Night of Fire (4 page)

“Lady, you’re incredible.”

She wasn’t a lady, she was a maiden. Now that she was no
longer exploring his seed-maker, he’d stopped moving in that jerky way. She’d
focus on getting him going again. That way, hopefully, he would take over.

He was enough taller that she didn’t see how they could come
together while standing up. Besides, usually her parents had sex in bed,
although sometimes her father took her mother from behind or her mother would
fasten herself to his hips. Thoroughly confused, she looked down. If she lay on
her back—

“Wait,” Taurus said. “We’ll use our clothes.”

His shirt protected her back from brush and rocks while his
slacks provided a cushion for her buttocks. As soon as he’d spread out his
clothes, she’d lain down and spread her legs because that’s what she’d seen
maidens do at Bel-fire. She wasn’t sure whether he approved because he’d again
shaken his head and muttered
incredible
several times, but then he’d
lowered himself between her legs, his knees pressing against her inner thighs.

For a moment she’d felt trapped, but then he’d leaned over
her and kissed her breasts.

He was still kissing them—occasionally taking one and then
the other nipple into his mouth and washing them with his tongue. Why he’d want
to do that was beyond her comprehension unless he didn’t think she was clean
enough, but it felt so good! Her skin where he bathed her tingled in a way she
felt all the way to her woman-place. Again she tried to comprehend how he was
going to get his organ inside her and whether she needed to do anything to help
him insert it, but she felt so alive that it was nearly impossible to think.
Soft and hot at the same time.

When her woman’s moon-cycle had begun, her mother had shown
her how to use cloth and leaves to absorb the blood and had given her an herb
tea to take away her belly cramps. She’d complained that she didn’t like this
part of being a woman, and her mother had laughed and told her it was worth it.
Back then she’d wondered if her mother was making fun of her.

She no longer did. Becoming a woman meant feeling alive in
ways the child she’d once been couldn’t have comprehended. Yes, she was here
because her clan needed Taurus, but so did she.

Somewhere beyond her sight, people were singing and
clapping, and the drums seemed to be getting even louder and more urgent, but
she didn’t care. In fact, the noise added to her pleasure. Taurus had an
amazing amount of her breast in his mouth and now his hand—his hand was between
her legs.

The moment he touched her in that fascinating place, she
felt something ooze out of her, but she didn’t think it was blood. This felt
nothing like her moon cycle, more as if her baby-place were readying itself for
him.

She wanted—needed him inside her.

When he used his fingers to push apart the two flaps of
flesh there, she stopped existing anywhere else. She couldn’t remember how to
breathe, and her hips didn’t want to remain on the ground. Instead, they lifted
toward him, and her legs spread even wider without her telling them to—at least
she didn’t think she had.

His finger pushed deeper inside her to the most sensitive
place on her body, the place that so often fascinated her. It was all she could
do not to clamp her pelvis muscles around that finger so he’d keep it there
forever. Putting her own fingers up in her had been pleasurable but nothing
like this. She didn’t think a man’s hand had anything to do with making a baby
or spilling seed, but that was all right. More than all right!

He released her breast. “You’re tight in there,” he said.

“I am sorry.” Had she disappointed him? If only he’d tell
her what to do!

“Sorry? Lady, a snug fit is what all men dream of.”

That was good, wasn’t it? Eager to increase his pleasure,
she again tilted her pelvis toward him and bent her knees outward. She wished
she could see what he was doing. Much as she’d loved having him play at nursing
her, she was more interested in having her opening explored.

“Damn. You’re amazing.”

He was still up inside her, but his finger jerked and slid
here and there, she felt his legs brush against her right thigh. After blinking
several times, she managed to get her vision to clear and saw that he’d
repositioned himself so he was now stretched beside her, propped up on an
elbow, staring at what she’d offered him.

“Amazing?” she asked. “What do you mean?”

“You don’t have a single, solitary hang-up, do you? What are
you, some leftover flower child?”

Did they speak the same language? So much of what he said
made no sense. “Flowers, yes. Without them there can be no Bel-fire.”

“Yeah, right. Whatever.”

She was afraid he’d say something else she didn’t understand
and she’d have to pull her mind off the sensations he’d ignited inside her, but
he scooted down a little, probably so he could have a clearer look at her
opening. His finger continued dancing inside her.

No, not dancing—something more.

Although she’d explored up inside herself and found the
experience so enjoyable that she had no intention of quitting, it had never
felt like this. Instead of checking to see if her cave was large enough to
nurture a baby as she’d done, he seemed more interested in touching her here,
there, everywhere. Some part of her seemed to be trying to push out. It was
getting larger, more sensitive, she was positive of that. And when he touched
it—

“Ah! Oh…”

“Like that, do you?”

“Yes! Yes!”

“I mean to please.”

What was he doing now? Although her head roared, she
struggled to comprehend. All those nooks, crannies and pieces inside her felt
as if they were on fire and would blaze until she lost consciousness. In
contrast, her arms and legs felt as if they’d been weighed down with rocks. It
couldn’t be, yet she wouldn’t be surprised to find a burning brand resting on
her belly.

Her cave was now full, crammed with him. Not one finger but
two. Maybe—maybe more?

He kept touching, what?

“I…I cannot breathe!”

“Don’t worry about it,” he muttered. “No one’s ever died
from being finger-fucked.” She thought he said something else, but she couldn’t
concentrate. Now he scooted into a sitting position and placed a hand over her
mouth. The other—thank goodness—continued to plug her. Continued to dance, run,
tiptoe, maybe gallop.

“Ah—”

“Hush. Hush. Let it go. Just don’t telegraph it to the
world.”

Tiny volcanic eruptions spread over and up and through her
cave. They raced to her belly, lightly hammered her breasts. She felt herself
begin to fly off in all directions, half terrified, she tried to sit up.

Before she could, he pulled out of her. Then he gripped her
inner thighs and splayed her legs. He was there—his seed-maker probing her
opening.

Pushing into her.

Shoving.

Hard!

The pleasure she’d been experiencing evaporated to be
replaced by a sharp pain. She gasped.

“Shit! No.”

He was starting to withdraw, leaving her. No, that couldn’t
be! He hadn’t spilled his seed inside her. The earth, and she, hadn’t been
fertilized!

Panicked, she clamped her legs as best she could around him
and held him where she needed him. At the same time, she grabbed his shoulders
with all her strength. Already the pain was fading.

“No! Please! Feed me.”

His seed-maker was still in her, filling her, it seemed,
clear up to her navel. He couldn’t have felt more tense if he’d been a bow
string. “You’re a virgin,” he whispered.

“Yes.”

“Damn. Why didn’t you…?”

She felt him start to draw back again and increased her hold
on him. “Please,” she begged. “Please do this. Tonight. Now.”

“Holy shit. What is this? You’re looking for a stud to take
your cherry?”

She knew what a stud was, and although there weren’t any
cherry trees near where her people lived, they’d traded for the delicious dried
fruit. “Yes,” she said, hoping that’s what he wanted to hear.

“Shit.”

“I—I have come so far,” she managed. “What I ask is not so
much, is it? Surely it is not so hard for you do to.” If she kept him inside
her, would a little of his seed dribble into her? Would it be enough?

“Lady, this is hardly a hardship on me. But damn it, a
virgin.”

“I thought you would want—”

“I want. Believe me, I want.” He took a ragged breath.
“Shit, I’m going to burn in hell for this.”

“No, you will not burn,” she said, although she didn’t know
what he was talking about.

“I hope to hell you’re right. What a—you’re sure about
this?”

“Yes.”
Yes!

Apparently that was the answer he wanted to hear because he
stopped trying to draw away and pushed himself deep into her again. While
they’d been talking—and even before that when she’d felt the pain—she’d lost
touch with at least some of her inner volcano. But its strength hadn’t been
spent. It waited for her, ready to grow and heat again.

How could a man be so strong? She understood the kind of
muscles needed to hunt, farm, even fight, but this? He pushed and pushed at
her, jolting both of them so she wasn’t sure she was still on the ground. Maybe
he’d speared her and was carrying her along.

Along where?

Her cheeks were so very hot, as were her arms and breasts
and stomach. Most of the fever, however, was centered in her baby-cave. She
felt enough discomfort to know she’d be sore once their mating was over, not
that it mattered.

“Virgin. Virgin. Damn.”

She wanted to tell him—tell him something. But he had become
part of her. Her cave felt as if it were trying to empty itself and suck all of
him into her at the same time. His thrusts increased in intensity, he grunted
with each breath. Suddenly something warm and wet flooded her cave, and he
rammed into her like a stallion mounting a mare. She rode the wave, sensed it
rise up around her, cover her. Drown her.

“Ah—ah!”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were a virgin?” Taron demanded
when finally he could talk again. Maia—that was her name, wasn’t it?—was lying
beside him, looking for all the world as if she’d been poleaxed. He wasn’t all
the way back to the here and now himself, but enough progress had been made that
he at least had a toehold on reality.

“Would you not have mated with me if you had known?”

Like him, she was drenched in sweat. He didn’t need to ask
to know he wasn’t the only one who’d come. Shit, she’d had a climax during her
first sex act. Either he was stud of the year or this was one sexy broad.

“Mated? All right, if that’s what you want to call it, who
am I to argue? And no, I wouldn’t have gone at it the way I did if I’d known,
that’s for sure,” he admitted. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“You did not. Not really.”

Noting that she was trembling, he pulled her onto her side
and into his embrace. It was cool enough that they wouldn’t be able to lay here
in the buff much longer, but he’d take all he could get. Hell, the last thing
he wanted to do tonight—or for the foreseeable future—was let go of her.

“Look, let’s don’t play games, all right?” he said. “The way
you came on to me—hell, I figured you had more experience than I did, and
that’s saying a lot.”

When she didn’t ask for an accounting of his experiences and
tentatively—at least it seemed tentative—curled down enough that she could kiss
his nipple, he went on. “I’ve only had one other virgin. And since I was in a
like condition, it was pretty awkward all the way around. You’re so uninhibited,
prancing around the next thing to naked—what gives?”

“Gives?”

Guessing this was going to be another of those conversations
that went nowhere, he tried to rub away the goose bumps on her shoulder. Before
long, his effort progressed to what he could reach of her flattened breast with
their bodies sealed together the way they were.

“Look, I’d like to know one thing,” he managed despite the
stirring of a certain part of his anatomy. “I need to know. Are you on the
Pill? Maybe you’re wearing a patch. IUD?”

“Yes,” she whispered after a too-long silence.

If he’d been set up—
”I’m holding you to that,” he
said firmly. “Believe me, lady, you better not be lying to me.” She didn’t say
anything, which made him feel more than a little uncomfortable. “You don’t
sound as if you’re from around here,” he said in an attempt to pull more out of
her. “Where do you live?”

Instead of answering, she arched her back, giving him
greater access to her breasts. Despite her somewhat roughened fingers and the
calluses on her heels that told him she spent most of her time barefoot, the
rest of her lush and freely offered body was silken. Maybe that’s what came
from clean-living, not that he knew what she did for a living, where she came
from, who the hell she was, whether she was wearing a wire and had been hired
by the competition, unimportant things like that.

Her nipples had turned into not-too-small pebbles and seemed
several degrees warmer than the rest of her breasts. If someone put a gun to
his head, he couldn’t say how many breasts he’d been invited to explore, and
after a while he’d come to the conclusion that they were all pretty much the
same. Yes, there were differences in size, color, position, sensitivity, but
since they all existed to serve the same basic purpose, there wasn’t all that
much to be said about them.

Something, however, was different with Maia’s. He just
didn’t know what it was—only knew he hadn’t come close to being done with them.

Or with her.

He repositioned her so they were sitting up and her back was
now against his chest, and he’d cradled—strange that he’d think of it like
that—her legs between his. He’d managed to prop his ass and lower back against
a clump of grass, and although it was far from the most comfortable back rest
he’d ever had, he didn’t care. Strangely, he cared only a little that his once
again alert cock was being smashed by her ass.

Her head rested against his left shoulder. Her hands lay
unmoving on his thighs. The message in her open-to-him body was about as basic
as it could get. No fool he, he alternately played with her breasts, stomach,
hip bones, even curled himself around her so he could gain access to her muff
and the lush cunt underneath.

The first time he cupped her pussy and pressed down, she
responded by grinding the back of her head into his collarbone. She was leaving
fingertip-sized divots in his thighs. It had been an experiment—at least that’s
what he told himself—a test to see whether he’d made her so sore that her pussy
was incapable of registering pressure. Obviously it wasn’t.

Encouraged, or maybe the truth was he had no control over
what he was doing, he spread his fingers to increase his control over her cunt.
His middle finger was positioned at the entrance to her entrance. He entered,
wiggling his finger just a little to make sure he’d found ground zero.

Her breathing picked up, and so did his. Just like that, he
felt pressure in his groin; the message in his cock came through loud and
clear. There was only one place it wanted to be.

Amazing. Contrary to what the men’s magazines said about the
early thirties still being primetime sexually for men, he hadn’t gone for two
jerk-offs in one night since his early twenties. Sure, he was capable—he
thought—but like drinking too much, blowing a whole night with sex was no way
to run a business.

Screw his company, his career.

The nymph to end all nymphs was here, between his legs,
offering herself to him like a Christmas morning gift.

Unfortunately, there was a limit to how wide he could spread
his legs, which meant she too was under the same constraints. In addition,
leaning forward like this so he could play in her playground was going to kill
his back. However, until the death knell had been sounded—

Maybe there’d been a change in the drumming, maybe he’d
simply become aware of it again. Whatever it was, he matched his hand’s rhythm
to the beat that seemed to have permeated both earth and air.

She’d stopped digging into his legs. Now she painted and
caressed them, touching the same area over and over again. It was always new, always
traveling from thigh muscle straight to his cock.

When he slid his hand farther over her sex and buried his
middle finger up to the base in her, her hands stopped moving. Now they lay
nearly still on him, trembling just a little.

“You’re cold?” he asked.

“No. I…”

“You what?” He straightened his finger so the back of it
rubbed against her pussy wall. Her next breath came out a sob.

“I did not expect…”

“What? That you’d climax the first time?” Could he take
credit for that?

“Climax?”

What planet was she from? And did it matter?
“Come?
Get off on me? Whatever you want to call it?” Her juices were drenching his
finger and some had already leaked out to dampen his palm. He wondered how much
of his semen was mixed in with her sap. Curious about how close she was to the
brink, he curled his finger so it now brushed the back of her pussy. Her cunt
muscles clamped around him.

Hmmm. Time to bring in the reinforcements.

Ignoring the increased discomfort in his back, he leaned
even farther forward so he no longer had to brace himself. Now that his other
hand was free, he put it to good use. Stroking her pubic hair and
finger-fucking her at the same time took both dexterity and concentration. He
sure as hell didn’t mind, and from her little grunts and groans, he had no
doubt about how she felt.

Calling on his inventive nature, he pulled her tight against
his hard-as-nails cock and caught a pussy lip between the thumb and forefinger
of his left hand. Now that that silken piece of flesh was out of the way, he
had no trouble working a second finger inside her. Sweat broke out on her. She
shoved her ass against him, grinding her buttocks into his cock.

Shit!

“That’s what I’m talking about,” he whispered into her ear.
His voice sounded as if he hadn’t used it in a month. “Lady, you’re randy.”

“I—it feels so good.”

“Makes you sorry you put it off so long, does it?”
Shit.
Did he want to go there?
“How—how old are you?”

“I am a woman.”

You are now.
“I won’t argue that but—” Despite her
pussy grip on him, he straightened his fingers. Her G-spot was around there
somewhere. If he connected… “I don’t understand you, not even a little bit.”
About
as much as I understand what the hell I’m doing with you.

“And you want to?”

“Damn right.”
I also want to screw you until I can’t see
straight, but that’s another story.

“I—I want to tell you about me,” she said in a small,
uncertain voice. “About my people. Our fears.”

“Fears?”

Whatever he’d just touched, her cunt spasmed as if an
electrical probe had been applied to it. Never one to deny a lady, he stroked
again. Just like that, a small stream of hot fluid drenched his hand. He held
it against her, no easy task given the way she was jerking.

Climaxing. Right here, right now, without him having to do
more than a little freelance finger play.

“Come on, Maia,” he encouraged. “Let it happen, just let it
happen.”

She bucked against him with such force that he was knocked
backward. He felt himself start to slide off his clump of grass and tried to
straighten. However, with his hands otherwise occupied, he had nothing for
leverage.

He landed on his back with her on top. She lay there a
moment, sweating and shaking, making tiny, continuous mewling sounds. Then,
just like that, she went limp. Her breath came out in a long, loud sigh.

Climax number two.

Despite whatever was poking into his back, he was in no
hurry to have her get off him. Although his hands were sticky with her come, he
felt compelled to cover her breasts. After all, he didn’t want her getting
cold. The moment he spread his fingers over them, however, compassion and
consideration changed into something else.

Splayed out by gravity, her breasts were nevertheless
incredible organs. They were hers, he could touch them only when she gave him
the right, but he’d taken her virginity. He’d showed her the meaning of
climax—a damn simple task—and now she wanted to tell him about her people and
their fears, whatever that meant. She knew what his cock felt like inside her
cunt and in her hand.

That made them, what? The word
soulmates
flitted
through his mind, but that was way too heavy. Too dangerous.

In the space of what couldn’t be more than a heartbeat, she
went from out cold to sitting up. Alarmed, he reached for her, but she was
already on her hands and knees, not because she was leaving him but because…

Although she was still putting her mind back together, Maia
had been aware of what was happening on the other side of the hill. There’d
just been a great whooshing sound, almost an explosion, and now the night sky
was becoming brighter, redder. The fire arch The Lady had told her about had
been lit. Soon it would be time for her and Taurus to step under it, but they
still had a few minutes—maybe enough time for her to make him hers, at least a
little bit.

She turned around. He was on his back, staring up at her,
his arms reaching for her. His seed-maker put her in mind of a shaft stuck into
the ground, only it was coming from him, not the earth.

Positioning herself so her legs were outside his, she rocked
over his organ until her baby-place was directly over it. She’d felt him inside
her before, it shouldn’t be such a soul-changing prospect to have it happen
again, and yet she couldn’t get enough air into her lungs.

Down, down, down she came. She moved as slowly as she could
because she wanted to draw out the experience for both of them. The tip of his
organ pressed against her opening and seemed to hang up there. Although she’d
never done it before, she used her hand to move her flesh out of the way. He
slid in.

“Good grief, woman.”

Grief was something no one wanted, but Taurus didn’t appear
to be in pain. In fact, he seemed interested in nothing except pushing even
more of himself into her. She accommodated him by widening her stance, lowering
herself onto him and sucking him into her. The two bags of flesh where she’d
been told a man’s seed was stored pressed against her bottom. It felt
wonderful.

He couldn’t pump into her the way he’d done before because
he wasn’t in the right position. However, she was.

Rather pleased with herself for having figured that out, she
lifted her head so she could study the red-tinted sky. She rested her hands on
his ribs for leverage and began moving her hips up and down. His hands settled
over her thighs, not in a punishing way but not gentle either. Down against him
she went. When she’d gone as far as she could and his seed sacs pressed harder
against her, she stayed there for several heartbeats. He felt so big inside
her.

When she straightened and drew away, she brought his organ
with her. Keeping him inside her called for concentration, no easy thing since
his skin gliding against hers had become like small, continuous lightning
strikes.

She’d been sent to this time and place to claim Taurus and
take him back with her. But tonight, right now, was all she could think about.

Tiny lightning strikes were good. Delicious. Like the finest
food only countless times better. Her skin, not just where his seed-bearer was
touching, became hotter and hotter and was so sensitive she might have felt the
weight of a single grain of sand.

She forgot who she was, couldn’t remember what it felt like
to be separate from him. His seed-bearer was amazing. Like a predator after
prey, it effortlessly trapped her. But she had no desire to break free.