She flew after him, joy and distress tearing at her. She wrenched him around, jumped on him, climbed him, wrapped herself around him and squeezed him as if she’d merge them. His shuddering groan quaked through her as he hugged her back, crushed her to him, his arms trembling his relief.
She covered his face and neck and anything she could reach of him in tear-drenched kisses and wept. “I don’t just want you! I worship you, I crave and adore and love you far more than life. And it’s not out of need or gratitude. Not the way you fear. I don’t need you to survive, but I need you to be alive. I’m grateful you exist, and a few light years beyond that that you love me, too. I don’t deserve you or that you should feel the same for me. I-I hurt you and mistrusted you and it doesn’t matter that I was reeling from the shock of the regained memories and the revelations-”
His lips crushed the rest of her outburst in savage kisses. Then she was on the bed again, on her back, filled with him as he drove into her, growled to her again and again that he believed her and in her, and she screamed and sobbed her relief and gratitude and love and pleasure.
It was hours before that storm abated and she lay over him, free of doubt or worry, of gravity and physical limitations.
She told him, “You make me feel-limitless, just like what I feel for you. But you are too much, give too much. It would have been criminal to have all this without paying in advance with some serious misery and heartache. I love the fates that tossed me around only to land me in your lap, and by some miracle make you love me, too. I just adore every bit of misfortune and unhappiness I had that now make me savor every second of what we share all the more.”
Rodrigo swept Cybele with caresses, agreed to every word she said. They were the exact ones that filled his being. He did believe they wouldn’t have come to share this purity and intensity without surviving so many tests and…
He shot up, his nerves going haywire.
Under his palm. He’d felt it.
“The baby…” he choked. “He moved.” And for the first time since he’d shed tears over his mother’s death, his tears flowed. With too much love, pride and gratitude.
She pushed him onto his back, rained frantic kisses all over his face. “No, please-I can’t bear seeing your tears, even ones of joy.” That only made the tears flow thicker. After moments of panting consternation, wickedness replaced the stricken look on her face and she attacked him with tickling.
He guffawed and flopped her onto her back, imprisoning what he swore were electricity-and magic-wielding hands over her head with one of his, his other returning the sensual torment.
She squirmed under his hand, nuzzled his chest. “I can’t wait to have our baby. And I can’t wait to have another one. One we’ll make as we lose ourselves in love and pleasure, flesh in flesh.”
“This one was made of our love…well, my love, at least.”
She nipped him. “Yeah, I have to make up for my initial lack of participation in the love department. But from now on, I’m sharing everything with you. And not only about our baby. I want to be involved in everything you do, your research, your surgeries…” The radiant animation on her face faltered. “Uh-that came out as if I’ll hound your every step…”
He squeezed her, cutting short her mortification, laughter booming out of his depths. “Oh, please, do. Gives me an excuse to hound yours.” Then he grew serious. “But I know exactly how you meant it. I want you involved in everything I do, too. I’ve never felt more stimulated, more empowered, more satisfied with my work than when you were there with me. And then there’s every other instance when I see or feel or think anything, and it isn’t right, isn’t complete until I share it with you, knowing you’re the only one who’ll understand, appreciate.”
She attacked him with another giggling, weeping kiss that almost extracted his soul. Then she raised a radiant face, gestured for him to stay where he was.
He watched her bounce out of bed to rummage in her suitcase. He hardened to steel again, licking at the lingering taste of her on his lips as she walked back, ripe and tousled and a little awkward, all the effects of his love and loving, short-and long-term ones. She was holding something behind her back, impishness turning her beauty from breathtaking to heartbreaking.
“Close your eyes.” He chuckled, obeyed at once. He couldn’t wait to “see” what she had in store for him.
Her weight dipped the mattress. Then he almost came off it.
She was licking him. All over his chest and abdomen.
He growled, tried to hold her head closer, thrusting at her, offering all of him for her delicate devouring.
“Keep those lethal weapons of yours closed.”
He did, his heart almost rattling the whole bed in anticipation. Then he felt a sting on his chest.
The tail end of the sensation was a lance of pleasure that corkscrewed to his erection. It slammed against his abdomen. Air left his lungs on a bellow of stimulation.
Another sting followed. Then another and another, on a path of fiery pain and pleasure down his body. He’d never felt anything like this sourceless manipulation of his sensations. He could swear she wasn’t touching him, was pricking each individual nerve cluster mentally.
He thrust at her, incoherent with arousal, his growls becoming those of a beast in a frenzy. He at last thrust his hands into her hair, tugged until she moaned with enjoyment.
“Tell me to open my eyes,” he panted the order, the plea.
Another skewer of delight. “Uh-uh.”
“I don’t need them open to take you until you weep with pleasure,” he threatened, almost weeping himself again with the sharpness of the sensations she’d buried him under.
“Which you routinely do.” Another sting. He roared. She purred, “Okay, just because you threatened so nicely. Open ’em.”
He did. And couldn’t credit their evidence for moments.
Then he rasped between gasps as she continued her meticulous sensual torture, “This is-hands down-the most innovative use of a micro-grasping forceps I’ve ever seen.”
She was tugging at his hairs using the most delicate forceps used in micro-neurosurgery. And sending him stark raving mad.
“It’s also the most hands-on method I could think of to say thanks.” Her eyes glittered up at him, flooding him with love.
“Not that I’m not deliriously thankful for whatever made you invent this new…procedure, but thanks for what, mi vida?”