“You’ll see.”
“But—”
“Ela, be quiet.”
She didn’t say another word because there wasn’t anything else she wanted to say as his hands resumed their exploration of her. He no longer lingered around her sex but, instead, his hands swept over her hips, and onto her flat stomach. Then he lowered his head and kissed her bellybutton. She squirmed with pleasure.
“Why did that feel so good?” she asked, suddenly aware that her breathing had quickened.
“Be quiet, Ela,” he commanded in an easygoing kind of way, his breath hot against her bare skin. And, apart from the gasp, as his tongue tracked downward, she was.
She wondered what he was going to do and the anticipation had her on edge. She gasped as his tongue found the source of her need and lapped her as if she were the most exquisite drink and he was dying of thirst in the desert.
She gripped the bed clothes in both fists and arched back, her hips coming into closer contact with his face. In response to her intense reaction he suckled her and instantly she was flooded inside with an intense combination of heat and warmth and intense pleasure, the like of which she’d never experienced.
“Oh, Xander!” she gasped. “That’s wonderful.”
He lifted his head to look at her. “Ela,” he growled. “Will you stop talking!”
She clamped her mouth shut, not wanting to argue in case he stopped doing these things to her. He resumed his ministrations and she soon forgot about talking as the coiling sensations intensified again and all her thoughts and feelings were centered on the rush of pleasure which soared through her body. And then his finger circled where she wanted him, teasing her, and she opened her legs more fully. He slid his finger inside of her and she cried out as she became swamped by powerful sensations which surged through her repeatedly in waves, making her gasp and focus on the pleasure which his tongue and fingers brought.
Her fingers tingled and inside… well, inside it blew away not just her breath but her mind, and in that instant she knew a freedom she’d never known before. And she knew that she’d always be working towards possessing that freedom again.
As the echoes of her orgasm rolled away, she lay back on the bed blinking, as if she’d emerged into a whole new world. And her first view of this whole new world was filled by Xander’s face.
“You should have sex with me now,” she said, unable to stop herself.
His expression of male satisfaction faded. “It’s usually called making love. At least it is when two people are in this situation.” He swept his hands along her legs and sat back.
“You should make love to me now.” She was prepared, after all, to compromise up to a point. She dropped her eyes to his trousers. “It’s clear you want to.”
“It is,” he said standing up. “And it should also be clear to you by now that I don’t intend to.”
She couldn’t remember the last time she hadn’t been obeyed. She rose and walked over to him, and slid her hands onto his straining erection. He closed his eyes and sucked in a breath between closed lips. Then he opened his eyes and glared at her. “Ela! You are not getting your way over this.” He removed her hands. “Unless, that is, you wish to surrender your will to me, here and now, and do everything exactly as I say? Hm?”
For a moment she had the impulse to go to him and be that subdued woman he wanted, to place her hands on his shoulders and shift them down his arms and lay her cheek against his broad chest. There was relief in that thought of surrender to someone who was strong to take her cares away. Then the image of her mother flashed into her mind—someone biddable who’d been outbid by other women. If you were weak, you lost, she reminded herself. She shook her head.
He smiled again. He’d won and he knew it. It was clear, now, that he didn’t want her to surrender her will to him. “Then I suggest we eat the feast which I can smell has been provided for us.”
“And then to bed?”
“Yes, of course.”
As she walked around the tent picking up her clothes from where they’d fallen and putting them back on again, she realized she felt different. She was more aware of her body, she thought abstractly. Before it had been something which housed her will and her brain. Now… she couldn’t quite describe it, which annoyed her. She liked to be able to analyze things and people. It wasn’t until later, when she lay in bed after being thoroughly pleasured that she realized her body had awakened a will which was every bit as demanding as her mind. The battle had begun—not only between her and Xander—but between her mind and her body.
In the endXander had decided eating was over-rated. It seemed Ela was determined to divert him. There was no way he was going back on his word, but when she wanted to pleasure him, as he’d pleasured her, he decided a little compromise was in order.
Sometimes, he considered—as Ela stroked and caressed him with her fingertips, her whole hand, and then, surprisingly, her mouth—a proactive, dominant woman could be exactly what a man required.
It was only later, after Ela had satisfied and pleasured him as thoroughly as he had her, and she lay curled in his arms, fast asleep, as if drugged from giving and receiving pleasure, that he realized something had changed inside of him.
He felt different. He closed his eyes as he considered what it was that had changed. He could smell her sweet fragrance, could feel her delicate skin and bones under his fingertips, and could feel the beating of both her heart and his, as if they were merged, as if they were one thing.
He froze.One thing.She’d broken him down, that was what she’d done. But he didn’t want to feel anything, did he? Because that way opened him up to the opposite of pleasure—exposed him to pain. Something he knew only too well.
Gently he disengaged from Ela’s body, sat on the edge of the bed—its colorful silks and satins now disheveled and half-discarded on the woven rugs which lined the floor of the tent. He put his head in his hands and closed his eyes. What had he done? His heart thudded as he pressed his hands against his temples. The blood pumped around his body, mocking his belief that he’d managed to extinguish life at the very heart of him. He’d thought his emotions were so repressed, he’d made them extinct. It seemed he was wrong.
He stood up and strode to the front of the tent and gripped the curtains which barely moved in the stillness of the morning. He needed to break this feeling, shut it down before it destroyed him. He needed air and light.