Lord of the Storm

by Justine Davis

He cupped her breasts through the thin gossamer of her garment, cradling and lifting their full roundness with his palms. His fingers flexed, as if savoring the softness of her, and Shaylah let out a tiny moan.

  “Such a blending,” Wolf murmured. “Every inch the consummate woman, yet with the soul and heart of the bravest of heroes . . .”

  The pleasure that rose in her at his words collided with the pleasure of his hands on her, and she could only make an inarticulate sound of delight.

  “Do you not know how beautiful you are?” He squeezed her gently again, his fingers slipping ever closer to the sensitive peaks that rose tautly against the sheer fabric. “Have you been too long the officer, and not long enough the woman?”

  “Wolf,” she gasped, “please . . .”

  “Please?”

  He looked puzzled at the word. Shaylah guessed he hadn’t heard it very often, especially under these circumstances, but she didn’t want to think about that. She couldn’t think about it.

  “This is us, Wolf,” she whispered, lifting a hand to trail her fingers lightly over his jaw. “It’s different. Isn’t it?” She heard the plea in her voice, but could neither stop it nor care.

  His eyes flicked once more to the controller, then back to her face. After a moment he said softly, “Yes. Somehow, it is different.”

  Then his fingers moved, to catch and caress nipples already straining for his touch, and Shaylah gasped as fire shot through her as if from Carelia’s twin suns. He toyed with the rigid peaks until she was breathless, arching her back, thrusting her breasts to him for more.

  Shaylah knew from the new heaviness of his breathing that he was not unaffected himself, but she could only welcome the knowledge and soar onward beneath his hands. There was something about his touch, a tenderness that had been missing in that urgent, frenzied coupling she had induced.

  Then, with a swift movement that stole every bit of breath from her lungs, he took one nipple with his lips and flicked it with his tongue through the thin cloth, and Shaylah was lost in an inferno that made her cry out his name.

  Instinctively her hands came up, to grasp his head and hold it to her trembling flesh, to ensure that he wouldn’t stop that alternately gentle, then fiercer suckling that was making her body draw the heat from his mouth and send it racing down to some swirling, molten place deep inside her. But when her slender fingers threaded their way through the long, thick mane of his hair, she forgot her original intent. Her fingers flexed, moved, loving the feel of the heavy golden silk sliding across her fingers, the feel of it as it brushed featherlight over her body.

  The need to feel his hair trailing over her naked skin seized her irresistibly. She wriggled, tugging at the sheer gown that was no more than a nuisance now. When he realized what she was doing, Wolf moved away just far enough for her to shed the offending garment, then lowered his mouth to the other breast to repeat the attentions that had nearly driven her to madness.

  Her fingers digging into his shoulders, Shaylah moaned her pleasure as he suckled her deeply once more. She felt the heat of his hand slide down her side and over her belly, as if he were trailing fire from his fingertips. Then his fingers were parting the soft curls between her thighs, searching, until that fire leaped from him to her as he found the very core of her, and every nerve in her body leaped to life.

  Shaylah bucked helplessly beneath his probing fingers, arching, reaching, caught between the stroking of his fingers and the suckling of his mouth. Her hands slid down his back, her trembling fingers plucking desperately at the ties of his trewscloth.

  “Help me,” she said sharply, needing, having to have him naked against her.

  For an instant Wolf froze. Dazed with pleasure, Shaylah could only look back at him, her lips parted for her gasping breaths. His face went very still, and he nodded once before rising to his knees on the bunk beside her. Methodically, eyes lowered, he unfastened the ties and pulled off the brief cloth, baring himself to her hungry gaze.

  Shaylah stared at his jutting, engorged flesh, wondering that she had ever taken it inside her. The memory made her quiver, and she felt the warm wetness begin to flow within her. Tentatively she reached out, her fingers barely brushing the swollen tip, already moist with need. Wolf jerked sharply, but stayed where he was. When she looked up at him, his eyes were closed, his jaw tightly clenched.

  She reached out again, fingers curling around him, marveling at the sleek smoothness of male flesh. She saw a shudder go through him, but still he remained kneeling before her. She deepened the caress, stroking him from tip to base, her fingers tangling in the thicket of golden curls. When she heard his sharp intake of breath, she did it again. When he moved sharply, as if involuntarily, parting his muscled thighs, she slid her hand farther down, cupping him gently in her palm.

  He groaned, low and harsh and deep in his throat. It was a thick sound of pleasure mixed with anguish; she reveled in the one without understanding the other. He was shuddering under her caresses when at last he grabbed her wrist and stopped her.

  “If you needed to prove you’re in command here,” he said hoarsely, “you’ve done it.”

  Shaylah stared at him, bewildered. He had changed somehow, since the moment she had pleaded for help with his trewscloth, and she didn’t know why. “What’s wrong, Wolf? You don’t want . . . ?” Her words trailed away; she didn’t know if she couldn’t say it because she was too embarrassed or because she didn’t want to hear the answer.

  Wolf laughed, a short, rasping sound that held no humor. “I want. I want, and I cannot have.” He shrugged. “I’m used to that. But I’m forgetting what I’m here for.”

  Before she could react to his harsh tone, he had come down upon her, his mouth taking hers fiercely as his hands stroked, probed, and plundered her body. The heat began to flow again, hotter than ever, as if the brief respite had only served to build up more fuel to feed it.

  When his hand slid down her body once more, his fingers gentle yet determined as he searched out that tingling center, Shaylah clung to him. Shiver after shiver of sensation took her as he caressed her, until the heat inside her felt like some pool of molten liquid building behind a fragile barrier only he had the power to release.

  She gasped when his finger slid farther, dipping inside her, then withdrew. She could feel her own wetness by the ease of his finger’s entry, and she flushed when she realized that that was what he’d been doing: testing her readiness for him.

  Shaylah moaned when he levered himself over her and thrilled at the feel of his weight. She parted her legs willingly, and he slipped between them. She sucked in a breath and held it as she felt the hot, blunt tip of him probing against her.

  “Is this what you want?” he grated out, staring down at her. “Or do you wish me to pleasure you another way?”

  Lost in a fog of rippling sensation, Shaylah couldn’t interpret the edge in his voice. She knew something was wrong, in the words he spoke and the way he was acting, but her body was crying out for him, and she could do nothing more than whisper entreatingly, “Please, Wolf.”

  He moved then, quickly, almost roughly, thrusting into her in one long, deep stroke. She felt the impact as he drove home and cried out as a fierce swell of pleasure swept her at the sweet invasion. When he made as if to withdraw, she held him, her hands sliding down his back to clutch at the taut curve of his buttocks.

  “Wait,” she said breathlessly. “I . . . want to feel you.”

  “You have . . . great faith in my abilities,” he muttered, “but as you wish.”

  Shaylah felt him tremble with the effort to remain motionless. That edge remained in his voice, but she still couldn’t grasp its meaning through the shimmering haze of pleasure he’d put her in. All she knew was she’d never felt anything in her life like the sheer, overwhelming sensation of having him buried deep inside her. He was filling her,
stretching her, making her body expand to accommodate him, yet still she wanted more.

  Tentatively, experimentally, she shifted her hips. She felt him slide even deeper, touching the very heart of her, and she gasped at the sensation. She did it again, and again. He shuddered, she felt it ripple through him, but he didn’t move. Her hands came up to clutch at his shoulders; they were damp with sweat. Her fingers tangled in the golden strands of the hair falling around his face.

  “Oh, Wolf, I didn’t know. Does it feel as wonderful to you?” she asked anxiously.

  He made a low, harsh sound that could have been a laugh or a groan. “You’re not supposed to worry about how I feel.”

  “But of course I do. I . . . it’s so incredible, when I move, to feel you inside me . . .” Her voice went lower, suddenly restrained. “It . . . isn’t like that, for you? You don’t want to . . . to move?”

  “You”—he sucked in a breath as she moved beneath him again—”told me not to.”

  Shaylah flushed. “But I didn’t mean—” She broke off, her breath caught in her throat like a physical thing when he moved his hips, pulling back slightly and then pushing slowly into her again.

  “More?” he said, his voice oddly thick as he repeated the movement, harder this time.

  “Oh,” Shaylah gasped.

  It seemed all she could say, and she was grateful he took it as assent. He withdrew even farther, only to plunge forward with a fierce suddenness that drew another moan from her. In moments she was writhing beneath him, her legs lifting to wrap around him and hold him to her as if she would never release him, yet then letting him withdraw so that she could have the sheer pleasure of his swift, hot, thick invasion once more.

  The tension built in her, intense, demanding, until she was clawing at him from the pressure. Her fingers dug into his shoulders, his back, his buttocks, as he drove into her. Tiny cries burst from her; it was unbearable, it was killing her. “I can’t,” she gasped out. “I can’t stand it.”

  “All right,” he said, “now, then.”

  Shaylah wondered how he could sound so calm; it was all she could do to keep from flying apart. And then Wolf shifted, changed the angle of his body until his rigid, swollen flesh stroked across the very heart of her with every thrust, creating a sweet, hot friction that made her half mad with fiery need. It was as if he’d lit the fuse on some primitive explosive, and Shaylah knew that the detonation would change her forever.

  Fear spiked through her, fear of the unknown, and of what would be left of her afterward. But then she felt Wolf’s mouth at her breasts, suckling each rosy crest in turn as he continued to stroke her from within, and there was nothing left at all but swelling, rising pleasure that spread to the limits of her body, then rebounded with twice the force. It seemed to feed upon its own energy, growing, expanding until she could no longer hold it and exploded in a convulsion of heat and light and sensation. His name ripped from somewhere deep inside her, leaving her lips in a fierce cry of pleasure.

  Is this how a star feels, dying? she wondered, awestruck. Expending all its light and heat in one last burst of life? She could feel her body surging, rippling, every nerve seemingly intent on conveying to her the incredible sensation of stroking the hard, thick, male length inside her. Then, from the dizzying height, she became aware of something else.

  She looked dazedly up at Wolf’s face; it was contorted into an expression that was as much pain as it was extraordinary pleasure. His muscles were taut, trembling, but she couldn’t tell if it was from an effort to move or to remain still.

  Another quiver shook him, and she felt the answering sensation deep inside her as her feminine flesh rippled around him once more, coaxing, drawing, as if she wanted to pull him inside her forever. And she did, she thought as she shivered anew at the sight of his naked, golden beauty.

  “No,” Wolf groaned. “No.”

  She heard the denial, wondered at it, but lost the thought as, despite his words, he arched above her, driving himself to the hilt into that urgently caressing flesh. He closed his eyes as he threw his head back, the gleaming mane of his hair rippling down his back, the strong cords of his neck straining against the collar that bound him. “No,” he protested again as he ground his hips against her.

  He sucked in his breath with a strangled sound. A cry broke from him, a throttled shout of pleasure that seemed to coalesce into her name. Shaylah echoed it with her own cry of his name as she felt him shudder violently, pouring his heat and light and life into her.

  “Wolf,” she moaned, knowing that this time it was she he had given this to, not the ghost of his dead mate.

  He collapsed atop her, then slid weakly to one side, the harsh, heavy sound of his breathing distinct in her ears. His arms were still stretched across her body, his legs still entangled with hers, and she savored every bit of contact, every echoing shudder that rippled through him, setting up an answering shudder of her own.

  At last Wolf’s breathing slowed, and Shaylah sensed the tension that began to flow back into him. He pulled away from her, rolling to his back, freeing his arms and legs. His eyes stayed closed, tightly as if he were fighting some inner battle.

  “Wolf?” she whispered, biting her lip as a tide of apprehension rose in her, sending the last lingering remnants of pleasure skittering away before it. “Wolf, what’s wrong?”

  He made a sound, a flat, harsh sound that had no meaning, yet conveyed everything. His words, when they came, were just as jarring. “Are you . . . finished with me?”

  Shaylah raised herself on one elbow. “What?”

  “May I go?”

  “Go?” Shaylah stared at him, pain stabbing at her. He just lay there, eyes closed, one forearm resting on his forehead, hand palm up. The left hand, with the scarred wrist plainly visible. She shuddered. He never moved.

  “You were . . . satisfied, were you not?” His tone was mockingly humble, that of a slave pleading for approval.

  Shaylah knew she was gaping, but she was so stunned she couldn’t help it. The vibrant golden lover who had just taught her more about life and love and her own body than she’d ever known was gone; this was not the slave he was portraying, but the man who knew so well how to make her angry.

  “Stop it! Just”—her voice caught on a sudden, choking sob—”just stop it, damn you!”

  “As you command,” he said flatly. He moved then, sitting up on the edge of the bunk, obviously choosing to take her words as permission to leave. He was on his feet and two strides away before she found her voice again.

  “Wolf!”

  He stopped, and she saw his tension in the rigid muscles of his naked back. She saw, too, the new marks on him, only now beginning to fade. And the old ones, the shiny bands of skin at his wrists and ankles. Something knotted up tight in her chest, a cold, pressing pain she couldn’t bear. It colored her words as she whispered, “Wolf, what did I do?”

  The golden mane of hair slid over his shoulders as he turned his head to look at her. “You broke me, Captain,” he said coolly. “You own me as no one has. You should be proud.”

  SHAYLAH SPENT THE next day alone in the observation port; she saw nothing of Wolf. She dozed occasionally; she had slept little after Wolf’s departure, despite the sated weariness of her body. She didn’t understand what had happened, and after hours of lying awake in the darkness of her quarters trying to figure it out, she was no closer to an answer.

  His protest in those final moments, as his body erupted inside hers, made no sense to her. He had come to her of his own will, her battered heart insisted. Surely he had not meant to just fulfill the slave’s duty, pleasuring her while withholding himself?

  He had agreed it was different between them. Didn’t that mean he knew that he no longer had to prevent his own pleasure? Didn’t he know that surrendering to it gave her no power over him, that if an
ything, the beauty of it increased his power over her?

  He had come to her, yet when it was done he acted as if she were nothing more than another of those who had used him. As if she had gained some victory over him, as if she had forced him as all the others had. In fact, he was only slightly less angry than he had been the night she had used the controller.

  She stared out at the dark sphere of the asteroid, feeling as barren as it was, as lifeless. Empty, except for a burning knot of pain deep inside. And at last she began to realize that there had been no other way for it to be, that there never had been. The Coalition and what it had done to him would forever stand between them.

  Shaylah had never been one for analyzing her own actions; she based her decisions on her own personal code and tried not to think about the things she had no control over. But now she wondered, rather acidly, if she had merely been avoiding the unpleasant truth of what her life had become. Avoiding the acknowledgment that her life, her career, helped cast men like Wolf into slavery.

  She could not, she knew, change the system that was so much larger than herself. But she could change her support of it. She could do one small thing, save one victim of Coalition arrogance. She only had to think of a way. And when she did, she would walk away and leave him in peace, with no reminders to spark the ugly memories. And she tried not to think of what it would do to her, knowing she would never see him again. Tried not to think of what the ache inside her told her about her feelings for this golden man.

  SHAYLAH WAS stunned when he came to her again that night. She had been sitting cross-legged on her bunk, scanning a star chart, trying to think of someplace far from the Coalition where he would he safe and free, when the whisper of sound made her look up.

  He stood in her doorway, a look of utter resignation on his face. The light from the corridor haloed his naked body, giving him a strangely spectral look. She had the sudden thought that it was as if he were indeed a phantom, the embodiment of all the souls of a lost race, contained in this one lithe, graceful, golden body; the one last lion left to represent them all.