Susan Squires - [Da Vinci Time Travel] (20 page)

He turned out the bathroom light and pushed into the hall. No light shone out from under the doorway. He tried the knob. She’d locked it. Bad omen, that. But she couldn’t keep him out.

The tiny part he had inherited from his father was at least good for that if nothing else. She might see him do it. That meant he would be revealing a part of himself he had never revealed to anyone, even to his father. Well, anyone except the guards who’d seen him get out of the jail cell that first night in Chicago. Then they’d drugged him for being insane. (Saying he had gone berserk on the prisoners he shared the cell with and attacked them when they entered to break up the brawl was easier than telling the truth about how he escaped.) Why couldn’t he get a
talent that was useful? He couldn’t even get himself out of prison with it. He’d been caught four times trying. It took him too long to dissipate at each locked door. And he couldn’t hold the dissipation long enough to make it through the ventilation system. They’d had to cut him out of a vent over the cafeteria once. He was a shameful period to his father’s hopes for him.

But his small talent could get him into Diana’s room.

He put his palms on either side of the doorway to steady himself and stilled his center. His eyes went unfocused and his breathing slowed.

Mist. I am mist and darkness,
he sang to himself.
I am fog.

He felt himself dissipating. His molecules fanned out in infinitesimal thinness. He slid under the door. Inside, he gathered his molecules in a whirling mist that grew heavy and took form. His body warmed. Slowly the darkened room came into view.

She was sitting up in bed, her eyes wide, staring at where the mist had been. Unfortunate.

“How . . . how did you do that?”

“My father passed only a tiny part of his power to me.” It hurt him to admit that. But she wouldn’t see that in the dim bedroom. Only a little light from the streetlight outside leaked in around the patterned fabric shade. “What you saw was pretty much it.” That and the dream-thing. But she wouldn’t like knowing he could get into her dreams. Sins of omission.

Her eyes grew big.

“Don’t be afraid. It’s just parlor trick magic, not real magic.”

She nodded. “Looks pretty impressive to me.”

“Not compared to my father.” But from the light leaking in he saw her expression.
Okay. She might or might not have been talking about the magic.
She’d noticed he
was naked. And erect. And his erection was growing. How could he not frighten her?

“What . . . what are you doing here?”

“Well, all that talk about recreational sex being okay in this century. I thought . . .”

She swallowed, her eyes big. Oh, he was just doing a great job here.

He pressed on. He had to make it sound casual. That was the only way she might accept it. “So I was thinking that since you had only that one time, and . . . uh . . . not under ideal circumstances, you’d probably need research for your current book.” That was the stroke of genius that had caused him to nick his chin. He’d tie having sex with him to the one thing that must have kept her going through all her travails—her writing.

She looked stunned for a minute. Then . . . interested.

He took a step forward. “So I was thinking . . . how bad can that be in the twenty-first century? A little research, I mean.”

Her eyes were like saucers, and they were taking in every inch of him.
Good.
She was at least attracted to him. He could feel it. He had to be ready for the fact that she might be a little nervous. Or even frigid after her disastrous first experience. But he’d be gentle. He might not be a parfait knight, but he was enough of a man to do this for her.

His cock throbbed with a mind of its own.

He
would
be gentle.

Diana looked up at the body that had haunted her, waking and sleeping, for the last days, and wanted to hide under the covers. He was offering himself to her. Probably a sacrifice. But he obviously needed release, and this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for her.

Funny that he had known she wanted to make love to him as research for her books. It was research. That was all. She wasn’t on the pill and he didn’t offer a condom, but she’d come off her period just a few days ago. She’d probably be okay this once.

She pulled the covers up to her breasts. All she could do was look at him and wonder what would happen next and what she felt about that and about how big his male parts were.

She didn’t have to wonder long. He stepped forward and . . . and knelt at the edge of her bed. How surprising. She couldn’t see the color of his eyes right now. They were dark pools, mysterious, unfathomable. Not that they were ever fathomable to her. . . .

He took her one hand and clasped her fingers lightly. He brushed her knuckles against his lips, lightly. His lips were very soft. She’d read that men had soft lips. But to feel how soft they were in contrast to the hard muscle
elsewhere—even now she could see his biceps bulge—that was an entirely different thing. His breath was hot and moist against her hand. It made her shiver in unseen places that shouldn’t be able to do those sorts of things. He was so close she could smell that his hair was wet. She smelled soap, too, but underneath that he smelled like . . . Well, she couldn’t describe it. Like a man, she guessed. A very clean man.

“May I come to you, Diana?” he whispered.

He was . . . petitioning her. She swallowed once. This was it. Now or never. She nodded. He pulled back the covers and she scooted over so he could slide in beside her. His arm just somehow found its way around her back. He smoothed a piece of hair off her forehead with the other hand as he pulled her in. Her breast seemed to push itself against his chest of its own accord.
Oh, dear.
Wet oozed between her legs. He was so big. His shoulders were massive this close, and his pectorals hard and his abdomen girded with iron bands. His engorged member lay across his thigh. She wasn’t really looking at it. Not directly. But she was very aware of it. He was an entirely different being than she was. Frightening and fascinating. His very differentness seemed to call to her on some elemental level she’d never really considered. She put her hands on his chest and ran her hand through the crisp hair, dark against his pale skin. The air in the room was cool, and his nipples were pinched. She dared not touch them.

He didn’t try to undress her. He didn’t pull up her nightshirt and just spread her legs. He just turned her chin up and bent to kiss her. A comma of damp hair flopped across his forehead. His lips brushed hers. It seemed so natural to open her lips slightly. He licked her lips. Who could not have opened further? Then his tongue was exploring her mouth, a gentle quest, not the ravishing she’d
described so often. It stroked her own and she found herself stroking back.

Of course she’d kissed before. She’d kissed that frat rat. But that had been a slobbery penetration, mashed against her tongue. It was not a kiss.
This
was a kiss. She felt his hands rubbing along her back. Stroking her. Somehow one of her hands was holding his biceps and the other was gripping his shoulder.

She could have stayed kissing him forever, but he broke the kiss. His tongue darted over her ear. His breath was warm. He made his way down her neck, sending showers of goose bumps down the length of her body. She shivered and began to laugh, her tension released. Her laugh seemed to inflame him. He held her even closer and kissed his way over to her throat. She found herself leaning back, trusting his arms to hold her. Which he did with one arm only, and distracted her with kisses while he unbuttoned the top buttons of her sleep shirt.

It didn’t take him long to ease his way in and cup her breast. He caressed it. That was the only word for it. And that was
very
different from the wild and painful groping on the floor of a frat room. He cupped it, and stroked it, and all the while he was working his kisses down until he found her nipple. She took in a ragged breath.

She’d rubbed her own nipples through her bra, just to see how it felt. It wasn’t the same. This moist suckling took every nerve in her nipple and gave it a direct connection to her clitoris. And he didn’t stop. He continued on, moving his tongue over her nipple, sucking, rolling the nub of it around. When she thought she couldn’t stand any more, he moved to the other nipple. The man really had a very talented tongue.

“Oh, god,” she murmured, almost against her will.

He raised his head, smiling at her. His eyes were crinkled
at the edges. “Not God. Gawain. Is there anything particular you’d like to research, my lady?”

She shook her head convulsively. “No. Just . . . just anything you’d like to do.” She didn’t want this to be any more of a trial than necessary for him. And she had no idea what to ask for.

“Well, then, I think I should just cover all the basics.” He began unbuttoning the rest of the buttons on her nightshirt.

“Okay. That . . . that sounds good.”

He ran his hand down over her belly and palmed her mound. She couldn’t help but press against his hand, which allowed his finger to slip inside her folds. Or more than one. She couldn’t tell because sensations just seemed to pour over her. He slid his fingers up to her clitoris and down into her vagina, slowly, over and over again, until she was rocking against him. When he withdrew his hand, she wanted to protest. Her body was certainly protesting. But he slid down and scooted over between her legs, pressing her knees out. She felt opened to him, vulnerable, but not in a bad way. It was Gawain. She could trust him.

Oh my God.
Was he going to . . . ?

His tongue slid into her, across her, over every centimeter of screaming flesh. She was having trouble breathing and he didn’t seem to care. Indeed, he slid his hands under her buttocks and pressed her hips up to have better access to her moist folds. She rocked against him shamelessly, her fingers twining in his hair.

She could feel it coming. It wasn’t like a rolling tidal wave, though she had used that image once. It wasn’t a volcano. It wasn’t thunder and lightning, or stars spinning out of control. All the neurons in her woman’s parts, her brain, up and down her spinal cord, just . . . broke apart.
She keened for something not lost but thrown away, surrendered, and which came back again to her a hundredfold.

It had never been like
that.
The orgasms she’d had at her own hands weren’t the same thing at all. Maybe there ought to be categories of orgasms, like they categorized tornadoes. If so, that was a category 5. She gasped for air.

Gawain was up on his elbows. “Ready for the next topic?” His tone was light, but his eyes were dark, dangerously intent. “I’m afraid we have to get to it soon, because it depends a bit more on me.”

She nodded, unable still to speak but needing something, wanting something she could not name. She pulled him up, and as she did that, her knees just seemed to come up naturally, rocking her nether parts up toward his cock. It hung between his legs, swollen and questing. It was . . . really big. She looked up at him.

“Don’t worry,” he whispered. “It will all work out.” He took the head in one hand as he held himself up on the other, and guided it to her entrance. She braced for pain. It had been painful last time. But if that was how it always was for her, if it was some lack in herself or her physiology that made actual penetration painful, then she had to know. She had to be able to write that into her stories, if they were to be real.

He pushed at her opening gently. His penis didn’t immediately slide in.

“I’m sorry. I’m tight or something.”

“You’re fine. It’s me that’s too large. We’ll just go slow. Slow can be nice.”

It could. He bent to suck her breasts again, until she couldn’t be worried about anything but whether he might ever stop, because that would be bad. And he was rocking at her, a little deeper each time, until . . . until he was
pressed against her, groin to groin, and she felt so wonderfully . . .
filled.
And it turned out that’s what she had wanted, needed, all along.

He groaned and arched above her, pressing himself into her, sliding out and thrusting in again. Just watching him was a revelation. The muscles moving in his arms and shoulders. The way his eyes closed and opened to focus on her. Emboldened, she slipped her hands around to clutch his buttocks as they bunched and relaxed. And then she felt it coming again. Her own breathing was shallow and fast. His motion got faster. She reached now for his nipples and rubbed them with her thumbs.

And then she couldn’t think about anything else but the sensation that was about to transform into something entirely, altogether, different.

And it did. It did. It did.

He arched into her just as she was coming down from the mountain and she felt the big cock inside her stiffen and then jerk as he came himself, with a grunt that spiraled up almost into a yell. It was wonderful to watch him, wonderful to feel.

When at last he sank onto his elbows above her, he didn’t just roll away. He kissed her, so gently, on the eyelids, and then on the mouth, and then he put his arm around her buttocks and rolled them onto their sides, with his cock still inside her.

“Diana,” he whispered into her hair as he cradled her head to his chest. “Diana.” The smell of clean man was in her nostrils, and behind it the raw, musky smell of what they’d done.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He cleared his throat. “Good research?” His voice was still husky.

“The best,” she said. Oh, she should never have done
this. This felt too right. It made her feel too whole. That was dangerous.

Mordred grinned as he sat in his now-familiar cone of light and tapped away at the computer. He hadn’t found the girl today, or Merlin’s brat. That was annoying. In fact, Merlin’s son had grown up into a very annoying man. Mordred would enjoy making him suffer before he died. The girl he could just kill quickly, or after he had taken her a few times.

He would find them. And if he didn’t, he was willing to bet that Merlin’s son (was his name Gawain? yes, he thought so) Gawain would find him. Result the same in either case.