A Stroke Of Midnight

“So hard,” I said, and my voice sounded breathy and hoarse.

“I know,” he whispered, “too hard. I will not last.”

“Then don’t last,” I said.

He frowned at me, eyes still wild. “What?”

“Then don’t last, for this first time, meet your need. You can prove your stamina next time.”

“Next time,” and he laughed. “I don’t believe in next times. All that’s real to me is you, here, now.”

He sat up and leaned in toward me. We weren’t touching now, just close.

“If I am not good enough, you won’t want me again.”

I leaned in toward him, putting our faces very close together.

“Did she judge you all on just one night?”

His eyes widened. “Yes,” he whispered.

“I don’t.”

He smiled. “Are you saying that Frost and Doyle were less than spectacular the first time?”

I had to smile. “No.”

“Then who?”

I shook my head. “Everyone was wonderful, some just got spectacular with practice.”

He drew back far enough to see my face clearly. “You mean that?”

“Yes.”

“They can’t all have been amazing.”

“If they weren’t, I’ll never tell.”

“You won’t tell,” he whispered.

I started to touch his face, but he pulled back just enough to be out of reach.

“Tell what?” I asked.

He gave me a look, a look eloquent with meaning.

“Oh,” I said, and smiled again, but it was a gentler smile. “No, Amatheon, I won’t tell.”

He wrapped his arms around me, pulling me in against him. His back was covered in the dry, powdery dirt. I expected it to be rough, but it wasn’t. It was smooth and fine like the softest talcum powder. It did not distract from the warm smoothness of his skin but seemed to add texture like icing spread over warm, rich cake.

I pulled back enough to show him my hands covered in the soft, dry powder.

“So soft.” I looked up at him.

“Does it feel as soft against other places as it does on my hands?”

He drew me close, and just before his lips touched me, he whispered, “Let’s find out.”

CHAPTER 18

WE ROLLED OURSELVES IN IT UNTIL WE LOOKED LIKE GREY ghosts. The shine of our magic was dimmed by it like Christmas lights shining through snow.

He pressed his hardness against the front of my body and the back of me. He was almost painfully hard, pressed between our bodies. He thrust against my stomach, my ass, but he would not enter me. He rubbed his body over me as if his manhood were another way to caress my skin. Even his balls were high and tight, and the few times he let me touch him there, he quivered, shivering with his need. My hand found that a second pulse lay in his groin, beating against the palm of my hand. He moved my hand away from him. He pressed and teased against me, doing a parody of position after position, but he would not enter me. He would not give himself to my hand or my mouth.

When he had covered us, nearly head to foot, in the soft, powdery dust and shown me the promise of his body, the strength of it, he pushed himself against and across my body, and I begged him to enter me.

“Please, Amatheon, please, no more teasing. Enter me, take me.”

“I thought you were going to be on top.” His voice was teasing and full of pleasure.

“Lie down for me and I’ll be on top.” I tried to push him to the ground, but he stayed on his knees and would not be forced to the ground.

His hair lay in rich coppery waves around his face, caressing his broad shoulders. Even the greyish-white of the dust could not dim the rich color of that hair. The multilayered colors of his eyes glowed like individual jewels, sapphire, emerald, ruby, amber, and amethyst. Even the black pupil seemed polished and shining with power.

When his hair had first broken free of the French braid, Amatheon had tried to stop, tried to pull away, as if his shoulder-length hair were something shameful. I had shown him with my gaze, with my hands, that he was beautiful, all of him.

By the time he knelt shimmering with power through his coating of dust, there was nothing left of that hurt. But still he denied me.

“Please, Amatheon, please, lie down for me, or take me.” If he’d had a shirt, I would have grabbed him by it, but what I tried to grab to help persuade him, he would not let me touch. He trapped my hands between his and said, “It has been forever since a woman, any woman, has begged for my touch.”

He pressed our hands against his chest and closed his eyes. His breath went out in a long sigh. “The land has been too long untended, Meredith, too long unloved. It fears it is too late and there is no life to awaken.”

“You are the land, Amatheon,” I said, “and you live. Yield to me and I will love you. Please, please, Amatheon, please let me love you.”

“You speak of love so easily, do you mean sex?”

I closed my eyes and laid my forehead against his hands where they still trapped mine.

“I am no longer certain what I mean. I think I would say almost anything, do almost anything, in this moment, if it would make you say yes.”

“Yes to what?” but his voice held that teasing note again.

“Fuck me,” I said, still with my eyes closed, my head pressed against his hands.

He used his grip on my wrists to swing me around. He flung me to the ground. I barely caught myself with my hands in the dirt, barely kept my face above the ground. I drew breath to protest, but his weight was suddenly on top of me, pressing me to the ground. He jerked me up on my knees, so that I was on all fours. He shoved himself against my body, I think he meant to shove inside me, but the angle wasn’t quite right. and he had to use his hands to move my hips ever so slightly. Again I started to say something, but he had his angle, and he shoved himself inside me, as hard and fast as he could. He shoved himself in until his balls smacked against my ass. I screamed, because he was too hard, and the angle was sharp, and I knew that as much as I’d begged, if he kept this position, I would be begging him to go before many thrusts. I’d felt men be hard and eager before, but never this hard. So hard, I wondered if it hurt him, too?

“Do you feel that?”

“Yes,” I gasped.

“Is this really what you want?”

“A different position, then, yes.”

“What position?”

“Me on top.”

“Why?”

“So I can control how deep you go. I’ve never felt anyone so hard.”

He drew out of me as abruptly as he’d entered. He turned me around, keeping only one hand in his as he lay down on the ground. He drew me down on top of him, but it took both of us to slide me over him, to put that quivering hardness inside me.

The feel of him sliding inside me flung my head back, closed my eyes. I fought my own body to stay high on my knees and not slam him into my cervix until I was ready for it.

His hands touched my hips, brought my attention to more than just the part of him that was inside me. “I want to see your face while you ride me.”

I looked down into his face and saw at last that look. That look that is dark and eager and all lust, but something else as well. Possession. In that moment, in a man’s eyes is the sure knowledge that you won’t say no. That you are, for that moment, his.

I gazed into the heat of his eyes, not the heat of magic, of faerie, but the eternal magic of male and female, of that eternal dance that truly did make the grass grow, the flowers bloom, the crops ripen. It was all in his face, that spark that keeps it all going.

“Amatheon,” I said, voice heavy with sighs.

He frowned up at me. “What is wrong?”

I smiled. “Nothing, absolutely nothing,” and I rolled my hips forward and began to ride him.

I rode him until his hips began to rise and fall with mine. I rode him until his hands convulsed around my breasts and I cried out. I rode him until his body began to lose rhythm, and the earth underneath my knees began to change. I was using the hard surface for my leverage, and suddenly I didn’t have the leverage needed to keep the rhythm I wanted. That was my first hint that the ground was growing soft, and Amatheon was begi