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, s
he 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 free dom, 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 wa
s 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.