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  Claws retracted, his hands hooked under her arms to lift her off him and up his body. Easily holding her in front of him, Tor searched her eyes. Heavy lids and swollen lips made Sahara’s face sensual seduction. Her hands rested lightly on his shoulders.

  “Do you understand?” Tor demanded.

  Sahara smiled a mysterious woman’s smile. “Yes.”

  Tor frowned. “What do you understand?”

  “Lie on the bed with me and I’ll explain it to you,” Sahara invited. “Hanging in your hold is sort of disconcerting.”

  “I can’t think when you touch me,” he confessed. “This is important.”

  “I know, but I need this,” she said softly.

  Immediately he lowered them to the bed, still holding her off him. They lay facing each other. Sahara gazed him for a second with that small smile.

  “What’s between us is primitive,” she said softly. “Sometimes it’s so powerful its expression might seem harsh to anyone else. You don’t want to call it love because that word has become too civilized for what we feel, what we need from each other. Calling it any other word like ‘relationship’ gives it a beginning and an end. What binds Tor and Sahara has always been part of us, a part that was seeking the other. There is no beginning to it, no end. It simply is.”

  Tor’s body surged over his amazing woman. Her words said what he’d been unable to articulate. His knees pushed her legs wide as his hands gripped her wrists, pulling them high over her head. Stretched beneath him, held by his hand bracketing her wrists, his thighs forcing her legs apart, Sahara’s hips bucked beneath him in sensual need.

  Probing her entrance with the head of his cock, he let her seek it with what little movement she could manage. “No end, Sahara,” he growled. “What we are cannot be escaped. Do not be so sure you could have given your first heat to another. I would have taken you from him.”

  A shudder ran through her as she looked into his eyes. There was no need to shield her from the savage truth as he thrust into the tight sheath of her body. Hard flesh plunged into her, stretching her with ruthless intent. The hot silk of her body contracted around him and Tor arched into her.

  Primal demand took him out to thrust in with even more force as he held her beneath him and gave in to the needs he’d never been able to curb with her. “Had it been you and Signet in the siege tower, I would have come through the roof to get you.”

  Sahara’s hands framed his face as he pounded into her. Legs rose to loosely circle his chest, opening her to his plundering demands. She said nothing, but tears disappeared into her hair as she looked up at him.

  “Why,” Tor demanded as their bodies met in fierce need. “Why the tears?”

  “I would have gone to you,” she confessed. “He deserved more than that.”

  In that confession was a wealth of acceptance and regret. Tor would not have it. He was gratified with her honesty but he needed all her attention. “This is our time.”

  Pulling out completely, he easily flipped her over to hands and knees. Reaching down beside the bed and retrieving the little remote from his discarded flight suit, he flicked it on and was rewarded with a deep moan from the woman kneeling before him.

  His thighs inside hers to keep her spread, Tor grasped her hips and sank into the wet silk of her body. Tremors from the vibrator in her ass nearly robbed him of control. “Our time,” he repeated harshly, his body jerking into a demanding rhythm as he took the woman who owned his soul.

  Love didn’t cover what she pulled out of him. Perhaps demented obsession came close, but he didn’t care. They had narrowly escaped the type of savage violence that had once marked his people, and even though it had been three years since his brother’s death, in the light of history, it had been a close thing.

  His hands reached under her shoulders to hook over her and pull her body onto his cock with each thrust. The need to drive deep into her, to mark her soul with his possession added primitive power every movement. Her panting yelps as he slammed into her fueled raging hunger. It still wasn’t enough.

  “My woman.” Tor stopped and straightened on his knees behind her. Still impaled in the burning delta of her thighs, he carefully grasped the wire receiver of the vibrator in her ass. Not turning it off, he slowly pulled the toy from her body. The resulting twisting moans from Sahara were exactly what he wanted but not near enough. Tossing the toy to the floor, he looked down at the woman stretched around his cock.

  There was no longer blood in his veins, it was lava that beat through him as he looked down at both her entrances contracting and releasing in sexual need. Her need was the intoxicating scent in the air, the squirming visual of Sahara on her knees, offering ass and cunt. She drove him deep into the past, making him the demanding savage who would have her complete surrender. Ass and cunt were not enough.

  “Ask for it,” Tor snarled as he hand caressed the cheek of her perfect bottom, his thumb following her crease, rimming her ass and traveling down to pull intimate folds open, displaying her body, accepting him while denying the touch she wanted. “Ask for what you need.”

  Her cheek on the bed, he watched her expression. Swollen lips panting, heavy lids lifted over silver eyes as her head came up to look back at him. “You, Tor. I need you.”

  Not what he’d been expecting but better. His body fell forward over her, covering her as cock slammed into cunt with the hard push of his body. He’d have her ass, but not now. Now was too out of control. The primitive drive to plant seed in her womb consumed him. He had to drive into her, to find the place where life bound them together. The twining of their two DNA strands was what he needed, what they needed.

  His chin hooked over her shoulder, bringing his face cheek to cheek with hers as the primal beat of life’s ancient drums thundered through them. The fire from a thousand tribal hearths washed over them, burning away the present as it took them deep into their history. This is what worlds had been fought over for, the power of this passion.

  The explosion of release drew the full-throated Leonor roar from Tor. It welled up from the pit of his soul as she swept through him. Pounding his seed into her body was not just mating. It was her lock on him. Her scream of completion was as powerful. A high, long and terrifying feline scream across the ages, warning that the lioness once again guarded the pride.

  Sinking to the bed, Tor did not slide off her. He couldn’t, not yet. Her body clasped him in trembling pulls as she panted harshly. Covering her smaller form was an instinct and he was too deep in the grip of need to do anything else. His chest shifted to the side to lighten the load on her rib cage, but that was all the space he could give her.

  The sleeping chamber slowly came into focus again. Rolling off her reluctantly, Tor couldn’t yet move off the bed. Sahara moaned and opened her eyes to gaze at him across the pillow.

  “Something sort of bothers me,” Tor said softly.

  “One thing?” Sahara mused. “You’re doing better than me.”

  “More than one, but this makes no sense. How it is you’re so much smaller than I am as a humanoid, but as a Lioness you’re quite a bit larger?”

  “That’s what’s bothering you?” Sahara raised a brow. “Male problems are strange. I am a small Mist Lioness because of the human DNA. In human form I strongly resemble those ancestors.”

  “Most of your kind are larger?” Tor continued to study her.

  “They used to be, but we lived on Earth a long time. Now most Mist Lions have some human ancestors. A pureblood is rare.”

  Tor gently smoothed the golden hair off her face. He needed to pet her. “What’s your real name?”

  “Beloved of Tor,” Sahara smiled, “but if you mean before we met, Guinevere. I was named for some human relative. She was famous.”

  “Why was she famous and how come you never corrected me?” Tor asked. They were lying on the same pillow, talking about trivial things. This was right. Nothing had ever been as beautiful as looking at a well-loved Sahara smiling over his
questions. He used the word “loved” because he had no other that would honor her. Even in his mind he could not think of what she was to him in the words that might somehow demean her.

  “Her story is history of another reality. I was actually glad you never called me her name. Not that I’m ashamed of her, but it was right for you to use a different name. It felt right then and now. Do you mind?” Sahara questioned, shifting to her side, facing him.

  “You’ll have to tell me her story sometime. I’ve never minded but often wondered why you accepted a new name,” he said casually, his fingers combing long strands of gold down her shoulder and over her breast, being very careful as he arranged it around her nipple.

  Sahara’s back arched as he fingers grazed sensitive flesh. “There is a crowd of very important officials waiting to speak with you,” she reminded him in a lazy purr. “Also a threat to discuss. I don’t hear Nearrid pacing outside the door.”

  “Nearrid does not pace. If he’s there, he’s stoically leaning against the opposite wall.” Tor leaned up on an elbow to take her mouth beneath his. Kissing Sahara was much more important than worrying about Nearrid’s whereabouts. Slowly releasing her lips, he gazed into sleepy eyes.

  “We will be legally joined as soon as possible. Directly following that you’ll be crowned Queen of Leonor,” he told her. “Following that, the religious ritual of husband and wife naming. Is there some binding ceremony Mist Lions recognize?”

  “You don’t think that’s enough?” Sahara asked.

  “No. There will be no question in any culture. So? Is there?” His deep voice rumbled as he sank to her lips again. Licking kisses took some time.

  “We already did it,” Sahara murmured into his mouth. “Heat is final.”

  Leaning over her, his hand had to drift down her neck, firm fingers seeking the perfection of her breast. Petting one lazily, he watched his large paw move over smooth flesh. “That’s it?” he pressed her.

  “There’s the Earth custom called a wedding. It involves costumes and a holy man. I don’t know much about it.” Sahara shifted so his hand moved to caress her other breast. “I know you’re done with love, but do you mind if I mention it once in a while?”

  “You say whatever you want, woman. That’s part of the deal.” Tor dragged his eyes up to look at hers. “But the love business had better be about me. I’m the one embracing possessive selfishness. Keep that in mind.”

  Laughing, Sahara pushed his shoulder lightly. Tor rolled on his back for her and lifted her on top of him when she indicated that’s where she wanted to be. The woman sort of snuggled into him, arranging herself comfortably across his body.

  “I love you,” she said softly. “And I’m very tired. Just give me twenty minutes to nap and I’ll be fine.”

  “You’ve decided to nap on top of me?” he chuckled.

  “I’m a cat. Of course I’m napping on top of you,” she mumbled.

  Tor sighed as her breathing immediately changed to sleep cadence. “If all I felt was love, life would be much easier, baby.”

  About the Author

  Hello everyone. If you’re reading this, I hope it means you’ve enjoyed reading one of my books. If you have some other opinion of them, feel free to lie to me anyway. I hereby absolve you from all possible guilt and consequences for flagrant, adjective, saturated lying to the author.

  I’m a chronic fantasizer. Every good romance novel ended too soon. After a while, I started making up stories when I had a few minutes to while away. So now, instead of sitting around with a blank look on my face, I’ve taken to writing them down.

  Because of my father’s job, we moved every three years in my early life. My first memories are of Bermuda, and then we were in several African countries. It was a wonderful childhood. I gained a rich cultural background in the world community, but never learned to spell. As an adult, I avoided writing at all costs, embarrassed over my limitations.

  But the writer will not stay silent forever. She broke out, and insisted on learning the mystical world of grammar and spelling. Haven’t mastered all of it yet, but they let me write for you anyway. Bless every editor on the planet. They give dreamers a place to send fantasies and save us the embarrassment of owning our shortcomings.

  Gail welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email address on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.

  Tell Us What You Think

  We appreciate hearing reader opinions about our books. You can email us at [email protected].

  Also by Gail Faulkner

  Darius

  Full Ride

  Into His Keeping

  Jamie’s Cherub

  Romeo

  Slip Knot

  Stealing Carmen

  Wanna Play

  Discover for yourself why readers can’t get enough of the multiple award-winning publisher Ellora’s Cave. Whether you prefer e-books or paperbacks, be sure to visit EC on the web at www.ellorascave.com for an erotic reading experience that will leave you breathless.

  www.ellorascave.com