Their most immediate task would be a tour of all the different Nightwalker courts so that Valera could prove what she was to them. They had to know there were good Witches out there. They had to learn how to save those who didn’t know the right way to use magic, those who, like her, had accidentally gotten caught up in necromancy.

She smiled as Guin sat up and wrapped up the beautiful queen of the Shadowdwellers with enormous arms, dragging her into his lap and kissing her soundly. Val sighed. The queen even cried prettily, it seemed. Had it been her, she would have been covered in snot and who knew what else.

Sagan was monitoring her thoughts, so he chuckled when that one slipped through her. She grinned up at him sheepishly and watched Guin get to his feet with Malaya still cradled in his arms.

“Holy Hannah,” she gasped when the giant Shadowdweller towered over her. He’d looked a bit smaller lying down. Not a lot, but not like a skyscraper either.

“Yeah, a lot of people react that way to Guin.” Sagan chuckled.

“Cripes, he makes you look undernourished…and that was something I’d never thought I’d say!” Valera was clinging to thick biceps, her hand smoothing over them. She felt a little sad because his band of office was no longer around his arm. He had removed it along with the title of M’jan.

“Don’t be sad, little love,” he whispered to her. “It is not an end, but a wonderful new beginning. With you.”

“And the cats,” she reminded him.

“And the cats.” He chuckled.

Guin carried Malaya the entire distance from the Senate to the palace and directly into their suite. The entire time, she had her arms tight around his neck and simply wouldn’t stop crying. He was focused completely on her and trying to reassure her, so he didn’t even mind the heavy contingent of guards that followed them the entire way. Actually, considering recent events, he welcomed their added security. Anything that would give him several uneventful days with Malaya.

“I didn’t even see it,” she said. “My stupid visions showed only the part where you were making love with me in exciting places, but didn’t even warn me this would happen! What good is precognition if it won’t work when it’s most important?”

“It worked with Acadian. It warned us of how she would try to play us. It helped.” He sat down on the divan with her, still cradling her closely. “But it’s a little arrogant to assume you deserve omnipotence, Malaya. And anyway, fate had its way. Maybe you weren’t warned because I wasn’t going to die and fate already knew that? Who knows. I’m here now. Safe. Well. Holding you. Be calm, my honey, and focus on that.”

“I will. I am. It’s just…twice in just a few days! I feel like I’m being punished for taking you for granted for so long!”

“Let me get this straight. I’m almost poisoned and then I’m stabbed in the heart, but you’re the one being punished?”

That made her laugh. She sniffled and swatted his shoulder.

“Don’t make jokes.”

“Who’s joking?” He grinned before kissing her softly. Her nose was stuffy from crying, so he had to let her up for air frequently, making her laugh again. The laughter was full of relief and tainted with the remaining threads of the fear she had felt as she had watched him come so close to death. “Well, I guess I might need some guarding after all. Not used to being the target. More used to jumping in front of the target.”

“Like the time you got shot!” She shuddered at the memory.

“Then there was that spear in my leg. Still have the scar from that. Wanna see?”

Malaya knew he was using humor for comfort, and it was working. The more she felt his vital body under her hands, the better she felt. In fact, she thought as her touch roamed finely muscled shoulders, it made her feel safe, secure, and centered. His strength and his presence had always done that for her. And now, as she shifted in his hold to straddle his lap, she began to kiss and touch him until she felt his life-force emanating into her everywhere. This would calm her, she realized. Only this would ever make her feel protected and assure her of his permanency.

“I guess,” he interjected between kisses, “you actually do want to see my scar.”

She chuckled, pausing to slowly lick her tongue over his bottom lip. It was the same seductive action that had so unraveled his control when she had done it in the bath. It pretty much had the exact same effect. Except this time there would be no need to stop, and no reason to hold himself in check.

“I thought I’d never feel you touch me again,” she whispered as she grabbed for his hands and moved them up over her body. She had worn a traditional sari to the Senate. The short blouse underneath the drape of it left her midriff bare to his touch and it was nothing for him to slide his fingers up under the bottom hem so they could run up the bottoms of her br**sts. He stopped when he encountered her ni**les, brushing over them and plucking lightly at them.

“Where’s Rika?” he asked, grinning against her kiss.

“Guin!” She laughed. “I don’t know, she was in the Senate last I saw. You dragged me into an empty room after we left, remember?”

“Oh yeah…kinda hard to forget that. I was planning on f**king you fiercely against that door, damn it. Was working on a heck of a hard-on, too.”

“You are incorrigible. And you need to pull just a little harder,” she informed him.

“Is that right?”

“Oh yes, much better.”

She stripped down the drape of the sari, pulling the pleats free of the underskirt and shedding it somewhere behind her. She reached to remove her blouse next.

“It’s the middle of the night,” he warned her. “I just got stabbed and the whole world is in an uproar. People will be here very soon and I won’t let them find you na**d.”

“Then you better take me to bed,” she warned in return. “If I’m not mistaken, you’re working on a heck of a hard-on…and I want to go for a ride.”

Guin hardly needed any more convincing. Her back hit the bed within seconds, the door slamming shut even as he reached to shed his leather vest, bracers, and shirt. He paused to stick a curious finger through the holes in both garments, but stopped when he got nudged in reprimand. Malaya was only wearing the sheer underskirt to the sari by the time he had removed his belt and began to work on his jeans.

She sat up and got onto her knees as he stepped out of them and had her hands around him instantly. He was, as noted, mostly aroused already, but there was no “mostly” about it the moment she brought him to the press of her lips. Guin dropped back his head and exhaled a hard sound of pleasure as her tongue swiped across him. With hardly any other introduction, he was in her mouth. What she did to him, it was with a hunger he couldn’t describe. He realized it was like she wanted to suck the life out of him, to hear that primitive cry from his soul she always wrought from him when she did this. For her, it would affirm his life to her.

But Guin had other ideas. He let her continue as long as he could take it, unable to deny that her almost desperate enthusiasm was blinding in the wonderful way it felt. After a few minutes, though, he couldn’t bear it anymore and he stopped her.

“No, I want—”

“I know what you want,” he said roughly. “Let me show you what I want.”

She was on her back again and he knelt between her knees. Pushing the nearly transparent skirt up her thighs, he snagged hold of her panties and tossed the delicate things away. Then, just as direct and blatant as she had been, he spread her legs and her woman’s flesh apart and fitted his mouth to her.

He heard her gasp and even felt her resist. He knew she wasn’t in the mood to be passive and that he was too far out of her reach for her liking, but he didn’t want this to be all about her fear at almost having lost him. If this was about affirming life, then he would make her feel alive. Any way he could. It didn’t take long for her resistance to melt under the dance of his tongue. He nibbled at her and sucked dozens of places besides her cl*t until there was no place untasted. He thrust his tongue into her, one thumb circling her clitoris, the other sweeping back past her perineum and against the highly sensitive nerves of her anus. The sensation of being overrun made her cry out for him, her whole body curving and grasping for him, from her fingers in his hair to her calves against his back.

He left her wanting, however, lifting away from her and starting to run up the center of her body. Malaya locked in resistance, though, and with a powerful push she sent him rolling over onto his back. She mounted him with a float of silky thin material, on her knees as she leaned all of her weight onto his repaired chest and kissed him as she slowly and wickedly rubbed her hot, wet sex all along the length of his, over and over again.

“I told you,” she scolded him between dips of her tongue. “I want to go for a ride.”

She reached to wrap her hand around his cock, the entire rod wet with her excitement now. She stroked him firmly several times, watching him until he couldn’t help the groans erupting from his chest and he clamped his hands with bruising strength on her thighs. Then she poised herself over him and began to wriggle herself down in a slow, excruciating impaling. She’d gotten him so worked up he was at his thickest inside her, stretching her to her limits. She ejected several lusty cries of satisfaction as she took him farther and farther into herself. Then she was firmly in her seat, his incredible penis so rigid and filling she didn’t want to move at first. But she heard him drawing hard for breath, felt his hands opening and closing on her thighs with impatience and tested restraint.

Flinging her hair back, she leaned back as far as she dared, clenching herself around him as her dancer’s muscles stretched and flexed. Guin released a shout.

“Oh goddamn! Malaya!”

Pleased with the reaction, Malaya then bent over him the other way, stopping when she could kiss him. Then she began to ride. Slow at first, but quickly escalating until her lover’s hands moved up to her h*ps and she could see him watching every wave of her body. She used strictly her leg muscles, reaching to cup her own br**sts and watching the heat that burned into his eyes as she did so. Malaya licked her fingers and wet her ni**les and smiled in triumph when he growled savagely and began to drag her down onto him in hard, frantically increasing slams.

“Laya! I’m going to give you my baby. You hear me?”

This time she was the one shocked with a jolt of rushing excitement. Dizzy, she reached out to brace against his shoulders and looked down into his beloved granite eyes.

“What do you mean?” she gasped, suddenly feeling everything much more sharply and feeling her heart race out of control.

“I mean I should be fertile by now, Malaya. I was due to medicate three days ago. But I figured you might want that heir.”

Malaya pressed against him and stopped. Panting hard, she stared down at him. He was gripping her desperately and she knew he was boiling close to cl**ax, but she needed a second. Just a second.

She sat upright, sharply, her head falling back as her body arched. She closed her eyes and rose up against his hands again. They were back in their frantic pace once more within seconds, but Malaya was somewhere much altered from what her body was experiencing. Still feeling the rise of pleasure, feeling the tremble of approaching the brink of release, she was also watching the flash of imagery flooding her mind. The vision tensed her up, clenching her around Guin so tightly that he cursed in a harsh, blue rush. But the more she saw, the harder she rocked him into herself.

When he came it was with the vibrating roar of a beast. It shimmered into her as she felt hot release jetting deep within her body. And as she shot into orgasm for herself, she saw everything she needed.

She saw the royal wedding that they would have, placing Guin into state with class, respect, and elegance, and she saw crowds of their people shouting out for him as if he were their personal friend and hero.

She saw herself undressing for him one day and the rocketing shock he reacted with when he was the first to see the color change around her navel. And then he was whirling her around in the air with his joy.

She saw herself ripe with child and Guin, as always, close beside her.

Malaya gasped as her entire body jolted with both cl**ax and the relief of affirmation. There was no telling how long it would take for any one of those visions to come to pass, but they all meant the same thing to her. Guin was alive and he was going to stay that way.

Overrun with misfiring nerves and relieving emotion, she collapsed across Guin’s chest and struggled hard for breath so she could tell him all she’d seen. Her eyes were full of tears again, Malaya unable to help the emotional rush of them.

Despite that, she was smiling when she rose up to tell Guin their future.