“Dante, you said I saved you before. How did that work?”
“We had sex. You shared your light with me. But that was different. My body—my mind—craved moonlight after being deprived of it for so many years.”
I remembered the vision of the moon’s energizing rays pouring into me. Remembered again how my own skin had glowed with Roberto. “It’s not just light, is it? We share energy, don’t we?”
“It’s a lovely thought, a wonderful one,” Dante said as he realized where I was heading, “but I don’t think sex would be possible. I doubt I could even get my pants off, and even then I don’t know if we have enough slack to connect that way—”
“Kiss me,” I said, interrupting his flow of words.
“What?”
“We glow with pleasure. We don’t have to have sex to share light; all you have to do is kiss me. I could share energy with you that way, maybe enough to help you recover a little, at least give us some more time.” My excitement suddenly faltered. “Or maybe I’d just drain energy from you—”
He kissed me.
I pulled back. “Wait, maybe this will hurt you more than help.”
“Then I shall die happy.” He brushed his lips over mine, sweet, simple, soft, the brush of hot, dry lips over my own chapped lips. And then a wet stroke of tongue, smoothing the way to a more slippery friction, and with it a sudden explosion of sensation, more than I had expected from such a dire, battered condition of its participants. It was like a detonation of feeling, a bombardment of things that were the opposite of pain—pleasure, yes, but even more than that. A seeking of life, a last quietly desperate sip of bliss, of enjoyment. A precious, unexpected treasure stolen out of the misery of the moment.
He kissed me with wave upon wave of feeling. All that he had withheld before now came flooding out. A raw surge of seeking, melding, joining with me.
Incomprehensible murmurs came from Dante’s throat, from mine. A few husked words . . . Mona Lisa . . . my lady . . . love you . . . yes . . .
If we had kissed before, I did not remember it. And it was so much more than the surge of pleasure I’d gotten from kissing Roberto. Like digging into ground looking for a trickle of water and finding a gushing well instead. Dante kissed me as if he would pour his soul into me and pass it into my keeping—a plentitude of giving, not a taking. A benediction of words and sweet sentiment and hotly sprinkled passion over my mouth, my chin, down my neck, touching off zinging sensations, an abundance of it, wherever those firm and tender lips roamed, pulling forth my own gasps and whispers of his name, spurring him more heatedly on.
A seeking nuzzle of those hot lips over the swell of my breast, against my skin. A light, potent brush over my nipple that felt like an unexpected jolt of lightning within me. A sensation so intense it almost frightened me.
“Dante!” I opened my eyes to see my skin and his aglow in luminescent light.
“Sweet, so sweet,” Dante murmured as he tugged my open neckline down with his chin so that it exposed one nipple, pert and erect. “Beautiful . . . lovely.”
I watched his mouth envelope the hard tip, felt the heat and moisture of his mouth, felt the stroke of his raspy tongue, felt the bolts of amazing sensation that pulled cries from my mouth and more light from my skin until I was glowing like a small nova, overshadowing his own light, as he licked and teased and suckled and pulled at the reddened peak, enjoying himself with utter carnality.
He pulled his mouth free with a tight, pulling sensation that arrowed straight to my womb. “Lie down,” he said roughly.
“What?” I was half-blind, dazed from the bombardment of strange and new sensation.
“Lie down on your side. Scoot your legs toward me . . . yes, like that.”
That gave us a little more reach, a little more overlap. His mouth, those soft-hard lips, peppered kisses over my quivering abdomen. “Lift your hips a bit. Perfect.” He nuzzled the shirt up above my stomach, exposing my triangular thatch of hair to his gaze. “So beautiful,” he murmured.
I watched with both curling dread and anticipation as he lowered his mouth to lay a gentle kiss on my inner thigh. “Open your legs for me.” His breath wafted over my thatch of curls—a curiously exquisite sensation.
“What are you doing?” I gasped, shocked and appalled as he nuzzled his way between my legs. The sound turned into a moan as he did something even more shocking with his tongue.
“I’m kissing . . .” The pause was punctuated with like action. “. . . licking . . . tasting you. Open your legs wider . . . yes.”
He lapped and laved and pleasured me until I was half-crazed and wholly blinded, overwhelmed with searing sensation, beyond thought, beyond embarrassment. And still there was more.
Searching deep in my wet folds, he licked and sucked over an area that arched my back and spasmed my legs, building a tense, spiraling, frightening pleasure that suddenly crested and ruptured, free of skin, body, and fleshly containment. Light blazed forth in a rapture of incandescent brilliance as I cried out and seized in ecstasy.
A blissful moment where time seemed to suspend for an indefinite moment as I felt his tongue thrust deep inside me, as I felt him pull my light into him, illuminating his own skin more brightly. A moment of connection, of shattering, of giving and receiving. Of being flung up in pieces toward heaven and then falling back down reassembled.
He pressed a gentle kiss to my hip. “My lady,” he breathed, resting his forehead there.
I opened my eyes and blinked.
Same place but different reality.
Dante’s blistered back, buttocks, and weeping arms were healed. No redness. Even the black charring burns over his wrists were gone, leaving healthy, healed flesh in its place. My own scrapes and bruises had vanished as well, and the leaden, drugged weariness was gone. I felt refreshed, at full and normal strength.
A twist—an easy, simple pull and twist—and my arms were free. “What happened?” I asked.
Dante’s glittery silver-blue eyes opened. “You can also heal with sex.”
I could heal? That was my most heartfelt desire, an instinctual yearning I had felt my entire life—the ability to heal. The manner of doing so, however, was . . . well, let’s just say—unexpected.
“That technically wasn’t sex, was it?” I said doubtfully. I rose to my feet and rubbed my sore arms to get some painful circulation going.
“Part of my body was in yours,” he answered.
Yes, I recalled that quite vividly: his tongue buried in my spasming depths.
I felt my neck and face flush as I freed Dante’s wrists.
“How do you feel?” I asked, helping him stand.
His hand lifted, not to rub his sore arms, but to lightly touch my face. “Well and renewed by your light and healing grace. We can correct that technical point later, if you like, when we have more time.”
Imp.
I smiled as a new and deeper intimacy stretched between us. “I would like that,” I said, nodding, then smiled. “So that’s what all the fuss about sex is about. I never knew.”
“Next time,” he promised, “will be even better.” He brushed an all too fleeting kiss against my lips. “Let’s get out of here, shall we?”
It was about thirty feet up to the netted ceiling covering the pit, a bit more distance than what I could jump straight up. I solved that problem by springing off the side of the wall, launching myself farther upward. Grabbing hold of the center of the silver net, I tore it open down the middle. Using the natural swing as it gave, I went backward, then propelled myself forward, flipping myself up and out to land on the edge of the pit. An alarm suddenly screeched, ruining our quiet getaway. A motion detector—a surprisingly sophisticated bit of gadgetry in these primitive backwoods.
Dante sprang up and out in a straight jump through the torn silver netting to land lightly on his feet beside me. Six guards came bursting through the trees, hands reaching for venom-tipped throwing darts sheathed in straps slung across their chest. More voices raised in the distance, slower in coming, as if they were being roused from slumber. When they came, however, they would arrive in overwhelming numbers.