Chapter Twenty-eight

A Quick Study

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Kelvaran stood, lifting her along with him, and she clung to him with all her limbs as he carried her into her bedroom. They fell together across the side of the bed, and Kelvaran pulled his lips away to gaze into her eyes.

“I love you,” he said.

Kazia smiled. “I can feel that.”

“I thought I should say it aloud, since this ability is unreliable.”

Her smile widened.

“You're a quick study,” she said as her hands moved to his chest and began to unbutton his waistcoat. “I love you, too.”

He wanted to kiss her again, but waited patiently until she had undone all the buttons of his waistcoat and shirt.

He ran a hand up her arm under her wide sleeve. The silk brushed luxuriously over the back of his hand, but it couldn't compare to the soft and warm skin under his palm. When she had finished with his buttons, he raised her arm and placed a slow kiss into the bend of her elbow, allowing his tongue through his lips to touch her.

Kazia drew a sharp breath, and Kelvaran shivered with the reverberation of her reaction.

He stood, bringing her up with him, and shrugged the garments she'd unbuttoned onto the floor. He tried to kiss her again, but she held him back to run her hands over his shoulders and then down his chest while she took in the sight of him with smoldering eyes.

His skin was much paler than her own olive complexion. His body was lean, and there were the firm, compact muscles she had felt through his clothes the night before.

Touching him was exhilarating, and her heart sped wildly as she wrapped her arms around his waist, drew him closer, and kissed his collarbone, sucking his skin between her teeth as she drew a finger across the small of his back along the edge of his trousers.

Kelvaran's heart jumped, and he took her head between his hands, raising her face to finally kiss her. He slid his hands down her body and began to lift the loose silk gown.

Kazia released him then, stepping back and lifting her arms for him to pull the gown over her head.

As it floated down to join the growing pile of clothing on the floor, Kelvaran examined her undergarments, a sleeveless camisole of white silk and a pair of long, lace-trimmed pantalettes.

He kissed her again, then turned her around, bringing his arms around her from behind to unbutton the front of her camisole, all while laying a series of heated kisses up her neck to her ear and then down her neck again.

As he drew the camisole away, he kissed the pink scar that ran along her shoulder, then ran his hands in a gentle caress over her scarred back.

He was instantly shaken by a revolt in Kazia's aura, and she turned sharply to catch the hand that was touching her.

Rather than angry, though, she was embarrassed. Her cheeks flushed bright red as she grasped his hand and looked away self-consciously.

“You can't possibly think that this detracts from your beauty, can you?” he asked, his voice low and tender.

Kazia glanced at him, and looked away again.

“I've never been concerned about whether or not I was beautiful,” she whispered. “But now... I don't know why...”

He put his hands on her face again, caressing her forehead and cheeks as he looked at her adoringly.

“You are so... very beautiful. I've thought so since the first day I saw you.”

She smiled, and he felt some humor returning to her.

“I know,” she said meaningfully.

“There was dirt on your face,” he said gently, smoothing a tendril of hair back, “your hair was a mess, you were wearing farm hand clothes, and you were the daughter of my enemy, and I was so angry with myself for thinking that you were so beautiful. And that...” he gave a loaded glance down over her shoulder, “... that can't touch your beauty. Your beauty is far more than physical. Although...”

Kazia's upper half was completely naked, and he hadn't even looked yet. He looked now, though, and his breath caught painfully in his throat.

Their already combustible emotional connection ignited into flames of passion again and they mutually attacked one another's remaining clothing.

After much kicking of shoes and trousers, they fell onto the bed again in a fevered tangle of desperate lips and exploring hands.

Kazia felt Kelvaran reign in his chaotic desire, and at the same time his energy condensed into deliberate intention. He began to move down her body, kissing every place he encountered along the way.

His lips were hot, and his hands clutched at her soft flesh, sliding firmly down the sides of her waist to her hips. Her skin tingled with the contrast of these warm sensations with the cool air of the room.

He put a hand under her leg, bending it upward to kiss the side of her knee. A flicker of anger went through him as he noticed the scars on the back of her calf, but immediately redirected his attention to kissing up the inside of her thigh.

Kazia had calmed somewhat along with his earlier restraint, but now her breath became erratic and ragged, and a small sound escaped her, almost causing Kelvaran to lose the control he had struggled to achieve. Still he kissed his way to the very top of her leg, and reaching the apex of her thighs, he kissed her there, drawing a much louder moan from Kazia.

He nibbled at her and teased with his tongue, and her hips rose beneath him. She threw the leg he had been kissing across his back, trying to pull him in closer.

The connection between them contracted and tensed, became as taut as the string across a bow. He sucked her flesh into his mouth, capturing it gently between his teeth, continually sweeping his tongue across it.

The pleasure she felt rippled through his own body, intensifying with his every movement, and he began to wonder – if she were to reach the peak now, would he follow? It would be interesting to find out.

But just when it felt like she really might, he felt her hands on his shoulders, pulling him up with some urgency. He rose and shot forward like an arrow released from that bowstring. Her hands clutched at his hips, pulling him down between her thighs to grind against her.

Their eyes met in a deep but unfocused gaze of almost drunkenly wanton lust for one another. Behind it, though, Kelvaran could feel a sense of fear within Kazia, buried in the background as she had said some feelings could be.

He paused, trying to examine this more clearly, but she pulled at him desperately until he was distracted and lost track of it. He lowered his hand to guide himself, but her fear worried at him again. He hesitated.

“Is this...” he whispered.

There was something he wanted to ask, but couldn't find the tactful words.

“What is it?” Kazia asked.

“Have you...” he stammered, becoming more flustered and unsure as he struggled with how to ask. “Will this be painful for you?” he finally said.

Kazia drew a breath as she understood what he was asking. His sudden unease crept into her as well and she wondered nervously if her answer would disappoint him. She pulled his face over to stare into his eyes. She couldn't feel any expectation from him, only a concern for her comfort.

“It shouldn't,” she answered honestly.

With only a sense of relief and renewed enthusiasm, he began to move into her. Still, he went very slowly, taking his time with small, careful movements, each sending waves of pleasure bouncing back and forth between them.

While Kazia did appreciate his attentiveness, he moved almost too slowly for her patience to endure. She pushed him aside, rolling with him to reverse their positions, pushing him down onto the bed with a hand on either of his shoulders to hold him there.

A shock of excitement shot through Kelvaran. When he looked up, Kazia's lips curled into a slow smile and her half-lidded eyes held an almost imperious glint.

Her appearance stole Kelvaran's breath away, and as Kazia began to move herself on him, he squeezed the flesh of her hips and rose to meet every movement eagerly.

When she sped up her motion, he tried to lie still beneath her, allowing her to take her own pace, but when he could no longer endure, he sat up suddenly.

They clung to each other. These two had spent so many years of their lives alone and adrift on a cold sea, two half-wrecked boats, all patched holes and rotting hulls. Somehow these two precarious disasters had crashed into each other.

It was terrifying. Both knew how easy it would be to sink beneath the flotsam if they panicked now. Perhaps instead, they could help each other swim to shore.

The ribbon had come out of Kazia's hair and Kelvaran closed his hand around her unwinding braid, relishing the softness of her hair as well as the softness of her voice now humming an ancient and primal song into his ear, frenzied and incoherent.

The connection of their auras told them exactly how to move, exactly how to touch, to bring both the most pleasure, and as the pleasure of one washed through the other only to be sent back to its source again, what began as the infinite reflection of two became the forging of one new being as they were melted together in this crucible of love and desire.

Out of the cold sea and into the fire, even if it burned them up, the warmth was irresistible.

That fire suddenly surged into a blinding white heat engulfing them both at once, and Kazia cried out as he grunted into her shoulder.

They stopped moving, but remained in place, holding one another tightly as they shuddered the last of their strength into one another.

 

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