Susan Squires - [Da Vinci Time Travel] (21 page)

He grinned again and sipped his whiskey as he watched the responses scroll down. They spoke in code now on a new site, so the authorities in this time would not yet be alerted to their actions. He kept a running tally with a marker on a paper of the number of heads his followers boasted of taking. Two score so far. Soon the authorities . . . What did they call them now? Police. Soon the police would connect all the deaths and would start searching for him. It would be too late. His army was like a serpent rising from the center of the earth. How wonderful that he could comb the world for the ones he needed, the disaffected ones whose souls had an emptiness at their center that longed to be filled by someone who would transform them. Now they would come from all over, wherever they were, and his army would coalesce like smoke drawn from the air into substance.

“Listen,” he typed. “The post arrives at 1113 after dark tomorrow. Wear flowers in your hair. Armageddon is at hand for unbelievers. We are the world. We are the answer.”

So, tomorrow night, the loft at 1113 Post Street at Market would begin to fill. They would drop jobs and families
if they had them. They would drive and fly and walk to get here, so that he could transform the emptiness inside them into purpose. Some could get here by tomorrow night. Others would stream toward San Francisco as if it were Mecca in the holy month of Ramadan. He’d read about that on a Web site today.

He had to assess their skills, appoint his seconds, find someone who could run supplies and communications. He had to let them look into his eyes and see that he was their answer. He would spout the words they wished to hear, and his followers would give those words the substance they wished the words possessed. And then they were his.

She was a miracle. Making love to her had been a miracle. Gawain couldn’t regret it. The way she opened to him, the way she trusted him. He’d worried when she was so hesitant. He’d wondered if she was too damaged by her previous experience. But no, Dilly was ever courageous. Once she’d decided to bed him, she bested her fears.

He hoped he’d been gentle enough with her. It had cost him every ounce of his control to go as slowly has he had, when he had wanted somewhere in his gut to make this coupling an act of claiming. He wanted to claim her as his own, fast and fierce and shouting to the night, with the right to protect and defend her, the right to make love to her, for them to bear children together and stand together against all comers.

He had known her forever. He had loved her first in the only way a man of twenty-three can love a child of thirteen. But now she was a woman. He could love her the way a man was meant to love a woman, and he did. He cradled her as she dozed, but he did not drift off.

He had to find Mordred and dispatch him. To hell with what the villain would do to the twenty-first century if he
could. It was what he intended to do to Diana that made him most dangerous.

Gawain felt her stir in his arms. She still had her sleep shirt on, though it was entirely unbuttoned, leaving her soft breasts pressed against his chest. He had captured her thigh between his own. This was how they should sleep together, always.

She wiggled the leg between his. He opened his thighs immediately. “Did your leg go to sleep?”

“No. I just liked the feel of it against your . . . you know.”

He raised his brows. “Against my ‘you know’? I’ll have you know those are my bollocks and my cock you’re speaking of.”

Her eyes went dark. “Yes.”

“I know you know those words. You use them in your books.”

“Yes.” She cleared her throat. “Well, it’s a little different saying them to someone in real life.” She cleared her throat again. “I . . . I hope it was okay for you.”

“Yelling is a clue. You don’t often get yelling.”

She tried to suppress a smile and looked down.

He felt his cock springing to new life. Would he ever get enough of her? “I’m not sure your research is yet complete if you have to resort to ‘you know’ to describe things.” He rolled over on his back and scooted her over. A full-size bed was really too small for this. They should be on the king-size in his room. Next time.

“Don’t you think you should explore a little yourself? Just in the name of research.”

She grinned but looked away.

“You can’t possibly be shy after opening to my mouth the way you did.”

“Was . . . was I too brazen?” She looked stricken.

“Don’t you know that a man likes his woman to be a lady in public and brazen in bed? You were perfect.”

“So . . . so I should be brazen now.” She slid a glance down to his groin.

“Yes.”

She took her lip between her teeth as though she were girding her own loins. “I suppose you know that all those things I wrote in my books—they were pretty much just words to me. I know the words well enough . . . but . . .”

“But you should explore the reality,” he said firmly.

She smiled shyly. “If you’re sure you wouldn’t mind.”

“I’ll bear up.” At least this time he could wait. He’d just had one hell of an orgasm.

“Well, I think I’ll start with your nipples. I was very curious earlier, but I didn’t like to . . . just . . . well, you know.”

“You think you’re conveying something with this phrase ‘you know.’ But you’re not. Could you mean ‘lick them’?”

She sighed as if relieved. “Yes. Lick them.”

She bent over him and touched her tongue to his right nipple. Sensation shot to his groin. He hadn’t expected that. Not from just a nipple. Not after having spent himself so forcefully less than an hour before. She ran her tongue over it and then sucked gently. He cleared his throat. Now she raked her teeth across it, not biting, but the mere possibility of biting made him feel open and vulnerable to her. She continued working at it, alternating techniques while her other small hand gravitated toward his other nipple and began to tweak it.

She pulled up. “Now, describe how that feels please.”

“Good.”

She frowned at him. “I can’t just say it feels ‘good’ in my books.”

“Well, I’m a man. Men don’t wax flowery over . . . over things like that.” He took a breath. “That doesn’t mean you have to stop.”

She slipped down and slid her tongue into his navel. “I
have other fish to fry right now. I’ll try to get back to them later.” She pulled his thighs apart and he obliged her. “I’ve read,” she said meditatively, “that the area just behind the testicles is very sensitive.” She took two fingers and rubbed the spot in question slowly, deeply. Lord, he was hard as a rock already. Could things get any more intense? “Is that true?” she asked.

“Uh, yes.” Where did she
read
these kind of things? In books like hers?

“Pleasurable?”

“That would be yes.”

“And balls, do you like them caressed if I promise to be very gentle?”

“I . . . I don’t know. No one’s ever done . . . that exactly to me.”

“You surprise me.” She gave a knowing smile. “A man with your experience?”

The women he’d had might have been experienced, but they had not prepared him for . . . for this. The last woman he’d had was the Green Knight’s wife, and that was many years ago. At the thought of the Green Knight and his failure of honor, his heart contracted. He had to put that failure away. This was for Diana. He would perform the act of loving with her, for her, as a healing rite. That was the height of honor. And if it wasn’t, then honor be damned.

“Is something wrong?”

She must have seen his doubt flicker across his face.

“No, my love. I only hope I have enough experience to keep up with you.”

She started, blinked twice, and then turned her attention assiduously back to his genitals. “Can you at least tell me when what I do feels good?” She drew her brows together quickly. “You would tell me if I hurt you, wouldn’t you?”

“In the name of research, of course.”

A slow smile dawned. How he loved to see her smile. Her eyes crinkled in mischief. “Let me just see if what the books I’ve read say is correct. Now we rub the testicles together, just softly, inside their sack. We cup the whole and lift, rubbing at the base there, like that. And then, then just stroke across the vein of your cock, like this, and then grasp, firmly, very deep, and stroke up.”

He was gasping.

She looked like the cat who’d swallowed the canary. “These books were definitely worth reading, if only for the sex scenes,” she remarked, calm as you please while he was barely hanging on. “Now, look, you’ve secreted a little clear liquid. We can rub that gently across the head like that.” He groaned. “Oooh, may I?” She glanced to him, but he was long past saying anything. He was clutching the bedclothes and trying not to writhe. Just the sight of her little hands, grasping him, exploring him, was enough to . . .

She took the head of his cock in her mouth and tried a tentative sucking. Dear God, that was it. He wasn’t going to come in her mouth on her first foray into oral sex. He took her shoulders and just lifted her up. He scooted up to the head of the bed and sat her, straddled, across his lap. “We haven’t tried this yet. You’ll like this.” He managed that through gritted teeth. He lifted her and she pulled his cock up. It took some wriggling on her part to find the angle. He thought he might die.

And then she lowered herself. He was sheathed in her, so tight, so hot. He felt her contract around him as she settled him into her. “I may be clumsy at this. Will you help me find the rhythm?”

It didn’t take her long. He put his hands around her bottom as she pushed up, which had the added benefit of bringing her breasts to brush against his chest every time she rose and fell.

“I . . . I can’t wait for you, love.” And he was jerking into her, spurting again and again until he felt stripped inside. He’d failed her.

“Good,” she whispered. “Because I had been one ahead of you.” And she kissed him lightly on the forehead. That brushing, tender kiss stripped yet more from him, only this time it was from his heart. He drew her mouth down and kissed her as she collapsed against his chest.

“I’m sweating,” he apologized as the cool air in the room hit him.

She nuzzled his neck. “Yes. I see that men will do that. Men in romance novels hardly ever sweat when they have sex.”

“When they make love,” he corrected, running his lips over her throat.

“In most romance novels, I’m afraid they only have sex.” She sighed. “And if they achieve a—what did you call it?—a transcendental bond . . . it feels forced. Not real at all.”

He’d called it a sacred bond. He didn’t correct her. The sentiment was right. He felt himself sheltered inside her and for a moment he wondered who was protecting whom.

She was drowsing on his shoulder now. But he knew he could rouse her for one more climax. He stroked her back gently, then down over her buttocks. She squirmed against him.
That’s right,
he thought.
That feels good, doesn’t it?
He kissed her neck softly and stroked the side swell of her breast. She shifted against him, her eyes still closed, until the breast was up and available. He rolled her over on her back and began kissing the nipple. He felt her come to full awareness under him. He slid his fingers inside her slick folds and kissed her while he brought her up to orgasm yet again. How he loved to give her pleasure. He loved seeing her gasping and glowing with persperation under his hands. When she had collapsed again,
he gathered her into his chest. “Come lie beside me until the morning,” he said, scooting down. He slid her arms out of her sleep shirt finally and drew the blankets up over her shoulders. Only then did he ease out of her. He drank in her sleepy protest and turned her backside into himself, spooning against her with his arms around her. He would protect her tonight, and for all time to come. She might have thought this recreational sex, but for him it was anything but.

He had committed to her tonight in a sacred bond, even if it was one-sided.

Diana woke alone in the morning. But the sheets still smelt of him. Of them. She could hear him moving in the rooms outside the door. Oh, dreadful, dreadful outcome. It had been wonderful. And whatever she had said about her reasons for egging him on to do it with her, she was lost well and truly now. It had seemed so right. He was so kind, so tender, with her. She had enjoyed giving him pleasure so much. And receiving pleasure in return.

Who knew it could be like that? Was that what all those sterile words on sterile pages had been trying to invoke? But you could only know it if you’d felt it. And she’d felt it last night with every nerve she had. She’d lain with a man. No. That was wrong. It was special because she had lain with Gawain. She wanted to rewrite every sex scene she had ever written, but what use? The words still would not express the closeness, the wonder, of last night.

At least on her side, it had been much more than recreational sex. She had lost her heart to the unattainable. That was disaster.

He seemed like someone she knew through and through, trusted through and through. He was a good man. Courageous beyond a doubt—to have survived a mental institution and prison and traveling through time. To have been
in the Resistance after Camelot had fallen. All those took incredible courage. And he was smart. He had taught himself about this century and how to get along in it, not because he had some miraculous ability to adapt but because he had courage and intelligence and . . . probably stubbornness. He had called her stubborn as a child, but she knew full well that he must have matched her, will for will.

Then there was the incredibly hot hunk part. Who wouldn’t be in love with him?

She was. After five days, she was totally in love with him. But maybe, if what he said was true and they had known each other in the fifth century, even if she had been only thirteen, it wasn’t so strange that she could fall in love with him so fast. How she wished she remembered being friends with him. She would never get that back, likely. But she could be his friend now.

That’s all he would let her be of course. And that would hurt. He had called her love or my love several times, but that was just the fashion of the time. It didn’t mean anything. Gawain the parfait knight was never going to love a little romance writer of the twenty-first century who had to make up a fantasy life in her books.