Mona Lisa Eclipsing Page 12

  Not even a flicker of heat or power.

  “Too weak,” I said after several fruitless attempts. Was I too drained or simply too drugged? The thought triggered another idea. With more effort than was pretty, I struggled to my knees, putting me face-to-face with Dante. His face was lobster red, but there was no perspiration. His skin was alarmingly dry and as hot as a furnace, giving off palpable heat even from a distance of several inches away.

  “Dante, you said I saved you before. How did that work?”

  “We had sex. You shared your light with me. But that was different. My body—my mind—craved moonlight after being deprived of it for so many years.”

  I remembered the vision of the moon’s energizing rays pouring into me. Remembered again how my own skin had glowed with Roberto. “It’s not just light, is it? We share energy, don’t we?”

  “It’s a lovely thought, a wonderful one,” Dante said as he realized where I was heading, “but I don’t think sex would be possible. I doubt I could even get my pants off, and even then I don’t know if we have enough slack to connect that way—”

  “Kiss me,” I said, interrupting his flow of words.

  “What?”

  “We glow with pleasure. We don’t have to have sex to share light; all you have to do is kiss me. I could share energy with you that way, maybe enough to help you recover a little, at least give us some more time.” My excitement suddenly faltered. “Or maybe I’d just drain energy from you—”

  He kissed me.

  I pulled back. “Wait, maybe this will hurt you more than help.”

  “Then I shall die happy.” He brushed his lips over mine, sweet, simple, soft, the brush of hot, dry lips over my own chapped lips. And then a wet stroke of tongue, smoothing the way to a more slippery friction, and with it a sudden explosion of sensation, more than I had expected from such a dire, battered condition of its participants. It was like a detonation of feeling, a bombardment of things that were the opposite of pain—pleasure, yes, but even more than that. A seeking of life, a last quietly desperate sip of bliss, of enjoyment. A precious, unexpected treasure stolen out of the misery of the moment.

  He kissed me with wave upon wave of feeling. All that he had withheld before now came flooding out. A raw surge of seeking, melding, joining with me.

  Incomprehensible murmurs came from Dante’s throat, from mine. A few husked words . . . Mona Lisa . . . my lady . . . love you . . . yes . . .

  If we had kissed before, I did not remember it. And it was so much more than the surge of pleasure I’d gotten from kissing Roberto. Like digging into ground looking for a trickle of water and finding a gushing well instead. Dante kissed me as if he would pour his soul into me and pass it into my keeping—a plentitude of giving, not a taking. A benediction of words and sweet sentiment and hotly sprinkled passion over my mouth, my chin, down my neck, touching off zinging sensations, an abundance of it, wherever those firm and tender lips roamed, pulling forth my own gasps and whispers of his name, spurring him more heatedly on.

  A seeking nuzzle of those hot lips over the swell of my breast, against my skin. A light, potent brush over my nipple that felt like an unexpected jolt of lightning within me. A sensation so intense it almost frightened me.

  “Dante!” I opened my eyes to see my skin and his aglow in luminescent light.

  “Sweet, so sweet,” Dante murmured as he tugged my open neckline down with his chin so that it exposed one nipple, pert and erect. “Beautiful . . . lovely.”

  I watched his mouth envelope the hard tip, felt the heat and moisture of his mouth, felt the stroke of his raspy tongue, felt the bolts of amazing sensation that pulled cries from my mouth and more light from my skin until I was glowing like a small nova, overshadowing his own light, as he licked and teased and suckled and pulled at the reddened peak, enjoying himself with utter carnality.

  He pulled his mouth free with a tight, pulling sensation that arrowed straight to my womb. “Lie down,” he said roughly.

  “What?” I was half-blind, dazed from the bombardment of strange and new sensation.

  “Lie down on your side. Scoot your legs toward me . . . yes, like that.”

  That gave us a little more reach, a little more overlap. His mouth, those soft-hard lips, peppered kisses over my quivering abdomen. “Lift your hips a bit. Perfect.” He nuzzled the shirt up above my stomach, exposing my triangular thatch of hair to his gaze. “So beautiful,” he murmured.

  I watched with both curling dread and anticipation as he lowered his mouth to lay a gentle kiss on my inner thigh. “Open your legs for me.” His breath wafted over my thatch of curls—a curiously exquisite sensation.

  “What are you doing?” I gasped, shocked and appalled as he nuzzled his way between my legs. The sound turned into a moan as he did something even more shocking with his tongue.

  “I’m kissing . . .” The pause was punctuated with like action. “. . . licking . . . tasting you. Open your legs wider . . . yes.”

  He lapped and laved and pleasured me until I was half-crazed and wholly blinded, overwhelmed with searing sensation, beyond thought, beyond embarrassment. And still there was more.

  Searching deep in my wet folds, he licked and sucked over an area that arched my back and spasmed my legs, building a tense, spiraling, frightening pleasure that suddenly crested and ruptured, free of skin, body, and fleshly containment. Light blazed forth in a rapture of incandescent brilliance as I cried out and seized in ecstasy.

  A blissful moment where time seemed to suspend for an indefinite moment as I felt his tongue thrust deep inside me, as I felt him pull my light into him, illuminating his own skin more brightly. A moment of connection, of shattering, of giving and receiving. Of being flung up in pieces toward heaven and then falling back down reassembled.

  He pressed a gentle kiss to my hip. “My lady,” he breathed, resting his forehead there.

  I opened my eyes and blinked.

  Same place but different reality.

  Dante’s blistered back, buttocks, and weeping arms were healed. No redness. Even the black charring burns over his wrists were gone, leaving healthy, healed flesh in its place. My own scrapes and bruises had vanished as well, and the leaden, drugged weariness was gone. I felt refreshed, at full and normal strength.

  A twist—an easy, simple pull and twist—and my arms were free. “What happened?” I asked.

  Dante’s glittery silver-blue eyes opened. “You can also heal with sex.”

  I could heal? That was my most heartfelt desire, an instinctual yearning I had felt my entire life—the ability to heal. The manner of doing so, however, was . . . well, let’s just say—unexpected.

  “That technically wasn’t sex, was it?” I said doubtfully. I rose to my feet and rubbed my sore arms to get some painful circulation going.

  “Part of my body was in yours,” he answered.

  Yes, I recalled that quite vividly: his tongue buried in my spasming depths.

  I felt my neck and face flush as I freed Dante’s wrists.

  “How do you feel?” I asked, helping him stand.

  His hand lifted, not to rub his sore arms, but to lightly touch my face. “Well and renewed by your light and healing grace. We can correct that technical point later, if you like, when we have more time.”

  Imp.

  I smiled as a new and deeper intimacy stretched between us. “I would like that,” I said, nodding, then smiled. “So that’s what all the fuss about sex is about. I never knew.”

  “Next time,” he promised, “will be even better.” He brushed an all too fleeting kiss against my lips. “Let’s get out of here, shall we?”

  It was about thirty feet up to the netted ceiling covering the pit, a bit more distance than what I could jump straight up. I solved that problem by springing off the side of the wall, launching myself farther upward. Grabbing hold of the center of the silver net, I tore it open down the middle. Using the natural swing as it gave, I went backward, then propelled myself for
ward, flipping myself up and out to land on the edge of the pit. An alarm suddenly screeched, ruining our quiet getaway. A motion detector—a surprisingly sophisticated bit of gadgetry in these primitive backwoods.

  Dante sprang up and out in a straight jump through the torn silver netting to land lightly on his feet beside me. Six guards came bursting through the trees, hands reaching for venom-tipped throwing darts sheathed in straps slung across their chest. More voices raised in the distance, slower in coming, as if they were being roused from slumber. When they came, however, they would arrive in overwhelming numbers.

  “Shift your form and fly away! I’ll hold them off,” Dante yelled as he leaped toward the six men. At the highest point of his jump, he transformed himself with a palpable wave of energy and the loud sound of ripping clothes. Bits of cloth sprayed the air in all directions as a one-hundred-and-eighty-pound man transformed suddenly into a five-hundred-pound-plus saber-toothed tiger. He was huge. Massive. Even taller than the men.

  He was the most terrifying creature I’d ever laid eyes on. The sheer size of him, not to mention those wickedly long saber teeth, complete with a spine-chilling roar, stunned the attackers. If I was standing in their shoes, I would have shit myself.

  Two hunters managed to hurl their darts and roll out of the way. The rest froze in that critical moment as they saw death racing toward them in prehistoric form. The beast swiped with his enormous paws, claws fully extended, several inches long, sailing past two attackers and grabbing up another in his jaws. The two long ivory sabers sank through the hunter’s chest like the weapons they were named after. A savage chomp with the powerful jaw, and most of the hunter’s chest, including the heart, was bitten off as easily as taking a bite out of a hamburger. Before the body, what remained of it, hit the ground, there was a bright flash of light.

  The body poofed into ashy dust, empty clothes and weapons falling to the ground.

  I thought for a moment the tiger had missed the other two hunters because they stood frozen there like statues. Then in slow, ponderous motion, as they started toppling over, a thin line of blood appeared across their necks like red paint seeping out. As their heads slowly separated from their necks, a bright light leaked from their open bodies. With an immolating poof, two more piles of ashes dusted the ground.

  With an easy pounce, the creature swatted the three other men into the air like a big cat playing with amusing mice. He broke the spine of one, by the sound of it, partially eviscerated the other, and tore through the ribs of the last, sending them thudding to the ground, an incapacitated bloody mess.

  The prehistoric tiger glanced back at me.

  I stood there with my mouth opened, stunned by the carnage and odd light-and-poofing-dust display—was that how Monères died?

  The two darts protruding from the tiger’s chest didn’t seem to bother him; too big, perhaps, to be knocked unconscious by them. He chuffed at me, a loud coughing sound, and tossed his head in a gesturing motion, like he was trying to tell me something. Oh yeah, to run away. Or more like, fly away.

  I tried. I brought the image of a vulture to mind and tried to picture myself becoming that image, but nothing happened. I didn’t know why—perhaps it was the shock of seeing Dante becoming that tawny, striped, enormous beast. Or maybe sensing more than fifty hunters running toward us wasn’t enough peril yet to force the change. Maybe I had to be hurtling down a gorge, in eminent danger of going splat, before I could shift.

  “I can’t change,” I said to the huge creature, not sure if Dante even understood me. “I tried but I can’t shift, and I know you want to be heroic and hold them off while I escape, but hello, here. I need some help. For one thing, if you didn’t notice, I have no shoes, and my feet don’t have the inch-thick calluses these guys seem to have. Are my words even reaching you? How about this? Here, kitty, kitty,” I coaxed.

  The big, magnificent cat eyed me balefully.

  My heart lifted into my throat as I felt—and saw—the first wave of reinforcements crest the small ridge above us. “We have to hotfoot it out of here, Dante, and I can’t do it without you. Please, Dante. I need you.”

  With a hissing snarl, the saber-toothed tiger delicately snatched up with his teeth the dark, reddish bracelets from the ground where they’d fallen in his transformation. Then he was in front of me, crouching down on his belly.

  “What do you want me to do? Climb aboard?”

  Dante chuffed and nodded his head, so much bigger than my own. Jesus, was he big! Big, but not invulnerable. Especially against fifty of those heathenish hunters who were streaming down the hill in a dark, brown-skinned wave, holding spears, swords, daggers, and those nasty venom-tipped darts, which reminded me . . .

  I dashed in front of Dante to pull the two darts out of his chest and throw the nasty things away, then leaped onto his broad back. “Go,” I cried, clutching a thick ruff of fur. Powerful muscles bunched and rippled beneath me, and he leaped away. Too late, I saw, looking back—my fault. Dozens of launched darts were coming at us like a dark and feathered malevolent cloud. Dante and I were about to look like a porcupine. Forget about knocking me out—that many venomous darts would be lethal! Me, definitely. Maybe even to him.

  With a quick, desperate pull of power from my innermost core, I threw out my left hand and let energy spill out from my mole, familiar yet different. Broadening the focus, I spread it wide with a grunt of effort. Instead of acting like a shield, which was what I was aiming for, it did even better. When the oncoming darts collided with my streaming energy, it not only repelled them but also launched them back at the hunters, some of whom had shifted into their animal forms—leopards and hyenas—all of them notably smaller than Dante’s prehistoric tiger form. Then my pulse of power hit the wave of attackers themselves like a soundless sonic blast, and sent them flying backward.

  I glanced down at my hand, staring at my innocent-looking mole from which that surprising blast of power had come, then hastily gripped fur with both hands to secure myself as Dante stretched out in a loping run.

  FIFTEEN

  WE RAN FOR Several hours. The jungle was denser this far south, and the trees taller, providing more shade. Riding the back of a huge tiger might have been better than running barefoot through the jungle, but it had its disadvantages. Especially when you didn’t have any underwear. Going commando was not something I planned to do ever again.

  While he ran for our lives, I was being tortured and flayed with erotic stimulation, and had become embarrassingly wet while riding him, not just perspiration of skin but damp between my legs where his thick but surprisingly soft fur brushed up against bare and sensitive parts of me. Dante, polite saber-toothed tiger that he was, didn’t say anything when I first became stickily moist, not that he could anyway. But the heavy, musky scent of arousal I began to emit soon made my condition pretty obvious, if the honeyed wetness starting to drip down his sides wasn’t a big fat clue already.

  If that wasn’t bad enough, the stimulation down below stirred things up above. My nipples peaked into hard pebbles and swelled my modest bosom, made worse by the rhythmic surge that rubbed them against the soft, furry pelt. I had more nerve endings than I had ever imagined. Nerve endings that became increasingly sensitive at each brush, each back-and-forth movement atop stimulating fur as Dante ran in long, loping strides.

  I alternated my position, trying to ride more up on my knees to alleviate the torturous fur-rubbing friction, but that just made my weight harder to balance; alas, riding on top of a giant prehistoric tiger was not at all like riding a horse. When I almost toppled over, Dante turned his head and growled softly. Plastered tightly against him once more after almost falling off, I felt the deep rumble pass right through his back up into my own chest, and more jarringly, between my thighs. “Oh God,” I gasped, swallowing down a moan. “Don’t growl. I’m sorry!”

  Boy, was I sorry. If he growled again, I was going to light up like a freaking lightbulb and give our position away. Not that I’d
heard any signs of pursuit after that surprising power blast I had thrown at Mona Sierra’s minions, knocking over their front line like ninepins.

  I clung to Dante and endured with gritting teeth and glazed eyes for another hour before we finally stopped at a stream. By that time I was thirsting for something far beyond water.

  Sliding off him was almost unbearably, sensually painful. I was never going to look at fur quite the same way ever again. By now, I was so aroused, I wouldn’t have cared if a horde of hunters were about to descend on us. I just wanted, needed, something I couldn’t name, but that wasn’t quite true because in the next second I opened my mouth and did so. “Dante,” I whispered, my eyes huge as I panted and trembled with need.

  That great jaw opened, dropping the bracelets he had carried, then transforming light sparkled and glimmered as fur formed back into naked skin, silver-blue eyes, and a prominent state of arousal. “Mona Lisa,” he growled.

  He was magnificent: that arresting face, the riveting body. A gorgeous study of pure masculine form. I touched his chest—smooth skin flowing over hard, rippling muscles, softness over leashed power—trailed my marveling hands down the ridges of his abdomen, finally touching what, two days ago, would have sent me shrinking away in anticipation of pain, not pleasure. My fingertips trailed lightly over his jutting arousal, feeling him, learning him.

  “Your skin is even softer here,” I murmured in wonder, “like smooth silk over hard iron.”

  Dante’s eyes blazed. He held still, so still, not even breathing as I slowly leaned forward and pressed my nose, my lips, against his throat, inhaling deeply. “I still smell you—tiger . . .” And the animal scent of him was as compellingly attractive, as enticing and intoxicating as the rest of him. “Taste you . . .” My lips trailed down over the graceful slope of his chest. Strength, power, pleasure . . . all inherently combined in him.

  Moving farther down, I pressed a kiss over the firm, round head of him, finally eliciting a reaction, a sound. His hands buried themselves in my hair, gripping tight as I licked and delicately tasted the drop of wetness at the tip and found it salty sweet, such contrast, like the rest of him. Discovered that it could be a delight, a pleasure in itself to learn, to taste and touch, the male form, envelope it into your mouth—the smooth, hard slide of him in. To suckle and lap and stroke over that silky, plump smoothness, the vein-rich shaft, testing the firmness beneath.