His features contorted, almost, it seemed, with pain. Leaning toward her, he covered her mouth with his own once more, kissing her deeply, almost savagely, as he slipped a hand between their bodies and traced the cleft of her sex, parting the flesh, testing the exquisitely sensitive inner surfaces with the tip of his finger and sending excruciating shock waves through her that made her belly clench painfully. She rocked her hips, moving against his hand, urging him to penetrate her body. A groan of pleasure clawed its way up her throat when he did.
He probed her with his thick forefinger only a moment, however. Disappointment filled her when he withdrew it. In the next moment, she felt something far larger probing her in its place. She arched toward him eagerly, aiding his descent into her depths as he stretched her woman’s passage with his engorged phallus, filling her slowly. His claiming sent waves of escalating passion through her, lifting her to new heights when she’d thought she could not feel more, enjoy more, bear any more without shattering, fainting, dying.
Twisting her wrists, she gripped the chain as he withdrew and drove into her once more. He caught her hips, holding her as he withdrew and thrust deeply inside her again, and again in almost a frenzy of deep, stabbing thrusts. She met him with a fervor that matched or surpassed his, feeling the tension build inside of her until, abruptly, it began to disintegrate, breaking apart in an eruption that poured heat and pleasure through her like lava, making the walls of her sex clench and unclench like a fisting hand around his cock.
He shuddered, growling hoarsely as her body clenched around him, milking him of his fluids, arching jerkily as his body was caught up in the throes of release. When it subsided at last, he collapsed against her for several moments, gathering his strength. Finally, he pushed himself off of her with an effort and landed beside her on the bed. Rolling to his back, he dropped an arm across his eyes as he struggled to catch his breath.
Weak in the aftermath, so sated she could not think and had no wish to, Dalia melted against the bed and felt as if she was sinking into it as darkness swarmed around her. Inside, her body still quaked and twitched, as if tiny electric currents were discharging. Gradually, almost reluctantly, the tremors subsided, her heart slowed, and her lungs ceased to labor to drag in air.
The questions ebbed around her once more, like the whispers of distant voices. As before, they tripped over one another, merged, and tangled her mind in confusion. The anger had vanished. She didn’t know whether it was because he had so sated her with pleasure or if the anger had had no foundation to begin with. She turned her head to study him. “Why? Only tell me why, so I can understand.”
He sat up abruptly, putting his back to her as he sat on the edge of the bed, scrubbing his hands over his face. “Give me your word you will not do anything that would jeopardize your life or the life of the child, and I will release you.”
Impatience wove its way through her. “Not until I understand this.”
He stood abruptly, adjusting his clothing as he turned to look at her. It was only then that she realized he hadn’t even taken the time to undress himself. It occurred to her that she should’ve been repulsed at the almost primal way they had coupled, but even the explosive savagery of it in memory made her body clench all over again with remembered pleasure.
He shook his head, his lips tightening. “Emotion is not a gift. It is a curse, a weakness we would have been better without. I should not have told you as much as I did--not yet. You are not ready.”
His comments only confused her more. “Iamready.”
He leaned toward her, bracing his arms on the bed. “If you were ready, you would not have flung it in my face as if it was a thing of such revulsion that ... never mind.”
“I can’t accept what I don’t understand,” she flung at him as he stood away from the bed and strode toward the door.
He paused there, turning to study her. For several moments, she thought he would say nothing else. Finally, he spoke.
“You are my Eve, Dalia, my curse and my salvation.”
Chapter Eight
“What does that mean?” Dalia demanded as he closed the door behind him. She listened, but all she heard was his retreating footsteps. “Fuck!”
She pulled at the chain in frustration for several moments and finally subsided.
She should have told him what he wanted to hear, she realized irritably. He would’ve freed her. She’d been too focused on demanding answers, however--still too disoriented from what had happened between them to think clearly.
She settled back after a moment, knowing it was useless to struggle and still too weak, for that matter, to arouse enough strength even for anger. What had he meant, she wondered? His Eve?
It was a name, vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t grasp the significance of it without knowing the origins. Frowning, she concentrated on activating the CPU assist implanted in her skull, referencing the word as a word first, and then as a name when she decided it could have nothing to do with time ... unless he meant twilight? The end of life?
She dismissed that and summoned the other data. Faces flashed before her eyes, biographies, history. She discarded them, one after another. Finally, the computer referenced a defunct religion from several centuries earlier. Eve was the name given to the first woman--the woman created for the first man, Adam--according to that religion, and from them the human race had sprung. She had been designed to be his companion and mate, and she had so enthralled him that he’d allowed her to lead him astray.
The reference only left her more confused, not less so. Had he meant it in that context? Or had he meant something else?
She could not have been created for him, not in the truest sense. She was human and he wasn’t. Perhaps it was a poetic reference? He had said she was his, had claimed her as his woman.
He didn’t seem particularly thrilled about it, which made it difficult to accept that he had meant to say he loved her--particularly since she had only just tried to cut his heart out and she hadn’t known him more than a few hours.
Of course, quite obviously, he had known of her for quite some time.
Still, that only left the suggestion that she had, in fact, been madeforhim.
He was wrong, of course, but that didn’t mean he didn’t believe it.
She’d been avoiding thinking about what he’d said before.
He’d said she was carrying his child. She waited, expecting a flood of disgust, revulsion. It didn’t surface. She wondered if it was because her mind simply refused to accept the possibility, or if the possibility wasn’t completely revolting to her.
