Purity (Pure and Tainted) (24 page)

“Oh Boone…” She sighed and winced as her arm rubbed against one of
her nipples. “Purity, that hurts!”

“You’re just sensitive right now.” Boone stroked her cheek. “Do
you want me to touch you now?”

“Yes, please.” K relaxed back against him with a sigh. “I just
hope this helps. I mean, having you touch me.
Because I’m no
good at it myself.”

“I hope it helps too, darlin’,” he murmured. “I really do.”

Because if he wasn’t able to help her, he didn’t know what the
hell he was going to do.

Chapter Seventeen

It was surprisingly comforting to lie back and let Boone stroke
her. Because that was all he did at first—just ran one big, warm hand over her
body in a way that made her want to arch her back and purr like a cat. It
reminded K of the way he’d washed her hair in the shower that first time or the
way he rubbed her back at night sometimes as they talked. It was
calming…soothing. Purity, but she’d missed his touch—K was ashamed to admit,
even to herself, how much. It was so nice to be close to him again. His spicy,
masculine scent seemed to fill her senses and the warmth of his big body
surrounding her made her feel safe and protected.

But at last the need growing inside her was too much. Feeling
restless, she slipped out of his shirt and lay naked against him, with her head
pillowed on his left arm and her side pressed against his chest.

“Please, Boone,” she murmured. “I think I’m ready now.
Ready for more.”

Boone leaned over her, holding the small pink tube. He squirted a
little bit onto one fingertip. “Here goes, darlin’. I’ll try to be gentle—just
tell me if it hurts.”

“All right.”
K closed her eyes and bit her lip,
bracing for the contact. When she’d tried to touch herself it had been
irritating and painful. But to her intense relief, she felt nothing but a
soothing coolness when his broad fingertip finally made contact.

“Are you okay?” Boone asked anxiously, as he circled her right nipple.
“Does it hurt?”

“No.” K shifted against him. “No, I…I think it’s helping.” In
fact, it was doing more than helping. She couldn’t help thinking that the feel
of his finger stroking over the tender, tight nub of her nipple gave more than
just surcease from pain. It also tingled strangely, sending little electrical
shocks of pleasure throughout her entire body, making her skin feel incredibly
sensitive and her breath come short.

“You want me to do the other one?” Boone murmured, his warm breath
brushing her cheek.

K nodded. “Please.”

“My pleasure.”
His voice, already deep, seemed to
have slipped down into an even lower register and she wondered if touching her
was somehow giving him pleasure as well. But how could it when he was the one
doing the touching?

Boone got some more of the gel from the little pink tube and began
stroking it over her other nipple, being just as careful as he had with the
first. K felt it tighten and had to bite her lip in order to keep back a moan.
Purity, it felt so
good!
The pleasure
he was giving with his touch was as intense as the pain had been before she
admitted her need to him. But there was still one place she ached.

“Boone,” she whispered, wishing her voice wasn’t quite so
breathless. “Could you…do you think you could put some on me lower? That place
between my thighs
hurts
.”

“Of course, darlin’.”
One large, warm hand stroked
gently down her quivering abdomen and belly and then K felt him cupping her
mound. “I’m going to take this slow,” Boone murmured in her ear. “Let me know
if it feels okay.”

“All right.”
K nodded and spread her thighs
wider for him. “Please, Boone…”

He made a low, indistinct noise in the back of his throat and then
she felt his fingers gently spreading her open. K moaned softly as the cool air
hit her exposed inner sex and then Boone touched her.

He was slow at first, just as he had promised. She felt the broad
pad of his finger stroking the soothing gel gently over her swollen nub. Her
own clumsy touch had done nothing but irritate her but when Boone caressed her,
she moaned breathlessly as the burning pain finally eased. Then, just as it had
with her nipples, the sensation of pleasure began to grow and build inside her,
only this time it was a hundred times more intense.

“Boone!” she gasped as his finger traced magical patterns around
her throbbing sex.

“Are you all right?” He stopped at once but K didn’t want him to.

“More than all right.”
She looked up at him. “The pain is
gone but there’s something else instead.
Another sensation.
I don’t understand it but it feels so…so
intense.
So
good
.”

“It’s sexual pleasure, K.” He pulled her closer and kissed her
cheek gently. “I know you’ve never felt it before, but it’s one of the
strongest drives we humans have—the need to mate, the desire for pleasure.” He
was still cupping her mound lightly, though he had stopped touching her as he
spoke.

“I like it.” K looked up at him. “The pain is gone now, Boone
but…I don’t want you to stop. Will you…touch me some more?”

“All you have to do is ask,” he assured her. Then that one gentle
fingertip began its slow, careful journey around the button in the center of
her sex once more. “God, darlin’, you’re getting so
wet.”

K moaned and arched up against him. “What…what does that mean?”

“Means your body is reacting to being touched. It’s getting ready
for…to do other things.” He kissed her cheek again and lifted her head a little
with his arm. “Look and see for yourself.”

K wanted to ask what exactly her body was getting ready to do but
she was mesmerized by the sight he was showing her. Between her thighs, her
sex, which had once been a colorless slit, had bloomed like a flower. Her
nether lips were plump and full and Boone had them spread open so that her
inner sex was on display. Pink and soft and glistening with moisture, her core
seemed swollen with need and pleasure, especially the tight little button at
her center which he was tracing over and over with his fingertip.

“Purity!”
K gasped and bucked against him as
the pleasure grew to new heights. She didn’t know why watching him touch her
should make the pleasure more but somehow it did.

“It’s beautiful,” Boone murmured in her ear. “
You’re
beautiful, K. So beautiful I can’t look away from you. Your
full breasts, your soft little pussy, so open and wet…”

For some reason his words, murmured in that deep, hot voice made K’s
body respond even more. Sparks
of pleasure were arching through her like lightning and she had the feeling
that she might explode soon, but in a
good
way. Still, she wanted something else—something more.

“Boone,” she gasped, reaching up to tangle one hand in his thick
brown hair. “Please would you…will you put your mouth on mine while you do
this?
While you touch me?”

His blue-green eyes were half-lidded with desire. “I’d love to.”

And then his mouth covered hers, just as it had on Minotaur, and
his tongue traced the seam of her lips, demanding entrance.

K opened for him eagerly, accepting his tongue as she accepted his
fingers between her thighs. His mouth tasted hot and spicy and forbidden.
Contaminated,
she thought deliriously.
So contaminated.
But the thought no longer held the fear
and horror it once had. Now she welcomed the contamination and begged for more.

And Boone seemed more than willing to give her more. The entire time
he was kissing her, the broad pad of his finger continued to trace a slow,
deliberate path around her aching bud. K began to feel like there was a wire in
her lower abdomen, a wire that was twisting tighter and tighter, threatening to
snap at any time. Her hips twitched and she moaned into Boone’s mouth. She had
a feeling she would never be the same if that wire snapped and yet, she wanted
it to.
Wanted the feeling building inside her more than she’d
ever wanted anything else in the entire universe.

“Boone,” she gasped, breaking the kiss at last. “I’m so…I feel
like…like I’m going to
explode
.”

“It feels like that,” he reassured her, his deep voice husky with
emotion. “But
it’s
okay, K. It’s just because you’re
about to come—to have that release we talked about.”

“But what…what should I do?” K begged breathlessly. It seemed she
couldn’t hold still in his arms. Her body was twitching all over the place, her
hips and pelvis thrusting in time with his slow, rhythmic caress.

“Just let it happen,” he murmured. “Just let yourself come, baby.”
As he spoke, he increased his tempo just a little, the warm callused pad of his
finger slipping over her sensitive nub just a little harder, a little faster.

It was all K needed. With a gasping moan, she felt the wire in her
belly snap and suddenly she was flooded with pleasure, overwhelmed by it,
overcome by it in a way she’d never felt before.

“Oh!” she cried, grasping at Boone’s broad, bare shoulders.
“Oh, Boone…
Boone.”

“That’s right, K,” he murmured, his eyes still half-lidded as he
stroked her. “That’s right, give it up. Give it all up and let yourself go,
baby.”

K’s back arched and it felt like every muscle in her body was
tightening at once. It reminded her a little of the awful seizures she’d had
back when she’d first come out of her suit and had needed Boone’s touch so
badly. But the intense pleasure she felt was the exact opposite of the pain
she’d had then. That and the way Boone was looking at her—the expression on his
face, the need in his eyes that seemed to match her own. Hardly knowing what
she was doing, K tangled her fingers in his hair again and dragged him down for
another kiss.

Boone kissed her back eagerly, still stroking between the swollen
lips of her sex until K began to feel like the pleasure was too much—too
intense. With a little gasp, she pulled away from his touch and broke the kiss.

“You okay?” He looked concerned.

“I think so.” K was surprised at how shaky her voice sounded. “I
just…I’ve never felt anything like that before. It was…amazing.”

He gave her a lazy grin. “Kind of makes up for all the messy
biological functions and inconvenient emotions, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know if I’d go
that
far,” K said, frowning. “But it certainly helps.” She looked up at Boone. “I
feel better now, almost like my body is satisfied in some way. The way I feel
full after I eat.”

“That’s good.” He smiled at her. “I wasn’t sure if it would help
or not. But Loki said—”

“I don’t care what he said.” K yawned. Now that her body’s
insistent urges had been satiated, she found herself incredibly weary.
Which made sense—she hadn’t slept for the last three nights because
of the pain.
“I’m tired, Boone,” she murmured. “Will you—”

“Will I what, darlin’?” he asked gently.

K sighed. There was no point in going back to the way they’d been
before, no point in trying to be angry with him again. It felt too good, too
right to be held in his arms. The comfort of snuggling against him at night was
too tempting to be denied.

“Will you hold me tonight like you used to?” she made herself ask
in a low voice.

“Of course I will.” He stroked a strand of her hair away from her
face and kissed her forehead. “I just need to run to the fresher for a minute
and I’ll be right back.”

“All right.”
K yawned again. “Don’t be long.”

“I’ll try not to be,” he promised. Then he gently disentangled
himself and got off the sleeping platform.

K watched him walk across to the fresher. She wanted to wait to
sleep until he came back, wanted to feel him hold her again but her eyelids
felt like they had weights tied to them. Having the accumulated stress and pain
of the past several days suddenly relieved made her incredibly tired. By the
time he’d closed the door behind him, sleep had overtaken her.

* * * * *

God!
Boone barely made it to the fresher and closed the
door before he ripped his underbriefs down and fisted himself in one hand. His
shaft was throbbing for release and when he closed his eyes, he kept seeing K’s
face as she came, kept hearing the soft, helpless little cries she made when
she lost herself entirely in the pleasure he gave her.

He wanted to draw it out, to make it
last, but then he made the mistake of putting his hand to his face—the hand
he’d touched her with. K’s warm, feminine fragrance still clung to his fingers.
Boone slipped them into his mouth and tasted her on his tongue. Under the bland
sweetness of the gel her natural flavor was salty and wild and utterly
delicious.

He couldn’t hold back anymore. With a
few short, sharp strokes, he was coming, coming with her name on his lips as he
remembered her crying out for him while she gave herself entirely and without
reservation. Goddess, she was beautiful—so wild and dangerous, his Paladin.

Paladin.
The thought brought him up short. He’d
given her back the suit and she had never withdrawn her promise to kill him.
Though she
had
said she would delay until they got Shayla back. And
maybe that would be enough time.

Enough time for what?
Boone asked himself.
Enough time to
make her feel for you what you feel for her? Enough time to make her love you
when she doesn’t even know what love is?