When she finally attempted to turn, he withdrew his thigh and let her, but kept his fingers where they were. She nuzzled at his throat, ran her fingers over his chest. It was no longer an odd feeling for him to be touched by her, but the sexual context changed the tone of the caresses, gave them a different weight. He liked the result.
"Where did you learn all this?" she murmured. "You're a virgin."
He almost halted. "I suppose you're right, technically speaking." Sex had effectively been wiped out by Silence. Oh, his race had continued practicing it for the sake of procreation - until technology had made that unnecessary - but it had become a mechanical, passionless act. In the present time, normal Psy considered sex an impractical and worthless "animal" exercise. His brethren didn't value the beauty of bonding with another being on such an intimate level.
Brenna was kissing a line across his chest. "Technically speaking?"
"I'm very good at research - some might say I was obsessed with this particular topic." He slid his fingers up and out to rest his hand on her abdomen once again.
She ran her teeth over his skin. "Exactly what kind of research did you do?"
"An Arrow never divulges his sources." Using the hand under her head to tangle in her hair, he kept her in place as he claimed a deep kiss. She responded with pleasure but below that was a strange tension that he knew she probably wasn't aware of.
Scars from the abduction.
They'd take time to heal. He didn't allow himself to think ahead to the moment when he'd enter her body. That would be the most difficult part, connected so profoundly were the sensations with the nightmare. "Do you want to be on top?" he asked against her mouth, recalling her lack of fear when she'd straddled him in the armchair.
"Will that interfere with your master plan?" She smiled and he felt rather than saw it. Her hand began to slide south.
He pushed it back up. "There is a degree of flexibility built into the plan. But you don't get to touch me yet."
A sensual feminine laugh. "I'm okay, baby." Her hands gripped the sides of his waist. "I'll let you know when I need something other than what you're doing."
So she was aware of her anxiety, unsurprising really, given her will. "Don't scratch too hard."
Another laugh. "I'm not the dangerous one in this bed. You're driving me crazy, you know that."
"Good. My research tells me that that is my job as your lover. I hear predatory changeling women are tough critics."
"Believe me, you have nothing to worry about." She licked at the skin of his neck.
Breaking the contact, he fit his body over hers, alert to her reaction. She didn't withdraw, so he braced himself on one arm and brought the hand of the other up to close over her satin-covered breast. She sucked in a breath. And when he nudged at her with the painful hardness of his erection, she didn't hesitate to wrap her legs around him. "Kiss?"
He fulfilled her request, already addicted to the taste of her. His male instincts bucked at the reins, wanting to go quicker, deeper, but he held fast, helped by the very skills that usually kept him coldly distant. As they kissed, he massaged her breast, testing what made her moan, what made her wriggle. Brenna, he discovered, liked it when he was firm in his touch. Soft caresses just made her complain with feminine impatience.
He was very, very glad for his lover's preference. He knew he could do gentle - he had the control for it - but tonight he wanted to love her with everything in him. "Off," he ordered, pushing up her slip. The plan had called for this to come later, but he hadn't factored in the seduction of this particular woman so lush and welcoming beneath him.
She raised her arms and he pushed the material over her br**sts with every intention of pulling it over her head...but found himself unable to move any farther. The mounds of her br**sts thrust upward in pure temptation, the ni**les hard and tight. He wanted to see them properly. Not thinking, he tried to use Tk to flick on a lamp but, of course, nothing happened.
Reaching across, he manually turned on the small light integrated into the headboard. It emitted a warm, almost hazy, glow. Brenna gasped but didn't say anything, letting him devour her with his eyes. Her ni**les were a dark strawberry color, the upper curves of her br**sts creamy...but for a scatter of freckles that taunted his analytical Psy mind with their wild abandon.
"Judd?"
The thick desire in her voice was the last straw. Dipping his head, he sucked one tight bud into his mouth. Her hands gripped his hair as her body twisted under him as if to escape. But when he released the nipple to switch his focus to the other, she protested.
The sensations inside him were pure chaos. Fire and need and erotic heat. But blending into that dark male passion was something gentler, an emotion that didn't dull the jagged edges of his hunger but which made him aware of Brenna's reactions on an almost subconscious level. Tenderness. It was a strange feeling. So raw, so powerful, and yet it engendered the most intense care.
He let her nipple slide out of his mouth. She pulled him back, but he was more interested in running his gaze over the sheen of wetness on her br**sts, wetness he had caused. A surge of possessiveness gripped him by the throat. Yes, she was most definitely his. Spurred to see more of her exotic female body, so unashamedly curvy, so different from his, he dragged the bunched-up slip up over her head and threw it aside.
"Keep them there," he ordered when she would've lowered her raised arms.
She curled her fingers around the bars in the headboard, her eyes watching him with unconcealed interest. The position left her entire upper body exposed to his gaze and he took blatant advantage. Leaning in, he blew a breath across her ni**les. Her body rose and fell in a sweet, soft wave and she held on tighter to the thin metal rods.