She opened a different drawer. Her hand closed about a length of soft material and she held it up.
“A piece of cloth?”
She drew the deep amethyst material through her fingers with deliberate slowness. “Any ideas yet?”
Darias smiled, a slight curve of his lips. “Oh, I think I can come up with one or two.”
And three and four.
He sank to his knees on the rich, burgundy rug, taking Riana with him. Slowly, he reached out and closed his hand over the material, right above hers.
Just as slowly, she released it.
Curious, Darias studied the cloth. In some ways it reminded him of the colorful, arm-length scarves the women wore in the open-air markets, but there was an odd metallic sheen to this material. He hefted the scarf, surprised to discover it was as light as a leaf on a breeze. Darias squeezed it, liking the sensuous feel of the material against his palm. He nearly dropped the cloth when it seemed to pulse in response to his touch.
“It’s alive!”
Riana gave a throaty murmur of amusement. “No, it is responding to the biochemical signals in your skin.” She walked two fingers up his thigh until she was touching both him and the cloth. “Different emotions give off different biochemicals, and no two people’s biochemical signatures are the same. The cloth simply reacts.”
Darias was utterly conscious of her light touch on his hand. It was amazing how a simple touch from this woman could send heat coursing through his veins. The scarf grew warm, as did his simmering blood.
“Take your clothes off.” He wanted—no, he needed—to see her fully.
“Take them off for me,” she murmured.
All too aware that his hands were shaking, he placed the scarf around his neck. He fumbled at the first fastener of her tunic, muffling a curse when he heard the unmistakable sound of cloth tearing. The back of his neck heated with embarrassment. Krel, this was so much easier when she was in charge.
“Hurry.” Her breathy plea erased his discomfort.
Within moments, he had the tunic off and discarded on the floor. His hands on the waistband of her breeches, Darias paused. Sucking a deep breath between his teeth, he dropped his head and fought for a measure of control.
“Darias?”
“Shh, it’s all right. I’m not going anywhere.” He had to do this right. Too often in the past, he’d taken while holding part of himself back. This time he was going to give. As much as he loved her taking control, it was her pleasure that was paramount now.
Keeping one hand on her waist, he scooted until he was behind her. He slipped off the leather tie holding her hair, freeing the glorious mass to fall in a living river of color. He removed the scarf from around his neck and, carefully lifted her hair and slipped the scarf around hers, leaving the ends to dangle over her breasts.
Each intake of air, each movement, caused the ends to brush the tips of her breasts.
Still on his knees, he pulled Riana between his spread thighs. Sliding his hands around his waist, he opened her breeches. Brushing the dark red triangle between her legs with the tips of his fingers, he began placing tiny kisses down her spine. Every so often, he tugged on her hair with his lips, just to see the shiver race down her spine.
Riana moaned when he reached the small of her back, the sound vibrating a responding chord deep inside him.
She began a primal rocking motion.
He caught her hips and held her still as he painted an intricate pattern at the curve of her waist. No longer sure who he was teasing the most with the slow seduction, and at the end of his control, he lifted her slightly and shoved her breeches down over her firm bottom and off her legs.
She tried to turn in his arms.
Darias refused to let her, tucking her back firmly between his knees. “My turn,” he reminded her, barely able to form the words. Darias drew his hands up, over her flat belly, to the slight ridges of her ribs, up until he had trapped the silky material of the scarf between his palms and her breasts.
The material heated and pulsed.
Riana gave a quivery little moan of desire.
In a heartbeat, he had lifted Riana up and around, so that she was straddling his waist. His mouth closed over her breast, pulling strongly at the taut nipple.
Riana’s head tilted back and her fingers bit into his upper arms. She moved restlessly in his arms.
The fragrance of her arousal filled his senses. Holding her tight against him with one arm, he used the other to lower her to the floor, following her down, his mouth still at her breast.
He pulled back, looking at his handiwork. The crest of her breast was flushed a deep red, furled and begging for more kisses. Satisfaction roared through him. He didn’t even try to hide his arrogant smile.
She glanced at him from between lowered lashes. The heat in her gaze was enough to set him ablaze.
He stared at her, unable to get enough of her honest need. Even as he watched, the amethyst material covering her breast seemed to take on a silver shimmer in the muted light of the storm.
Taking one end of the material in his hand, he drew it down her body, his gaze locked with hers.
Her breath caught and she arched under his ministrations. Darias lifted first one leg, and then the other, placing them over his shoulders, leaving Riana wide open to his touch. He waited, giving her time to object.
She smiled at him.
His heart stopped in his chest at the implicit trust in her smile. Light as the gossamer wings of a honeybird, he slid the scarf from around her neck, over her breasts and down her stomach. His mouth followed the same path. Beneath his lips, he felt a muscle in her stomach contract sharply. Her scent filled his head.
Could he do this outside of punishment? Could he put his mouth on Riana, arouse and fulfill her?
His mouth went dry, a lifetime of tradition shouting a warning in his head. Telling him he was weak to choose a woman’s pleasure over his duty as a warrior.
Riana shifted, and her hands came up to cradle his head.
He figuratively turned his back on the voices of the past. Weak to give her pleasure instead of humiliation? To take his own in her arms?
He hadn’t known what true strength was until he tried to master Riana and instead discovered the steel in her spine.
Discovered what love felt like in her arms.
He froze.
He squeezed his eyes shut. He loved her. A chill deeper than any he’d felt before washed over Darias. After all he’d done to her, trying to crush her spirit, humiliating her in front of not only his warriors, but her friends, how could she ever love him back?
Krel, fate could be cruel. Love wasn’t an emotion Nexarian custom encouraged. Strength, loyalty, duty. Yes, they were all concepts drilled into him since a child.
But not love.
Darias wanted to rage, to slam his fist into something. To find a woman he loved only to learn his own actions had ruined any chance of gaining love in return…
“Darias?” Riana breathed, naked hunger in her sultry tones.
He shoved his despair aside. He’d deal with his revelation later. Now, now he would give her this.
Stretching the material between the soft folds of her feminine flesh, he pulled it taut. He closed his mouth over both Riana and the material. Little currents eddied out, sending jolts of pleasure from his mouth to her.
“Darias!” Riana screamed as her body began tiny, internal convulsions.
He took his time loving her with his mouth, despite her pleas and demands to finish it, running his tongue from the cloth-covered swollen nub to her opening. Darias felt her unmistakable reaction as wave after wave of powerful shivers quivered inside her.
“Darias!”
He pressed his tongue deep inside her opening.
Riana fell completely apart.
Darias made sure he was there to catch her.
* * * * *
His heart was pounding against her ribs. Riana pressed a kiss on the inside of his arm. “For a beg
inner, you learn pretty quick.”
He gave a laugh that turned to a stifled moan as she wriggled to get more comfortable. She realized Darias was still aroused.
She lifted her upper body, holding it slightly away from his. “Now it’s my turn. What would a spanking feel like with this,” she slid the amethyst scarf across his chest, “draped over your ass?” she asked in a deep, sensual whisper as she wrapped it around his cock and tugged softly.
His heartbeat jolted then accelerated.
She leaned forward to taste one nipple. Riana slid her mouth to the hollow of his throat, lips parted slightly so the edge of her teeth scraped his skin. She tasted salt as the tip of her tongue stroked the firm flesh. She sucked on his neck, an erotic tug that sent a hard shudder the length of his spine.
“Stay right there,” she muttered.
Crossing to a desk, she retrieved her book. Tapping one slender finger on the leather binding, Riana tried to calm the erratic beating of her heart. She reached for the cut-crystal decanter Darias had kept on the desk and poured a glass of deep-red wine.
Control.
She took a sip, letting the spicy, fruity flavor burst over her taste buds.
She needed to regain control. Her emotions were too close to the surface to conceal. She wanted, ached, for that last, tiny little part of Darias. It went deeper even than obsession. No, it was much more fundamental than that.
“Riana?”
The deep, rough, utterly masculine tone went straight to her pussy. Schooling her expression, she turned.
And nearly dropped the glass of wine.
Darias was kneeling on the floor, his forehead touching the carpet. Large hands, tanned and rough and scarred from work and war, held the cheeks of his ass apart.
She swallowed, her eyes filling with unfamiliar tears.
Throat tight, her mouth opened but words wouldn’t come.
“Riana… Take what belongs to you. Everything that belongs to you.”
Riana pulled herself together. Crossing the small space separating them, she laid one hand on his thick wrist. She was proud of the calm, steady cadence to her voice. “Do not move.” Stroking the hair-roughened skin of his wrist, she asked softly, “Are you sure? Once you give yourself to me, I will not allow you to change your mind.”
“I’m sure.”
She gave one last, soft, lingering stroke to his wrist as she trailed her fingers to the small of his back. There, she rested her palm. “Tell me.”
He didn’t pretend that he didn’t understand exactly what she meant. “I want you to take me, cock, balls,” a fine quiver rippled under his skin, “ass. Any way you please.”
“What if I want to take you hard, slam a cock as large as yours into that tight hole and make no concessions for the fact your ass is virgin?”
Another one of those subtle, barely there shivers. “Yes. I trust you to see to my needs.” It was what he didn’t say that her heart heard.
One tear slid down her cheek. She moved away, sat down in the chair behind the desk.
The view was extraordinary.
But it wasn’t the view that heated her insides and melted her heart.
Darias trusted her. Really trusted her.
The ultimate alpha warrior willingly gave his body, his pleasure and his emotions into her keeping.
Darias was hers.
As she was his.
Crossing her legs, she steepled her fingers beneath her chin and tasted the words again.
Darias was hers.
“Spread your knees one meter apart.” He immediately complied. The position opened him to her completely. She could see his huge balls and a good portion of the long, heavy, fully erect cock. And the small, dark opening.
Long minutes passed. She could tell by the stiffening in the broad shoulders that a mixture of lust and fear had taken hold of him. She let it build. Finally, she rose and retrieved the small bottle of oil she kept in the right-hand drawer.
And one other item that she placed on the scarf that trailed between his spread knees.
Coating her fingers, she played lightly around the ring of muscle.
It squeezed tight.
She smacked his ass, a light, stinging pop that heated rather than punished.
“Mine.”
She heard him swallow. “Yours.”
Riana probed the tight ring with the tip of her index finger.
His breath became rushed, light. He started as she eased one finger inside, deep inside. Instantly, her finger was engulfed in heat. Riana closed her eyes as her own need built again.
But first she must see to his.
A small, not altogether comfortable smile curved her lips.
A second finger joined the first.
His breath became small pants. Beneath the surface of his skin, one quiver joined another. He was apprehensive.
Riana saw more than he would have been comfortable with had he known. This was the giving up of control on a level that Darias both craved and dreaded. They both knew that once he permitted this act—no, surrendered willingly—nothing would be the same. He’d belong to her—in her mind and, more importantly, in his. In that moment, Riana knew she understood Darias better than he understood himself. That was okay. She was there to catch him when he fell.
Contentment mixed with arousal. This is what had been missing all these sennights since she gave Darias the new rules. Why she hadn’t enjoyed his surrenders, his sensual punishments as fully as she should have. Even tonight, when he’d been pleasuring her, she’d kept an emotional distance between them. The deepest, most basic level of her soul had recognized the edge of cruel punishment she’d used against them both.
Her anger and need for revenge had ruled.
She carefully stretched the virgin tissue, slowly pumping her fingers in and out. Small grunts and moans kept rhythm with her. Scissoring her fingers in his ass, she poured oil directly in the dark opening with her other hand. Not for the world would she abuse his trust by truly hurting him tonight. Only when both fingers slipped easily in and out of his flesh did she add a third finger.
He jerked. “Riana?” Uncertainty darkened his voice to pure midnight.
“Shh.” She twisted her fingers, stretching him further. “Relax, my warrior.” This time when she thrust inside slowly, she made sure she pressed the bundle of nerves in his hot channel.
“Ahh. I don’t think that’s helping me to relax.” He gave a strained chuckle.
She touched the bundle of nerves again.
He groaned, the muscles of his sphincter clamping down on her fingers.
She retrieved the item off the scarf. The night of the semi-public spanking in the garden, she’d been unable to sleep after she’d finished punishing him. Restless, discontent, an unaccountable sensation uncomfortably close to guilt driving her, she’d left their bed and gone to her ship. Once there she had programmed his measurements into a machine she’d traded for on NAXH281. What had emerged was a work of art.
It was a dildo like none else in the galaxy. Almost an exact duplicate of Darias’ cock, down to the veins roping the velvet-soft length. Embedded in the bio-synthetic flesh were nerve-endings that transferred sensation from the smaller cock at the other end. As she fucked him, she would feel each clench of muscle, each ripple of response and, when she came, a warm viscous oil, much like a man’s sperm, would eject inside his body.
Since the morning she’d given Darias back his leather breeches, she’d kept it in the desk, hoping against hope that one day he’d allow her to use it but reluctant to push.
Now she was free to satisfy them both.
This time she lightly scraped her nails over the bundle of nerves deep inside his ass.
He groaned. His body gleamed with a fine sheen of sweat. A bead rolled down the valley of his spine.
She caught it on the tip of her tongue, taking that tiny part of him inside her.
A flash of lightning gleamed off his powerful flanks, bringing to light his masculine
beauty, muscles shifting and sliding under the skin of his back, his cheeks clenching and releasing against the pleasure.
Pulling her fingers from him, she teased the opening, rimming it with a barely there pressure.
His buttocks tightened, capturing the motion.
She probed again, testing the tight ring of muscle.
“Riana. Krel,” he groaned, a deep, guttural sound that she was sure he wasn’t even aware of making.
Leaning over his back, she put her mouth next to his ear. “Do you want this?” She let the words heat his skin, sending a cold chill across his flesh. “Do you want me?”
“I think I might die without you inside me.” There was a touch of humor in the strained tones. And a wealth of need.
She stood up and stepped into the harness containing the dildo. Riana hissed as the replica of his cock slipped into her heated channel.
She gnawed on her lip. She had to make this good for him. Her hands shook as she tightened the leather straps of the harness.
Oh Zethra, she was going to blow this. Her control was shot to Tartarius.
Riana stiffened her knees. No, she refused to fail.
She moved behind him.
She placed her hands on the powerful haunches. Ever so slowly, she eased the head of the cock against the small hole.
The lubricant made it easy to slide the tip into his heat. A hiss of pleasure escaped her as the nerve-endings in the cock inside Darias transmitted the sensations directly into her pussy.
“Are you okay? Am I hurting you?” she panted. Zethra, if this was what a man felt when he made love to a woman, it was a wonder anyone ever got out of bed.
“Hurts. Burns.” He sucked a deep breath, his muscles quivering against the invasion.
She pushed a little deeper, unable to help herself.
His fingers dug into the plush carpet.
“Bad?”
“Unhh.” He pulled forward and just as quickly pushed back.
She leaned forward, pressing her mouth just below his shoulder blade. Heat and wet satin. He tasted totally male and all Darias. “Bear down,” she whispered. “It will help.”
She pulled out and, just as slowly, pushed back in. Over and over. Each time a little deeper.
So hot. He was so hot inside. Was that how she felt to him?
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