Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 99485 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 332(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99485 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 332(@300wpm)
I loved the way she reacted when I touched her. Her sweet, curvy body was eager for pleasure—she’d been nearly panting as I caressed her clit in the bath. Gods, how I yearned to taste her there! The priestess had been right—The Thirst was already beginning.
It wasn’t like a physical thirst—not a dry or parched throat or a desire for water. No, The Thirst was a soul-deep longing. A need to bring pleasure to my Fated Mate—a yearning to feel her trembling and coming under my tongue as I drank her juices. But it was as fierce as any physical thirst—a longing that I couldn’t ignore.
There’s a reason we put our commitment to our female’s pleasure right in the Binding Ceremony vows. Brutes believe that it’s wrong to come first—a sin and a shame to leave your lady wanting and take your own selfish pleasure before she’s had hers. But also, making her come first causes her juices to flow, which helps ease The Thirst.
I believed strongly that I needed to take care of my new bride’s sexual needs. Needs that she was going to be feeling very soon, as the bond that grows between all Fated Mates as they spend time in close proximity, brought her closer to me.
But there were things standing in my way—namely the ridiculously strict culture she’d been raised in. The humans on L’Crist didn’t give their females much freedom. And that included sexual freedom.
Just have to take things slowly, I told myself, pushing The Thirst to the back of my mind. And before I did anything else, I needed to heal her.
Then maybe we could move on to pleasure.
15
AURORA
Slade put me down on the side of the bed—which was an expensive floating mattress covered in a green coverlet—with my legs hanging over the side. Then, to my surprise, he sank to his knees in front of me.
“What are you doing down there?” I asked, frowning. Though “down there” possibly wasn’t a very accurate description. He was so tall that we were still nearly eye-to-eye, even with him kneeling by the side of the bed and me sitting on it.
“Healing you,” he said simply. “Give me your hands, Princess.”
Bemused, I held out my hands to him. I had no idea what he had in mind—possibly he was going to put some salve on the palms of my hands, which were still raw from the fall I’d taken in the parking area.
But Slade didn’t produce any kind of healing ointment. Instead, he turned both hands over so they were palm-up. Then he leaned forward and dragged his warm, wet tongue over the raw place on my right palm.
“Oh!” I jumped involuntarily and tried to pull my hand away.
But Slade didn’t let me. He had one big hand firmly around my wrist and he wasn’t about to let go until he was finished with what he was doing.
He licked me again, laving the stinging palm with his warm tongue over and over until it stopped hurting. Then he let my right hand go and started working on the left.
I held up my newly freed hand and examined the palm carefully. To my surprise, there was no evidence of the fall I had taken. The raw flesh had knit itself back together leaving nothing but a slight redness to the skin.
“Oh!” I exclaimed. “You healed me!”
Slade looked up for a moment.
“Of course I did—you’re my wife.”
“But how? How did you do it?” I asked.
He finished healing my left palm to his satisfaction and then looked at me again.
“When a Brutal finds his Fated Mate, his body chemistry changes,” he explained. “It allows him to heal her wounds, the way I healed your. And it allows him to do…other things too.”
“What other things?” I asked, curiously.
But he only shook his head, the dim light of the nighttime glows in the corners of the room gleaming on his golden horns.
“Never mind. For now, let’s have a look at that knee.”
I’d had my white silk robe wrapped around me but now he pulled it to one side, revealing my wounded knee. There was a jagged cut to the right of my kneecap where a piece of gravel must have stabbed me when I fell. It was deeper than the scrapes on my palms had been and I wondered if he could still heal it.
Slade didn’t seem to have any doubts, however. He looked up at me after examining the knee.
“Okay, baby this is deeper so it’s going to take a little longer—spread your legs for me so I can get to you.”
“What?” I squeaked. “Why should you need me to…to spread my legs?”
I was very aware that my cunny was still wet from the way he’d been touching me in the bath and I was afraid if I spread my legs he would see it.