Addie's heart beat faster. She was afraid. And she was excited. “Why don’t you want to be disturbed?”
He didn’t reply; only fixed his eyes on her face. And the orange-y backgrounds behind the vivid emerald rings of his eyes burned with dry fire. She couldn't suppress a shiver.
“Turn around,” he ordered quietly.
“No, Zoark, I’d like to… ”
But he didn’t let her finish. “Turn around.”
Without waiting for her to comply, he grasped her by the shoulders and nudged her body into a clockwise rotation.
She didn’t want to comply. If he planned for them to continue this… relationship, they needed to be equally free to engage in it. She’d never overcome her fears of him without an ability to explore. And he’d…
Maybe that was it. His own history with cursed Samantha must have colored his perceptions of human women in darker hues - seeking hands, too insistent; bodies rubbing, too close; mouths that invaded without consent… It was easier from behind, more impersonal. And it left him in control.
He lifted her hair off her neck and kissed her there tenderly, then bit. His lips were warm and a little rough, his tongue slick and warm as he soothed the bite with leisurely strokes over the sensitive area of her neck. Up and down. Back and forth. The wet spot instantly cooled under the howling wind.
Addie’s thoughts scattered. With nowhere to hide from the sensual assault, she pushed backward, trying to get closer, and they came into a delicious full-body contact. He grunted softly when his arousal pressed against her back.
Did his eyes flare? Did For eyes dilate from pleasure? She didn’t know. Oh, to be able to taste him again, as she had inside his teepee, to lick into him, exploring the texture of his mouth that would be wonderfully familiar and excitingly strange to her. To feel the serrated range of his teeth with her tongue, sharp and frightening, and marvel at the contrast between the moist warmth of his mouth and the coolness of his dry lips under hers.
Denied the reality of the sensations, all Addie had left was imagining what it would be like. They were as close as two beings could be, yet light-years apart.
He slipped his warm large hands inside her dress and caressed her breasts, dropping deep, slow kisses to both sides of her neck, tasting her. And she let him, putting her head to one side and then the other to provide him with better access.
With her backside, now bare, she felt the press of his stomach against her, the slick hair on his lower body bizarre and wonderfully exciting. They were so different, and yet they fit in perfectly together like this, molded front to back, bodies straining to get closer, to become one.
She’d never imagined a desire could be overcompassing like this. And for a For, a male who was a definite cross between a man and a beast. What she felt for Zoark wasn’t seedy or dirty like some titillating secret kink. Every time she looked at him, she experienced a full feeling, warm and uplifting. She wanted to shout out from the sheer joy of it. Their connection, right here and now, was real and wonderful.
Addie shuttered under him, propelled into nirvana by Zoark’s multiple orgasms that made his member swell and pulse inside her, again and again.
So what if he didn’t want to look at her. So long as he got his strength back, nothing else mattered.
???
Their leisurely progress down the mountain was a drastic opposite to the frenzied ascent. Zoark walked behind Addie as she stopped here and there to collect some necessities on the way. She gathered some more Nessi fruit for Ihr and Ehr, Timpho grass bulbs that she perpetually needed, a sizable chunk of moss to use in the household.
“Vircea took care of me and Oh’nil after our pawi died,” Zoark said out of the blue.
It took Addie a few beats of silence to connect his statement to the question she’d asked earlier about him and his siblings being close. “How did your pawi die?”
“She fell off a cliff at the mountain overpass.”
Addie almost stumbled. Images of Qalae clinging at the very edge of the rocks swam in her mind.
“Did you see it happen?”
He nodded. “It was a long time ago. I don’t remember there being any falling rocks. She simply misstepped. Looking back, I believe she had been breeding again, and her stomach made her clumsy. She also carried a child in her arms, little Zaria. I remember her thrusting Zaria away, but the silly girl clung to her clothes and wouldn't let go. They both fell.”
“Zoark, this is heartbreaking. How old was Zaria?”
He had to think back on that one. “She was the youngest. Maybe three years in your time.”
“I can only imagine how hard it was for your father.”
Zoark cocked his head to one side. “My father was a chief. He could pick any woman he wanted, and he had. There were a number of different ones over the years.” He looked at her intently. “But he never took another permanent mate.”
“And he had you to raise.”
