CHAPTER FOURTEEN
For a moment, she didn't move and, in the silence, he allowed his eyesto finger her.
Beneath the blond tumble of hair, her blue eyes watched him, her lipstoying with a bemused smile. She wore the odd toga-like dress that hadrecently become popular among the women on the home planet; it was awhite color, trimmed in a pale blue that went well with her hair, butLors hardly noticed it. His eyes were fixed upon the twin lift of herbreasts as they fought against the material.
She swung her long, curved legs to the floor, a momentary flash ofcreamy flesh showing at her thighs, and stood up. She came to him onslippered feet, whispering against the floor and stopped before him, herbreasts faintly brushing the material of his tunic.
"I thought I'd never get here, darling." Her voice was soft and warm.Sex, love and desire hung in her words; the emotion dripped from hervoice the way water falls from the roof of a cave, giving her tone athroaty huskiness that started the blood racing in his veins. Yet sheheld herself back, restrained her urge to fling herself into his arms.It was a game with her, one she had always played. "Did you miss me?"She asked.
He nodded, unable to trust his voice. It would crack, he knew it would.He would be able to say nothing beyond a mere croak. Too much washappening, too damned fast. It was almost impossible to keep up with itall.
"Well," she mused. "I realize you're stunned to see me, but you ought tokiss me. At least, that."
He reached out his hands slowly, feeling the tremble begin in hisfingers as he closed them over the softness of her upper arms. A drumbegan pounding in his temples as he touched her, a flashflood rippedthrough his veins, and his stomach churned like a storm. He brought hismouth down slowly against hers and felt her lithe body flatten upagainst him the way a candle melts against a sheet of hot metal.
Her mouth was a pliant sweetness that shoved all his thoughts of Terrainto the back of his mind; her body trembled against the lean hardnessof his in a shiver of passion. The very touch of her tongue against hislips beat aside all the problems that swirled about his muddled mind andawakened the desire and need that had lain dormant within him all thistime.
"Darling," she breathed, when he had pulled his mouth from hers. "Oh,Lors..."
"Shhh."
There was no need for talking, no sense in it at all. Her body mashed upagainst him and he allowed his hands to smooth down over the material ofher dress, along the curve of her spine to the twin globes of herbuttocks. Her mouth lifted to his again, eager, demanding, while herfingers dug through his tunic and into his flesh with a sharp need thatthrilled him.
Her hand reached behind him, her fingers finding the light button andsuddenly the room was sheathed in the soft cloak of darkness. Only thetiny nightlight gleamed like a small, yellow eye in the center of theceiling. She spoke to him, without removing her lips, her breath hot anddemanding against his mouth.
"I don't want to wait any longer, darling," she panted, "not anotherminute."
His arms slid around her, lifting her at the shoulders and the thighs tocarry her to the bed, but she twisted away from him, whirling off into adarkened corner of the room where the yellow light could not touch. Hecould hear the sigh of the toga-like robe as she whipped it away fromher soft flesh. Then she stood there, before him, framed in the alluringgold of the circle of light.
Lors felt his breath suck inward at the sight of her, standing therenude. She was even more beautiful than he had remembered and he feltshaken, to the very roots of his being.
The smooth curve of her shoulders glowed in the light and her face waskissed by shadows. The arching lift of her breasts and the impassionednipples threw a wash of dark shadow downward over the flat of herstomach and the lithe curve of her thighs. With the light covering thebeauty of her face, Jela lost her identity.
She was woman. Period.
Any and all, from time immemorial, or immoral, perhaps. She was somehow,standing there, a composite of every woman who had ever drawn a breath.She was the best of woman, the choicest parts of all women since thedawn of time, suddenly thrown together in a high breasted, slim waistedcreation that was being offered to him, only to him.
And Lors?
It moved in him, churned through his guts like a forest fire. He wasman! All men, glaring with the red eyes of passion at all women. He too,in the wash of lust that had swept over him, lost his identity and hedidn't give a damn. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered except that shewas waiting...
His fingers ripped away his clothing and he was at her side in no timeat all, his arms sliding about the pliant warmth of her flesh to claspher to him. To take her. To love her with a fever that was equal to thechallenge she presented.
She made a small sound and he hushed it with his mouth, planting hislips roughly against hers while he lowered her to the bed. He hurt her,but she didn't try to get away.
It was the kind of hurt she had waited for, that they both had yearnedfor all the long months that had kept them apart. His hands closed overher. Smoothing the tender flesh and feeling of life beneath his palm.
She moaned, tearing the sound from the very depths of her as his handssmoothed the satiny texture of her thighs, his fingers working againsther flesh. He felt the nails of her hands digging into his shoulders,but he paid no attention to it.
Nothing mattered now. Nothing except the warmth of their love and theexpenditure of the raging passions that threatened to engulf them both.
* * * * *
They laid there for a long time, basking in the heat of their love, andhe knew. Finally he knew that it all would not work. There could benothing between him and the Terran woman. It was impossible. She couldnot live in his worlds, nor could he live in hers. Jela was his worldand the past was merely an emotional thing. A moth and the flame.
Yet ... somehow, he _did_ love Beth. Somehow her and her life wasimportant to him. Her happiness was something that he had to assure. Hadto guarantee for her.
He had to work out a plan that would solve everything and return thewhole business to a state of normalcy. It would be difficult, if notimpossible, and he knew that Zark would never listen to him, never allowhim to carry it out.
But he had to do it.
There would be all kinds of risks and, if he failed in the thing, hemight have to pay with his life. If he managed to accomplish it, hewould get nothing as a reward, except perhaps the hand of theCommander's daughter. That wasn't such a bad reward, though.
He kissed her and the fires began to burn again.