Ask For It (12 page)

The flick of his tail betrayed his annoyance. He was done hiding his emotions from her. Honesty was the only way for either of them to preserve who they were. She would never again be unaware of his feelings about her. His naked emotions were the high-risk price he would gladly pay to keep her a woman with her own free choices, but he needed the same from Sahara. Had always needed it from this woman. Five years he’d been starving for her, and three of those miserable years had occurred because she was protecting him.

It was his job to protect her delicious little ass, and she was about to become very clear on that. His handprint on that part of her anatomy might get the point across.

Sahara nodded, her fingers now pleating the shirt over her knee as she studied them. “I loved you too much to take that freedom from you. And too much not to be selfish and want the same back from you. If you couldn’t love me as I am, I…um…I wanted you to find it with someone real. Not a pale shadow of a female trying to please you.”

She did it again. Her courage, her honor, it knocked the steam right out of him and all he wanted to do was crawl to her and beg her to take him as her mate. Tor felt the power of her surrounding him. How was he supposed to spank her ass when all he wanted to do was kiss it and assure her that he worshiped every little breath she took?

Was there such a thing as too much love? He had loved her too much to force his rights on her. She loved him too much to trap him with her biology.

“Damn love,” Tor hissed. “I’m done with it. My thirst for those words from your lips crippled me as a warrior and a male. It consumed my pride and nearly destroyed our lives. Time to embrace greed, lust and possessive selfishness. Those three will bind you to me, Sahara.”

Tor quickly unlaced his leathers. Three long steps took him to the bed. He sat beside her to swiftly yank off his boots. Wide silver eyes jerked to him, watching him stand and strip off pants in efficient movements.

This time he didn’t hesitate. Suppressing his desire for her was a thing of the past. A past when he was careful and afraid of offending her. No. Lust and greed demanded he shred her clothing, and he intended to indulge that drive at every opportunity.

Extending claws, he ripped his shirt off her in fistfuls until the rest fell off. She hadn’t stood up and he was fine with that. His legs on either side of her thighs, he stepped up to her and grasped the back of her head. Dangerous talons holding her head still in his grip, he directed her mouth to his cock.

“You are my woman,” he snarled as her lips opened over him. “Mine alone. In public you will dress modestly and allow me to treat you as the treasure you are. You will not refuse my gifts nor my interest. You ever spread your legs for attention in front of my brothers again, or anyone for that matter, I’ll fucking tan your backside like a slaver with a new captive. That is the selfish possessiveness part.” Tor paused as her licking tongue flicked down the thick vein on the underside of his engorged member, sweeping around the base of his cock and lightly stroking the top of his ball sac.

“In private, if you don’t strip fast enough I will rip the clothes off you. Your beautiful body is mine to look at. That is the greed part.” Tor sucked in a gasp as her mouth enveloped his testicles, sucking them as if she could draw the seed out that way. “I will fuck you, caress, fondle or in any other way I please to gain your attention. In private…” the words became hard to form as her mouth let go of its sensitive prize. She went back to licking her way up the stock of his cock.

“In private,” he repeated as her tongue eagerly rimmed the head of his cock. “My woman is available at all times. That’s the lust.” Her mouth opened over him, taking him deep. “There will be no subject we cannot talk about.” His mouth clamped shut as her sucking strokes made him dizzy for a moment. “No secrets,” he finished harshly.

Claws retracted, his hands hooked under her arms to lift her off him and up his body. Easily holding her in front of him, Tor searched her eyes. Heavy lids and swollen lips made Sahara’s face sensual seduction. Her hands rested lightly on his shoulders.

“Do you understand?” Tor demanded.

Sahara smiled a mysterious woman’s smile. “Yes.”

Tor frowned. “What do you understand?”

“Lie on the bed with me and I’ll explain it to you,” Sahara invited. “Hanging in your hold is sort of disconcerting.”

“I can’t think when you touch me,” he confessed. “This is important.”

“I know, but I need this,” she said softly.

Immediately he lowered them to the bed, still holding her off him. They lay facing each other. Sahara gazed him for a second with that small smile.

“What’s between us is primitive,” she said softly. “Sometimes it’s so powerful its expression might seem harsh to anyone else. You don’t want to call it love because that word has become too civilized for what we feel, what we need from each other. Calling it any other word like ‘relationship’ gives it a beginning and an end. What binds Tor and Sahara has always been part of us, a part that was seeking the other. There is no beginning to it, no end. It simply is.”

Tor’s body surged over his amazing woman. Her words said what he’d been unable to articulate. His knees pushed her legs wide as his hands gripped her wrists, pulling them high over her head. Stretched beneath him, held by his hand bracketing her wrists, his thighs forcing her legs apart, Sahara’s hips bucked beneath him in sensual need.

Probing her entrance with the head of his cock, he let her seek it with what little movement she could manage. “No end, Sahara,” he growled. “What we are cannot be escaped. Do not be so sure you could have given your first heat to another. I would have taken you from him.”

A shudder ran through her as she looked into his eyes. There was no need to shield her from the savage truth as he thrust into the tight sheath of her body. Hard flesh plunged into her, stretching her with ruthless intent. The hot silk of her body contracted around him and Tor arched into her.

Primal demand took him out to thrust in with even more force as he held her beneath him and gave in to the needs he’d never been able to curb with her. “Had it been you and Signet in the siege tower, I would have come through the roof to get you.”

Sahara’s hands framed his face as he pounded into her. Legs rose to loosely circle his chest, opening her to his plundering demands. She said nothing, but tears disappeared into her hair as she looked up at him.

“Why,” Tor demanded as their bodies met in fierce need. “Why the tears?”

“I would have gone to you,” she confessed. “He deserved more than that.”

In that confession was a wealth of acceptance and regret. Tor would not have it. He was gratified with her honesty but he needed all her attention. “This is our time.”

Pulling out completely, he easily flipped her over to hands and knees. Reaching down beside the bed and retrieving the little remote from his discarded flight suit, he flicked it on and was rewarded with a deep moan from the woman kneeling before him.

His thighs inside hers to keep her spread, Tor grasped her hips and sank into the wet silk of her body. Tremors from the vibrator in her ass nearly robbed him of control. “Our time,” he repeated harshly, his body jerking into a demanding rhythm as he took the woman who owned his soul.

Love didn’t cover what she pulled out of him. Perhaps demented obsession came close, but he didn’t care. They had narrowly escaped the type of savage violence that had once marked his people, and even though it had been three years since his brother’s death, in the light of history, it had been a close thing.

His hands reached under her shoulders to hook over her and pull her body onto his cock with each thrust. The need to drive deep into her, to mark her soul with his possession added primitive power every movement. Her panting yelps as he slammed into her fueled raging hunger. It still wasn’t enough.

“My woman.” Tor stopped and straightened on his knees behind her. Still impaled in the burning delta of her thighs, he carefully grasped the wire receiver of the vibrator in her ass. Not turning it off, he slowly pulled the toy from her body. The resulting twisting moans from Sahara were exactly what he wanted but not near enough. Tossing the toy to the floor, he looked down at the woman stretched around his cock.

There was no longer blood in his veins, it was lava that beat through him as he looked down at both her entrances contracting and releasing in sexual need. Her need was the intoxicating scent in the air, the squirming visual of Sahara on her knees, offering ass and cunt. She drove him deep into the past, making him the demanding savage who would have her complete surrender. Ass and cunt were not enough.

“Ask for it,” Tor snarled as he hand caressed the cheek of her perfect bottom, his thumb following her crease, rimming her ass and traveling down to pull intimate folds open, displaying her body, accepting him while denying the touch she wanted. “Ask for what you need.”

Her cheek on the bed, he watched her expression. Swollen lips panting, heavy lids lifted over silver eyes as her head came up to look back at him. “You, Tor. I need you.”

Not what he’d been expecting but better. His body fell forward over her, covering her as cock slammed into cunt with the hard push of his body. He’d have her ass, but not now. Now was too out of control. The primitive drive to plant seed in her womb consumed him. He had to drive into her, to find the place where life bound them together. The twining of their two DNA strands was what he needed, what they needed.

His chin hooked over her shoulder, bringing his face cheek to cheek with hers as the primal beat of life’s ancient drums thundered through them. The fire from a thousand tribal hearths washed over them, burning away the present as it took them deep into their history. This is what worlds had been fought over for, the power of this passion.

The explosion of release drew the full-throated Leonor roar from Tor. It welled up from the pit of his soul as she swept through him. Pounding his seed into her body was not just mating. It was her lock on him. Her scream of completion was as powerful. A high, long and terrifying feline scream across the ages, warning that the lioness once again guarded the pride.

Sinking to the bed, Tor did not slide off her. He couldn’t, not yet. Her body clasped him in trembling pulls as she panted harshly. Covering her smaller form was an instinct and he was too deep in the grip of need to do anything else. His chest shifted to the side to lighten the load on her rib cage, but that was all the space he could give her.

The sleeping chamber slowly came into focus again. Rolling off her reluctantly, Tor couldn’t yet move off the bed. Sahara moaned and opened her eyes to gaze at him across the pillow.

“Something sort of bothers me,” Tor said softly.

“One thing?” Sahara mused. “You’re doing better than me.”

“More than one, but this makes no sense. How it is you’re so much smaller than I am as a humanoid, but as a Lioness you’re quite a bit larger?”

“That’s what’s bothering you?” Sahara raised a brow. “Male problems are strange. I am a small Mist Lioness because of the human DNA. In human form I strongly resemble those ancestors.”

“Most of your kind are larger?” Tor continued to study her.

“They used to be, but we lived on Earth a long time. Now most Mist Lions have some human ancestors. A pureblood is rare.”

Tor gently smoothed the golden hair off her face. He needed to pet her. “What’s your real name?”

“Beloved of Tor,” Sahara smiled, “but if you mean before we met, Guinevere. I was named for some human relative. She was famous.”

“Why was she famous and how come you never corrected me?” Tor asked. They were lying on the same pillow, talking about trivial things. This was right. Nothing had ever been as beautiful as looking at a well-loved Sahara smiling over his questions. He used the word “loved” because he had no other that would honor her. Even in his mind he could not think of what she was to him in the words that might somehow demean her.

“Her story is history of another reality. I was actually glad you never called me her name. Not that I’m ashamed of her, but it was right for you to use a different name. It felt right then and now. Do you mind?” Sahara questioned, shifting to her side, facing him.

“You’ll have to tell me her story sometime. I’ve never minded but often wondered why you accepted a new name,” he said casually, his fingers combing long strands of gold down her shoulder and over her breast, being very careful as he arranged it around her nipple.

Sahara’s back arched as he fingers grazed sensitive flesh. “There is a crowd of very important officials waiting to speak with you,” she reminded him in a lazy purr. “Also a threat to discuss. I don’t hear Nearrid pacing outside the door.”