“Higher. Just a little more,” he coaxed quietly until her hands were several inches above her shoulder line. Ashla felt strangely exposed by the position, which accounted for the way she jolted under his touch when his hand slid across her bare belly. She felt surrounded by him somehow, certainly under his power, a point proven when he slid his leg between hers from behind her, firmly nudging her feet a distinct distance apart.

Then she felt his fingers slipping around the waistband of her skirt, tracing the line between nudity and clothing very thoughtfully for a moment.

“Every woman,” he said in low explanation, “is unique. Each is a complex lock that takes time and knowledge to open. A woman like you, however, is an even deeper puzzle. I would not dare to claim I fully understand you. I couldn’t be so arrogant. But I think I have learned just enough to make a start.”

“A s-start?”

“A very small start,” he agreed.

Trace’s fingers slid open the buttons down the back of her skirt one at a time, his touch reaching to stroke the slowly exposed curve of her lower back as he went. Soon the fabric simply slipped away, landing with a flutter around her calves. She tried to lean forward and press her hot face to the wall, but he stayed her with a firm hand, keeping her just as he had arranged her to be.

“Answer a question for me,” he said as those leisurely, thorough fingertips of his began to sketch across the top of her panties. “When did you first realize you were inclined toward submission?”

Ashla jolted as if he had given her a good smack on the bottom. She jerked around to face him, but only made it halfway before his masterful hands caught her and sent her shooting back into the stance he had demanded of her. She drew hard for breath, both frustrated and aroused, confused and excited. She didn’t know what to feel from one moment to the next! She couldn’t even think to formulate the words she knew she should be flinging at him in protest.

“I take it the answer to that would be ‘five seconds ago,’” he noted a bit wryly. He sighed, the exhalation skittering down her na**d back in a warm wash.

“But I’m not!” she blurted out. “My God, that’s the last thing I would ever—!”

He cut her off with a low chuckle, the teasing tips of his fingers sliding into the secret warmth hiding beneath the last small scrap of cotton she wore.

“Really? Are you sure?”

Ashla choked on her response when his smooth caress glided straight through her damp pubic hair and settled in to stroke her in long, wet rubs along the length of her labia.

Trace forced himself to focus on his point, making a mighty effort to control the response of his body and psyche as he felt how slick and hot she was with her unrealized depth of excitement. She was all but na**d as she pressed away from the wall and into the length of his rigid body. He had broken such an incredible sweat as he attempted to master himself that his clothing was sticking to his skin almost as thoroughly as she was. He sent his free hand up to seal around her slim throat, tipping her head back so he could see the mind-numbing start to her journey of passion in her eyes.

He was painfully short of time and luck, but he couldn’t bring himself to spear her fragile ego with the coldness his departure would cause. His chest hurt with the raging of his breath and blood, but he couldn’t stop now.

I have suffered deeper tortures, he thought fiercely to himself, and survived. I can do this for her. I can be what she needs so desperately.

He repeated this litany to himself like a desperate sort of mantra. It was about Ashla. It was all about Ashla. He didn’t dare take a moment of purposeful pleasure for himself without risking his state of euphoria overtaking him and destroying everything he hoped to achieve.

“Every command I give you, you obey,” he said. “What’s more, I can feel your skin turn hot as you do. I hear your breath and heart as they race. You tell yourself it is fear that compels you, but I see much more to it than that. I feel much more to it than that.” He emphasized his point with the seeking swirl of his finger, rimming the entrance to her va**na until she drenched his fingers with a fresh, scorching flood of honey. “You were never frigid,” he gasped between his laboring breaths. “No one who responds like this can be labeled so coldly when she is the truth of heat personified.”

Trace closed his eyes as her gaze began to cloud with bald response and snowballing surrender. He throbbed with painful need, unable to resist the thrust of his h*ps against her bottom as he sought for her cl*t with his thumb and burrowed his first finger inside her. Ashla sucked in a long breath, her tight flesh tensing around the digit that slid deeper and deeper. It took no stretch of his imagination to envision that sensation all around his straining cock.

He cursed in Shadese, a low and dangerous word of warning she didn’t comprehend. But even if he had spoken in English, she was far beyond comprehension. Ashla was wriggling in counterpoint to his strokes and circles that tempted her toward a promise of rushing satisfaction. Fear and doubt abruptly hurried through her; it made her awkward and prompted her to struggle out of cadence with what she truly wanted. Unable to predict how much longer he could hold himself in check, Trace was like a force of fury as he kicked his foot against the inside of hers, forcing her legs wider apart even as he ground against her from behind her and within her.

“Don’t!” he barked roughly, the command all but a snarl. “Don’t doubt. Don’t think! Just obey me, jei li. Obey my touch. Obey the pleasure I can give you. Accede to your own passions. Searing Light! Blessed Dark! You are so hot it’s driving me mad!”

Ashla couldn’t grasp the way his thoughts were wildly vacillating. She didn’t understand why he didn’t stop teasing her and just bury himself in her. It was so obvious by the savage way he burrowed his erection against her that he needed to do just that. She craved what she felt of him, the hardness and the primal urge of thrust that pounded through him. Her nerves were burning at their ends in a blaze of little bonfires, her body weakening and wetting his probing touch until he slid in and out of her with slick successive thrusts of one and then two fingers.

She felt her soul coiling inside her. Her pulse roared as pleasure spilled through her in powerful washing tides. She cried out, fearful and thrilled and swept away in the climbing rush. Her hands shot away from the wall, one grasping his hair at the back of his head, the other seizing his belt near his katana.

“Trace!” she gasped wildly.

“I’m here,” he reassured her. “Come, jei li. Yes. Aiya, that’s it. Please,” he begged hoarsely then.

Ashla felt everything within herself whip inside out in a sudden surge of power and release, forcing a wailing scream from her lips as she seized with overriding pleasure. Her entire brain exploded into short circuits that snapped and crackled through her in violent rushes. Her fists gripped Trace and held him captive against her as her body jerked and went into pleasured spasms.

Trace opened his eyes and watched her flesh and muscle quiver. He stared as the diamond-hard tips of her br**sts shimmied with every shudder roiling up through her. Her swollen clitoris pulsed under his thumb and her walls hugged tight around his embedded fingers.

He had never needed to come so badly, not in all of his long life, as he needed it then. As she rode her orgasm to its fullest crest, she writhed like pure sexuality against him. His knees finally buckled and he brought them both down to the floor. Trace groaned in agony as the movement tightened the denim he wore against him. Then, unable to bear it an instant longer, he shoved himself back away from her, away from the lure and the raw temptation of her. He turned his back on the pink flush covering every inch of her sweet skin and the sensual sweat dampening the fair waves of her hair.

But how could he shut her out when he could hear her panting in the wake of pleasure, when he could smell the aroma of her sex…

He raised his wet hand up, the smell pervading and delicious as he couldn’t resist slowly painting her across his lips. All it took then was the flick of his tongue, and she was inside him. She was inside his memory and senses, inside the insanity of his thoughts and the bright screaming light of craving that seared him with demand.

Ashla was shaking with disbelief and a dozen other causes as she struggled to get her body to work again. Without Trace’s supporting muscle, she had become little more than soggy jelly. She was limp, yet vibrating powerfully with aftershocks. She struggled to see where Trace had taken himself to. She didn’t need to look far. He was over her again in an instant, pushing her down onto her back in the suite’s thick carpeting. He wedged himself between her thighs even as he tore at the front of his jeans. He stripped his belt free and sent the katana flying back into the oblivion behind himself.

“Can’t stop,” he choked out, his black eyes filled with a distress she didn’t understand. “You are too perfect. So ready. Primed for the pumping.”

He came free of his clothing with a primal cry of triumph, his distended phallus falling heavily against her lower belly, the color of it seemingly angry in contrast to her pale skin.

“You don’t need finesse any longer, do you?” he wanted to know as he reached between them to snatch off her panties in two quick tugs. “You’ll forgive me. You’ll forgive me…” The last ended on a wild sound of pleasure as he moved them into a position that opened her bared sex into a perfect cradle to catch his cock. Dry, hot, and hard fell into a wet and welcoming flower of flesh. He choked on his own breath as he slid into a beautiful burning bath, drenching himself from root to tip without even thrusting inside her.

But that had to happen. Now. That very same instant. He barely even felt her hands clutching at his shoulders. He heard her gasp when he notched the pulsating head of his c*ck against the opening rim of her sheath. If she thought he would take his time and savor the sensation as she wanted to, she was wrong. He plunged forward deep and hard, forcing a strangled sound to escape her.

Trace shoved into her harder, sinking deeper, suffocating himself tightly inside her. Then it was a matter of wild, off-cadence thrusts that had no rhyme or rhythm to them, except that he was following one craving rush to the next, to the next, to the next. She was so tight that he could barely move, but so wet he couldn’t be kept still. He reached up to trap her head between his hands, staring down into her eyes as his impacts shuddered through her harder and harder.

“I need to come inside you!” he gasped stupidly, as if she hadn’t already figured out his desperation for what it was. “I need to…I need to…Ashla!”

I’m sorry! he wanted to scream at her. I didn’t want to be like this! This isn’t me! This animal isn’t me!

“Trace.”

So soft, so sympathetic to match the comfort in her eyes as she once again lifted fingers to his mouth in an effort to soothe away his self-recriminations and guilt. Her compassion undid him, the last vestiges of civility evaporating as she silently gave him permission to be whatever he needed to be in that moment; man or beast or both.

He crashed forward into her, holding himself deep and deep, feeling her sex twitching around him. He needed to finish this. He needed to be done! The agony of his want was unbearable, spearing right through the heart of his c*ck and clutching at his tension-hard balls.

“Why can’t I…?” he almost sobbed as he resumed his frantic rhythm into her. It made no sense! He had almost cl**axed just watching her reach orgasm, but now that he was inside her at last, he felt trapped within himself.

He heard her start to make little mewls of sound, her pleasure slowly resurfacing. Her br**sts bounced hard with each impact of their bodies until the taunt of her nipple was too much to ignore. Next thing he had her between his teeth, and then sucked deep into his mouth. She cried out, tensing everywhere around him as her back arched.

It was enough, and he knew it instantly. He knew it by the savageness of the pain that broiled through him and the relief of oncoming release.

“Aiya! Oh, baby, yes!” he shouted with exultation just before he burst hard enough to shatter. He continued to bellow triumph in Shadese as he poured himself into her.

By the time his body resigned its efforts, he couldn’t even breathe, never mind support his own weight. He collapsed onto her with no regard for her slight frame. In fact, as he swam in the euphoria of his wild orgasm, he took nothing into regard at all.

Chapter 9

“This is ridiculous,” Guin snapped sharply as he paced the length and breadth of the room. “It’s been five days! You know Trace as well as I do, and he would never keep us waiting if he could help it.”

Rika tracked the agitated movements of the bodyguard, keeping note of his location at all times out of sheer habit, but opted to allow Malaya to handle Guin’s frustration and fury. It was usually the wisest move, considering that Malaya was the only one who seemed to have impact on Guin when he got in these moods. She liked to call them “caged tiger with a toothache” moods. The imagery was just as suitable now as ever.

The Chancellor glanced up, sighing before turning to tame her tiger.

“What would you have us do, Ajai? Trace may not take advantage of it often, but he is a grown male of independence. Yes, it is rude to keep us waiting without word, but he wouldn’t be the first to do so.”

“It would be the first time for Trace to do so,” Guin growled impatiently. “Besides, I have another meaning. If he is injured in ’scape, or if he has run afoul of another traitor like Baylor, we owe it to him to discover what has become of him! Five days, K’yatsume,” he reminded her with emphasis. “Even at its worst or best discrepancy, if he has been in Shadowscape all of this time he has certainly hit the two-day mark by now.”