Guarding the Goddess Page 12

  “About what? It looked serious.” Ty sat on the couch and patted the seat beside him. “Care to talk about it?”

  Ellina opened her mouth to say no, she didn’t—it was her habit to keep her secret thoughts private. But that was in the past—because she had no one she could trust to tell them to, she thought. Maybe with Ty’s help, she could figure out what was happening to her…and what had happened between them during the Ritual of Humility.

  “Well…” She settled beside him, trying to think how to begin. “I guess…I guess I’m thinking about what…what we just did,” she confessed. “What I did to you. And wondering…why I did it.”

  He arched an eyebrow.

  “I thought you were performing a ritual.”

  “I was, but…” Ellina bit her lip, hoping he wouldn’t be angry with her. “But, well…I sort of…took the ritual further than was absolutely necessary,” she admitted at last. She looked up at him quickly. “Does that upset you?”

  To her relief, Ty only shrugged.

  “You took it as far as you wanted to—as far as you needed to, my Lady,” he rumbled. “I was glad to be of service to you in any way you needed me.”

  “So you’re not upset with me?” she pressed, wanting to hear him say it.

  Ty frowned.

  “I should be, I guess,” he admitted at last. “I have been worried that our…relationship might move towards the physical at some point.”

  “Worried?” Ellina frowned. “Why would that worry you?”

  “Because…” He sighed and ran a hand through his still-damp hair. “I have a history of…” His forehead wrinkled, as though he was trying to think how to phrase it. “Of wanting to please and serve females—especially females in power. You might say I was born and raised to do so.”

  “You were?” Ellina was fascinated. “Is that how all Kindred are raised?”

  “To a certain extent.” He frowned. “We all have the inborn desire to pleasure and protect females. It’s just that my own instincts have been…specially honed in that area.” He cleared his throat. “Let’s just say that my desire to serve and submit to you is probably more intense than it should be, especially considering our respective positions.”

  Ellina wanted to ask him more, but before she could, he went on.

  “But I asked to talk about what was on your mind, little one,” he reminded her. “Not what was on mine. So go on—what has you staring into the fire with that puzzled look on your face?”

  “Well…” Ellina sighed and dragged her eyes from the flames, where they had returned momentarily. “I was just wondering why I did…what I did,” she admitted at last. “And why…why I enjoyed it,” she ended, almost in a whisper.

  He raised an eyebrow at her.

  “So you enjoyed making me come, did you?” he rumbled.

  Ellina felt her cheeks getting hot with a blush but she nodded, determined to be completely honest with the big Kindred.

  “I did,” she said softly. “But not in the sense that I felt powerful—although I did,” she admitted. “You’re so big and strong and yet you let me have control over your body. You let me make you come. That was…a very heady experience.”

  “For me, too I assure you, little one,” Ty murmured. “But tell me, in what other way did you enjoy touching and taking me?” he asked.

  Ellina tried to think how to describe it.

  “I…I felt tingly,” she told him at last. “Like tingles of actual physical pleasure when I touched you…when I made you come.”

  “Why is that surprising?” Ty asked, frowning. “Giving pleasure can be as intensely pleasurable as receiving it—at least in my experience. For instance, when I am tasting a female—”

  “Tasting?” Ellina interrupted him, frowning.

  His eyes went half-lidded in the golden glow of the fire.

  “When I’m on my knees before her, licking her soft little pussy open with my tongue,” he explained in a low voice. “When I’m bathing her sweet clit and delving deep into her honey well to taste her juices, well…that makes my shaft harder than almost anything else.”

  “You…you do that with females?” Ellina felt her breath catch in her throat and that strange tingling in the tips of her breasts and between her legs began again.

  “Well, I haven’t for a long time,” Ty admitted. “But when I do, gods…” He shook his head, his pale eyes far away in the firelight, as though he was remembering something intensely pleasurable.

  “You…you really like that? It makes you tingle?” Ellina asked.

  He nodded. “I do more than tingle, little one. Sometimes I fucking come just from the flavor of a female’s juices on my tongue and the sound of her moans in my ears. The pleasure of pleasuring is that intense—even without anyone touching me.”

  Ellina thought of the erotic sight of his seed spurting from the broad head of his shaft and felt the tingling in her own secret areas increase.

  “That’s…amazing,” she murmured at last. “I didn’t know it could be that way.”

  “You know now,” he pointed out. “You just admitted that touching me and making me come made you ‘tingle’ with pleasure.”

  “But that’s just the thing,” Ellina protested. “I shouldn’t be tingling with pleasure. I shouldn’t be able to experience any pleasure at all.”

  “What?” Ty gave her a startled frown. “Why not? Is it forbidden for a Potentate to have pleasure?”

  “Well, no—not that I know of,” Ellina said. “It’s just…I don’t have the correct parts for it, you know?” She blushed to speak of her deficiencies to the big Kindred but she reminded herself that he already knew about her mutation—he had seen her naked and hadn’t been repulsed.

  Ty looked her up and down, clearly confused.

  “You seem to have all the right parts to me,” he said at last. “Why should you not have pleasure from them?”

  “No, no…” Ellina frowned. “You don’t understand. I don’t have a third breast,” she explained. “Or a second sacred mouth—both of which are only for pleasure.”

  “They are?” Ty still looked confused. “Forgive me—I don’t know much about Chorkay anatomy,” he confessed.

  “It’s like this,” Ellina instructed him. “The two outer breasts on a Chorkay woman are for nursing a child. The inner breasts—the third one—is for pleasure only. For the nipple gives no milk—it only feels good when…” She felt her cheeks heating as she spoke. “When a man touches or licks it,” she finished in a rush.”

  Ty raised his eyebrows.

  “And I suppose the, uh, second sacred mouth—the one located just below a Chorkay female’s navel—is also just for pleasure?”

  “Just so.” Ellina nodded. “It has no secret entrance which leads to a womb like the first or primary sacred mouth—so there is no need for a male to batter it open. It is only for sexual enjoyment. So it doesn’t hurt when a shaft enters it and a male may spill his seed there as often as he likes with no fear of conception. Also…” She bit her lip, squirming a bit with embarrassment for a moment.

  “Also what? Go on, Ellina,” Ty prompted softly. “Don’t be ashamed—tell me.”

  “Also the, um, pleasure button of the second sacred mouth is very, um, pronounced and…and sensitive,” she finally managed to say. “It gives intense pleasure when touched.”

  “Are you saying that the primary sacred mouth has no clitoris? No pleasure button?” Ty asked, frowning.

  “Oh no—it has one,” Ellina assured him. “It’s just too small to give any pleasure—that’s all. Because the primary sacred mouth is only for breeding.” She sighed. “Some say that’s why females who have the Sacred Blue skin tone, like me, also only have the one sacred mouth—the one for breeding. Because the need to produce an heir is too great for the Potentate’s consort to waste his seed in a secondary sacred mouth.” She shrugged unhappily. “And so we have none.”

  Ty looked skeptical.

  “And so you think, because yo
u lack a third breast and a second sacred mouth that you can never have any sexual pleasure at all?”

  “I know I can’t,” Ellina assured him. “That was one reason Hennessy thought I wouldn’t mind if he cheated on me if I were to take him as my consort,” she added. “Because, as he put it, I don’t have ‘the right parts’ to get any pleasure from breeding anyhow.” She hung her head. “He was right there, at least. Even if he was a total ass for saying so.”

  “Let’s leave that little bastard out of the equation for now.” There was a dangerous growl in Ty’s voice, as though the very thought of Hennessy Tolland made him angry. “And address the question at hand. You really feel like you can’t have sexual pleasure in any way?”

  “How can I when I lack the proper equipment?” Ellina protested.

  “What makes you think your equipment isn’t right?” he countered. “In females of my own kind, there is no third breast or second sacred mouth, but they’re perfectly capable of sexual pleasure. Why should you be different?”

  “Well…because I’m a whole different species from you,” Ellina protested.

  “The Goddess made us all,” Ty told her. “I know, I know—you believe in Thufar,” he went on. “But I believe we are all her children.” He frowned. “Even those of us who are made…differently.”

  Ellina had the strangest feeling that he was speaking about himself as much as about her. But she still couldn’t agree with his conclusions.

  “It’s nice of you to say I’m not deformed—even though by Chorkay standards I certainly am,” she said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I lack what—for my people—is the necessary equipment to experience sexual pleasure.”

  “Then why did you tingle when you touched me?” Ty countered. “And why did you kiss me so eagerly last night when you milked my fangs?”

  Ellina felt herself blushing again—her cheeks going hot in the firelight.

  “I…don’t know,” she admitted. “That’s why I’m confused—it doesn’t make sense.”

  “I think it does, though.” Ty looked at her intently. “My Lady, would you allow me to try a little experiment?”

  “Experiment? What do you mean?” Ellina asked, looking at him uncertainly.

  “It’s easier for me to show you than to tell you,” Ty said. “Although I confess that it might involve me touching you…rather intimately.”

  Ellina felt her heart start to pound and hot blood rushed in her ears.

  “Intimately?” she asked. “How…how intimately?”

  “No more intimately than you touched me a little while ago,” he promised in a low, soft voice. In the firelight, his pale eyes were once again half-lidded. “Don’t worry, little one—I won’t try to breed you,” he added. “But I’d like to prove a point to you, if I may.”

  Ellina took a deep breath, wondering what she ought to say. When he said he wouldn’t touch her more intimately than she had touched him, it wasn’t much of a reassurance. After all, she had actually had her fingers inside him while she stroked his shaft. That was much more intimate than she’d ever expected to get with her Kindred bodyguard.

  But I want to do this—want to let him touch me, she realized, as she looked up at him. And I trust him—I know Ty would never harm me.

  “All right,” she heard herself saying at last. “Let’s do it—let’s try your, uh, experiment, Ty.”

  “Good.” He smiled at her, a slow smile that seemed to do strange things to her insides. Just looking at it made her feel warm and melty all over. “Then climb in my lap, little one and let’s get started.”

  Nineteen

  Ellina couldn’t believe she was doing this. She was still only wearing the long, thin drying sheet knotted above her breasts. She was completely bare beneath it and yet she was climbing into the big Kindred’s lap—straddling him as she had the night before when she was milking his fangs to taste his essence.

  You mean when you were kissing him, whispered an accusing little voice in her head. And it looks like you’re about to do a lot more than that right now. You shouldn’t, Ellina—you know it isn’t right!

  But somehow she couldn’t seem to stop herself. She pushed the accusing little voice away and made herself comfortable in Ty’s lap, making certain that the drying sheet still covered her modestly, hiding both her breasts and her sex.

  “Now then,” Ty said, when she was situated. His own drying sheet was wrapped around his trim hips, leaving his broad, muscular chest bare.

  “Now then,” Ellina echoed his words. “What are we going to do?”

  “Just this.” And his big hand came up to cup her breasts through the drying sheet.

  “Oh!” Ellina gave a little gasp but didn’t move to get away, even when he cupped her more firmly and his thumbs found the hard points of her nipples and began to circle them slowly.

  “Oh…” she said again and this time the sound was more than half moan. For the gentle motion of his thumbs seemed to do something to her—caused a strange, hot pleasure she had never expected in the tips of her breasts before. Her nipples grew suddenly even harder as he circled them and the sparks of pleasure seemed to get even more intense.

  “Do you feel that?” Ty murmured, looking at her. “Do you feel me touching you?”

  “Y-yes,” Ellina admitted.

  “Good.” He nodded. “And does it feel good or bad?”

  “G-good, I think,” she whispered.

  He arched an eyebrow.

  “You think?”

  “I…it’s hard to tell…hard to know with…with the drying sheet in the way, I think,” Ellina heard herself say.

  The big Kindred nodded thoughtfully.

  “It would seem that our experiment would be more accurate with skin-to-skin contact. Would you agree?”

  Ellina could barely speak so she just nodded.

  “Very good,” Ty murmured. “So maybe we should take this down, just a bit?”

  As he spoke, he tugged at the top of the drying sheet until it loosened. Ellina’s heart lurched in her chest and for a moment she wanted to clutch at it—to hide herself as she was so in the habit of doing. Then she reminded herself that Ty thought she was lovely—that the women of his people all had two breasts, not three. So it was all right to let him see her.

  He thinks I’m beautiful, she told herself as she let the top of the sheet fall to puddle in her lap, baring her breasts to him in the firelight. He likes the way I look.

  From the look in Ty’s half-lidded eyes, he certainly did like the way she looked. He was staring at her like a hungry man stares at a feast, Ellina thought. Or maybe like a connoisseur admiring an especially fine piece of art.

  His expression made her bold enough to sit up straight and thrust her bare breasts out to him.

  “I’m ready, Ty,” she said, somewhat breathlessly. “You can…can go on with the experiment now.”

  “Mmm, so I can,” he murmured and his big, warm hands came up to cup her again—this time with nothing between them.

  Ellina bit back a moan as he began circling her tender peaks again. She seemed to throb inside with his gentle touch—so light and teasing and yet it was sending showers of sparks from her nipples straight down to the place between her legs.

  “Oh…” she moaned softly, shifting in his lap. “Why does that feel so good? So tingly?”

  “Maybe because you can have pleasure?” Ty suggested, the barest hint of a smile curving his sensual mouth.

  “Maybe…” Ellina admitted breathlessly. She didn’t want to agree with him completely—she didn’t want him to stop proving his point.

  Ty seemed reluctant to stop the experiment too.

  “Shall I prove it to you further?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at her. “Shall I give you even more pleasure, my Lady, to prove that you are able to experience it?”

  “I…I suppose that’s a good idea,” Ellina whispered, nodding. “Go ahead, Ty—what do you want to do?”

  “Only this.” And leaning forward
, he put out his tongue and lapped a slow circle around the aching peak of her right breast.

  “Oh!” Ellina gasped, for this was a whole new sensation—an extremely pleasurable one. Again, she didn’t want it to stop.

  “Did you feel it?” Ty asked her, pulling back a bit. “Did you feel pleasure when I licked you?”

  “I…I think so.” Ellina squirmed in his lap. “Maybe you’d better do it again,” she suggested. “Just…just to be sure.”

  “Of course. Whatever my Lady desires,” Ty murmured. Leaning forward, he ducked his head again. Only this time, instead of licking her, he sucked her entire throbbing nipple into his hot mouth and began to tease it with his tongue.

  “Oh! Oh, Ty!” Ellina moaned. She found that she was pressing her breasts out, trying to give him better access and somehow her hands had found his broad shoulders, as though she was begging for more.

  He made a low humming sound in the back of his throat and switched to the left nipple, sucking it and toying with it just as he had the right one. At the same time, his big hand came up and cupped her other breast, squeezing her nipple lightly as though he was trying to give her pleasure in both places at once.

  In that, he completely succeeded. Ellina found she could hardly sit still, it felt so good! She was squirming all over his lap and she felt positively molten from the waist down.

  “Oh,” she moaned as she wiggled against him. “Oh, Ty…”

  At last he looked up, his eyes dark with lust.

  “Do you see now, my Lady?” he murmured, still cupping her breasts. “Do you see how your body is perfectly able to receive pleasure?”

  “Well, I see that…that my breasts are able to, at any rate,” Ellina answered breathlessly. “But I still don’t know about…lower down.”

  He frowned.

  “You’re still worried about the fact that you have no, uh, second sacred mouth?”

  Ellina sighed.

  “That’s where the pleasure button is. And my primary sacred mouth has such a small one.”

  “You might not have a second sacred mouth, but I’d be very surprised if your pleasure button is unable to give you pleasure,” Ty rumbled. He started to pull her drying sheet down even further, but then stopped himself. “With your permission, my Lady?” he asked formally.