GABRIEL (The Innerworld Affairs Series, Book 4) (28 page)

Shara's attempts to drive him to distraction had taken its toll on her. She almost demanded that he satisfy her immediately but his words had now aroused her curiosity as much as her body. She obediently closed her eyes.

"Hold your arms out to your sides," he instructed, positioning them as he wanted. "Palms up and head tipped back as if you're a goddess beckoning to the moon to increase your power over me. Spread your feet a little farther apart... to keep your balance."

From the teasing tone of his voice, she guessed her balance was not quite what he had on his mind. The pose left every part of her body exposed to him. It might have been somewhat embarrassing but with her eyes closed and her temperature creeping higher, she had little problem ignoring her usual modesty.

"Can you guess what I'm doing?" he asked from behind her. She turned her head toward his voice. "How about now?" he said at her side. "Or now?" He was back in front of her. "I'm tempting myself by looking without touching. Don't you feel my eyes on you, devouring you, committing every sexy, feminine part of you to memory?"

Her breasts tightened in response.

"I was once asked to describe what I considered the perfect female body. My answer then was long and lush, with full breasts and hips ample enough to offer comfort to a body as large as mine. I might have added hair like black silk, soft, full lips made for kissing and eyes that would tell me exactly what she's feeling when I touch her. My answer now would be only one word." His breath was hot against her ear as he whispered that word.

"Shara."

He stepped to her side and was gratified to see her head automatically turn to follow his movement. "You are the beautiful Goddess of the Moon and I am your devoted servant, here to worship at your temple."

A shiver slipped down her spine and into her core. He had claimed to be tempting himself but his words were playing havoc with her patience. She closed her thighs to try to relieve the throbbing.

"Don't do that," he said, noting the movement. "You wouldn't want to lose your
balance
when there's so much more to come. All I've done so far is look. Now I'm going to touch. Is there any place in particular you'd like me to start?"

The smile she heard in his voice prompted her to shake her head rather than reply. Whatever he had in mind was probably better than any suggestion she might make.

"No preference? Then I think I'll start here." His fingertips tickled the palm of her left hand then slipped in and out of her fingers.

As lightly as a butterfly's caress he grazed his way up one side of her arm and down the other. The mild tingling she had been feeling grew more intense wherever he touched and when his fingers trickled over her shoulders to her other arm, smoldering trails of sparks were left behind. His hands sensitized every inch of the back of her body, from shoulders to heels. And when she was about to scream at him to be done with it, he came around to her front and began working his way back up from her toes.

She told herself she could wait, that she should appreciate the steady building of her need, that the release would be that much better when it finally happened. But when his fingers moved from her thighs to her stomach, avoiding the neediest part of her, she couldn't hold back the disappointed sigh. "Gabriel, please, I'm dying."

His hands eased up her sides and cupped her breasts. "No, you're not. You're hot, but you're in no danger." She gasped as he scraped his palms over her nipples. "Let me assure you, my Moon Goddess, I'm hot too. But I'm not ready to finish it yet, because I've been waiting to do this for too long."

She felt him lift and knead her breasts and then his firm, wet mouth closed over one peak. Slow, controlled actions were discarded as he covered each breast with eating kisses that became more demanding by the second.

"Please!"
she cried, clutching his shoulders. He raised his head to take her mouth while he urged her down to lie on the pouch.

She parted her legs, anticipating his immediate entrance, but he stretched out beside her instead. When she tried to turn toward him, he pressed her back again and broke the kiss to say, "Just a bit longer. There is something I wish to learn while I'm still able."

She was beyond understanding. His mouth was hard and hungry when it returned to hers. His fingers were no longer gentle as they raked over her stomach and into the curls between her legs. With a desperate moan, she arched into his hand. As he used her own dampness to stroke her, she grasped his shaft and moved her hand to the steady rhythm he set.

His tortured groan let her know his need was no less than hers and yet he seemed intent on giving her a release without coupling. She didn't care how it came, only that it should. But wanting it to happen didn't make it so. Simultaneously, their movements became more hurried as they strived to help each other escape the rampaging fever.

Breathing heavily, Gabriel abruptly stopped his efforts and raised himself over her. "It has to be this," he said in a strained voice and plunged into her body.

Her cry this time was of relief and pleasure combined, but it was only momentary, for now that his fire had joined with hers, the blaze of passion burned even hotter. She wrapped her legs around him and lifted her hips with each of his powerful thrusts so that he was embedded as deeply as possible. Though the need to climax was overwhelming, she didn't want the delicious torment to stop.

Higher and higher into the heavens she rode the spiraling sensations, until there was no heaven, no ground, no bodies. Only pleasure and the raging inferno demanding its tribute.

As it had been in her dream the other night, she was suddenly at the base of an erupting volcano and scaled her way up to its mouth. A tongue of fire shot up from the bubbling cauldron of lava and shaped itself into a man.

Shara!
he called and held out his arms.

In a panic she looked behind her for an escape route but the path through the flowing lava was no longer there. The only escape from the volcano was through its fiery heart. Leaping off the rim into the man's arms, she spoke his name in return.
Gabriel!

He caught her as the eruption rocked through them and held her securely against him in the rippling aftermath. It was like nothing she had ever imagined, yet it was no less incredible than she had known sharing herself with Gabriel would be.

Shara knew everything had returned to normal when she recognized the feel of the sleeping pouch beneath her and the weight of the man above and inside her. She opened her eyes and gave him a shy smile. "An experiment, huh? Did we learn anything?"

He gave her a dimpled grin and rolled them both onto their sides without separating their bodies. "I think so. First of all, we've confirmed that only coupling will cool the fever. No substitutions. Second, either passion can trigger the fever or the period of relief just took a drastic drop. It's only been about four hours since the last peak."

She didn't want to think about that, so she revealed a different concern. "I saw the volcano again. Only this time I knew it was you."

"Yes," he said, picking up her bewilderment. "I saw it also, and I heard you say my name this time, but it was more like a hallucination than a dream. So now it's certain. We're not only sharing the fever, there's a mental connection of some kind, in spite of my jammer and without being formally joined."

Shara had a strong feeling that the vision had a deeper meaning than the obvious but it made her uncomfortable to think about that also, so she pushed it to the back of her mind.

She felt him flex within her body and her muscles hugged him in return. Having decided to momentarily shelve her personal codes of propriety, she could admit that she liked feeling him inside her. Bending her knee, she drew one leg up to his hip to bring him even deeper.

"There is one more thing we learned," he said in a husky voice. "They were right."

Shara wrinkled her forehead. "They who?" He laughed and a spear of pleasure darted through her.

"Whoever they are who said,
nothing in life is as pleasurable as coupling during the mating fever
." Instead of agreeing with him, she lowered her lashes and he experienced a very strange feeling in the pit of his stomach. "Shara? What's wrong?"

She shook her head but kept her eyes averted.

"Please look at me." As she complied, he noticed her eyes were still the delicious shade of chocolate he liked so much and his hunger for her returned full force. But there was something he hungered for even more—assurance that she had enjoyed the foreplay and coupling as greatly as he. "Am I mistaken? Was that not the most incredible physical experience you've ever had?"

She heard the insecurity in his voice and had to tell the truth. "I could count the number of
experiences
I've had on one hand and none of them could be described as incredible. I didn't know it could be like that for me. It was really quite... wonderful."

His reward for her honesty was a kiss so sweet, it almost made her forget he was the enemy.

As the kiss became less gentle, however, she realized that he wasn't withdrawing from her body or growing tired. And if he didn't sleep, she couldn't do what she needed to do. "Gabriel?"

"Hmmm?" he asked though his grin hinted that he knew her question.

"As I said, I don't have much experience with... intimacy, so I hope you don't mind my asking this. Each time we've coupled there's been evidence that you had a release, even if you don't clearly remember it. But you're still, um..."

He shifted his hips forward and she inhaled sharply. "Aroused?"

She nodded. "Is that normal for you?"

"Drek
no," he said with a laugh, "and thank the stars for that. If it was, I may have had the bothersome appendage removed years ago." When he saw the shock on her face, he laughed again. "I'm joking. But it does get rather uncomfortable going around all day in this condition."

Shara swallowed nervously. "All day?"

"And night. The swelling subsides somewhat but not completely." He wondered what she'd say if he told her this
condition
of his began weeks before the first time-hop—when he first saw her in her lab.

Though Shara couldn't know precisely how he felt, she could certainly empathize. Each time they'd coupled before this, she had been left wanting. Even now she was far from totally sated. She mulled over the problem and came up with a logical solution that could also help her get on with the task she'd planned. "I think we need to run another experiment."

"Oh?" His hand skimmed down her back and massaged her bottom.

She closed her eyes to hold on to the tiny tremors of pleasure he was giving her.
"I... oh my... we
should endeavor to find a way to bring us...
you
some relief." He partially withdrew and slowly entered her again. "Um... we know that once is not enough to... relax you. Perhaps a... a repetition is..." His movements eloquently finished the sentence for her.

The experiment was mutually exhausting but they worked at it until they had their conclusion—three couplings were required to bring complete relief... and put Gabriel to sleep.

Unable to let go of the lovely feeling of contentment too quickly, Shara lay snuggled in his embrace for some time, yet she couldn't allow herself to sleep. She had work to do.

After a while she whispered his name and when he didn't stir, she eased away from him then paused to make sure he didn't awaken before she left him completely. Once she was free, she wasted no time getting to work.

Gabriel reached out in his sleep to bring Shara close again and her absence awakened him. With a feeling of dread, he opened his eyes and searched the immediate area. He felt some relief when he saw her a few feet away sitting cross-legged on her tunic, working her microputer. It wasn't as bad as if she'd abandoned him but it wasn't good either.

Beauty was on her knee and there was a small pile of static papers on each side of her. As he watched, she picked one up from the smaller pile on her left side, peeled a hair off, inserted it in the microputer, pressed keys then put the paper and hair on her right side.

He could think of two reasons for her not being asleep. One, she wasn't tired or satisfied enough. He knew without a single doubt that wasn't the case. Thus, the second, more troublesome reason remained. She had stayed awake on purpose—and put him to sleep on purpose—in order to work without his knowledge.

Why would she resort to being devious? He had no objection to her testing the hair samples. Besides, the tests could have waited until she returned to their own time.

There was only one answer. In spite of all his warnings, she was still planning to stop Khameira's ancestor from going to Terra.

It seemed to him that after everything that had happened to them, she would have been frightened enough to realize that she lacked the experience to do anything on her own. But going off alone was apparently what she was planning to do. Just in case he was wrong though, he decided to wait until she made a move to leave before pouncing on her.

He could hardly believe how foolish and stubborn she could be. What if she had taken off and the fever struck again? How could she place more importance on her search than on her own life?

That question stopped him cold. How many times had he risked his life to obtain one more piece of information? How many times had he been frightened out of his wits and still pushed on toward a goal he'd set for himself? Too many times to count.