“It’s like everything else—it takes practice.” Boone tried to be encouraging although the sight of her stroking gel over her own tight nipples had his shaft throbbing inside his underbriefs. “Try lower,” he said. “Lower down.”
“I don’t know…” K looked at the gel uncertainly. “If it hurts me here…” She nodded at her full breasts with their tight, straining nipples. “I can’t imagine how uncomfortable it’s going to feel between my legs.”
“Just try, darlin’,” Boone urged, trying to sound calm and supportive. “Warm the gel up first—rub it between your fingertips.”
K did as he said, squirting out a small amount of the pinkish gel and rubbing it between her thumb and fingertips for a few moments. Then, hesitantly, she spread her legs and slipped her fingers between them.
Boone tried not to watch as she spread the plump outer lips of her pussy and began to stroke her clit but it was impossible to pull his eyes away from the erotic sight.
K shifted around some, twitching her hips restlessly as she probed gingerly between her thighs. Despite her efforts, it soon became clear that she wasn’t getting any relief.
“What’s wrong?” Boone asked her. “Still cold?”
“No.” She shook her head and made a small, frustrated noise in the back of her throat. “But it’s not working—I’m only making it worse.” She looked up at Boone. “Is there supposed to be some kind of special technique for this? Some method I ought to be using?”
“Couldn’t tell you,” he said dryly. “You’ve got different equipment from what I’m used to, darlin’.”
“Yes, but you know how to do this—how to achieve a release. You told me you did it all the time,” she accused.
“Well, not all the time,” Boone objected. “That makes me sound like a freaking pervert.” Like laying in the sleeping platform with her watching her try to get off was any better. But he pushed the thought away.
“But you achieved this…this release you were talking about?” K persisted.
“Well, yeah. That’s kind of the point of the whole thing.” Boone nodded.
“Then you can help me achieve it too.” She thrust the tube of pinkish gel at him. “Can’t you?”
Boone bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood. Damn it, he couldn’t do this—couldn’t take advantage of her innocence. He knew that. And yet here she was asking him to touch her.
“I shouldn’t,” he said, his voice coming out strangled. “You might regret it later on. When you understand more. When you know—”
“All I know is that I’m hurting. Please, Boone…” Her voice softened and the look in her black eyes was pleading. “Please, help me.”
The look of uncertainty and pain on her lovely face was too much for Boone. He knew K well enough to understand how much the plea for help cost her. She valued her independence above all things. For her to allow herself to beg for his assistance—it was the closest she’d come to an admission of weakness. To admitting that she needed him. Boone liked that more than he cared to admit—he wanted her to need him. To need him the way he needed her.
“All right,” he murmured at last. “If you’re sure.”
“I’ll be fine as long as you’re gentle,” K assured him. “You’ve been contaminating me from the moment you took off my suit, Boone. This is just another form of contamination, right?”
“Uh, I guess you could look at it that way.” Although he certainly didn’t. Boone cleared his throat. “Okay, let’s get started. Loki said this should help. Here.” He pulled her closer. “Get comfortable. Put your head on my arm.”
K did as he said, snuggling against his side and rested her head on his left bicep with a soft, contented sigh. “This is nice, Boone,” she murmured, looking up at him. “I…I’ve missed it. Missed having you contaminate me…I mean, touch me.”
Boone was surprised and touched. “I’ve missed it too, sweetheart. But I thought you didn’t want to be touched.”
“I don’t want to want to be touched…but I want it anyway.” K shook her head. “Does that even make any sense?”
“It makes perfect sense.” Pulling her closer, Boone dropped a gentle kiss on her forehead. “I just wish you would have come to me sooner. I missed touching you as much as you missed being touched.”
“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 t
hen 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?
She hadn’t known what food was either, until he cooked for her and fed her, he reminded himself. K might have been born in an artificial womb and raised as a Purist but if there was one thing she had proven, it was that she could learn and grow. So maybe she could grow to love Boone, the way he was beginning to love her. Maybe he could teach her that as well.
In the back of his mind though, a small doubt still prodded him with a sharp stick. What about her Erian blood? What about Loki’s claim that she would need to find a touch-partner among her own kind?
Boone sighed and cleaned himself up. They would have to sort through that mess when they got to it. In the mean time, he wanted to go back to bed and hold K while she slept. Wanted to feel her sweet body resting against his own and know that she was safe in his arms. Safe and loved.