He let his gaze drop to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and her nipples tightened in response. Stars, she was eager, available, responsive. What more could he want?

But she was a virgin, and some of his ardour cooled.

"Are you sure?" He raised his gaze to hers.

"Yes." Standing, she began to unwrap her sarong.

"I'll do that." He strode around the table, placed his hand on hers. "You can change your mind at any time."

"I won't."

She sounded so sure, so sensual that he yearned to encourage those banked embers in her eyes to blaze into a frenzied fire. But she'd also said that she'd wanted a body and then had hidden in her quarters for months. So he had doubts. As if sensing she could banish the last of his hesitation, Dora reached her arms around his neck, brought her mouth to his, searing him with her lips, her bare b.r.e.a.s.t.s pressing against his chest in a s.e.xual a.s.sault that made his senses, reel.

His savage reaction to her had him taking her mouth with a rough fury. She gasped. Dora tugged him closer, molding her mouth to his, pressing into him, giving as much as she took.

d.a.m.n, the woman could kiss. She poured her desire into their fused mouths, stroking a need in him to have her naked, right there on the conference table. "A bed...

would... be better."

"I want you here. Now." Her hands dropped to his loincloth, fumbled with the knots.

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As bold as she sounded, her hands trembled. He clasped his hands on her waist, lifted her to sit on the table. His hips spread her knees wide and all the while he kissed her.

Her fingers gave up on the knots, stroked up and down his back, rushing him, urging him to hurry, to make love to her, as if she feared he would change his mind. He might have come to his decision quickly, but now that he was holding her, kissing her, the only thing that could make him leave would be if she sent him away.

Remembering that this was her first time battled with his need to pour himself inside her. With her legs straddling him, her scent enticing him, he had difficulty holding back. She'd waited a long time and endured much to arrive at this point and he wanted their lovemaking to be memorable. No, he wanted their time together to be the most spectacular experience in all her three hundred years of life Perhaps a tall order. But Zical was up for it. Oh, yeah, he was up all right and burning hard.

He pulled his mouth from hers. "We need to slow down."

"Why?" Part breathless, part demanding, part sultry petulance, her demeanor told him that she might have read every s.e.x manual ever written, but knowledge and experience could be two very different things.

"Dora, your body hasn't made love before. The fit might take some getting used to."

"I'll be fine."

"I'm not aiming for fine. I' m aiming for sensational."

Dora giggled. Brazenly, she reached beneath his loincloth to stroke him. "I'd say you've already reached the mark."

Placing his hand over hers, he pulled her back. "Not yet." He set her hands on the table, then threaded his fingers through her hair. "I want you to remember every kiss, every caress." Coming his fingers though her hair, he stroked ear, palmed her jaw and watched her pulse throb in her graceful neck. His voice turned husky. "Since we skipped the entire seduction process, let me make it up to you. Yes?"

"Yes."

She tried to brush her b.r.e.a.s.t.s against him, but he leaned back just enough to keep them apart. Frustrated, fascinated, she leaned her head into his hand and released a sigh. "You smell good I never knew the sense of smell could be so... enticing."

"For both of us," he agreed.

Trailing his fingers down her neck, tracing her collarbone, he held her gaze.

Antic.i.p.ation flared in her eyes as he ever so slowly dipped closer to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

He'd intended to caress and stroke and fondle with his hands to excite her, but once her fullness filled his hands, he lifted a breast to his mouth and took the tip between his lips. Sucking gently, he heard her gasp.

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"Oh... oh. Ah... I didn't know... I never imagined... that I could feel... so good." She threw back her head, arched into his mouth. "More, please."

Amid all his failures, Zical was glad he could give her what she asked for. Without hesitation, he gave her more.

Chapter Thirteen.

Dora thought if lovemaking was a flavor, it would be peppered and ambrosial. If lovemaking was a color, it would be paprika red. If lovemaking was a scent, the fragrance would be pungent spice with a finely sharpened texture, both creamy and steamy. And if a sound, lovemaking was pure unadulterated sizzle.

Every sense contributed to her spiraling emotions as Zical's expertise seduced her with one level after another of skillful stimulation. She tried and failed to quantify and identify each element. But like a finely cooked meal, or a masterful opera, the end result was so much more than sum of the components that a.n.a.lysis failed her.

She morphed into a creature of sultry senses. Her pulse accelerated, her loins throbbed. Primitive mating urges took over and she arched her spine, thrusting her breast deeper into Zical's mouth.

Exquisite impressions zinged from her nipple to her core as heat from his mouth streamed into her. His tongue laved the tip, feathering her with wondrous care, even as his teeth nipped her sensitive flesh and kept her squirming.

Every nerve ending in her body was focused on her nipple, his tongue. She demanded more, her other breast jealous for his attentions. Sometime during his erotic kiss, he untied her sarong leaving her open and so ready for him to enter her. But he had yet to move on to her other breast, and she finally understood what it was like to want him to keep doing exactly what he was doing, yet contradictorily to advance to the next tier.

When her nipple grew so sensitive that a moan escaped her throat, Zical finally released her flesh, only to give the exact same treatment to her other breast. Knowing what he was about to do, antic.i.p.ating the rippling pleasure, had her reaching for him once again.

And again he grasped her wrists and placed her palms on the table's edge. She recalled that Rystani custom dictated that only the males touched, not the females. And Zical was all proud Rystani male. He obviously adored taking charge, setting this unbearably slow pace, and she would let him.

She didn't want to remind him that she wasn't born a Rystani woman. She didn't want to remind him that she was anyone but the current woman of his desire.

However, holding still while he laved her nipple when she longed to skim her palms along his back, brush her lips into the cords of his neck, twine her legs around his waist, and tug him into her took more self-control than she'd believed possible.

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Since actions were denied her, she attempted to urge him to go on. "You feel so good."

"Mmm."

He kept right on caressing her nipple with the tip of his tongue, paying little attention to her words. Dampness pooled between her thighs and her synthari required touching. When she tried to slip her hand there, Zical released her breast.

"Don't move," He placed her palms flat on the table.

"Wh-what are you... thinking?"

"That you need to hold still."

She lifted her palms. "No one could hold still with-"

"Sure you can." Again, he gently pressed her palms flat. Then he waited to see if she would comply.

She clamped her fingers around the edge. "I'll try."

He carefully brushed her hair back from her eyes and eyed her with satisfaction.

"Much better."

"Easy for you to say." He wasn't the one clinging to a table, sitting there naked, ready to scream if he didn't make love to her soon.

"Open your legs for me." With no hesitation, she did as he requested. Finally be was going to get on with it.

He trailed his fingers over the delicate skin on the insides of her thighs. "You've been waiting a long time to make love."

"Too... long."

"And how do you feel?"

"Needy, Impatient. Stars! What are we waiting for?"

A grin tugged at one comer of his mouth. "Don't you want me to appreciate every bare inch of you?"

"Not particularly."

His hands made sitting still almost impossible. He was being too careful, going too slow.

"I haven't even given you any compliments on how beautiful you look."

He was teasing her with words, taunting her flesh with caresses, and her head swam. Sunlight from the window glinted on one side of his face, casting half in shadow and adding highlights to the muscular sheen on his chest. He'd never looked more desirable and she yearned to touch and taste and do so much more than wait.

She clung to the table, reminding herself not to touch him. She couldn't close her thighs. Not with his hips keeping her open. Totally at his mercy, she didn't know if she approved. And yet the ache in her kept swelling, spiraling, taking her to a place she most definitely wanted to be.

"I don't need compliments. I need you to... to..."

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He cut off her words with, another kiss. Eagerly she opened her mouth and then she felt him ever so delicately brush the curls of her synthari. A zing of pleasure caused moisture to pearl. She shimmied her hips in expectation of another caress, a deeper stroke.

As he thrust his tongue into her month, he inserted one finger inside her synthari, which hugged him with welcomed heat. She would have gasped at the sensational feel of him, but she had no breath, no words to explain how badly she ached to move her hips, to take in more of him.

Slowly, he removed his finger, then thrust it back into her, causing a stir, an uproar of raspy delight. His thumb opened up her nether lips and found where she was most sensitive. His gentle touch was like an electric current that hummed, that tightened and clenched her muscles and caused a swirl of antic.i.p.ation. She d never felt anything so delicious, yet she couldn't stand the light pressure and ached for more of his touch.

He broke the kiss and eyed her, clearly quite pleased with his efforts. "So what do you think?"

Think? His thumb caressed her center and she gasped. "How can I think when you... ah... oh-oh-oh." She could feel pressure building, her muscles tensing. She was surely about to explode.

"Good?" His tone cracked with raw heat, as if he knew exactly how she needed more.

"Very... ah... good."

And he stopped. Withdrew his hand. He stared at her face as she opened her eyes in pa.s.sion-dulled confusion. "Zical, please."

"Please what?"

"Keep touching me."

"I will," he promised, leaning into her, nipping her neck with tiny love bites, then lapping away the sting. "Trust me?"

"Yes."

"Then don't rush me."

She realized in his Rystani warrior way he was giving her a choice. A choice to do this his way. "You have no idea how... difficult... it is to sit here and not scream with the need you're creating."

"Seems to me you've recovered."

She had. While they'd been conversing some of the tension had eased. No longer feeling as if she were on the edge of combustion, she nevertheless yearned to proceed, to lose herself in the delicious haze of pleasure that Zical could create. She adored how he made her feel cherished and womanly, and she was glad they'd taken this time for themselves, glad they'd he enjoyed being with her. And most of all, she was thrilled that Zical was the first man she was intimate with, because she cared so much about him. To her he'd become more than a friend, he'd become... special. She couldn't think 143.

about him without warm happiness urging her on. Tessa had been right when she said that making love was special when the emotions were involved. Dora admired this brave man who bore the burden of command with such honor and stoicism. Now, he'd gone out of his way to please her and make the occasion special. He couldn't possibly stop before taking her completely, not after he'd agreed to make love. So when he leaned down and captured her breast in his mouth, she released a sigh of pleasure and relaxed.

Not that she could relax for long. His mouth summoned every bit of the tension she'd thought had dissipated, stretching her taut, stoking her with an expertise that caused the embers he'd kindled to leap into dancing sparks that singed and burned and placed her on the edge of a deep chasm all over again.

And this time when his clever fingers dipped into her synthari, she barely noticed that instead of one finger, he'd inserted two. But the extra thickness pleased her. He pleased her. She shifted her hips forward, parted her legs wider, welcoming every intimacy and fully believing that even if she died tomorrow, she'd never regret this night with Zical.

While she didn't understand how her heart could beat so hard when she was holding perfectly still, or how moisture broke out in a sheen on her skin while she did nothing but accept his every caress, she understood that comprehension wasn't required for enjoyment.

She'd built her body for lovemaking, and like a finely tuned starship, Zical had taken over as the pilot in charge. Left to her own inclinations, Dora would have preferred being more than a pa.s.senger along for the ride, but she was not about to question his methods. Especially when he felt so good.

But this lovemaking wasn't just about erotic sensations. She knew deep in her heart that she would respond like this only with Zical. Her emotions were all there, joy, acceptance, and a deep fondness for this man that she wanted very much to explore.

While she yearn to kiss him and trace her hands over all that savage-looking male flesh, she also relished submitting to his basic demands. And the more he asked, the more she wanted to give.

So even as she suffered the sweet torments of his tongue on her own b.r.e.a.s.t.s, she knew there was no place she'd rather be than right here, right now. She'd created this body for him to enjoy, for them to enjoy, and there was no part of her flesh he couldn't explore. Nothing she would deny him.

"Zical?"

"Mmm?"

She liked being at his mercy. She suspected she'd also enjoy his being at hers But the plain, simple truth was that she liked Zical, always had, always would. She enjoyed his company, period. Sharing her body with him was an extra bonus, a delight that made her happy, that made the physical pleasure almost secondary.

"Tell me... what would please you. And I'll do it."

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