Hunted Warrior (24 page)

He slid down her body, reversing the slow, sensuous climb of when he'd first crawled onto the bed. He stopped midway down her body. With the slightest lift of his eyebrows, he asked silent permission. Avyi couldn't answer with words, only nodded with a dip of her chin. Mal parted her knees, leaned in, tasted.

“Oh!”

Avyi couldn't control her hips when his mouth fixed on her pussy and used every weapon in a full-out assault. “Amazing,” he whispered against her heated flesh. “That's what you wanted.”

“You think a lot of yourself—” The words were a gasp, cut short when he flicked his tongue inside her channel, then swirled up to encircle with fissures of pain-sharp pleasure.

“I do. Too much. But I can't get enough of how you taste.” He nibbled the tendon up the inside of one thigh. “I could stay here all day.”

A groan edged primitive need into the room—her groan. She'd never heard anything half so erotic, let alone feel it backed up with action. Mal inserted two fingers into her slick channel and established a rhythm nearly as quick as what they'd shared when stroking his erection. Then lips, then tongue, then the barest scrape of teeth. He alternated fast to slow, rough to soft, until Avyi grabbed two handfuls of his straight blond hair.

“Pick one,” she gasped. “And stay with it.”

“I like teasing you.”

“Why?”

“Because you'll do the same to me when you get the chance.”

Avyi uttered a quick shriek when he followed his words with a long, deep suck on her clit. The pressure, matched with his swirling tongue, forced her to the breaking point. His relentless fingers never stopped—even when she shattered. She surged her hips up and toward him, and he took everything. Her thrusts never altered the position of his head, which was rigid and selflessly giving her a place to grind out the last of her stunned sensation.

Again using his hair, Avyi pulled him up so they could share a kiss. She wanted the proof of her release—proof that he'd given and taken at the same time. He tasted sweet, salty, both mixed on his tongue. The combination was beyond sensual, as was the slow, promising way he withdrew his fingers.

“You know what happens next.”

She smiled, feeling like melted wax. “For once, I really don't.”

“What happens is . . . everything else.”

He positioned himself at her opening. Avyi already had her legs lifted and hooked around his low back. She was open to him, vulnerable and yet in the care of a man intent on making these hazy, gorgeous sensations last as long as possible.

With a mighty, breathtaking move, Mal surged into her body. She gasped. He cussed. And there was no stopping either of them. Avyi kept her legs around his hips and her hands planted flat against the padded headboard. She took his driving pulses, both accepting and fighting at the same time. Her beaded nipples rubbed against his chest as he shoved deep. He, too, used the headboard, but not as support. He curled his fingers around the top and found extra leverage—hips and body and the unrelenting force of his arms bracing for even deeper thrusts.

Avyi had never thought there could be such a thing as being too full, too magnificently stretched, so ready to give everything to another individual. Mal made her reconsider.
Made her
. Because he didn't relent.

“I've done it,” she breathed, her respiration far too fast. “I've made you forget. Your body is mine. You want me too much to hold back.”

“I
am
holding back.”

He slowed only briefly, to catch her gaze. Avyi found fire in his eyes. Power. Unimaginable power. Yes, he was holding back. It was like comparing a firefly to a strike of lightning.

“I'll hurt you,” he said. “I don't want to.”

“Hurt me how?” She glanced at where he held the headboard. “You've given me your strength. I can take anything.”

Still keeping up a steady rhythm, he let go with one hand and used it to pull her chin in place. She couldn't look away if she wanted to.

“My strength, Avyi, is only part of me. My control is another.” With a dozen quick, fierce strokes, he brought her right back to the cusp of orgasm. But he only gave her those dozen. “I can stop when I need to.”

“Pull out right now? Be done?”

An expression of supreme arrogance transformed his aristocratic features into beautifully depraved variations. “If necessary. Just like I'm holding back the use of my gift.”

“Right now?”

“We're having sex. Lots of friction. So much energy. You have no idea what this feels like to me.”

She reached up and threaded her fingers through his hair, which crackled with static. “Better than orgasm?”

“I don't know. I've never tried.”

“Why not?”

“You felt what happened when you held my hands to my shoulder, the electricity that flooded us both.”

“All I know is that you look sensual after you use your gift. You look satisfied.”

“It's another way of letting the body have what it wants.” He swallowed, pushed back the insistent pulse of his hammering need to come, and braced his weight on either side of Avyi's neck. Arms straight. Arms tingling. “I just can't have both.”

“I don't believe that.” With a wry smile, she leaned up and licked the left side of his jaw. “Give me a taste.”

CHAPTER

M
al shuddered. “Why?” was all he could manage.

“I want new. I want experiences I've never had.” She slid her hand down to grasp his buttocks again, reinitiating their quick, thumping rhythm. “And I want to see the look on your face when it happens.”

He groaned. “Avyi, no.”

Without waiting for any further resolve-crumbling inducements, he leaned low over her. He shoved one hand between their hips and found her clit. With the other he dropped to his elbow, still holding his torso up from hers—but not so far up that the sweet scrape of her nipples didn't greet him with every forward thrust. He put the deep pull of his mind aside. No gift. No powers. No losing control of anything but his body, which needed appeasing until Mal thought he'd go mad from the screaming in his mind.

Take. Have. Own.

The last of his gentleness seeped away as he used Avyi for his satisfaction. She grasped him, chanting his name, scraping fierce nails up his back and down his ribs. He found the rhythm he needed, the depth and pressure, and climbed steadily toward the moment when his mind winked out and only feeling remained. Avyi thrashed her head, then snapped taut. Her inner muscles clamped around his cock in a surprising flood of new sensation. It was what he'd needed. Mal buried himself to the hilt, glorying in how well she accepted his invasion—how she welcomed it with so much passion.

Sweating, he slumped down so that his head rested on the pillow next to hers. Their cheeks met, while their chests, now pressed together, heaved in time.

“
Bathatéi
,” she whispered. “That was . . .”

“Yes, it was.”

After endless moments of glorying in their bodies drained of tension, and their respiration leveling to a softness near normal, he rolled to the side and pulled her with him. She lay partially over him, with one knee hooked up toward his navel.

“You held back after all.”

“You sound disappointed,” he said.

“In theory. But . . . I was being selfish, even reckless. You protected me. Thank you for that.” She stopped and pushed damp hair away from her temples. “It was wonderful.”

“Amazing?”

Avyi smiled against his chest and nipped a bite of his flesh.

Her silent distraction didn't work. She was pliant and soft against his body, while he disliked knowing—even if she wasn't going to discuss it—that she'd wanted more from him than he'd provided.

“I can't, Avyi,” he said quietly. “It's dangerous.”

“Have you with . . . with other women?”

“Not exactly.” He shifted to pull a coverlet over their cooling bodies. Briefly he wondered if this was the scene she'd predicted, but he didn't want to ask. If it was, it could mean the end to their acquaintance. Worse, it could mean any number of futures had just opened up.

“Will you explain it to me?” She pushed up, then crossed her forearms over his chest and settled her chin there. “So I can call that
undoubtedly
amazing, rather than feel like I missed out on something.”

“You missed out on me making the wrong call,” he said. “On me truly forgetting myself for one second. You know how fast light travels. Imagine if I did so much as blink, with my concentration gone for only that duration. I could kill us both.”

“Show me. Now. When you're in complete control.”

Mal exhaled and looked into the most tempting eyes he'd ever known. The urge had been so strong, to give her the burst of his body and the jolt of his gift. He'd never had both. Never together. He'd always feared losing too much of himself to a woman who could accept both—and feared what would happen to a woman who couldn't.

But she was right. He was calm now, if he didn't glance down to the beautiful tangle of limbs covered by a thin white coverlet. Or acknowledge that how Avyi stroked his skin and ran her fingers through his chest hair were the most comforting sensations he'd ever experienced. It was calm and promise and a dare, all at once.

“Very well.”

Her lips curled into a sweet half smile.

Momentarily distracted, Mal took that smile into himself until the memory of it would become as intrinsic as the composition of his cells and the beat of his heart. Tentative as it was, that smile was a gift. He'd learned that much. Revealing her emotions was something she reserved for him. The full crest of her upper lip flattened as her mouth widened even further. She was more than beautiful. Full of mystery and intrigue, all in the guise of a half-grown woman, she was the ultimate puzzle for a man who'd given up on solving much of anything. The problems he faced were so insurmountable as to make trying as difficult as doing. He'd come to the stomach-dropping conclusion that she was just as burdened. Yet her delicate appearance and moments of vulnerability, even accessibility, hinted that maybe, just maybe, with enough time and dedication, he could unravel her secrets.

If he could do that, he could be the man to lead their people. Why did it take a single woman to make him realize something so basic?

He was delusional, but it verged on possible. In a moment of clarity—one he imagined was akin to her predictions—he knew Avyi's contradictions would draw him back, again and again. It would be the equivalent of chopping off a limb when it came time for them to part. And there were some wounds from which a Dragon King couldn't recover. A missing limb was one. And like human beings, heartbreak was another.

“Very well,” he said again, with authority in his voice. If she wanted to see the man she'd taken into her body, she needed to know who he really was. “Sit up.”

Together they arranged themselves so that they sat facing one another. His legs crossed behind her back, while hers angled over his so that her heels pressed against the tops of his buttocks. Modesty was not an issue. Becoming aroused again was.

He stayed focused on her face. “Brace yourself on my shoulders. Don't look down. Straight into my eyes.”

Avyi did as she was told. He'd enjoy her obedience more if there weren't the lingering questions as to whether she actually wanted to go along with him, or if her conditioning by Dr. Aster had stripped her ability to resist. Perhaps she didn't say no to Mal because she
couldn't
.

No.

Even at the end, moments before they shared that astonishing orgasm, she'd fought him—fought for what she wanted from him. She was obeying now because she wanted to. That made him breathe more easily and hold on to the slippery certainty that she was her own woman.

She remained still, her stare trained on him.