Sunny - Mona Lisa Eclipsing

“What are you doing?” he asked, panting.

“I’m crawling over to you. Meet me halfway.”

He had to walk on his knees—he couldn’t stand, his feet were too blistered—and he was very weak. He moved laboriously slow, like an arthritic old man as I crawled like a slug toward him across the hard and hot concrete. My muscles were quivering by the time I reached the end of my rope to where he was waiting for me at the end of his own tether line. If our hands had been bound in front of us, I could have reached him, but with our hands tied behind our backs . . .

There was just enough length for my forehead to brush up and rest against his kneecap. One foot more on both our ends and I could have used the sharp ends of the darts to slice away at Dante’s bindings . . .

“Fucking bitch,” I snarled in anguish. “God, she’s sadistic, leaving our ropes just long enough to touch, but not enough to be of any real help. I can’t even provide you with any shade.”

Dante made a vague sound. We just stayed like that for a while, touching. “You feel so cool,” he murmured, closing his eyes. He, on the other hand, felt alarmingly hot.

A minute passed, another precious minute of my weak body resting while my thoughts flew at a hundred miles an hour, thinking, considering options, ideas.

“Probably would have taken too long to free my arms anyway,” Dante murmured.

As an alternative, I could use the darts to saw away at my own wrist ties, but for what purpose? I still wouldn’t be able to reach him. Not in time.

“There is one thing you can try,” Dante said after a moment.

I turned to look up at him.

“Your Goddess’s Tears—”

“My what?”

“The moles in your hands. I’ve seen you do things with them—”

“Take away pain?”

“No, I’ve seen you . . . project energy, use it like a shield, deflecting daggers and swords.”

That sounded astonishing. Even niftier than being able to fly metal objects into my hands. Also completely unhelpful to our present condition.

“I’ve also seen you use it to burn through a man’s chest, take out his heart in a powerful blast of energy.”

I felt the blood drain away from my face. “Oh, was that why you pulled away when my mole started to heat up?” I asked faintly.

“Yeah, knowing you can do something like that, you can see why I preferred you use a knife instead to dig out the bullets.”

Definitely safer in comparison.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

“Thought maybe you can try to use them to burn through your ropes.”

“I don’t know,” I said uncertainly. “I’ll give it a try.”

I couldn’t grasp the binding around my wrists, which was just as well for this experiment. Didn’t want to accidentally blast off—or through—my opposite wrist. Wriggling back a few inches provided enough slack to grab hold of the long rope with both palms. A moment to calm and center myself. To dive deep into myself and open that door to where that power dwelt within me like a sleeping beast. To try and call it forth, and when that didn’t work, to try and pull and yank it out.

Not even a flicker of heat or power.

“Too weak,” I said after several fruitless attempts. Was I too drained or simply too drugged? The thought triggered another idea. With more effort than was pretty, I struggled to my knees, putting me face-to-face with Dante. His face was lobster red, but there was no perspiration. His skin was alarmingly dry and as hot as a furnace, giving off palpable heat even from a distance of several inches away.

“Dante, you said I saved you before. How did that work?”

“We had sex. You shared your light with me. But that was different. My body—my mind—craved moonlight after being deprived of it for so many years.”

I remembered the vision of the moon’s energizing rays pouring into me. Remembered again how my own skin had glowed with Roberto. “It’s not just light, is it? We share energy, don’t we?”

“It’s a lovely thought, a wonderful one,” Dante said as he realized where I was heading, “but I don’t think sex would be possible. I doubt I could even get my pants off, and even then I don’t know if we have enough slack to connect that way—”

“Kiss me,” I said, interrupting his flow of words.

“What?”

“We glow with pleasure. We don’t have to have sex to share light; all you have to do is kiss me. I could share energy with you that way, maybe enough to help you recover a little, at least give us some more time.” My excitement suddenly faltered. “Or maybe I’d just drain energy from you—”

He kissed me.

I pulled back. “Wait, maybe this will hurt you more than help.”

“Then I shall die happy.” He brushed his lips over mine, sweet, simple, soft, the brush of hot, dry lips over my own chapped lips. And then a wet stroke of tongue, smoothing the way to a more slippery friction, and with it a sudden explosion of sensation, more than I had expected from such a dire, battered condition of its participants. It was like a detonation of feeling, a bombardment of things that were the opposite of pain—pleasure, yes, but even more than that. A seeking of life, a last quietly desperate sip of bliss, of enjoyment. A precious, unexpected treasure stolen out of the misery of the moment.

He kissed me with wave upon wave of feeling. All that he had withheld before now came flooding out. A raw surge of seeking, melding, joining with me.

Incomprehensible murmurs came from Dante’s throat, from mine. A few husked words . . . Mona Lisa . . . my lady . . . love you . . . yes . . .

If we had kissed before, I did not remember it. And it was so much more than the surge of pleasure I’d gotten from kissing Roberto. Like digging into ground looking for a trickle of water and finding a gushing well instead. Dante kissed me as if he would pour his soul into me and pass it into my keeping—a plentitude of giving, not a taking. A benediction of words and sweet sentiment and hotly sprinkled passion over my mouth, my chin, down my neck, touching off zinging sensations, an abundance of it, wherever those firm and tender lips roamed, pulling forth my own gasps and whispers of his name, spurring him more heatedly on.

A seeking nuzzle of those hot lips over the swell of my breast, against my skin. A light, potent brush over my nipple that felt like an unexpected jolt of lightning within me. A sensation so intense it almost frightened me.

“Dante!” I opened my eyes to see my skin and his aglow in luminescent light.

“Sweet, so sweet,” Dante murmured as he tugged my open neckline down with his chin so that it exposed one nipple, pert and erect. “Beautiful . . . lovely.”

I watched his mouth envelope the hard tip, felt the heat and moisture of his mouth, felt the stroke of his raspy tongue, felt the bolts of amazing sensation that pulled cries from my mouth and more light from my skin until I was glowing like a small nova, overshadowing his own light, as he licked and teased and suckled and pulled at the reddened peak, enjoying himself with utter carnality.

He pulled his mouth free with a tight, pulling sensation that arrowed straight to my womb. “Lie down,” he said roughly.

“What?” I was half-blind, dazed from the bombardment of strange and new sensation.

“Lie down on your side. Scoot your legs toward me . . . yes, like that.”

That gave us a little more reach, a little more overlap. His mouth, those soft-hard lips, peppered kisses over my quivering abdomen. “Lift your hips a bit. Perfect.” He nuzzled the shirt up above my stomach, exposing my triangular thatch of hair to his gaze. “So beautiful,” he murmured.

I watched with both curling dread and anticipation as he lowered his mouth to lay a gentle kiss on my inner thigh. “Open your legs for me.” His breath wafted over my thatch of curls—a curiously exquisite sensation.