Sweet Revenge

want. But her desires had always had a clear route and a definite end. Security, reputation, restitution. Now she learned that some desires had a morass of paths leading to many destinations. She was still afraid, but no longer of him. She feared herself now, and what price she might be willing to pay to go on feeling as she felt tonight.
    He showed her what it was to burn, slowly, while still craving the heat. She heard her own shuddering sigh as her body, so long restricted from this one pleasure, strained, shivered, and accepted. Here was passion that liquefied, tenderness that excited, and knowledge that broke down long-held beliefs.
    He took, as she had known he would, but there was giving as well. And no pain. She’d been so certain there would be pain. Yet his hands moved over her like water. Even when his mouth fit over her breast and her body arched in reaction, there was only pleasure. Waves of it.
    She smelled of smoke and silk and secrets. Enough to drive a man mad. She touched, but cautiously. Though her response was everything a man could wish for, he sensed a knot of tension remaining. She was building to a peak he knew she couldn’t understand. Part of her mind was holding back, perhaps wary of the price. Where there was intense pleasure, there was intense vulnerability. Murmuring, he covered her mouth with his. Hers opened, so that her tongue moved in an experimental dance with his.
    The tastes were new to her, and yet … familiar. The feel of his body moving against, fitting itself to, sliding over herswasn’t foreign or frightening as she’d expected. She didn’t experience the violation she’d been prepared for when he touched what no man had touched.
    Then there was more, more than pleasant sensations, more than easy discovery. Her breath grew shallow and she struggled for air. Her skin, so sensitized by each stroke, heated until even the breeze flitting through the open windows couldn’t relieve it. Helplessness. It was something she’d sworn never to feel, not at the hands of a man. She struggled against it, against him, as the heat gathered, knotted, then expanded in her center.
    Here was the pain, but nothing like any pain she’d known. She fought against it while she fought for it. She clawed at the sheets in a desperate attempt to find her balance.
    Slowly, he skimmed his hand up her thigh, feeling the tremor of each separate muscle. And he found her, hot and moist. There was an instant of resistance, a strangle of breath as sensation intensified. Her body contracted, then on a moan of astonished release went lax.
    From that moment she was trapped, greedy for whatever she could feel, desperate for all he could teach. Her blood pumped hot, fast, and close to the surface as she wrapped herself around him. There was a freedom here she embraced, as she embraced him. There was trust. She opened herself to it as she opened to him.
    When he slid into her there was shock, there was pleasure, one for the other. He couldn’t have told her that at that moment, with her body cupped around him, he was more vulnerable than he’d ever been and more willing to risk.
    Later, she lay quiet beside him. It shouldn’t have meant so much. It couldn’t change anything. She knew it was foolish to feel differently. In her country a woman of her age would have been long married, and if God were kind, would have borne children. What had happened tonight was simply a natural function. A woman was born to give a man pleasure and sons.
    She was thinking like a woman of Jaquir! The shock of realization left a bitter taste in her mouth, one that overpoweredthe lingering flavor of the man beside her. She started to shift away, perhaps to run. Then his arm draped over her.
    Braced on his elbow, he studied her face. There were still secrets there, and, beneath the glow of quenched passions, reservations he couldn’t guess at.
    “Did I hurt you?” It wasn’t his first thought, but he was no more ready to share his secrets than she.
    “No, of course not.”
    He touched her face. Though she didn’t shift away, neither did she return the touch. Because her skin had cooled, he drew the sheet up, waiting for her to say something, to give him any sign of how she felt, or what she needed. The silence stretched out and drew into knots.
    “You won’t forget me, you know,” he murmured. “One never forgets the first lover.”
    There was just enough bite in the words to let her see he was holding his temper, but