Chapter 5

Elijah came out of the rear room dressed more appropriately in a pair of jogging pants that were somewhat small on him, but much better than running around in nothing but a towel. They were flexible enough to be comfortable and served their purpose.

"Close enough," Siena remarked as she took his measure. "I didn't realize Jinaeri had men's clothes here. Something tells me she has a secret she's been keeping from me."

"And do you require your subjects to tell you about their affairs?"

Elijah knew he was baiting her, but she smiled and moved to sit on the couch with her feet curled up under her. She was looking a bit better though, if a little tired around the edges. Elijah joined her by sitting on the couch across from her, hooking an ankle over his knee with casual ease.

"No. But I do require my ladies-in-wait to do so. Jinaeri is one of my closest aides. I only keep unattached aides near me."

"Why?"

"Because my senses are quite powerful and it is too easy for me to detect the scent of a mate on them."

"And why would that be so bad?" Elijah pressed her. He suspected the answer already, but wanted to hear her say it.

"It is a … distraction. I keep myself far removed from those distractions. I would not punish her or condemn her for it, I would merely replace her and give her another position."

"You mean a demotion. No wonder she is reluctant to tell you."

"It is not a demotion."

"To go from a valuable aide close to the Queen to … whatever? You don't consider that a demotion?" Elijah laughed with a short, disbelieving snort. "I'll bet you anything Jinaeri does."

"Perhaps," Siena relented.

"And for what? For having a lover? That sounds quite discriminatory, Your Majesty. All because you don't want to be made uncomfortable with thoughts about a mate or about sex?"

"I would not expect you to understand," she snapped suddenly, her body becoming rigid with her irritation. "It's well known that you Demons will rut with anything that sits still for you long enough."

"Oh, really? Is that fact as well known as the whole ‘Lycanthrope blood is tainted' thing?"

He made his point, that was clear. He could tell by the color flushing her cheeks. But to his surprise, she once more relented.

"Perhaps you are correct. I am afraid some of my prejudices still show themselves from time to time, despite my efforts otherwise. I apologize for the disparagement."

"I wouldn't worry about it," Elijah said quietly, feeling a bit low for taunting her. "I've said enough rude things to you recently to more than compensate."

"This too is true," she noted, her brow lifting teasingly as her eyes sparkled.

"You know," Elijah raised a hand to shake a finger at her, "you have an attitude problem."

"I certainly do. Your attitude is a huge problem for me."

"Oh, very funny," he said, sarcasm dripping from his lips.

But in spite of himself he was enjoying the harmless sparring. She had a quick and ready wit. This did not surprise him. He had seen evidence of that quite a bit already. Still, it was a pleasant attribute. He had been surrounded by strong and brilliant women all of his life. It stood to reason she would be appealing to him because of that fact alone.

"Are you hungry? I need to hunt for us if we are to eat," she said.

"You don't look like you are ready for a hunt yet," he cautioned.

"And I never will be if we start to starve to death. Don't concern yourself, warrior. I haven't had a rabbit take the breath out of me yet."

She stood up, the skirt of another one of those little dresses falling into place only after giving the Demon a glimpse of a temptingly curved bottom. Heading for the cave entrance, Siena was oblivious to the reaction it inspired in him. When he followed several minutes later, he found the empty dress pooled on the floor right near the opening. Unable to help himself, he picked the garment up and, touching it beneath his nose, he took a breath full of her scent.

It was getting harder and harder to resist these lures she so unwittingly left in his path. Whether it was moon madness or just plain old-fashioned overactive hormones, he had to get out of there. He dropped the dress back onto the ground and turned abruptly back to the little parlor.

He was still pacing in front of the fireplace when she suddenly appeared at the top of the short steps. Elijah looked up at her and froze instantaneously in place. She was flushed, breathless, and beautiful. Fresh from the hunt and, he would swear on Noah's life, she smelled a thousand times more provocative than she had when she'd left. Elijah stood still as she stepped down lightly into the room and moved past him to lay several freshly killed rabbits on the hearth. She crossed back over his path to head for the pool, intent on bathing away the remnants of blood that had stained her hands.

Siena was not blind to the warrior's rapt attention. And what she did not see outright, she certainly felt. She had an affinity with all animals, a telepathy of sorts that told her what actions and urges and feelings a specific creature was experiencing. It worked on humanoids as well when their emotions and sensations were born of their more animalistic sides.

And lust was certainly an animalistic aspect.

She washed her hands slowly, dawdling on purpose because she did not want to go back to that part of the cavern and feel the weight of those vivid green eyes and the equally clear desires that burned behind them. She was not immune to her own awareness of him and the things about him that attracted her equally honed senses. Demon or otherwise, he was a remarkable man, both physically and chemically. Siena left it to those narrow prospects. She could not bring herself to admit that there could be anything more personally appealing than just physicality. She didn't want to feel these things, but they were relentless. No matter how hard she tried, she could not push away these thoughts that would only serve to draw her to him. She hoped that by accepting at least that aspect of her attraction to him, it would remove the untouchable lure that he presented.

Siena splashed water over her face and neck, hoping the brisk cold of it would cool her speculative thoughts. She stood up and moved slowly back to the near room. To her relief, he had gone into the back bedroom. It wasn't much of a distance, but it helped. She immediately busied herself with preparing another pot of stew, using the last of her herb supply, wiping the tangy scent of them off her hands by absently brushing them over the skirt of her dress. Her thoughts wandered into the bedroom, wondering what he was doing. She reached to sense his movements in any way she could.

It was a mistake.

She sensed him all too well. She could see him vividly in her mind, seated on the bed, hands draped loosely between his knees and his head bent as he struggled with himself. She felt, in that reaching moment, everything that he felt. He, too, was hoping that putting a room between them would lessen the sharpening pain of the inexplicable attraction he found himself feeling toward her. He was humming with taut nerves and the screaming desire to fling himself into the next strong wind. He had to escape, had to fly, but he could not do so and expect to survive. Not just because of his wounds, she felt him admit to himself, but because when he thought about never seeing her again, about putting any great distance between them, it began to suffocate him.

Siena braced both hands on the countertop, her head bowing as she tried to take in a breath, as she tried to remind herself that he was the one struggling with borderline claustrophobia, not her. She also tried to tell herself that his impassioned feelings were not the reason why her heart began to pound. That the sparkling sensation that tightened her chest had nothing to do with what it meant to her to finally be wanted for herself. Not for being royalty, an heir, or a sister, but the woman as a whole. Wanted as all of these things, as well as for the huntress, the vindicator, the Queen, and the servant to the needs of her deprived body. To the warrior in the next room, she was golden and soft, shaped perfectly for his hands and his body, exuding the perfect scent to call him to her. She had hot blood, noble thoughts, and a wit like a treasure box that when sprung open he could not help but feel rich and prosperous in its presence.

Even as he thought all of this, she was aware of the height of arousal in his scent as it grew with every thought directed toward her. She felt the pounding of his heart straight through to her temples, and she gasped out a soft, astounded laugh when she felt the startling heat that pulsed hard and low in a body that seemed to be permanently solidified with need for her. Siena sucked in a deep breath, trying to sever her connection with him, but she was far too fascinated by the purity of it to truly want to let it go. She had never empathized with a being so perfectly, had never felt within her own body everything that another being felt. She shook, uncontrollably, as she ran a hand across and then down her belly, as if she would suddenly find her sex changed, allowing her to touch the masculine thrust of uncomfortably straining heat low in the vee of her hips. Tears sprang into her eyes, her pain and her struggle as unbearable as his.

Oh, but she could feel his honor. His determination never to give in to his impulses no matter how much it killed him. This was what stabbed through and through her. The realization that though she was a remarkable temptation, though she was forbidden to him by all the natural and written laws of his people, though he could condemn himself to punishments beyond her comprehension, it was none of this that stayed him.

There was only a single thing that would anchor him into his honor, and that was the understanding that he could never again do anything to hurt her. That he would rather see himself dead than see her cry or be afraid of him or anything else like that negative pain ever again.

In all her lifetime growing up as royalty, she had been valiantly protected from any number of things, but never once had she been cherished in such a manner. How could it be that so staunch an enemy could display so tender a sense of honor to someone who represented everything he had despised for three centuries?

The Queen absently hooked the stew pot onto the fireplace arm and swung it over the flames. She barely hesitated before moving closer to the bedroom entrance. She listened to the fast, hard fall of her own breathing, watched with clenched fists for a moment as it moved in and out of her chest, as she told herself to turn around and head in the other direction.

Distance. She needed to put distance between them.

But instead she took it away. She did not understand what propelled her into the room, but she went under its power until she was finally able to stop herself just as he looked up at her. She watched with a fascination she couldn't comprehend as his lax hands curled into tense fists. Her breath quickened even further when she realized it meant his control was being sorely tested just by her presence in the room. Why did that give her such a thrill? The rush of heat and excitement made her tremble with anticipation. There was power here, she realized, one she had toyed with all her life once she had discovered the flirtatiousness of her body as she had become a woman. She had learned how to use it to calm and soothe, to charm and win, to beckon and deny. It was always a rush, but here lay a path so dangerous that her entire life could explode from it. To move straight along this path lay certain disaster, certain pleasure, certain wickedness of power over the most potent man she had ever known. She stepped a single step closer and he surged to his feet and faced her, his face a storm of emotion in the flickering firelight between them.

"Siena," he warned, her name breaking over his tense vocal cords.

"Elijah."

It was the first time she had ever said his name, and it had an astounding impact on both sides. For her, it made her laugh with unexpected delight. It made no sense logically, but there it was all the same. For Elijah, the simple word beat at every last defense he had tried to erect to protect himself from her lure. His name on her lips, passed through the rich tone of her seductive voice, stabbed through his libido like a hot knife plunged into butter. He turned his head away from her, swearing under his breath as he forced himself to stand in place and not move toward her.

Siena made it a useless effort. With a speculative gleam in her golden eyes, she began to walk toward him. His head snapped back up, his fierce eyes trained completely on her, the moment she took her first step. He could hear the brush of the soles of her bare feet as she moved, stirring sand and dust against polished stone, the arch of her foot and flex of her legs so tight that her heels never quite touched the floor. Her hands were linked behind her, allowing the flirtatious little skirt of her dress to twitch and swing with the natural slink of her body.

Elijah was forced to remember how that perfect, sensual body had felt against his. Every velvet slide, every eager twist, every wave of sweet, heated musk that had risen from her skin. He was compelled to remember it even more vividly as she came up so close to him he could feel her body heat.

"Siena," he said hoarsely. "Don't. Don't touch me, or I swear … I can't … I will have to …" She looked up into his eyes, looking so speculative as she did that he imagined he could read her boldly sexual thoughts. His speech abandoned him as he looked down into those eloquent eyes of gold. Though she said nothing for a long minute, she spoke molten volumes with those hungry eyes. He watched the sweep of her delicate lashes go lower and lower as she so obviously took his measure, and so clearly did so as a woman interested in taking the measure of a man. But, as requested, she did not touch him. Her hands remained linked behind herself and she stood just close enough to not make contact with his skin.

"Will you answer a question?" she asked softly, her eyes drifting over his face, his chest, and down his clenching abdomen.

"Siena—"

"Yes or no," she interrupted firmly. When he resisted further, she lifted a hand to him, her palm hovering over his right pectoral muscle. The threat was terrible and clear. "Yes or no?"

"Yes," he relented quickly, breaking immediately under a form of threatened torture he had never once anticipated in his career as a warrior.

She lowered her hand back to her side and smiled. She enjoyed every battle she won, Elijah realized, no matter what it might cost her in the process. She was, in essence, exactly like him.

"Tell me what it feels like to have sex."

Elijah stepped back under the impact of the question, but she followed relentlessly until his broad back was touching immoveable stone that would not give him another inch of escape.

"Why would you ask me such a thing?" he demanded, trying for all he was worth not to give in to the thousands of impulses rushing through him like so many pinpricks.

"Because you know," she said simply.

"Siena, you have to leave. You don't want to know this and you don't want to be this close to me. You know that."

"Perhaps. But it has occurred to me that since you are not of my species, perhaps certain rules do not apply."

"A risk I cannot see you wanting to take. Siena, this is not you …"

"And how is it you presume to know who I am?" she said with sudden sharpness. "No one knows me. No one knows this part of me and no one ever will! Do you have any idea how much that infuriates me? I am half cat, warrior, and every natural instinct in me that belongs to the cat is one of sensual ease and bitterly acute need. Sometimes I want to scream with the intensity of the pain denying myself such pleasures causes me!" Siena sucked in shallow breaths, and her voice and eyes roared with the passion of her emotions. "It's like an animal in heat who is locked in a cage. No freedom, no release. Nothing eases it. So I ask you this question with the hope that somehow your answer with help bring some of that ease. Do you hate me so much that you will deny me even this? Even after I saved your life?"

"I do not hate you, Siena! Of all of your people, it is you who have given me the least reason to hate, no matter how hard I tried to do so! I am trying to protect—"

"I do not need your protection! I need your response." She leaned even closer to him, her face a breath away from his as her gaze bored into him, her cinnamon-sweet breath cascading over him with heat and breathless need. She shuddered and radiated with need. Deep in her eyes, he saw her pain, saw 150 years' worth of denial and sacrifice.

"Why won't you take a mate, Siena?" he asked, his tone quiet and undeniably tender. This, in spite of the irrational surge of jealousy the very suggestion burned into him like a violent brand. Every cell in his body screamed with possessive, predatory protest. "There's no call for you to hurt like this," he said hoarsely, hardly able to speak under his emotions.

"Because the last time a female ruler mated, it was to a bloodthirsty bastard who nearly destroyed her people after she died and left him to rule alone!" Siena's hand fisted as her rage toward her father flared. "Three hundred years wasted with war and the ramifications of it. Thousands of both our people slaughtered. And for what? Over what? An imagined slight? A male ego slightly bruised? No, I would rather die than subject my people to such a torment again."

"Siena, not every man is like that," Elijah argued.

Siena laughed at that notion. She reached out and touched him suddenly, both hands slipping over his lower ribs, making him draw in a sharp breath.

"Certainly you do not speak of yourself. You are the most seasoned warrior of your race, this muscle built on the battlefield."

"Because it has to be, not because I thrill in it," he said tightly, biting back the groan building under her curious touch.

"And you took no pleasure in killing my father?" she asked, the accusation whispered hotly.

"I took as much pleasure in the doing of it as you took in the occurrence."

"Oh, yes," she mused absently, her hands drifting up his sides slowly. "You did do me something of a favor, did you not? You freed me to free my people."

"I did what I had to do to stop the killing."

"So noble," she noted, her hands lifting away so just her fingertips skimmed his skin as she drew graceful traces over the definition of his chest, shaping pectorals, ribs, and the bumping ridges of his abdomen.

"Siena, stop," he commanded, grabbing her hands into his, forcing them into stillness so she could not keep him off balance with the temptation of her touch. "If you want to hate me, then do so just as things are. Don't create more reasons to despise me. We have had enough hatred between our people."

"But I don't hate you either, Elijah," she insisted, again battering him with the sound of his own name. He could not understand why that affected him as it did.

Of course, her proximity and her allure did not help much.

"Then why are you acting like this?"

She stilled as she seemed to think on it. Her tongue came out to lick slowly between her lips, that erotic speculation brightening her eyes once again.

"Because I have never in my life felt this … this desire that I feel at this moment. I want to understand why that is, Elijah." Elijah was not expecting her to lean into him so suddenly, her nose drifting across his skin as she took in a deep breath. "Why is it your scent appeals to me like no other?"

Elijah couldn't speak to answer. The beast that was his need for her was rearing up violently within him, thrilling over the way she brushed against his body as she took in his scent. Before he could counter the impulse, he lowered his head to her throat where it curved into her shoulder and returned the action without hesitation. The smell of her was divinity. Ambrosia. She was highly aroused, and it was reflected with a heavy dose of feminine musk that bled through him like an erotic poisoning. It burned through every vessel, every nerve, releasing endorphins and blood all along his body so both would settle heavily in anticipation of her next action.

He did not resist when she pushed her hands out of his hold, the movement sending his slack hands sliding down her forearms as she reached for him. At first, all she did was drift haunting touches of fingertips over his hairline, his forehead, his nose and cheeks and chin. Without truly touching him, she cradled his head between her hands, her fingertips fluttering like the wings of a butterfly near his ears as her hands shook violently with her pent-up needs. She reached up with her mouth, her lips and breath brushing over him with sensations both there and nonexistent all at once. Elijah made an anticipatory sound of agony, low in his chest, painful conflict exploding over his pupils as she looked up into them with aching clarity of purpose. He dreaded it, longed for it, both with every fiber of his soul.

"Siena, please," he begged one last futile time.

Then her mouth was against his and all protest faded to nothingness. She was perfect. So utterly perfect.

No woman can be so unbearably perfect …

Elijah thought this fiercely, even as he convinced himself otherwise just by leaning in to meet the lush caress of her mouth. He drew hard for a breath that might actually provide a measure of oxygen for a change, and it did so on the back of her scent and the cinnamon confection of her taste. Her lips were hot against his, and pliant beyond reason. Elijah encircled her head with his hands, drawing her up tighter into the kiss she had just barely begun, and showed her exactly what it was she was toying with. Part of him still hoped the intensity of it would frighten her as it had the day before.

And part of him did not.

His mouth burned fire into hers, his powerful hands pressing fingerprints into her scalp as he clutched her tightly. His hands shook as hard as hers had, and she felt the vibration from head to toe. He tried for violence, tried to frighten her with the rough, slashing intensity of his kiss, crushing her beneath his mouth, even going so far as to release a predatory growl of warning, of danger. He battered and bruised her, bit at both of her lips as he threatened to devour her like prey, tearing at her soft, vulnerable flesh with hunger and intensity.

Siena refused him any avenue of salvation, slamming her hands against his chest, thrusting her weight into a push that pressed him aggressively to the stone wall behind him, unlocking her mouth from his just long enough for her to tilt her head in the opposite direction and capture him once more. She reached boldly for the caress of his tongue, rushing into his mouth with her urgent seeking in a way that made every nerve in his body sing with pleasure. She was no virginal miss who patiently accepted only what he orchestrated. She would conduct as much as he would, and the idea of it floored him. With that change of aggression and the honesty of reaction it forced from him, she released a sound of delight and encouragement.

Discouragement fell to the wayside as he burned with the press of her body and the appetite of her mouth. She wriggled her body into his, her soft curves spreading over the hard planes of his muscles. She fit him perfectly, so tall and so elegantly shaped. He did not dwarf her, and he found that enticing beyond reason. His hands drifted to her neck and throat, slipping under her heavy hair to encircle the warmth of it. Even the collar she wore was warmed by her body heat. Before he realized he was even attempting to do so, he had unlatched the intricate collar and it slid down the front of her body.

Siena jerked back suddenly in shock as she felt the collar abandon her throat in order to be replaced by his hands. She grabbed up the collar before it could slide down her chest and then looked from him to it in disbelief.

"That's not possible," she whispered, shivering as he once more closed the distance between them to nuzzle her bare neck with his mouth, his cradling hands holding her to him though she was trying to keep a specific balance to her body. She moaned at the astounding sensitivity of the area. It had not been exposed to the touch of anything but gold and moonstones for her entire lifetime.

"Put it aside," he urged her, his tongue tracing her carotid artery up the entire length of her neck in a way that turned her legs to jelly. She gasped with pleasure, her eyes closing as he repeated the circuit in the opposite direction, adding the teasing scrape of his teeth until she was trembling with chills. Siena felt as though her entire body was moving out of her control, just as her world careened off its axis.

"Elijah, the collar …" she tried to explain, her words little more than soft pants of sound.

"Put it aside," he commanded again, enunciating each word firmly.

Siena let it fall from suddenly nerveless fingers and tilted her head so he had increased access to her neck and throat. He made a sound of male approval that sang through her with an operatic note of delight. He was encircling her with the steel bands of his arms a moment later, lifting her up to the tips of her toes. He seized her mouth and kissed her into a state of total breathlessness and numbness of thought. She felt light and utterly feminine. He could make her forget her own strength so easily with his large, powerful hands and demanding masculine body.

Elijah lifted her off the floor, swinging her easily around until her feet touched the bed. She laughed when she found herself standing on it, looking down into his eyes. Her laughter faded the moment she realized the access their new positions allowed him to her breasts. His lips twisted into a devilish smile as he lifted his knuckles and skimmed over first one nipple, then the other, teasing until she could no longer bear the sensitivity. She was fascinated by the instant response of her body, the reactive thrust seeming erotic even to her as she watched him taunt her with his touch. She could barely catch a full breath as he leaned into her, nuzzling her through the fabric of her dress. The silky material seemed like nothing to him as he drew one of the points into his mouth, sucking until she thought she was going to collapse from the intense pleasure. He lifted his head away only long enough to hook the strap of the dress with his pinkie, peeling down the dampened silk until it was no longer a barrier to his mouth.

Siena cried out soulfully as his mouth, so full of wet fire, surrounded her once more, drawing her deep onto his tongue and then releasing her to pull his teeth across her teasingly. This time her knees did buckle, but he held her in place as if she weighed no more than her dress.

Elijah reveled in the taste of her, the feminine fullness of her breasts, the sensitivity of the gold-and-rose point of her nipple as he flicked his tongue over it until she made another of those sexy little whimpers of unmistakable pleasure. He sucked her deeply into his mouth when she did, and she jerked bodily against him. He felt her hands clutching at his head and shoulders, the mindless grasp of a woman lost in her bliss, and it rushed through him in ripples of tightening need.

As he tormented her with sensation, she slid against his body, feeling every contour of the sinew that was roped like bundles of steel cords over his frame. His feet were braced apart, his entire form as rock hard and rigidly set as a great stone statue. When she grasped his arms with clutching fingers, they hardly made an impression in his skin. He reeked of passion like he reeked of power, unapologetically and dominantly. This was not a man who liked to second-guess himself. He preferred to drill himself with skill and knowledge so that when the moment came, he would react with instantaneous decisiveness. That was what he had done at the mineral pool. He had seen, wanted, and acted. Ever since then he had forced himself to rethink what had come so naturally to him in that chain of minutes.

So now he was back in his element, one hundred percent, and thrusting himself fully into what had originally felt so right. He devoured her with a voracious and passionate mouth, and all the while he was touching her long body with bold, searching strokes of his hands. He was careening down the slope of her back and backside one minute, and then dipping under the hem of the dress to splay searching fingers over the back of her thigh. He stroked upward over her satiny skin, her bottom as bare as ever beneath the dress, her flesh fitting his palm as it moved over her to the arch of her lower back, around to her belly and along her breastbone.

There was so much sensation inundating her from so many places at once that she was light-headed with her pleasure and arousal. She was searching his body with her hands, the tendrils of her hair eagerly joining the exploration. She surrounded her senses with the feel of him, burying her face in his blond curls. Muscles rippled beneath her hands, twitched as she glided over them with her sensual, searching touch.

His burning mouth came back to hers as her stimulating touch sent his body temperature skyrocketing. He released her in increments so that she slid down his body and onto the bed. He followed every inch of the way, his mouth clinging to hers as he drank deeply of that hot cinnamon flavor so unique to her. His hands braced his weight above her as he moved over her body. When she felt him settling against her, she purred with encouragement and delight. The sound struck him exactly as it had before, only this time he was going to act freely on those feelings.

Elijah instantly swept his hands under her dress, stripping it from her in a single motion that included the careless toss into the room beyond. The torrid speed of the exposure caused Siena to arch against him, bringing her hot skin in contact with his with unbelievable sensuality.

Oh, how he remembered the burning feel of her skin, how he had craved little else but a repeat of the sensation since it had originally occurred. Even then, she had been chilled by the lake water, so it paled in comparison to now. She was a sheet of seductive satin beneath him, enveloping him in the rare purity of suppleness and richness that only came from so perfect a source. Her legs slid out from beneath him until her thighs framed his hips wantonly, settling him deeper into the feel of her, fitting them together like lock and key. Elijah gripped at the bedding as he felt himself settle into that heated cradle of her hips, only his clothing providing an obstacle between them, an obstacle that felt like nothing, like so much wind. His fingers gripped with such pleasurable agony that they punctured the ticking of the mattress, even without a reflexive growth of sharp claws. Those lengthened into existence a heartbeat later, when she ran eager hands down the slope of his spine and over the hard muscles of his backside, clutching him to her so she could shift her hips and rub her heat against the hard length of his sex.

"Siena!" Her name was a vicious growl in his throat, but she felt the shaking of his body as he looked for restraint and control, as he fought his vulnerability to her methods of encouraging his excitement.

In return, she moved her mouth to his ear, her lips rubbing breathily over it until he shuddered, and then slowly, softly, she drew out his name. A guttural gasp hitched into the single word as she felt him moving intimately against her.

"Kitten," he groaned from the bottom of his tormented soul, "Sweet Destiny, kitten, you feel like paradise. My paradise ."

Siena responded with a smile against his neck as her hands began searching him with flawless intimacy. She stroked strong, graceful fingers back up to his shoulders in a caress sealed tightly to his damp skin. She moved around to his chest, down his sides once more, where she paused to drink in the feel of his rapid breathing. Her fingers slid down his flank and then beneath the waistband of his pants. She felt the defined muscles of his backside tighten under her enticing touch, but she was not satisfied with only that reaction. She drew her legs up just a little farther, allowing her hands the freedom to slip around his hips and into the heat and hardness resting so close to her.

Elijah had been stroking his tongue against the vital beating of her pulse in her neck when her fingertips brushed over that sensitive part of his body. He lifted away from his tasting of her, his back arching reflexively as he swore vehemently under his breath. Siena was not disturbed in any way by this. She had never touched a man in this fashion before and she was not about to relinquish the experience too soon. She wrapped silky fingers around him, feeling with fascination as he pulsed against her palm. He shuddered from head to toe as she stroked the length of him slowly, learning his shape, his weight, and especially his sensitivity. She had never imagined that flesh could become so incredibly hard. There was heat so intense that it nearly burned the pads of her gliding fingers. Most importantly, every touch, light or firm, had him practically contorting with a pleasure that seemed to border very close to pain. Again she came to understand a single truth. Power. The power to drive him mad with just the skill and intentions of her hands.

The rush of arousal that followed that understanding was hers, not his. Siena panted hard with it as it flooded her with molten gold, a precious liquid burning through her and then spilling slickly out of the very core of her body. She understood, all of a sudden, that there was only one way to her own pleasure, and that was to dive into his. It was one of those revelations that would change everything, even though it seemed so small a detail. She knew it. She knew it from the bottom of her soul. When her fingertips drifted over the wet tip of his arousal, one after another, coasting silkily through moisture and over highly sensitive skin, she learned a whole new description for stimulation.

Elijah exhaled a low, rough sound of ecstasy, his jaw clenching as he blindly thrust his hips toward her wicked little hands. She got the message, his reaction prompting her to repeat the stroke, only this time more slowly. Elijah couldn't think straight from that moment on. Not that he had been engaged in much thought beforehand that didn't center around the luscious feel of her body and skin sliding against him. Siena was relentless in her curiosity of his body and he was utterly mindless under her increasingly bold caresses. Before he knew it, he was on his back and she was stripping him quickly.

Then she slid up his body and sought his mouth. She kissed him and caressed him, trying to outdo herself first with one, then the other. She reveled in the abandon of his reactions, of the sounds that escaped him. She could make every rigid muscle twitch and flex, using the hot velvet touch of her lips and tongue to do so. His hands dove desperately into her hair, crushing the sensitive strands beneath fisted fingers.

Siena had never thought such a stranglehold could actually feel so incredibly good. It was a part of her body as sensitive as any other, and his touch was like wild magic as he grasped her in passion. It was an instantaneous erogenous zone, and she felt him suddenly comprehending that as he began to drag his fingers through the body-length coils.

"Oh!" she cried throatily, her body rising up over his and arching like a sleek python. She was straddling his stomach, her hands braced on his chest, her head thrown back as his calloused fingertips streamed through her grasping, clinging hair.

Elijah freed himself from the golden ivy curling around her body, a smile turning up one corner of his lips. Her position over his body left her vulnerable to an entirely different assault of sensation. His hands dragged rough touches down the center of her torso, over breasts and ribs and belly and hips. Then he went seeking for the heat and the moisture that had called to him relentlessly. His fingers slipped through a tangle of golden curls and touched the flesh beyond. She was slick and swollen with the arousal her manipulations of his pleasure had caused to her own body. Siena squeaked with a thousand impulses, thoughts and feelings crowding for expression, and Elijah plunged a free hand into her hair and dragged her down to his kiss. She gasped into his mouth when the invasion of his touch registered on her nerve endings with violent eroticism. He found the sensitive nub that would respond the most to his stroking fingertips and circled it with a flirting, skilled touch.

She had never suspected how breathless such a seemingly simple caress could leave her. He was touching her in earnest now, forcing her to go weak and wild with the strange, building sensation that flowed outward from that one small spot. She couldn't concentrate on what she was doing anymore, so her hands fell away from his body.

Elijah rolled her over onto her back, taking back control as she moaned with incredible intensity into his hungry mouth. She was a factory of brash sounds of pleasure from that moment on, the auditory stimulus sending urgent need clawing through Elijah's soul. He left her mouth quickly, sending uncaught cries into the room by doing so. But he was busy learning the taste of her throat, her collarbone, and breasts once more. He felt her shuddering, closing in on the release she wanted, needed so desperately.

His fingers stilled against her, making her sob a sound of protest.

"Elijah, please," she cried, her head turning side to side as her mind and body sought for what was missing.

He did not give in to her pleas immediately. He had something better planned. Her exotic scent had taunted him long enough. This was his one and only thought as he reached to replace the touch of his fingers with the caress of his mouth.

Siena's hips surged upward and she cried out so loudly that the cavern echoed with the sound. Elijah caught her bucking hips in eager hands and held her to his tasting tongue. She was pure aphrodisiac. Flavor and scent combined together with the perfection of strawberries and cream. She was shaking so hard in his hold as her pleasure was coiled up tighter and tighter inside her that he could predict the power of her coming release by it.

Siena suddenly was surging up into an oblivion beyond mere bliss. Her body locked even as it released. She heard herself screaming wildly, but hardly recognized herself in the unfettered sound. Pulsations of ultimate pleasure rode through her like shock waves, and still his tongue stroked over her, pushing her further and further into the extraordinary abyss of relief and delight.

She had barely settled back into the mattress before he was sliding up her body and sharing the confection of her sweetness with her in the form of a soul-searing kiss. He was so hard and so heavy with need for her that he was slightly mad. Her orgasm had pushed him to his limits, and he needed to be inside her with a desperation he had never known himself capable of. Her thighs fell open for him easily as he settled between them, and he rested against her saturated flesh with a hot, insidious slide.

Her eyes flew open in shock at how astoundingly stimulating the sensation was. He looked down into those golden pools, looking deep into her soul, past the haze of desire and the endless need to be who she was in this moment.

"Tell me what you choose," he said hotly against her swollen lips. "I have to hear you—" He broke off when she shifted her hips, bringing him right to the threshold that he so badly needed to cross. She swallowed his groan greedily, her mouth ravaging his with unparalleled intensity.

Elijah reached between them for her throat, encircling it to keep her from following after him when he broke away from her kiss. She was heaving for breath, her eyes wide and demanding that he let go. Of her. Of his doubts. Of everything.

"Siena," he gasped as she purposely slid against him once more. "I need to hear it."

"Of course," she whispered seductively, catching him once more in the perfectly poised spot where a single forward thrust would bury him inside her. "Elijah, I want this," she breathed.

"Do you accept me?" Elijah demanded of her, clutching her so hard it was a wonder she did not break. "Do you choose me ?"

"Yes," she gasped, her body groaning for the completion he kept from her. "I accept you. I want you. You, Elijah …"

Elijah released his restraint with a savage growl of intent. He surged forward, pushing into her body with a single, rending thrust Siena cried out, but not with any kind of pain. He could feel that with every fiber of his being. Her maidenhead gave way with ease, letting him sink deeply into hot, welcoming heaven.

Heat, tightness, slick surrounding honey. She was a burning sheath of immeasurable bliss, and he was deeply surrounded by her at last. In this she was beyond perfect. She fit him as if she had been hand-fashioned for him. Elijah was blind with the beauty and wonder of it. She was so tight around him it felt as if it should be impossible to move, so for the longest minute he did not. Siena was clinging to him, her hands on his shoulders, her body permanently arched into his, it seemed. She gasped and gasped, her eyes wide as she stared up at him with shock and amazement. As he remained deeply embedded in her, he was deeply embedding the memory of the moment into his brain. He would never forget this, and he would make sure she never did either.

But she was silky and slick and incredibly tempting, so he could only bear it for a few more heartbeats. He needed more of her, needed to give her himself. He began to withdraw and she dug her nails into his shoulders.

"Elijah!" she gasped helplessly, her golden eyes wild with the confusion of knowing something instinctively, yet not fully understanding the method to his seeming madness.

"Oh," he teased softly, "I am not going anywhere."

He stroked within her deeply, making her groan until the lusty sound was echoing off the surfaces around them. He loved that sound, loved her raw passion. The thrill of it pulsed through him, hardening him even more until he felt so incredibly thick within her quivering body. He knew she felt the new surge of heat because she purred with a deep, deep rumbling vibration. The sound urged him on, even though he needed no encouragement. It took only a moment for him to find the perfect pace for them both. She met his thrusting hips with natural ease after one awkward second. He guided her with a hand on her slender hip, the other hand trapped in the tangled clutches of her hair. He felt her nails bite into his back and he surged forward with the backlash of the resulting pleasure.

"Siena," he groaned, "kitten, you feel so damn perfect."

"Elijah …"

That was all she said. His name. Over and over, with increasing urgency, until she was sobbing it to him like a chant. Elijah could do nothing but bury his face in the curve of her neck and send them both spiraling toward an outrageous release. It was going to be torrid and fast, violent and ecstatic, and he just gave himself over to it. His name bursting from her throat was the most erotic thing he'd ever experienced in his long lifetime. He plunged into the sweet silk of her body again and again, until he felt he would shatter from the pleasure of it. Siena felt the world go up in heat and flames, her body burning and burning until it needed to explode. She was already crying out with her release when he finally broke into his own, adding fuel to an already raging fire. He crushed her into his embrace as he pulsed into her with violent surges of relentless climax.

It was all he could manage, to keep himself from crushing her with the weak collapse of his drained body. He scooped her up to his chest and rolled with her so that she was sprawled over him instead. He felt the separation of their bodies and it left him feeling powerfully bereft. He held her to him with a heavy arm, his fingers wrapping possessively around her shoulder.

"Thank you," she murmured a few minutes after their breathing had normalized.

"For what?" He laughed, tilting his chin to his chest so he could see her face as he pushed back the half ton of hair that obscured it.

"For answering my question."

He recalled the question and turned his gaze up to the ceiling formations.

"I hope it was a good answer," he said softly, not wanting to feel the trepidation that was trying to creep over him.

"Very adequate," she said.

"Adequate?" The term nipped at his ego, making him pull away from any looming worries immediately. "Would you care to rephrase that?"

"Must I?" she asked turning her face toward him as she lifted her head.

Elijah saw the humor glinting in the troublemaker's eyes and thoughts. He gave her a poisonous look and she started to laugh. Siena was not much of a giggler, he noted with pleasure. She had a bold, sexy laugh that dared you to gainsay her humor. It had the knack of ferreting out his libido with unerring ease.

The warrior rolled her off his body so abruptly that she laughed even harder. When he trapped her on her belly beneath him, his hands pinning hers to the bed, she became nearly hysterical.

"Have I happened to mention how that sexy laugh you have tends to affect me?" he asked silkily, showing her exactly what he meant with a strategic shift of his hips.

Siena stopped laughing, raising her head to try and see over her shoulder. Realizing it was a useless effort, she settled her cheek onto the sheet and smiled.

"You actually have not mentioned anything of the kind," she informed him.

"Then allow me to explain," he murmured.

Elijah made love to Siena relentlessly. When she complained about the abuse to his injuries, he lectured her on the healing qualities of her delectable body. The lecture was long and thorough, spoken across her skin and driven home inside her body.

After that, she never complained again.

At least not about that. She did find she liked his lectures, though, and so found other topics they could discuss in depth. Siena had never come close to suspecting what this kind of intimacy would feel like. She had claimed time and again that she wanted no part of it and would not miss it in the least. She had maintained there was no possible avenue for enrichment in such things. She had thought that her life could never be better than it had been before walking into this cavern.

How foolish and wrong she had been. The arrogance of ignorance! She was Queen of her species, but she had not truly begun to know the world until she had ascended, her sheltered, limited life depriving her of so much practical information. This thing, what she had chosen to allow here with the Demon warrior, would change that forever.

Change her forever.

Other than that thought, she pushed all other realities between them aside. Whatever tomorrow brought, she desperately wanted today to go on as long as it could It wasn't just the physical completion that lured her into feeling this way, she admitted to herself. Elijah was a natural wit, making her laugh in a carefree manner she had known so rarely while growing up the offspring of a royal warlord. There was something about him, about his confidence and the surprising intelligence behind all that brawn and battle-hardness. She had never suspected him of being multidimensional in this way. It had so surprised her, when they had first met, his loyalties and obvious sensitivities when it came to the needs of those he loved.

In her childhood home, warriors did not love. Attachments were weaknesses. How could such a man as Elijah have stood toe to toe with the warlord who had reigned before her and come out the victor when he so clearly was susceptible to all the things her father had claimed were drawbacks to a warrior?

Siena knew the answer to that already. She had discovered it on her own as she had become older and wiser. Ironically, her father's coldness and lack of attentiveness had propelled her into becoming the very opposite of what he was. The only reason she was such a powerful fighter in her own right was because it was the only skill he had demanded of her and had supervised himself. She had dared not fail to impress him, and if she satisfied him he would be comfortable leaving her to reign in his stead as he warred.

So she knew what it meant to blend these seemingly incongruous parts of oneself. He was as comfortable with himself as she was, just as arrogant, just as wise when it came to what he should or should not let others see. But they had both lowered their formidable defenses in order to allow for this union of the moment. It was so out of character, so outrageously dangerous, and so incomprehensible in origin.

It was so magnificent and so very revealing.

Siena had never doubted her femininity or her womanhood, always a clear product of her confidence, but her sexuality had been little more than a tool for intrigue and manipulation. Otherwise, it was to be denied. Here, closed off from the world, centering herself on his body and in his hands, she now understood so much more than she had ever suspected.

She now understood what that slink of her spine was made for, what the lowering of lashes over smoky eyes could truly do, and what power there was in the tiniest, softest little sounds her throat could make. She began to truly understand what every shrug, every shift, and each soft, curvaceous slide could truly earn her in return.

She looked down on Elijah through her lashes, her amber eyes smoldering with the reflection of all her need, of all she was wanting and determined to get from him in that moment. She was straddling his hips, knowing that to him, she looked bold and beautiful as she entrapped him within her determined body. He actually had his hands folded beneath his head as if they were having a discussion about the weather, pretending the way she was moving over his rigid body was having little effect, in an attempt to taunt her.

Siena was not fooled. She felt his burning emerald eyes on the sway of her breasts as she moved. She felt the pulse and growth of the hard shaft inside her body every time she closed her muscles around him like a vise. She knew that his jaw ticked at its hinge because his teeth were clenched with the pleasure she made him feel. She had powerful legs, unparalleled flexibility, and she was stubborn as hell. He would lose this contest of wills, though it would make winners of them both in the end.

She braced her hands on the bed beside his shoulders, leaning over him so that her nipples brushed his chest with every exhibition of her spine's reptilian ability. She dipped forward against him, her breasts brushing his lips and nose, allowing for both temptation of taste and the musky scent of her perspiration-coated skin. She knew he was crazy about how sweet and sexy her skin smelled. Crazier still for the taste of her.

Before long his withheld hands were on her body, molding and cupping the full flesh of her breasts, drawing her toward his mouth until she was just as tortured as he was by her seductive libido. He was groaning under the relentless undulation of her hips, yet unable to drown out the sexy grunts and gasps she made as she pleasured herself with his body. He did not touch or guide the work of her pelvis. She had proved a quick study, and an uninhibited one. She had no qualms about finding her way over him herself. She also had very little mercy when she was ready to drag him into her world of climax. She spoke to him, low, soft, and sexy, verbally contemplating how she could make him lose control. Elijah could have told her that control had gone out of the window ages ago, but it would have spoiled her wicked little manipulations, and he would be the last to rain on her parade.

She drove him nearly insane, though. She was so hot, and she was learning how best to burn him very quickly. Her fingertips were always searching his body, looking for those places that were so erotically sensitive to her touch. When that did not work, or work fast enough for her liking, she employed the use of a sizzling tongue. She drew wet maps over his chest, taking paths over both nipples in order to avoid his bandage of her hair, and traveled to his neck and throat. She slid up over his jaw until she was devouring his mouth.

Hips, hands, and lips combined in a blissful barrage of sensation. She felt his building torment, and it echoed back to her. Still she gasped hot whispers of need and feeling into his mouth. The detailed accounting of how she felt as she rode him so relentlessly blinded her with her own pleasure. Siena cried out into his mouth, lifting away a second afterward and arching back, flinging her hair behind her until it fell heavily over his thighs. Now he grasped her hips, holding her to the rhythm as she convulsed violently around him. He pushed her and pushed her until she was screaming and he was obliterated by the vise of hot, velveteen muscles. He joined her release with a roar of agonizing gratification.

When she finally fell across his chest, trying desperately to catch her breath and bask in the afterglow of her amazing level of pleasure, Elijah became aware of the fact that he was in a great deal of trouble. He knew she intended to part ways with him after they left this place. She planned on defying this condition to her crown that she deemed a curse, this sentence that declared she take only a single mate in her lifetime who would reign as her equal on a throne she had suffered and struggled long for. She was giving everything to the now because she refused to devote anything to the future.

But in spite of the fact that he was repeatedly breaking about a thousand natural laws himself, Elijah felt a desperate sensation in his gut that warned him it would not be so easy to extricate himself from her golden embrace. He felt entangled with her in a way that was far more intricate than the grasping tendrils of her determined hair. He also knew that if he made the slightest suggestion about that, she would shut down and all of this would come to a crashing end.

He pushed back the dark cloud that came with his thoughts for just a little while longer. With a single movement he hauled them both off the bed. She complained and laughed all at once, but obediently circled his neck with her arms and his hips with her legs. He walked them to the mineral pool and tried to coax, and then pry, her off him.

"No, it's cold," she argued.

Elijah just grinned and lofted their weight sideways off the edge. Siena was screaming as they hit the frigid water on their sides. She pushed away from him, leaping up with the shock of the water. When he surfaced laughing, she gave him a very hard shove that sent him back under.

"Damn it!" she hissed, rushing through the hip-deep pool as fast as she could to reach the side. But of course he encircled her with a single arm and dragged her back into his body before she could haul herself out.

"What's the matter, kitten? Don't like water?"

"That was low, even for you, warrior," she said sharply.

Her verbal daggers fell on deaf ears. He was nipping at the sensitive side of her neck in the way he had come to learn melted her completely. Before she knew it, her hands were deep in his hair and their mouths were deeply enmeshed.

It took them almost a full minute to hear the very distinct sound of a throat clearing.

Siena whirled around suddenly, almost knocking Elijah over. To her shock and utter despair, her sister stood in the cave entrance, leaning her back casually against it and raising a very curious eyebrow at the couple in the pool. She sensed Elijah's impulse to lay hands of comfort on her waist, and she let him steady her as the entire world began to spin.

"Your Highnesses," Syreena greeted them politely.