Sunny - Mona Lisa Craving

Oh boy.

Intensity was a nice thing in a would-be lover. It told you they were paying attention to you. But not to this degree—this raw, overwhelming amount. This much of it was more scary than exciting…but a spark of sanity had crept into that blue sea of madness. Those fierce, pale eyes swept over me, examining every detail as if I were a two-headed alien suddenly plopped down in from of him. He studied me as if he felt the same thing I did: like he should know me but didn’t. I had the feeling that if he could have drank me down with those pale, eerie eyes of his, I would have been drained completely dry and left like parched, cracked earth.

He raised a hand slowly as if I were the wild creature that had to be gentled, and swept it just above my skin as if he could feel my force, my presence, my aphidy—that unique, attractive force and fragrance inherent to all Queens. It had flared out wildly, reaching for him the first time his hungry power had hit me. I had clamped down on it tightly, desperately contained it. It vibrated my skin now where he ran his hand over it, stroking my invisible power, buzzing and prickling where his hand wrapped around my wrist. A small pulse of power escaped from me and jumped to him against my will, as if our energies wanted to blend, merge, come together—something I’d never experienced before with another man.

As startled as I, he dropped my wrist and we faced each other, inches apart, both of us breathing heavily, our bodies quivering and tense. He was behaving himself as much as I was, keeping his power controlled on a tight leash, not letting it pummel me as it had before. He was sane enough not to want to scare me away, I realized. Comforting. But if we were to get intimate, I wanted— needed —to know that he was rational enough to control himself, to not hurt me. He was bound by silver. I was stronger than him, I could protect myself. But still…something in me could not help but fear him.

Strong though I was, when a woman opened her body to a man, she was vulnerable to him in ways only another woman could understand. Before I let loose my aphidy, before I had sex with him, I had to trust him enough to let go of the tight rein of my control. That was the only way I’d be able to glow. And I didn’t know if I could do that with him.

He was such a raw mass of seething pain. I sensed it, and that part of me that had always been drawn to pain was drawn to him now because of it. I didn’t try to resist it. Lifting my hand, I laid it again on his bare chest. Once again, the small pulse of power jumped between us. His face twisted, as if my touch pained him, but he did not groan as he had before—the sound that had startled me, made me jerk back away from him. He clenched his teeth, swallowed down the sound, and shuddered from my touch.

Just my palm laid flat against his chest with my Goddess’s Tears pressing into his skin, and something between us connected like a current flowing out of me to him. A circuit that cycled back to me. My pearly moles flared to life and did what they usually did around pain. My palm began to tingle, my hand grew warm, and my power, drawn forth by the suffering of another, spilled out of me and seeped into his flesh in a wide, assessing sweep, easing the pain.

God. Such agony he was in. What control it had taken on his part simply not to lash out at me in reaction to that pain. “Dante, can you say something? Anything?”

“Touch me more.” The words came out hoarse and guttural, as if they’d been wrenched from him.

I looked into his eyes and saw that tiny spark of sanity firm, grow stronger with our physical connection. “Thank God,” I whispered. Looking into his eyes, feeling him through my palm, reading him, I knew that we’d pulled him back—both he and I together—from that brink of madness he’d been teetering on. I knew that he would not hurt me, that I could save him. That I wanted to save him. Not just for the healer he would gain me. But for himself. For the valiant warrior that he was, the fierce will inside of him that had tenaciously pulled him back from the encroaching madness.

I stuffed the condom in my pocket, freeing my other hand, and laid it across his forehead, pushing my disquiet aside to just concentrate on him, the poor suffering creature before me. My palm flushed and tingled as that pain-easing power of mine spilled into him, soothing the jagged edges of his mind and body. His eyes closed and his jaw clenched. Wetness spiked his lashes.

“It’s okay. You can groan if you need to. It just startled me that first time,” I murmured. But he didn’t, and I was glad he didn’t. I still felt uneasy around him. “I’m taking away some of the pain, removing the symptom. Not curing the disease,” I told him.

His lashes lifted, dark wet crescents. “How can we cure it?” He spoke with less strain, but his voice still sounded rusty, sore.

I hesitated, then answered him with his own words. “Touch me.”

His right hand lifted slowly, hesitantly, the chains clinking with his movement. It came to rest cautiously on my shoulder. “Your shirt is wet,” he said. But it was his body that shook as I brought my other hand to his face and traced both hands down his cheeks, his neck, moving to his shoulders, pausing there a moment, then drifting down his arms, back up. Smoothing across his chest in gentle, tingling sweeps.

“I fell in a river,” I said, explaining why my shirt was wet.

Chains rattled as his left hand came up to rest on my other shoulder. He began an echoing refrain of my motions, gliding them down my arms. Back up.

“When you touched me that first time, I knew I could not let you go.” His voice was a raw and husky murmur. “Don’t leave me.”

“I won’t,” I promised, even though my heart sped up in disquiet at his words. The thought of being held by him, captured by him…I shook off the unease. “I won’t leave you unless you bite me. That is the only thing that will make me go,” I said, continuing my ministrations, learning his body, easing his pain. I tried to lose myself in the pleasure of touching him, my hands drifting down his abdomen, sweeping up his sides, skimming lightly up and down his back.

“I won’t bite you,” he said in that ragged voice of his.

“No biting. No blood. All other things you may do.” Meeting Nolan’s eyes over Dante’s shoulder, I gestured for him to leave and he slipped from the room, closing the door softly behind him. Taking that mental step, committing myself wholly to this, I swept a hand lightly over his groin, finding him long and hard, swollen full.

His teeth ground together audibly, and his body tensed to rock hardness. His skin stretched taut over the sharp blades of his cheekbones, and his pale blue eyes glittered down at me. I looked away, finding it easier to touch him, be with him, if I did not look into those eerie, familiar but unfamiliar eyes.

“This is the cure,” I said softly, taking the verbal step. “Touch me. Make love to me.”

His hands gripped my shoulders tightly before he consciously eased his grip. And that one moment of force, that hint of strength, drew my breath in.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said, alarmed, almost panicking, lifting his hands away.

“I’m not.” Warmth spilled across my cheeks in an embarrassed blush. “It was…nice,” I admitted softly. “I liked that firmness, the hint of your strength. Touch me more.”

I felt him heat at my words, but he stood there in an agony of stillness, fear that I would be frightened into leaving battling with his desire to do as I said—to touch me more.

I took his hands in both of mine, and some of that frightened tension left him as we connected once more. Until I slid them under my wet T-shirt and laid his hands against my bare skin. Then tension roared back into him again. Simmered between us as I swept my hands over his hips and slid them down his buttocks. He sucked in his breath, expelled it out when I continued on my journey, sweeping my palms down the back of his cloth-covered thighs.