Before, when he’d entered her, he had moved with urgency and impatience. Now he took his time, teasing her lips with the head of his cock, stroking her the same way he had with his fingers and tongue. He managed to keep it up for a good five minutes before he drove himself to the point where he couldn’t stand it any more than she could.
Still he didn’t enter her. Instead, he lifted her with one arm—obviously no longer troubled by the damage to his wrist—and turned her over onto her hands and knees. Her excitement intensified as he knelt behind her, grasping her hips with his hands. Suddenly he thrust into her, driving deeper than ever before, and she gasped again as she felt his big cock fill her more completely than she had ever been filled before.
As he moved inside her, he leaned over her bottom and bit the back of her neck, his incisors piercing the skin just beneath her ear. He hardly had time to enjoy the sensation before her body released in a flood of hot wetness and throbbing pleasure.
She felt Damon begin to move away and made a sharp sound of protest. He stopped, and she rolled over to face him, holding out her arms. He fell into them, and once again she guided him inside her. Then she bit his neck just to the side of his Adam’s apple, sucking the blood that trickled over her tongue.
He reached his own completion not long after, pumping so fast and furiously that she came again. He rolled over and pulled her close to his side, murmuring senseless words of endearment into her hair.
Sometime later, as she lay there in blissful contentment, Damon gave way to exhausted sleep. Alexia draped her arm across his chest and listened to the night sounds outside the cabin. She couldn’t hear anyone moving about, not even the nearly silent Nightsiders, and she was pretty sure every last human had long since gone to bed.
That didn’t mean they were necessarily asleep.
She sighed and nestled her face into the hollow of Damon’s shoulder. She had thought she’d known what sex was like before she’d first made love with Damon, that day when she had thought her time on earth was almost over. But she’d had barely a taste then, and now she knew what it really meant to give herself to another person in every way, and take everything she was offered. Not as an operative doing a job, or a serf, or one dependent on another for survival. Not even for friendship, or “caring.” This was what she had fought against every moment since she recognized the depth of her attraction to her enemy.
It wasn’t just sex. It wasn’t need or hunger or even comfort.
It was love.
Her throat suddenly tight, Alexia disentangled herself from Damon’s body, rolled off the cot and picked up the tunic that lay on the floor beside the bed. She brushed it off and pulled it over her head, smoothing the soft fabric over her body from chest to upper thighs. Every nerve felt raw, exposed, vulnerable to the slightest sensation from the brush of the almost imperceptible draft coming from under the door to the feel of wood on the soles of her feet.
“Alexia?”
She turned to find Damon propped up on one elbow, the sheets draped over his hips in a way that made her wonder if he was actually trying to be modest. He smiled, his sapphire gaze wandering over her body with undisguised admiration.
Alexia blushed and mocked herself for her self-consciousness. There wasn’t any part of her Damon hadn’t seen, and that included a good chunk of her heart and soul.
“Good morning, I think,” she said, returning his smile.
He tilted his head. “Two a.m.,” he said huskily, “if I’m not mistaken.” He stretched, long muscles shifting under night-pale skin, and lifted the blanket. “Come back to bed.”
There was no doubt that he was ready to resume their sexual gymnastics, but Alexia couldn’t stop her mind from working over everything that had occurred in the past few days and what was likely to happen in the very near future.
First there was the question of the patch, which she and Damon had speculated might be in the settlement. She hadn’t been foolish enough to ask about it outright; if the colonists did have it, they would have responded quite differently when they had first seen her. It would be pretty difficult for all the people she’d met to hide the reaction she would expect.
Assuming her judgment was correct, she and Damon still had to share what they’d learned with Theron and find out what he planned to do. And now that Damon had no orders or direct line of communication to his own masters, he still had a few very important decisions to make.
Alexia didn’t know how much he and Theron had discussed before she had arrived at the Bloodmaster’s cabin, but Emma had told her that the colony had accepted some clandestine support from the Expansionists at the very beginning. Theron had never been under any illusion as to how the Expansionists would react once he broke off their
“alliance.” What Alexia had seen since her arrival made clear why the Expansionists would want to eradicate the settlement.
Not what we believed, the Independent double agent had told her. If that information had reached the Council, there was no telling what they would do about it.
And Aegis? Wouldn’t this colony’s mere existence force them to change their assumptions about Opiri and their approach to Erebus? If there was even a chance the settlement could be a basis for a new kind of civilization...
For the first time since she’d arrived, Alexia was struck by the full recognition of what Eleutheria could become. A symbol, not only of equality and friendship, but of the hope of peace founded not on mere truce but true understanding. Understanding that could end the deportation of convicts from the Enclave. That could bring people— people, not Nightsiders and humans—together as she and Damon had come together.
“Are you all right?” Damon asked with a worried frown.
Belatedly Alexia realized that they hadn’t talked since he had taken her blood. She could imagine the thoughts racing through his mind: he had taken advantage of her, he had behaved like a savage, he had hurt her. She could feel those fears as if they were her own.
She went back to the cot and perched on the edge, hands braced on the frame and gaze fixed on the floor. “I’ve been thinking,” she said slowly.
“About what?” Damon asked, hesitantly reaching out to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Did I do something wrong? Did I...” His fingers stopped, and she heard his teeth clench. “Did I hurt you?”
She turned to catch his hand and pressed his palm to her mouth. “No, Damon. If you had, I wouldn’t be sitting here, wishing we could start all over again.”
His expression relaxed all at once. He took her hand between his and brought it to his chest. His heart was beating strongly, and his dark eyes were warm with relief.
“I didn’t know what I was doing last night,” he said.
“Oh, yes, you did.” She spread her fingers across his chest. “You knew exactly what you were doing, and you were extremely good at it.”
He ran his thumb gently across the places where he had bitten her. “No discomfort?”
he asked.
“No. Should there be?” She smiled. “There was never any pain, Damon. Only the most indescribable—” She broke off, knowing she could never explain. Knowing if she did, she’d only want it again and again, like an addict who had no idea when to quit.
Damon’s lips brushed her neck. “It was indescribable for me, as well,” he murmured.
His voice had a little growl in it, provocation and promise, but Alexia didn’t fall into his trap. “Does it always happen that way?” she asked, leaning back. “Between Nightsiders and their vassals and humans?”
He sat up cross-legged on the cot, the blanket still draped across his lap. “I know only what I have been told,” he said, his voice roughening. “With vassals, it is said to be mutually pleasurable, but there is always an imbalance of power. With serfs...” He worked his fists into the sheets. “Whether or not they receive pleasure is of no interest to the Opir who owns them.”