"Our chances of survival with Mona Sera are small either way," I whispered. "Don't you want to live now, fully? I do. I want to touch you. Have you touch me in return. I want to know what it's like to take a man into my body and truly enjoy it." I closed my eyes. "My body weeps for you. I want you so much. I've never felt like this before, ever."
"You wear silver," Gryphon said with surprise.
It took me a moment to comprehend what he was saying, so caught up was I in what I was feeling. My hand flew up to the cross I wore always around my neck, covering it. "I'm sorry. Does it hurt you?"
"Why would it hurt me? It lies against your skin, not mine."
"Does the holy cross bother you in any way?" I undid the clasp, walked away from him and dropped it into the drawer of a credenza set against the wall. Then I turned back to him. With the distance of the room between us, I felt that peculiar possession leave me and felt myself reverting back to my old self, filled with trepidation and self-consciousness, remembering once again that pain, not pleasure, was all that I usually harvested when I tangled men upon my bedding sheets.
"We can touch and look at the holy cross and enter churches without impunity. It is only the silver content that irritates us. Does not the feel of silver against your flesh disturb you in any manner?"
I shook my head in denial and crossed my arms over my bosom, coldly naked, coldly aware that I inhabited a body men would never consider voluptuous. That awareness prompted me to venture the conclusion: "Perhaps you are not pleased with my body."
"No," Gryphon said gravely. "Your body is most pleasing to me."
But in the sudden chaos of my emotions, I could not discern the truth of his words. I did not believe him. The pull between us was there and strong, but that seemed to be instinctive, something he couldn't control. His willful choice, however, was clear. He hadn't moved. He did not want me.
"I'm sorry." I laughed brittlely. "I don't seem to be too good of a seductress. Men are attracted to me at first but afterward they say I'm cold. And I am. Frozen inside."
"We are not attracted to humans," he explained again, quietly, patiently. "We do not feel with them what we would feel with another of our kind."
The irony was that I wasn't sure whether he included me in with those humans. "I see. You're right, of course, about us. We shouldn't…" I inched toward the haven of my bedroom. "I shouldn't have tried to force myself on you. I'm sorry."
Gryphon crossed the ten feet between us with one giant leap, moving so quickly, he wasn't even a blur. He was just suddenly standing there, an inch away from me. I gasped.
"I've changed my mind," he said softly, perverse man that he was.
Anger flared up, burning away my self-consciousness in a wonderful wash of cleansing heat. "I don't want your pity," I hissed, backing away from him, retreating into my bedroom, silently cursing the vagaries of all men, no matter what their kind.
"Good. Neither do I desire yours," he said shortly, pursuing me until the back of my knees bumped against the mattress. My bedroom was so small there was no room for anything other than the bed and bureau and a few feet of walking space.
"The last emotion I feel for you is pity," Gryphon said, his eyes soft and luminous. Unbuttoning his top two buttons, he tore his shirt over his head and let it drop to the ground. The sound of a zipper rasped loudly in the tense silence. Gracefully, he stepped out of his pants and stood before me, baring even more of himself to me than I had to him. I still had on my underwear. All that adorned him now was the white bandage on his left side. It did nothing to hide his glory.
I sank down onto the bed, my knees suddenly weak, marveling at the revelation of how lovely the male form could be. Clothes had hid him, masking him in commonness. Unclothed, his full beauty was revealed. He was divine.
I let my eyes wander freely over him, to and fro, over the excessive loveliness of his form. Allowed my visual senses to gorge without restraint on the sensual feast that he was after a lifelong famine. His chest rippled, more muscular than I could have imagined, more than that brief, tantalizing glimpse of his abdomen had hinted of when I had tended to his wound.
He was sleek, powerful, dangerous. A graceful, deadly predator with wide shoulders that tapered down to slim hips, powerful thighs, and thick calves roped with muscle. The only soft thing about him was his swathe of dark hair that fell in thick waves to tease his shoulders. My hands itched with the need to bury themselves in the long strands, to discover if they would be as soft and silky to the touch as they promised to be. His chest was smooth perfection, needing no other adornment but the twin areolas that were the color of warm chestnuts and would no doubt be as tasty. Crisp strands of hair arrowed down his lower belly to bush in a dark frame around his stiff, rampant rod that rose up eagerly to meet me, an elegant melding of form with function. It brushed against the hard ridges of his abdomen, bobbing almost as if in greeting. A nervous giggle escaped me and I clamped a hand over my mouth.
"Do you not still want me, Mona Lisa?" he asked softly, his dark eyes glowing.
I licked my dry lips. His sizzling eyes followed the movement.
"I will always want you," was my simple, truthful reply.
His eyes squeezed shut, then opened, his eyes blazing like burning sapphire. "You are more than I ever hoped to find, a Queen I never dared to even dream of. Will you not lay your hands upon me? Grant me permission to lay my hands upon you?"
He crawled with sinuous grace onto the bed, his knees resting on either side of me, sinking down onto the mattress, moving carefully as if afraid of frightening me. He needn't have bothered. The extreme lust I was feeling for him, the desperate control I was exerting to not fall ravenously on him and devour him up was scaring me near to death as it was. I scooted back a few inches and fell onto my back as he straddled me and lowered himself down, his arms braced on either side of my head, stopping just short of contact in an unnatural distance that was harder to maintain than just the natural touching of skin against skin would have been.
"Do you not wish to touch me?" he asked.
"Yes." Oh, sweet mother may I, yes! Taking a deep breath, I reached out a trembling hand and lay my fingers upon his chest. His skin was cool and smooth, silken skin over living rock. It felt so good it edged toward pain. We both groaned with the thrill of contact. I snatched my hand back.
He rolled in a fluid motion onto his left side. I turned to face him. He reached out his right hand and I was comforted, reassured when I saw its fine trembling. He touched me lightly in the same spot that I had touched him, just above the heart. I gasped at the pleasure of it. Nothing more, just that light touch, and liquid desire trickled down my thigh. The scent of my arousal thickened and permeated the room. Gryphon's nostrils flared and he breathed harshly, deeply, but did nothing more. When I could stand it no longer, I reached out and placed my entire palm flat against his chest. He shuddered and grated, "Yes. More."
I stroked him, unable to stop myself, not wanting to, and his hand moved as mine did. A light stroke along the collarbones, a second hand to trace along the line of his shoulder, down the slope of his arm. I buried both hands in the cool falling silk of his hair that felt even better than I had imagined, and made a surprising discovery at his nape. "You have soft, downy… feathers?"
He hummed an acknowledgment, absorbed in the feel and play of my own hair.
Suddenly, I had to taste him. I whispered my need, "Gryphon," and rose up on my knees and lowered my lips to his. Satin smoothness. Sweet coolness. And soft. So soft. I brushed my lips against his, enjoying the smooth glide of skin against silken skin until he moaned his need for more and parted his lips. My tongue slipped into the shockingly warm cavern of his mouth and I lapped along his teeth, traced the wet lining of his cheeks, and brushed against the roughness of his tongue. Gryphon groaned again, gripped my shoulders, and pulled me down to him. The pleasure-pain of flesh against flesh, the meeting of my peaked nipples against the smooth hardness of his chest, the brush of his warm, swollen member against my soft belly spurred him into action. He rolled, pinning me beneath him, his lips moving aggressively against my lips, his tongue entwining with mine in a rub-slide-enter-retreat plunging motion that had me parting my legs and arching my hips against his. I pulled him to me, wanting more of his delicious weight. I slid my hands with frantic greed down his back, over his slender waist, to the succulent rounded globes of his bottom, urging him to come into me.