Tallis intended to ask what she meant. Which more? But that wasn’t the result. With her chant in his ears, he bared his teeth and scraped them across her nipple. She arched toward him. More of that. Yes. She revealed herself more than perhaps she knew, craving pain and pleasure intertwined.
Dragon damn, he wanted to claim her.
How?
How much more?
There were steps he could take. The traditional ways of the Pendray—ways that would bind them forever. He . . .
Can’t stop.
“Don’t want you to stop,” she whispered.
“Witch.”
Withdrawing from her sleek heat was nearly impossible. Kavya clawed his ass and back, trying to keep him close, which made it even more difficult. Only his goal made the brief absence bearable.
He shoved her down so roughly that the bedsprings creaked and the headboard smacked against the outer wall. “Over,” was all he managed to say.
When Kavya didn’t comply fast enough—so new to this, so untested—he shoved his arms beneath her lower back and flipped her onto her stomach. She squealed and fought. Tallis grinned tightly against the rush of power that came from being able to grab her wrists and keep her from slipping free. “Going somewhere?”
With his free hand, he lifted her pelvis to create the perfect angle for his return. He pulsed inside her, looming over her, his back an arch around her squirming body.
“Because this,” he gasped against her nape, “this is where I want you. Where else would you go?”
“Nowhere.” The word was more breath than sound. That was new. That was welcome. Kavya wasn’t perfect, and neither was her seduction. She was artless. The studied calm of her cultured voice slipped away in favor of animalistic sounds that matched his inner tumult, stoking them to greater heights, bathed them in hotter fires. “Nowhere but here. What do I do?”
He made the mistake of letting go of her wrists. She caught his hand in one of hers and bit the fleshy pad at the base of his thumb. Tallis thrust harder, but she kept her primal hold on two inches of his flesh. He liked it, too, that blend of possessive pain and the utter pleasure of knowing he’d taken her down this road toward sexual madness.
“Keep that,” he said. “Yours. Show me what you do with things that are yours. How you own them.”
She tightened her jaw. Tallis felt as if she’d break skin with her sharp little teeth, but he knew what his skin could take. He could take anything she wanted to give. She let up and licked, sucked, started again.
He dragged her up to all fours. Only briefly did he remove his hand from the vicinity of her mouth, so that he could hook that arm under her body. He supported her torso, with his forearm between her breasts—and put his hand back where she needed him. She kissed his palm, his fingertips, and the twin crescents of teeth marks she’d embedded in the lower stretch of his thumb.
She was the most unexpected woman. Erotic. Needy. Fearless.
With a last pull toward restraint, Tallis pushed her hair away and nuzzled his mouth at the base of her hairline. “I want to bite you here,” he said against her skin. “How much could you take?”
“Anything you can give.”
His mind was splitting in two: good sense on one side, greed on the other. If he sank his teeth into her flesh, right there . . .
He’d claim her. By Pendray tradition she would be his, and she wouldn’t even know it.
Tallis groaned, tossing her hair so that it covered that temptation. He returned to mating their bodies in a fierce dance. No more foreplay, even if that foreplay had involved some of the roughest sex he’d ever indulged. At that moment, he’d tear her open and live inside her skin, burrow into her bones, swim in her veins along with the blood that powered her heart.
He gasped in relief and surprise when she thrust her hips back to meet his, twice, three times, and thrashed her head. Chin toward the ceiling, she cried out her release. Every ligament and joint tightened. She was frozen in the grasp of the orgasm that washed over her and through her and up into Tallis.
It was the permission he’d waited for.
Pulling her up to a kneeling position, he crossed both arms around her torso. Big hands. Full breasts. Tight hold. He was all body and force of motion. One hand crept up to her throat and held her chin to the ceiling in a mimic of how she’d arched when she came. Tallis pressed his lips against her throat and took, took, took. The brilliant colors that danced behind his eyes were almost distracting, until there was nothing left but a blaze of red so strong that it rivaled the burst of his orgasm. Sensation shot from his balls and the base of his shaft, until nothing was spared—no nerve centers, no hidden places. He was blasted open by pleasure as potent as moonshine and as pure as his rage.
Only he wasn’t a Pendray in the midst of a berserker rage.
He was a devastated man.
—
Kavya didn’t sleep, and neither did Tallis. They lay together in the near-darkness of twilight, as the city’s electric rainbows played over their bed. The room was cold. Wrapped with Tallis beneath the covers, Kavya idly caressed the varied textures of his skin. Smooth shoulders. Rough cheeks. Silky hair down the length of his chest, the hair changing texture around his sex. She touched him because they both needed her to, just as she needed to be touched. Connection.
The frustration of being unable to read his thoughts had given way to fascination. So many other ways to communicate. Some were inept by comparison to the streamlined sharing of knowledge between one mind and another, but she was known as the Sun. Her speeches were all delivered orally. She’d long since learned the value of intonation and hesitation and cadence.
Now she was communicating with Tallis in a way that was so intimate that she reminded herself to breathe. She was pressed flush against him from the calves on up, with her head pillowed by the hollow below his shoulder. She was fatigued and felt utterly pampered. What a strange thing to find in the arms of a Pendray.
“Are you sore?”
It was the first he’d spoken since having finished what had been . . . astonishing. Kavya hadn’t known that ferocity lived within her. What the Sun gave her followers was an insipid, limp thing compared to how she and Tallis had become as mighty as lava hitting cold ocean water—gusts of steam and fire that wouldn’t die.
“I think I will be,” she said quietly. The darkness made for a reliable confidant. She could talk to him without too much latent embarrassment. She didn’t feel embarrassed, but her throat closed and her face heated on a wash of memories. Talking to him within night’s shadows was nearly as private as being able to speak into his mind. She kissed the outer curve of his chest muscle. “We didn’t hold much back. Unless . . . Did you?”
He chuckled softly. The amusement rumbled in a low hum that infused her bones. “Hold much back?”
“Yes. Was that a leisurely stroll for you?”
“I wouldn’t say a stroll, no.” Tallis tightened his arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. “But yes. I did.”
Kavya searched her memories for any sense of hesitation. Only one came to mind. “You wanted to bite the back of my neck. I even dared you.”
He took a deep breath. “That would’ve been more than sex, Kavya. For a Pendray, anyway. Had we done that after the blessing of my family, we’d be married.”
A shot of adrenaline threatened to burst her skin with that single word. Married?
To this man?
To any man?
No, not just anyone. Tallis was unique in that.
“How . . .?” She needed to swallow. “How do you mean?”
“My clan’s tradition.”
His voice sounded trapped between affection and resignation. It was the tone people used when speaking about family, religion, and cultural differences. Sometimes there was no denying that even the most treasured customs could appear ridiculous. Kavya had felt it—that urge to apologize for aspects of Indranan life that flummoxed outsiders.