Eventually the discomfort of his position forced him to move. He pushed himself up on one hand, wincing as his back muscles seized up in protest and his softened penis slid out of her.
“Well, this is inelegant,” he said through gritted teeth.
The gorgeous dazed look left her face, and she laughed, her gaze sympathetic. “It’s that damn wound on your back, isn’t it?”
He nodded. Limber and graceful, she slid out from underneath him and rolled off the table. When she was upright, she slipped under his arm and took his weight, helping him to straighten. He forced himself to take a deep breath. Then he kissed her.
She murmured, and he drew her close, relishing the feel of her naked body against his. At last, with obvious reluctance, she pulled away. “Let me get the vial of oil,” she said. “You need a back massage to loosen those muscles, especially after the stretching exercises from earlier and—you know.” Unexpectedly, her face turned dark red.
“I won’t say no,” he said. He stroked her cheek, inexpressibly delighted at the blush. Delighted with everything about her. “Xanthe, I love you.”
She grew very still, her eyes, full of that great, shining heart of glass, fixed on him. When she made as if to say something, he touched her lips with two fingers and shook his head with a smile. Just because he felt the need to tell her how he felt didn’t mean that she should feel the need to reciprocate.
He went into the other room and eased down onto the bed to lay on his aching back with a muffled groan. A few moments later, she joined him.
He loved watching her walk across the room nude. Her breasts were reddened by his attention, and the black silken triangle between her legs glistened with moisture. Her body was sleek and powerful, like a panther’s, and despite the shyness she had shown to him in various other ways, she had no body shyness at all and she moved with complete, athletic confidence that he found incredibly sexy. His cock stirred as he watched her; he was so hungry for her, he was already beginning to stiffen again.
She had gathered up their clothes and she set them on the floor by the bed. Then she took a small vial of oil and poured some into the palm of her hand. Her gaze flew involuntarily to his groin, and he clenched his teeth on another laugh as she flushed pink all over.
“Oh gods, please do,” he growled.
She scolded, “I’m supposed to rub your back!”
He loved it when she scolded him. He grasped her knee, gently. “My back is perfectly fine while I’m lying down. It can wait. It’s everything else that feels urgent right now.”
She looked at him, stricken laughter in her gaze, and he could see that she was tempted.
“After we work on your muscles a bit.”
He gave her a lazy, one-sided, calculating smile. “Very well, but I won’t roll over until you give me a kiss.”
He watched her gaze grow heavy lidded, and his cock stiffened further. “All right.”
She bent over him, her mouth softened, and he raised his head to meet her, kissing her lavishly, feeling hunger for her roar to a fever pitch all over again. When she would have pulled away, he grabbed her and yanked her back down, so that she overbalanced and fell on him.
Instinctively she caught herself on his chest, bracing on the hand that had held the palm full of oil. The warm liquid splashed across his torso as her slippery hand slid off his skin, and she sprawled on top of him.
He growled deeper, an arm wrapped around her neck as he plunged hectically between her lips. While he fucked her mouth with his tongue, he rubbed his chest with a hand until it was slick with oil, then he palmed her breast, that high, firm luscious mound of flesh. She moaned, the shaken sound vibrating in his mouth.
The oiled, slick friction of their bodies drove him out of his mind. He bit her neck, suckled at her ear, sank both fists into her hair and muttered, “Climb on top.”
The glazed look was back in her eyes, arousal shimmering out of her flesh in waves of velvet heat. He held her by the hair down to him, while she straddled his hips with hers. She groped for his cock blindly; when she took hold of him, she brought his tip to her entrance and sank down, down, sheathing him again in that tight, wet fist.
She was off balance, bent over, her weight on her elbows, but he could not seem to make his fingers loosen from her hair. It was uncivilized, possessive in the extreme. It was either unlike him or it was the truest manifestation of who he was becoming with her.
He hissed against her lips, “Fuck me, just like this.”
She groaned and obeyed, her hips moving on him in a primitive rhythm that he met with upward thrusts, spearing into her with cock and tongue, blind to everything but the need to enter her, enter her. She sobbed for breath, the jagged puffs of breath against his face as erotic as anything they had done together.