Chapter Twenty-eight #2
The fastening released beneath my thumb. I opened the dark fabric slowly, giving her time to change her mind. Light spilled through the widening gap, blue-white at first, then gold where my knuckles brushed her skin. The pattern ran over her collarbones and down the center of her chest.
Avena watched my face. “Your breathing has changed.”
“You’re beautiful.”
The light across her body turned pink so quickly that I felt it as heat. “That does not explain the respiratory response.”
“It does for humans.”
For a second she stood bare from the waist up, luminous patterns moving over skin no Khevari had ever been invited to touch for pleasure.
“Still yes?” I asked.
Avena took my hand and placed it against her breast. “Yes.”
Warmth filled my palm. Her light flared gold beneath my fingers, then softened to an unsteady pink when my thumb moved over her nipple. Avena inhaled sharply, and I stilled.
“Do not stop,” she said.
I bent to kiss the line of her throat. Her head tipped back, exposing more of it, and the trust in that movement went through me harder than desire.
I kissed my way over her collarbone following the flickering lights while my hand learned the weight and warmth of her.
When my mouth followed, her fingers closed in my hair and her whole body shuddered against me.
“That,” she said, the word breaking around a breath, “is not represented accurately in the records.”
I laughed against her skin. “You need better records.”
“I need you to do it again.”
So I did.
Her knees met the edge of the bed, and we went down together. Avena pulled me over her, then stopped long enough to work at the fastening of my jeans. Her fingers were steady. Mine were not.
“You don’t have to prove anything,” I said.
“Neither do you.” She pushed the jeans down my hips. “I want nothing between us.”
The rest of our clothes joined the first pieces on the floor.
Fully bare, Avena’s light had nowhere to hide.
It moved beneath her from throat to ankle, pink deepening toward gold wherever our skin met.
I had imagined her body from fragments and outlines, from the shape of her beneath Dominion silver, black and gray. My imagination had failed. Badly.
For one startled beat, she studied me with the same open attention. Her gaze lowered, and her light brightened.
“That response is involuntary?” she asked.
“Mostly.”
“And caused by desire?”
“Avena,” I growled.
“I am trying to understand.”
“You’re doing great.”
Her smile returned, warmer now. “Then show me.”
I lay beside her and guided her hand over my shoulder, down my chest and lower. When she finally touched me, every useful thought left my head. I caught her wrist from reflex, not refusal, and forced myself to loosen my grip.
“Too much?” she asked.
“No. Just new.”
“For you?”
“With you.”
The answer changed her expression. She touched me again with less caution and more curiosity, watching every reaction until I kissed her to keep from becoming a demonstration model. Avena laughed softly into my mouth, then used the sound I made to learn exactly what I liked.
I let my hand travel from her waist along the outside of her thigh. “May I touch you?”
“You are touching me.”
“More, uh, intimately.”
Understanding colored her pink from chest to face. She nodded and took her lip between her teeth as my hand traveled between her thighs.
“Yes,” she said with a little gasp. “Teach me that.”
I said a silent prayer that Khevari women were anatomically like humans when I found the hard nub of nerves right where I expected it to be.
The first stroke of my fingers pulled a broken sound from her and she went rigid, but quickly reached for me instead of retreating.
I slowed until her breathing steadied and her own rhythm of her hips increased.
There was no efficient purpose to any of it.
No outcome the Dominion could count. Only attention, trust and the pleasure we gave because the other person had asked for it.
“This is what our people abandoned?” she whispered breathlessly.
“One of the better parts.”
“That decision was irrational.”
“Finally, a cultural assessment we agree on.”
Her laugh dissolved into another gasp as my fingers moved deeper, slow and deliberate.
I worried I had gone too far, but then she pulled me closer, her neat nails digging into my shoulders.
Soon, there was no room left between our bodies.
Her hands moved over my back and hips, grabbing and thrusting against my body as if she wanted to climb inside me, no longer uncertain.
I kissed her until neither of us was teaching, only answering.
I stopped being careful. Avena rolled beneath me and opened for me completely without fear. I settled between her thighs, both of us bare, with nothing between us but the last choice.
With my last small bit of control, I looked into her unusual lavender eyes. “Do you know what happens next? Now is the time to tell me to stop if you don’t want to go on.”
She touched my face, her lips puffy from my kisses, her lights almost completely pink now. “I have only seen it in the records, of course, but I do not want you to stop, Declan. Please do not stop. I want all of you. And I want to give you all of me.”
The words nearly broke what remained of my restraint. I kissed her and let myself feel the full press of her body beneath mine. For several breaths I could think of nothing except moving closer and sliding inside, being one with her. My Avena.
Then there was a flash—I saw the ceiling above her and remembered the glass over my other face. The thought stopped me with every muscle drawn tight.
Avena’s hands went still on my back. “Did I hurt you?”
“No.” I rested my forehead against hers and fought to slow my breathing. “I just saw… I don’t want the people outside this room deciding this for us because the Dominion put a clock on our bodies.”
She searched my face. Her lips brushed one cheek then the other. “The clock did not bring me here, Declan. It did not make me ask.” Her fingers tangled into my hair and held me close. “I choose you. Do you choose me?”
“Yes.”
“Then do not give the Dominion our choice by refusing to make it.”
I kissed her again, hard enough that my answer was clear. Then I slowed, watching her face as I moved into her.
Avena’s breath caught. Her fingers tightened against my back, and I stopped at once.
“Tell me,” I said.
Her eyes opened. Gold burned through the pink beneath her skin. “More.”