by Moira Rogers
Her touch skated away, and she slid both hands up his chest until her fingers brushed his nipples. “We may drown here in the deep end.”
It was classic Celine, living this night as if it would be her last. Karim drifted back to the edge of the pool and braced his arms on the wet stone. “Just hold on to me. I won’t let you sink.”
Mischief glinted in her eyes. “Don’t move your arms,” she whispered, then vanished under the water. Fingers dug into his hips, and her mouth encased the head of his cock, so much hotter than the water surrounding them.
Words flashed, tumbling one over the other, her memories of the last time they’d been in this pool. It aroused him almost as much as the hot tug of her mouth, and he let his head fall back on a groan. Deeper.
As clearly as he’d always been able to read her thoughts, she’d never let him close enough to share his own with her. It could have been coincidence that she moved her mouth lower — she’d always taken pleasure in the power of having his cock in her throat — but her thoughts crystallized a heartbeat later. You feel so good in my head. Say something else.
There was only one thing to say. Stay with me.
Her touch disappeared and she surfaced in a sudden splash, her long hair plastered wildly to her face. “Say it again.”
He moved his arms, reaching out to frame her face with his hands. “Stay with me. Here, or at court. Wherever.”
“At court I’ll always be a priestess,” she whispered. “I want to learn to be my own woman, but I can’t promise you it will be quick.”
“Rais has been threatening me with all sorts of occupations lately,” he admitted. “Perhaps if I’m busy here in the country, he’ll leave me the hell alone.”
“Tell Rais to take his occupations and —” Her teeth dug into her lower lip. “See? A woman can’t speak that way of our king. Perhaps you should keep me here for my own good. I can’t scold him like I used to.”
“Of course you can.” His next words were reckless, insane, and he told himself to bite them back. It didn’t work. “You can talk to him any way you please if you’re family.”
Something gentle and tender filled her eyes as she pressed both hands to his chest. “You would trust me with your heart again?”
The truth was stark and undeniable, and he knew that now she was beyond taking it the wrong way. “Despite my best efforts, darling, you have never not held my heart.”
“You stole mine, when it wasn’t my own to give.” She smoothed her hands up to curl behind his neck, one falling to the stone edge behind him as she pressed close. “I need time. A month. A month to prove to myself I can be trusted with your heart. And maybe you can steal mine again.”
He pulled her closer and, in one smooth, hard movement, slid inside her. “I can do that. I’m quite good with the ladies, you know.”
Her head fell back, her body arched just enough to give him a perfect view of her breasts, barely breaking the water. “Shallow water,” she managed, the words shaking. “Get us to shallower water because I am going to drown us both with all the dirty ways I’m about to fuck you.”
The closest shallow area was a barely submerged dividing wall between two pools. Karim wound one arm around Celine’s waist and used the other to lever himself to sit on the wide stone surface. “Ride me.”
She was Celine, which meant obedience always came with her own twist. Her knees splashed in the water on either side of his hips as she rocked down, taking him deep. Only when he was buried in her body did she lift her hands, tugging at his head as she bent backwards and guided his mouth to her breasts.
He closed his mouth around one nipple, the fire of arousal flaring inside him, burning away everything but the taste of her wet skin and the sweet, tight clamp of her body around his cock.
“Yes… more, Karim —” Her grip on his hair was almost too tight, but he barely felt it. He was too focused on being inside her, taking her.
He needed to take her.
He pulled away, flipped her onto her stomach and moved behind her in the water. “Is this what you want?” he rasped, one hand easing her legs wide.
“I want you every way.” A soft whisper, shaky and desperate. “Inside me, on me, beneath me… Every way until there’s nothing left but you.”
His cock bumped against her cunt, and he held still, not thrusting forward. “Tell me you need it.”
She snarled and drove back, her leverage foiled by the grip of his hands and the resistance of the water. “Karim. Please.”
He gave in, just enough to push a few inches inside her. “Tell me you need it.”
“I need it.” Water surged as she rocked back again, this time taking another inch of him with a low moan. “I need you. I’ve always needed you.”
It soothed the wolf as much as the man, and he buried his cock in her with one driving thrust. “You have me, Celine. Always.”
“Yes?” Every movement seemed slower, sharper with the water’s resistance. She edged back and reached for his hand, dragging it around until their fingers twined together and pressed against her clit. “I don’t want slow. I want it all. Now.”
He’d give her anything, so he set a hard, quick rhythm of thrusts, each one deeper than the last, and rubbed firm circles over her clit. Water cascaded over her back every time he surged forward, and she arched sharply, tilting her head back.
Unbidden came a whisper from her mind, a fractured memory of his hand curled in her hair, the image painted with hot need, a need he was perfectly willing to fulfill.
Her dark hair was plastered to her back, but the curls floated free under the water. He gathered the locks there and twisted them up in his hand. “Like this?”
A throaty moan echoed off the walls. “No wonder I could never control you like I controlled the rest. You used to drive me wild because I couldn’t do my job when you reached inside and pulled out the things I needed. You always made it about me —”
Karim stopped, fully joined with her but unmoving, and bent until his mouth was close to her ear. “I made it about us, darling. Everything I do to drive you wild makes me insane.”
She shuddered and turned her head to seek his lips with her own. “I love you.”
I love you too. A silent declaration with his mouth fused to hers, but no less earth-shattering. Love.
The last of her defenses fell as her body tightened, her climax starting deep inside her. Tickles of pleasure played at the edges of his senses as her heart finally lay bare to him, a jumbled mix of desire and strength and fear and underneath it all a love she’d struggled against for so many years, never really escaping it.
He’d never felt closer to her, because her confused emotions matched his own. The sheer need that had held him bound to her all these years was a shared one —
One they no longer had to fight.
Karim let go, driving her against the stone as pleasure roared through him. Her body gripped him, prolonging his orgasm as his cock pulsed inside her. Celine.
She bit his lip so hard the taste of copper slid across his tongue, but her moan was pure pleasure and throbbing release. As the spasms faded she slumped forward, her elbows resting on the stone wall. “I think… I think we have a lot of pent up need to work through.”
It would take years. “When do you want to leave for the palace?”
“Tomorrow.” A soft laugh. “Or the next day. I want you all to myself for a while.”
“There is always the journey.” No reason they couldn’t take their time, provided everything was fine. “As for the rest, we’ll simply take it one day at a time.”
Day by day. It was how he’d survived her loss and her continued absence from his life, so it was fitting that they should rebuild exactly that way, with no expectations but that they were both exactly where they wanted to be.
Slowly but surely, they would build a life.
Epilogue
It was supposed to be a small ceremony.
Celine studied the garden full of friend
s, family and priestesses and wondered if she’d been foolish to imagine such a thing possible. It was a small ceremony, for the wedding of a high priestess. But for a woman who’d wanted a quiet acknowledgement of her acceptance of a mate, it was anything but.
They’d moved the ceremony outside when gossip had resulted in a good portion of the Temple arriving along with the new High Priestess and her personal guard. Rais had come, of course, along with his young bride and their new daughter, an adorable little thing with Rais’s dark looks and Avani’s big eyes.
Celine sat in the spot of honor and leaned back against her mate’s side, warmth bubbling up inside her. “So much for small. Your servants are going to quit in a fit of pique.”
“If my ill humor hasn’t driven them away by now, nothing ever will.” He sounded anything but bad-tempered, almost jovial as he caught his sister’s smile and lifted his glass to match her salute. “Zahra is pregnant.”
“I’m not surprised. Only that it took so long.” Though she imagined Karim didn’t want to know just how enthusiastically his sister enjoyed her husband.
He closed his hand around hers. “Are you happy? The new High Priestess says you look like you are.”
“She would know.” Lexa had grown into her new position, and Celine felt not even the slightest twinge of jealousy. She’d been the most powerful woman in their world for enough years. It was someone else’s turn.
Lexa’s turn. Celine had wealth and her share of influence, judging by the way the king still flinched when she glared at him. And she had Karim. She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed his knuckles softly. “Are you happy? You’ve gained an ornery mate who is going to hire workers to update your house with a few technological amenities it is sorely lacking.”
He groaned. “You used to like the house well enough without things like comlinks and video feeds.”
“Yes, when it was a house. Now it’s my home, and my home needs comlinks and video feeds.”
“Point conceded. How else are we going to excuse the fact that we never leave it?”
Celine laughed and turned to kiss his cheek. “I was planning to claim the privilege of age. We’ve earned a few placid years of peace, haven’t we?”
“Placid?” Karim pinched her ass under the table. “Bite your tongue. How soon can they all be gone? I plan to chase you around the dinner table tonight.”
“Pinch me again and I’ll be biting something, but it won’t be my tongue. And we can’t send them home until we all go for a run. You know tradition, the new mates have to lead the chase.”
“Yes, yes.” He waved a hand and grinned. “Not the sort of instinctive animal revelry I was looking forward to… but it will have to do.”
Karim’s property was large enough that there were plenty of secluded little clearings and caves to be found, if one felt properly motivated. “I think tradition also allows for us to get lost along the way… if we can outrun them.”
His smile turned seductive. “I know just the spot.”
She’d taken him a hundred times as a warrior, but nothing compared to the quiet satisfaction of having Karim as a man. A dangerous man, perhaps, but one she could love. Did love. Maybe had always loved.
Celine rose to her feet and held out her hand to him. “The sooner we run, the sooner we can hide.”
He took her hand with a laugh, then turned to address their guests. “Now, if everyone is amenable, my mate and I would like to run.”
Mate. She’d been called many things — flattering and insulting — but none had ever resonated so completely with her heart. “We’ll run,” she murmured as the assembled guests started toward the open field. “But you’ll still have to catch me.”
“We’ll see.” He closed his hand in her hair suddenly, shocking a gasp out of her with one firm tug. “Something tells me you like to be caught.”
“Almost as much as you like catching.” Ignoring their audience, she rocked up on her toes and dug her teeth into his lower lip in clear challenge — one that would stir his body as surely as he heated hers. “Let’s run, my love. We’ll see who ends up on top.”
Moira Rogers
How do you make a Moira Rogers? Take a former forensic science and nursing student obsessed with paranormal romance and add a computer programmer with a passion for gritty urban fantasy. Toss in a dash of whimsy and a lot of caffeine, and enjoy with a side of chocolate by the light of the full moon.
By day, Bree and Donna are mild-mannered ladies who reside in the Deep South. At night, when their husbands and children are asleep, they combine forces to unleash the product of their fevered imaginations upon the page. To learn more about this romance writing, crime fighting duo, visit their webpage at www.moirarogers.com. (Disclaimer: crime fighting abilities may appear only in the aforementioned fevered imaginations.)