Mona Lisa Craving

FOUR

WE WERE BACK once more in the car, but I was sitting up, free. No silver handcuffs. I’d have felt better if I had been restrained but, nope. I was here of my own free will. By my own stupid volition. We were crossing out of my Louisiana territory into the bordering state of Texas, and I was sitting there doing nothing about it.

The rogues, it seemed, resided along the fringe of my territory. And they were not the only rogues who plagued me. Father and son were rogues as well, something that came as almost a shock to me. I hadn’t thought of them as such. They were dressed better and seemed, I don’t know, somehow honorable…even though they’d knocked me unconscious and taken me from my people. Which went to say just how screwed up my judgment was…continued to be. Maybe I could blame it on being hit in the head. It just knocked the sense right out of me, you know?

I don’t think that was going to go over too well with my guys when I got back home. If I got back home. I was trusting the word of two rogues—that they would return me safely back after my look-see, even if I decided not to help Dante, the reason for this all. How stupid was that? Very stupid, because I believed them. That was why I was here, playing the nice, sedate passenger.

We would be there in twenty-five minutes, they had said, and were accurate almost down to the minute. The little hand of the clock had just ticked up to eight when we turned into the driveway of a neat little home just off of County Road 257, fifteen minutes past the WELCOME TO TEXAS sign. It was a rural setting, looking totally normal and feeling that way, too, if you were just a human, which I was not.

A wave of power, of need, coming from the house punched me like a blow to the stomach, so strong and fierce it was. I gasped, sitting there in the car, more than a little shaken. “Christ, what the hell is that?”

Quentin, the boy, turned around in his seat, said with sorrow in his eyes, “That’s Dante, my brother.”

Holy crap. “How old is your brother, exactly?”

“We’re twins. He’s twenty, same as me.”

“Twins, huh?” And a whole year younger than me. How thrilling.

“We’re not identical.”

“No kidding,” I said. “You feel nothing alike.”

“No, we don’t,” Quentin said sadly. “He’s older than me by six minutes, which is why I was spared his fate.”

Lunara asseros, Nolan, the father, had called it, or lunar craving. Also known as Moon Madness, so named because those who had it were often driven mad by their unfulfilled need for lunar light. It was why I was here, and what I was supposed to cure, a rare affliction that could strike down a warrior. Not all. Usually just the strongest or the first born. Rare because it occurred only if a Monère warrior never Basked, never was exposed to the moon’s essential light pouring into them. Rare because almost every Monère Basked at least once in their lifetime. Unless you were born rogues, as these two boys had been, and had never known a Queen’s light.

What happens to those afflicted? I had asked.

If they do not receive the light that their Monère body craves in time…that their thinking mind needs to survive…then they burn out, go mad. Become nothing more than a ravening beast that must be put down and destroyed or he will go on to kill others.

I’d asked how long Dante had been ill.

Thirty-six hours now, had been the answer. That was a long time.

A brown-haired woman with warm brown eyes, standing half a head shorter than I, rushed out of the back door and hurried to the car. Her hair was coiled in a simple bun, and a gold ring adorned her left hand.

“Thank the Goddess,” she said fervently. “You brought a Queen.”

“My mother, Hannah Morell,” Quentin said, introducing us. “Mother, this is Mona Lisa. She’s come to help Dante.”

I didn’t quibble over his choice of words. Didn’t say that they’d kidnapped me. I stepped out of the car and I saw the surprise register in Hannah’s eyes when she saw that I was not restrained.

“And you’ve come of your own volition.” She sank down to her knees, tears in her eyes. “Thank you, gracious lady, thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Please, get up.” I gestured awkwardly for her to rise, flustered at having her kneeling like that. “And I only promised to take a look at him,” I clarified.

“Quentin is hurt, Mother. A sword ran him through,” Nolan said as he opened the passenger door and gently lifted Quentin into his arms. “He needs your healing touch.”

I glanced back at the small woman rising to her feet. “You’re a healer?”

“Yes, milady.”

I turned with exasperation to father and son. “If you dunderheads had told me that in the first place instead of knocking me out, I’d have come with you voluntarily. God, I’d do just about anything to get a healer for my people.”

“Save my son,” Hannah said passionately, “and I will serve you.”

“You will be our healer?”

“Yes. My word, by the holy Goddess of Light.”

“Okay, good, good,” I said, immensely cheered and vastly more motivated now…until another powerful wave of that vibrant want, that stunning need, hit me, stealing my breath away. I swayed for a moment, then caught my breath and balance and followed Nolan and Quentin into the house.

It felt odd entering their home. Odd because the real reason I was being brought here was to have sex with their son. That’s right, sex. Not Basking, because we drew down the moon’s rays only during a full moon—that was several weeks away, and from what I’d felt, I didn’t think the boy could wait that long. But Basking wasn’t the only way Queens gave off light. Sex—pleasure—also made us glow.

Nolan laid Quentin down on a sofa in the family room next to the kitchen. Leaving him in Hannah’s care, he led me down the hall to his other son. “He’s in the study,” he told me.

I followed him, trepidation fluttering inside me like wild butterflies. I don’t know what I expected to see when he opened the door and cautiously entered. Maybe someone looking like Quentin, only more drawn and haggard, sitting in a chair, shaking with need. I should have known better. I should have known from the feel of his power that he would be nothing like what I expected. That he would be nothing at all like his brother.

My first thought was that this was not a boy. I would have called him a man, like I was a woman and not a girl despite my years, had he been a rational being. But he was not. There was nothing rational in those eyes. And what odd eyes he had, a blue so pale they were almost translucent. They were eyes that I had never seen before, but felt somehow as if I had. Those eyes sent a chill racing through me, as if a ghost had just tripped and fallen on my grave.

He was shackled at both wrists by a three-foot length of silver chain attached to the wall, allowing him to stand and move about. And he was doing that, straining against the taut length when I stepped in, his body quivering, his pale eyes fixed upon me with unthinking hunger. Making me thankful for the chains that restrained him, otherwise he would have been on me like a famished beast.

He had his mother’s brown hair, but lighter in color, honey brown. That was the only soft thing about him. His hair was an even longer length than his brother’s, pulled back in a ponytail that may have once been neat, but was far from that now. Hanks of hair, freed from the hair tie, hung about his face. Unkempt stubble shadowed his chin, and an earring, if you could call it that, punctured—not pierced, but punctured—his left ear. I’d never seen a Monère with an earring before. Probably because our bodies healed so quickly. But this man-boy creature had one. Not the neat, needle-thin hole you normally saw, but a much bigger one. A crude, hand-hammered gold bar almost pencil thick was punched through the earlobe. Much more primitive, like what you’d see among native tribes in Africa maybe. And that was pretty much a good word to describe him—primitive. Primal. Dangerous.

Whereas his brother was model pretty, Dante was like his famous namesake, invoking images of Hell. Cruelty and harshness marked his face, and all he wore were dirty, torn pants. His chest and feet were bare, showing his starved leanness. It was as if every ounce of fat had been consumed from his body, honing him down to nothing but hard striations of bunched muscles. He was like a cutting blade of power, hard and austere. I could literally count his ribs, see the hard muscles fanning over them. His chest was soaked with sweat, and the smell of it was sickly, not a healthy scent. Just as the look in his eyes was not a healthy hunger, but an unthinking, overpowering one—like that of a rabid dog foaming with madness and the need to tear out your throat.

The sorrow that had been in Quentin’s voice was heard in his father’s now. “Dante. Son,” he said softly, trying to bring Dante back to himself. “I’ve brought a Queen to help you. Mona Lisa. She’ll give you the light you need from her, if you let her.”

A rumbling growl started deep in Dante’s chest and rose up into his throat. With no warning he lunged at his father. The chains jerked him to a halt, snapping him abruptly back. He prowled back and forth restlessly against the restraining length like the wild creature he had become.

The sadness I’d first heard in his brother, then in his father, was a pervasive thing. It seeped into me. Sadness at the waste, at the loss. Sadness because I thought it was too late to save him. But still I had to try. Taking a deep breath, I stepped forward until I stood only two arms’ lengths away from him.

“Dante,” I said softy, and knew somehow that he was as intensely aware of my presence as I was of his, even though his gaze was locked with his father’s, a steady growl rumbling from his throat. I called his name again but his attention did not waver from the other man.

“Nolan, back up to the door. Don’t leave, but give us some room.”

Nolan did as I asked, moving back until I could no longer see him, and his presence no longer pressed so strongly upon us—until all I could see was just the tortured, wild creature that was his son. The growling stopped and those odd blue eyes suddenly turned and met mine. The impact reverberated through my entire body. Such fierceness, such intensity. There was something very frightening about those eyes. Was there anything still rational left in there?

“Dante.” Though my heart beat rapidly, my voice was as calm and gentle as the freshly fallen night. “Do you understand what I’m saying? Can you speak?”

He stood still but not at ease. Every muscle in his body was tense, quiveringly taut. I took one step closer to him, and slowly lifted my hand out, a hand that shook slightly.

“Dante.” His name fell from my lips like a soft melody as I touched him. As I laid my hand lightly on his chest.

He groaned, a harsh, guttural sound like an animal in great pain. The sound startled me, and I jerked my hand back. He went wild at the loss, snarling and lunging powerfully forward, jerked to a rattling halt by the chains. Only the fleece lining beneath the shackles kept his skin from tearing.

I fell back a step, I couldn’t help it. Even knowing that the silver chains rendered him only human strong, there was such anger to him, such menace, I could not help but be frightened. My heart pounded and the trembling of my hand spread to my entire body.

“I’m sorry,” I said, turning so I could see Nolan from the corner of my eyes. “I…can’t. Not with him like this. Even if I were crazy enough to try it…” And I would have tried it, had Dante shown even a modicum of reasoning, of understanding—making me wonder who the crazy one among us really was. “It would not do any good. We shine only in pleasure.” And I doubted I’d be able to feel that with Dante, as wild and violent and dangerous as he was.

The big man didn’t say anything, and his silence and sorrow weighed down upon me like a heavy stone. And why should it not? I had just essentially passed a death sentence on his son. One that he would have to carry out. But the tall, formidable warrior didn’t protest, didn’t try to insist, holding to his word…that the choice would be mine.

Because he did, I swallowed and voiced the other option I had considered. “If your other son, Quentin…if I glowed with him here in this room, would it help? Could Dante absorb my light if we were close to him but not touching?”

Hope flared in the big man’s eyes. “Yes, it should. Proximity is all that is needed in Basking. It should be the same with this, too.” This being sex.

“Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Let’s give it a try.”

We didn’t have to call him. Every word we said was clearly heard by everyone in the household—one of the downfalls of possessing such acute hearing: no privacy, unless we deliberately tuned down our senses. Quentin appeared in the doorway, dressed in clean clothes and no longer smelling of blood.

“You’re healed?” I asked as our eyes met in that intense awareness of two people who knew they would soon be intimate with each other.

Quentin nodded.

“Do you have a condom?”

Uncertainty passed across that pretty face. Young. So young, cried a voice inside me. Yeah, but he was the lesser of two evils. I sure as hell was not going to fuck his father. Nolan was a married man.

Ironically enough, it was the married man’s wife who appeared with a familiar square foil packet in her hand. She pressed what I had requested into Quentin’s hand and left when she caught sight of my flaming face and Dante’s wild, animalistic state.

With condom in hand, Quentin stepped into the room and came toward me. His brother went ballistic. Dante lunged, flung himself out. Not his upper body, but his lower one, his feet flying out in a half-circle. With the added length that gave him, that of his entire body and arms stretched out to their fullest, it was enough to reach me. His feet swept across my knees, knocking me down. I fell and he rolled over me, a fluid, seething mass, coming quickly to his feet. Hands clamped down on me and he pushed me behind him, crouching in front of me, growling viciously at Nolan and Quentin, who had rushed forward in alarm.

“Stop!” I said. “Don’t come any closer. It’s all right. It’s all right,” I repeated as father and son halted their headlong rush. “Dante’s just trying to protect me…I think.” The last two words were muttered prayerlike, flung up heavenward by my racing heart.

Whatever Dante was doing, it was compelled by his most primal instincts. And the need to protect a Queen was a real hard-wired one instilled in all warriors. I was betting my safety—and his—on it.

He had latched his left hand onto my wrist, leaving his right hand free to fight with. And he’d put me behind him, a protective gesture as well as a possessive one, setting himself between me and the other men.

“Back up,” I said as calmly as I could. “He has me, and hasn’t hurt me so far. Let’s see what he does.”

Nolan and Quentin moved back to the door and stopped there, watching us, making me realize what I had said: Let’s see what he does. I hadn’t meant it literally. Not really. At least, not in Quentin’s case.

“Quentin, if you could, um, leave. The less people in the room, the better,” I said to soften my request. “I’ll be fine with your father. Just…leave the condom.” My face flushed fire-engine red as Quentin slid the precious foil packet across the floor to me. When he slipped quietly from the room, the coiled tension in Dante’s body revved down a notch. Down to a watchful battle readiness instead of a ready-to-erupt-and-tear-out-our-throats state. He backed us up as far as we could go, until we came up against the wall. Then his attention turned to me.

Oh boy.

Intensity was a nice thing in a would-be lover. It told you they were paying attention to you. But not to this degree—this raw, overwhelming amount. This much of it was more scary than exciting…but a spark of sanity had crept into that blue sea of madness. Those fierce, pale eyes swept over me, examining every detail as if I were a two-headed alien suddenly plopped down in from of him. He studied me as if he felt the same thing I did: like he should know me but didn’t. I had the feeling that if he could have drank me down with those pale, eerie eyes of his, I would have been drained completely dry and left like parched, cracked earth.

He raised a hand slowly as if I were the wild creature that had to be gentled, and swept it just above my skin as if he could feel my force, my presence, my aphidy—that unique, attractive force and fragrance inherent to all Queens. It had flared out wildly, reaching for him the first time his hungry power had hit me. I had clamped down on it tightly, desperately contained it. It vibrated my skin now where he ran his hand over it, stroking my invisible power, buzzing and prickling where his hand wrapped around my wrist. A small pulse of power escaped from me and jumped to him against my will, as if our energies wanted to blend, merge, come together—something I’d never experienced before with another man.

As startled as I, he dropped my wrist and we faced each other, inches apart, both of us breathing heavily, our bodies quivering and tense. He was behaving himself as much as I was, keeping his power controlled on a tight leash, not letting it pummel me as it had before. He was sane enough not to want to scare me away, I realized. Comforting. But if we were to get intimate, I wanted—needed—to know that he was rational enough to control himself, to not hurt me. He was bound by silver. I was stronger than him, I could protect myself. But still…something in me could not help but fear him.

Strong though I was, when a woman opened her body to a man, she was vulnerable to him in ways only another woman could understand. Before I let loose my aphidy, before I had sex with him, I had to trust him enough to let go of the tight rein of my control. That was the only way I’d be able to glow. And I didn’t know if I could do that with him.

He was such a raw mass of seething pain. I sensed it, and that part of me that had always been drawn to pain was drawn to him now because of it. I didn’t try to resist it. Lifting my hand, I laid it again on his bare chest. Once again, the small pulse of power jumped between us. His face twisted, as if my touch pained him, but he did not groan as he had before—the sound that had startled me, made me jerk back away from him. He clenched his teeth, swallowed down the sound, and shuddered from my touch.

Just my palm laid flat against his chest with my Goddess’s Tears pressing into his skin, and something between us connected like a current flowing out of me to him. A circuit that cycled back to me. My pearly moles flared to life and did what they usually did around pain. My palm began to tingle, my hand grew warm, and my power, drawn forth by the suffering of another, spilled out of me and seeped into his flesh in a wide, assessing sweep, easing the pain.

God. Such agony he was in. What control it had taken on his part simply not to lash out at me in reaction to that pain. “Dante, can you say something? Anything?”

“Touch me more.” The words came out hoarse and guttural, as if they’d been wrenched from him.

I looked into his eyes and saw that tiny spark of sanity firm, grow stronger with our physical connection. “Thank God,” I whispered. Looking into his eyes, feeling him through my palm, reading him, I knew that we’d pulled him back—both he and I together—from that brink of madness he’d been teetering on. I knew that he would not hurt me, that I could save him. That I wanted to save him. Not just for the healer he would gain me. But for himself. For the valiant warrior that he was, the fierce will inside of him that had tenaciously pulled him back from the encroaching madness.

I stuffed the condom in my pocket, freeing my other hand, and laid it across his forehead, pushing my disquiet aside to just concentrate on him, the poor suffering creature before me. My palm flushed and tingled as that pain-easing power of mine spilled into him, soothing the jagged edges of his mind and body. His eyes closed and his jaw clenched. Wetness spiked his lashes.

“It’s okay. You can groan if you need to. It just startled me that first time,” I murmured. But he didn’t, and I was glad he didn’t. I still felt uneasy around him. “I’m taking away some of the pain, removing the symptom. Not curing the disease,” I told him.

His lashes lifted, dark wet crescents. “How can we cure it?” He spoke with less strain, but his voice still sounded rusty, sore.

I hesitated, then answered him with his own words. “Touch me.”

His right hand lifted slowly, hesitantly, the chains clinking with his movement. It came to rest cautiously on my shoulder. “Your shirt is wet,” he said. But it was his body that shook as I brought my other hand to his face and traced both hands down his cheeks, his neck, moving to his shoulders, pausing there a moment, then drifting down his arms, back up. Smoothing across his chest in gentle, tingling sweeps.

“I fell in a river,” I said, explaining why my shirt was wet.

Chains rattled as his left hand came up to rest on my other shoulder. He began an echoing refrain of my motions, gliding them down my arms. Back up.

“When you touched me that first time, I knew I could not let you go.” His voice was a raw and husky murmur. “Don’t leave me.”

“I won’t,” I promised, even though my heart sped up in disquiet at his words. The thought of being held by him, captured by him…I shook off the unease. “I won’t leave you unless you bite me. That is the only thing that will make me go,” I said, continuing my ministrations, learning his body, easing his pain. I tried to lose myself in the pleasure of touching him, my hands drifting down his abdomen, sweeping up his sides, skimming lightly up and down his back.

“I won’t bite you,” he said in that ragged voice of his.

“No biting. No blood. All other things you may do.” Meeting Nolan’s eyes over Dante’s shoulder, I gestured for him to leave and he slipped from the room, closing the door softly behind him. Taking that mental step, committing myself wholly to this, I swept a hand lightly over his groin, finding him long and hard, swollen full.

His teeth ground together audibly, and his body tensed to rock hardness. His skin stretched taut over the sharp blades of his cheekbones, and his pale blue eyes glittered down at me. I looked away, finding it easier to touch him, be with him, if I did not look into those eerie, familiar but unfamiliar eyes.

“This is the cure,” I said softly, taking the verbal step. “Touch me. Make love to me.”

His hands gripped my shoulders tightly before he consciously eased his grip. And that one moment of force, that hint of strength, drew my breath in.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said, alarmed, almost panicking, lifting his hands away.

“I’m not.” Warmth spilled across my cheeks in an embarrassed blush. “It was…nice,” I admitted softly. “I liked that firmness, the hint of your strength. Touch me more.”

I felt him heat at my words, but he stood there in an agony of stillness, fear that I would be frightened into leaving battling with his desire to do as I said—to touch me more.

I took his hands in both of mine, and some of that frightened tension left him as we connected once more. Until I slid them under my wet T-shirt and laid his hands against my bare skin. Then tension roared back into him again. Simmered between us as I swept my hands over his hips and slid them down his buttocks. He sucked in his breath, expelled it out when I continued on my journey, sweeping my palms down the back of his cloth-covered thighs.

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.

With deliberate lightness, he drew his hands slowly down my breasts, learning their shape, their feel, watching my reaction to his touch. Helpless tremors shook me as his fingers skimmed over my nipples. They pebbled in response and those hooded eyes lowered down to them in fascination. His fingers returned to circle the pouting hardness that he’d drawn forth, rimming the brown areolas, brushing softly over the sensitive tips. He watched me respond, his piercing eyes lifting back up to mine, and I was helpless to look away as the control suddenly shifted from me to him.

“You like this?”

I nodded, unable to speak with the rough pads of his fingers brushing over my nipples. A light swirling stroke, then a firmer caress. His fingers traced down the slight swell of my breasts. Drifted down my belly. He splayed his hands across my waist, my hips, down my thighs, back up again. With just the tips of his fingers, as if he were a blind man reading braille, reading me, he ran those sensitive rough pads around to the back of me and bent his head down. Again I had the sense that he was reading me, learning me, as he moved his mouth inch by inch closer until his lips brushed my nipple.

My hands tightened on his arms. Tightened more as he drew that sensitive tip into his mouth and I felt wetness and warmth. And pleasure. Oh my God, so much pleasure. He played with that nipple the same way he had kissed me, with slow, deliberate intent, with loving thoroughness, with pleased discovery.

I leaned into him, increasing the pressure, asking for more, and he gave it to me. A firmer lick, a harder suction, the dangerous tease and scrape of his teeth across the budded tip while his hands cupped my bottom, kneading the rounded flesh in a firm, caressing grip.

He drew me to him and our naked flesh met. Our bodies pressed together and he was unable to hold back the groan that welled up in him, that seemed to come from his very soul. It came tumbling out of his mouth as he released my tender bud and buried his face against me. His stubble scraped across my erect nipple and it felt good, so good. I moaned softly and moved against him, increasing the friction against the rough abrasiveness of his beard, twisting like a cat in his lap, purring with delight.

Our breath came faster, and yet we still held to our individual control. The time had come to loosen it, and I was frightened and scared and excited and impatient. Sex—ultimate pleasure—was about losing control, not keeping it, and I felt eagerness stir within me. My power knew that it would soon be freed.

Stretching sideways, I grabbed my pants and dug the foil packet out of the pocket. Gripping the condom in my hand, I prayed that it would be all right. That we would be okay in the storm I was about to unleash.

“I’m going to loosen my power now,” I told him. “I have to let go of my control, but you can’t. You have to stay in control.” My next words were delivered with a wry smile. “I’ll try to be gentle.” Something a man would normally say. “But it’s probably going to hit us hard.”

I felt it like an eager wave, ready to fall, to crash down.

“What do you mean?”

“Just remember. No biting, no blood. Or I will leave you.”

His pale eyes darkened at that threat. “No biting, no blood. My word on it.”

Trusting in him, I let go of the tight rein I had over myself. We had a moment of quiet, of breathless silence. Then the presence that was within me, the power and attraction that made me Queen, that drew all males to me, emerged, set free. It came roaring out in a dazzling gush of power. And spilled out and onto him.

“Shit,” he said. His hands clamped down tight around me as it hit him, and then his own power rose up to meet mine so that we were suddenly drowning in biting energy, awash with primitive vital urges. Becoming nothing more than what we instinctively needed. I felt his hunger, his cry for the moon’s light. And within me was pulled forth my own need, my own personal craving. Not the demon urge for blood that I had feared, but the urge that was buried in all Monère women—the need to feel life growing in them. It flared up hot and hard within me, and spilled out onto him. Every hard-wired instinct in us propelled us together in that unthinking need to mate. To bear forth life.

With a growl, his mouth came back upon me. He drew in my nipple, sucking hard with primitive drive, and that forceful sucking built the need in me even greater until it became almost pain. Give me a child! Give me a baby!

As if he heard my body’s cry, his finger pushed into me and found me wet, moist and ready. Warm fertile ground. He shifted, laid me down on the floor, and came over me, covering me, braced on his arms. His pale blue eyes were wild, his body trembling with need, but he held back, poised there at my gate. “Say yes,” he gritted.

A split moment to decide. An endless cycle of time to let the foil packet spill out of my hand. To fall onto the floor, released. “Yes,” I breathed.

He thrust forward, missed the entrance, and we both cried out in painful frustration. I reached down, took ahold of him, and guided him where we both wanted him to go. He thrust forward again and penetrated me, filled me up, brought forth my light. And my light brought out his—a weak, pale glimmer of my own, as if he were a dying battery, almost completely drained.

He drew out, surged into me. And it was suddenly not enough. I was the one who went wild, becoming nothing more than a creature of instinctive need, twisting beneath the hard male body thrusting into me. Writhing against him, rising up to him, my legs wrapped around him to help him slam into me. More, more, more! my body demanded. And he gave it to me with grunting force. He thrust deep, he thrust hard, spilling his seed into me in a harsh, choking climax. Then I was coming, too.

Power crystallized within me and exploded out of me. Light spilled out, illuminating me, blindingly intense. I felt him drink in my light, not a passive process, absorbing it, but actually pulling it into him with the force of his own need, like a physical hand hauling in a rope, and I was that rope. He glowed, suddenly bright like a fire ignited, and my light lessened for one shaking, shuddering moment that passed so quickly I could almost believe it didn’t happen, would have believed it had I not felt it so keenly. A momentary blast, then the light that lit us up, was emitted from us, became normal once more.

He watched me as ecstasy filled us both. Watched me as I shattered beneath him. Watched me still. “Again,” he said and moved. And with surprise, I felt him still hard within me.

How could that be? I’d felt him come. Had felt the pulsing jets of his release shooting within me. Had felt the wetness of his spilled seed mixing with my own juice, trickling out of me. But the hard, smooth length moving within me, washing me anew with sharp, edgy sensations was undeniable. One stroke. Two. A fluttered heartbeat. A skipped breath. And then he sank himself down deep inside me like a sword thrusting home all the way into its sheath. And with us connected like that, he rolled us on the floor until we came up against the wall.

He shifted around until he sat propped up against it with me sitting on his lap and him still deep inside of me, thick and throbbing. In this new position, he began moving in me. A slow, languorous stroke, deep and fine. In this new position, his hands, freed, moved over me also, stroking me on the outside as he stroked me on the inside. Lazy, thorough. But whereas he moved inside me with firm hard pressure, along my skin he touched me with but the barest pressure. Deep strokes within, light tantalizing strokes without. His fingertips trailed almost ticklishly light over my skin, sensitizing it even more until I became screamingly aware of everything he did to me. Everywhere he touched me, inside and out.

Those grazing fingertips crisscrossed a devilish path down my back, arching me into him as he leaned forward until his breath fell with teasing, tantalizing puffs upon my breasts. Until my nipples hardened into pebbles, puckered up under the warm current of air moving over them. Inside, my sheath tightened in corresponding reaction, in parallel anticipation, gripping his thick stalk even more tightly, even more sweetly, as he did what I’d asked him to do—as he danced with me. As he danced within me. As he played me with his hands, with his breath, with his hard male organ. As he finally touched the spear points of my breasts, not with his soft lips but with his rough bristles, I gasped in shock, in surprise, in pure seething pleasure. Jerked against him. Bucked against him below as he rubbed that sandpapery roughness over me, scraped it over my peaks, drawing forth such an abrasive cascade of pleasure, of sweet, moaning sensation.

Light finger strokes down my back, over my buttocks. A hard, bristly rub across my breasts. While inside me he moved in a sure, lazy rhythm as he tilted his head back and watched with heavy-lidded eyes. Watched what he did to me. Watched the feelings he drew out of me. Watched my reactions to his every move, his every light and rough caress. And all while he felt what he did to me inside. In the quivering spasms that rippled my internal walls. In the wet sucking grip of my hungry sheath squeezing down on him with more and more tightness as he slowly built up the pleasure, the wracking tension once again.

He made love to me like his father and brother fought. With sure grace, with natural athleticism, with extraordinary physicality, as if his body had moved this way a million times before. No fumbling, no hesitation.

He’s a virgin. A virgin, a voice inside of me screamed. Had to be. But he played me like a master violinist played a beloved Stradivarius. With familiarity. With a skilled touch. With an exploring, swiveling plunge of his hips that drew forth a muttered gasp, a deep moan from me. That lit me up once more with a soft, illuminating glow.

A slow withdrawal. Another leisurely swivel-stroke in, that had me mewling and grasping his arms in breathless pleasure and hardening demand. It was wonderful and not enough. I rose to my knees, fisted my hands in his hair. Tightened around him even more, and rocked against him with hard, surging moves that brought forth his own light again. That made his breath catch and hold, and his eyes gleam even fiercer.

“No,” he said, his voice so harsh it was almost a growl. “Let me learn you. See what pleases you.”

“Everything you do pleases me.”

“Then let me do it more.”

“I don’t know if I can take more.”

“You can.” And unvoiced—You will. Those odd bright eyes of his demanded it, holding me still, almost in thrall as he began to move in me again. Screamingly slow. Agonizingly gentle. So that I felt every hard slip and slide of him in and out of me while I trembled and held obediently still, poised over him.

When he was assured of my compliance, when I ceded control back to him and harsh primitive triumph glittered in those warrior eyes, he rewarded me by leaning forward and brushing his bristly beard across my eager pouting nipple, then taking it into his mouth.

Just wetness, warmth, nothing else. And I gasped, swallowed back a moan of need. Please.

As if he heard my silent plea, he gave me the suction I needed. A hard sweet pull that zinged from my breast down to my womb as if the two separate organs were connected somehow. So that what was done to one affected the other. So that the light sucking, tugging pull of his mouth upon me was felt not only by my nipple, but deep inside me also, in that part of me that cried out to be filled by him again. Not just by his hard, throbbing length, but what it ultimately thirsted for—the wetness of his seed.

I trembled and shook and twisted against him. And wound even tighter within when his light, tracing fingers accidentally grazed over my sensitive rear rim as he trailed his way from one cheek to the other. He groaned as I unconsciously clenched around him.

His fingers moved back to trace around my anal pucker, both of us groaning as he did so. I was shaking, wound up so tight as he played with me there for an endless moment. Then his other hand moved in front, drifted down through my silky triangle and explored me there where we were joined. He moved those light, grazing fingertips along my stretched outer lips, and I tightened even more, cried out, jerked against him when he traced over my hard, swollen nub. Like an explorer finding treasure, he returned to the spot, traced over that tiny sensitive part of my body where so many nerves screamed. His two hands traced over me, one in front, one in back. And I drew tense, tremblingly tight, like a bow drawn back by an expert archer, my light spilling out from me, his light mixing with mine, making the room glow.

Those dancing fingers suddenly stopped. Stilled all movement of hands, but not of body. His body arched up with sudden thrusting force, plunging up into mine, filling me with his hard, spearing length once, twice. Three savoring strokes in that suspended, taut stillness, that spiraling tightness. Then those fingers moved once more, pressed down firmly over those two spots he had found, one in front, one in back. And it was this, that sudden pressing firmness in those twin spots along with the rough-frictioned drive of him deep inside me that gave me what I needed. Flicked the ignition switch. Made me blast off.

I cried as I came apart again. As my second climax roared through me in a hot, convulsive rush. And as I shook and shuddered, my light bursting from me, he drove into me again and again in a slow, steady rhythm, unhurried, as if he had all the time in the world to fuck me as he drank down my light, as he pulled it into himself, dimming my radiance for one brief instant while brightening his own. Then, as my twitching convulsions lessened, his pace quickened. His driving thrusts into me grew even more forceful, stronger. Deeper. His right hand moved down my leg and caressed my foot with the pleasing strength with which he had gripped my shoulders. With that same strong firmness and pressure, his thumb pressed down deep and hard into my sole. He pushed there, right in the center of my foot, and ripped another wash of splintering sensations through me so intense that it was frightening. With his other hand he squeezed my swollen clitoris while he speared himself through my spasming tightness, seating himself home deep inside of me. I came a third time, explosively. Crying out. Coming apart. Splintering into a million sundering pieces. I collapsed on top of him, drained, limp, literally shocked with pleasure, and felt him come inside of me again. Felt the powerful jetting of his own release.

And as he drank down my light, I drank up his seed.

We lay there, chests heaving, bodies and worlds torn apart and slowly coming back together, our lights fading. One last glimmer and we no longer glowed. The light of our pleasure vanished, and I felt the wetness of his seed ooze out, trickle down my thighs.

My eyes fell upon the innocent foil packet, unopened, unused, lying there abandoned on the floor. And the cold light of reality set in.

Oh my God. Oh my God. What have I done?