Page 36 of From the Darkness

“No.”

“You don’t remember?”

She felt him shake his head.

“But you remember some things!”

“Yes. If I could answer all your questions, I would.”

“Would you?”

“Yes.”

She desperately wanted to believe him. Trying a different tack, she asked, “Where are you staying? Somewhere in the house?”

“Out here.”

“Out here?”

“It’s as good a place as any.”

“You have a shelter? A safe place.”

“I have what I need.”

Again, she wanted to make him give her details, but she was pretty sure it would only frustrate him more.

Striving for a positive note, she said, “You sound stronger.

“You’re making me stronger.”

Her eyes blinked open. “Me? How?”

“When I touch you, hold you. I feel your energy. Your life force. Your strength. And that energy comes back to me.”

“I don’t understand. I thought you kept getting physical with me—so we wouldn’t have a chance to talk.”

He laughed, a deep rich sound. “That, too. There are better things to do than talk.”

She wanted to tell him he was wrong. But he prevented her protest by dipping his head, so that his mouth was close to her ear. She felt his warm breath, felt him take her tender lobe between his strong teeth and delicately play with it.

“Oh!” Her eyes drifted closed again because she wanted to concentrate on nothing besides him.

“I love the way you respond to me. You always responded to me so sweetly.”

She couldn’t answer. She could only prove his point by arching into the tingling caress. Just a small thing, his mouth on her ear, but she had never felt anything so erotic.

He continued his playful attentions, down the sensitive column of her neck, teasing her with his lips, his teeth, his tongue.

No longer holding her in place, his hands slid down her sides, tracing the shape of her hips. Then, slowly, he slid them back upward, along her ribs and then to the undersides of her breasts, where he stroked along the rounded swell.

It was only a light touch. Maybe the lightness of it was what drove her mad. She felt her nipples contract to tight points, heard her own indrawn breath.

“Please,” she moaned, her head falling back against his shoulder. All those years ago, he had been careful with her. Respectful. Kept his hands from straying to intimate places.

Now he had changed the rules. Slowly, he drove her closer to insanity, his hands inched upward, finding the undersides of her nipples and touching her just there. Stroking back and forth, the light contacts more stimulating than if he had taken her firmly in hand.

Her whole body tuned itself to him—to that slight but commanding caress. Breath sawed in and out of her lungs, as she waited—suspended in an unbearable anticipation of need. And when his fingers finally circled the tight buds, she cried out with the intensity of it.

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