hand down between her thighs, parting and probing her there, while she gasped for air.
She clung to his neck, his shoulders, as if for dear life, and he slid his hands down the backs of her thighs and easily lifted her up, pulling her to him, sliding his erect shaft inside her, when she hadn’t even been aware he had undressed. The breath rushed from her lungs and her eyes slammed closed at the sensation of him filling her. He was thick, stretching her to receive him, pressing deeper and still deeper. Her sensitive inner thighs were rubbed by the fine hairs and hard muscle of his as he began to move, sliding out and in again. His pace was slow as she clung to him, then picked up as his body played hers like a maestro at his chosen instrument. Higher and higher he made her soar, as he drove into her harder and faster. She sank her nails into his broad shoulders and felt unable to get close enough to him. To be possessed fully enough by him.
His mouth found her neck, and kissed and nibbled upward to her chin, insisting she lower it so he could feed from her lips again. When she did, his tongue mimicked what their bodies were doing.
She cried out, but his kisses swallowed the sound, and then everything in her seemed to explode in unbearable pleasure. Sensation reached critical mass, then detonated, and the ripples that followed made her body turn to liquid fire. Nothing but feeling existed in her. She was entirely enveloped in the ecstasy of physical pleasure, of release.
She was pure sensation. Just as he’d instructed.
She clung to him, limp and more satisfied than she had ever been in her life, and he held her in his arms, kissing her hair and her face, his arms so tight around her that she felt like a tiny thing, all wrapped up in strength. She wondered if a dusty university basement, or even her own little house in Binghamton, could ever feel this secure, this safe.
This perfect.
And then their bliss was shattered by the sound of something clattering. They both turned to see the statue lying on the floor beside the table, and it must have hit a nearby chair on the way down, because it was broken in two at the neck.
“Hell!” James lowered her to her feet and turned, unashamedly naked, to pick it up. “It’s okay.” He looked inside one half, then the other. “It’s all right, nothing spilled out. It’s all in the lower half.”
Self-conscious, cold and alone now, Lucy hurriedly gathered up her borrowed clothes. She pulled on the jeans, the tank top. Nothing underneath. She felt wild, untamed. Primal. Her hair blew as the ocean breeze picked up strength. She quickly turned to close the porthole, shutting out the wind.
“Thank you. We can’t risk a sudden gust blowing away my people’s savior.”
“That’s not going to happen,” she said softly. And inwardly she thought it couldn’t happen. Because he was his people’s savior. Him, James William Poe. He was the one. And she was so proud of him that she felt her chest swelling with it before she reminded herself that she had no right to feel so proprietary. He didn’t belong to her, nor she to him. They were two different people—different species, even—on totally opposite paths. This…this beautiful interlude was only that. A brief, magical oasis in the midst of chaos and war and death. And when it was over and peace had been restored, they would go their own ways and cherish the memory.
She would not have a single regret.
He met her eyes, part of the statue in each hand, and said, “It’s time, Lucy.”
She didn’t ask him again if he was sure. She wouldn’t insult him that way. She’d made her arguments. He’d made his choice. She wasn’t even entirely sure he was wrong.
He turned to face the table. Lucy walked up to take her place beside him, determined to be of whatever help she could, for as long as this interlude might last.
James tipped one half of the broken statue up and poured its contents onto a crisp white bedsheet that he had spread over the table. Right in the center. Then he looked up at Lucy, standing directly across from him, and she held his eyes, biting her lip.
It had been good between them. He’d known it would be, had sensed that it would be fiery. Amazing. Special. More than