Sunny - Mona Lisa Craving

He trembled as if a fever shook him, his cheeks slashed red. Breathing hard, his hands drifted slowly up my torso. The metal of his right restraint bumped up against my side, and I winced. In pain this time, not pleasure. His hands stilled. “You’re hurt.”

“Bruised a bit. There were some big rocks in that river.”

“Let me see.” He waited until I nodded, then drew up my T-shirt. And hissed.

“That bad, huh?” I swallowed. “Best to take the T-shirt off so you can see where to touch, and where not to touch.” I smiled as I said it, but inside I was not smiling. As my shirt was lifted over my head and tossed away, inside I was cringing. I was built modestly on top. Neat and compact were the best words to describe me. And the vivid purple and red bruises discoloring my left side and right arm did not help make me any more attractive. Despite my bold actions with him, I was far from confident when it came to sex. The men I’d been with had loved me, and I them. Dante hardly knew me. And his vision of me was not colored by love. My turn to tremble, to feel horribly vulnerable. I could not meet his eyes. Did not want to see what expression filled them.

If only Monères glowed from embarrassment. How easily then it would have been to cure him.

“Take off your pants.” A brief pause. Then he added, “Please,” like it was a word he was not used to saying.

Well, heck. Why don’t we just make it harder? But I nodded, and despite the trepidation filling me, undid the button, pushed down the zipper, and stepped out of my wet jeans and underwear, completely bare to him now. Still, I could not lift my eyes, even when he removed his own pants. He folded them neatly—an odd thing to do in this situation, I thought—and laid them on the floor. Then taking my hands, he drew me down to sit across his thighs as he leaned back against the wall.

“You’ll be more comfortable this way. And I’ll be less likely to hurt you,” he said. And it put me in control, as much as a woman could be in control when you made love with a man. It touched me, the gesture. The thoughtfulness behind it. The heavy chains, though, clinking and rattling with each move were distracting and annoying, setting my already jumpy nerves even more on edge.

“Let me remove the chains,” I said, reaching for his shackles.

“No,” he said sharply, pulling his wrists out of my reach. “It’s not safe. I’m not safe yet. Leave them on.”

I mentally dug a hole and buried the last of my unease in it. Yes , I thought, he ’ s a man worth saving. But instead of making me feel better, it made me feel worse. Never had I felt the burden of my own pleasure so keenly. My initiation into sex had been a painful thing. With humans. Humans that Monère are not compatible with because we’re of a different chemistry, a different race. It wasn’t until I came across another Monère, across Gryphon, that I had found the joy and pleasure that could be had in being intimate with a man.

I’d never had a man’s life—a virgin, to boot—dependent on my glowing in pleasure before. Of him going mad and being executed by his own father if I didn’t. It wasn’t so much his lack of lovemaking skills I was doubting as much as I was questioning my own adequacy. A woman is harder to stir up and please than a man. Pure, unalterable fact. And right now, bruised and unsettled among strangers, bare skin to bare skin with someone I felt I should know but didn’t, I did not feel up to the burdensome task that pleasure had suddenly become.

Dante was calmer, saner now, after I’d eased his pain. Maybe we could wait until we returned to Belle Vista and Dontaine was there to help us. I knew that I could glow with Dontaine.

“What is your name?” Dante demanded in a gritty voice.

“Mona Lisa.”

“Mona Lisa,” he repeated. And while his next words were said in a soft whisper, they were tinged with strain. “Can you…touch me? It’s starting to hurt again.”

My faint hope died. Nope, we weren’t going to be able to wait.

I shifted up on my knees and laid a hand on his chest, another on his forehead. Praying while I did so. Please. Help me be enough for him.

He closed his eyes, relaxing beneath my tingling touch.

As the pain seeped out of him, my touch changed from soothing to caressing, stroking the slight swell of his chest, trailing down the bristly side of his face to trace his slightly chapped lips. Such a smooth-rough contrast. Like what he was—dangerous pleasure. I leaned even closer until our lips were just a breath apart. “Dante,” I whispered, brushing my mouth against his. “Come dance with me.”

We kissed and it was a sweet, light thing. A mingling of breath, of scent. A simple pleasing of our senses.

At first his lips were soft and yielding, pliant. As if he’d never kissed anyone before, and perhaps he hadn’t. As if he were just absorbing the feel of me. Then they firmed, moved across mine in a light caress, brushing across my lips, easing back, coming back at a different angle. He danced with me as I had asked him to. With his mouth, with his lips, only his lips, closed and gentle-rough against mine. He kissed me now as an active participant, with pleased discovery, with growing delight. With quickly learned skill, and slowly budding pleasure. Finding what he liked. What I liked. Building that slight, fragile connection between us with soft caresses, gentle touches. Until I yearned for more than just the feel of his lips brushing against mine. Until I yearned for the taste of him, too.

My tongue swept lightly across his lips. His eyes, still closed, twitched with surprise. I smiled and did it again. A light, deliberate wet stroke across the seam of his mouth. “Open for me,” I whispered.

He did. Our mouths mated again with our lips open, and I tasted him. A light sweep in his mouth, a gentle foray, retreating then. I did it again—gentle probe in, a teasing flicker of my tongue against the tip of his. When I retreated this time, he followed, delving into my mouth with a light stroke of his own. Another, and another. Tasting me as I tasted him. Teasing my tongue as I’d teased his, a sure and quick learner. And all the while our mouths and tongues danced with each other, my hands moved over him. A sweep over his wide shoulders. A caressing stroke down the muscles of his arms. He did not have the thickness and breadth of chest and shoulders that he would have in another century. He had the sweet, budding slenderness of youth still yet, with more. The muscles carving his body marked his entry into manhood, and his claim on a warrior’s body, strength, and will. That will now was focused on finding my pleasure.

We were playing a more intimate version of Simon Says. He did as I did, went where I went. His hands lifted, touched me, across the shoulders, feathering over my collarbones. He sighed into my mouth with pure unadulterated delight at the raw pleasure of touching me, tangling our tongues together in a wet, intimate caress. He sipped upon me, nibbled on my lower lip.

When I tensed and drew in a breath as his teeth skimmed across my flesh, he said in a gritty whisper, “No biting, no blood. I remember. But all other things I may do, yes?”

“Yes.”

He smiled and watched me with half-closed eyes. The hard intent gleam, his rough stubble, the primitive ear piercing, and the darkness I sensed in him tangled up with this gentleness—it all sent a tremor shooting through me. Because playing with him was like playing with a keg of dynamite. Safe until it blew up on you. And that darkness that dwelled within me—that had been a part of me even before I took in the demon essence—was both scared and thrillingly turned on by that perilous pleasure.