aving the warm shelter between her thighs. Cushions scattered around them, fell on the floor. Her eyes were tightly shut, her mouth forming soundless words.
Devin began to drive himself into her as if to drive away all the demons and the hurts, all the brutal deadening truths that were the world of the Palm in their day. His own climax when it came left him shuddering and limp, lost to where he was, only dimly clinging to what he knew to be his name.
He heard her whispering it softly, over and over. She moved gently out from under him. He rolled over on his back, eyes closed. He felt her fingers glide along his skin. He could not move. She was playing with his hands, caressing and guiding them out from his sides. Her lips and fingers danced down his chest and belly, over his satiated sex and further down, exploring along his thighs and legs, and down.
By the time he was aware of what she'd done he was bound hand and foot to the four posts of her bed, spreadeagled beneath her. His eyes flew open, startled and alarmed. He struggled. Uselessly, he was held in bonds of silk looped and knotted.
"That," said Alienor in a husky voice, "was a wonderful beginning to a night. Shall I teach you something now?" She reached, naked and magnificent, flushed and scored with his marks upon her, and brought something up from the floor beside the bed. His eyes grew wide when he saw what it was she held.
"You are binding me against my will," Devin said, a little desperately. "This is not my idea of how to come together in love." He twisted hard again, at shoulder and hip; the silken bonds held firm.
Alienor's answering smile was luminous. She was more beautiful in that moment than he could ever have imagined a woman being. In the huge dark pools of her eyes something stirred, primal and dangerous and terrifyingly arousing. He felt, improbably soon, a quickening in his sex. She saw it. Her smile deepened. One long fingernail stroked lightly, almost meditatively along his gathering tumescence.
"It will be," murmured his dark lady, the Lady of Castle Borso. Her lips parted showing the sharp white teeth behind. He registered the taut firmness of her nipples as she opened her legs to straddle him again. He saw her caress what she had claimed from the carpet by the bed. Beyond her, by the fire, the wolfhound had its handsome head raised, watching them.
"It will be," Alienor said again. "Trust me. Let me teach you now, and show you, this, and then this, and soon it will be your idea of how to come together. Oh yes, Devin, it will be very soon."
She moved upon his body and the candlelight was deflected and then hidden as she came down over him. He struggled but only for a moment for his heart was pounding again and desire was overwhelmingly upon him, just as Alienor was, just as her own complex needs could be seen rising in her again, in the darkness of her eyes before they closed, in her movements above him, and in the ragged, reaching, upward straining of her breath.●●文●檔●共●享●與●在●線●閱●讀●
And before the night was over, before the half of it had passed, with the last candles of winter burning down, she had proven herself right, terribly, over and over again. And at the end even, she was the one who lay bound and open between the four pillars of the world that was her bed and Devin was no longer quite sure of who he was that he should be doing to her the things he was. The things that made her whisper and then cry aloud his name as she did, over and again. But he did know that she had changed him and had found a place within him where his need to seek oblivion was equal to her own.
The candle on his side of the bed burned out some time later. There was a small, scented drifting of smoke. The pattern of light and shade in the room changed; neither of them was asleep, they both noticed it. The fire was down to its embers; the dog still lay before it, its magnificent head stretched out on its paws.
"You had better go," Alienor said, stroking his near shoulder absentl