Midnight 01 - Luisa's Desire

themselves.
     
    "Well," purred his tempter, "why don't you show me how it's done?"
     
    You know how it is done, he thought, far better than I.
     
    "You seem to know what goes where," she said with a satiny smile and a pointed glance at his loins.
     
    The insinuation hardened him even further, his shock at odds with his arousal. She must have seen the pictures in his mind, the union of god and goddess in the flesh.
     
    It seemed a travesty that this woman could read him as easily as his guide.
     
    "You were thinking very hard," she explained, her amusement gentler than it might have been. "Perhaps you were too distracted to shield your mind. I will stop listening if you prefer."
     
    "No." He squared his shoulders. "Shielding my thoughts will not erase them. And you will learn better if you put no walls between us."
     
    "As you wish," she said.
     
    Her lashes fell in acknowledgment, then rose. Despite his reluctance, he could not look away. Her eyes were a rich, pure green, the color of innocence and nature, of drives both simple and complex. He forced himself to meet their unspoken promise. Whatever her experience in the sexual arena, he was her equal in many others. More to the point, he had faced lust down before. He was a man, after all, not a rock.
     
    "Here." He took her hand, slipping it under his upper robe. "Keep your palm pressed lightly above my heart."
     
    Her pupils dilated at the contact and the softest of flushes stained her cheeks. She licked her lips. The tip of her tongue was small and sharp. In spite of his resolve, he was not prepared for the strength of his reaction. His penis jerked upward, just once but hard, as if her tongue had wet its tip. Without warning, he became aware of the steady throb of an artery in his neck.
     
    Her fingernails pricked his skin like a kitten's claws.
     
    "Your chest is very hard," she said huskily, then shook her head with impatience.
     
    The gesture reminded him she was hungry; that to her a man was more than a partner for her bed. What would it be like, he wondered, to gratify all those needs at once?
     
    "Focus on your hand," he instructed, striving to keep both their attention where it belonged. "You must concentrate on the energy swirling above my skin. It will feel like the currents of a lake in which you are submersed while very still, or perhaps like a sort of tingle. I am going to meditate, to draw on the life force of the earth. You should feel the flow change. If you are able, I want you to follow the current down."
     
    He closed his eyes and began to breathe, to slow his heart and calm the heated rushing of his blood. The touch of her hand was oddly pleasant, light now and quiet, with none of the twitches untrained people tended to betray. Without being told, she matched her breathing to his own. In and hold. Out and rest. He slipped quickly into the state he sought, enjoying for a moment the familiar sensation of weightless peace. He was more than Martin now, and less. He was, at least in part, the simple spirit Martin hid.
     
    Before his sense of self could dissolve completely, he drew up a skein of force, slowly, letting Luisa see how it was done, letting her feel the gradual brightening of the spinning tsakhor above his heart.
     
    There, he said, sensing he did not need to speak aloud, now I shall send the energy through the channels of my subtle body.
     
    She shivered as he began. "Oh," she whispered, "I feel it."
     
    She stepped instinctively closer, her thighs and belly brushing the woven folds of his robe. It seemed natural to wrap her lightly in his arms, to slide his hand into the small of her silk-draped back. Her temple nestled easily beside his jaw. Though he had witnessed the act of love, he had never held a woman. She was soft, a yielding pleasure to the touch. His arousal returned as calmly as a dream. The energy he had drawn from the earth fed its intensity, though its progress seemed honey slow. Hungry for more, he nuzzled her shell-like ear.
     
    "Follow," he murmured, "follow where I go."
     
    Her body pressed his, her free hand raking languorously up his skull. Sparks seemed to rustle through the shortness of his hair. She had been cool but now she warmed, reminding him this was no ordinary woman. No doubt her flesh followed strange rules of its own. When she rose onto her toes, the tips of her breasts matched his. The change in position made a place for his erection between her thighs. His skin tightened, his organ