“Can’t you feel that it is?”
“Yes, but your feelings and mine, they’re tangling—and this is all very intense.”
“I understand that.” He took a breath, instructing himself to calm down. “It’s intense for me, too, and all very good.”
“I’m glad.” With a wicked sparkle in her eyes, she undid the fastening of his pants, easing them over his hips. Jak held very, very still, closing his eyes, certain that the smallest wrong move would have him spending with ignominious speed. “Should I do this like you did?” Stella asked, peeling the fabric away so his turgid cock sprang free. “In the carriage.”
He groaned, the memory only spurring him to greater extremity. “I think it’s not going to matter,” he gritted out, then risked looking at her. Her dark head was bent as she studied him, and he nearly came right then simply from having her look at him. “My star,” he nearly panted, sliding his hands through her hair. She looked up, eyes wide and dark with desire. “Please.”
She smiled, softly and sweetly. “A kind of healing.” Setting her hands on his abdomen, she slid them down, following with her gaze, her native green magic sparking through his skin—and she wrapped her hands around his shaft.
His eyes rolled back in his head, his whole body going rigid, and an inarticulate, strangled gargle of sound erupted as he fisted his hands in her hair. Probably much too hard, but he couldn’t help himself, and she didn’t seem to notice. Gripping his cock firmly at the base with one hand, she stroked up with the other. She had been paying attention in the carriage, her technique perfection, her healer’s hands striking the exact balance between firm and gentle. His knees went to water, and he sank to the floor, Stella following him down.
Kneeling before him, she watched him gravely. “This is good, yes?”
“Danu, yes.” He tried to relax his grip on her hair, but she stroked him again, and his hips rode up in helpless need. “Stella…” he ground out.
One more stroke of her exquisite hands and he lost himself, body arcing, spending his seed in convulsive bursts that left him sagging, breathing ragged, face buried in the silken mass of her hair. She stroked him soothingly, attuned to his sensations, following along with meticulous attention.
“You are a miraculous lover,” he whispered.
“Am I?” She rubbed her cheek against his, finding his mouth with a searching kiss, then studying his face with grave attention. “I want to be for you. It’s lovely to give pleasure this way, like healing, only there’s no pain to overcome, so it rises to another, even better level.”
As her words penetrated his pleasure-fogged brain, he got a grip on himself, unwound his hands from her hair, and gently moved her hands from him. She gave him a questioning look. “Is something wrong?”
“No.” Rising to his feet again, he brought her with him, then kissed her and stepped back. “But let me clean up. We’re going to start over.”
“Start over?” Looking at her hands covered with his fluids, she licked one finger curiously. The sight had him hardening again. “Tastes like the sea,” she said, crystal-gray eyes alight with innocent wonder. The artlessness she brought to their lovemaking stirred him more than all the practiced techniques of his more-experienced lovers.
“Starting over,” he replied firmly, going to the attached bathing chamber and wetting two towels, bringing her one to clean her hands and using the other on himself. “And turning the attention on you,” he added, lowering his voice to a sensual burr, just to see her blush.
“There’s no need to start over.” She sounded shy, lashes lowering as she diligently wiped her hands clean. “I don’t need attention on me. I liked doing this for you. I want to make you happy, Jak.”
She was babbling. Shy and nervous. He tossed the towel aside and firmly fastened his pants again. They were going to stay that way for a while. “Finished with this?” He plucked at the towel in her hands, then tossed it aside also when she nodded. Moving slowly, he threaded his hands through the silk of her hair, pushing the mass of it back over her shoulders, coaxing her to lift her face to his. “Did you find it exciting, doing that for me?”
Mutely, she nodded, the blush high on her cheekbones.
“That’s how I’ll feel, giving you pleasure,” he explained. “Enough of you tending to me. I want to touch you. That would make me happy.”
Doubt filled her eyes, a sense of that feeling curling into him, too. He would have to practice discerning her emotions from his. Especially with Stella being such a giving person and him—well, who was he kidding?—him being accustomed to taking whatever he could get, it would be a challenge to make sure he gave to her.
“I see…” she said slowly. “What do I do?”
“Nothing at all,” he replied as seriously as he could, given that he wanted to laugh with sheer delight in her. “I’ll do all the work. You stop me if I do something you don’t like.”
“Go ahead.” She visibly braced herself, closing her eyes and even curling her fingers into loose fists at her sides.
He studied her. “Maybe we need that whiskey after all.”
Her eyes flew open. “I did not ‘but Jak’ you!”
“Not verbally.” With a mental sigh for his obtuseness, he took her hand and led her to the chairs by the fireplace. Seating her in one, he poured them both a finger of the excellent and rare Branlian whiskey he’d purchased with his winnings from the tavern contest, which felt like an age ago. Stella held hers tentatively, as if it might sprout wings and flap away. He took a fortifying sip of his whiskey, savoring the smooth burn. “I think there are maybe things you want to tell me that I need to listen to.”
“Oh.” She reflected on that, turning the cup in her hands. “I just… It’s that…” She blew out a breath. “I do love you.”
It still gave him a thrill to hear it, even mitigated as it was in that moment by the clear hesitation in her voice and manner. He could wish that she was an open book to him. “But Jak…” he prompted, lifting a brow.
She laughed a little, then actually sipped her whiskey, eyes going wide. “How do you drink as much of this as you do?” she gasped, waving a hand as if cooling flames.
“Practice,” he informed her seriously, then grinned. “The second sip is smoother.”
Judiciously she sipped again, then nodded. “True.”
“So,” he said, crossing one leg over his knee. Realizing that might come across as defensive, he unwound and leaned his forearms on his knees, dangling the glass between them. “You love me, but…”
“But I really don’t think that there’s a future for us.” She grimaced. “I know there isn’t.”
He bit back the automatic argument and forced himself to slow down and consider her words. “Because you looked?”
She nodded unhappily, then shook her head. “We have to face that you and I are very different people. Once we’re no longer on this quest, what would we have in common? Where would we live? You can’t be forever guarding my back and escorting me about.”
“Why not?” he asked, very reasonably, he thought, given the frustration boiling up inside him.