me, and yet if I came to you, burning with mating heat, if I bent you belly down in submission and attempted to rut you, you would cry and beg me for your release.”
Cha’lii’s eyes widened, and he felt a curl of satisfaction mixed with remorse. He had proven himself right, but he hated himself for it allowing the lie between them.
“I think you’re mistaken,” she challenged. “There was nothing sexual about that gesture. But believe me, if you did everything you just promised, I would cry and beg for release, but it wouldn’t be from fear or because I don’t want your hands on my body.”
Disbelief boiled in Rhyst’s belly. Of course she would say that to taunt him.
His lower hands slipped beneath her buttocks, lifting her high against him, pinning her hips between his swollen sheath and the wall. Her gasp that escaped her was reedy as he nudged the sheath against the hot, wet center that he burned for. He slammed his upper hands against the wall as he ground against her, head dropping forward to whisper into her ear, claws scratching furrows into the stone wall. He felt his glands just behind his jaw swell with his mating venom as he pressed into her. His eyes glinted down at her, his orb recording her escalating heat and pheromones as her arousal filled his nose with its rich, sweet scent.
Dropping his mouth, he dragged his lips against the column of her throat, his glands almost painful as he teased them both with the touch.
“I would rut you, Cha’lii, and if that happened, you would never escape me. I would pin you beneath me, holding you as I drove deep within you, unleashing my seed. I would mark you and chain you to me. You would be mine, and caught in the heat, I would rut you without restraint, brutally. There would be no softness from me. I would claim your hot cunt and would not be able to tear our bodies away from the mating heat for two full days, or more, until we are entirely spent. You tease me,” he bit out in a hard whisper against her neck, “because this is not something that any civilized female would want.”
He dropped her then and moved away, his burning eyes still tracing over her as he made room between them, his lungs laboring to draw in breath around the heat that burned through his veins, consuming him.
“Don’t tell me what I do and do not want,” Cha’lii snapped. “How would you even know?”
“Because I am not a fool!” he roared.
Spinning around, his tail lashed out behind him as he paced into his room and dug out a basket from the storage compartment. He returned to her with it, his anger and lust burning through him, making him hard and spiteful. It brought back every cruelty, every whisper, every taunt.
For whatever reason, Cha’lii was pretending to be amenable toward it, but he knew she would not truly want it. And while she still had choices, he could not take them away from her. If he claimed her and she left or was taken away from him, he knew that he would fall into such despair that there would be little that any of his brethren would be able to do to help him. He would be ruined as an a’sankh the moment he lost her.
If he were honest with himself, it was probably already too late for that.
Casting the basket at her feet, he snarled and stalked back to his room and dropped on his bed. His cock burned with need, and his glands ached with unspent mating venom. He lay there, panting in misery, without rest or reprieve, until the late hours descended and exhaustion took him.
As sleep claimed him, he grieved for the female’s absence from his side. When had he become so attached to having her with him that he couldn’t even bear to lie alone with the corridor separating them? It did not bode well for when she would finally be taken from him.
Chapter 27
Charlie bit her lip as she put away the last of her things. Last night, after the way everything had gone down in flames, she hadn’t been able to summon the energy to deal with anything more than dropping her packages into the large basket and shoving it to the side. She didn’t understand how everything had suddenly gone so wrong. It wasn’t like she didn’t know exactly what he