9
Lily
I could get usedto this. Soft bed. Even softer sheets. Darius wrapped around me, his arm tucked snuggly around my waist, his chest at my back. I’d never felt so safe, so languid. I didn’t want to move. Ever.
“How is your leg feeling?” Darius kissed the back of my head but didn’t move otherwise.
My leg. I’d completely forgotten.
Timid at first, then with growing confidence when I didn’t want to cry with pain, I moved my leg. The muscles felt sore, like I’d done a few too many squats the day before, but otherwise I felt great. The deep agony I’d suffered buried under that rock was gone. A memory.
Not one I wished to dwell on, let alone repeat, now that my leg was healed. “The doctor was right. The pain is gone. I guess the bone must be healed.”
Darius moved his hand from my waist to my thigh and explored the thin bandage that still covered the surgical site, lightly massaging the muscle. I melted. Like, puddle of hot wax melted.
“That feels good.”
“Does it?” He continued to run his hot hand up and down my thigh, massaging and squeezing the muscle, making sure I was well. When I sighed and rolled onto my back to face him, I discovered the room was too dark to make out his expression.
“What time is it?” I asked. How was a woman supposed to figure out what time of day it was in outer space? Worse, on a ship in outer space. No sunrise. No sunset. No birds singing or insects making noise. No cars or honking horns. Our room was dark and silent except for a gentle hum that seemed to be coming from the very walls, the floor itself. I assumed that had to be from something mechanical on the ship. Engines? Water pumps? I had no idea.
“Time?”
Darius spoke loudly, and the ship answered. “Ship time zero nine zero seven.”
“Is that morning?”
He smiled at me. “Yes, bonded one. Are you hungry? Do you want to go eat something?”
“Later.” I lifted my hand to his face and searched for what I wanted. His lips. “Right now I want you to kiss me.”
His hand froze in place on my leg. “I’ll want more than a kiss.”
“So do I.” I wanted him. Touching me. Inside me. Hot skin all over mine. I wanted to breathe him in and taste him and feel alive. Feel something other than fear and pain and weakness. I didn’t want to think about broken bones or battle or explosions.
When I tangled my fingers in the hair at the back of his neck and pulled him toward me in the dark, he didn’t resist. The clash of our lips, our tongues, was a frenzied claiming.
Moments later Darius had pressed my back to the bed. He tore his lips from mine and kissed my cheek. My neck. Lower. When he reached my hard nipples, my back arched off the bed. So sensitive. So alive.
He moved lower, the lightest graze of his lips over my clit, a gentle kiss before he moved to my injured leg. “Light, level four.”
The room brightened, and I closed my eyes in protest. “Hey!”
“I need to see for myself.”
Brilliant. I was naked, bared to the room, fighting the urge to cover myself, and Darius leaned close to inspect the bandaged area of my thigh.
Ready to tell him to leave it, the words caught in my throat when he leaned down and kissed the center of the bandage. “What are you doing?”
“Taking care of you.”
Closing my eyes, I turned my head away. It hurt to watch him as he placed kiss after kiss over the suddenly hypersensitive area. Other than the staff nurses at my various boarding schools, who spent half of their time bandaging a skinned knee and the other half chastising a young lady for being a tomboy, I couldn’t remember anyone ever taking care of me but me.
When I couldn’t take it anymore, I reached for him. “Darius.”
“Impatient, are we?” He grinned up at me, then moved so that his chin was poised above my wet core. “Can I kiss you here?”
“Yes.”