Where Dark Things Wait: Night Creatures Book One

Chapter Thirty-Seven - Teach Me

The weekend had finally arrived, her first weekend since resuming her training, and for once neither she nor Dunstan had anywhere else to be or any duties to perform. How odd It seemed to have weekends again, rather than an endless blur of repetitive days that consisted of only hunger and vengeance. How strange it felt to want to spend time with the man next to her, in whose arms she had woken.

Cuddling against Dunstan's side, her fingers traced over his tattooed shoulder and collarbone, and onto his sculpted chest. The blue-black ink looked stark on his pale, vampire-cool skin, and she wanted to lick and kiss each mark; each part of the life story that had brought him to her. She wanted to kiss each scar as well, to taste his skin and hear him moan at her touch, yet she wasn't sure she felt ready to have him touch her. It didn't matter that Wren was in prison facing trial, or that she knew he had no power; what he'd done had left a mark on her psyche that she hadn't yet gotten over... but then that was why she had a question to ask.

Lying her head on Dunstan's chest, she didn't dare meat his eye as she asked, "Will you teach me?"

"Teach you?" he repeated, and she could hear the confusion in his tone. "What do you want to learn, beautiful?"

Hesitating, she struggled to form the words, to say what she wanted. In truth, she wanted him. His scent still made her hunger, and the feel of his body pressing against hers had heat blossoming in her belly, even though she knew she could bare to be touched.

"Kallie?" Dunstan prompted, concerned.

"It's OK if you say 'no'," she said in a rush. "It's an odd request and you might not want me like that anyway..."

"Like what?" he asked, and she could hear his frown in his voice. "I can't answer unless you tell me what you want, beautiful."

She paused again, taking a deep breath for fortification as she tried to find the words. Closing her eyes, she forced the request from her lips, still not willing to meet his eye as she announced, "I don't want to be afraid of intimacy, but I am. What he did made me afraid. It doesn't matter that I want you, that your smell tempts me, or that I want to hear you groan my name, because I know that if you were to touch me, my mind would spiral back to that god-forsaken cell..."

"I don't need sex, beautiful," Dunstan insisted, his finger stroking through her hair. "You'll be ready in your own time."

"I know," she agreed, then added, "But in the meantime, I want to give you something else. I don't want to fear intimacy, so I want to be intimate in another way. I want you to teach me to pleasure you... to inflict pain in the way you enjoy it... "

He stilled further, his fingers stopping their path through her red-brown tresses. His silence made her nervous, and she wondered if he hated the idea, if he'd stopped desiring her since she'd returned; beaten, and bruised, and broken. It made sense if he had. She'd needed him to hold her together and now he probably saw her as weak; unattractive, and so much less that she had been.

"I shouldn't have asked," she breathed, rolling away from him without looking at him, and curling up with her back to him.

Only he followed, his body curling around hers and his arm looping over her waist as he murmured, "Kallie, you don't owe me anything. You don't need to feel obliged to sate my desires. I don't need it."

"It isn't about obligation," she retorted, rolling back towards him and finally meeting his concerned gaze with a defiant one of her own. "I'm asking because although I'm not ready to be touched, I think I want to touch you. I know I want to touch you. I want to make you moan, Dunstan Eorl. I want to do something for you, not because you need it or because I owe you, but because I desire it. I desire you."