On The Prowl Page 0,114

my inner sheath and my oral sheath – then pushed with slow, insistent deliberation back within me, stretching me, filling me abundantly simultaneously above and below. I mewed, sucked on his tongue, and echoed the action by tightening around him below, within.

His stomach muscles ridged so hard they felt like stone slabs against me, and he made a desperate sound against my lips as he ground himself even deeper inside me. Pulled out. Then another slow, deliberate, stretching push back into my tightness that had us both groaning, trembling. With the third stroke, it was as if the magical threshold of my body had suddenly been reached. It finally eased its almost unbearable tightness, loosened, became more receptive. And like a leash suddenly let go, Amber began a fast, almost furious rhythm, pistoning, pouring himself into me, his tongue stabbing me above as he stabbed me, pounded me, below. And I welcomed him, clung to him, wrapped my tongue and lips and body around him, and asked him for more with arcing body, sucking cheeks, hungry cries. As hungry to hold him, absorb him, become one with him, as he was to pour himself into me.

Our passion, our pleasure, lowered the barriers of our flesh. Called forth the lunar lightness that dwelt within us, so that our glow illuminated our skin and filled the night with building incandescence, growing brighter and brighter as I wound tighter and tighter. Until I finally crested and burst. And it was like the world trembled with my release. His climax followed a heartbeat after mine. Light streamed from us in almost bursting luminosity. Then faded gently away until darkness once more cloaked the night.

Chapter 2

I dreamed of flying, of floating in the air above, and the sweet scent of dead flesh below me, and woke up gasping, alone in my bed. Amber had left before dawn, gone back to his men, his people, safe and unaware of where I would travel that day. To High Court, the ruling seat of our people on this continent, set high and remote in the northern reaches of Minnesota, bordering Canada. They'd summoned me for questioning on Mona Louisa's death, the former Queen who'd ruled my Louisiana territory. The bitch who'd ripped Gryphon's heart out, literally, from his chest, killing him and a part of me. I'd killed her in return, although it was not truly I who killed her finally, though I'd done my best to. It had been Blaec, the High Lord of Hell.

The Council had waited for me. They'd had to, while I roamed the forest in my tiger form, in my separate tiger mind, until the day my human thoughts and feelings had finally filtered into my other self, and I could know and control that animal part of me, and realize that time had indeed eased my grief until it had become bearable.

A Queen had been killed – so had a Warrior Lord, but that was of secondary concern, I learned to my fury – and questions needed to be answered. I was going now to answer them. Up to a point.

The plane landed and we disembarked, Dontaine, Tomas, and I. I'd left all the others behind, those who needed protecting, the youngest among us – Jamie, Tersa, my brother, Thaddeus... him, especially, I did not want there – and the others to protect them... my ex-outlaw rogue, Aquila, and Chami, my deadly assassin. Left behind deliberately, also, was what remained of my heart – Amber, a powerful Warrior Lord, but even more vulnerable than the children. Queens feared him. Feared his bigness, his power, and the legacy his infamous father had left behind – Sandoor, who had raped his Queen and then faked both their deaths. San door, who had inconveniently returned to life and heaped even greater infamy upon himself when he had been discovered to have kept that Queen captive for over a decade, a Queen whom he'd had service his needs and that of his band of rogues. He was truly dead and gone now, killed by my hand. But his son was still paying for the father's sins. Amber would be looked upon with suspicion forever by other Queens, watched carefully by the High Court to see that he, too, did not turn rogue. Turn upon his Queen.

"Two men are not adequate enough to protect you," Dontaine repeated now, as he had many times before during the flight.

My answer remained unchanged as we disembarked and walked to a