Ask For It

by Faulkner, Gail

  In all the years since her husband’s death, she’d refused to move back to the palace where he could take care of her. It made sense now, along with every other thing she’d done that had enraged him over and over again.

  What still didn’t make sense was her reason for being here. Clearing up their baggage only made her offer to have his baby more of a mystery. There was no way to mistake this conversation for a request to start over. Now she fully understood the code he lived by and had pulled no punches explaining how completely he’d failed as a male and as a warrior.

  Tor retracted claws one by one, pulling them out of the window frame. Straightening, he turned to face her. To face what he deserved.

  “Beloved of my Brother, why do you extend the generous offer of a child? How has time run out?”

  Chapter Three

  “I need a male who is able to perform without using the pheromone. I do not wish to lie with your brothers. That leaves you. In the past we enjoyed contact to the point of you being physically capable of delivering sperm without using the pheromone. I will likely conceive,” Sahara answered as if she were explaining the obvious. Her tone was not condescending so much as deliberate in pronouncing each word clearly.

  There was no humor in her little speech and almost none in the subject, but her clinical terms gave him a moment of amusement. “The pheromone is meant to enhance a female’s enjoyment. Males have no difficulty delivering sperm. Our problem seems to be finding a receptive womb.”

  “See, even though I’ve been here almost five years, there are things I do not understand completely.” Sahara nodded as if he’d just made her point.

  The point he’d made was that a Leonor male could deliver sperm to a mud slug if he had to. Little desert flower need not worry about that resource. What was unclear to him was how she felt time had run out. Why did she suddenly need a male? He was still sure there was something else driving her.

  Tor suspected the reason time was running out had to do with her physiology and that possibility didn’t feel good. He knew nothing of her people’s lifespan, not to mention other physical limitations and requirements.

  “Tell me exactly why time is running out, Sahara,” Tor requested firmly. Reality was, he couldn’t force an answer from her. Certainly not after the hard truths she’d just laid at his door.

  Sahara sighed and glanced away from him. That was a bad sign. She could face him without flinching while discussing an event she considered rape and near death at his hands, but revealing this made her look away. Fear wrapped around his gut.

  A little stiffly she raised her head, but her eyes didn’t quite meet his. She focused on his jaw and explained. “My biological clock is about to demand a response to the ticking. The situation could get unmanageable if I don’t, um, don’t choose a male to focus on. The other option is to find a deserted planet and, ah, see if everything works out.”

  Tor worked through her little speech. Slowly he returned to the couch and lowered himself to sit beside her. He kept his movements deliberate and nonthreatening. If that complicated answer meant what he thought it did, both of them were in trouble.

  Very gently he reached out and took one of her hands off her lap, folding his large paw around it. “Look at me, beloved,” he directed softly.

  Big gray eyes rose to meet his. “I will not knowingly fail you or harm you. I will do everything in my power to make you happy and comfortable…” Tor had thought he could do this when he realized how big what she was trying to tell him was, but he hadn’t gotten past the last huge thing.

  Knowing the pain and humiliation she’d endured because he’d been too selfishly consumed with lust to adequately explain the Corbeth was overwhelming. She’d almost died. Her narrow escape from that horrifying possibility was too close. Tor didn’t know how to express the feelings thundering through him.

  A tremor ripped down his body. He couldn’t control it as he gazed into platinum gray eyes and lost his soul again. She sat so stiff. Her amazing control was being strained if his suspicions were correct. She’d come to him.

  “Sahara, how can I help you?” he tried again. Perhaps letting her take control of the conversation would make her comfortable. “Anything you need, anything at all.”

  She searched his eyes. What she found apparently satisfied her because her little spine relaxed. “I need a male to focus on. I’d rather it was you, but I’m afraid,” she confessed softly. “I’ve never been in heat before. I will involuntarily emit a pheromone. What if it’s dangerous to you? The other problem is, if I’m not focused on one male the pheromone will draw all males.

  “This happened to my mother. My father died before I was born. I remember blood battles. It’s bad. If you don’t want me, you have to send me away. You can’t share me with your brothers. It will make one of you kill the others.”

  Yep, he’d suspected her indirect reference to a ticking clock was a shield for a not-so-humanoid problem. A hugely nonhuman problem that flashed impossible suspicions across his mind. Right now he didn’t give a death-angel damn that she wasn’t what she appeared.

  “You will focus on me,” Tor stated firmly. “There will be no Corbeth. How long can you control it?”

  “A day or two at most. I need to be out of the city soon,” she answered shyly.

  Tor contained the rush of possessive lust with an iron will. She’d come to him, despite everything. He would not fuck this up a second time.

  “I am going to pick you up and take us to the mountain castle. I don’t think I’ll be able to put you down, baby. Don’t expect it. I will not hurt you, but my instincts require contact,” he warned her. “When we get to the mountain castle it’ll be empty and I’ll do everything in my power to focus you on me sexually. Try to control the pheromone until we get there.”

  Her response was immediate. Sahara nodded and held up her arms. There was no hesitation as he carefully lifted her. Tor drew in a deep breath. “Trust me,” he whispered as his mouth took hers in a quick, hard kiss. He dared not take more.

  Holding her cradled to his chest, Tor effortlessly surged to his feet and strode from the room through a different door than the one they had entered. As soon as they crossed the threshold to the hall, he started barking orders.

  Sahara turned her face into his chest and relaxed against him. Everything was going to be fine. He would see to it or kill the fools who got in his way. Little desert flower did not need a pheromone to make him a weapon determined to keep her. Goddess help them when she couldn’t control it anymore.

  “Get us away from people now,” Sahara whispered. “Contact with you is having an unexpected result.”

  Tor froze in the hallway. “What result? Speak plainly, baby.”

  “I’m losing control. Run,” she breathed. “Find somewhere you can lock us in. If other males break in you will have to kill them to keep them off me. And if you don’t, I will,” she promised ominously.

  Tor didn’t need to hear any more. A compelling wisp of scent drifted past his nose and took on the power of a cannon shot as it exploded in his system and burned straight down to his groin. He’d thought he was turned-on, but this took him to an entirely new level of lust. He put his head down and took off. The only place open to them now was the old fortress section of the palace.

  Behind him a warrior roared and then another. There were several yells and some banging about but no thunder of running feet.

  “What is that?” he demanded as he avoided heavily trafficked areas, heading for the old sections.

  “I told you. Pheromone,” Sahara hissed as she clutched his neck. She didn’t have to hold on to him. His run was a smooth flow of muscles generating speed, but mostly his grip held her securely. He raced through progressively narrower passageways and older rooms with silent confidence.

  “I don’t think so, baby,” he disagreed. Entering the siege castle, he put her down briefly to slide a heavy beam across the door. It rested on great iron hooks. He didn’t bother with the tw
o other beams that would have crossed the door. Swinging her up in his arms, he turned and headed deeper into the old building.

  “You sealed the door, aren’t we safe?” Sahara demanded. Her body trembled in his arms.

  Tor was surrounded by the compelling scent of her arousal. It pounded through him, invaded every pore of his body, fed the fierce lust he’d not been free of for five years.

  “Not yet. That was one door. The fortress has others. I need to get us to the fallback tower. When that door is secured, we can deal with our issues.”

  “I may have been wrong. It doesn’t sound like anyone is following us,” Sahara glanced over his shoulder.

  “You were not wrong. Leonor warriors do not thunder after prey in wild abandon. We are being hunted. I can feel them coming,” he assured her calmly. “Don’t be concerned. I will not be caught in my own lair.”

  “Oh Goddess,” Sahara breathed as he entered a narrow door.

  Swiftly putting her on her feet, Tor closed the reinforced door. Four pig-iron bars slid across the old, double steel door. It had been built to withstand a full siege. He was fairly certain it would hold against his men for a few hours.

  The bottom of the tower they stood in was dimly lit by feeble stabs of light from far up its walls where small weapon openings began. Tor’s eyes adjusted quickly, but there was little to see in the long-unused tower. There certainly hadn’t been a siege since the days Leonor tribes battled each other over seven thousand years ago.

  Sahara trembled against the wall, her arms wrapped around herself as she watched him. Big gray eyes were worried, but her body was screaming invitation with the beguiling scent coming directly from her sex. She said it was pheromones, and the power of her scent wrapped around his chest and squeezed. He suspected it was something infinitely more dangerous to his kind and there was much she had to tell him. No time for it now.

  Tor reached for her, picking up his woman. This time he wrapped his arms around her back and took her mouth. Eagerly she opened for him as he thrust into her, his tongue invading, claiming. She couldn’t wrap her legs around his hips because of her skirt. He’d fix that problem for her in a minute.

  The kiss took what was his, demanded it of her and she gave it to him, her head bending back in surrender as he ate her mouth. The soft sounds he remembered so well coming from the back of her throat. Tor plundered and felt a swell of anger mix with the extreme sexuality surrounding them.

  The anger was part of both of them. He could feel it in her as well. The rumble coming from his chest was more growl than purr and that was exactly what he heard from her. It didn’t matter. No, it mattered a lot. Not as much as what they both needed now. Mad or not, they were going to fuck. Making love would come later. After the fucking. After the anger.

  Tor ripped his mouth off her and put her down. “If you want to wear clothing when we leave here, take the dress off. If you don’t care, I’ll rip it off,” he snarled as he flicked the clasps on his vest and shed it. Reaching down, he unlaced the opening of his leathers and shoved them out of his way. He didn’t have time to take off boots. Not this time.

  Sahara’s eyes were riveted on his cock and she hadn’t moved. Breathing hard, he looked down at the woman staring at his sex. “Take off the dress now. Last chance.” The words were thick on his tongue as he battled the urgent drive to shred it off her with claws.

  Beside them, on the other side of the door, a Leonor warrior roared in frustration and the sound startled her into action. She grabbed the hem and drew her dress over her head, dropping the garment as her eyes traveled up his body to meet his gaze.

  He loomed over her, staring at the soft body finally exposed to his view. She had come to him without undergarments. The punch of her intentions was gratifying, but again, he didn’t have time to enjoy it. He only had a few moments of lucid thought left and he needed to explain what would happen next. Even though her scent was a mind-numbing inducement, he would not lose this woman a second time because he’d failed to tell her something.

  “We are going to fuck. Then I’m going to make love to you and then we’ll talk,” he rasped. He flattened his hands on the stone walls beside her to keep them off her just a few more seconds. She was out of choices and he needed her to understand that. “Do you understand?”

  Another roar outside the door as the males realized there was no entering this place.

  Sahara nodded and reached up to run her hands down the fur of his chest.

  “No. Say it. Ask me,” Tor demanded. It was difficult to make sentences, but he had too much to lose. A harsh shudder ran through him at her touch. “I will have you. All of you. You must acknowledge. I will not release you again.”

  He didn’t see it coming. Her ability to remove thousands of years of civilization and reduce him to an elemental male barely out of the cave lair.

  Sahara dropped to her knees. Both little hands grasped the base of his cock as her mouth closed over the wide head. She sucked him in with no preliminaries, dragging her mouth over as much as she could in hard pulls. Sensation blew up his belly and down his legs on white lightning bolts. She took him deep. Twice. The second time the head of his cock slid out of her mouth to rest on her lips as pre-cum marked her face. From that position, with his cock resting on her lips, she looked up into his eyes. “Please. Fuck me.”

  As she opened over him again, Tor threw back his head and roared with all the fury and frustration of five years denied. An explosion of knowledge coursed through him. It was all about what they had missed. Her complete surrender to his total domination was the gift she’d tried to give him and he’d been blind to it. Unable to understand their cultural differences that were born of the same drive. Kneeling at his feet, her tongue licking the length of his cock, she’d taken them back to that place.

  There would be no misunderstanding this time. The females of her species required a hard, vicious killer who could defend them with no hesitation. She had chosen him and he was well able to see to her needs.

  Chapter Four

  His hands reached down and gripped her head as she worked his cock, his fingers sliding into her hair, ensuring she took him as he pumped into her sweet mouth. The thunderous roars of other males outside his door seeking entrance to rip his woman away from him, the bare stone tower around them, all of it was straight out of this planet’s ancient history. The dangerous past had come full circle and would be repeated this day.

  Tor’s hands slid down under her arms and pulled her off him. His woman’s mew of loss turned into a gasping howl of pleasure as he lifted her high and dipped a shoulder to force her legs over his shoulders. Holding her back with one hand, her ass with the other, he brought her cunt to his mouth and proceeded to show her that he meant to have everything she offered.

  Her head dropped back on her shoulders as he sucked naked pink folds into his mouth and ate the honey from her core. Before he was done, she would have no option but to scream her pleasure. He wanted the males outside that door to hear her scream for him. Beg him to take her. This was the hard, possessive beast she drew out of him. The one who had shed civilization a long time ago as his arms closed around her for the very first time.

  Swept into the violent past where death could well be the price of a mate as strength was the only measure of survival, he knew the she-beast he held to his mouth and reveled in her. He would take her as his forefathers had claimed a mate. Marking her as his possession and demonstrating the right before his warriors. Not that he’d open the door and engage them in battle for her, but this might as well be a public fuck. He kept her by the door to be sure every scent reached them, every sound was heard.

  The tip of his tongue scraped over her clit and Sahara moaned. He flattened his wide tongue and thrust deep into her channel, coming back to her clit immediately. Her body tensed, thighs over his shoulders, trying to pump up into his face. Tor nipped a sensitive labial fold in punishment. She squealed but did not jerk away. She settled back to where his hands had
directed.

  Returning to the business of eating her as he pleased, Tor was rewarded with her gasping pleasure as he held her body to his face. Spread open and controlled by his strength, she couldn’t move away, couldn’t do anything about it, and that was exactly what he needed.

  Her body shuddered. Tor sucked her clit lightly then tongued it with the rough tip. Leaving that bundle of nerves, he moved over pink folds, around them, in them, his muzzle and tongue explored her fascinating core. Through his hands he felt her body tighten, her sleek muscles tremble on the high wire of pleasure, and knew she was close. Seeking the protrusion of her clit, he lapped in circling strokes. She screamed for him as she came, high and long. Bathing his face with her intoxicating pleasure.