The wind began to pick up, blowing more dead leaves across my body. Streaming my hair across my face, so that for a moment I couldn’t see what Mistral was doing. The wind was damp, as if it rode an edge of rain. But it never rained in the dead gardens.
I felt his mouth laid on the mound between my legs, resting on the tight, curling hair. I couldn’t see, but I knew what he was doing. He bit me, and I yelled, “Enough.”
I used one hand to push my hair out of the way, so I could look down my body and see him. He gave one quick flick of his tongue between my legs. That one small touch sped my pulse and opened my mouth in a silent O.
“You know what I want to do,” he said. He spoke with his hands around my thighs, fingers digging in just a little, his face just above my groin, so close that his breath touched me there.
I nodded, because I didn’t trust my voice. On the one hand, I didn’t want him to hurt me; on the other, I did want him to come just to that edge of truly hurting me. I liked that edge. I liked it a lot.
I finally found my voice, and it almost didn’t sound like me, so breathy, so eager. “Go slow, and when I say enough, you stop.”
He gave that smile again that filled his cloud-dazed eyes with a fierce light, and I realized it wasn’t my imagination. Lightning played through the heavy grey clouds of his eyes. It had gone away, but now it was back, and it filled them with a flashing white, white light, so that his eyes looked blind for a second. The wind slowed, and the air felt heavy, thick, and I felt an edge of electricity in the air.
He spread me wide, using his fingers, so strong, so thick. He licked the length of me, back and forth until I writhed under his mouth and hands. Only then did he press his mouth over me. Only then did he let me feel the edge of his teeth around the most intimate parts of my body.
He bit down slowly, so slowly, so carefully.
I breathed out, “Harder.”
He obeyed.
He took as much of my flesh down there into his mouth as he could fit, and bit me. Bit me so hard that it raised my upper body completely off the ground, and I screamed for him. But I didn’t scream stop, or enough. I just screamed, full-throated, spine bowing, staring down at him with wide eyes and opened mouth. I orgasmed for him, from the feel of his teeth in my most intimate flesh. I orgasmed for him, and even through the pleasure of it I changed my scream to “Stop, stop, oh, God, stop!” Even through that most overwhelming of pleasures, I could feel his teeth going just a little too far. When something hurts in the middle of orgasm, you need to stop — things usually only hurt when the afterglow begins to fade.
Again I screamed, “Stop,” and he stopped.
I fell back onto the ground, eyes unable to focus, fighting to breathe, unable to move. But even while my body lay helpless with the afterglow, I began to ache. I ached where his teeth had touched me there, and I knew that it was just going to hurt more later. I’d let my desire — and Mistral’s — send us too far over that fine edge.
His voice came. “I did not bleed you, and I did not bite you as hard there as I did on your breast.”
I nodded, because I couldn’t speak yet. The air was so dense with the coming storm that it made it harder to breathe, almost in the way the queen could make the air too thick to breathe.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
I found my voice. “A little.” The ache was becoming sharper. I had only a limited time before it was simply going to hurt. I wanted him to finish before the pleasure truly did become pain.
He crawled over my body on all fours, so that he wasn’t actually touching me, but he could see my face. “Are you all right, Princess?”
I nodded. “Help me turn over.”
“Why?”
“Because if we finish this with you on top, it’s going to hurt too much.”
“I was too rough,” he said, and he sounded so sad. Lightning flashed first in one eye then the other, as if it traveled from one side of his mind to the other. The light blue lightning bolt on his cheek paled in the brightness of it.
He started to crawl off me as if he were going to stop. I grabbed his arm. “Don’t stop, bright Goddess, don’t stop. Just help me roll over. If you take me from behind, you won’t be brushing up against the part of me you bruised.”
“If I have hurt you so badly, we must stop.”
My fingers tightened on his arm. “If I wanted to stop, I would say so. Everyone else has been too afraid of hurting me, and even if you went too far, I do like it. Mistral, I like it a great deal.”
He gave an almost shy smile. “I did notice.”
I smiled back at him. “Then let us finish what we started.”
“If you are sure.” In the moment he said it, and meant it, I knew that I would be safe alone with him. If he was willing to pass up some of the first intercourse he’d been offered in centuries for fear of my being hurt, then he had the discipline to control himself in private. Consort preserve us, but he had more discipline than I would have had. How many men would have turned down the finish, after a start like that? Not many, not many at all.
“I am sure,” I said.
He smiled again, and something moved above us. Something grey was in motion near the high domed ceiling. Clouds — there was a tiny knot of clouds up near the ceiling. I looked into Mistral’s face and said, “Fuck me, Mistral.”
“Is that an order, my princess?” He smiled when he said it, but there was an edge of something that wasn’t happy in his voice.
“Only if you want it to be.”
He looked down at me, then said, “I would rather do the ordering.”
“Then do it,” I said.
“Turn over,” he said. His voice did not have quite the firmness it had had earlier, as if he wasn’t sure I would obey.
I had recovered enough to roll over, though I was slow. He moved back until he knelt by my feet. “I want you on your hands and knees.”
I did what he asked, or ordered. It put me looking at Abeloec, who still knelt, motionless, at the top of our makeshift blanket. I expected to see lust, or something to let me know he was enjoying the show, but that wasn’t what was in his face. His smile was gentle, peaceful. It didn’t match what we were doing, at least not to me.
Mistral’s hands stroked my ass, and I felt him rub against my opening. The front of me was sore, but the rest of me was eager.
“You’re wet,” Mistral said.
“I know,” I said.
“You really did enjoy it.”
“Yes.”
“You really do like it that rough.”
“Sometimes,” I said. The tip of him rubbed around the edge, so close, but not inside.
“Now?” He made it a question.
I lowered my upper body, so that my lower body lifted toward him, pushing against the feel of him. Only his slight movement backward kept me from taking him into my body. I made a small sound of protest. The wind held the smell of rain, the press of silent thunder. The storm was coming, and I wanted him inside me when it came.
He laughed, that wonderful masculine sound. “I take that as a yes?”
“Yes,” I said. I pressed my cheek into the brittle leaves, my face, and hands, touching the dry ground. I had to close my eyes against the push of dead leaves and plants. I pushed my ass up at him, and asked, wordlessly, that he take me. I didn’t realize I was saying anything out loud, but I must have been. For then I heard my own voice chanting, “Please, please, please,” over and over, soft under my breath, my lips closer to the dead earth than to the man I was begging.
He pushed just the tip of himself inside me, and the wind changed instantly. It felt almost hot. I could still smell rain, but there was also a metallic smell. The scent of ozone, lightning. The air was hot and close, and I knew in that moment that it wasn’t that I wanted Mistral inside me when the storm broke, but that the storm would not come until he was inside me. He was the storm, as Abeloec had been the cup. Mistral was the heavy press of the air, and that neck-ruffling promise of lightning.