Page 43

Sexual contact must be verboten if Silence is to succeed. There is no other option—there’s too much sensation in it, too much chance of emotional bonding.

Eleri knew what she was feeling was a dulled echo of what it should be, but this was her only chance and so she would take it. Moving her hands to the buttons of her shirt, she began to undo them.

Adam sucked in a breath. “Eleri, what—?”

“I want contact,” she said, her shirt partially unbuttoned. “I want skin to skin, so much contact that I feel .”

He stopped her hands, and for a moment she thought this was it, Adam ending the experience before it began. But then he nudged her hands aside and said, “Let me,” and her pulse kicked up a notch.

Not enough, not anything like it had done during their first meeting so long ago, but for now, for who she was…she accepted it, embraced it. As she embraced the warm sensation that spread through her entire body when Adam ran his knuckles down the strip of skin he’d already exposed.

“You’re not wearing a bra,” he said, a slow smile on his lips. “Now, how are you getting away with that with a white shirt, hmm?”

“I don’t have large breasts, and while the color is white, the material is thick.”

Adam ran the back of his hand over her right breast without warning, and she felt her abdomen clench. He was watching her, gave a small nod. “You felt that, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” As a dull stab deep within her.

Adam did it again, before moving his hands to the buttons at her cuffs. He undid them with a slow deliberation that she knew she should savor, but—“I need things to be fast, Adam. Sensation layered atop sensation. No time for anything to fade.”

A desperation of sensation.

The ring of yellow around his irises seemed to glow, become brighter. “Falcons are the fastest creatures on the planet, our diving velocity so ruthless that our prey never sees us coming.”

Rising to his feet in a sharp movement, he hauled her upright, too, then tugged her with intent toward an opening that seemed to lead back into the lower part of the Canyon.

“Caves,” he threw back over his shoulder, an intensity to him that pushed against her.

“Including one carpeted with the softest sand.”

It took them only four minutes to reach it, and though it had been semi-dark to this point, the cave itself rippled with a glow of sunlight. It took her a second to see it—tiny holes in the rocks to one side that must be a hollow in the Canyon that permitted a dance of light inside.

She didn’t have much time to take in the wonder of it, however, because Adam was suddenly in front of her, his hand sliding around the side of her neck to her nape to hold her close while he undid the rest of the buttons on her shirt with his other hand, tugging it out from her pants at the end to finish the job.

His hand on her skin, stroking up in a hard glide to close over one taut breast and squeeze. She sucked in air, the sensation strong enough that it wasn’t a dull throb but a spear. “More. More, Adam. ”

Making a deep rumble of a sound in his throat, he released her instead—but only to rip off his own top and throw it aside before moving his hands to the waistband of her pants. A glance at her through hooded lids. “How far?”

“All of it. Everything.” She had no limit, no point of overload, wished she did.

Adam, her mate , took her at her word and dropped to his knees to undo her boots, get them off, along with her socks. “Cute feet.” A wink as he looked up, his hand on the top of one foot.

And Eleri realized for the first time that sensation in such a context wasn’t always tactile.

Looking at him, at his smile, the way he was so big and beautiful and…

happy to be with her. It intensified everything already building in her.

She undid her own pants, worried her feelings would vanish behind the wall of numbness.

Adam groaned as her pants fell to her feet, but pulled them away when she lifted her feet one at a time. However, before she could push down the plain white cotton of her underwear, he leaned in and bit the inside of her thigh…as his stubbled jaw rubbed against her.

She’d been right.

She felt more.

So much more.

Her thigh was over his shoulder before she knew what she was doing, and from the way he kissed the little bite he’d just taken, he didn’t mind.

Instead he gripped her thigh to hold her closer, and then, without warning, her underwear was gone, cut neatly away from her body by talons she’d never seen emerge.

Eleri wasn’t ready for the next sensation, that of his mouth on the most sensitive flesh on her body, the lick of his tongue deliberately rough as he gave her what she’d asked for: sensation atop sensation.

Then he was kissing her with raw intensity, and her other leg would’ve buckled if he hadn’t been holding her up.

The cool, calm, rational part of her created by the reconditionings knew she was still only catching the edge of what she should…

but this was more than she’d felt for an eternity.

And it was with him, with her beautiful boy.

She let herself fall into it, fall into him, and when he rubbed his jaw deliberately against her inner thigh, she allowed the buzz of sensation to haze her mind.

He pulled her to the ground, using his strength to control the movement so she landed on the sand with the lightness of a feather.

Rising above her, he spread her shirt apart and made a deep sound in his throat.

“So damn beautiful.” His hand on her breast again, his knee nudging her thighs apart so he could settle in between.

He had only the faintest line of dark hair low on his chest, a trail that led into his jeans, his abdomen hard and ridged. “I want to feel you crushing me,” she said, still fighting to outrace the numbness.

Adam came down on her without warning, sliding his hand down to curve around and grip her buttock as he put his partial weight on her, keeping a large amount off by bracing himself on the forearm of his free hand.

She pulled at his shoulders. “All of it.”

“I’m heavy, Eleri,” he said, but gave her what she wanted.

She could barely breathe and it was wonderful, Adam rubbing up against so much of her exposed skin. “Jeans,” she gasped out.

“Demanding.” A kiss that tasted of her, and the unexpected intimacy of it added another layer of sensation to this interlude where Eleri was determined to drown in the tactile, in emotion…but mostly in Adam.

Cold rushed in where Adam had been the instant he left her, and the numbness, it began to eat away at the depth of sensation she’d hoarded…but Adam hadn’t been lying about changeling speed. He was on her again almost before she’d processed that he was gone, and this time, he was naked.

The hairs on his thighs rubbed against hers, his chest crushing her breasts as he fisted a hand in hair she hadn’t even realized he’d undone, and he dropped his head to kiss her with a deep, wet intensity.

She surrendered, opened herself, gave him all of what she had left, and he gathered up the dregs and somehow saw beauty.

“You’re driving me crazy,” he said as he moved his hand to between them, his thumb pressing down on a body part she knew was called the clitoris but whose purpose she hadn’t ever understood.

At the same time, he speared his fingers through her labia to touch the highly sensitive entrance to her vagina… and Eleri got it.

She’d been taught the body parts in biology class but was never told that those parts weren’t only about function. The clitoris’s whole purpose, it appeared, was pleasure. Her body was designed for pleasure.

Her breath caught, her torso twisting as she reclaimed her right to feel. “More, Adam,” she gasped, able to sense the looming wall of nothingness waiting to crash over her.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” His chest heaved, his hair falling around his face as he looked down at her.

She looked up at him and wanted him beyond bearing. “You could never hurt me.”

His face twisted, a raw anguish in it. “Never.” A rough promise. “On the honor of my clan, mate of mine.”

Her eyes burned, and in that moment, she knew she could cry. She drew Adam down to her. “All of it, Adam. Please.”

A shuddering breath before he kissed her even as he resettled his body so that the blunt hardness of his erection pushed against her. It should’ve felt like a violation, that penetration to a body that had never felt its like…but it felt the opposite. An embrace.

Adam inside her, around her, the smell of him, the weight of him, the wild honor of him.

For a pulse in time, she did drown, her body rippling in a faded echo of pleasure—but it was pleasure true and real—and her tears were of a woman who felt .

···

Later, Adam held Eleri against him, spooning her too-slender body with his own as his falcon spread its wings over her spirit. “You cold?”

A shake of her head. “You burn like a fire.” Cool words, but he’d tasted her tears at the end, felt her body shiver around his.

He’d have thought he’d done it wrong, not given his mate what she needed, except that she’d kissed him in the aftermath and said, “I felt, Adam. All through me,” as tears yet streamed down her face. “I felt .”

He snuggled her closer, distraught in ways he fought to hide. Because he knew from her physical responses that she’d caught only the merest edge of sensation, the barest whisper of what could be between mates. Those fuckers had hurt her so much, her mind and spirit grievously wounded.

“This is just the start,” he murmured, kissing her ear because it was close and he just wanted to adore her. “We’re going to get stronger with every day that passes.”