chapter Ten
Kylah swallowed. Failed. And did it again. She was attempting to swallow her heart which kept trying to escape through her throat. What if she could do it? And yet, what if she couldn’t? How awful would that be… for both of them?
She pulled back a little and looked at him. He was so certain. Self-assured to the point of arrogance. He knew so much about pleasure, did he? What if…
“What if it doesn’t work?” she worried aloud. “What if—they’ve broken me?”
“That’s really up to ye, isn’t it?” The gentleness in his dappled eyes softened the hard truth of his words.
A storm brewed within her. How could she be broken if she did not allow herself to be so? How could she let the pain they inflicted upon her ruin any chance at pleasure? If it existed, didn’t she deserve it? Didn’t she need it more than most? If it was to be had, if it was a part of her body, she should be claiming it. Owning it.
“Tell me what to do.”
His nostrils flared at her whispered order, but he held completely still. He took a few breaths deep into his chest and let them out slowly, his gaze conflicted and intense.
“S-should I be… undressed?” The idea left her cold and terrified.
His brows drew together. “Eventually, but ye often doona start out that way.”
“Oh.” she felt suddenly very awkward, and moved closer to his imposing body, instinctively seeking his warmth.
“Gods how I wish I could touch ye,” he groaned.
The same desperation he expressed vibrated through her body. “Tell me what would happen if you could. If you were. Where would you begin?”
“That’s easy, lass,” he said huskily. “I would start with yer infuriating, tempting mouth.”
She covered her mouth with diffidence. “Infuriating?”
He grunted with amusement. “Aye. I’d stop yer incessant questions with my own lips as I’m tempted to do time and again.”
“Oh?” she asked from behind her hand. How long had he been tempted to do so?
“Move your fingertips,” he cajoled. “Run them across the ridges of your lips where they meet yer skin.” She did so, discovering that her mouth felt fuller and warmer to her now than it ever had. Keeping her touch feather-light, she traced the two peaks beneath her nose and enjoyed the sensation of her breath escaping through parted fingers. Her lower lip had more sensation in it than her upper and she lingered there, looking to him for further direction.
His eyes hungrily tracked each movement of her fingers and in a moment of impulse, she slipped one into her mouth and wet it on her tongue. She took the soft hiss of breath through his teeth as an affirmation.
When he spoke again, his voice was tight and low. “Next, I’d explore yer jaw, and the hollow of your throat. It can be very sensitive there.”
Kylah ran the backs of her fingers across her jaw, mirroring the action he’d attempted to perpetrate only moments before, before dropping beneath her chin. She sucked in her breath. It was like the entire surface of her skin awakened and came alive. Starting with the skin on her cheek and spreading downward in a wave of delicate sensation. Her chest became flushed, her nipples constricted, her belly tightened and beneath it, a shameless quiver began, stunning her into stillness.
“What de ye feel, Kylah?” he prodded.
She searched her mind, which had somehow deserted her. “Awake?” No. That didn’t seem quite right. “Aware.”
“Yes,” he sounded pleased, but she couldn’t look at him. “That is the beginning, now ye must discover more.”
She swallowed hard again, feeling her throat work beneath her fingertips. “What would you—discover next?” she queried.
That dark chuckle speared through her again, weakening her knees.
“I’d run my hands over yer shoulders and down yer arms, taking yer robes with them.”
“Really?” Her brows fell together in puzzlement. “To be frank, I thought you would go straight for my… my breasts.” She finished in a whisper.
“Oh, I’ll get to them,” he vowed. “But they have to ask for it, first.”
Ask for it? “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yer shoulders,” he reminded. “Slowly. Feel the softness of the skin there.”
She followed his dictate, undoing a few clasps and sliding her ghostly robes from her shoulders with her fingertips, taking a moment to feel the soft glide of her fingers over smooth and velvety skin. It was lovely. It relaxed and revitalized her all at once.
“Lower,” he pressed.
Her robes hung onto her nipples, almost exposing them to his eyes that appeared to glow in her intensifying light.
“I-I’m frightened,” she admitted. Even though this time there was no tearing and rending of garments. No violence. No pain. There was still danger. Danger of degradation. Of shame and rejection. Of judgment and failure. She couldn’t bring herself to bare her body to the greedy eyes of a man. “Maybe I should just lie down.”
“Excellent idea.” He locked eyes with her, and they simultaneously lowered their bodies to the smooth stone of the grotto. His hazel gaze remained steady on her own. Never once wavering, never drifting to other parts of her bared flesh. He sustained her, strengthened her, staying with her until she was prostrate on her back and he on his side next to her, his head propped onto one palm sustained by his elbow.
“All right.” She let out a shaky breath. “All right, what would you do next? Now that I’m lying down.”
He took more breaths, as though choosing his words very carefully. “When you open your robes, doona focus on what ye expose of yerself. Just run your fingers along the underside of yer wrist and forearm.”
She frowned at him again. It seemed as though he focused on the strangest parts. No other man had ever even mentioned her wrists or forearms. Never looked at them. Touched them. They were mundane parts with no particular erotic draw. “Are you entirely certain—?”
“Do it. Just with your nails. Score it lightly.” He gave her an impatient look that dispelled much of her earlier tension and brought a smile to her lips.
She lifted her shoulders off the ground, and shrugged her robes away, scoring her tender skin with her nails.
Pleasure. There it was. A hollow, aching pleasure skittering along her skin in such a way, that if she tried to define where it was, it would disappear. The acute response danced along her nerve endings with such intensity that her back arched and her thighs clenched.
“Now,” he stated tightly. “They’re asking for it now.”
“What?” she tried to latch onto his words through the gathering fog in her brain. She was more concerned about what was going on below.
“Yer breasts,” he gritted out. “Yer incredible breasts. They’re begging to be touched.”
They were? She glanced down. They were. She was certain of it now. The pert mounds with small, pink tips quivered with her unsteady breath. She risked a glance back up at Daroch, who was staring at them in a most peculiar way. As though he’d never seen their like before. He swallowed convulsively. Once. Twice. His tattoo intensifying the movement of his throat.
“I don’t know if I can,” she whispered to him.
“Oh, ye can lass.” His command sounded more like a plea. “Ye must.” His chest now scissored with breaths that flared his nostrils with every intake.
“How?”
He dragged his eyes away from her breasts and back to hers and with a blink, the gentleness had returned. “Close yer eyes,” he murmured. “Doona think about what ye should be doing. Let yer body tell ye what it wants ye to do.”
Kylah snapped her eyes shut and instantly felt better. “What it wants you to do,” she corrected breathlessly, feeling braver now, protected by the darkness behind her eyelids.
“Christ woman,” he cursed. More breaths. Not as deep and slow as before, and their increased pattern did something else to Kylah that she’d not expected. It sped her own breaths to match his. Daroch was enjoying this, though he’d not admit it to her. He garnered a pleasure of his own from teaching her this.
She wondered what it was. What it felt like for him.
The ache between her thighs intensified and her breath hitched. She reached her trembling hand to hover over her bare chest and awaited his dark instruction.
“Palm it,” he commanded, shorter and less gentle than before.
She did.
“Lift it,” he gritted out. “Feel the weight of it.”
The longer she touched that part of her, the heavier it felt. All the sensation seemed to be concentrated in the jutting, demanding nipple.
“Run your thumb across yer nipple,” he growled.
She complied, softly, slowly.
Pleasure. There it was again. But now, it was tangible. It was there, in her breast. It still bloomed along her skin, particularly in a southerly direction. It was in the panting breaths and the tense muscles of the Druid beside her.
Her other hand flew to her belly as though to contain the swarm of butterflies unleashed within. She gasped as a sudden hot, slick sensation flooded her loins. That place between her thighs suddenly felt uncomfortably warm and alarmingly wet.
She clenched her eyes tighter. “Daroch?” she whimpered.
“Aye?” He sounded pleased again, but also leashed. Restrained, somehow. It ratcheted her anxiety higher.
“Something’s happening,” she confessed. “Something… there.”
A small rustling of fabrics told her that he leaned closer and she had the overwhelming urge to curl into his chest and hide from herself.
“Is it wet?” His tone had turned into silk being rent with bare hands and it reached all the way through her, landing in that place with a wicked vibration. “Is it slick, and swollen, and aching?”
She trembled and turned her head away from him. “Yes.”
“Then ye are ready.”
She wanted to deny it. But she didn’t. She wanted to run from it. But she couldn’t. Her body had taken complete control of her mind and the whole of it seemed to be ruled by her sex. And her sex seemed to want to be ruled…
By him.
She unhooked the rest of her robes, until they were splayed open beneath her, baring her entire body. Her teeth were clenched, her limbs trembling. Unbidden memories and fears seemed to want to worm their way into the darkness behind her eyelids so she opened them and focused on the stone as her face still turned away from him.
“Find that moisture, Kylah, and there ye’ll find yer pleasure.”
Slowly, the fingers that rested on the quivering muscles of her belly crept lower and lower still. Through downy curls protecting that most secret part of her, and dipping into her soft, warm sex.
A sharp gasp seemed to escape them both at the same time and mingled with the gentle lapping of the grotto onto the smooth stone.
She was soft and delicately fleshy. Slick and warm and… wanting. Kylah’s hips arched and her thighs parted slightly of their own accord.
“Daroch?” she turned her face toward him as her finger brushed against something so intense, her eyes flew wide and their hot gazes collided with all the force of a physical touch.
“I’m here, lass.”
“Cover my hand,” she begged.
He did. The pressure such that his hand settled into hers. Overtook it. And yet, touched it not at all.
“I can… almost…” He caught his lip in his teeth, his eyes boring down at her, more needs and shadows in their depths than she could ever attempt to count.
She nodded, her fingers seeking out the slick moisture once more, exploring it and the sensitive flesh beneath it.
“Find that place that makes you gasp each time you touch it,” he murmured. “Circle it, caress it…” He stopped, dropped his head and seemed to be trying to gather his will.
Kylah took his advice as best she could. Pleasure stabbed at her each time her fingers delicately danced over the small bud of sensation. She’d found it. She reveled in it. She pulsed with it, and each time she found it, the pleasure seemed to bloom wider and throb until in a long and singular moment, instinct seized her, and she no longer needed the Druid’s promptings to know what it was she sought.
A rhythm of sorts found her. A circular pressure that tightened every muscle in her thighs and curled her toes. Her breaths became irregular pants. Her eyelids fluttered open, and closed, and open again. Her head tossed from side to side. Seeking him, retreating, then finding him again.
Daroch was right there with her, hovering above her ear, saying dark, wicked things to her in a language long dead, belonging to a people long forgotten. Incantations of sin and sex and possession. The timbre of his voice prompted a perturbing perception to uncurl deep in her very core, to reach out from inside her and seize upon her being.
Pleasure and demand built and competed until wretched little cries ripped from her lips. Just when she felt as though her body could take no more. Like the Fates had pulled her thread too tightly and their tools hovered to snip it into pieces, a wave of pure, unadulterated ecstasy crashed through her with indescribable force.
Her thighs clamped together and she was helpless to do aught but survive the blissful shocks jolting through her. She was dimly aware of the pulsing of her glow, the pitch of her cries. It was the pleasure Daroch had promised and more. It was experiment and atonement. Bliss and blasphemy. Sin and redemption. It was completion. The realization that no one could truly know themselves until they’d known themselves in such a way. Could never truly be a lover, until they’d thus loved.
But as her sense of self seemed to gather back from whence it had shattered, she felt as though something was missing. The kiss of cold spring air on her skin. The warmth of his breath hitting the flesh she bared to him. The satisfaction of something—mutual.
She peered up at Daroch’s intense, savagely handsome face and offered him a lazy smile. Everything seemed different in this moment. What once had been cold, black stone now felt close and cozy, much like a sanctuary. What had been a dark place where the very walls had mourned now was full of wicked secrets and echoes of delight. “Now you,” she murmured. “Don’t you need to find your own… pleasure?”
His jaw locked and he abruptly rolled away from her. “Nay.”
She sat up, clutching her robes in front of her. “Why not? I’ll be here with you. I want to learn what brings you satisfaction. I want to watch—”
“Doona say that!” he whirled on her, a wild spark of something cruel igniting in his eyes. “Never say that to me.”
Kylah blinked, disoriented by his abrupt change. “A-all right. Tell me why.”
“Why?” Daroch pinned her with his icy stare. “Why?” He began pacing like a caged animal, the strips of his tunic flaring about his powerful legs. “It’s perverse and repulsive, that’s why.” His lip curled and caused his tattoo to bunch into a demonic shape. “It’s unnatural, and—and debasing, beneath our human dignity.”
“But…” Kylah proceeded very carefully. “Isn’t it what you just did with me?”
For the first time since she’d laid eyes on him, his jaw went slack. He went perfectly still but for the breath lifting his chest. His unblinking eyes discomfited her, so she levitated to a standing position and tried to modestly rearrange her robes.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” she nudged gently. The warmth of her release drained from her limbs like the water of a bath, leaving her cold and trembling and searching for cover.
He plunged both hands into his bound hair, gripping it in frustration. The movement did fascinating things to the muscles in his arms, but Kylah ignored them, focusing on the unraveling man before her.
She floated toward him, reaching out, “Daroch, I’m sorry if I said something to ruin—”
“Don’t.” He held up his hand, a mask of chilly courtesy settling over his features. “You did nothing. I—have a lot of work to do.”
Her head snapped back as though he’d slapped her. “Work?” She gaped at him.
“Aye,” he turned from her and strode toward the hidden crevice. “I’ve already wasted enough time tonight.”
Dumbfounded, Kylah stared at the stone wall he just disappeared into. Wasted time? Anger smothered a bloom of hurt and confusion. Why would he entice her to do something so intensely intimate and then cruelly abjure it? Perverse? Repulsive? She wrapped her arms around her middle.
A deafening crash sounded from his lair. Then another.
Kylah prepared to plunge through the stone and see just what the bloody hell he was doing. And, while she was at it, she would give him the tongue lashing of his life. How dare he provoke such a lovely, intimate moment and then go and—
His angry roar preceded the unmistakable shattering of glass. Then wood. After that, a clatter of steel kept her feet planted, as it were, right where she was.
“Oh Daroch.” A tear slipped down her cheek. She suddenly understood what had just happened. This had nothing to do with her. And everything to do with his obsessive quest vengeance.