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An Excerpt From: IMMORTAL LUST
Copyright © SIERRA DAFOE, 2008
All Rights Reserved, Ellora's Cave Publishing,
Inc.
“But I thought you said it was a sin for you to bathe.”
He splashed toward her, reaching for the knife, and she
froze in sudden terror. “It is an even greater sin,” he replied, “to lie
with a woman. But that is what I am going to do, Cytharea.”
A gratitude so deep it pierced her heart flowed through
her as he moved back out into the water, raising the knife to his short,
tousled hair.
“No! Wait.” He paused, glancing at her questioningly. Cytharea flushed. “I…I want to see your face, Gerard.”
He stiffened, appearing more affronted by this request
than by all her pleas to touch her. Then, with a small, rueful chuckle, he
raised the knife to his beard and began trimming it close. “After
everything else, I suppose it can make little difference.”
She watched him slowly cut away the thick growth of his
beard, wincing inwardly at her presumption. Scraping his cheeks carefully,
he ducked under the water again. When he emerged, Cytharea
caught her breath in wonder.
He was so handsome! His mouth, now fully exposed, was
broad, his lips full. His brows seemed more forceful now with the beard
gone, and his cheeks were lean. His neck, corded with muscle, flowed
smoothly down to shoulders pebbled with drops of water. Glinting in the
moonlight, they cascaded down his body as he strode toward her, ripples of
silver spreading out across the water behind him.
The sodden fabric of his braies,
riding low on his hips, clung to his powerful thighs. Above the edge of the
coarse-woven cloth, a tangle of chestnut hair trailed from his navel to his
groin. The curving muscles of his chest were also flecked with hair, his
nipples tight, gleaming with wetness.
She too was wet, she realized, a furtive dampness
forming between her thighs as he rose above her, dripping water onto the
smooth, flat rock. He was so beautiful she almost wanted to hide herself
from him, ashamed of her wasted appearance. Lowering himself to his knees
beside her, he reached out to touch her face almost wonderingly.
“Cytharea.” Her name on his
lips was a whisper, no more. Something clenched in her heart at the
sound—had any man ever spoken her name so? Perhaps, once or twice, into the
darkness of their beds after they had lost her. But never to her. Never
like this. Never with eyes filled with moonlight and kindness. “Tell me
truly, Cytharea, will you die without this?”
She nodded wordlessly, almost crying. It was true. Her
body would perish if she did not feed. Her hunger gnawed at her, sharp and
consuming—and yet, she felt suddenly, even if she was not starving, still
she would die if he did not touch her. Her skin ached for his caress in a
way it had never yearned for any man. And there was a heat between her
thighs she’d never felt before.
“Please,” she whispered, her
voice small and desperate. “Please…” Raising thin, trembling arms, she
reached for him. But he caught her hands and she cried out in
disappointment—until he placed them flat on the swell of his chest. His
heart thundered within it, and again Cytharea was
painfully aware of the rush of his pulse, his blood beating through his
body, seductive, enticing, so very tempting…
She bit her lip, terrified of giving in to the craving
inside her. She had claimed proudly that she would die rather than bind
herself to any man. But the hunger inside her was so very, very great…
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