Free Merry Gentry 05 - Mistral's Kiss by Laurell K. Hamilton Page B

so sad. Lightning flashed first in one eye then the other, as if it traveled from one side of his mind to the other. The light blue lightning bolt on his cheek paled in the brightness of it.
    He started to crawl off me as if he were going to stop. I grabbed his arm.
    “Don’t stop, bright Goddess, don’t stop. Just help me roll over. If you take me from behind, you won’t be brushing up against the part of me you bruised.”
    “If I have hurt you so badly, we must stop.”
    My fingers tightened on his arm. “If I wanted to stop, I would say so.
    Everyone else has been too afraid of hurting me, and even if you went too far, I do like it. Mistral, I like it a great deal.”
    He gave an almost shy smile. “I did notice.”
    I smiled back at him. “Then let us finish what we started.”
    “If you are sure.” In the moment he said it, and meant it, I knew that I would be safe alone with him. If he was willing to pass up some of the first intercourse he’d been offered in centuries for fear of my being hurt, then he had the discipline to control himself in private. Consort preserve us, but he had more discipline than I would have had. How many men would have turned down the finish, after a start like that? Not many, not many at all.
    “I am sure,” I said.
    He smiled again, and something moved above us. Something grey was in motion near the high domed ceiling. Clouds—there was a tiny knot of clouds up near the ceiling. I looked into Mistral’s face and said, “Fuck me, Mistral.”
    “Is that an order, my princess?” He smiled when he said it, but there was an edge of something that wasn’t happy in his voice.
    “Only if you want it to be.”
    He looked down at me, then said, “I would rather do the ordering.”
    “Then do it,” I said.
    “Turn over,” he said. His voice did not have quite the firmness it had had earlier, as if he wasn’t sure I would obey.
    I had recovered enough to roll over, though I was slow. He moved back until he knelt by my feet. “I want you on your hands and knees.”
    I did what he asked, or ordered. It put me looking at Abeloec, who still knelt, motionless, at the top of our makeshift blanket. I expected to see lust, or something to let me know he was enjoying the show, but that wasn’t what was in his face. His smile was gentle, peaceful. It didn’t match what we were doing, at least not to me.
    Mistral’s hands stroked my ass, and I felt him rub against my opening. The front of me was sore, but the rest of me was eager.
    “You’re wet,” Mistral said.
    “I know,” I said.
    “You really did enjoy it.”
    “Yes.”
    “You really do like it that rough.”
    “Sometimes,” I said. The tip of him rubbed around the edge, so close, but not inside.
    “Now?” He made it a question.
    I lowered my upper body, so that my lower body lifted toward him, pushing against the feel of him. Only his slight movement backward kept me from taking him into my body. I made a small sound of protest. The wind held the smell of rain, the press of silent thunder. The storm was coming, and I wanted him inside me when it came.
    He laughed, that wonderful masculine sound. “I take that as a yes?”
    “Yes,” I said. I pressed my cheek into the brittle leaves, my face, and hands, touching the dry ground. I had to close my eyes against the push of dead leaves and plants. I pushed my ass up at him, and asked, wordlessly, that he take me. I didn’t realize I was saying anything out loud, but I must have been. For then I heard my own voice chanting, “Please, please, please,” over and over, soft under my breath, my lips closer to the dead earth than to the man I was begging.
    He pushed just the tip of himself inside me, and the wind changed instantly.
    It felt almost hot. I could still smell rain, but there was also a metallic smell.
    The scent of ozone, lightning. The air was hot and close, and I knew in that moment that it wasn’t that I wanted Mistral inside me when the storm broke, but