Night's Honor (23 page)

She might not know where they were going, but it was definitely a step in the right direction.

Taking a deep breath, she nodded. “Agreed.”

His expression turned serious, and he eased away from the wall. Without his body weight pinning her into place, she had to force her own shaky limbs to support her.

Sliding his fingers lightly down her arm, he took her hand.

“Come make love with me,” he said.

After all of that—after taking the time to create an understanding that was filled with respect and that gave her a sense of safety—how like him to make everything so classic and direct, and simple.

She tightened her hand in his. “Yes.”

SIXTEEN

A
t her reply, a sense of peace and gladness filled Xavier.

He raised her hand to kiss her fingers, and she caressed the corner of his mouth. Her dark eyes looked wondering, and she looked more vulnerable than he had ever seen her.

Need roared like a freight train in his blood, but he would not give into it. Not yet. Putting an arm around her slender body, he walked with her to his bedroom door and opened it.

Inside, everything was as he had last left it, the large, old four-poster bed made with an eighteenth-century, intricately embroidered quilt. He saw that Diego had unpacked his bag and set it neatly on the chair in the corner, then he forgot everything except for Tess.

As they passed through the doorway, she pulled back against his arm, her body language suddenly turning reluctant, and he realized he had forgotten to turn on the lights. He flipped the switch, and gentle, indirect light flooded the room.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

The reluctance vanished from her body, and in reply, she shut the door and turned to put her arms around his neck.

That was all the invitation he needed. He kissed her hard and hungrily, and he felt her reaction shudder through her whole body. Her lips molded to his, and she kissed him back with a fierce hunger that set him ablaze.

Over the centuries of his existence, he had witnessed so many things—miracles and tragedies, and mysteries that were simply unexplainable. He'd had considerate, humorous lovers, and he'd enjoyed every one.

None of it compared to the miracle of holding Tess's body against his. Seeing the utter lack of fear in her flushed, angular face, when she had once been so afraid of him.

Realizing the passion that glazed her beautiful eyes was all for him.

“‘Thy love is better than wine,'” he whispered against her softened, sexy mouth.

Better than wine.

He brushed his lips down the side of her cheek, along the clean, graceful curve of her jawline, and kissed her slender neck. Her skin. Dear God, was there anything else as perfect as her skin?

She cradled his head in both hands, her uneven breath sounding in his ear. “What was that? Were you quoting something?”

“Love poetry,” he muttered, kissing along her collarbone as he ran his hands underneath the hem of her sweater. “From the Song of Solomon.”

An exhalation of a laugh shook out of her. “You're a romantic?”

“I was, once upon a time,” he admitted. He curved his hands around her narrow rib cage. She fit so perfectly against him. “I still am, on occasion. When life permits.”

“I'm not a romantic,” she confessed. Nuzzling his cheek, she slipped his jacket off his shoulders. He shrugged it off and let it fall to the floor.

“I forgive you,” he told her expansively, with a grin.

Another ghost of a laugh danced across her face. “Quote something else for me.”

As he coaxed her sweater up, she lifted her arms. He pulled it off of her and let it fall to the floor too. She wore a plain black bra, no lace, but the way it molded to the round curve of her breasts was extravagantly feminine.

He touched her temples. “‘Thou hast doves' eyes,'” he said gently.

Her expression turned luminous. The emotion shining out of her face—that was all for him.

He felt it come into him, until it lit every corner of his soul and shone back out at her. “Of course, there's also this one—‘I have compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots.'”

She burst out laughing. “What on earth does that mean?”

“I have no idea.” Smiling, he stroked her graceful shoulders while she undid the buttons of his shirt.

“How much can you quote?”

“I was a young man with a completely normal sex drive, who was encouraged to study the scriptures,” he said. “I memorized all of it.” He stroked her lips. “‘Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet. . . . Thou hast ravished my heart.'”

Something stricken banished the laughter from her gaze. “Yes,” she whispered. “That's what it feels like.”

All the words burned away, and he stood silent, without language or barriers, holding on to her bare, warm waist. He felt like he might drown if he let go. He might drown anyway, but if he did, he needed to bring her with him.

He shrugged out of his shirt, threw it and went down on his knees in front of her. Unbuttoning her jeans, he slid the zipper down and eased both her jeans and panties over her hips while she stripped off her bra. When she stood totally nude before him, he sat back on his heels and feasted on the sight of her.

She was panther-sleek, with toned, slender muscles, a narrow waist and a flat stomach, all of which served to enhance the feminine swell of her hips, and
Dios
, those full, round breasts. The dusky rose of her nipples were the perfect crown for those tender beauties, and the silken tuft of private hair at the juncture of her legs beckoned him with a siren's lure.

Slipping his arms around her slim thighs, he rubbed his cheek against her, inhaling her scent, while he listened to her heartbeat gallop. It was good, so good, to scent the evidence of her arousal, and to know that her heart raced for him.

He had been stiff for some time, but now his cock hardened further until he felt desperately sensitized, unbearably erect. Desire might be an old friend whom he had met before, but with her, it came to him wearing a new face, sharp, bright and joyful.

He felt the blood coursing through her, such unimaginably precious treasure housed in the temple of her body, and her fingers stroking through his hair. She tugged gently until he tilted back his head to look up at her.

“Let me come down there with you,” she murmured.

It took a moment for him to understand what she meant. He loosened his hold around her thighs, and she began to kneel.

“No,” he said, standing to pick her up. “I won't take you on the drafty floor, not when we have such a large, comfortable bed to explore.”

He walked to the bed to ease her down onto it, and he came down on top of her. Hungry for the rich taste of her mouth, he kissed her again as he stroked between her legs to finger the delicate, plump folds of her moistened sex.

Fire flashed in her eyes, and her breath sawed in her throat. As she fumbled at the waist of his slacks, her lips shaped unsteady words against his. “I can't stand it.”

His, this urgency of hers was all his. The look in her eyes. The need he could feel in her. All for him.

Her body might be lovely, but the passion of her spirit was what drove it, and that was inexpressibly gorgeous. Intoxicated with beauty, he licked her mouth. “You can stand so much more than you think you can.”

Carefully, he parted the petals of her flesh until he found the small pearl of her clitoris. With a deep sense of pleasure, he explored the stiff little peak of flesh and circled it with his forefinger. She made an inarticulate, urgent noise at the back of her throat, her body arching up to his touch.

He needed.

He needed her.

“Touch me,” he said against her mouth.

She made another odd little sound, something between a growl and a whine, and hooked one leg around his waist as she ran her hands quickly, greedily down his back. Tracing the waist of his slacks to the front, she wrestled with the fastening.

Something thundered in his ears. With surprise, he realized it was his own roughened breathing. When she got his pants open, his stiff, aching penis spilled out into her hands.

As she gripped him, he threw his head back, face twisted. She ran her thumb over the broad, damp tip of his cock, and the pleasure was so extreme, it was agonizing.

“Oh, shit,” she muttered. She grabbed his wrist, held his hand against her and shook as though she had a fever.

It snapped him back into focus. He stared down at her as she climaxed, quivering rhythmically against his fingers. It was so surprising, he couldn't stand for it to be over so soon. He slid down her body and parted her legs, and put his mouth on her.

Her head snapped back against the mattress, and she stuffed the heel of one hand against her mouth to muffle a scream.

The taste of her, the sensation of such velvety softness against his lips . . . he lost all sense of self-control and feasted, licking and sucking, while she bucked and twisted underneath him. His awareness narrowed to two things, how immense and painful his erection had become, and the slick pearl of flesh he held with such tense care between his teeth.

She was sobbing now, and swearing like a sailor. He would have laughed, if he'd remembered what humor was.

Instead, he flicked his tongue faster, harder. He couldn't shove his cock into her and suck on her at the same time, no matter how much he wanted to, so he made do by inserting two fingers into her.

Her inner muscles clenched on him, and she was so tight and richly plush inside, so wet, he just had to fuck her with those two fingers, he had to. The heat and carnality of it shoved him outside of himself. All his intellect shut down, until only the urgency was left, and it built to an excruciating level.

A low, shaking moan broke out of her, and her body rippled with more tremors. He felt her climax, inside and out.

As he held his mouth firm and steady to help her through it, he thought,
Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.

No. That ancient, long-dead author got it wrong.

Love is surprising and can strike the oldest, most world-weary heart without warning.

Love is so much stronger than death.

•   •   •

T
he strength of her second climax was so ferocious it overtook everything. She felt completely lit from the inside, bathed in the sweetest, most delicious fire she'd ever experienced.

It wasn't that she'd never climaxed before. She'd had healthy, athletic sex, and she'd climaxed many times, both with partners and by pleasuring herself. Climaxing happened to be one of her very favorite things to do.

But she'd never before climaxed with Xavier.

The visual shock of watching him work between her parted legs was only matched by the sensual shock of feeling his mouth move on her with such intimate wisdom, and feeling his fingers pierce deep inside her body.

She'd never before climaxed with such emotion.

He had coaxed her out of her fortress until she stood unguarded, and the pleasure rolled over her like a tsunami. Sobbing for breath, she clutched at his shoulder, while tears spilled out of the corners of her eyes. He was the only thing strong enough to hold on to in the face of such a storm.

As the wave of pleasure peaked and ebbed, Xavier raised his head and met her gaze, the angles of his face pronounced and serious. He had such clarity in his eyes, as if he comprehended even more than she what they did together.

The muscles in his arms and upper chest bunching, he rose to crawl over her. A sprinkle of sleek, dark hair ran down the middle of his lean torso, winging out to touch both flat, male nipples, and arrowing down to the erect penis that jutted out of the opening of his slacks.

He had a beautifully masculine body, but it was only a naked body. It shouldn't be so profound. Except she couldn't lie to herself, and it was.

After two climaxes, she should feel sated, but she didn't. Nothing was going predictably. Her body felt empty and aching.

Looking up into his eyes, she curled her fingers around his cock. He felt hot and hard, his penis covered with skin like silk. When she squeezed him, he hissed between his teeth and arched into her hand.

The most ravenous hunger gripped her. She arched her pelvis up, guiding him as he settled his weight on her. Nose to nose, they stared into each other's eyes. The intensity was palpable and searing, like an arc of electricity sparking between them.

The head of his cock brushed the hypersensitive, swollen flesh at her entrance. Bracing his weight on his arms, he pressed, and the thick, rigid length of his flesh entered hers.