Thea Harrison - Rising Darkness

“So we leave in the morning?”

“Yes, first thing.”

He wanted so desperately to say no. To say that they could have more than a single day together. That they could have years of leisure and safety together.

But that old bastard time was winging away from them again. With every ounce of passion inside of him, he willed that everything would be different this time. But as much as he wished it to be otherwise, he could not lunge after the fleeting moment and capture it in both hands.

Her fingers trailed along his collarbone. She touched his cheek and tilted up his head. Even in the growing shadows, her gaze was brilliant, glittering like precious aquamarines.

“Oh good,” she said. “We still have hours and hours.”

“A veritable wealth of minutes,” he said.

She lifted her eyebrows and smiled. “A staggering fortune in seconds.”

The sound of his own laugh shocked him. He was still not used to hearing it. He reached for her hand and laced his fingers through hers.

Her expression turned vulnerable. “Do you have memories of us being together in other lives?”

“Some,” he said. “Do you?”

“Just flashes.” Her fingers tightened on his. “They keep hitting at random. So many memories. It’s like a floodgate has opened.”

“You’ve only just healed,” he said. “Maybe the images are like aftershocks. I went through a period when images would bubble up unexpectedly, but after a while it calmed down. I think it will for you too, after things have had a chance to settle into place.”

She was silent for a moment. Then she said, “They’re disconcerting, but I like them. Of course, it helps to know what they actually are.”

He thought about telling her of his first, best memory, of that time they had lived together in England just after the Norman Conquest.

See what I know? he wanted to say. Have you had memories of this time too? Are they the same for you?

Were you happy?

But he didn’t want to prompt her into any false memories. When he had been younger, Astra had been very careful to avoid prompting him too much, and he thought it best to emulate that example.

Besides, his memories of that lifetime meant too much to him to risk corrupting them. It would mean so much more if Mary recovered images from that time independently of him. If she could say, as he thought and hoped she might, that she had been as happy during that time as he had been.

Even though they had just made love twice, the hunger for her came back. It rode him hard and he succumbed to it. He slid down her body, coaxing her legs apart.

Her breath catching audibly, she opened readily to him. He nuzzled the soft tuft of private hair at the graceful arch of her pelvis, breathing her in. Her scent mingled with his, musky, rich and evocative. While she stroked the back of his head, he fingered the plump, moisture-slick petals of her sex. Her breathing deepened and turned ragged, and her arousal drenched his fingers.

He was enchanted with every sensual detail.

As he had grown into maturity, abstinence had become just another part of his discipline. His knowledge and understanding about the sexual act, while detailed, remained purely clinical. Not only had every woman he met been a pale shadow in comparison to his memories, but in the end he had always found it so much easier and quicker to find his own release when his body had craved it. Being alone had been so much more preferable than looking with irritation into the uncomprehending expression of a strange woman he would never grow to care for, and would end up leaving soon enough.

Everything about this intimacy with Mary transcended both his memory and imagination. It enveloped him utterly.

The warmth of her body, the touch of her hands. The light, feminine scent rising off her soft skin.

His own powerful response to her. The primitive urges that overwhelmed him, to cover and take, and to penetrate, to discover a rhythm that his body already knew.

The rich texture of experience highlighted all over again how starved and sharp he had become.

He had already known that he was only half alive without her. Now he realized something else. Being with her brought him fully into the present, and fully immersed him in the experience of being human.

Gently he parted the exquisitely shaped folds of her sex, bent his head farther and licked her. Even against his sensitive tongue her private flesh felt incredibly soft, like velvet. Her pelvis arched up to him as she gasped.

Her response electrified him. Pausing for a moment to savor it, determination hardened in him. Those other lovers she had taken had meant nothing to her, and therefore they meant nothing to him. The decision to set all of that aside was an easy one for him to make, much easier, he suspected, than it was for her. After all, she was the one who had to live with the memory of those empty experiences.

But she would never have another lover. Only him. They did not have to say it to each other. He already knew.

He parted her farther and found the delicate, stiff little nubbin of flesh seated at the heart of her pleasure, and he put his mouth to it.

A small scream broke out of her, and her torso lifted off the bed, and the intensity of his own reaction astonished him. He grew hard again as he licked and suckled her and listened to the incoherent, uncontrolled sounds of her pleasure.

When the urge to penetrate became too much to ignore, he slid first one finger into her, then another. Her inner muscles tightened on him. He lost himself in the sumptuousness of it, fucking her tenderly, his fingers gliding in and out of her wet, hidden sheath as he massaged her clitoris with his tongue.

He could feel her climax. Her inner muscles clenched on his fingers. Then the rippling began, and she shook as though she would fly apart at the seams. She cupped the back of his head, holding him to her, and he complied, licking at her rhythmically until she screamed and climaxed again.

Then he could not stand it any longer. He rose up and reached for another condom, rolling it over his erection with hands that shook with urgency. As he came down to her, she was already reaching for him to guide him into place.

Gentleness fled, along with his control. He thrust hard and impaled her. She tilted her head back and cried out again, wrapping her legs around his hips. Elbows planted on either side of her head, he succumbed to barbarity and sank his fists into her fabulous, wild hair, pinning her down as he moved inside of her, harder and faster, until his own climax twisted him up. The pleasure was excruciating, necessary.

All the while he watched her face, her beautiful face. Her lips were parted, her gaze blind, as she stared inward, focused on what he was doing to her.

I am the only one, he thought. The only one who has driven you to this extremity. The only one who has given you this kind of pleasure, this completion.

And by God , I am going to be the last lover you will ever take.

The very last, and only one.

THEY SQUANDERED THEIR veritable wealth in minutes, their staggering fortune in seconds, on pleasuring each other. Then, as the last of the coals in the fireplace faded and the darkness was complete, they fell asleep. The last thing Mary knew was Michael resting his head on her shoulder, his big body sprawled over hers, a heavy, reassuring weight.

She woke suddenly with a hand clamped over her mouth. Predawn filtered into the cabin, turning everything bleak and gray. Michael leaned over her, his broad, naked shoulders and head in silhouette. Her heart kicked. Staring up at him, she gripped his thick, strong wrist with both hands.

His shadowed gaze was the polished steel of a drawn sword.