Pleasure

  “Sagan,” she groaned, the lusty sound of his name rushing into him like an ocean tide drowning a parched desert beach. He flooded with a wicked combination of need and unexpected desperation. Sagan latched on to her again, this time drawing her deep against his tongue, sucking on her with tight hunger. “Sagan…”

  Not M’jan Sagan or even Ajai Sagan, but just Sagan. For the first time, he felt stripped of his personas of priest and Shadowdweller and was only a man. It gave him a glorious freedom all in a rush and that liberty powered his craving for her, jacking it up into astounding exponents. He teased and tortured her breasts, devouring her until he knew she was nearly raw with sensation. Sagan then launched himself upward to seize her mouth and reached to draw up her thighs to frame his waist.

  Valera transformed beneath him as she fed off his escalating aggression. Passivity disappeared and she met his mouth with wild appetite and such erotic response that it made Sagan’s head reel. Her nails scraped down his back and this time he was the one to arch in response and groan with incomprehensible lust. He snapped her bra free, ripping it in his haste to bare her against him. A moment later they were both reveling in the contact of heated flesh matching to heated flesh.

  Valera touched him everywhere she could reach, and not only with her hands. Her mouth, legs, and even her feet stroked against him. Sagan reached for the snap of her jeans and she was lifting her hips for him even before he had pulled the zipper.

  “I need you on my tongue,” he whispered in a heated rush into her mouth as he pulled her pants down her thighs.

  “Oh yes,” she gasped, tears stinging across her eyes as she helped kick away the last of her confining clothing. “It’s been so long since anyone touched me.”

  Sagan felt that keenly because the same was true for him. He surged down her beautiful body, licking himself a path along her sweetly dampened skin. She was misted with a fine layer of perspiration, the slick and sexy moisture speaking to him of how excited she truly was. As for himself, he didn’t think he could be any harder or any more eager than he was. His fingertips paved the way for him, drawing down through soft copper curls and seeking the wet declaration of her need for him. He could already smell it on her, the exotic aroma of a woman aroused. Sagan dropped down and caught the backs of her thighs against his shoulders, his drenched fingers spreading her open to his approach.

  Valera was gasping for every breath in anticipation, and when he kissed her intimately she sobbed with aching emotion at the unexpected act of tenderness. Then his tongue touched her in a fluttering tease and her body was awash in fire. It wouldn’t take long for him to make her come, she knew. She was so ready to feel that extreme of passion that it would take almost no effort at all. Val reached up above her head and grabbed for the spindles of her headboard, holding tightly as her body writhed beneath the wickedly quickening play of his lips and tongue. He sucked at her sensitive clit again and again, then drew himself a tongued path to her entrance where he teased raging nerve endings mercilessly.

  Sagan was not prepared for the divinity of her taste. He thought he would be, but he had overestimated himself and underestimated the delicacy she would be to him. Just her rich flavor alone drove him out of his senses, but she intensified it with the wanton reaction of her body and her strangled cries of pleasure. Valera abandoned herself completely to the magic he worked on her body and he felt her legs clutch tightly around him just before she wrenched into an explosive orgasm. Sagan heard her screams with only half an ear. He was much too focused on lapping up every creamy drop of the release he had coaxed from her body.

  “Stop! God, Sagan, please!”

  She was on overload and he could very much appreciate the sensation. He was feeling something quite similar. It was that and the overwhelming need that rode him to plunge deeply into her.

  But this was the moment of his sharpest reckoning, he realized as he drew up her bare body to kiss her. Not that he hadn’t already crossed several lines to have come this far with her, but this would become a very purposeful flouting of the vows he had taken and adhered to for sixteen decades. He realized nothing could ever come of whatever this was that raged between them. He was a priest. He was immortal and she was a human woman with over a third of her lifetime already past her. She would age and become a host to an array of human illnesses as her body systems broke down and failed her.

  It was because the very idea of it so suddenly paralyzed him with such unexpected emotion that he froze into stillness and stared down into her passion-clouded eyes. It had been mere hours since he’d met her, he realized with shock. And yet, now he felt as if he had wasted precious time. He hadn’t taken enough of her by far, and hadn’t given enough to her. Rules, he realized, didn’t matter. Couldn’t matter. They interfered with each precious moment he had with her. She was…

  His.

  Maybe not for eternity, but for this moment she was his. Sagan took that desperate feeling to heart, letting it seize him and take control of him. He disregarded her limp, sated state and set his cock in the hot, wet bath of her sweet pussy. A chill of raw need raced along his spine and met up with the heat the contact sent erupting through him. He shuddered as he soaked himself in her, reveled as she came alive beneath him once more.

  “Give me your mouth, jei li,” he demanded of her even as he set himself ready to enter her. He took her willing offer with heat and frantic desire. But he disregarded the primal urge he had to plunge into her deep and hard and instead burrowed into her in slow, inching movements. He savored every instant of it, from the incredible tightness of her to the way she raked his back in protest of his pace. Even so she undulated under him with every new inch of his invasion. Sagan’s blood rushed loudly in his ears, his chest aching with the raging beat of his heart. He was almost sheathed completely when the urge to climax rushed over him, reminding him of how unpracticed he had become.

  But he refused to make a disappointing show of himself with her. Grinding his teeth for control, he settled into her completely and they both exhaled in pleasured relief. Sagan remained still, recovering himself slowly as he minimized the awesome stimulation she was to him. He took those moments to pay tribute to her kiss-swollen lips and drifted soft kisses across the lashes of her shimmering oceanic eyes.

  She caught her breath just long enough to ask him, “Why me? Tell me, Sagan. Why are you defying your vows because of me?”

  “Because no other has ever made me want to, Valera,” he breathed in gentle reprimand against her cheek. “If you are a sin, jei li, then I am a sinner with all my soul. Nothing so sweet should ever be dangled before a man only to be denied. It would be cruelty, and I know my gods are strict, but they are never cruel. I will not believe that of them. I knew you were a gift the moment I first saw you. This…” He lifted himself from her and reached to stroke the curls where they were joined. “This is a gift. For however long I am blessed with this gift, I will embrace it with all that I can. I am so vibrantly alive in this moment, Valera. Can you feel how magnificent and vital it feels?”

  She could, if for no other reason than the power of his words sent her soaring. Valera was so incredibly full with him inside her, years of loneliness and emptiness melting away as passion bloomed in their place. She had never felt so special. So treasured. And all of it given to her by a man she’d known for what seemed like instants. Yet, somehow she knew that he knew her well. Maybe it was his telepathy, or maybe it was pure fate. Who was she to question it when he refused to do so?

  Valera curved sensual hands up over the back of his shoulders, drawing him back down along her body. She kissed his mouth in a slow, seductive connection, plunging them both back into the physicality of their union and all of its ramifications. She felt his weight shift, resting on her heavily for a moment. She basked in the feeling, the sheer size and power of him, as well as the obvious craving she saw in his eyes for her, making her feel light and wondrously sexy. All of her doubts and flaws, real or imagined, flew away. He saw her a
s a most perfect beauty, and so she became one.

  The change that came over her was stunning to Sagan. She had already had the power to make him a little crazy, but when she came alive with an all-consuming confidence of sexuality and feminism, she pushed him to a whole new level of insanity.

  “Move,” she breathed in temptation against his lips. “I want to feel you move.”

  Sagan couldn’t obey her fast enough. He withdrew from the clutch she had on him in a slow glide of astounding sensation. He watched himself draw free of her grasping, hungry little body, his cock slick with her juices. He couldn’t get back inside her quick enough to suit his need. He groaned loudly as he hilted deep inside her and she exhaled a sigh of pleasure that resonated through him.

  “More,” she coaxed without need, but the instruction had the desired effect on him. Sagan gave her more, each thrust a little more emphatic than the one before, the pace quickening in large leaps. She stroked his chest and back as he became slick with sweat. She stared up into his eyes so she could see the ecstasy that was building within him. He reached out in a sudden, harsh movement and grabbed the headboard of the bed, rising up slightly to change his pitch into her body.

  Suddenly Valera saw any hint of control spinning away. The feel of him changed to something amazing. There was victory in his eyes as he snatched her up into the storm he was feeling.

  Sagan knew he was hitting her g-spot just right by the look in her eyes. She became wild beneath him as she reached harder and harder for his every in stroke. She was so unbelievably wet around him, her heat hugging his pumping cock so intimately it was mind-blowing. Val threw back her head and began to cry out in a rising crest of lusty sounds that went right through him. It sought out all of the nerves in the seat of his testicles and he knew he was going to lose control completely. He swore harshly as he forced himself to keep his cadence within her. She was so close, her body clutching tighter…tighter…

  Valera burst like an overfilled balloon. It felt as though she were seizing, the way her body locked and clenched in total spasming pleasure. And then she cried out Sagan’s name, and she flew. It was like soaring out from inside of her own body. The rapture of it was profound and devastating.

  Sagan rode every moment of her release with her, his teeth grinding as her body suckled him in strong squeezes. His entire body screamed for release, the imminent approach of it making him lose all control as he pounded into Valera without measure or care. When the rushing force of climax overtook him at last it was blinding. He vocalized, a long loud shout that sounded savage. And why shouldn’t it? The potent ejaculation he was feeling felt so incredible that it all but hurt.

  He held himself tight and deep within her even when he had spent himself to the last drop. He gasped for breath, and his strong arms that had swung heavy swords night after night for years began to tremble under the hold of his weight. Sagan couldn’t stop staring at her as she tried to recover from her climax. Her skin shimmered with sweat, her flesh reeking of their lovemaking, and her gorgeous eyes dazed with the remnants of ultimate ecstasy. She was so beautiful, and he wanted to burn the image in his mind for all time.

  He shoved back thoughts of their uncertain future. It was better to bask in the here and now.

  They only had the here and now.

  Chapter Five

  Valera sucked in oxygen in great big gulps. She couldn’t open her eyes to save her life, and her entire body was depending on the strength of the one that held her in place against the wall. Her every muscle was overworked and her nervous system was numb with satiation. She felt Sagan, just as breathless as she was, with his face burrowed against her neck beneath her hair and dropping intermittent kisses onto her sweaty skin.

  She had never conceived of such an incredible lover ever entering her sphere. She’d reconciled herself very easily to her hermit’s existence, not bothering to waste time on fantasy when reality had proven more than difficult enough to deal with. And maybe this was about convenience or maybe it wasn’t, but when Sagan was working himself into her body with such passionate focus as he just had, how could it possibly make a difference? Differing species, vows and rules, and time and familiarity made no difference. The world outside of her cabin made no impact as he riddled her with ripping orgasms, one after another, until she was literally blind with pleasure.

  And Sagan’s powerful physique made things possible that had not been possible for her before. Like being held hard against a wall, her weight so incidental to him…except that he seemed to get off on it. She had realized it fully some time ago when he’d had her on her hands and knees, thrusting into her in punctuation, and she’d understood that he was enjoying the way the impact shimmied up her body. At first it had embarrassed her, but he’d flooded her with his poetic descriptions of why he found her so delightful just as she was. That, and the fact that he had quickly lost control of himself in the process as her body and his own expressions about it excited him beyond his capacity to contain it, had erased her concerns permanently.

  Two days later and with almost every surface of the house having been utilized for their insatiable need for each other, Valera feared nothing so much as she feared that their time was running short. As the stamina and strength of his lovemaking improved, it told her he was healing at a phenomenal rate. In fact, she suspected he was entirely well now. His hands were certainly free of any signs of damage as they skillfully wrought responses from her body, to the point where she didn’t even recognize herself in this passionate, multiorgasmic creature she had become.

  As for Sagan, he was all too aware of how deeply mired in trouble he had become. He had expected an intense interlude between them, an appetite that would eventually reach a point of satisfaction. Except it had only grown more and more intense as reservations and societal expectations fell away from them both. She stopped caring that it had only taken him a matter of hours to “get in her pants,” and he stopped thinking of her as “human,” with the differentiations that used to imply to him.

  It also stopped being just a matter of sex; if, indeed, it had ever been that at all. Her studious and quiet ways were so opposite to his physical ones, yet she took as much pride and pleasure in her cooking as he did in his swordwork. It had fascinated and amused him at first, but as she fed him creations of both complexity and simplicity, he truly came to appreciate the art and effort in what she did. He suspected she made the same effort when it came to her magic, although she never once showed him use of it again.

  But now he felt the press of time and responsibility creeping up on him urgently. Even now, as he tried to catch his breath and was flooded in the wondrous reek of their sexual activities, he realized that there were those at Sanctuary who would be distressed by his absence. They would be looking for him. He didn’t want them to find him here, and he certainly didn’t want them endangering themselves in their efforts to pursue his whereabouts.

  Then there was the unknown factor. The one that told him the things his trauma had caused him to forget were very crucial to those he loved and respected. Also, if he had been attacked so boldly, what had happened to the rest of the religious house? Was it safe, or had it been overrun by whatever force it was that had hurt him? This was the least of his worries, of course, because he had faith in M’jan Magnus’s potent abilities and his sheer determination to guard and guide the house he ruled.

  Still…

  Yet the draw and magnetism of this woman he held was all-consuming, and once he left her, he could never come back. Knowing that made leaving her all but impossible. Not after only two days. Sagan was paralyzed betwixt his choices and his desires, and the one that was most immediately satisfying and so astoundingly pleasurable was the one that won out.

  “Mmm,” he heard her hum with soft contentment into his ear. “I’m exhausted. I can’t move.”

  He resolved the problem by gripping her luscious backside and holding her weight against him as he drew her back from the wall. He enjoyed her lazy, sate
d giggle as he walked her down the hall and dumped them both into bed with a hard tumble. She ended up beside him, her sweet shape instantly clinging all along his left side as she pillowed her head on his shoulder.

  He very much shared her feelings of contentment and intimacy.

  This was the part that truly astounded Valera. Perhaps it was because he was limited in just how far he could go away from her on a moment-to-moment basis, but she hadn’t been the one to start these postcoital cuddle sessions. Sagan had all but tackled her to keep her ass in bed the first time she’d tried to ditch him after sex…which had been the first time they’d gotten intimate. She had still been thinking he was going to come to his senses or something and that she probably wouldn’t want to watch it happen at the time. But as it turned out, her Nightwalker lover barely let them come up for air, food, and water…never mind “alone time.” Now she was confident she wasn’t dreaming, misinterpreting, or even just a convenient fluke. But she was very aware of his inner conflicts as time passed and he grew more and more introverted in his thoughts.

  The harassment of these thoughts became apparent by a week later. The dynamic between them evolved into change. The harder he worked to keep his divided concerns to himself, the more desperate his interactions with her became. He never grew short-tempered with her, his patience and placidity always so remarkable, but it seemed that what he didn’t express outright found its way into their lovemaking. There was suddenly an element of punishment woven within. Not that Sagan would hurt her, but he began to torment himself. He fixated on her pleasure and denied his own release, sometimes for hours, until she was too exhausted to be of any use to him and he would take the suffering of his incompletion into his sleep. He would dream fitfully, began to eat sparingly and with less pleasure than he had at first.