The Bargaining (5 page)

The really crazy thing, Deacon thought, was that he believed her. She honestly did look as if she might go insane if left in this state of unfulfilled desire. This was way too surreal.

He opened his mouth to protest again, but a thought stopped him. Their plans for escape balanced precariously on their ability to work together quickly, efficiently, and logically. Any mistakes, any hesitation on either of their parts, and they could kiss freedom goodbye. Deacon needed Kili functional, rational, and competent, not whimpering and writhing like a sex-starved nympho. He needed the Kili he’d met an hour earlier, not this strange impostor he saw now.

Fuck
. Looked like it was about time for him to give up and play along with this cosmic joke.

“Deacon,” he growled, leaning closer to her, his shadow falling over her tense form and blocking out the dim light of the cell. “I’m no one’s master, and you sure as shit don’t need to serve me anything. If we’re going to do this, we’re doing it my way. Now let go.”

He flexed his wrist against her grasp, urging her to release her grip. For a minute, he wondered if she had heard him. She hesitated, then slowly slid her hand away, leaving it to rest, palm up, fingers curled, beside her head.

Deacon paused for a moment, waiting to see if she moved. She did not. She held as perfectly still as the doll he’d compared her to, but the tiny shivers of her pussy against his fingers assured him she was very, very real.

And very, very aroused.

He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. Time to step off the edge of the cliff and see what waited for him at the bottom. He hoped it wouldn’t be rocks. Or Protectorate soldiers with blasters at the ready. And if it was ... well, he might as well enjoy this one last moment of pleasure. If his hormones were telling him the truth, it would leave a hell of a smile on his face before the executioner fired.

Opening his eyes, he forced all the other thoughts out of his head and let that smile peek out now. “Hold on, little bit,” he purred. “This could get bumpy.”

Chapter Nine

She drew in a ragged breath as his fingers slid deeper, parting her softness and luxuriating in the slick sweetness of her honey-coated folds. Her entire body trembled. He could feel the soft fluttering of her internal muscles, but she didn’t move. All she did was tremble like a leaf in the summer breezes and mew like a frightened kitten.

“Shhh,” he whispered, leaning down toward her, unable to resist temptation a moment longer. Seeing no reason to. “Just relax. Feel. Experience.”

He laid his tongue against the golden hollow of her throat, feeling the frantic race of her pulse and the shuddering rhythm of her breath. She tasted as she looked, of dry, golden honey and sweet, exotic flowers. He rumbled in pleasure and flexed his fingers against her. She tasted like a garden and felt like a river, damp and deep and ruled by a racing current.

Deacon sucked at her flesh, drawing her skin against his teeth, opening his jaw and taking her inside. His tongue slid over the satin surface, laving and tasting, savoring her unique flavor. He heard her breathing becoming even harsher. It shuddered faster between her lips, broken and ragged. Her body tensed, drawn like a bow, shivering in anticipation of the next flash of feeling.

“
Darash
,” she moaned.

“Deacon,” he corrected, fingertips finding her entrance, probing and exploring. “My name is Deacon.”

“Yes! Anything.” Her head tossed back and forth against the rough canvas of the cot, gaze fixed blindly on the ceiling.

“No.” He circled her entrance with one fingertip, teasing the hungry flesh. “Not anything. Deacon.”

His finger hovered in place for a long moment, then dipped inside, pressing through the tight ring of muscle and sliding within.

“Powers!”

She clamped down around him, holding him tight within her. As if he had any plans to leave. He chuckled and pressed deeper, a slow, tantalizing progress forward until his knuckles pressed tight against her clit and sent another shudder racing through her.

“Deacon,” he said again, stroking her slick inner walls. She felt like paradise, all hot and wet and welcoming, and he wanted more of it. He drew back, ignoring her frantic pleas and the sharp upward tilt of her hips. His fingers circled again, nails lightly scraping the surface. He knew he was teasing her -- probably torturing her, to her way of thinking -- but her response had become critically important to him. He needed to hear her say his name. He needed to know that she realized who it was that touched her. He didn’t want any confusion in her mind between him and the jackasses she had “served” for so long.

“Deacon,” he said. His fingers pressed forward again. Two entered her this time, getting lost in the haven of her welcoming cunt. She gasped for air, hands clawing at the rough blanket beneath them. Her thighs parted wider, knees falling to the sides, leaving her totally exposed to him, pink and wet and vulnerable. But she never spoke.

His fingers curled, hooking forward to scrape against her sensitive inner walls. He heard the sharp intake of breath and slid his mouth down her throat, over her chest until he could feel the pounding of her heart beneath his lips. “Deacon,” he murmured.

She struggled to draw breath. He could hear the effort it cost her, but he didn’t relent. He needed to hear her speak his name. It had become his only purpose.

A moan broke from her lips and her hips circled against the cot, trying to coax him deeper. He responded by adding a third finger, stretching her to accommodate him, feeling her muscles tense and shiver before they gave way and allowed him inside.

“Powers. Please.”

Her voice sounded harsh and raspy, but Deacon wasn’t satisfied. He ignored the pleas and slid further down, nuzzling against the rounded pillow of her breast. He marveled at the ability of her tiny frame to support such bounty, knowing this was the one Ankharan custom he couldn’t quite bring himself to argue with. What man would protest a race of women with galactically impressive tits? Not him.

His mouth closed over the peak, and they moaned in unison. Here her taste seemed richer, sweeter, fresher, as if it had been concentrated on her nipple in preparation for his arrival.

Her hand reached up, sliding around the back of his neck to cup him closer. She cradled him against her even though he had no intention of leaving anytime soon. She tasted too good for that; her nipple felt too good against his tongue. He teased the tight bead, tracing the crinkled surface of the areola and feeling her shiver. Her pussy mirrored the reaction, clenching and releasing around his fingers as he continued to stroke and stretch her tight passage.

“Ah! Please. I cannot take ... cannot ...” She broke off as his fingers twisted and flexed and Deacon growled in pleasure.

“Deacon.” He said it firmly, insistently, and punctuated the reminder with a sharp nip of the bead between his teeth. Kili cried out and her nails dug briefly into his skin.

“Yes, I --” She broke off on a gasp as the hand between her thighs shifted, his broad thumb flicking with amazing delicacy over the surface of her pulsing clit. “Powers! Deacon!”

The scream echoed in his head and had him purring in satisfaction. “Good girl. Now was that so difficult?”

She didn’t answer, just squirmed beneath him, blinded and deafened by her arousal, doing everything in her power to tug him closer, urge him deeper. He smiled, suckled briefly at her nipple, and let it slip from his mouth with a soft pop.

“Now, let’s see if we can’t come up with a prize for you for that accomplishment.”

He doubted she heard him, but it didn’t matter. She could feel him and smell him and the slightest touch of his hands or mouth on her skin made her shake like an antique warp drive. He knew she was with him, whether she could summon words or not.

Smiling, he slid his mouth over her skin to her other breast, lavishing the nipple there with the same attention he’d given its twin. He suckled and licked and scraped and teased, occasionally nipping sharply enough to make her cry out, but always soothing the sting with generous strokes of his tongue.

When he left it dusky and gleaming, he traced a snaking path over her torso, dancing across her ribs and down over her stomach, which flexed and contracted against him, making her pussy contract in response around his deliberately stroking fingers. He chuckled in satisfaction and let his tongue circle her navel before dipping inside to awaken the ultra-sensitive skin. She gasped then, a breathless, shuddering sound, and to Deacon it sounded like music.

His mouth slid lower and his fingers withdrew, making her chest rise off the bed and her hands clutch at him in protest.

“Deacon, no! Please! You can’t leave me. You can’t stop. I’ll die if you stop. Please --”

He cut her off with another chuckle as his mouth slid down over the pale, bare skin on her mound. She froze and offered no protest when he shifted position, bringing his hand up to her chest to press her back down to the cot. He settled his chest between her parted legs, using the breadth of his shoulders to spread her even wider. Still not content, he placed his other hand high up on her inner thigh and pressed it open just as he lowered his mouth to her cunt and began to feast.

She tasted like spun sugar and warm spice, with a heady, alcoholic tang. He growled in satisfaction and drank deeply. After the tension of the failed mission, the boredom of captivity, and the struggle against temptation and his conscience, the taste of her was like water after a very long drought. He intended to enjoy every minute of it.

And Kili certainly wasn’t objecting. At the first touch of his tongue, she had drawn into a rigid bow, muscles trembling, frantic, panting cries breaking over her lips. Incoherent and breathless, she made no sense with her half-voiced pleas and mewls of pleasure, so he ignored them and listened to what her body told him. Her moisture ran thick and sweet. He could feel the contractions of her internal muscles when he pressed the flat of his tongue against her entrance. He felt the trembling of her thighs beside his head and the bite of her fingernails into his shoulders as she clutched him closer. He could sense her excitement and a tinge of surprise that made him wonder what the hell these damned Ankharan bastards had been doing to her all the times they’d had her.

Growling again, he forged deeper. His cock made petulant demands from inside his trousers, but he ignored it for the time being. Not only did they not have nearly the time he would need to satisfy that tyrant, but he was enjoying giving Kili pleasure too much to stop now. Deacon considered himself a good lover, skilled and attentive, and he always found he enjoyed sex more if he could make his partner lose her mind in the process, but this act was different. It had a newness he’d never experienced before, as if she were a virgin without all those messy physical barriers to deal with. Her sense of wonder seemed to him to match what a virgin’s might be. It was a heady feeling.

In any case, he savored every shiver, every goosebump, every breathless cry, and he wanted even more. He wanted to see her come apart at his touch, and he dedicated himself to the task with great purpose.

It didn’t take long.

Her half-spoken pleas and broken phrases turned into a constant whimper that contained no words but held a definite message -- that he continue what he was doing. Deacon complied happily, loving the texture of her skin, the warmth of her flesh, the exotic taste of her arousal. He noticed the sting of her nails biting into his shoulders, but he ignored it. He’d suffered through a hell of a lot worse for a hell of a lot less.

Shifting his position, he slid both hands high up her inner thighs and pressed them apart to open her for him even wider. She followed his silent commands, folding her knees to the sides and drawing them up high to the sides. She made herself totally vulnerable to him, and her desperate moans begged for more.

Slowly, slyly, his fingers slid higher. He licked a path up from her entrance to the quivering button of her clit and flicked it with the top of his tongue. Her voice broke, her breath freezing in her throat. Deacon just smiled and closed his lips over the little peak as he parted her folds with two broad fingers and pushed deep inside her drenched passage.

She quivered as if he’d hooked her up to an ion battery pack, but she remained breathlessly silent. Her body clenched around his invading touch, but he felt the slick welcome of her internal walls and the eager warmth that greeted him. He began to stroke, in and out, reaching deep inside before nearly withdrawing completely. Her hips quickly began to rock in counterpoint, pressing hard against his hand with each downward glide.

She began to breathe again, but her gasps and pants sounded like more of a struggle than a reflex. She fought for air even as he fought to deprive her of it. He took the upper hand, though, when he added a third finger, stretching her wide, and closed his mouth over her clit with a strong, drawing pressure. The combination of friction and suction, penetration and pleasure, seemed to force the oxygen from her in the form of a quivering scream. It lacked the volume to echo in the stone chamber, but it echoed in Deacon’s mind, making him groan in simultaneous pleasure and frustration. He wanted to go on teasing her forever, but he knew that if he went another five minutes, there would be no turning back. He wouldn’t be able to take his hands off her until he was sated, and that meant he’d probably still be rutting on her like a wild dog when the guards came to drag him away to his execution. Not what he had in mind for the future.

Drawing on the last of his self-control, Deacon thrust his fingers deep in her snug, velvet core and twisted to touch as much of her as he could. His tongue flicked rapidly over the surface of her clit and his mouth sucked at her with intense pressure, providing the final sensation that threw Kili bodily off the cliff and into the abyss of climax.

He followed her down, continuing to stroke and lick, but gently now, full of comfort rather than intent. He felt the violent shudders wracking her petite frame and felt a twinge of envy spurred on by the fire behind his fly. He ignored it. This had been her time, service to her need, not his. If they managed to make it out of their present situation alive and with all pertinent parts in working order, then they’d reevaluate the situation and see if they couldn’t come to an agreement more pleasing to his cock. ’Til then, they’d both have to suffer.