Текст книги "Alien god"

Автор книги: Ursa Dox

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Wylfrael tensed. I felt it all down my body, from his fingers on me to his chest and abdomen against my back.

“You were doing that human thing. Your eyes getting all wet and shiny.”

“You mean crying?” I huffed. “So? Humans can cry for a lot of reasons, you know. Not just when we’re sad. Anytime we’re overwhelmed with emotion. Even joy. So, you can’t get mad at me for that. I wasn’t failing at playing a good fiancée. Many humans even cry at their own weddings, so you should have considered it a rehearsal run.”

“But it wasn’t a rehearsal, was it? And you weren’t crying for joy, were you?”

“Well, obviously not,” I snapped. “But the Sionnachans don’t know that, so why does it matter?”

“I do not know why it matters,” he said in quiet consternation. “It shouldn’t. But I saw you standing there in my chamber, about to weep all over what will become your wedding dress and I... I found I couldn’t stand it.”

“You couldn’t stand it... So, you just left. Well, lucky you! There have been many things I’ve barely withstood here so far, and I’ve just had to endure them, not outrun them.”

“What about when you tried to get down the stairs past me the other night, and I took you outside for the sontanna ride? You were running then. At least away from your room.”

His fingers were winding in my hair, now. So slowly I almost didn’t notice him doing it, and I wondered if he even realized, or if it was some unconscious movement.

“Fine, I’ll give you that,” I said. “But I can’t go very far. You can fly off to a whole other world if you want to! And by the way, I’d like a thorough explanation of that phenomenon.”

“An explanation of opening a sky door?”

“Yes! What is that? How do you do it? How do you travel through space without any protective gear? How long does it take to get from one world to another that way? Is that why you didn’t come attack the ship for more than a month of us being here, because it took you a while to come back?”

“You have a lot of questions,” he murmured. He was still playing with my hair, winding it into a thick knot around one of his hands. I would have told him to stop, if not for...

Well, if not for how nice it felt.

“I do have a lot of questions,” I admitted. “I always have, since I was a kid. Questions about everything that’s out there. This is what I studied back on Earth. Stars. Space.”

“I’m not sure how much there is to explain,” Wylfrael said, as if opening a door into another corner of the universe was as simple as flipping the page in a book. “I fly high into the sky, turn the sky to stone, crack it open, then step through to wherever I want to go.”

“But how?” I pressed. “Is it literally like a door? You step in on one side and step out immediately on the other?”

“Essentially, yes.”

My mind whirled. I would have shaken my head in disbelief if not for the firm grip Wylfrael had on my hair at the nape of my neck. Turning the sky to stone... Somehow, he was transforming gas from the atmosphere into a solid material, and that material became a door?

The scientific side of my brain wrestled with the possible explanations while another part of me wanted to just shake my head and call it magic.

There were theories in astrophysics, of course, that could potentially help explain it. Like wormholes. But the idea that someone could just create something like a wormhole out of thin fucking air...

“Incredible,” I whispered. “And how do you direct the wormhole?”

“The what?”

“Never mind. It’s a human term to explain a phenomenon like a stone sky door. It’s been basically unproven until now, though. I mean, it’s present in the solutions to Einstein’s theories, but some scientists think they couldn’t exist because they’re too unstable. Although, if you’re only creating them for a short time...” God, the papers I could write on this...

“Wormhole...” Wylfrael muttered. “Such an ugly term. It’s a sky door, Torrance. Nothing to do with worms and dirt.”

“Whatever, just tell me more about it! How do you direct it? How do you know where it will open?”

“I use my power.”

“Very detailed response, thank you.” I rolled my eyes. “If you’re going to be married to me, Wylfrael, you’ll have to get used to these kinds of questions.”

I swallowed, suddenly nervous about what I’d contemplated in the room alone. That he was done with this whole deal.

“You are still planning to marry me, right?” There was a fucking quaver in my voice that shamed me right down to my toes. I was immensely thankful I was facing away from Wylfrael right now.

His fist tightened in my hair.

“Of course, I am. Why would you think otherwise?”

“Oh, gee, I don’t know, maybe because you abandoned me for hours today with absolutely no explanation and made me think this was about to all blow up in my face!”

Now I just sounded pathetic. I cleared my throat and adopted a business-like tone.

“Good. Alright then. I’m satisfied that our arrangement is still in place.” I’d almost said I was happy instead of satisfied and barely caught myself. “Now, if we could get back to my question about how you direct the wormholes – the sky doors – with a few more details this time?”

“I can only travel to places on my star map. I direct my power to that area of the map, then visualize where on the planet’s surface I want to land.”

“Your star map...” I’d heard that term before, when he was talking to Maerwynne. “What is that, like some sort of compass? A tool you bring with you that – holy shit.”

I turned, creating a painful tug at my scalp. Wylfrael flinched, then unwrapped my hair from his hand so I could whirl around to face him.

“It’s this,” I gasped. The space was so cramped with two of us in the tube that Wylfrael’s wings were folded tightly behind his back, so I couldn’t see all of it. But even so, I knew exactly what I was looking at now. It’s a map. A fucking map inked right into his skin. These weren’t just star-like points strewn across his body. They represented actual stars.

“Is this like a tattoo? Is the kind of ink important?” I mean, the ink fucking glowed, for one thing. I wondered if he was radioactive, if just being beside him would eventually give me cancer or some other horrible side effect. But even thoughts like that couldn’t stop me from reaching a trembling hand forward and tracing the little blue flames on his chest. His pectoral muscles visibly tightened when my fingertips brushed his skin.

“It’s not a tattoo. Stone sky gods are born with star maps.”

I could barely comprehend that. That his kind was born with the universe inside them. No wonder he’s so arrogant, I thought. How could you not be, when no matter where you are, you’re never lost? When you have the whole spread of the sky as part of your own body, like you own it? When you can go anywhere, absolutely anywhere, and always find your way home?

I moved my fingers slowly, almost reverently, across his front. Down his chest to his taut abdomen, skimming across the edge of the few remaining bandages, then over to his arm, where the stars webbed all the way down to his hands. I realized with breathless excitement that the stars felt different from the rest of his skin, each point slightly warmer and thrumming, a tiny buzz of energy in each light.

“Are you quite finished with your examination?” Wylfrael asked through his teeth, a certain raggedness in his breath.

“No!” I said. “Now I’m looking for Earth.”

I found it. At least, I found the milky way galaxy, on the back of his left hand. There was something oddly thrilling in the discovery, and I held his hand with both of mine, bending so close my nose brushed his knuckles.

“Here! Here it is!”

He grunted.

“It’s on my star map, then. Good. Not every world is. I suppose you’ll want me to take you back there when this is all through. You and your friends.”

“No,” I said, my excitement fading. “I don’t think Earth will ever be safe for us now. We’ll have to figure that out, as a condition of our arrangement. Think about where the other women and I can live to be safe.”

His fingers twitched against mine. He said, in a monotone voice, as if he were controlling every word, every syllable, “I suppose I could grant you and the others safe haven here.”

I stilled, the stars turning into a meaningless blue blur.

“Stay with you?” I asked.

“Well, no, not really,” he said. “I’d be at Heofonraed as part of the council. But there’s room enough for you all in the castle, and then even without me, you’d all be protected by the Riverdark spell.”

“You care if we’re protected? All us humans whom not long ago you were so mad about invading your world?” I asked, confused enough to finally look up from his hand.

“I care about making sure you go through with our deal,” he said quickly. Too quickly. “If that means housing a bunch of human women as insolent as you, I suppose I’ll do it. I won’t be here to be annoyed by you all. I’ll be too busy on the council.”

“I’ll... I’ll think about it,” I said. In some ways, it was an ideal solution. Human forces would be loath to come back here ever again after Wylfrael’s rampage. We could breathe the atmosphere, the native Sionnachans were kind and generous, and our home base in Wylfrael’s castle would always be protected. It would be a lot easier than trying to find another world that would be safe.

“Hey,” I said, something suddenly occurring to me. “Do you think other stone sky gods have ever visited Earth?”

I thought of stories. Legends of angels and demons and gods. Sublime, winged beings from the sky. I wondered if that was all based in something alien rather than celestial.

“It is possible. I had not heard of your kind before now, but that doesn’t mean another stone sky god has not travelled to your world at some point. Perhaps to claim his mate.”

“Hmm. How many stone sky gods are there?”

“When I was last awake, dozens.”

“That few?” I said, surprised. I assumed they’d be like humans – billions of them out there.

Wylfrael’s wings twitched, like they wanted to expand in the tube.

“We can only reproduce with our fated mates. When we starburn, we grow the knot that can bring forth children, but not before then.”

“What the hell is a knot?”

He gave me a flat look.

“Something you do not need to concern yourself with. I do not have one, because I have not starburned.”

It was obviously some weird alien bit of anatomy related to sex and fertility. Starburning almost sounded like some kind of second puberty.

I relaxed a little bit.

“So, you’re impotent, then? Without this knot?” There was relief in the statement, but the nature of the relief surprised me, made me ashamed. It wasn’t relief that he’d make good on his word not to require sex of me. It was relief that I wouldn’t ever be tempted.

Tempted! To have sex with Wylfrael!

It was ridiculous. And it made me feel like I’d gone off the deep fucking end. But when I remembered the hot suck of his mouth on my wrist, I-

“I am not impotent,” Wylfrael said. There was no blustering ego, no defensiveness in the declaration. It was just a simple statement of fact. “A stone sky god is perfectly capable of copulation with someone who is not his fated one. He just does not starburn, and does not have the knot that can make that person pregnant.”

“Oh.” My relief, my sense of safety – not from him, but from my own stupid self – deflated instantly.

“Anyway, this is why there are not many of us. It takes much time to find one’s fated mate, and children do not always come quickly even after that. Sometimes, the female starburns much later than the stone sky god, which means she cannot easily take his knot before then.”

“Hold on, she starburns too?”

He confirmed it.

That was fascinating. That this mating bond could result in a biological or hormonal change in a whole different species, someone from an entirely different planet. I still didn’t know what the hell a knot was, but based on the way my skin was heating, my nipples hard and not from the cold, I decided not to ask further questions on the topic, afraid of my own bizarre reactions.

I was still holding Wylfrael’s hand. I was kind of surprised that he was letting me, that he hadn’t pulled it away with a berating word by now. I let it go and turned around so my back was to him once more.

“Alright. Show me this starfinder, please.”

Wylfrael raised a hand over both our heads, moving it in an arc under the domed top of the upright tube. There was no click of a button, no whirring of power like in a machine, but something was happening. The sky visible through the clear top of the tube looked like it crashed around us, stars falling everywhere, expanding and swirling down the dome and walls of the tube.

“Oh, my God,” I whispered, entranced by the shower of stars falling over us, like drops of shimmering rain, and the top of the tube was a clear umbrella.

“I suppose I am now,” Wylfrael murmured beside my ear. “Though such proclamations seem a little excessive, even from a devoted wife. I’d tone it down a little in front of the others.”

“Oh, my...” I almost said, Oh, my God again, out of annoyance this time, not awe for the starfinder. “I wasn’t talking about you.”

“You have another god, then?” he asked, and I could hear the smirk in his voice.

“Well, if you must know, humans have many gods,” I huffed. “And let me tell you, you are not the most impressive among them.”

His smirk turned into a throaty, dark chuckle that made something deep inside me tighten.

“As long as you don’t run off and marry any of them. As long as I’m the only one who’s yours.”

He paused, then, asking it casually, like he didn’t really care about the answer one way or the other, he said, “Do you already have a mate?”

It incensed me that this arrogant alien had never even thought about this before now. That it had never even crossed his mind, that I could be spoken for. Not that I had anyone back home – it seemed to be a condition of the women who were abducted for this mission, no living relations or spouses – but still.

“What would you do if I said yes?”

I wasn’t sure if he actually moved or if it was just my awareness of his hot bulk behind me growing keener. But he seemed to get closer and larger in the space, muscles and wings and stars closing in on me.

“It would change nothing,” he said, a new edge of ice coming into his voice, freezing the smirking laughter that had been there a moment before. “You are marrying me, and for the rest of your mortal life, you are mine.”

“Hold on. I thought that once you got on this council, I’d be free to do whatever I wanted. I know I can’t go back to Earth, but does that mean I’d have to be alone? Forever?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I didn’t exactly know that when I made this bargain with you!” I said, jaw tight. Not that I was planning on dating a Sionnachan or something, but it still would have been good to know about that piece of things before I agreed to all this.

“If word gets out that you’re taking lovers, it would put everything we’ve worked for into jeopardy. A starburning bond is sacred. A stone sky god’s fated bride would never stray, even if they are physically separated.”

“Wow, you guys really are arrogant,” I snapped. To think that just because they got married, their wife would never, ever deign to even want to be with anyone else was ridiculous. I’d never cheated on anyone and never planned to, but it irked me that Wylfrael was so sure in his claim, like any woman married to a stone sky god was spellbound by him, with no more mind of her own.

“It is not arrogance to speak the truth.”

“The truth,” I scoffed. “You didn’t tell me this little bit of the truth before. That I’d have no one for the rest of my life.”

“You won’t have no one,” he snarled in return. “You’ll have me.”

His words rang like a gong in my head.

“I’ll have you,” I echoed dully. “Ah, yes. My fake husband. No real life with him. No children.”

“You want children?” He sounded startled.

“Yes! You would know that if you’d asked,” I said. Being single back home, it wasn’t exactly something on my near horizon, but it was always something I’d wanted eventually. I was twenty-nine now, and I’d started thinking about the subject more and more with the approach of my thirtieth birthday.

“Well,” he said, a new gruffness catching in his throat, “I’ll get you a pet.”

“A pet!” I exclaimed, my eyes wide, my mouth opening in offended shock. As if a pet would replace an entire future with a man I loved. A family of my own.

“Yes. A pet. And, like I said, you won’t have no one, you’ll have me. I cannot make you pregnant, but if you should require anything else, I will provide it as your husband.”

“Anything else?” I seethed, having a feeling I knew where he was going with this and just daring him to say it.

“If you should ever require... companionship. Relations, as you call it, I will be the one to provide it to you.”

Provide it to me. As if it was some service I needed, like an oil change, instead of a real connection with someone.

“You’re saying if I want to fuck someone, it has to be you, then? For the rest of my life?” I asked, my voice rising higher and higher with every word until it reached a pitchy, furious warble.

“Yes,” he snapped. “It goes both ways, you know. I will take no other lovers, either.”

“Oh, poor you,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. It felt hot in the tube now, but I couldn’t tell if it was from his body heat or my anger. “You’ve had hundreds of years to fuck your way across the universe and now you’re stuck with only me.”

Oh, no. No, no, no. Was that jealousy?

“I can’t keep talking about this,” I said, tossing my hands in the air. I stormed out of the beautiful starfinder and didn’t stop until I’d reached one of the spread-out petals of this room’s walls, perpendicular to the ground far below. Too furious to be afraid, I kept walking until I neared the pointed edge.

I didn’t need to turn around to know that Wylfrael had followed me out. I felt his presence, even though the cold night air sucked away the warmth of him that had cradled me. He loomed behind me, a shadow I couldn’t shake.

“What?” I called brittlely without turning back to him. “Come out here to tell me what to do again? To tell me to be careful?”

“No,” he said softly. “Even if you slipped, even if you jumped, you’d never hit the ground.”

I finally did turn around to look at him. His wings flared open behind him, a silent, starry promise of protection and possession all wrapped up in one.

I’ll never be truly free.

Even if separated, even if he spent all his time doing whatever it was that the council needed him for, I’d never be free. Not really. I’d always be bound up in this, in him. The invisible, tightening layers of our agreement that had once felt like salvation and now just felt like ruin.

All my fury faded, crushed under sadness that made me double over, like someone had punched me in the solar plexus. My hands landed on my knees then disappeared, turning murky, and I realized it was because of tears in my eyes.

I couldn’t even be mad that I was crying in front of him yet again. In fact, a harsh, hurting part of me was glad for it. Good. Maybe he’ll run away again and leave me the hell alone.

But he didn’t. He was at my side instantly. He said nothing, and neither did I, as he scooped me up into his arms and carried me back towards the stairs. I could have fought him. I could have screamed.

I turned my face against his starlit chest – so warm, so fucking warm – and sobbed.

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CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN Wylfrael

Torrance was weeping. I couldn’t run from it this time. Not when the salt-scented tempest of it was directed squarely at my chest. She shuddered in my arms, even when we re-entered the warm shelter of the castle, having closed up the walls of the conservatory. Her face was exquisitely soft and alarmingly wet against my chest as I carried her down the stairs.

Was all human weeping this distressing, or only Torrance’s? I was not sure what was a more disagreeable possibility. That I would be affected thus by any human woman weeping. Or that my bride’s crying was special, and affected me above that of any other.

Because affect me, it did. Every tremor, every gasp she made, was like a shockwave through my frame. I wanted to make it stop.

I wanted to comfort her, my prisoner, my bride, but I did not know how.

She wants children. Children!

The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind, and now I felt a fool. I’d already resigned myself, with desperate agony, to the fact that I’d never meet my mate, never father a son. But now, I was forcing that fate on her, too.

I’m not forcing it, I reminded myself harshly. Her friends had left her. The only way she’d find them with any sort of efficiency is if I got access to the council. Being married suited both our purposes. We both had to make sacrifices.

I’ll have no one. That’s what she’d said. And, like some haunted half-wit, I’d babbled that she wouldn’t have no one. I’d gone far beyond any realm of decency or sense and told her I’d be there for her, that I would lie with her, even though that was something I knew I should never, ever do. I said I’d get her a blasted pet! Like that would mean anything to her now. I’d even said I’d house her human friends here, the very same ones I’d almost murdered in my rage. If I’d been at my full power, I knew with a deadly certainty I would have killed them all.

I’ll have no one.

I thought about her loving a Sionnachan male and rebelled. The same way I’d rebelled against the thought of Maerwynne marrying her.

That was not her fate. I was her fate.

What do I want with her?

The question was so loud in my head it was almost like Torrance had asked it herself – What do you want with me?

I carried her into my room – our room – and then I did not know what to do with her. I held her, turning my head this way and that, looking for something, anything, to make her stop crying. It was as if her grief was pouring out of her in physical waves, like I was the shore and she a battering ocean storm. I reeled with the sense that she’d drag away every bit of me, erode me down to my very bones, if I let her.

I wanted to drop her. To get as far from her as possible. It was the same trapped burrowbird feeling I’d had when I’d watched her, so lovely and so sad, with the fabric of her wedding dress around her.

I settled on pulsing my wings just enough to lift us onto the bed. But this was perhaps even worse, because now she was cradled in my lap. I thought of heaving her over to the side, but she was clinging to me now, her tiny fingers digging into my neck with the force of something feral.

So, I held her, just as she was. Tiny. Human. Weeping.

And mine.

There was no satisfaction in the thought. Only wild confusion. Confusion because I’d made her cry, which I knew I should not do, because she was to be my wife and we needed to look happy. But there was more than just that, more than just worrying about appearances. So much more. Eyes the colour of honey. A love of animals and snow. An infuriating, beautiful sort of hope that pulsed in her like a heartbeat even while it burned in me like poison.

She was more than I’d bargained for. Much more.

And I didn’t know how to save either of us now.

We’d announced our mating bond, our marriage, and could not go back on such a thing. We both needed the council, which meant we both needed each other.

“This would all be so much easier if I hated you,” I muttered as my hands ran up and down her slender back, the silk barely there between us.

“You don’t hate me?’ she asked, so astonished that she stopped crying for a moment. “Well, I hate you.”

“Clearly,” I said sardonically. “That’s obviously why you’re clinging to me so.”

She sucked in a wet-sounding breath and scrambled out of my lap. Some stupid instinct I could not quash made me regret my words, made me regret that she was no longer in my arms. Even my cock was being stupid at the moment, straining for her through my trousers, as if the curve of her hip still pressed there, even though she’d gone.

“You should have told me.” Her words were an accusation from across the bed as she sat up against the headboard. Though I could have grabbed her with very little effort, it felt as if she was in another world entirely, across a great expanse of fur wider than any universe.

“Told you what? That you could not take a lover, have children?” My own disillusionment was rising now. “It is the same for me. I can never find my true bride, my fated mate. Never. I’ll never have a son, as I always dreamed I would.”

“Oh, please!” Torrance cried, her eyes flashing in the low firestone light. “Aiko told me. She told me that you become a mortal when you claim your true mate. You’re just afraid of dying, that’s why you need me instead of your real bride. Don’t make it sound like we’re the same. You’re choosing your future. Mine was taken from me.”

“That’s what you think?” I asked, keeping very still, freezing everything down when what I wanted to do was explode. “You think I’m avoiding my fated mate and trapping you in this bargain because I’m afraid of dying?”

“Well, aren’t you?”

“No.”

Torrance didn’t look pleased with my answer. Her eyes were hard gold points with black in the middle.

“That’s because you’re immortal. How can you be afraid of something you have no concept of? People like me,” – she smacked her hand to her chest, making the silk of her robe rustle and expose more skin – “we have to fight every day to survive. It could all end in an instant.” Her voice cracked, then got quiet. “I was dying when you found me.”

“But you didn’t die,” I reminded her, more forcefully than perhaps was necessary, “precisely because I found you.”

“Well, maybe you should have left me there!” she cried. “It isn’t like you’ve saved me.”

My insides went dark and off-kilter. Like everything was sliding to one side, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t get my balance. In an instant, I was above her, on my knees, my hands planted on the headboard on either side of her.

“Do you wish that you were dead instead of with me?”

She did not answer, only stared up at me, all hurting honeyed fire.

“Answer me, Torrance!” My voice grated. I sounded desperate, delirious. I sounded mad – I heard myself, and I knew I did – but I kept on going. “Answer me, now! Would you rather be dead than with me?”

Something in her expression cracked. I thought that she might weep again, but with remarkable steadiness, she just said, “No.”

Relief spun dizzily inside me. Until she added, “Tell me the real reason you won’t find your mate.”

And when she dies it will be by her husband’s hand and blade.

I couldn’t tell her.

I couldn’t even say the words. So, I settled on something that was true even if it was not the main reason.

“It would take too long,” I said. “I don’t know where she is, who she is. She might not even be born yet!”

I was not sure that Torrance looked convinced, her eyes scanning me, her mouth tight. Her long hair was in a wild disarray about her shoulders, her cheeks showing tracks from her tears. Some of those tracks went right down her neck, leading my gaze to her delicate collarbone, down further to where the red silk of her robe parted, showing the space between the luscious curves of her breasts. Heat flooded me, and I gripped the headboard, denying my body its sudden need to lower, to bury my face in that opening. Her scent was stronger than it had ever been, winding through my limbs, warming my spine until my tail twitched and my wings snapped. Her legs were bent and spread, creamy white lines with their apex obscured by the silk.

This time, I could not stop myself. My body moved as if governed by another master, one whose name was not Wylfrael, one who had no discipline, no power, no control. One of my hands drifted downward to her bare knee, my thumb skimming inward, up her smooth thigh.

Her breath caught. “What are you doing?”

“Tell me to stop, and I will stop,” I said hoarsely.

I hated that even my voice was affected by her. My breath coming ragged and harsh just from touching her knee. I wanted to blame her for it, to make it all her fault, but I knew that I could not. Something in me had weakened, had worsened. I saw her hopes and desires for the future and wanted to strike them down. To kill them. Until there was only me, standing among the ruins of her life.

But perhaps I was not the only one. Because she did not tell me to stop. Even as my hand moved upward, my thumb nudging at the silken place where her thigh met her groin, she did not say the word. My entire body was taut. I gripped the headboard so tightly I feared it may crack, merely so that I didn’t unleash my crushing desire upon her small body.

I lifted my hand from her skin and flung apart the robe.

She was bared to me, strange and human, small and lovely. New colour flushed along her chest and up her neck into her cheeks, a heated redness. Her breath was as quick as my own, her breasts rising and falling, her nipples pretty little pink-brown circles. I brushed one of them with my fingers and it went taut. As did Torrance’s spine as she arched into the touch.

“Tell me to stop,” I groaned, pressing my hand down until I kneaded her breast. I knew that I was begging, not commanding. She had to tell me, and tell me now, before I looked lower, touched lower.

She made a choked whimpering sound as my palm dragged roughly across her nipple.

“Don’t,” she said softly, and I froze.

Good. Good, someone needs to end this madness, someone needs to-

“Don’t stop.”

My heartbeat got so loud and fast inside my own head it became a buzzing. I began to move again, slowly, as if in some sort of trance. My hand caressed her breast, rolling the nipple until Torrance moaned. That sound was a bolt of pure power to my cock, lightning in the dark. It snapped some cord inside me, made my movements quick and jerky and...

Shaky.

Shaky!

I was Wylfrael. An immortal stone sky god. I’d lain down with females from across the cosmos. And never once had I shaken.

I shook now. I shook when I took in the dark, erotic thatch of curling hair between her legs. When I brushed my fingers there, then lower, to a swollen nub at the top of her folds, she jerked, her hips rising to meet me.