He moved, the halo shifting around him as he crossed the room, and she saw that again he was coming to her fully aroused. For an instant the sight took her breath away, but then the reality of what had happened between them rose to shatter the golden vision.
Shaylah tugged the blue silk robe tighter around her as she slid from the bunk and stood facing him. No matter what her feelings, she told herself firmly, she was not going to let him destroy her composure again. And she would start, she added with an inner ruefulness, by not trying to speak in a voice she was certain would waver. She just looked at him in wary silence.
“I tried to resist,” he said slowly. “But I seem to have forgotten how. All I can think of is . . . my need for this.”
Shaylah colored, not at his nakedness or his fierce arousal, but at the confession that he needed her. The rest of his words troubled her, though, and she said stiffly, “If you are thinking to repeat last night’s . . . performance, I found the price too high, thank you.”
“No. It did me no good, changed nothing.”
“Then why are you here?”
His mouth twisted wryly. “I find myself in the position of a child who wants one thing above all else, yet whose instinct is to rebel when he is ordered to take it.”
Ordered? The word stung. Had she somehow made him feel like the slave he’d been? Had she done something to make him believe she thought of him that way?
“This time,” he said, “all will be as you command.”
As you command. Shaylah went utterly still. She knew now she’d been right. This was not her Wolf, not the proud, aloof man who made her feel sensations unlike anything she’d ever known. This was the slave, the ever-obedient servant. The man who had no choice. The man who had been brutally trained to be an instrument for her pleasure.
She remembered it then, the moment last night when she had demanded his help with his clothing, and he had gone so startlingly still. It was then he had seemed to change from generous, tender, fierce lover to cool, uninvolved participant. She remembered her other fevered demands, and she understood that he had thought of them as orders, like so many others. And at last she understood his groaning protest when he found himself unable, in the end, to maintain that coolness, to withhold himself from her as he had with all the others.
“Don’t,” she whispered, blinking at the tears that were suddenly brimming in her eyes. “It’s not like that, not with us. Please, don’t.”
He just looked at her.
“Wolf,” she said urgently, “I didn’t . . . I never meant to . . . order you. I just . . . please, I need you, so much.”
The wetness in her eyes spilled over now, tracing a silent path down her cheeks. She didn’t sob, didn’t have the breath to truly weep. And suddenly, as if her tears had brought him to life again, her Wolf was back, his green gaze warm as he looked down at her, his arms gentle as they came up to hold her.
“Ah, Shaylah,” he murmured. “It’s been a very long time since I’ve heard words that sweet. You make me want to believe.”
“It’s true!” She protested his doubt. “I mean it.”
“I believe that you believe you mean it now.”
“I do mean it,” she insisted. “Why is that so hard to accept?”
He sighed, the exhalation stirring the dark silk of her hair. “Perhaps I don’t have it in me to believe anymore.”
From some deep place within her, some never-tapped wellspring, determination rose in her. Determination and faith. Any man who could survive what he’d been through with any warmth left at all, let alone the feelings he’d shown her, had to have held on to some capacity to believe, to have faith. He did have it in him, somewhere, and she would prove it to him.
“Lie down.” He blinked at the abruptness of it. “You promised all would be as I command, did you not?”
Warily, he stretched out on the bunk, his eyes searching her face as if for some clue to what she was thinking. She joined him, kneeling in almost the exact position he had taken last night. For a long, silent moment she just looked at him, the long, lean lines, the taut curves and ridges of muscle, the golden sheen of him. She shivered slightly in anticipation as her gaze lingered for an instant on the swollen shaft, and she saw his stomach muscles ripple as if she’d touched him.
Good, she thought. I will teach you about orders, my prickly Wolf.
“I have only one more command.” Her voice was low, throaty, and she saw him swallow tightly.
“Which is?” he rasped out.
“That all commands henceforth shall be yours.”
He blinked. “What?”
“I was not clear?” she asked in mockingly innocent concern. “Let me explain, then. My orders are that you shall give the orders.”
He stared at her, brow furrowed as if he knew she was up to something, but he couldn’t begin to imagine what.
“What happens between us will be up to you,” she said, as if he had asked for clarification. “I will do exactly as you command, no more, no less.”
She threaded her fingers together and rested her hands primly atop her thighs as she knelt at his side. Her knees were tightly together, and with her hair tied neatly at the back of her neck, only the sensuous fabric of the blue robe as it clung to her body distorted the image of a prim and proper young woman of an ancient era. She waited in silence, just looking at him.
“Shaylah,” he began at last.
“Yes?” she answered promptly, not moving.
“What game is this?”
“No game, Wolf,” she returned, all mockery gone from her voice. “I meant exactly what I said.”
His eyes narrowed as he studied her. “What are you trying to do?”
She shrugged, much as he did when he was about to give an answer cloaked in mock obedience. “Whatever you wish me to do.”
It was the slave’s answer, and she saw the speculation in his face. “If this is to teach me something, I must warn you, you make a very poor slave.”
“So do you.”
“So that is what you’re trying to do?”
“I’m trying to do as you wish.”
“It won’t work,” he warned. “You were not cut out for a submissive woman, Shaylah.”
“Nor you for a submissive man, Wolf. But that is what I wish to do. Submit to your command. Now, what do you wish me to do?”
She saw the muscle jump in his jaw, saw the taut ripple as his stomach muscles contracted. She kept her smile of satisfaction turned inward.
“You’re playing with fire, Captain,” he said, the stern warning diminished a little by the taut hoarseness of his voice.
“I hope so,” Shaylah murmured under her breath.
She hadn’t thought he could hear her, but she saw him take in a quick, short breath as if he had. He lifted one hand, reaching over to rest it on her leg, palm over her bent knee, fingers splayed over her lower thigh. Shaylah felt heat from his touch begin to radiate across her skin. Wolf watched her carefully; she held scrupulously still.
He flexed his fingers, the tips digging slightly into the muscle of her leg. In spite of herself her breathing quickened under his touch, but she resolutely maintained that same prim posture. His hand slid up her thigh, up to the soft, tender flesh on the inner side. She shivered as her pulse began to race, but by biting the inside of her lip, she managed to stay still.
The sight of his chest rising and falling with his own suddenly accelerated breathing helped her steady herself, kept her from begging him to move his fingers just a little more, to that already heating place that recognized this man all too well.
“Shaylah,” he growled, his voice low and harsh.
“You—” her voice caught, but with an effort she went on smoothly, “wish me to do something?”
“Damnation, I—” H
e stopped abruptly, his eyes narrowing as he looked at her. The vivid green turned hot, glowing, as if he were daring her to continue with this. She knew she’d guessed right when, lifting a hand to the sleeve of the lustrous robe, he said flatly, “Take this off.”
There was no mistaking the challenge in his voice, even masked by a hoarseness that belied the coolness of his tone. Praying to Eos that she hadn’t started something she would forever regret, Shaylah unfastened the robe and let it fall from her shoulders. It slithered off the bed, leaving her clad only in the sheer, short swath of the pale blue gown.
He just looked at her, so steadily that she would have thought him unaffected except for the way his lips parted slightly as he took in a long, deep breath. She knew too well the effect he was having on her; the moment his gaze lowered to the full curves of her breasts, she felt her nipples draw up into tight little buds. She wanted to pull the sheer cloth away from her body so that he couldn’t see her instant response, but the vow she’d made to turn the tables on him kept her motionless.
And silent. She saw his brows lower and knew he wasn’t convinced of how far she’d take this. She could almost see him make the decision, when still she didn’t speak, to push a little further.
“This, too.” He touched the filmy fabric.
Shaylah quivered inwardly, her stomach knotting. But she moved, her hands going with trembling slowness to the hem of the gown. She’d gone up against a squadron of starfighters with less trepidation than this. But then, she thought shakily, she had only been risking her life. Now she was risking her heart.
Her heart? For the briefest of moments she paused, wondering where that had come from. Was she truly so fascinated, so captivated by this man? Startled by the thought, her gaze flew to his face, just in time to see his expression change to one of cynical understanding.
He thought she was stopping, she realized, changing her mind, as he had expected her to all along. With a defiantly fierce motion, she jerked the gown over her head and tossed it to the floor. Her breasts swayed with the movement, and Wolf made an odd sound. She turned her head back to face him, forcing herself not to succumb to the instinctive urge to cover her nakedness with her hands.
The rapid rise and fall of his chest stopped for an instant as he stared at her, looking stunned. Shaylah lowered her eyes so he wouldn’t see the flash of triumph in them; she renewed her vow to show him that she’d meant exactly what she had said. Now, and before.
When she dared look at him again, his shock had been replaced by a look of pure challenge. “All right, we’ll play your game, Captain,” he said, and she knew by the intensity of his gaze that he was gauging her response to the taunt of her title. She kept her expression carefully even.
He reached out once more, sliding his hand slowly from her knee upward. Shaylah struggled to control the quiver of her flesh and bit back a moan as he again came to a halt with his fingers heating the tender flesh of her inner thigh.
“Part your legs,” he rasped out, his eyes fixed, not on the triangle of dark curls just at the tip of his fingers, but on her face. She tried desperately not to react as she silently did as he asked.
She couldn’t stop the shiver that ran through her when she felt his hand move, felt the first tentative probing of his fingers. She could feel her own heat and knew that when he reached his goal he would find her wet and ready. Yet she could never have predicted his reaction when he did.
He shuddered as he encountered slick, hot flesh, and even as she gasped at the sudden, fierce sensation that pierced her at his touch, the words that broke from him astonished her.
“Thank God,” he breathed.
“Wolf . . . ?”
“I didn’t think you . . . I thought you were trying to show me you were in control, felt nothing unless you wished to.”
“As you never did?” she asked softly, as steadily as she could with his fingers moving gently over soft feminine flesh. “This has nothing to do with control, Wolf, or with all the times your body was forced to feel things your mind and heart fought against. Do you think I wanted that, you doing only as ordered? A forced mating is a barren, useless thing.”
His fingers stopped. His gaze flicked up to the shelf above her, where the controller sat. “You . . . believe that?”
“I know that. The thought of you being with me only because you have no choice is . . .” She took a deep breath, smothering a shiver, and not just at her own words. He might not be caressing her, but the heat of his hand pressed so intimately against her body was making her want to squirm.
“Then why . . .” He stopped, but Shaylah had caught his glance at the controller.
“Take the damn thing, Wolf. I hate the sight of it.”
She felt his tension in the sudden tautness of his fingers. “You would give the key to the chains to the slave who wears them?”
“And that,” she said softly, “is what else this has to do with. It has to do with you believing I mean what I say.”
His eyes widened slightly, and she saw him take in a deep breath. “Shaylah . . .”
It was soft, low, and held some vibrant undertone she’d never heard from him before. She took in a quick breath of her own, nerving herself to pound the point home.
“I await your commands,” she said, in an eerie echo of his own practiced, mocking tone of humble respect.
“I have . . . only one,” he said, his voice catching.
“Which is?”
“Make love to me.”
Shaylah’s breath died in her throat at the beauty of the way he said the ancient Triotian words. Only from her parents, steeped in Triotian tradition, had she heard the word love, and she knew that no Triotian of blood would use it lightly. It made her fairly quiver with the need to do just that, and to show him that she truly knew the difference between a mating by force or by choice.
And she did. She used every bit of knowledge she had gained last night, kissing, stroking, petting, moving over his golden body like a priestess at a temple of worship. He tried to remain still as she ministered to him, but the heat grew so fiercely, so swiftly that, with a growl worthy of his mythical namesake, he began to move.
He tugged at her bound hair until it fell free, tumbling in a silken mass to trail over his body as she trailed another line of sweet, tiny kisses over his chest. When her lips found his nipples and her tongue began to probe, his hands shot up to cup her head and hold her there.
Shaylah heard him groan as the golden-brown disks of flesh tightened under her mouth. His fingers, threaded through the dark fall of her hair, tightened as he started to move, then stopped. She felt the movement with a shock of recognition; such had been her own need to heighten his touch on her by moving her own body against him.
More confident now, knowing he was responding, she felt a dart of hope that she could make him feel what she felt, could really succeed in making it as incredible for him as it was for her. When she moved her mouth along a long, slow path down to his belly and he shuddered, muscles rippling beneath her lips, she knew she could. It would be a bonding as deep as any he’d ever known.
It flared out of control then, and Shaylah knew nothing but the raging heat of need, needing to touch him as much as she needed his hands on her, needing to kiss and lick at him as much as she needed his mouth on her. She fairly writhed in the effort to do both, and Wolf rose to the challenge as if she’d voiced it. His hands, his mouth were everywhere in return, and when at last his body slid home, she couldn’t have said who had moved to join them.
It was fierce, hot, and more than a little wild, and Shaylah gloried in it. And when the tide became unstoppable, and he rose above her with his face drawn taut with pleasure, only one thing marred the sweetness of it: that tiny, barely perceptible hint of resignation in his vivid green eyes.
And then nothing mattered but the surging, rippling
waves that swept her, hot, steady pulses of pleasure that made her cry out his name again and again. And then he was with her, his hands gripping her with a sweet possessiveness as he held her for his final thrust, her name breaking from his lips with a guttural, harsh sound as his body went rigid, arching against her.
Savoring his weight as he collapsed, panting, upon her, Shaylah knew she had never felt so drained, so sated, so warmly satisfied. Only the memory of that glitter in his eyes marred her contentment, but she refused to think about it now, when she was so replete. She just wanted to lie here, holding him on her and within her, and drift forever.
“Wolf?” she murmured.
“Mmm.”
It was low, faint, no more than an acknowledgment that she had spoken. It somehow added to her pleasure to know that this strong, indomitable man was as spent as she was.
“We must talk.” She felt him try to move, then give the effort up with a groan. “Later,” she amended with a smile she didn’t try to hide.
“Mmm.”
Her smile widened as his breathing slowed, deepened; Wolf would not be leaving her this night. She gave herself a few more moments, savoring the feel of him in her arms, before she followed him into sleep.
Hours later, Shaylah woke with her heart hammering in her chest. It came again, the shrill beeping that had awakened her. The scanner alarms.
They had been found.
Chapter 9
SHAYLAH ACTIVATED the computer with a quick command.
“Ready, Captain,” the oddly genderless voice said after running the voice scan. Shaylah glanced over her shoulder as Wolf joined her in the conroom, fastening the flight suit she’d found for him. He glanced at the scanners, and she saw his eyes narrow at the size of the blip that had activated the alarms. She turned back to the computer.
“Quick scan. Identify and give coordinates on intruder,” she said.
“Working.” A pause. “Cruiser weight, Diaxin class. Range, one thousand twenty stellar miles and closing. Speed sublight, acceleration factor five.”
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