Chapter Eleven

You Like Me Like This

Part One

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After closing the door behind Yilina, Kazia turned and stood gazing at Kelvaran across the room. From this vantage, he really was looking pitifully misused over there. She gave a contrite sigh, then swiftly returned to the bedside and pulled the curtain ties away from his wrists.

“I apologize. I shouldn't have done that,” she said tersely, drawing the cravat away from his face as well. “Go back to the lab. I should be more agreeable after another hour or so.”

But as she turned to put some distance between them, Kelvaran rose up grasped her elbow, and tumbled her back down into the bed. Landing atop her, he kissed her hungrily, matching her earlier fervor.

“Mmh...” Kazia pushed lightly against his shoulders until he lifted his face again, staring down at her with eyes full of adoration. “Go on,” she insisted.

“What could I possibly say to Yilina if I went back to the lab today?”

“You could say that I drugged you.”

Kelvaran laughed ruefully. “Are you that determined to have her think you so villainous?”

“Aren't I?” Kazia mused. “She was right. I am a vile creature. I can't control myself at all.”

Kelvaran scoffed. “Nonsense. It's only that potion talking. You'll feel better once it wears away and you're back to yourself.”

Kazia shook her head. “I am myself,” she said.

Her face turned thoughtful, and her gaze drifted to Kelvaran's bare chest as she toyed absently with the edges of his open shirt. She glanced up at his eyes, and away again.

“The Off-Switch doesn't make me behave this way,” she explained. “During my... training... I learned to turn off my feelings whenever I was frightened. It is danger that makes me like this. The Off-Switch only gives me something to be afraid of. Even without it, this will always happen any time I feel threatened, or feel my loved ones threatened.”

She lifted her gaze to meet his steadily. “I need you to understand this,” she said. “If I could have a lifetime of peace, it still might never leave me. And if I'm going to treat you like this, you should probably keep a distance until it passes.”

Kelvaran shook his head. He pushed one arm around her waist under her back, his hand sliding between her layers of silk clothing, to hold her tightly beneath him.

“I'm not going anywhere,” he whispered. He kissed her forehead softly. “I don't mind.”

Kazia's eyes narrowed on him in renewed scrutiny. “No, you don't,” she said knowingly. “You like me like this.”

Kelvaran frowned quizzically, his mouth opening to form a protest. “I...”

“Don't forget that I can tell,” she reminded him. “In Essyl, when I subdued that mercenary, you were fascinated. The first time you came upon me practicing knives in the garden, I could feel your attraction despite suspicion. Now, in our intimacy, you're always most excited when I take control.”

Kelvaran's cheeks reddened as she spoke, his lips still hanging open in stunned silence. Kazia raised an eyebrow in amused challenge.

“I won't deny it,” he finally conceded. “You are an admirable woman. I love you in all of your ways... and if you need to take control to feel safe, then...”

Kazia's hands clenched into fists around the fabric of his shirt as she scowled. “Is that what I'm doing?”

His sharp glance at her clutching hands told her that she'd startled him. She relaxed her grip on him and turned her face to the side, her mind filling with thoughts far more disturbing than his soulless eyes.

“Abrizhen thinks that since Gorvan was served in similar manner by his own father, his violence is a means of now affirming his own security.” She looked up into Kelvaran's eyes again. “Is that what I'm doing?”

He pulled his arm out from beneath her and stroked her face, smoothing back all of the hair that had scattered about when he'd tossed her down into the bed.

“I don't know,” he said quietly. “If that is what you're doing, then I'd say you've found a far more pleasant method than he has... and you're right...” He traced a finger across her collarbone, then down the front of her silk camisole. “...I do like it.”

He cupped the side of her breast in his palm and buried his lips into the crease beneath it while brushing the nipple with his thumb. The hot steam of his breath through the tissue-thin silk sent a quiver throughout her solar plexus, setting her stomach fluttering.

Rising abruptly, Kazia pushed him over, reversing their positions. She sat across his thighs and dragged her hands down his ribs as she sat up.

“I don't always have to be in control,” she said smugly while working at the fastenings of his trousers. “I do quite enjoy your passion as well... but if I started something, then shouldn't I finish it?”

She slid off the edge of the bed onto her feet to pull Kelvaran's trousers and underclothes away. An intense craving arose in her pelvis at the sight of his member already standing tall in display of its own urgency. She crawled slowly up his long legs, her eyes narrowed on it, licking her lips with a predatory intent. When she drew him between her lips, his groan seemed to reverberate through her skull.

It felt odd to her, the familiarity of his flesh now detached from her empathic sense. Concentrating her efforts, she tried to match every kiss, suck, and twining undulation of her tongue to her memories of their previous encounters. At first, Kelvaran's reactions were heated – his limbs trembling, his hips twitching upward to meet her, his heaving chest forcing his breath into harsh gusts – but after some time he stilled, his body held tightly unmoving, his breath calmed to a whisper.

It was quite discouraging. Were her memories unreliable without her Empathy? Perhaps she did lean on it too much, if she couldn't even manage common intuition without it.

She renewed her diligence. Determined to bring him along, she pursued even the lightest gasp or the most minute flinch, trying to elicit a repeat of each reaction. She had no result until she slid her saliva-slicked fingers down the shaft below her lips, over the distended sac, and nudged a fingertip inside the tight opening behind it.

A violent shudder rocked Kelvaran's body, accompanied by a questioning sound that soon elided into a growling moan. Kazia narrowed her eyes in triumph, then set about exploring this new territory.

She didn't get far, though, before Kelvaran sat up, seized her under the shoulders, then hauled her up and rolled her under him again, kissing her deeply. When he broke the kiss, she saw his face flushed and sweating despite the chill in the room. She frowned up at him with a defeated sigh.

“I'm sorry if it's no good,” she said. “My perception is a bit lacking today.”

“No good?” he asked breathlessly. “It was... I wasn't certain I could restrain myself.”

Kazia's eyes widened. Oh... yes...

The first time she had used her mouth on him, he had jolted so violently that he rammed the back of her throat, shocking her into a coughing fit. Since then, he always did try to hold himself in check, but his internal state would only become all the more turbulent, particularly when he took his potion and their emotional auras entangled. Yes, Kazia thought she really had been relying too heavily upon that connection with him. She smiled at Kelvaran with no small amount of chagrin.

“I'm afraid you'll have to tell me what you want this time,” she said.

His lips spread into a sly smile, then fell upon hers voraciously. His hand glided down her body, then crept into the split opening of her silk drawers, pulling a whimper from her as his fingers stroked through her wet, sensitive folds, setting her aflame with a searing need.

“I want you... Kazia...” he whispered harshly. His lips brushed over her earlobe, and a prickling frisson fanned down the back of her neck. “I always want you.”

Squirming beneath him, Kazia hooked one leg around his hips to pull him between her thighs.

“Then take me.”

Instead of complying, he only ground himself against her, rocking his hips, his hard length sliding easily over her slippery flesh. She moaned while giving him an affronted glare.

“Kel... please...” she whispered.

“You must tell me how you're feeling, too,” he murmured. He pecked gently at her lips, then at the edge of her jaw. “How is it? Still bothered by your potion?”

Rational thought was becoming difficult, though. In the absence of the usually overwhelming empathic immersion, Kazia's awareness of her body was intensified, every sensation growing acutely insistent. She felt as if her nerves were singing.

“They say that the loss of one sense will sharpen the others,” she said. “I think this may be such a case.”

Kelvaran chuckled. “I had the same thought, earlier.”

At the time, covering his eyes had only been an aid to her experiment. Now, the memory of his bound appearance set her blood boiling.

“Shall I tie you down again and have my way with you?” she suggested.

Kelvaran smiled down at her seductively. “Any time.”

Her retort was cut off as he drew back and then slid into her, his mouth covering hers to muffle the feral grunt that erupted from her throat.

Lifting his weight from her body, Kelvaran held himself up on one hand and grasped her waist with the other. He began to move inside her, slowly at first to let her adjust but soon settling into a smooth yet vigorous rhythm, angled so that his body still brushed against her most sensitive spot, continuing the momentum of his earlier goading.

Kazia's gaze, misted over in her euphoria, raked down his body, captivated by the muscles undulating beneath his skin with his strenuous effort. She ran her hands over his sweat-soaked skin and knew that if she couldn't touch his soul just now, this was the proof of his life she had needed to settle her heart – his warm flesh in her hands and inside her body, his laboring breath, his racing heart, the storm of his passion surrounding her.

Kazia squeezed her eyes shut and cried out loud as a blistering heat tore through her body. Somewhere within her psyche, a void broke open, and was instantly flooded with Kelvaran's presence. She heard his frenzied gasp as the familiar echo of their entangling auras began to ricochet between them, and Kazia's own ethereal reservoir shot its tendrils out to grasp him, clinging as if it would never again relinquish that hold. Where there should be darkness behind her eyelids, a searingly brilliant light erupted, dazzling her eyes and sending her head spinning.

“Kazia!”

His hands were on her face and her shoulders, gripping her, shaking her frantically.

"Hmm...?"

Kazia peeked her eyes open to find that she and Kelvaran were both completely engulfed in a wild conflagration of crackling blue flame, pouring from every inch of Kazia's skin.

"Oh."

 

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