Pleasure and Purpose Read online

  "Cillian," Honesty murmured, and watched how his gaze flared at the sound of his name on her tongue. She said no more, gave him no words to resist. Only the sight of her. Cillian watched her, and at last his hand went to his cock to squeeze just behind the head. His lips thinned, but his throat worked to hold back the moan she heard anyway. It urged one in response from her, and Honesty made no pretense at holding it back.

  "I might believe you want me," he said.

  "Come and let me show you that I do."

  It was a courtship as coy and stifled as any she'd ever witnessed, made ridiculous by the fact they were both naked. Yet if either of them felt the fool, Honesty couldn't tell it. They might have been sitting in a garden full of roses, her invitation made from behind a fan and his love-gift to her a posy, not his prick.

  And at last he moved toward her, step by step, until the bed dipped under his weight. Behind the blaze of lust, Honesty glimpsed a slew of other emotions, fleeting, in his eyes. Cillian licked his mouth again and ran a hand along her calf. He stopped at her knee, fingers curled lightly over her skin.

  He kissed it.

  She twitched at the soft, unexpected press of his lips to flesh unused to caresses. His name slipped out of her unbidden this time. Cillian nuzzled the fine hairs on her thigh and moved higher as Honesty's legs opened wider to accept him.

  On hands and knees he crouched between her legs, his mouth a scant breath from touching her. She tensed, waiting for him to kiss her again. Or to lick her. Even to touch her with more than the gust of air seeping from his lips.

  Her last lover had been a worker from the fields outside the Motherhouse. She'd seen him from her window, bare-backed and sweating in the last summer sunshine as he pulled the weeds from a crop of joba melons. He'd worn his hair too short for fashion, and it had stuck up crazily when he swept dirty hands through it. She'd gone down to watch him work, and he'd handed her a melon fresh off the vine, tart enough to pucker her mouth. He'd taken her hand and gone behind the toolshed where they'd lain on a bed of seed sacks. He'd been the last man to put his mouth on her cunt, and he'd tongued her only long enough to make her wet enough to fuck.

  Cillian took his time. His hands slid beneath her bottom to hold her to his mouth when at last he touched his lips to her clit. She cried out at the flicker of his tongue. He smoothed the flat of it over her, and her hips bucked until he held her still.

  "Please," she said.

  He looked up at her, even the lust in his eyes dimmed behind a veil of inscrutability. Slowly, deliberately, he slid his tongue over her heated flesh and down to press inside. Then again, the same motion in reverse, while Honesty arched and writhed as best she could against the bonds of his grip.

  Time slowed for her beneath his touch, and Honesty gave herself up to it, utterly. Pleasure washed over her in slow, rolling waves. She found the softness of his hair with her fingers and twined them deep in the silken depths as her climax burst through her. Trembling, she fell back onto the pillows with a low cry. It took her some moments to realize he'd moved away from her, but when she opened her eyes to find him, Cillian was staring at her. He didn't move away from her when she sat and drew him close for a kiss. She was the one who hesitated this time, and he the one who captured her mouth. The taste of her pleasure on his tongue sent another surge of desire through her. Still kissing him, Honesty lay back again and Cillian followed. He braced himself to keep from putting all his weight down, but Honesty would have none of that. One orgasm was not enough to sate her. She needed more, and one from him, as well. Somewhere along the way she'd lost sight of her reasons for this, whether her selfish heart thought only of itself or if woman she began and ended. All she knew was that his mouth was too sweet to deny, and the heat of his prick on her belly parted her legs. She wanted him on top of her, inside her, no matter if it was for her comfort or for his.

  "Make love to me," she murmured into his ear, and Cillian shuddered against her neck. His cock nudged her gate and she opened for him. She wrapped her legs around his waist to draw him closer. Her fingernails raked his back when he thrust deep with a groan. When he nipped at her neck, she cried out and lifted her hips.

  Cillian was as skilled with lovemaking as he'd been with cunnilingus. In moments she surged to the edge again. Honesty cried out her ecstasy and drove him harder with her heels and fingernails. Her body convulsed around him and Cillian thrust again, voicing his ecstasy in a hoarse shout.

  They clung to each other for the span of a heartbeat or two, a few breaths, and then he rolled off her. His hair spilled out over her shoulder, his head on the same pillow. Still languid in the aftermath, Honesty turned on her side to face him and stroked a hand over it.

  "You have such lovely hair."

  He laughed, a sound as unexpected as the kiss to her knee had been. He didn't look at her, but he laughed. Then he covered his eyes with a hand and his laugh faded into something more like a sob.

  Words were not always the best choice. Honesty reached to draw the blankets over both of them, for although touching him earlier had been like caressing flames, now they were both chilled. Yawning, she tucked herself up beside him and waited for him to push her away and get out of bed. Moment by moment, he softened beneath her until the hushed sound of his breathing told her he slept.

  It took her a very long time to join him.

  Chapter 12

  "This fountain is lovely." Honesty pointed with the hand not nestled in Cillian's. She'd taken his hand as they walked and noted how he'd tensed at the touch before relaxing.

  "What is the statuary representing?"

  "I don't know. I never asked."

  Though he wasn't much taller, his stride was longer. He'd shortened it to accommodate her. In the sunshine, his hair shone like flames. She'd tied it down his back with a dark green ribbon interwoven in the braid, but the sedate hairstyle couldn't hide its beauty. She wanted to touch his hair, and so she did.

  Cillian shot her a glance at the touch. "I could find out for you.

  "It's not important." She didn't really care. Once she was gone she'd never come back here to marvel at the carved stone angels with water shooting from their mouths. "Let's go into the hedge maze."

  Cillian grimaced. "That place? Why?"

  How much had changed since she'd taken him to bed, she mused with a small smile and a tug of his hand. He was still not the smoothest tempered of men, but seemed less inclined to instant rage or contempt. If modesty had been one of the five principles she'd surely have failed at maintaining it, because Honesty took no small amount of pride in how he'd changed in just the past few days because of her.

  For a moment, unease twitched in her gut. She'd made a marked difference in him without even trying. She could ease him into great changes, should she make an effort. . . but no. It didn't matter that his hands and mouth brought her such fierce pleasure. She ought to have told him the truth. She was no longer of a heart sufficient to serve. She might bring him some small comfort, but solace would be out of reach if he relied upon her to lead him to it. She ought to have left already, except she still hadn't gathered the courage to make that choice.

  "Because it would be most merry to see how long it takes us to find the center, and because I fancy finding out how private such a place might be." Forcing away her dark thoughts, she grinned at him, then dropped a slow wink.

  Cillian, for all his swaggering and his private room full of naked women, blushed. The color rose high on his cheeks and sent heat swirling throughout her body at the sight. This man . . . oh, this man was not at all what she'd expected.

  "I haven't been to the center," Cillian said, but followed. Like lovers, they strolled through the gate of woven vines laced with bits of ribbon and beads. Honesty paused to set one strand to swinging. "What are these?" He laughed. "They're called braggart's laces."

  Honesty stroked along another length of satin with a glass bead dangling from the end.

  "And what do they do?"

  "Th