middle of the bed.

He turned on me with the eerie quickness that usually preceded the need for a brain drain. But for the first time since he'd walked back into my life, his azoth sat at a steady level. I knew it instinctively, but still I probed at our psychic link for confirmation. Good. Maybe we'd gotten at least one problem under control.

Though the expression on Zeph's face suggested anything but control. He looked at me like a drowning man looks at a shoreline he knows he'll never have the strength to reach. The intensity of his gaze forced a small noise from my throat. I reached out a tentative hand to him.

"I want more than a kiss from you, Jandra," he warned me, sitting still as death. Only his eyes moved, roving up and down the length of my towel-clad body.

"I know." I stretched out my other arm, offering him an embrace. "Come."

He let out a long breath, shifting to half kneel, half lay alongside me. He swept me into his arms, but to my surprise, he didn't claim my mouth again. Instead, he pinned me with a serious look. "Forgive me."

"For everything?" I blinked, taken aback. "I'm...not sure I can do that yet." Sensing his dismay, I added, "I don't even understand it all yet. Can you honestly say you do?"

His shoulders slumped. "No. I suppose not."

I leaned up to place a kiss on the corner of his jaw. "It doesn't have to be perfect, Zeph. Not right away. It looks like we're going to be spending a lot of time together from now on--we'll work it all out eventually."

"Will we?"

I shrugged. "Well, we'd better. All this angst-ridden bitchiness even starts to wear on me after a while."

"Don't belittle yourself, Jandra." His expression softening, he leaned in again. "You're perfect just as you are."

"Hardly." Did those words sound oddly familiar? Hmm. "But thanks for saying so, anyway."

"I mean it."

His lips pressed mine gently, so gently. He swallowed my sigh of pleasure. I brought up a hand to stroke the midnight silk of his hair, the nape of his neck. I trailed the other hand along his back, fascinated by the alternating textures of his flesh, the pure and the defiled. I vowed to myself that someone would pay for what had been done to him.

"Don't think such things now," he murmured. "Please, just be with me."

"Yes, dear."

I parted my lips for him this time as he kissed me again. His astonishment rippled through me, and I laughed a little down in my throat. Giggles turned to groans, though, as his tongue slid past my lips to caress mine. I'd forgotten how good he tasted, like honeyed apples, like all things sweet and intoxicating. The sensual friction tightened my abdomen, made me ache for every other pleasure I knew he could give me.

Suddenly the damp terry cloth felt like sandpaper against my sensitized skin. I slid a hand in between us to pull the towel loose, but he caught my wrist. "Only if you're certain," he whispered raggedly.

I bit back a growl of frustration. "Don't I feel certain?"

I'd meant for him to touch my mind, but instead he pressed his free hand into the small of my back, bringing my body flush against his. I don't know what he felt, but I felt
his
certainty plain as day, straining against the curve of my thigh. Heat tore through me, pooling low in my belly.

Zeph's eyes fluttered closed for a moment. When they opened again, they were megawatts brighter than they'd been before. He captured my other wrist in a decisive grip and shifted, bringing us up onto our knees. The difference in our heights was less like this--my head actually reached his shoulder rather than the middle of his chest. I tipped my head back and gazed up at him. We stayed like that for a long moment, as if neither of us could bring ourselves to make the first move.

"If you're certain," he repeated.

I didn't bother with words this time. I slipped free of his grasp and turned the tables on him, bringing his hands to the tucked edge of the towel. Finally, he tugged it open and let it fall away behind me.

"Oh, my Jandra." His fingers splayed over the bare skin of my shoulders. He lowered his head to my neck and kissed the tender, bruised skin, now free of its bandage. The wound had closed and all but disappeared, but still the pressure of his lips made me ache and tingle all at once. I arched against him, shivering.

He moved lower, his hands and mouth wild against my body. He nuzzled the hollow of my throat, licked along my collarbone, brushed feather-light kisses just above my breasts. I whimpered, clutching at his arms for balance. When he mounded my breasts between his hands and buried his face in my cleavage, I nearly swooned.

My mind whirled away into a haze of pure sensation. This was what I'd been missing all this time. This ecstasy. Nothing else compared to it, pleasure feeding from me to him and around again, spiraling higher and higher until our bodies were a single mass of molten desire. Until our souls intertwined, the way they were intended to.

I was ready for all that. Honestly, I was. But as Zeph laid me back on the mattress and moved to tuck me underneath him, my breath caught in my lungs. Gasping, I stopped him with a firm hand on his hip.

"No."

Twenty

"No?" he repeated, his eyes going wide.

"Stop," I whispered. "Please, just stop."

He obeyed, poised on hands and knees above me. He said nothing, but he radiated bewilderment and hurt.

"Zeph...." I sighed, willing him to understand. I pressed his hip again, harder this time. He rolled off to lie on his back beside me. I sat up, raking a hand through my tousled hair. "I'm sorry. I just can't think straight right now."

He still didn't speak. He lay staring up at the ceiling, and I twisted around to study him. "Hmm," I mused. "You know, that's actually much better."

His gaze shifted to me. "What is?"

"In fact, I think that'll work." I rolled my hips and crawled close enough to throw a leg over his waist. I'd thought his eyes had been wide before--by the time I'd slid on top of him he practically goggled. It was almost funny.

"What are you doing?"

I bit back my laughter with an effort. I had a feeling he'd take it the wrong way. "I'm taking control," I replied, leaning down to peck the tip of his nose. "You don't mind, do you?"

He shook his head fervently. "But what made you change your mind?"

I sighed, not sure how to explain. "I thought I wanted to just let go, to lose myself in you," I began, "but I don't. Not really. I want to
give
myself to you. Not because things got crazy--hell, not even because
you
want me to. I want to do it because I decide to. Does that make sense?"

"This is important to you," he murmured, which told me he didn't really get it. He hesitated, then asked, "You want to be with me still? Truly?" At my nod, he persisted. "Even though you can't forgive me?"

So that was it. I realized he'd been expecting me to push him away much sooner than I actually had. My staid, stoic Zeph was just as nervous about this as I was. And just when he'd started to feel confident, I'd started freaking out. I sighed again, searching for words to soothe him. "Yes, I want to be with you. Maybe partly because I'm upset and need to be held right now, but also because I...I want you. I want you back in my life. So it doesn't matter if we haven't worked everything out just yet, at least not to me. I want to keep trying. And I want this, now."

Even as that beautiful smile lit his face, I felt like kicking myself. I hadn't been able to force the 'L' word out of my mouth even once throughout my entire speech. Even knowing how much it would mean to him to hear it, I'd held back. I could only hope he'd read it in my heart. That didn't make me too much of a chickenshit coward, did it?

"Come here," Zeph breathed, drawing me out of introspection. "Kiss me."

What else could I do? I leaned down and kissed those perfect lips. Felt the tension in his body smoothed away by pleasure, only to build again as contentment turned to urgency. His hands traced my back and butt in lines of sensuous fire. It felt delightful, but I wanted more than that. So much more.

I kissed a path along his jaw line as I sat back, settling my butt on his lean thighs. He watched me through heavy-lidded eyes as I trailed my fingertips along the waistband of his jeans. "May I?"

"I'm yours to command," he replied.

"No," I whispered as I worked the button loose. "No commands. Only desire."

He let out a groan I took as agreement. Not that I'd been waiting on him to agree or anything--the heated response of his body told me all I needed to know. I tugged down his zipper and peeled the denim back from his hips. Once freed, his shaft curled tight against his stomach, seeming to tremble with readiness.

The sight made me quiver as well, made warmth and moisture rush to my core. I reached out a tentative hand to stroke him, my fingers tracing the velvety underside of his erection. He pressed his head back into the pillows and hissed with pleasure. He lifted his hips, helping me slide the fabric down the considerable length of his legs. It seemed to take ages, but finally I tossed his jeans off the foot of the bed.

When I turned back, I had to bite my lip at the sight of him lying there, naked and passive. Zeph gave new meaning to the phrase "in all his glory." My gaze traveled slowly upward from where I knelt by his ankles, past the sculpted strength of his legs, to his narrow hips and waist. I watched, fascinated by the rapid rise and fall of his chest....

"Jandra?" The wariness in his tone caught my attention. "Is something wrong?"

"Nope. Just ogling." I smiled wryly at him. "I'd forgotten how damn beautiful you are."

His eyes blazed again at the compliment, bathing my skin in lavender prisms. My own urgency reignited, I crawled back to him, pressing his shoulders as he tried to rise up to meet me. "Stay put."

He sank back, his eyes intent on mine. "You want me like this?"

"Oh, yeah." I moved to straddle him again. "If I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do the hell out of it."

He smiled. "As you like."

"Like" didn't have much to do with it at this point. It was need that drove me. My entire body felt hot and heavy with anticipation, craving that most intimate connection I'd denied myself for so long. I curved body over his, capturing his mouth again as I hovered just above him. I kissed him thoroughly, then broke off to whisper, "Are you ready?"

He nodded once. "Are you?"

"You tell me." I leaned back slowly, allowing just the tip of him to enter me. Even that small contact was enough to make us both groan. His arms circled me as I slid the rest of the way down.

Once our bodies were fully wedded, he pulled me down to lie against his chest. His lips found my ear. "We are one."

"Zeph," I whispered. If I'd had something else to say, I'd forgotten it. I braced my hands against his shoulders and pushed upward, arching my back as I worked my hips against him.

I rode him with slow, steady glides, savoring every inch until we almost broke apart, then sinking down again. And again and again and again. All the while his hands skimmed down my sides and up my back, teasing over my belly and breasts. Every now and then he would pull me down for a long kiss, lifting his hips to surge up into me.

Our rhythm gradually quickened, until my rocking drew protesting squeaks from the bedsprings. Zeph's big hands cupped my butt, spreading me open wide. He met me thrust for thrust until I could think of nothing else but the slide of his body within mine. Just as I began to run out of breath, to slacken my pace, the pressure of his hands suddenly changed. Now he squeezed my body tight around his, and it was more than I could bear.

Ecstasy broke over me in a wave. I tensed around his shaft and cried out as he thrust in deep, wringing even more pleasure from my climax. He kept it up until I collapsed against him, utterly spent.

His arms slipped around my sweat-slicked back and cradled me. "Incredible."

I chuckled breathlessly. "Why thank you."

After a moment he rolled us onto our sides, still face to face, still joined. "Are you comfortable like this?" he asked. I nodded, and he slid one hand down to cup my thigh, guiding it up over his hip. "And like this?"

"Yes."

"Good."

He began to move inside me again, slowly for the first few strokes but gaining speed quickly. I gripped his shoulders and leaned back, deepening his angle. He had to be close to the edge, and his urgency spurred me on to another orgasm. A moment later, he began to shudder as well. He moaned and pulled me close against him again, tucking my head under his chin and whispering my name over and over.