Kushiel's Avatar - Jacqueline Carey [245]
That kiss, I cannot describe.
It was like a poem, a prayer, a homecoming unlooked-for. It was like dungeon walls crumbling to reveal a glimpse of sky. It shook me to the very roots of my soul.
All I could do was cling to him and gasp.
With infinite gentleness, Joscelin undid the buttons of my gown, sliding it from my shoulders until I stood in its water-billowed folds as at the center of a lotus. What flesh he unveiled, he touched, until I shivered, the tenderness of it nearly unbearable. With cupped hands, he poured water over my head, until droplets clung to my lashes, then followed the water's course with his lips. When he kissed my closed eyelids, I could have wept.
I relearned him that day, with hands, mouth and tongue, tracing the line of his collarbone, the flat planes of his chest that no blade had yet marred, like a blind woman learning sight by touch. Mostly, though, I yielded, and relearned love. He undid my hair, that I wore at the nape of my neck. When his hands rose, dripping, to cup my breasts, I sighed; I whimpered at the touch of his mouth, warm and wet, encompassing my aching nipples.
He lifted me out of the floating lotus of my gown, setting me so that my buttocks rested upon the warm stones to perform the languise-ment, parting my moist nether-lips with a touch delicate as a breath, the tip of his tongue tracing the swollen shape of Naamah's Pearl. And that is where time itself seemed to stretch and flow. I lay open beneath the sky, and everything done by the Mahrkagir was undone, every cruelty, every iron thrust—undone, undone, undone, every kiss, every lick, every stroke, imprinting love upon my flesh, until I shuddered and knotted both hands in Joscelin's hair, calling his name out loud, and my climax followed with the inevitability of the spring-fed waters tumbling over the rocks.
At that, Joscelin lifted his head and smiled.
"Come here" I said, drawing him to me.
He did, hoisting himself out of the water on both arms, the left as solid as the right, hands braced on either side of my shoulders. I bitmy lip, reaching down to fit him into me, his phallus rigid and hard, the walls of my nether parts still throbbing. Any other man—any one I have known—would have begun, then.
Not Joscelin. He waited, his brow touching mine, sheathed to the hilt in me and our loins enjoined. Slowly, my breathing eased to match his, and our heartbeats synchronized.
In the space between the beating of our hearts, I felt the presence of Blessed Elua.
I'd felt it before, that golden light filling me, the taste of honey in my mouth. I felt it now, and Joscelin's mouth tasted of honey to me, his tongue like nectar as we kissed. I smelled lavender in his damp hair as it fell to frame my face. The world pulsed and surged as he moved within me, and I moved to meet him, hips thrusting, no longer certain where I began and he ended, my fingers seeking the line of his back, the column of his spine, his muscled flanks. His eyes, summer-blue, looked into mine, shining with Elua's tide.
This is how we were made whole.
I cried out, at the end, and whose name it was—Joscelin's or Blessed Elua's—I could not say. It was one and the same, then. And if I had called what had gone before a climax, it was naught to what came after, welling from someplace deeper within me than I knew I had, until I could only cling to Joscelin with all my limbs and shudder at the force of it. And he—Elua! He went rigid against me, within me, and I felt the vibration all the length of his spine before his loins shivered and he spent himself within me.
So it was done.
"I'm sorry," I said when we had finished, and the presence had faded. "Joscelin, I am so, so sorry for what I've done to us."
He brushed my lashes. "For what, love?" he asked, examining my tears on his fingertips. "You did what you were called to do. So did I. What is there to forgive?"
"You know," I said softly. "You heard . . . stories. Some of them are true."
"Yes." He drew a line