Get There: (Originally Published in the Print Anthology a RED HOT VALENTINE'S DAY) by Megan Hart
Authors: Megan Hart
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Instead I reached out, my hand shaking, and ran uncertain fingers over the stripe of his cheekbone.
I shuddered as my fingers made contact with his skin. It had been so long since I had been touched with anything but violence or desire that was twisted at its root. Darius touched me sometimes, but his caresses were friendly and reassuring.
They did not affect me in nearly the same way that these small caresses did.
“Christus. I cannot do this.” I wanted to. I could no longer lie to myself. I wanted this man, wanted the moments of pleasure that he could bring to me in this strange life that I called my own. “If the men found out that I took you as a lover, we would both be under attack.”
My voice had a breathless quality to it, one that I had never heard before. I was feeling things that I had never felt before, too, as Christus lowered his head and laid his lips on my knee.
When he again looked up, the expression on his face—the longing, the desire—was my undoing.
“Why should anyone find out? It is no one’s business but our own.” The fingers that still softly stroked the skin beneath my knee moved with excruciating slowness, tracing a stripe up and up, until they found the edge where my leather wrap met my skin.
“Christus.” What was happening to me? I was not weak—I made my own decisions. Yet I could no more have stopped this encounter than I could have stopped breathing.
Slowly, giving me time to say no, Christus worked at the knot in my leather. When the fastening was loose, he pulled the garment away from my body, hanging it on the edge of the tub.
Leaving my skin bare from the waist down.
I felt my lower lip tremble, but apart from that small movement I was still, tensed, my breath caught in my throat with anticipation. With his eyes on my own, drinking in every nuance of my expression, he inched his fingers up, then up again, trailing them over my inner thighs as the muscles beneath quivered.
I inhaled sharply when those fingers grazed over the heated skin between my legs. Christus paused at the noise, again giving me time to say no.
I waited a long moment, my innermost thoughts whirling through my head in a great rush. Sex had been tied up with violence for so long, it had made me feel cheap at best. The idea that I could embrace it for pleasure was strange and oddly thrilling, if I could but take that leap.
My eyelids lowered, I looked down from the edge of the bath, where I still perched, looked at the god of a man who was rising out of the water at my feet. He was golden and sleek and beautiful, and he wore an expression of reverence and of need that looked to be nearly painful.
It was this exact combination that pushed me the last step. With an exhalation of the breath that I had been holding, I covered his wrist with my hand, holding his fingers in place even as I arched my hips to meet his touch.
“You are certain that we will not be disturbed?” I could not quite believe that I was prepared to accept his word when he nodded. The Lilia of even a day before would never have taken anything at face value, would have had to see for herself.
But this man inspired trust. Trust, as well as lust.
For the first time since I had come to the ludus, I decided to embrace the sensations.
Also by Megan Hart
“Nothing Else Matters” (in Hot and Haunted )
The Space Between Us
Collide
Copyright
Get There originally appeared in the print anthology A Red Hot Valentine’s Day , published in 2009 by Avon Red, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Excerpt from “Nothing Else Matters” copyright © 2012 by Megan Hart.
Excerpt from Seduced by the Gladiator copyright © 2013 by Lauren Hawkeye.
GET
I shuddered as my fingers made contact with his skin. It had been so long since I had been touched with anything but violence or desire that was twisted at its root. Darius touched me sometimes, but his caresses were friendly and reassuring.
They did not affect me in nearly the same way that these small caresses did.
“Christus. I cannot do this.” I wanted to. I could no longer lie to myself. I wanted this man, wanted the moments of pleasure that he could bring to me in this strange life that I called my own. “If the men found out that I took you as a lover, we would both be under attack.”
My voice had a breathless quality to it, one that I had never heard before. I was feeling things that I had never felt before, too, as Christus lowered his head and laid his lips on my knee.
When he again looked up, the expression on his face—the longing, the desire—was my undoing.
“Why should anyone find out? It is no one’s business but our own.” The fingers that still softly stroked the skin beneath my knee moved with excruciating slowness, tracing a stripe up and up, until they found the edge where my leather wrap met my skin.
“Christus.” What was happening to me? I was not weak—I made my own decisions. Yet I could no more have stopped this encounter than I could have stopped breathing.
Slowly, giving me time to say no, Christus worked at the knot in my leather. When the fastening was loose, he pulled the garment away from my body, hanging it on the edge of the tub.
Leaving my skin bare from the waist down.
I felt my lower lip tremble, but apart from that small movement I was still, tensed, my breath caught in my throat with anticipation. With his eyes on my own, drinking in every nuance of my expression, he inched his fingers up, then up again, trailing them over my inner thighs as the muscles beneath quivered.
I inhaled sharply when those fingers grazed over the heated skin between my legs. Christus paused at the noise, again giving me time to say no.
I waited a long moment, my innermost thoughts whirling through my head in a great rush. Sex had been tied up with violence for so long, it had made me feel cheap at best. The idea that I could embrace it for pleasure was strange and oddly thrilling, if I could but take that leap.
My eyelids lowered, I looked down from the edge of the bath, where I still perched, looked at the god of a man who was rising out of the water at my feet. He was golden and sleek and beautiful, and he wore an expression of reverence and of need that looked to be nearly painful.
It was this exact combination that pushed me the last step. With an exhalation of the breath that I had been holding, I covered his wrist with my hand, holding his fingers in place even as I arched my hips to meet his touch.
“You are certain that we will not be disturbed?” I could not quite believe that I was prepared to accept his word when he nodded. The Lilia of even a day before would never have taken anything at face value, would have had to see for herself.
But this man inspired trust. Trust, as well as lust.
For the first time since I had come to the ludus, I decided to embrace the sensations.
Also by Megan Hart
“Nothing Else Matters” (in Hot and Haunted )
The Space Between Us
Collide
Copyright
Get There originally appeared in the print anthology A Red Hot Valentine’s Day , published in 2009 by Avon Red, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Excerpt from “Nothing Else Matters” copyright © 2012 by Megan Hart.
Excerpt from Seduced by the Gladiator copyright © 2013 by Lauren Hawkeye.
GET
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