He punctuated the sentiment by lowering his mouth to hers, touching a clinging kiss to her. Malaya reached up to work her fingers into his hair. “I’m just happy you’ve started,” she said. “I feel like I’ve been waiting for this forever.”

He laughed at her for that and she realized why. Whatever her wait, his had been some time longer. How long was still a question for her, but it ceased to matter within a moment as he moved his head downward.

“Here now,” he murmured, his breath coasting hotly against her breast. “Here’s a sweet treat, hmm?” He proved it to himself by closing his mouth over her nipple. Malaya watched with fascination as his eyes slid closed and he made a sound of pleasure low in his throat. He continued to react just as intensely to every inch of her skin he discovered with his hands and his mouth. He was slow and thorough, painting her inch by inch with his touch until she vibrated with electric sensation everywhere.

Malaya never had given any real thought to Guin as a lover, and she had wondered earlier what she would find in his bed. Now she realized she had found both a beast and a bard, a man who could be wild and coarse or sensual and poetic in the way he loved a woman. She had dealt with the beast, and now she was seeing the bard. The stoic man she knew disappeared and his face and eyes grew a softly voracious expression that gave away everything he was feeling in every instant.

He took her at her earlier words and he worshipped her. She lay stunned and stimulated all at once as his crafty mouth followed the coarse caresses of his hands. He spent as much time on the length of her arms and her fingertips as he did on her belly and br**sts. He explored the sensitivities of her strong, fit legs. Guin turned her over then and started all over again, working his way down her spine and buttocks, his teeth nipping at those curves with appetite. She knew in that instant that she would not be allowed to leave his bed until his feast was over. She learned that there was another application for all of that patience and control that he had.

Feeling more alive than she had since the war, a time when fighting for her life had made her truly learn how to live, Malaya could do nothing he didn’t want her to do, forcing her to simply lie there and take and take and take as he familiarized himself with everything he’d labeled as off-limits. She moaned and squirmed in soft bursts, dizzy from her rapid breathing and from penetrating sensation that buzzed all over her.

“Guin…” she pleaded as he turned her over again and set his mouth lightly over hers.

“Yes, my honey?” He smiled with an arrogance and smug knowing that lit his dark eyes. “Feel good?”

“Very,” she sighed, “but I’m going crazy.”

“Excellent, that was exactly my plan,” he informed her with a chuckle and a kiss for her lips as she gave a small growl of frustration.

“Well, change your plans,” she demanded of him.

“Mmm, I would…except this is one situation where you cannot give me orders. We can try that another day.”

The suggestiveness of what he said made an erotic chill shudder through her. She was left to wonder what it would be like to spend time commanding this man to give her her pleasure exactly as she wanted it and when she wanted it. Guin as a submissive toy? Oh gods, what an outrageously arousing thought. That he was willing to serve her like that in the future shouldn’t have shocked her so much. After all, he spent most of his time in a role of subservience. Except the sheer vitality of his personality had never made it seem that way. Especially not when he was bullying her around and fighting with her for his opinion.

“I’m going to take that as an offer of promise,” she warned him with a grin. “I would pay all of my fortune for a day of completely obedient Guin.”

“I’ll sell myself much cheaper than that,” he admitted to her, “for a day with you as my bedroom mistress.”

“My, my, aren’t we full of surprises?” she observed on the back of a delighted sigh.

“That one and many more. I’ve had years to think about what I would do with you once I got you under me,” he said as he rested all of his weight along her body and pressed her beneath him. “It will take some time to span the list.”

That made her narrow her eyes on him in sharp curiosity. “Just how long do you mean when you say ‘years’?” she asked him.

“I mean years. And I won’t brush up this vain little ego of yours any more than I have to, so do not push for details. And now, my honey, I want to feel your hands on my skin. I want your nails in my back. I want your pleasure crying in my ear. Let’s see what we can do about that, hmm?”

Before she could reply, he rolled over with her sharply, leaving her as the cover for his body. She immediately sat up, straddling his abdomen. Her hands fell onto his hot skin instantly and with an exhalation of satisfaction, she began to touch him and shape him to her liking. She stroked over strands and stretches of taut muscle. It was marvelous to see and feel what she had only really taken note of incidentally before. She bit her lower lip in a concentrating nibble as she watched him react with strong sighs of contentment. She didn’t want him content. Not yet.

Malaya bent forward, her hair sliding over them both everywhere as she touched her mouth to his skin. The initial sweep of her tongue burned like a glorious acid. One touch and the sensation radiated in fierce growing distance over his flesh. When she teased his ni**les, each in turn, he couldn’t keep his hands out of her hair as he held on to her and the remarkable feedback flooding through him. She slid against him, the wetness of her aroused sex smearing over his skin and covering him in her scent. Guin reached down to grasp her h*ps and, with a slick slide, he drew her up onto his chest.

“Gods, you’re soaking wet,” he rasped roughly as he touched his fingers to the mound of soft flesh she had totally denuded of hair. Over the years she had vacillated between her preference in this; either way, she was beautiful and stimulating.

“I have been since you first grabbed hold of me, Guin,” she confessed to him, reaching behind herself to brace her hands on his thighs as she leaned back and gave him unhesitant access to her. His fingers slipped into heated, glossy flesh and he swore softly under his breath at the intimate feel of her. It was all about the touch. He had seen every detail of this body time and again for years, but it was the touch that finally crossed him into a realm of full sexual dimension. Full permission. Full pleasure.

Guin’s hands might have been rough, but his touch was gentle and finessed. Malaya caught her breath time and again as he slowly explored her, just as he had every other inch of her body. He kept his gaze riveted to her as she began to work herself in counterpoint to his caresses. Her torso arched, her br**sts attracting his free hand until he was pinching and tugging her ni**les into screaming sensitivity. Malaya felt as if she were spinning and twisting, everything overwhelming her. She’d never realized how sharply she could be made to feel, just by being brought to this point with methodical and studious attention to the rest of her body. She’d never been very patient or very submissive in bed. Sex had often come as a resort of final measure. She fed an appetite when it began to get in her way, then went back to dealing with her intensely busy and overfilled nights. In his way, Tristan reacted exactly the same. The only difference was that his appetites were far more powerful than hers.

Or so she’d always believed.

She could get very used to feeling this way. Her whole body was crying for more from this man of so many surprises. Malaya was realizing just how much she had shorted him over these years. She had made a three-dimensional man into a picture of only two dimensions in her mind.

He had such very thick fingers, and she was reminded of that as he worked one into the heated hollow inside her. She gasped, arching and twisting down against his hand to ride the sensation fully. He only let her do it for a moment before he withdrew from her completely and grasped her by her hips.

“Come here,” he commanded her hoarsely, dragging her forward. She quickly adjusted the bridge of her legs until she was kneeling astride his head with her feet under his arms as he pulled her down to his mouth. His tongue darted out to taste her and she gasped at the roaring feedback that immediately rushed into her.

Guin had wanted to taste of her so much, and now she melted like sensual butter on his tongue. Feeling her react was the world’s most powerful aphrodisiac and his c*ck was already hard enough to cut diamonds. She bent forward to brace her hands on the headboard, using it to help herself control the motion of her h*ps as she rode against his mouth. She forgot that he was supposed to be in charge, working herself into a wild little frenzy until her whole body was writhing with rising pleasure. She was crying out in soft, constant sounds of building tension. Guin’s position gave him an incredible view as she flung her head and shoulders back, her face creased with the pain of need. He reached under her and thrust two thick fingers deeply and suddenly into her, his tongue flashing around her clit.

“Oh my gods!” she cried out. She looked down at him suddenly, strands of hair clinging to her sweaty skin, a magnificent flush running up under her racial coloring. Her eyes gleamed with a mixture of wonder and some fear as the profoundness of how everything was about to change rushed into her. It piggybacked its way onto her orgasm, the crest so sharp and so consuming that Guin could feel her trembling long before the first spasm jolted into her. He wouldn’t let her take it and run, however. He stayed with her through every twist and shudder that blanketed through her and kept pushing her for more. She tried to wrench away at first, but his strength defeated hers easily and he thrust deep with his fingers and swept her relentlessly with his tongue. She bucked into a second crest, her legs shaking hard as she ejected a long, sibilant moan.

Guin devoured the flavor of her as if she were the sweetest treat, and that was because to him she was. Watching the rush of helpless delight on her face and in her whiskey-gold eyes was a high for him like no other. He ached to have her. To feel the clench of her around him as she rode him just like this. He withdrew from her, his hands bracing her body as she wobbled limply off balance for a moment. Then he rolled her over again until she was beneath him.

Malaya couldn’t breathe right and her heartbeat hurt with its speed as she watched him draw up between her thighs, his big hands around her h*ps hauling her into position with a firm, quick slide. She saw that amazing c*ck of his as he slid it against her saturated labial folds. She felt him rub over her again and again, an effort at thorough lubrication becoming a nerve-teasing act of torment. When he was satisfied that he was well ready for her, he wasted no time making a brusque attempt to breach the entrance to her body quickly. Not in totality, because she knew he was keenly aware of himself and her needs, but enough to make her breath lock and her body tense.

“Easy,” he soothed her softly, reaching to touch her exposed clitoris even as he guided himself into her. He had pushed just enough to get the head of his c*ck inside her, making it quick because experience taught him that slower could be more difficult. Now when she tensed up at his prodding invasion, he was already there and stretching her to suit. “Relax, my honey,” he said after giving her several moments to absorb the initial feel of him. “Trust me. I wouldn’t hurt you.”

“I know,” she said in a rushing whisper. “Guin…please…”

“I know, baby. I’m coming. Just a little time to make you take me…that’s all we need.”

That and the willpower to last that long. Despite her gloriously draining mouth, Guin was burning with the urge to lose himself explosively within her. However, nothing would make him trade away any moment of what he was feeling and the chance to savor it. He thrust forward into her a little bit, working in minute movements of his pelvis. All it took was a little patience and the grasp he needed to hold sanity together as he slid in and out of her, deeper and deeper each time. He broke out in a full-bodied sweat, and slowly each inward thrust was accompanied by a low moan of pleasure from deep inside his deprived soul. Malaya was grasping at his shoulders, her nails digging into them fiercely as she panted out long, throaty groans of encouragement.

“Yes, Guin…Gods, you feel so wonderful! I’m going to burst from being so full of you!” The heat of her words was punctuated by the sharp and sudden arching of her back and she spun off into a savage little orgasm.

“Oh, f**k me,” Guin gasped wildly as he felt her lock down tight around him, squeezing him in ripples and wet clutches. He was barely two-thirds of the way inside her but it made no difference to him as his groin burned with the answering urge to join his mate. Damn her anyway for being so perfect in every damn way! And damn him for wanting her so badly he couldn’t control himself for two seconds at a time.

Somehow Guin managed to ride her out, but he was light-headed from the effort by the time she suddenly relaxed around him in her repletion. The moment he felt that, he shoved himself in as deep as he dared, unable to help himself from watching the full connection as it happened at long, long last. The sweet dark pink of her pu**y surrounded his much darker and heavily engorged penis, and it was a lot like magic to see the two meshing together despite such exotic differences. As he drew free, shining and slick with her freshly wetted juices, he made a sound of triumphant bliss. He heard a soft, sated laugh and looked up at her.

“Can’t I take delight in you?” he demanded with a grin.

“You are delighted to be conquering me, my fine warrior. You’ll make me come until I can’t speak my own name or identify my twin. Only that will satisfy you.”

“That will satisfy you,” he countered as he thrust firmly and deeply forward. She cried out and he checked her quickly for any signs of pain, but he saw only intensity of enjoyment and it made him grin with self-satisfied feeling. “My goal for many years has been to see you ultimately happy. If I’d known how easy it would be, I might have tried this sooner.”