"So? Explain how fainting is normal," she prompted as soon as he chewed and swallowed his last bite.
Nicholas peered at his now-empty plate, glanced toward the kitchen as if considering fetching another, but then set the plate down and explained, "The combined pleasure is too much for the mind to take at first and in response, the brain sort of overloads and winks out as the orgasm overwhelms it. It's perfectly normal for the first year or so that life mates are together."
"What's this combined pleasure business?" she asked at once.
"I feel your pleasure and you feel mine," he said simply.
"So when you were…" Jo paused and bit her lip, trying to think of a way to describe what he'd been doing without having to use a crude term that would demean the beauty of it.
"Every time I kiss, caress, or touch you, I experience your pleasure as if it was my own," Nicholas said solemnly, solving the problem for her. "I experienced your pleasure, and it mingled with mine and then bounced back to you, mingling with yours again and bouncing back even stronger, and so on until neither of us could take it anymore."
That explained the overwhelming pleasure she'd experienced, Jo supposed, and then asked, "So this combined pleasure business only happens between life mates?"
Nicholas nodded solemnly, and then asked, "Why are you smiling?"
"Because you're over five hundred years old and have probably bedded a load of women and I'm glad as gonads that you didn't experience this with them."
"Glad as gonads?" Nicholas asked, wincing at the term. Shaking his head, he smiled reluctantly, but then admitted quietly, "I have experienced it once before, Jo."
"Your wife," Jo remembered.
He nodded solemnly.
Jo considered his almost guilty expression and then shrugged mildly. "I guess I can deal with that. I'm still the only one alive you can enjoy it with, so…" She climbed onto his lap and slid her arms around his neck, commenting, "I imagine that makes infidelity less likely."
"We are a monogamous people for a reason," Nicholas murmured, clasping his own arms around her. "Once you find a life mate, no other woman can compare. It's like trying to kill pain with aspirin after years of morphine."
"That seems an apt description," Jo assured him quietly. "Because I find you're like a drug I can't get enough of. I want you again already."
She raised her eyes to his to find that the blue was fading, replaced with silver again.
"So," Jo whispered, moving her face forward so that their lips were almost touching. "If I were to kiss and caress and touch you, I'd get to experience your pleasure too, right?"
Nicholas gave a very slight nod.
"That's a pretty cool deal," she murmured, reaching down to clasp him through the cloth of his jeans. He was hard and grew harder at her touch, and she shuddered at the excitement it sent shooting through her.
Damn, Jo thought faintly, he was right. She had been so consumed by the rush of passions that had overwhelmed her earlier as he'd ministered to her, Jo hadn't understood what was happening, but now… She squeezed him gently and closed her eyes as another rush of pleasure slid through her. In the next moment, she'd slid off his lap and between his legs to rest on the floor as she reached for the button of his jeans.
"Jo, wait, we have to talk," Nicholas said, trying to stop her.
"Later," she said quietly. "It's my turn now."
Nicholas met her gaze briefly, a conflict taking place on his face, and then he stood up, pulling on her hand to urge her up with him.
"What—?" Jo began uncertainly.
"The bedroom," Nicholas growled, tugging her around the table and toward the hall. "I fancy waking up in a bed this time rather than sprawled on the couch or the living room carpet."
Jo grinned and teased, "Where's your sense of adventure?"
Nicholas paused abruptly in the hall and whirled to take her in his arms. His mouth was demanding, his hands stripping away her robe before her chest even came to rest against his, and then he pinned her to the wall, grinding himself against her and thrusting his tongue into her mouth as he kicked off his shoes.
Moaning at the pleasure coursing through her, Jo clasped his bottom. She squeezed briefly, and then managed to work her hands between their bodies to undo the button and zipper of his jeans. They both groaned with pleasure when she slid her hand inside and found him, and then Nicholas broke their kiss to step back and remove his clothes. His T-shirt was dragged up and off in one step, and then his jeans followed and he was back, clasping her by the upper thighs and pulling her legs around his hips so that his erection rubbed against, but didn't enter her.