“Yes, I know but I enjoyed it!” Ellilah cried. “I wanted more! Even now, my body is…is throbbing all over where you touched me! And even places where you didn’t touch me. It’s shameful and wrong!”
“It’s normal and natural,” Roke countered. “Of course it feels good when I touch you—we’re fucking attracted to each other. In fact, Gods…” He ran a hand through his hair. “I can’t remember the last time I wanted a female so badly,” he admitted recklessly.
“You…you want me?” Her green eyes went wide.
“The same way you want me,” Roke growled. “Don’t deny it, little priestess. I can smell your desire.” It was a warm, devastatingly feminine scent that filled his senses and made his shaft ache in the confines of his trousers.
“But I shouldn’t want you!” Ellilah put her head in her hands. “Oh, if only I had been allowed to do the Ceremony of Shriving and drink from the cup of Mortem Amore before I left the Mother Ship! This wouldn’t be happening now if I had!”
“You said something about that before,” Roke said, frowning. “What is this ‘Shriving Ceremony’ and how is drinking from some special cup supposed to help you?”
“It helps by killing all your wrong and lustful desires.” Ellilah looked up at him earnestly. “It keeps you from having sinful urges.”
“So it kills your libido? Your sexual passion?” Roke shook his head. “That’s fucking horrible, sweetheart! Why would you want such a thing?”
“So that I can stop being bad all the time.” Ellilah’s big green eyes filled suddenly with tears. “So that I can resist all the wrong urges I have and stop being such a horrible person!”
Roke was appalled at her sudden admission. Did she really think such things about herself? If so, whoever had raised her had done her a grave disservice.
“Come here, sweetheart.” He reached for her and though she resisted at first, he finally coaxed her into his lap so he could wrap his arms around her as she cried.
“I’m so bad,” she sobbed against his chest, her narrow shoulders shaking. “Why can’t I stop being so bad?”
“You’re not bad, sweetheart.” Roke’s heart was breaking for her as he held her close and caressed her back soothingly. “It’s not bad to have sexual desires—it’s normal, natural. The Goddess herself built us to have desires.”
“She did?” Ellilah looked up at him with wet eyes. “But why would she do that?”
“So we would reproduce and have children,” Roke said reasonably. “Otherwise, the first generation of Kindred would have been the last.”
Ellilah sniffed and swiped at her eyes.
“I…I never thought of it like that.” She shook her head. “But only males are supposed to have desires—not females.”
“Says who?” Roke demanded.
“My stepmother.” Ellilah looked up at him. “She said that females are meant to be a receptacle for a male’s pleasure and that females aren’t meant to feel anything at all.”
“The same way females aren’t supposed to tame and train zorels?” Roke asked, arching an eyebrow at her.
“Exactly.” She nodded. “It makes a girl unladylike to train zorels and to want to…you know…have pleasure.” She glanced at him shyly.
“Let me ask you something,” Roke said. “Did you feel like this before your stepmother came into your life?”
“Well…no,” Ellilah admitted. “But I grew up in a houseful of males so nobody ever talked to me about this kind of thing before she came.”
“So you were fine and free and happy before she came along and the minute she appears in your life she starts filling you with guilt,” Roke growled.
He wished he could meet Ellilah’s stepmother. He would never hurt a female physically, but he would certainly give the evil stepmother a piece of his mind. Imagine making the poor little female in his lap feel so bad and shameful about perfectly normal desires! She had poisoned Ellilah’s pleasure with guilt and driven her into the priestess-hood where, in Roke’s opinion, she did not belong.
Some people just weren’t meant to take a vow of chastity. And from the hot-blooded way the little priestess had reacted to his kisses and caresses, Roke was fairly certain that Ellilah was one of them.
“I just…don’t want to be bad anymore,” Ellilah whispered. She seemed all cried out now, for she rested tiredly against his chest like a weary child.
“Poor little sweetheart,” Roke murmured, stroking her shining hair. “You’re not bad. I don’t care what your wicked stepmother told you—having sexual desires and pleasure is not bad. The Goddess made your body to enjoy sex—to take pleasure in your own touch and the touch of another.”
“In…in my own touch?” This idea seemed to upset Ellilah all over again. She shook her head and pushed herself out of Roke’s lap, though he would have been happy to hold her all night. “No, I…I don’t believe that.”
Roke sighed and rubbed his eyes. Clearly he wasn’t going to convince her of her own innocence all at once.