“Your scent has changed,” she said in a lower voice.
Duran closed his eyes and banged the back of his head into the smooth wall. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“We should go to sleep.” Great suggestion. Yup. “It will—”
“I’m not a virgin.”
His mouth fell open. And then he considered the idea of her with another male, any other male. As jealousy heated his blood for absolutely no good reason, he redirected himself by thinking about Chalen’s guards.
“Neither am I,” he said tightly.
“Have you ever been mated? Do you have a shellan?”
“No.”
“Good. I don’t have to feel guilty then. I’m single, too, by the way. Before the raids, there was a male or two, but no one serious. No one I brought home to my parents.”
Duran put his hands up to his face and scrubbed.
“It’s sad,” she continued, “that they’ll never meet any young I might have. Any hellren I may take.”
“I’m glad.”
“Excuse me?” she said sharply.
“No, no.” He dropped his hands. “I didn’t mean it like that. I’m glad that you’re thinking like there’s something on the other side of this. That your life continues. It’s a good thing to focus on a happy future.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” she said.
You’re still way ahead of me, he thought.
That was why he wasn’t crossing the distance between them. No matter how open she seemed and how much he wanted her, he wasn’t going to do to her on purpose what he’d done to Nexi by mistake.
One goal. He had one goal. After which, like a fuse having done its job to set off a bomb, he would cease to exist.
Literally.
16
AHMARE HAD MEANT WHAT she’d said about time. It was true that seconds and minutes and hours were fundamentals, unchanging in spite of your perception. But damn, in this silent, darkened bunker, sheltered by the dirt skirt of a mountain, she and the prisoner had tapped into infinity.
Duran, that was.
She and Duran had entered a strange kind of forever, sure as if all of time was a serene, temperate pond so perfectly calibrated to their body temperature and utterly, completely still that they had been unaware of all the wading steps they’d taken to this submersion. In fact, the illusion of infinity was so complete that even her brother’s reality had lost some of its sting. It wasn’t that she had forgotten Ahlan’s situation; it was more like that sense of urgency she’d been motivated by had run itself out on the racetrack of her fight-or-flight response and was taking a breather on a bench off to the side, gulping water and panting as it prepared for the next relay.
Her panic would be back the second it was safely dark outside.
And in its place, a different urge was consuming her.
Across the way, Duran’s body was giving off all kinds of arousal signals: Those dark spices, for one. For another, he was moving around a lot, his boots squeaking as he crossed and recrossed his legs, his throat clearing, his shoulder cracking as he stretched again. And again. And . . . again.
She knew exactly the kind of ants that were under his skin. The tingle in the spine. The flush of heat in the vein that flowed but did not ebb.
She had been hoping he would act on their sexual tension first, and that was some cowardly stuff right there. Such a lame move, as if she didn’t have to be responsible for her own choice if he was the one to cross over and kiss her first: Like if it happened that way, she didn’t have to feel guilty that her brother was suffering and she was getting off with a stranger.
Closing her eyes, she crossed her arms over her chest and resolved to cut the crap and go to sleep.
Two seconds later, she was sitting up. Putting her weight on her feet. Going to him.
Being the one who forged the trail across the vacant yet somehow utterly cluttered space between them. And just as time had become distorted, so, too, did distance—miles, she walked miles over the course of the fifteen or so feet that separated them.
Duran cursed in a low mutter as she stopped in front of him.
“You can tell me no,” she said, “but I’m not going to apologize.”
“I don’t know what that word means right now.”
“Which one?”
“The one that matters.”
Lowering herself down, she straddled his outstretched legs, staying on her knees. Her hands went to his shirt, finding the soft fabric, pressing into the hard chest underneath. When she leaned forward, she tilted her head to one side and hesitated.
He seemed frozen. Incapable of response. Shocked, as if he didn’t know what to expect. He wasn’t pushing her away, though. Far from it. And those dark spices were a roar in her nose now, a dense erotic scent that intoxicated her even further.
As his lips parted, he swallowed hard. “Please . . .” he whispered. “Do it.”
Ahmare lowered her mouth to his. With his level of arousal, she thought he’d grab her by the back of the neck and go hard-grind with the kiss. Instead, he closed his eyes as she brushed against him softly, and beneath her mouth, his lips trembled—until she captured them fully, that was. Then he responded, mirroring her motions, the caressing, the stroking, the plying.
When she entered him with her tongue, he gasped. Groaned. Jerked his hips.
Underneath her, his body was live-wire tight, his palms braced against the floor, his arms shaking as he held himself in place, his leg muscles contracting in a series of spasms. She appreciated the restraint, she truly did.
It meant he respected her in that old school way.
But it was not what she wanted.
Breaking from the kiss, she sat back on his knees and knew she had to do something to get him into gear. The kissing was nice, the kissing was great, but the prelude was not the purpose of this, and he seemed unwilling to be the one to take things to the next level.
Pulling the bottom of her shirt out from the waistband of her pants, she had a stupid thought about how Under Armour had made this thin, long-sleeved body upholstery to “wick sweat” and “cool as it covered” during workouts. Good attributes if you were in the gym or on a run.
Totally irrelevant in this particular hot-and-bothered situation.
Worse than irrelevant.
An impediment.
Duran’s eyes burned as she gripped the mesh, and he breathed like he had a car in each hand and was doing bicep curls. What she was about to show him seemed, given his rapt attention, like the kind of thing he needed to see more than he worried about oxygen.
Funny, how a male could tell you you were beautiful without saying a word.
Ahmare lifted the shirt slowly, not because she wanted to artificially delay things or was having second thoughts. She wanted to savor the moment of revelation.
Except the sports bra underneath was something she’d forgotten about.
As she up-and-over’d the shirt, tossing it somewhere, she didn’t care, she had meant to show him her breasts. Instead, hello, Champion.
Duran didn’t seem to notice. He traced the wide straps and tight panel with his hot eyes, as if he were imagining the flesh underneath.
“Take it off for me,” she said in a throaty voice.
More with the trembling on his side, but he didn’t disobey the command. Hooking his thumbs under the lower edge of the wide band, he took the tight nylon upward—
Her breasts popped free, bouncing, the nipples tight and tingling thanks to the fabric’s hard stroke.
Duran didn’t get any further than that. He bailed on the removal job with the sports bra wedged under her armpits, her breasts compressed on top, extra full on the bottom. Sitting up, he put his mouth to her, sucking one of her nipples in, lapping at her with his warm, wet tongue.
Ahmare let her head fall back, and he caught her torso with a strong arm. Spearing into all that long hair of his, she moaned at the sweet tugging, the slip and slide and recapture, the switch to the other side. And even though the contact was only in one place, she felt it everywhere, all over her skin and throughout her body.
Especially between her legs.
Back with the kissing now, and positions were changing. He was moving them, shifting her as if she weighed nothing, laying her back against the hard floor that could have been a down mattress for all she knew. As he lay on top of her, a strange, hypersensitive numbness came over her, and she welcomed it just as she welcomed his body, now flush against her own, her clothing, and all of his, a total frustration.
She solved that problem quick.
Peeling the sports bra all the way off, she went for the buttons of his flak shirt. Her fingers were sloppy as she worked her way down the lineup, and then she was parting the two halves, finding smooth skin and hard muscle and volcanic warmth underneath.
Pants were supposed to be next on both sides, but she stayed awhile where they were, like a mountain climber enjoying a keyhole view that was not to be missed even though the summit was where they were headed. He was so different than she, the pads of muscles and thick, heavy bones the kind of thing that made her feel feminine, especially as her bare nipples met his torso.
The independent part of her, the fierce and strong part that had entered Chalen’s castle without weapons, carrying the head of a dead man, rankled at the idea that somewhere in her was an unevolved female who wanted a male to chase her and catch her and hold her down while he entered her and bit her hard on the neck. While he marked her as his own. While he established a dominance that she was hot for. While he left his scent all over her.
Inside of her.
Yup, the modern side of her could do without those kind of he-man antics. But what was happening between them now wasn’t modern; it was ancient. It was as old as the species itself. It was the basis of mortal existence, the door to immortality through the creation of a next generation.
Splitting her thighs, she pulled him even more fully on top of her, and Duran came readily, his body making its way between her legs, the ridge of his hard sex pushing into her core through their pants. As he started to roll into her and retreat, stroking them both, his hands, broad and warm and calloused, swept up to her breasts, learning her contours, caressing. Kissing deeply, they moved together, getting their rhythm down, a dress rehearsal for the naked penetration that was coming soon.