For a moment, she didn't move and, in the silence, he allowed his eyes
to finger her.
Beneath the blond tumble of hair, her blue eyes watched him, her lips
toying with a bemused smile. She wore the odd toga-like dress that had
recently become popular among the women on the home planet; it was a
white color, trimmed in a pale blue that went well with her hair, but
Lors hardly noticed it. His eyes were fixed upon the twin lift of her
breasts as they fought against the material.
She swung her long, curved legs to the floor, a momentary flash of
creamy flesh showing at her thighs, and stood up. She came to him on
slippered feet, whispering against the floor and stopped before him, her
breasts faintly brushing the material of his tunic.
"I thought I'd never get here, darling." Her voice was soft and warm.
Sex, love and desire hung in her words; the emotion dripped from her
voice the way water falls from the roof of a cave, giving her tone a
throaty huskiness that started the blood racing in his veins. Yet she
held herself back, restrained her urge to fling herself into his arms.
It was a game with her, one she had always played. "Did you miss me?"
She asked.
He nodded, unable to trust his voice. It would crack, he knew it would.
He would be able to say nothing beyond a mere croak. Too much was
happening, too damned fast. It was almost impossible to keep up with it
all.
"Well," she mused. "I realize you're stunned to see me, but you ought to
kiss me. At least, that."
He reached out his hands slowly, feeling the tremble begin in his
fingers as he closed them over the softness of her upper arms. A drum
began pounding in his temples as he touched her, a flashflood ripped
through his veins, and his stomach churned like a storm. He brought his
mouth down slowly against hers and felt her lithe body flatten up
against him the way a candle melts against a sheet of hot metal.
Her mouth was a pliant sweetness that shoved all his thoughts of Terra
into the back of his mind; her body trembled against the lean hardness
of his in a shiver of passion. The very touch of her tongue against his
lips beat aside all the problems that swirled about his muddled mind and
awakened the desire and need that had lain dormant within him all this
time.
"Darling," she breathed, when he had pulled his mouth from hers. "Oh,
Lors..."
"Shhh."
There was no need for talking, no sense in it at all. Her body mashed up
against him and he allowed his hands to smooth down over the material of
her dress, along the curve of her spine to the twin globes of her
buttocks. Her mouth lifted to his again, eager, demanding, while her
fingers dug through his tunic and into his flesh with a sharp need that
thrilled him.
Her hand reached behind him, her fingers finding the light button and
suddenly the room was sheathed in the soft cloak of darkness. Only the
tiny nightlight gleamed like a small, yellow eye in the center of the
ceiling. She spoke to him, without removing her lips, her breath hot and
demanding against his mouth.
"I don't want to wait any longer, darling," she panted, "not another
minute."
His arms slid around her, lifting her at the shoulders and the thighs to
carry her to the bed, but she twisted away from him, whirling off into a
darkened corner of the room where the yellow light could not touch. He
could hear the sigh of the toga-like robe as she whipped it away from
her soft flesh. Then she stood there, before him, framed in the alluring
gold of the circle of light.
Lors felt his breath suck inward at the sight of her, standing there
nude. She was even more beautiful than he had remembered and he felt
shaken, to the very roots of his being.
The smooth curve of her shoulders glowed in the light and her face was
kissed by shadows. The arching lift of her breasts and the impassioned
nipples threw a wash of dark shadow downward over the flat of her
stomach and the lithe curve of her thighs. With the light covering the
beauty of her face, Jela lost her identity.
She was woman. Period.
Any and all, from time immemorial, or immoral, perhaps. She was somehow,
standing there, a composite of every woman who had ever drawn a breath.
She was the best of woman, the choicest parts of all women since the
dawn of time, suddenly thrown together in a high breasted, slim waisted
creation that was being offered to him, only to him.
And Lors?
It moved in him, churned through his guts like a forest fire. He was
man! All men, glaring with the red eyes of passion at all women. He too,
in the wash of lust that had swept over him, lost his identity and he
didn't give a damn. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered except that she
was waiting...
His fingers ripped away his clothing and he was at her side in no time
at all, his arms sliding about the pliant warmth of her flesh to clasp
her to him. To take her. To love her with a fever that was equal to the
challenge she presented.
She made a small sound and he hushed it with his mouth, planting his
lips roughly against hers while he lowered her to the bed. He hurt her,
but she didn't try to get away.
It was the kind of hurt she had waited for, that they both had yearned
for all the long months that had kept them apart. His hands closed over
her. Smoothing the tender flesh and feeling of life beneath his palm.
She moaned, tearing the sound from the very depths of her as his hands
smoothed the satiny texture of her thighs, his fingers working against
her flesh. He felt the nails of her hands digging into his shoulders,
but he paid no attention to it.
Nothing mattered now. Nothing except the warmth of their love and the
expenditure of the raging passions that threatened to engulf them both.
* * * * *
They laid there for a long time, basking in the heat of their love, and
he knew. Finally he knew that it all would not work. There could be
nothing between him and the Terran woman. It was impossible. She could
not live in his worlds, nor could he live in hers. Jela was his world
and the past was merely an emotional thing. A moth and the flame.
Yet ... somehow, he _did_ love Beth. Somehow her and her life was
important to him. Her happiness was something that he had to assure. Had
to guarantee for her.
He had to work out a plan that would solve everything and return the
whole business to a state of normalcy. It would be difficult, if not
impossible, and he knew that Zark would never listen to him, never allow
him to carry it out.
But he had to do it.
There would be all kinds of risks and, if he failed in the thing, he
might have to pay with his life. If he managed to accomplish it, he
would get nothing as a reward, except perhaps the hand of the
Commander's daughter. That wasn't such a bad reward, though.
He kissed her and the fires began to burn again.