Healer's Touch (20 page)

His breath left him in a long, low groan as he felt her push back against him, her muscles relaxing enough to take him all the way. His balls nudged up against the dripping heat of her cunt and the hot, excruciatingly tight walls of her anus gripped him harder than a fist. Gasping, he drew out, watching as the long, thick column of his cock emerged from the tautly stretched ring of her anus, watching again as it disappeared by increments back inside. He'd never seen anything of the like, never even imagined such a thing before Viera, before this witch had cast her spell over him.

Her searing flesh clutched at his member as if unwilling to release him, quivering around him until the vibrations passed into him and were echoed through his entire body. Sweat dripped from his forehead down onto her ass as he found the perfect rhythm, plunging in and out of her sweet bottom. Leaning forward, he wedged his hands between the mattress and her breasts, squeezing the soft mounds, pinching the nipples as she whimpered her approval, then slid his palms back down her silk-clad belly, seeking the hard little hill of her clit. With each thrust, he circled the straining nub with his fingers, until her body was so filled with tension it seemed to fill the whole room. Her moans evolved into cries, and then into screams as her anus began to spasm around his cock and her body to rock and thrash in a shattering climax.

With a hoarse cry, he gave in, succumbed, surrendered, his body convulsing in an ecstasy of release, his seed and his soul pouring into her.

 

When he came back to himself, he was lying on his side, her back nestled snug along his front, his cock still seated in her bottom, twitching with the lingering pulses of his orgasm. His arms encircled her waist, and he tightened them around her, pressing his forehead to her shoulder as his breathing gradually slowed.

Her hand slid into his, their fingers lacing together. His heart pounded at even that small touch. “Did I please you, Aru?”

He grinned against her back, feeling a brightness growing inside him like the flare of a candle in darkness. “I haven't known the touch of a woman in eight hundred years,” he teased. “How could you not please me?”

She squirmed against him and he felt his flaccid cock slip from her body. Turning in his arms, she scowled at him, but her lips were twitching with suppressed mirth. “You're a discourteous lover, Aru.”

“Mmm, you can't say I didn't warn you,” he said, leaning in to press a lingering kiss to her lips.

She sighed into his mouth and he just held her, letting his lips play on hers, letting himself enjoy the unbelievable rightness of her in his arms, until a rude noise erupted from his empty stomach and broke the tender mood.

“What was that?” she asked against his mouth. He pulled back to find her smiling pertly at him, her eyes glowing.

“Mortality is a deal of trouble,” he said. “I've barely sated one hunger, and another rears up to torment me.”

She walked her fingers down his abdomen almost to the base of his cock, then tickled him. He squirmed at the unfamiliar sensation, marveling that even now, eighteen years since his fall and after the morning they had just shared, she could still make him feel something new and strange and wonderful.

“Surely mortality has its compensations,” she said.

The light began to fragment, forming a halo around her face as his throat ached with tears. “It does, my love.”

Her arms came around him, holding him tight, and he buried his face in the fragrant softness of her hair and wept. For all he had lost, and all she had given him. For love. For life. For her. Her hands stroked up and down his back, soothing him.

“So,” she said at last, and he could hear the smile in her voice. “Does this mean I have my job back?”

Epilogue

“Explain to me again why we are here?” Karal growled as Inella raised her hand to knock for the third time.

They stood on the stoop outside Aru's front door in the growing cool of evening, awaiting admittance. “A supper,” she said, shooting him an exasperated glance, “to thank us for bringing the two of them together.”

Karal grunted, tugging at the stiff, confining neck of his good tunic. Every time he wore it, he was reminded why he hardly ever wore it—the damn thing felt like a noose. “Don't see why I had to come. I told her to stay the fuck away from him.”

She swatted his arm with one hand and knocked with the other. “Stop sniveling.”

He bit back a nasty retort and tried not to pay attention to how she looked in her best dress, a form-fitting, low-cut gown of turquoise lawn, trimmed in white lace. From the snug fit of the bodice, it seemed clear she must have made the dress before childbearing had rounded her figure. Her breasts bulged over the top, luring his eye until it was all he could do not to stare.

“Maybe they're not home,” he said hopefully. Salgrim's balls, but meals were becoming more and more complicated all the time. Supper at Inella's only the night before last, then this…thing with Aru and Viera. Was a time when the only company he had to contend with at dinner were the bugs in the salad at Heffie's.

“For pity's sake,” Inella hissed at him, pressing her ear to the door. “Hush up.”

Karal glowered at her. Damn, but she was getting more and more uppity all the time. “Well, obviously they're not answering the door,” he said. “I'm not about to stand out here among the mosquitoes all night.”

Her hand shot out to grab his sleeve, forestalling his intent to turn and leave. He stared down at her offending hand, incredulous. Well, that showed him what happened when you were nice. Give a woman a penny, she'll run off with the whole purse.

She seemed altogether oblivious to his growing irritation. “I don't hear them.”

He bit back a curse. “So let's go.”

She rolled her eyes, her grip tightening on his sleeve. “The lamps are lit. Let's try the back door.”

“Salgrim help me, I'm not even fucking hungry,” he muttered.

She dragged him by his sleeve back to the street and along it to the alley. The last of the day's light did not reach back into this narrow lane between buildings, and Karal winced as his foot landed in something suspiciously squishy in the dark. She led the way through a heavy gate and into a small, private courtyard. Stone benches surrounded a fountain long left dry, and a laurel standing hard on the south corner would provide pleasant shade during hot afternoons. The windows here were not shuttered like those that faced the street. Light spilled from them out onto the cobbles.

Inella released him and Karal took a moment to wipe the offensive whatever-it-was off his boot and onto a hapless potted fern next to the gate. Inella went from one window to the next, peering inside. At the third one, she stopped, her hand lifting to her throat, her entire body going rigid.

“What is it?” he asked, hurrying over, irritation eclipsed by concern.

“Shhhh!” she hissed at him, flapping her hand vaguely in his direction. As he came up beside her, he saw her expression was not fear but wicked delight. His cock perked up like a dog's ear at the gleam in her eye, before he even glanced inside.

The moment he did, the dog's ear shot skyward. Inside the window was a small salon furnished with a settee, two padded chairs, a low table and a sideboard. On the settee, Viera lounged, her skirts bunched up around her waist, her stocking-clad legs splayed wide. On his knees between them, Aru plied her pussy with mouth and fingers, much to her enthusiastic and obvious appreciation. The room was well lit. Karal could clearly see the Darjhan's tongue flailing at Viera's stiff and swollen clit, his three fingers plunging in and out of her glistening sex. Her back arched and he could hear her cries through the thin panes of glass as she found her peak.

He risked a glance at Inella. She stood utterly transfixed, her breasts rising and falling in growing excitement, the fingers of one hand trailing along their upper swells in an absent caress, as if she didn't even realize she did it. At the sight, Karal's cock practically howled in indignant need, the wail of a shameless glutton too long deprived. He really ought to have gone back to the Bull's Bollocks and found that whore. How the devil was he supposed to get through an entire evening in the same room with a woman he lusted for, and another he had just witnessed coming all over her lover's face?

He looked inside once more. Aru had pulled Viera's bottom right off the edge of the cushion so it hung suspended, her body skewered on the spear of his cock. He held her bent legs high so they crushed her breasts, opening her sex to Karal's view. Her hands clutched the carved back of the settee as Aru's shaft, pale and thick, slammed into her again and again. It wasn't long before his face contorted, becoming a mask of excruciating pleasure as he pounded into her one last time.

Beside Karal, Inella was panting, her cheeks and the tops of her breasts flushed pink, her eyes dark with voyeuristic titillation. Karal wondered what she would do if he reached over and took her hand, pulled her close. Would she melt into him, or recoil in mingled irritation and dismay?

He thought they had shared a few moments over the last couple of days. An accidental touch that did not seem precisely accidental, a smiling glance quickly hidden when she noticed he was looking, a growing tendency of hers to toy with her hair and tilt her head when she spoke to him. But these subtle women's courting games were not his strength. Things were simple with whores—as long as you paid them, they liked you fine—and unutterably difficult with everyone else. Certainly, social discomfort was not unique to the Kurgae'in, but it was all too common in them. He'd lived his whole life privy to the most private thoughts and feelings of those around him, the gift and curse of the Kurgan collective awareness. Here, among these Andun, he had only his eyes and ears to measure the intentions of others, tools he had never before had cause to hone.

In the salon, Aru had gathered Viera close to him on his lap, his hands stroking up and down her back as he pressed his cheek into her unbound hair. She smiled as she spoke to him, pulling back to look into his face. Her gaze shone with an emotion even Karal could read, and Aru's was no less bright. After a few moments, they rose and began straightening their clothes.

Karal looked down again at Inella to find her scrubbing at her eyes. He almost told her to stop sniveling, but some latent instinct for self-preservation thankfully intervened before he could. She turned to him, craning her neck to look at him, and before he knew what she was about, she reached up and took his face in both her hands, pulling his head down and pressing a kiss to his cheek.

He blinked, unsuccessfully willing his cock to quiescence. “What was that for?”

She smiled. “That was for Viera and Aru.”

Then, tugging him down once more, she pressed her mouth to his, her tongue darting out to stroke the seam of his lips and then push between them. Astonished, he could only stand there, his cock aching, his heart hammering as she kissed him. His hands recovered from the shock faster than his brain did, and clasped her shoulders, pulling her up against him. At last, she pulled her face away and gazed into his eyes, her own dark and glazed with excitement.

“And what was that for?” he asked, his voice nothing but a dry croak as desire snaked through him.

She smiled slyly up at him. “That one was for me.”

He gaped at her for a moment, then grinned. She grinned back and skipped like a girl to the door, knocking very loudly. He came to stand at her shoulder to wait. After considerable agonizing, he put his hand on the small of her back and was intensely relieved when she didn't protest.

She shot him a sidelong glance. “I was thinking…”

“Mmph. That's hardly news.” He scowled, trying to resist the curiosity that was eating him alive. “About what?” he asked finally.

“I thought perhaps, before you walk me home tonight, we could stop by your place.”

His mouth opened, but by Salgrim's prick, he could find nothing remotely delicate or chivalrous to say in answer to that. All things considered, Inella was lucky he didn't just shove her down on the nearest horizontal surface and give it to her right there. He stared at her, gaping like a landed fish and trying in vain to think of something—anything—tender to say. Then the door opened and Viera ushered them both inside with hugs and kisses and exclamations of delight. And the happiness he felt as he stepped into the glow of candles and hearth, Inella at his side, left him speechless yet again.

About the Author

Kirsten Saell lives a thrilling life that parallels those of her characters, her days full of peril and trepidation, her nights overflowing with steamy encounters with exciting men (and women) in dangerous, exotic worlds. Or she would, were she not so comfortable and satisfied living in a small town in coastal British Columbia with her husband and three wonderful kids. Still, a girl can dream. More importantly, she can type. To learn more about Kirsten Saell or read more of her words, please visit
www.kirstensaell.com
, or send an email to
[email protected]
. She'd be delighted to hear from you.

Look for these titles by Kirsten Saell

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Crossing Swords

 

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Bound by Steel

One duel. Easy money. Then Gil fell for his opponent.

 

Crossing Swords

© 2008 Kirsten Saell

 

A straight duel to the death. A professional opponent who's paying him to win. This was going to be the easiest money Gil had ever earned. Except he never counted on his opponent being a woman. And he never counted on falling for her.

After avenging the brutal murder of her lover, all Lianon wants is to die a clean death. Too bad the man she hired doesn't do women, and he's furious over her deception. Not only does he renege on their contract, he has the gall to lock her up in his apartment—naked, no less!—to punish her for her ruse.