Tithed Read online

  His erection rubbed against her through his sleeping trousers, and Elspeth reached down to stroke him. Connell, face buried in her neck, shuddered when she touched him. His teeth closed on her skin, giving her the pleasure-pain she’d always loved.

  She let her hand move up and down, then reached for the ties at his waistband. “I would see you.”

  He nodded and helped her undress him as he’d helped her. In moments he was bare, and she put her hand upon his shoulder to push him back against the pillows. She wanted to see all of him. She wanted to drink the sight of him like she’d drink fine wine, wanted to consume him with her eyes.

  His body had changed too. He’d always been strongly built, with muscled arms, broad shoulders, lean hips and strong legs. As a lad of ten-and-eight, dark curling hair had thatched the base of his penis and run in a line up his belly. Now, as a man of eight-and-twenty, the line had thickened. More curling hair scattered over his smooth skin and surrounded the dark circles of his nipples.

  She bent to lick one, then the other. He tasted spicy. She sucked his skin gently, hair tickling her cheek, then let her mouth linger on his skin. Warm. Smooth. The same, but different. His body had grown more defined with age. A rippled scar curved along one shoulder.

  She moved to kiss his mouth again, her hands running down his arms to circle his wrists, and she pulled away to turn over his hands. The palms were rough. Scars dotted his skin there too. Marks of hard work. She traced them with her fingertips first, then her kisses, and held them up.

  “Each of these must tell a story.”

  He nodded, drawing her closer to kiss her. “For another time.”

  She laughed as he put his arms around her to hold her close. Their bodies, length to length, skin warm, fit together like puzzle pieces. She took his kiss and gave it back.

  “Another time, oh and aye,” she agreed.

  Her hand found his cock again, and she stroked him gently, fingers barely grasping him. She let her palm roll over the head, then twist around and down the shaft. Up again, the rhythm familiar even after so long.

  He sighed into her mouth. She took his breath. He entered her lungs. Became part of her. His hand found the back of her head and held her mouth against him as his hips lifted into her touch.

  She broke the kiss to catch her breath. She shifted her legs, and the sensation made her shiver. Heat filled the pit of her belly and lower. She felt swollen, slick with arousal, empty and yearning to be filled.

  The first time she’d taken him in her mouth, he’d cried out her name so loud it had startled a colony of gulls. She’d been clumsy then, her love for him making up for her lack of skill, and it had taken only moments for him to spill inside her mouth. Time had granted both of them greater control. The memory of it, the musky, ocean taste of him, made her clit pulse.

  Elspeth slid down his body, her mouth leaving a trail of slickness along his skin. She let her breath caress his length, her lips hovering but not touching him. She heard him take in a breath, but did not hear him let it out, and she smiled. She licked the head of his cock. Connell moaned.

  She could not torture him longer, or herself. She wanted to taste him. Elspeth took him into her mouth, the entire length as far as she could. The brush of his pubic hair tickled her lips. He cried her name, and though there were no gulls to scatter above them, the sound of it well-pleased her.

  She slid her mouth upward, following behind it with her hand so he was not left bereft. She suckled the head of his cock in time to her hand’s stroking. Then down again, slowly, deliberately, until again her mouth brushed his dark hair and her hand slipped down to cup the weight of his balls.

  She had always loved doing this for him, giving him pure pleasure. Letting him fill her mouth gave her almost as much pleasure as him filling her, because she loved him.

  “Ella.” His voice hoarse, Connell moved his hips in time to the pace she’d set. His fingers tangled in her hair, not forcing her to stay there, but moving with her as she moved.

  He grew harder under her tongue. His breathing got faster. Between his legs his heartbeat quickened when she pressed the seam of his skin below his testicles. He moaned louder when she ran her finger along that soft skin and pressed in time to her sucking.

  A drop of salty fluid coated her tongue and she swallowed it. The taste made her clit swell further, begging for attention. She slid a hand between her legs to stroke herself. Her fingers had made no more than one full circle when she felt his hand upon hers.

  In the next moment, Connell shifted to the side, pushing at her hip in the same motion. He rolled her so skillfully she did not lose him from her mouth. He settled himself full on his back, hands on her hips and her heat poised over his mouth.

  She paused in her sucking when she felt his breath upon her. Then the next minute her own cry burst from her throat at the sensation of his tongue licking her. Heat on heat, wet on wet, he circled her clit then kissed her. Soft, firm kisses. The tip of his tongue stroked her clit.

  She lost her concentration at first from the sheer ecstasy of it. It had been so long. So long even since she’d made love to herself. She couldn’t breathe or move, could only let the glory of Connell’s mouth upon her wash over her.

  His hands stroked her hips, urging her to rock them in time to his kisses. This made it easier. She took him in her mouth again and let him move her body. Back and forth. He licked her while she sucked him.

  She couldn’t think. Could do nothing but ride the waves of pleasure. Her rhythm stuttered. She lost her place. Her hips moved against him until at last his hands held her still and he licked and licked and her entire body shook with climax. Her fingers clutched the bed clothes. She put her forehead to his thigh, her hair falling down over them, tangling round his cock, slick from her mouth.

  His tongue fluttered on her. She broke. She shook. She came so hard she couldn’t even think.

  He rolled them again. She became aware of the softness of his bed beneath her back and the weight of his head upon her belly. He was stroking a hand along her hip and side, over and over. She blinked and looked down to see him looking up.

  Grinning.

  “Come here,” she said, and he did at once.

  She tasted her joy on his lips, and it made her shiver again. She held him close to her. He settled between her legs, his belly against her still-pulsing center. He pushed her hair off her face. He kissed her mouth, her cheeks, her eyes, her forehead, then rested his forehead against hers and looked into her eyes.

  “I love you, Ella.”

  “I love you, too, Connell.”

  He smiled and kissed her once more, like he couldn’t get enough of her, and she understood because she felt the same. She thought he would enter her, but he did not. Connell seemed content to lie upon her, kissing her, and Elspeth was content to let him.

  She did not think her body could respond again to him. Her climax had left her shaken. But as Connell kissed her, soft, hard, gentle and fierce, once again heat pooled between her legs. Her body became pinpoints of sensation. Her lips. Her nipples crushed against his chest. Her clit rubbed the firmness of his stomach.

  Connell shifted, still kissing her, never stopping. The tip of his cock nudged her. She sighed and tilted her hips to aid his entrance. He did not push inside her.

  Instead, he kissed her more. His hips made slow, gentle thrusts. His pelvic bone rubbed her clitoris with maddening continuity. His hand slipped round beneath her neck to hold her head as he kissed and kissed and kissed her.

  Tongues stroked. Lips nibbled. Mouths opened, breath passing from one to the other. She no longer knew where she ended and he began. She no longer cared. She didn’t know the moment he began to fill her, only that he slid the tip of his cock along her folds. She arched to take him further. He withdrew.

  Their bodies had joined, melded by sweat and the slickness of her arousal. Nothing scraped, nothing pinched, nothing caught or tugged. Everything had become smoothness, like silk, like oil. Liquid
and languid and flowing.

  He slid inside her without pause. His cock nudged the entrance to her womb. His belly teased her clit. He began to move.

  She heard herself murmuring his name, words of love, and heard him answer, but they came with no conscious effort on her part. They slipped from her lips as easily as breath. She could not think of words, could think of nothing but him moving inside her and his mouth on hers. Nothing else mattered.

  “Ella—”

  His surprised tone made her open her eyes. The air glimmered around them. The thrall filled her, making sight replace sound, sound become taste, taste transform itself to sight. Connell tasted like singing and smelled like sunshine. She had covered them both with the high magic without knowing it.

  He moved faster with long, smooth strokes. The thrall glimmered and shimmered around them both. Her hands ran down his back to cup his rounded buttocks as he pushed upward on his hands to keep his weight from crushing her. Elspeth angled her hips and hooked her ankles around the back of his calves, urging him forward.

  “Look at what you’ve done.” Connell shivered. Sweat dripped from him. She slid her hands up his chest to tweak his nipples. “Look at you, Ella. Look what you can do.”

  The thrall danced within her and around her. Connell did not have magic. She wanted to share it with him.

  “Kiss me,” she said.

  He did. It should not have happened. It wasn’t supposed to happen. Everyone said it could not happen.

  Yet when he kissed her, it did. He opened to her out of love, and she gave him what she was feeling, seeing, tasting, smelling. He had no magic, but she gave him some of hers.

  His eyes opened, glazed with passion, and she lost herself in his love. They moved together. He bent to kiss her again. He tasted like love. Together, they made love while the thrall covered them and urged them on, taking them higher.

  I love you.

  He answered her thought with his voice. “I love you too. My Ella.”

  His pace became ragged. His breath shortened, and hers did too. Starlight filled her, tension coiling, every part of her focused between her legs where the pressure built and built until it let go and she surged with climax again.

  Connell thrust inside her once, twice, the last time falling forward to bury his face in her neck. He cried her name and gathered her into his arms.

  His cock pulsed inside her. The thrall let her feel his seed filling her. Connell’s climax sounded like moonlight and tasted like thunder, and it left her gasping and quaking with a third and final orgasm of her own.

  The thrall had never filled her the way it just had. Connell rolled off to lie beside her, his head next to hers, his lips pressed against her shoulder. Elspeth lifted her hand and formed an orb. It was perfect, without flaw, a deep and gleaming gold tinged with blue the color of summer sky.

  She closed her fingers and it absorbed into her skin. She made another, as perfect as the first. This one she released. It hovered above them, waiting for her to command.

  It was almost too much. She closed her fingers again and withdrew the orb. Her body hummed. Every sensation remained colored by a new awareness. By the thrall. By the magic Connell’s love had let her access at last.

  Elspeth began to weep.

  “Ella, love, what’s wrong?”

  How could she explain how it felt to hold the thrall in her hands rather than have it slip away from her grasp? To know she could do anything now, make anything happen, create and destroy. How could she tell him, who had no magic, how the years of working so hard to harness what she’d been born to do had left her convinced she would never be able to do it?

  How could she explain to one who did not have magic how empty she had been, and how full she was now?

  “Ella?”

  She looked down at him and brought him to her again for a kiss. “Thank you, Connell. Oh, thank you.”

  His brow furrowed at her tears, but he held her in his arms and kissed them away. “Shh, love. Please don’t cry.”

  How could she explain that she wept from joy, not grief? That she had found her way at last along the path she’d thought never to walk. How could she tell him she had believed she would always be alone.

  She could not. Numbers, not words, were her strength. She could not find the means to tell Connell everything in her heart.

  She could only tell him what she’d already said. “I love you.”

  And it was enough, because he demanded no more from her. Her words were not inadequate to him. They were enough. At last, for her, everything was enough.

  About the Author

  When she was in the third grade, Megan Hart fell in love for the first time. Not with a boy (that would wait until fourth grade), but with a story. “The Homecoming” by Ray Bradbury leaped out at her from the pages of a library book, and she tumbled head over heels. In the dark ages, before the days of photocopiers, the only way for her to keep a copy of this story was to copy it out by hand so she could read it over and over again. Something funny happened, though, as she carefully printed it on lined notebook paper.

  She made “improvements.”

  At age 12, reading Stephen King’s The Stand for the first time one memorable summer, it occurred to her that people really did write books for a living. That’s when she decided to become an author. Megan began writing short fantasy, horror and science fiction before graduating to novel-length romances. In 1998 as a stay-home mom, Megan took up writing in earnest, attending her first writing conference and getting her first request for a full manuscript. In 2002 she saw her first book in print, and she hasn’t stopped since.

  Published in almost every genre of romance fiction, Megan also writes fantasy, science fiction, women’s fiction, horrifyingly awful screenplays, and continues to occasionally dabble in horror.

  Megan’s goal is to continue writing the kind of books she’d like to read. She spends too much time playing The Sims. Her dream is to have a movie made of every one of her novels, starring herself as the heroine and Keanu Reeves as the hero. Megan lives in the deep, dark woods with her husband and two monsters…er…children.

  Learn more about Megan at her website, www.meganhart.com and her blog at www.readinbed.net. Follow her on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Megan_Hart and at Facebook: www.facebook.com/megan.hart.

  Look for these titles by Megan Hart

  Now Available:

  Passion Model

  Amidst a Crowd of Stars

  Coming Soon:

  Seeing Stars

  A love as a rare—and precious—as a desert rain.

  Amidst a Crowd of Stars

  © 2010 Megan Hart

  Marrin Levy needs a man. Not to have children. Her husband gave her three before he died—along with a failing homestead and crushing debt. What she needs is a strong back to help her wrest a living from the harsh, desert plant of Lujawed.

  She’s sent away for a field-husband to take over the hard labor, nothing more. She never expected the devastatingly handsome, forever-young Seveeran, Keane Delacore, would fit so easily into her family’s life.

  Keane’s heart is as strong as his back, bringing Marrin more than just help in the fields. He offers her love she never thought she’d feel again…if she has the courage to reach out and take it.

  Warning: Contains three-alarm love scenes and a three-hankie love story. Read it and weep—in a good way!

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Amidst a Crowd of Stars:

  The colony was still small enough to support group celebrations like this one. The tables had been set with flowers and pretty cloths. A band hired to provide music. Food, laid out in a bounty that proved to any who doubted how prosperous they’d all become.

  Marrin watched Sarai chattering with her friends. Her other daughters, Aliya and Hadassah, had also abandoned the dull company of their parents to seek their companions. Marrin had a plate of salad and a glass of iced water, but wasn’t doing much beyond looking around in amazed pride.

 
“You’re Sarai’s mother, aren’t you?”

  Marrin turned at the question to see a woman of about her own age she faintly recognized. “Yes. I’m Marrin Levy.”

  “Arlene Simpson. I’m Jack’s mom.”

  Marrin didn’t know Jack, but she smiled and nodded anyway. Keane came up beside her and put his arm around her shoulders, squeezing gently before stepping away to take the plate from her hands and begin finishing the salad.

  “Hi,” he greeted Arlene.

  The other woman’s eyes widened slightly. “Hello. I’m Jack’s mom.” Her smile thinned as she looked at Marrin.

  Keane smiled and shrugged, more honest in his reply than Marrin had been. “Sorry, I don’t know Jack.”

  “Jack Simpson?” Arlene’s tone clearly said Keane ought to know him. “He might be a year or two behind you.”

  Keane paused with the fork halfway to his mouth, an eyebrow raised. “Sorry?”

  Marrin tensed, her gut twisting. It wasn’t the first time their apparent age difference had been brought up in casual conversation, but it had been quite a while. Anyone who knew them knew Keane wasn’t as young as his Seveeran genetics made him appear.

  “My son,” Arlene said patiently, as though Keane were an idiot. “He graduated today with your girlfriend.”

  “My girlfriend?” Keane’s face showed an amusement Marrin envied, but didn’t feel. He looked around the room, clearly biting back a laugh.

  “Well, yes…you’re Sarai’s boyfriend, aren’t you? I just guessed you—”

  “You guessed because I was here with Marrin and behaving in such a familiar manner that I must somehow be related to her, and you assumed for some reason I was here because of her daughter, who graduated today with your son.” His smile remained pleasant, his voice light, but he’d set down his plate and put an arm around Marrin’s shoulders.

  Arlene looked confused, from Keane to Marrin and back again. “Well, yes.”