Tempered (A Daughters of the People Novel) (Daughters of the People Series) (16 page)

Her own breath
caught in her lungs, refusing to move, choked by the power of his words, the taut
need in his voice. “I would not mind this jumping thing so much, if it means
having you the way you described. Perhaps you would care to demonstrate.”

His laugh was
low and male and scraped across her skin, exposing the billowing desire heating
her blood. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Aaron eased
Hawthorne onto her back. She went willingly, allowing him to cover her as his
mouth found her ear, teasing it with gentle nips of his sharp, white teeth. The
tip of his tongue darted out, flicking her earlobe, then trailed hot,
open-mouthed kisses down her throat, sucking lightly. Her skin tingled under
his attentive touch and her hands clutched the back of his head, tangling in
the dark, silky curls.

It was
beautiful, the way he built trust, with slow sweeps of his hands along her
sides and the brush of his thumbs in the tender creases under her breasts, with
his lips sliding over her nipples, then his tongue, until they were tight nubs,
aching and tender. She writhed under him, holding nothing back, wishing to
please him as he pleased her. Did he know how she yearned for him, that she
dreamed of him as he did of her and buried those dreams so they would not haunt
her waking hours?

He explored her
the way he had that very first night, patiently, tenderly, thoroughly, strumming
the need ever higher. Her hips lifted from the bed, seeking his touch, and her
heart thrummed in her chest, galloping in time with the rhythm of his hands on
her flesh.

His thumb
stroked her clitoris, sending ripples of heat through her groin. “So wet,” he murmured,
and then he tasted her, laving her sex with the flat of his tongue over and
over again, pushing her to a fevered pitch with each sweep.

Her hands
clenched into fists around his hair and her control shattered completely. “Now,
Aaron, please,” she begged on a long gasp of air. “I need you.”

He
mmmd
against her sex, drawing a cry from her that held, suspended in the air around
them. His fingers pushed into her and his mouth latched onto her clitoris,
sucking and teasing, and her heart cried for him as he lifted her up and up and
up, so high she floated on a hot cloud of need. With another flick of his
tongue, she burst like rain on a warm summer day, jolting as lightning raced
through her and thunder rolled, and fell until he grounded her and she
rediscovered the warm, reassuring presence of her lover.

“Aaron,” she
whispered.

He rose above
her, yanked his shirt off and shoved his underwear down, freeing the hard
length of his erection. She saw him clearly in the room’s dim light, the
glitter of his eyes as he gazed upon her, the slash of his mouth in a face gone
rigid with desire, and the long ropes of muscle and sinew curving around the solid
frame of his body under the dusky beauty of his smooth skin.

He sat back on
his haunches with his knees bent under him and pulled her down the bed, draping
her thighs across his. “Tell me if this gets uncomfortable.”

She nodded solemnly,
content to follow his lead. He braced above her and slid the length of his
erection into her waiting body, filling her with his delicious breadth, tightly
sheathing himself within her welcoming heat.

She rippled
around him, an echo of the pleasure he’d given her. A strangled groan erupted
from him and his fingers dug into her hip. “I thought we could do it like this
without… God, you feel so right.” He panted the words out in shallow breaths.
“Maybe you should be on top.”

No.
No
.
She wanted him above her, wanted to be able to feel him taking his pleasure in
this way, wanted to accept him and dig her nails into his back and wrap her
legs around his waist, as other women did with their lovers. Two millennia of
fear and pain was enough. It was time to begin conquering it.

She opened her
arms to him and beckoned him closer. “Come to me, Aaron. Lie upon me and build
trust.”

He shook his
head, a harsh jerk, sending the ends of his hair bouncing along his neck. “Not
like that. It’s not good for you like that.”

“It will be this
time,” she assured him.

“Promise me
you’ll stop me as soon as it bothers you.” His eyes glittered down at her, the
hard need in them a seductive call. “Promise me.”

“I promise.”

“Don’t lie to
me,” he warned.

“As you said, I
am a terrible liar.”

He laughed
softly and eased down onto her, covering her fully, and her breath choked in
her lungs. The memory of that day dredged its way up from the dim recesses of
time, the clawing hands and the hard, continual pain between her legs, and the
screams of her mother as the lash fell upon her back, no less vivid for that
distance. He rolled to the side so that she was not fully beneath him, as if he
knew what horrors her mind held, and her breath unclogged and whistled cleanly
out.

This was Aaron,
her Aaron, who would never knowingly harm her, not like that. Aaron with his
gentle touch and sweet kiss and beautiful, clever hands. Aaron, whom Lali
trusted so fiercely she had claimed him as her surrogate father. Aaron, who had
brought Una back from the dead, and with her, all the good that had been lost
upon her death.

This was the man
who had built trust with her and introduced her to Godzilla and very nearly
captured her heart during their sojourn two months prior. She latched on to his
presence and held it in her mind, and it loomed large, crowding out all the
evil clamoring through her head.

His fingers
trailed over her temple and down the curve of her cheek. “You ok?”

“I shall be.”
She nuzzled his hand and brought her own up to explore the strength of his arm,
the curve of hard muscle and firm flesh. “Love me, Aaron.”

“I will,” he
murmured. He pressed his mouth to hers as his hips found a quiet rhythm and his
hands stoked her desire, and when his breath rushed out of his lungs and his
heart pounded so hard she could feel it with her own, he rolled onto his back,
taking her with him. She moved over him then, accepting his touch, encouraging
the hard thrusts of his body as his hands gripped her hips and their bodies
slapped together.

“Hawthorne.”

His voice was
low and thick and taut. She shivered and her own need rose to meet his.

“So close,” he
said, and he came, throbbing his release into her on a low, shuddering moan.

She sighed with
him, savoring the desire still rippling unreleased in her own body, and lay
upon him, enjoying the vestiges of their passion. His arms came around her,
holding her in spite of the sweat coating them both.

“You didn’t
come.” He brushed a kiss over the top of her head and tightened his grip. “I’m
sorry.”

“Why?” She
smiled against his chest, secure, content. “You pleasured me earlier, as you
will later. It was enough this time to watch you take your own.”

“It wasn’t
right. You shouldn’t have let me stay on top.”

She ignored the
recriminations in his voice, the guilt he held so close to the surface. “Aaron,
sweet, if I had not wished you to be there, it would not have been so. You know
this.”

His chest expanded
under her cheek. “I wanted you to be able to find something good there,
something to erase all the bad things that happened.”

“Those things
will never leave me, Aaron. They can only be subsumed.” She raised up and caught
his gaze with her own, willing him to understand. “I choose to revel in the
glory of what we have and not foster regret for that which may never be. Can
you not do the same?”

His mouth turned
up at the corner, a half smile that warmed her as surely as his touch. “Yeah. I
guess I can, if you can, too.”

“I shall,” she
said firmly. “Now, the night is still quite young. How shall we pass the time?”

“I wonder,” he
murmured, and she laughed and reveled and chose to believe.

* * *

The next few
days passed in a blur for Aaron. He spent his time working or playing with Lali
and his nights sneaking into Hawthorne’s bed, loving her for as long as he
could before sleep clasped them in its greedy grip.

The puzzle of
her past faded from his mind. The more time he spent with her, the more
ridiculous his earlier obsession with it seemed. What did the truth matter as
long as they were together?

They finished a
rough draft of the graphic novel’s script at the end of his third full week in
Tellowee, not quite two weeks before Thanksgiving. The work went quickly. The
closer the script neared to completion, the less input he needed from her. Soon,
he’d no longer have an excuse to stay. The artwork could be done anywhere as
long as he had her ideas down on paper for how the story should flow.

With the script
almost finished, Hawthorne snuck away more and more frequently. Business, she
said, though he gathered her absences had something to do with Isolde’s visit
just before Halloween and, oddly enough, with Bobby Upton’s presence the week
before that. The people traipsing through Hawthorne’s home seemed tougher
somehow, closed off and hardened, the way she sometimes was. He puzzled over it
in the rare moments when he was alone, and couldn’t quite eradicate the knot of
worry lodged in his chest.

While Hawthorne
was preoccupied with business, Aaron took care of Lali. Ruby came and went, but
seemed more intent on whatever secret project Hawthorne was working on than on
spending time with her sister. Lali didn’t mind. She was happy to spend time
with him, whether he was working or not. He took her to the park and the
library, toured Tellowee’s primary school with her, and took her swimming in
the IECS’ indoor pool. The faces in the tiny village soon became familiar
enough for him to place parent with child and, often, man with Daughter.

Though he still
had no idea what that meant.

He didn’t push
Hawthorne. Whatever she was doing consumed so much of her energy, he couldn’t
bring himself to press for answers. They would come eventually. For the first
time since she’d told him of her past, he was content to wait.

Maria began to
prepare for the upcoming holiday feast a couple of weeks before the big day.
One day at lunch not long after, she said, “Will your family come out to visit
for the holiday, Aaron?”

“I promised my
mother I’d be home for Thanksgiving.”

A heavy silence
descended around the table. He paused in the middle of scooping a hunk of beef
out of his stew. Maria’s face had sagged into a worried frown and Hawthorne had
gone rigid.

“What?” he
asked.

“Now is not the
time to leave the protection of my home, Aaron,” Hawthorne said. Her eyes were
cold and flat, her mouth a thin line. “It is not safe.”

“That’s
ridiculous. What could happen between here and San Francisco? Besides, I promised.
If I don’t go, Ma will never let me hear the end of it.”

“Better to risk
your mother’s anger.” She glanced at Lali, who seemed oblivious to the thick
tension gathering between the adults. “We shall discuss this tonight.”

“There’s nothing
to discuss,” he said, and refused to wither under the weight of her gaze.

That night, they
tucked Lali into bed and read her one story each, then kissed her goodnight. As
soon as Hawthorne pulled the little girl’s door nearly closed for the night,
she snagged his elbow in a hard grip and frog marched him to his room.

She closed the
door behind them, and he shook her hand off. “What is with you today? You’ve
been as mean as a hornet since lunch.”

She rounded on
him, pinning him with an hard stare. “You will remain in Tellowee until it is
safe for you to leave.”

“No, I won’t.
Christ, Hawthorne. Ma’s expecting me to come home and I’m not breaking her
heart just because you’re in a tizzy.”

“Do not be
foolish, Aaron. The Eternal Order is on the move…”

He huffed out an
exasperated laugh. “I don’t even know what that is.”

“There is
insufficient time to explain properly.” Her fingers twitched and clenched
together, and her expression softened. “You must trust me.”

“I might if
you’d tell me what’s going on.”

“You would not
understand.”

“Then make me.”
He cupped her shoulders, pressing his fingers into her tense muscles. “Is this
about Isolde?”

Hawthorne
clutched his waist, digging her fingers into his flesh. “She may be a key
figure in a clandestine group…”

“The Eternal
Order?”

She nodded once,
a solemn bow of her head. “Members of the Order seek to undermine the People.
It is complicated, the history too deep for you to learn in such a short time.”

“Try me.”

“Why should I?”
She dropped her hands and shrugged off his touch. “You have made your position
on my past quite clear.”

“I told you I
was ready to listen.”

“It is not
enough.” Her voice sharpened, slicing through him in quick twists. “And it is
far too late for that.”

His heart dipped
and thudded. “What do you mean, it’s too late? Are you saying it’s over?”

“Foolish man.
Would I struggle to convince you to stay if I did not want you here?” She
blinked and drew in a ragged breath. “A hundred years ago, I would have felt no
compunction in chaining you for your own safety. Now, I must bow to your will.”