Starr seemed unaffected by the dangers in the woods, easily bending down to avoid the branches and stepping over the exposed roots.
“How could anyone move forward in these entanglements? The further you go, the worse it gets.”
She looked over her shoulder at him and grinned. “Familiarity. These forests extend well into Dognelle territory. I played in them occasionally when I was a child. Easy to hide and figure out the lay of the trees and twining branches. Of course I was always in trouble for wandering too far away from the safety of the Dognelle borders, but there’s something so compelling about the cool forests. I couldn’t resist.”
As they talked she walked ahead of him. Lycan admired the soft sway of her hips, the way her skirt molded to her curves. But now she was moving ahead of him, faster and faster. Foolishly he’d removed her chains when they’d dismounted, figuring she couldn’t get away from him on foot. As it was, he was too big to keep up with her. The thickness of the forest nearly blocked his way. Her laughter rang out just as she disappeared.
“Starr?” he called, but she didn’t answer. He tried again, but she still didn’t respond.
“By hell’s fires,” he mumbled, stubbing his thick-booted foot on a huge root.
Then he heard her, seemingly far away. And damned if the little sprite wasn’t giggling like a child.
How dare she torment him like this? He would leave the forest, get on his balon and hunt her down. And when he found her he would punish her severely for running away.
But as he turned around in circles to see nothing but trees and branches, the realization dawned on him that he was well and completely lost.
Now what? He’d simply have to start walking. Carefully, of course, so he wouldn’t blind himself from a sharp branch, or break a leg tripping over a root.
“Damn woman. Should have known better than to trust her.” With every passing second his irritation mounted until he was certain if he laid eyes on her he’d do her great bodily harm.
“Are you lost?”
Lycan whirled at the sound of Starr’s voice. Directly behind him, leaning casually against the thick trunk of a redbark tree. He stormed over to her and grabbed her by the waist. “What did you think you were doing?”
Her smirk irritated him more than the fact he thought he’d lost her. “Proving to you how easy it is to hide within the forest. For someone who knows the trail, anyway. You were lost.”
“I was not.”
“You were too. You were turning around in circles so many times I was getting dizzy watching you.”
“I was looking for you.”
“You were looking for a way out, and couldn’t find it. And, just so you know, you were going the wrong way. You were heading deeper into the forest, not heading out of it.”
“I knew exactly where I was going.” By Lal, the woman was infuriating.
They walked further, and came upon a clearing. Starr’s eyes widened at the vision before them.
A crystal blue lake appeared in the middle of the forest. Soft grass and low hills surrounded the pristine water. Colorful wildflowers peppered the grass.
“It’s so beautiful. My people would kill for a watering spot like this.”
How strange the things he took for granted. Sometimes he forgot that everyone didn’t have access to the plentiful food and water found in Raynar.
A low rumble sounded in the distance. Starr tore her gaze from the lake and looked at him. Laying her hand upon Lycan’s chest, she said, “Is that thunder?”
“Yes.”
“Is it going to rain?”
The thunder grew louder, cracking across the forest.
“Yes, it’s going to rain.”
Starr’s emerald eyes sparkled and her grin was like a child’s. She was breathing heavily, her breasts rising, pressing against the thin gold top she wore. Her skirt flattened against her body as the strong winds whipped through the forest.
Then rain started to fall. It was so hot in the forest that the drops were cooling relief.
Starr turned to head toward the sky, blinking as droplets splattered against her cheeks.
She looked at Lycan and grinned.
He’d never seen anyone look more desirable than Starr did right at this moment.
Her smile died when she caught his expression. He couldn’t help it. Thoughts of being angry with her dissipated in the cooling drizzle. Her passion filtered through his senses, her complete joy and awe at the shower only adding to his need for her.
“It’s raining, Lycan,” she said, her eyes like the luminous green Zerlon sea. Moisture pooled in their depths, spilling over and mixing with the droplets pelting her face.
“Yes, it is.” He stepped toward her, stopping only inches away. Her gaze stayed fixed on his.
“It never rains in Dognelle. Ever.” Her cheeks flushed a bright coral, the tears flowing from her eyes like a running river.
He tried to imagine her experience, what it must be like to stand out in a cooling rain when you’ve spent your entire life in drought. “I take it you don’t want to run for cover or go back to the castle.”
She shook her head. “No, that’s not what I want right now.”
Thunder shook the ground at his feet. His heart pounded a cacophony of rhythms. “What do you want, Starr?”
He already knew the answer. Instinctively, in some strange way, he felt a connection to this woman, and he knew exactly what she needed. He just wanted to hear the words from her.
Yet she paused, as if she couldn’t make up her mind whether she wanted to say the words or not, as if telling him what she wanted would somehow lessen her in his eyes.
“Starr, this choice is yours. In this, you are free to say whatever you want. Or don’t want.”
“I am no slave, Lycan.”
He started to argue, then realized she was right. He could enslave her and hold her against her will, but that would never make her the same as the women of Raynar. “I know.”
“I make my choices, even at this moment, as a free woman.”
That, at least, he could give her. “Yes.”
She nodded then, and finally said what he needed to hear. “I want you to make love to me, Lycan. Out here, in the rain.”
Chapter Eight
Starr’s throat constricted, went as dry as her desert lands, but still she’d managed to get the words out.
Making that decision had been both easy and difficult. She wanted to make love with Lycan, wanted it more than she’d ever thought possible. But she would not surrender her freedom in exchange for a moment of pleasure. He may think her a slave, but she was not a slave, would never be one. And if making love meant that he thought she accepted her place as a concubine in his harm, then she wouldn’t do it.
Her heart soared with joy at his willingness to give her the choice, to give her the freedom to make the decision.
Why she chose this moment, she wasn’t certain. Maybe it was the miraculous raindrops, making her feel alive and one with the planet’s strange atmosphere. Maybe it was the way Lycan looked at her, the hunger in his eyes like holding up a mirror to her own emotions.
The elements mixed together, desire and passion, rain and thunder, swirling around her like a vortex. She was spinning out of control.
Cool rain did little to quench the heat building up inside her. Lycan’s burning eyes were like throwing fuel on her already inflamed senses.
He laid his hands on either side of her head, resting his palms against the bark of the tree. His breath caressed her cheek, his dark, desire-filled gaze focused on her mouth.
She parted her lips, offering a wordless invitation.
One that he took. He lowered his mouth and pressed his lips against hers, slipping his tongue inside with a kiss that spoke of fire and passion. There was nothing gentle in the way his mouth ground against hers, and she didn’t want gentle now.
Passion exploded from deep within, a force she’d held back her entire adult life. This was what
had been missing before—why she had never engaged in sex. Nothing could have prepared her for the feelings pouring out right now, because nothing in her life had prepared her for Lycan.
She moaned into his mouth, reaching out and grasping his tunic, clenching her fingers into the material of his shirt until his body touched hers. His heart pounded against her hand, a frantic beat that echoed her own racing pulse.
“Where?” he said as he tore his mouth away and nipped at her shoulder.
She shuddered, her voice no more than panting gasps. “Out in the clearing there. Near the lake.”
“Let’s go.” He moved away and grasped her wrist, dragging her through the last of the thick trees and into the clearing.
Desire pounded between her legs, moisture gathering as her mind was awash in images of what it would be like to make love with Lycan.
Tiny droplets of rain pelted the surface of the water, looking like fish leaping out of the lake.
The rain slowed to a near mist, the sun partially breaking through the dark clouds. Lycan took her to an embankment near the water and laid her on the ground, standing over her.
What a magnificent warrior he was. Legs spread, hands on his hips, looking at her with an expression so fierce that if she didn’t know it was desire, she’d worry that he would grab his sword and run her through.
Which, in a certain way, he was about to do.
She giggled, and he arched a brow. “You find something amusing?”
“Yes. I was thinking you looked like a warrior about to run me through with your sword. Then I thought about your sword and…” Her gaze gravitated to the sizeable bulge in his breeches.
His eyes widened, then he threw his head back and laughed, a hearty, rich sound that made her want to grab him, strip his clothes off and have her way with him.
“You fear being impaled on my sword then, little virgin?”
“On the contrary. I’m looking forward to it with great delight.”
His eyes darkened and he pulled off his tunic. A fine sheen of sweat glistened on his arms and chest, like diamond drops sparkling in the misty sunlight. When he opened his breeches and removed his rigid cock, she let out a shuddering sigh.
Soon he was naked, and he dropped down onto his knees between her legs. “We need to get your clothes off.”
She nodded, lifting up to undress, but Lycan pushed her back down. “Let me.”
He started with the top, lifting it slowly over her head and casting it to the side. Instead of moving on, he stared at her breasts until her nipples puckered under the intensity of his gaze.
“Lift your hips,” he commanded.
Complying eagerly, she raised up her buttocks, giving him the access he demanded. He reached for the waistband of the skirt and teased it down over her hips and legs, so slowly she feared she’d go mad. As he pulled the material down, his fingers lingered on her exposed skin.
The humid air made breathing difficult. Or perhaps it was the way Lycan looked at her, his eyes roaming from her face to her breasts to her exposed pussy. A thrilling excitement that she had never known was possible trickled like warm water over her skin. His gaze was like a lover’s touch, one she felt deep within.
A keening cry resounded in the treetops. Lycan turned his head and looked up, then back to her and smiled.
“The Reevlo birds protect us here. They will sound if someone approaches.”
She nodded, spotting the large, colorful birds nestled in the tops of the redbark trees. Their plumage was a rainbow of colors, their beaks as long as a sword. Though the Reevlo were not common in Dognelle, she had heard stories of their abilities to see for miles and alert a kingdom to possible invaders.
As a warrior it was quite disconcerting to know that these creatures could announce an upcoming attack. As a woman desperate for a private moment with her lover, she welcomed their watchful eyes.
When she returned her gaze to Lycan, she found him smiling down at her. “What?”
He reached for her, skimming his fingers along her ribs and belly. Her muscles contracted at his light touch. “You have a beautiful body, Starr. Your waist is slender…I can span it with my hands.”
Proving his statement, he grasped her middle.
“Your hips are not narrow, but well curved.” He ran his hands down her hips and over her thighs. “Your legs are long. Ahh, I can well imagine the feel of them wrapped around me.” She let out a whimper when he slowly trailed his finger above her sex and ribcage, tracing circles over her breasts. “And your breasts are like ripe fruit that tantalize me for a taste.”
She warmed under his praise, unaccustomed to being thought of as beautiful. His words were foreign to her. Her life had been spent as a warrior, her body wrapped up in clothing that protected her from the dusty desert. Her only companionship had been that of other females. No one had ever called her beautiful before.
No wonder the women of Raynar accepted their fate. If sweet words like Lycan’s were spoken regularly, what woman wouldn’t want to do his bidding?
She may be a warrior, her first love may be protecting her people at any cost, but right now she reveled in being a woman about to experience something that would only occur once in her lifetime. The taking of her virginity shouldn’t be a monumental occurrence, and yet it seemed as if she stood poised on a precipice, about to tumble into new, unfamiliar territory.
Lycan nestled down beside her, turning her to face him. He reached for her leg and drew it over his hip, nestling his cock against her sex.
He licked her bottom lip, then drew her mouth into a deep kiss, his tongue sliding inside and teasing hers. His body felt so hard, all muscle and strength. She felt almost petite lying there next to him.
And she’d always thought herself tall. The men of Dognelle were shorter than her, and thinner. Lycan was big…everywhere. Especially his shaft, which he rocked against her aching sex.
Her nectar seeped from within her, moistening both of them. Lycan caressed her hip, her thigh, trailing a fire over her ribs to grasp one breast in his palm. He teased the nipple until it stood hard and erect, then bent and covered it with his lips.
Starr wound her fingers into his hair and held his head over her breast, delighting in the sensations his sweeping tongue evoked. She closed her eyes and focused on the way his tongue swirled around the taut bud, the way sparks of pleasure shot straight to her core, the way he moved against her when she whimpered as if in answer to her unspoken plea for more.
“Tell me what you imagined when you thought of making love for the first time, Starr.”
She opened her eyes and looked at him. “I never imagined anything.”
Arching a brow, he said, “I find that hard to believe. Everyone imagines their first experience with sex. How it will be, what positions, the different types of sex.”
“Different types of sex?”
He stroked her hair and wound it around it fist, kissing her lightly. “Yes. I can pleasure you in many ways, Starr. With my hands, as you’ve already experienced, with my cock, and with my mouth.”
Visions of watching Tor pleasure the concubines with his mouth entered her memory. She wondered then what it would feel like to have a man’s mouth on her sex. And how it would feel to taste a man, to engulf his shaft between her lips as she had seen the other night.
“I would like that,” she said, suddenly feeling a bit shy and unable to meet his gaze. Truly, this bashful behavior was something she’d never experienced before, but she’d also never been intimate with someone before.
He tipped her chin and forced her gaze to meet his. “And which would you like, my little virgin? My hands pleasuring you, like this?”
Slipping his fingers between them, he stroked her sex until she arched her hips against his. “Yes, I like that very much.”
He removed his fingers and drew them to his lips, tasting her. She shuddered, so incredibly aroused that she felt lightheaded.
“Or would you like me to taste you, Starr?” r />
“Only if I can taste you, too.”
Lycan sucked in a quick breath. “Now that I would enjoy very much.”
“How do we do that?” She suddenly felt inadequate, really and truly virginal for the first time. She had seen Tor and what he had done with the women, but that had been her only experience with sex. Perhaps she should have paid closer attention that night when the women devoured his shaft with their mouths, but she had lost her focus with Lycan touching her.
“We will do what we feel like doing, what comes naturally.”
Easy for him to say, since he was well experienced and knew exactly what to do.
“Are you worried that you won’t please me?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He took her mouth in a searing kiss, plunging his tongue hard and fast inside her. She picked up his rhythm and gave in kind until she was breathless and panting. When he pulled his mouth from hers, his eyes were as blazing as the cloudy sky above.
“Now…feel my shaft, Starr,” he said, reaching for her hand and placing it over his cock. “I am so hard it is painful. That is what you do to me with just a kiss. Don’t be afraid that you won’t please me.”
A bit more confident than she had been earlier, she stroked him lightly, loving the feel of his steely sword. She leaned back and watched his shaft slide through her hands, her sex pulsating with the need to feel him inside her.
“Your hands are magical. You could easily make me come just by touching me.”
She remembered the other night when she had done just that. Watching his seed spurt all over her hand at the same time he took her over the edge was the most erotic experience of her life.
So far.
Now, a burning urge to taste him consumed her, and she boldly shifted, sliding down his body in increments, pressing her lips and tongue against his skin and tasting his salty flavor. He was so different than her, his body hard where hers was soft, his taste so masculine it burst onto her tongue and heightened her already frenzied arousal. His stomach rippled under her questing lips and she enjoyed having this one, brief moment of ultimate power over him as she continued her trek down his body until her mouth was level with his cock.