She took advantage of the new freedom of her own hands to raise them to Blade's head. She ran her fingers through his hair, twirling the long tough strands between them, then bringing her hands down to stroke his cheeks. Her grip on his face tightened, and she tried to pull it down to bring his lips against hers.
She might as well have tried to pull the head off a stone statue. The cords in Blade's neck stood out as he easily resisted the tug of her hands.
Then suddenly his eyes were looking into hers, his neck muscles relaxed, and his head swooped down. His lips pressed down on hers, strongly, insistently, the lips of a man with an utter conviction that he wants something and will get it. Blade opened his mouth, and his lips spread out to surround Alanyra's, curling over and under them, warm and seeking. Even more warm, even more seeking, his tongue crept out from between those white teeth, to play against her mouth. Her own tongue came out to meet his, as though it had been drawn out.
She could hear Blade's breathing quicken, and she began to feel her own doing the same. The warmth in her belly was growing faster and farther too. It was growing faster and farther than she had ever felt it grow with any man before. Only charging into a battle had ever made her feel this way. But now-
Now Blade's lips were pulling away from hers. A moment's frustration. Then she felt them caressing her throat, the sides of her neck, the lobes of her small ears. It was as though a spark-fish were sending little jots of its life-spirit through her. She twisted in his arms, and this time she did whimper. But it was not in frustration. Slowly she was losing the ability to sense anything outside the two of them, herself and Blade, standing here on the sand, slowly writhing against each other, slowly exciting each other to a higher and higher pitch.
His hands were shifting from her buttocks to her hips now, tightening their grip, lifting her straight up into the air. She rose until his eyes could look straight into hers for a moment. A brief moment. His head dipped, and she felt his lips moving on her shoulders and down over her breasts. The nipples had long since stiffened into almost painfully tight little buds. Now his lips were around them, and once more it felt as though he were drawing sparks out of her body. These lips were warm and wet, and they were absolutely maddening. She wanted to scream. And this, all of it, while he held her in his hands in midair, as though she were a child. For a moment fear of such strength in a man almost chilled her desire.
That lasted only seconds. He lifted her higher and higher for a moment, then slowly lowered her down on the piled weed. It crackled under her weight, and she felt it prickle against her bare skin.
Then all other sensation vanished as he lowered himself down upon and into her. Deep-deep-incredibly deep! In a second her whole existence came to be focused around what was in her, sliding in and out of her, driving her slowly higher and higher in her passion. She whimpered again, sobbed, bit her lips until they bled, to keep from screaming or shouting or bursting out into hysterical laughter.
Then she was not rising slowly any more, but hurtling up toward her peak. She felt that peak growing and swelling within her, farther, faster-then it exploded within her. She clawed at Blade's back. She ground her hips and buttocks into the weeds, trying to twist and turn herself around his maleness, to get more and more of it. She wanted more of it, even while the furious pulsing spasms ripped through her muscles. She raised her legs and pounded her feet on Blade's buttocks, trying to hold him, trying to drive him deeper into herself.
And he was still moving, still solid, still driving into her-and now she was driving up toward a second peak, and this time she could feel that he was coming along with her. His eyes were glazed, his breath rasped, his whole body seemed wound up like the cord of a crossbow. Then all the tension went out of his body, and it was heaving and twisting and writhing along with hers. All the breath went out of his lungs in a single long rasping wssssssh, and it seemed that all the fluid went out of his body in a series of powerful, hot pulses.
Eventually the erotic fog cleared out of Alanyra's head so that her senses began working normally again. Her mind remembered where she was, who she was-and who she was with. She raised herself on one elbow and looked cautiously at Blade.
His eyes met hers. His face crinkled into a smile, and he said quietly, «Lady Alanyra. I would like some food, if you can manage it. And without any drugs in it this time.»
It was a long time before Alanyra could stop laughing enough to say yes.
Chapter TWELVE
Blade realized that there was no easy way to influence a woman as intelligent, able, and strong-willed as Alanyra. Certainly just making love to her wasn't going to be enough. Of course she would be far more ready to listen to him on almost anything than she might have been otherwise. But he was still going to have to be able to talk to her seriously if he wanted to get her help.
He wanted and needed her help more badly than he dared tell her. She seemed to have some vague glimmering of an idea similar to his own-finding some way to peace between the Sea Cities and the Fishmen-the Sea Masters. Some way to peace, and an end to the preposterous and futile bloodshed of their three-centuries' old war. It was more than Blade had expected, to find someone like that among the Sea Masters. If Autocrat Krodrus felt the same way, as Blade suspected he did well, something might be arranged.
Blade would have done his best to enlist Alanyra in his cause even if she hadn't already been more than half in sympathy with it. She was intelligent, strong-minded, and a leader among the High Clans of the Sea Masters-an invaluable ally. If he couldn't make peace in the crystal seas with her aid, he could at least try to get out of the Sea Masters' Reefs and back to the Sea Cities with a whole skin. Blade had been prepared to risk that skin any number of times in good causes, but he generally preferred to keep it as intact as possible, if he had a reasonable chance to do so. The suicidally inclined do not make very good secret agents, or very long-lived ones.
All this meant that Blade's work was only just nicely begun after he finished making love to Alanyra for the first time. He knew that if he could get proof of his guess that someone in Nurn was playing games with the two sea peoples, he would have Alanyra firmly on his side. More important, he would be able to convince others in both Talgar and the Reefs, and so create a faction among each people working for peace. Neither of Nurn's customers had much love for the Empire; that was obvious. If the Empire stood revealed as an open enemy in all but name-well, things might happen. Blade didn't know how many of them might happen before he was snatched away from the crystal seas, back to Home Dimension. But he was determined to get as much done as possible.
Unfortunately he couldn't do nearly as much as he had hoped to do among the Sea Masters. He could not move freely, for one thing. Alanyra said this was for his own safety, and Blade believed her. After three hundred years of war, the Fishmen didn't look on the Talgarans any more kindly than the Talgarans looked on them. Nor could he even talk freely with the warriors and scribes of Clan Gnyr.
«Most of them would not talk to you at all,» Alanyra told him. «Those few who talked to you would most likely not be able to answer most of your questions, even were they willing. You might find one who could understand your questions and answer them. And it would be even odds that he would simply be laying a trap for you, to discover your plans and betray you.»