The Claiming (25 page)

Instead, he lifted his head and gazed down at her. "Look at me."

She opened her eyes and stared up at him in bewilderment.

"I want to see your eyes when I touch you," he murmured softly as he moved his hand to her other breast, tracing a tantalizing circle around its rosy peak till it, too, rose against his palm. “I want to know you are not clinging to another man’s picture in your mind while I’m making love to you.”

His words made no sense to her, disturbed her, but she dismissed her puzzlement as his hand moved lower in a languid caress along her ribs then to the soft, trembling hollow of her abdomen, spreading tingling warmth throughout her body till her flesh quivered with sensitivity. His fingers traced lightly over her hip, raising goose flesh, then across her thigh, moving upwards once more along the sensitive flesh of her inner thigh to cup her femininity, probing gently. She caught her breath on a gasp, her eyelids sliding half closed.

Alain gazed deeply into her eyes, watching them darken, glaze with her rising passion. He drew a ragged breath, fighting the rising tension in his own body, wanting her with an intensity that was near torture and yet holding himself back, needing to see that she wanted him as badly as he wanted her.

He slid his hand up to cup her breast and he began a slow, tortuous, mind numbing assault on her senses, drinking deeply of her lips, a slow, languid kiss that left her dizzy and weak. And when his lips left hers, it was only to blaze a trail of burning kisses to the hollow of her throat and along her neck to her shoulder.

Jana choked back a moan of pleasure as his mouth covered her breast. The gentle nipping of his teeth, the moist warmth of his mouth, the roughness of his tongue as he teased the hard tip sent shock waves of fire coursing through her veins, building a hot, burgeoning tension deep inside her femininity. His mouth moved to her other breast and she clutched the sheets, focusing on the rising tide of want and need within her.

When she was gasping for breath, he moved lower, brushing hot, moist kisses against the trembling hollow of her abdomen, and lower still, parting her thighs and nipping at the soft, sensitive skin along her inner thighs, moving slowly upwards again. “No," she gasped, trying to push him away, fearing she would find her release the moment he touched her there with his mouth. She needed to feel the hard flesh of his manhood driving into her, desperately wanted him inside her when she found her release.

He gripped her hands, forcing them to her sides against the bed, his eyes smoldering as they bored into hers. Then he lowered his head and stroked the tightened bud of her femininity with the rough warmth of his tongue, and she thought she would die with the pleasure of it. A moan escaped her. He lifted his head and gazed at her. "You want me to stop?" he murmured softly.

She twisted her head from side to side, burning, feverish with the need he had built in her, torn between divergent desires, her body screaming for immediate release, her mind longing to feel him as part of her when she came.

He kissed her again, languidly, teasing the tightened, sensitive bud till she was moaning with pleasure, her breath coming raggedly in her throat as she fought to hold off her release.

He released her hands, rising above her, gazing down at her with longing. His own face was tight with his need as he paused, probing gently with the head of his erection, the muscles in his chest and arms taut and bulging as he held himself poised above her. "Princess," he said in a ragged whisper.

Despite his command for her to look at him, her eyes had drifted closed of their own accord as she focused on the mounting pleasure, but she looked up at him through a haze of desire when he spoke.

He whispered harshly, "I want you."

She put her arms around him, pulling him to her. Opening her thighs wide to him, she arched her hips to receive him fully, gasping out a sharp cry of pleasure as he plunged deep inside her, so wrapped up in desire that it was several moments before she realized she’d felt neither pain, nor discomfort, when he thrust fully inside her. The thought seemed unimportant, slipped away from her as her mind focused once more on the joy of feeling him inside her. Urging him to take her hard and rough as he thrust again and again, she lifted her hips to receive each plunging thrust till the fire that had burgeoned inside her exploded, shock waves racking her body endlessly with spasms of ecstasy.

Watching her, Alain found his own surcease, uttering a ragged groan and thrusting deep to spill his seed in a soul shattering release before he went still atop her, spent.

He knew she wept even before he managed to roll off of her. He felt the scalding tears against his chest. He reached for her to pull her into his arms, but even as he did so she curled on her side away from him. He allowed his hand to drop, staring at her back while pain and anger twisted inside him.

He rolled onto his back, staring up at ceiling. After a while, she lay quietly beside him. He thought she slept. He'd tensed, on the point of rising, when she spoke.

"Alain?"

He relaxed against the pillows. "What?"

"Why....?" Jana bit her lip. What she didn't understand, and wanted to, was why he seemed to have changed toward her. Why had her not wanting to produce as the primitives did angered him so much when he was an outworlder, as well. She found, however, that she simply couldn't ask him that, couldn’t think of a way to ask him, feared what he might tell her. It occurred to her, though, that he’d said he was only half. Perhaps that was why the natural way seemed ‘right’ to him and the other seemed unacceptable. But, if that were the case, then why had he chosen to live in the most civilized manner allowed on Orleans? “Why did you decide to live … here, rather than with your mother’s people?”

His hand clenched around a fistful of sheet. "You think I should have stayed with my own kind?" he asked softly. "My mother was Camarl … my father outworlder…. Which world do you think I belong in?"

Startled, Jana turned to look at him. He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. She could read nothing of his thoughts from his profile. "I don’t know. I was just … trying to understand. Both, I guess."

His lips curled into a smile that was more a grimace. "In fact, neither. The ruling race, the whites, those who suspect, despise me for being half savage.... The Camarl despise me for being half white … I didn't choose. I grew up on my father's plantation like any other farm boy. I don't think I even realized I was different until my mother died and my father chose a woman to take my mother’s place....

I went to live with my mother's people for a time after that, but I didn't understand any of their ways or customs. They were as alien to me as they would be to you. I'd discovered that long before the whites rounded them up like animals and herded them onto a reserve, that I didn't belong with them."

Jana blinked, not certain she’d understood him correctly.

His smile was unpleasant. "They were savages, and a good deal more trouble than the whites were willing to put up with. They formed a great army, drove them before them until they found the most barren, useless land they could find and then imprisoned them there, building walls to keep them in.

"So you see ... I have no place, except the one I've made for myself. No people."

Jana was so shocked by what he’d told her that she could think of nothing to say for several moments. “But, your brother … the infants. You have them...."

His face hardened. "They are not mine."

Jana stared at him blankly. "But … Lill said they had come from Caro’s body."

His lips curled derisively. "There's always the chance Caro lied, of course. Then again, the child she miscarried wasn't mine."

She thought back to what Lill had told her before, trying to remember exactly what the servant had said. "The one that killed her?"

Alain's lips tightened. "It wasn't a miscarriage that killed her. I was referring to the one she was carrying when she agreed to marry me. Imagine her chagrin when she found herself tied to a savage ... and for nothing. If she'd only waited a few weeks more it wouldn't even have been necessary to go through with our farce of a marriage."

"But I heard...."

"What? That I killed her? That my baby did? Or that she killed herself because she couldn't bear the humiliation of being tied to a man rumor had it was a savage? Which, in fact, she knew before she ever agreed to the marriage. Or that she killed herself when she found out she'd be giving birth to a 'breed'? Which did you hear, Jana? All of them? Which did you believe?"

"I didn't believe. I didn't know what to think."

His lips curled derisively. "How forgiving of you! Do you want to hear what really happened?"

Jana didn't really think she did. She said nothing, wishing she'd never brought it up … any of it. Despite his anger, she saw very clearly now that it hurt Alain to talk about it. She didn't want to hurt him. She ached to take him in her arms and soothe him. She couldn't do it. She didn't know how to approach him when he became so cold, so remote.

He rose, pulling on his breeches, thrusting his arms into his shirt.

"The truth is," Alain said after a long moment, "a little of all, I suppose. She flew into one of her rages when she discovered she was pregnant again … this time by me. She threw everything she could lay hand to at me and every insult she could lay tongue to. I tossed a few insults back and left. She followed me, screaming at the top of her lungs. I was almost halfway down the stairs before she reached the top stair. She threw something … what, I can't remember. It flew past my head. When I turned, she was already plunging past me. I couldn't honestly say whether she lost her balance when she launched her last missile ... or if she was lunging at me. Regardless, I was too late to catch her. She rolled to the bottom. She broke her neck in the fall. If you want to know more, ask the servants. Or better yet, the neighbors. There were at least a half a dozen witnesses to Caro's grand exit."

He strode to the door that connected his room to hers by way of the bathing room then, closing it firmly behind him.

Jana stared at the closed door, feeling, strangely, as if something important had been wrenched from her grasp, that it had been offered and then snatched away again before she even realized that it was something dearly desired. She felt much like the day that Marty had come and taken her from Bondage Inc. She’d been afraid because she didn’t know where she was going or what would happen to her. She’d felt lost because Bondage Inc. and the technicians there were all that was familiar to her and she knew she would not see them again. Then, it had felt as if something important had been torn away from her, almost as if it was a part of herself she was leaving behind.

The unhappiness she sensed in Alain made her feel much the same, hurt, frightened, lost.

She realized finally that she had lost it before he’d left, that he’d withdrawn from her when he’d felt her tears. She should not have cried. He’d noticed and he’d thought it was because of him. She supposed in a way it had been. She should have controlled herself. It was not logical anyway to cry only because the one thing in her life that had been a constant source of fear and pain was gone.

But she had realized the moment desire ceased to control her whole being that she was no longer a virgin and that meant she could never go back to the life she’d known before no matter how badly she might want to.

***

Jana discovered that it was far easier to allow herself to become completely self-absorbed than to allow her thoughts to dwell on Alain. She had hurt him, made him angry, made him unhappy, and she couldn’t bear to dwell on it, or think of it at all. It was easier to push it firmly from her mind and concentrate on her problem, as awful as that was.

Alain had succeeded in doing something she had not thought could be done. He had taken her virginity. She was no longer salable merchandise. Her choices had narrowed to two. She could contact Val-risa and let her friend know that she would need the passage off world, or she could stay. If she stayed, it seemed very likely that she would only continue to make Alain unhappy, and she would be facing something she couldn’t even begin to imagine—and discovered she did not want to. Or she could take the ship when it came and hope that she would end up on a more civilized world where something could be done for her.

In truth, it all boiled down to one choice.

She had come to realize that Alain no longer kept her because he wanted to, but because there was no longer an option not to.

Even if that had not been the case, even if Alain had seemed to want her still, she didn’t think she was strong enough face what she would have to face if she stayed.

Blane, evidently thinking he was helping, had dragged her out to the stables to witness the birth of a young Zell. Jana had had no idea that that was what he had in mind or he would have had to drag her out to the barn kicking and screaming.

Far from helping her feelings, witnessing the birth of the Zell gave her nightmares. She could not close her eyes without imagining herself in the place of the animal, screaming with pain while her body convulsed and finally expelled something huge and bloody and coated with disgusting mucus. She’d thrown up when the creature emerged from the body of it’s mother, tangled in a bloody membrane, then passed out and had to be carried in the house.

It had terrorized her so thoroughly that she had actually, briefly, considered taking a leap from the top of the stairs as Caro had.

The moment she realized the train of her thoughts, she knew she could not hide in her room anymore. She could not hide from her fears by staying there. They were beginning to take control of her mind, making it impossible to think with any semblance of logic.

She had to do something. Even knowing she had many weeks that she must wait before she could leave, she knew she would lose her mind if she did nothing at all but wait.

She crept up to the attic again and searched until she found men’s clothing that she could wear. Grabbing several pairs of breeches and several shirts, she slipped downstairs again, hiding the sets of clothing in different locations so that if any were discovered, there remained the chance that the others would not be. She would slip away and tell Val-risa that she would need the passage, find out where she would need to meet the craft, and learn what would be needed to arrange payment. It was something that had to be done. She could not send a written message to Val-risa as Val-risa had sent to her and she feared that if she didn’t let her know Val-risa would decide she didn’t need the passage after all.