Twilight Illusions (24 page)
Read Twilight Illusions Online
Authors: Maggie Shayne
He reached her face, parted her mouth with his tongue and made love to it, even as he urged her thighs wider and nudged into her moistness. She arched her hips to take him inside, and he went, eagerly. Her slick entrance clenched him, squeezed him as he drove deeper, filling her up and retreating. Holding back, teasing her until she bounced beneath him, before he plunged into her once more. It was heaven. It was hell. It was slow, burning torture.
He rode her hard on the path to ecstasy, and when he hovered at the brink, he felt her teeth at his throat. She took his essence into her body, as release pounded through her. His own climax was his reply, and she clung to him as if she were drowning. Then relaxed beneath him. He felt her muscles unwind, one by one. She sighed long and low and her fingers wound in his hair again.
“That was like nothing I could have imagined.” A bare whisper. A new wonder in her voice.
He rolled off her to lie on his side, lifted her head to pillow it on his arm. “Your senses are heightened. You feel everything more thoroughly than before.” He kissed her cheek. It had happened too fast. He should have taken more time, made it last, drawn it out. It was over. Dammit, already it was over.
“You can say that again.” She opened her eyes to stare up at him, the laughter vanishing from the amber. “Ask me why I would have chosen to live, Damien.”
He swallowed hard, a small candle of hope igniting in his dark soul, just from the touch of the light in her eyes. He hated that glimmer. It would only make the impending disappointment harder to take. But he asked her. He grasped at the straw she dangled. “Why would you have chosen to live, Shannon?”
“Not just because I was afraid of death. Not for eternal life and health and youth. Not for all this strength and energy, or even for the chance to avenge Tawny's murder.”
She paused, her head lifting until her lips hovered a hairbreadth from his. Her eyes shot amber sparks at him, and the candle inside him flared brighter. “But because I love you.”
“Shannon⦔ He caught her head in his hands, kissed her, tasted her, dug into her mouth with his tongue.
“I'll never leave you, Damien. Gilgamesh. I'll be with you for always. You will never have to walk alone again. And neither will I.”
He kissed her again, deeply, and the slow healing of his oldest, deepest wound began.
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â¦it yearns and waits to be retouched
By someone who can take away
The memory of deathâ¦
Twilight Illusions
Copyright © 1994 by Margaret Benson
ISBN: 978-1-4268-0760-2
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