Mistrals Kiss   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

Again I screamed, “Stop,” and he stopped.

I fell back onto the ground, eyes unable to focus, fighting to breathe, unable to move. But even while my body lay helpless with the afterglow, I began to ache. I ached where his teeth had touched me there, and I knew that it was just going to hurt more later. I’d let my desire — and Mistral’s — send us too far over that fine edge.

His voice came. “I did not bleed you, and I did not bite you as hard there as I did on your breast.”

I nodded, because I couldn’t speak yet. The air was so dense with the coming storm that it made it harder to breathe, almost in the way the queen could make the air too thick to breathe.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

I found my voice. “A little.” The ache was becoming sharper. I had only a limited time before it was simply going to hurt. I wanted him to finish before the pleasure truly did become pain.

He crawled over my body on all fours, so that he wasn’t actually touching me, but he could see my face. “Are you all right, Princess?”

I nodded. “Help me turn over.”

“Why?”

“Because if we finish this with you on top, it’s going to hurt too much.”

“I was too rough,” he said, and he sounded 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.