never get another one in,' he warned.
'I know. Don't worry, he'll nail it.'
'He better,' came the gruff reply, then the door slammed and Max Sark was alone. He slumped in his chair and stared at the speaker.
The kid was still sprouting mush interspersed with silences that reeked of sex, but Sark had no complaint with that. Sex was part of the job. It was the emotional gush that worried him. He knew the kid wasn't that good an actor.
He shook his head, too despondent even to be angry. The general had been right, of course. The kid was too young. But they'd had no other choice.
Damn. He closed his eyes. They'd waited so long for this one. They were so close.
'Come on, kid,' he whispered, wishing their communication could be two-way. 'You're not a Champion. You're a spook. Fuck the girl and get on with the job.'
But would he? Realistically?
Sark covered his eyes with a deceptively steady hand. He suddenly felt old, a hundred years older than this kid who was about to blow five years of painstaking preparatory work on an emotion Sark didn't believed existed.
'Fuck,' he said again.
From this point on, all they could hope was that training and duty would ultimately over-ride libido. Because if it didn't, Sark knew as sure as the general liked a little poon-tang on the side, that this kid's life wouldn't be worth the price of a bullet.
On either side of the fence.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
'I have to go.' Long Shadow said for the fourth time, lifting his head. Then he lowered it, his hands tangling in her hair, holding her still for his kiss. Another long, deep, desperate kiss.
Lying beneath him, Dee could feel the resurgence of his recently depleted erection. She reached between their bodies to stroke it, encouraging its growth. 'But I want you to come,' she teased, capturing his eyes, drinking the adoration that burned in them. 'I want you to live inside me like this forever,' she said, and despite his anxious frown, she guided his solid flesh inside herself again, where it was slippery and still hot from their last coupling.
'I'm going to die like this,' he sighed, bending his head to kiss her as his hips, naked and glistening from the exertion of their lovemaking, started to move against her.
'So am I,' she whispered against his lips. 'We can die together.'
He paused, his hands tightening in her hair. 'You're not going to die,' he told her, and kissed her fiercely.
She kissed back, her fingernails biting into his firm buttocks, then spreading to stroke the skin in tiny conciliatory circles. 'Did that hurt?' she breathed. 'Will I kiss it better?' She stretched, her hands dipping lower to stroke the insides of his thighs as her tongue slid wetly across the top of his chest.
He groaned, his hips moving with new urgency.
'I love your taste,' she said, her tongue working its way back up to his throat. 'I love what it does to me.'
Her head fell back and she stared up into his eyes, the silky curtain of his hair enclosing them in an intimate world of their own. A world where there was no 'outside', only the sound of their breaths, the taste of each other, and eyes. Dee found if she gazed into his eyes as he made love to her, something built inside her. Not just the orgasm that eventually shook her body. But something else. The thing that made her never want to let him go — that made her want to touch him all the time, to stroke his body, to run her fingers through his long hair and to hold him as she was now.
Her hands moved up to his shoulders, her fingers testing the strength of the bunched muscles beneath his burnished skin. 'I love the way you feel,' she said, still staring into his eyes. 'I love the feel of you inside me.'
His mouth lowered to touch hers but he didn't kiss her. He was straining to hold back the orgasm she could feel cresting inside him. But she wanted him to come — wanted his pleasure more than her own now. It was tied in with the feeling.
Wrapping her arms around his shoulders, she pulled him down onto herself, his broad chest rubbing against her breasts as she ground her pelvis up into him. 'Conquer me,' she whispered into his hair. 'Make me your woman, Long Shadow.'
' Yes. ' His back arched, and with a final satisfying thrust, he filled her with the very stuff of life itself. And she clung to him, with her hands, her thighs, revelling in the feel of it pulsing into her. Exhausted, he slumped against her, his lips at her throat.
It should have been a joyous moment, an acceptance of the ultimate gift of his love, but for the first time she felt a pang of sadness intrude on their lovemaking.
This precious seed — genetic template for the beautiful man who lay in her arms, was wasted in her barren womb. She could give him her body but she could never give him a child, and in a flash of insight she understood this feeling that had grown in her with the touching, the caring, and the longing.
A tightness constricted her throat and when he raised his head to kiss her goodbye she could only manage a wavering smile.
'Are you unsatisfied, my love?' he asked, kissing her again.
She shook her head, whispered, 'You have to go.' But he was kissing his way down her neck to her breasts and despite her sadness she felt the tumult stir in her again. His hair drifted in a soft caress over her chest as his mouth awoke first one nipple, then the other. 'Belle's waiting,' she said faintly, but he was kissing down her stomach, parting her legs, and she let herself be distracted, writhing under his knowing tongue.
His fierce lovemaking had sensitised the delicate flesh and it responded to the slightest pressure with wild pulses of pleasure that filled her mind until she could think of nothing but the coming explosion.
'You are my woman,' she heard him say as she teetered on the edge. 'There will be no other.'
'Yes. Yes,' she panted, her hips unashamedly pushing up for the trigger that would release her orgasm. 'No other. Please.'
He rose above her and through a haze of arousal he appeared as a dark angel, a messenger from her God delivering his ultimate truth.
She felt a slight pressure as the tip of his penis entered her but his hand, restraining her hips, kept them from pushing up to claim the pleasure she was a breath away from.
'Tell me you love me,' he commanded. Their eyes, inches apart, were locked.
'I… love you,' she said. 'From the moment I — '
His lips dived onto hers as he plunged into her and with that first thrust she was there, gasping his breath as the orgasm took her. But he continued to drive into her, the thrusts that followed setting off aftershocks that fed on each other and he was kissing her and touching her and she was delirious with the sensations that all melded into one like a carnival ride where you're screaming so hard you don't even realise it's over.
But finally she did realise it was over. She became aware of Long Shadow's body heavy against hers and the sound of their panting.
She licked her lips and swallowed in a dry throat. 'I don't think there's any question of my satisfaction now,' she said.
Long Shadow's reply was to roll off and sit with his back to her.
She touched it, unable to stop herself, her fingers gliding over the smooth flesh, wanting to taste it but too limp and sated to raise her head.
'I shouldn't have done that,' he said.
She knew what he meant, but answered, 'I'm glad you did.'
'No… Not that.' He turned to look at her, frowning when he saw her smile. 'You know what I mean. I had no right to ask for such a declaration. Not then. I made it… meaningless.'
She shrugged. 'Ask me now.'
