Blood Noir - Laurell K. Hamilton [62]
He finally rose up enough to pin my wrists to the bed. It meant he couldn’t kiss me anymore, but he could still fuck me, and he did. I could watch his body work in and out of mine now, and the sight alone brought me again. Without his mouth to stop me, the screams were long and ragged.
His voice came breathy, strained with effort, as his body kept working in and out of mine. “Feed, Anita, feed.”
It took me moments to fight back from the waves of pleasure, to hear the words, to even try to understand them. I managed, “What?”
“Feed the ardeur, Anita. Feed before I go.”
I blinked up at him, and it must have shown on my face, because he laughed, a wonderful masculine laugh, so happy, so Jason, but more. “You forgot, you forgot about the ardeur.”
I managed to nod.
“I do good work,” he gasped, “but feed now, I’m almost…” His body convulsed above mine, eyes closing, his body beginning to lose its rhythm.
“Feed, now!”
I almost didn’t have enough concentration left to find that metaphysical piece inside me and let it go. But at the last moment, with his body almost gone above mine, and the effort showing on his face, in his shoulders, his arms, his chest, I found the ardeur, and let go. It rose from me like a nearly visible force. Jason’s body reacted to it, like a blow. He cried out above me, his body shoved inside me one last time, and I felt him let go, too. Let go of his control, let go of his effort, and give himself over to the ardeur, give himself over to that piece of me that fed on pleasure. It fed on the feel of his body buried deep inside mine, it fed on the strength of his hands holding me down, it fed on the salt taste of his skin as my mouth rose and licked at his chest. I fed, as his body convulsed inside mine, not once, but twice, three times. I brought him with my body squeezed around him, pulsing for every last drop. I brought him with my mouth on his skin, his chest, licking the last salty bit off the hardness of his nipple.
He paused above me, head hanging down, the edges of his hair plastered to his face with his efforts. His shoulders began to collapse, so that he finally lay down on top of me. He kept his hands loosely on my wrists as his face lay beside mine on the pillow. He was still inside me, but we were both done. We lay there, not for more sex, but to catch our breaths, and let our bodies be able to move again.
He kissed my cheek, and I turned, with effort, so he could kiss my lips. It was a gentle, breathless kiss, and I swear I could taste his pulse in his mouth.
“I like you,” he said, and managed a smile as he said it.
It made me laugh, and that made him wince, rather than writhe. “No more, God, please.”
He’d reached that point where he was too sensitive to do more. Cool. I kissed him back and said, “I like you, too.”
When love isn’t on the menu, like isn’t a bad thing to be able to say, and mean it.
26
THE SEX HAD been good enough that it wasn’t a matter of deciding how long to cuddle afterward, it was simply we both fell asleep. We fell into that deep, exhausted, damn near unconscious rest that comes after the sex has been long, and hard, and sweaty, and amazing, and the day has been too long, too hard, and you can finally let it all go. You can finally rest, against the skin and touch and weight of your lover.
I woke with Jason and I wrapped around each other; legs and arms intertwined, bodies almost melded together with sweat, and fluids, and sleep.
He made a small, soft sound that was almost a laugh, but not. The sound was one of those utterly contented noises that have no spelling, no place in a dictionary, but they are often the sounds that say more than any full word just how happy we are.
He turned his head enough to see me, and gave me the smile and the look that went with that soft almost-laugh. I moved my head toward him, still on the pillow,