It wasn’t that she didn’t love him.
It never had been.
She was a great, vast, wild power. He was her greatest vulnerability. And that terrified her beyond all reason. She was afraid of hurting him. She was afraid of hurting others. Most of all, she was afraid of what she might do if anything ever happened to him.
He must have been staring at her too intently, because her expression turned from mild shock to genuine concern. “Dilys, you’re starting to scare me now. What’s going on?”
“This,” he said, and he crushed her to him. His head swooped down to take her mouth in a raw, passionate kiss. Her initial startled gasp gave way to hesitant confusion, then melting warmth that changed quickly to growing heat as her passion rose to match his. He groaned into her mouth and gathered her close. His hands swept down her back. His fingers curled around her buttocks and pulled her tight against him. And when her arms twined like vines around his neck and she crushed her breasts against his chest, his heart nearly burst from pounding so hard.
Magic surged inside him, as immense and forceful as that rogue wave he’d blasted out into the sea. He’d already released so much of the power that she’d shared with him. First, with that initial, wild blast that created that enormous wave, and then the power he’d expended catching up to that wave and taming it. Yet despite all that he’d used, he was still so far from being drained he could scarcely believe it.
No wonder she’d spent her whole life terrified of unleashing the magic inside her. She didn’t merely hold a strong gift. She held all the energy of the sun, all the untamed wildness of the sea. Vast, unimaginable power. And when she’d shared her grief with him, poured that power into him along with all the fear and pain and longing of her wondrous, magnificent, deeply loving and passionate soul...
Numahao bless him.
He tore his mouth from hers to gasp her name on a ragged inhale, then buried his face in her throat, kissing, nibbling, biting the sweet, sweet, oh-so-silky skin of her neck, the shell of her ear, the tiny, sensitive spot behind that ear that made her cry out when he laved his tongue across it. Her fingers thrust into the coils of his hair and gripped his skull.
“Dilys... sweet Helos, Dilys...”
The sound of his name on that ragged, breathless gasp filled him with satisfaction and pride. That was his name on her lips. Him she called to give her what she needed. His kiss, his touch that drove her sweetly out of her mind with pleasure.
Soaring hope and steely determination flared within him in equal measure. This was right. They were right. He was exactly what she needed, and it was well past time for him to prove it to her once and for all.
Her skirts bunched around them as she wrapped her legs around his waist. He walked them blindly to his bed, kicking toppled books out of his path as he went. When he reached his bed, he lay her down upon the downy mattress and pulled back to look at the glorious beauty of her passion-flushed face. Her eyes had gone soft and hazy, her lips plump and red. Color stained the beautiful brown skin of her cheeks. And all her silky black hair lay fanned out around her head. She looked like a mermaid lazing in a warm tidal pool, all soft and dreamy and utterly inviting.
His claws sprang from his fingertips. He dragged them down the front of her gown, slicing the fabric from neck to navel, baring the dark perfection of the beautiful skin beneath. So smooth. So silky.
He slid his hands inside the torn edges of the gown, laid his palms against her flat, warm belly and slid them up, parting the shredded gown as he went until she lay bare before him.
There was hesitance in her beautiful eyes. Worry. Shame. A little fear. The Shark had befouled her with his disgusting touch, reveling in taking intimacies that only a trusted lover should ever have claimed. He’d left no inch of her skin untouched, no part of her free of his taint. He’d made foul what should only ever be beautiful.
That could not be allowed to stand.
Dipping his head down, Dilys set out to replace every awful, humiliating, degrading memory with something new, something joyous. Her lovely breasts with their dark, taut peaks rose and fell with each shallow, panting breath, and he caressed them first with his hot, hungry gaze, then with his hands, and finally with his lips and his teeth and his tongue until her back arched up to offer him her sweet flesh.
Bit by bit, inch by inch, he laved every morsel of her flesh with loving caresses, adoration, devoted care, wiping out even the smallest echo of a memory of what the Shark had done to her. And with each stroke of his fingers, every sensual, dragging lave of his lips, his tongue, he gave her back a hot, tingling flare of the magic she had given him. She clutched his shoulders, her nails digging deep, and his name fell from her lips with breathless urgency.
“Dilys!” She squirmed against him, her hips rocking against the hard length of his sex in blatant demand. “Come into me now. I need you inside me.”
There was Compulsion in her voice. He had ripped her gown down to the hem and sliced through the folds of his linengudobefore he managed to shake off the Command he wasn’t yet ready to obey.
“Don’t speak,” he growled. He rose up to kiss her again, deeply and thoroughly, while one palm rubbed the sweet, softly-furred mound of her sex until her parted legs began to tremble with the first of what he intended to be many orgasms.
“Dilys!” She clutched at his hips, trying to drag him closer. “I need you n—” Her voice broke off and her eyes flew open, wide with sudden fear, as he clamped a hand over her lips. They had gagged her. They had Silenced her Voice. He eased his grip, but didn’t remove his hand. He would take that memory and remake it as well.
“No,” he told her. “This is me, and you know I will never hurt you, and I will never take what you do not give. This”—he tapped his fingers against her lips—“is just a reminder,moa kiri.I want to give you what you need in my own way, at my own pace, without you Commanding me to rush when I want to go slow. I promise, you will enjoy it. Will you do that for me?”
Eyes wide over his silencing hand, she nodded slowly.
“Good girl.” To reward her, he replaced his hand with his mouth, and while kissing her deeply, pressed a thumb to her clitoris and pulsed a throb of hot magic through his hand. Her eyes went even wider, and her body arched as if electrified, shaking furiously as the next orgasm crashed over her. Her teeth clenched tight as her muffled scream of pleasure tore from her throat.
He kissed his way down her body again, giving every inch of her body the same, agonizingly thorough attention, pulsing hot, tingling flashes of magic as he went. For the next hour, he tormented her with slow, languorous pleasure, working his way down to her toes and back up, then turning her over to do the same again. She cried out again and again, and her nails ripped him bloody more than once. But even when she was sobbing and crying and pleading for release, she didn’t Command him to hurry.
That deserved another reward. He drew her up on her hands and knees and kissed every inch of her sweetly rounded buttocks while one hand teased her dangling breasts and the other drove first one finger, then two, then three inside her quaking body, sending pulse after pulse of energy through his fingertips with each thrust until she shrieked in mindless pleasure and collapsed into shuddering unconsciousness on the bed.
As she began to rouse, he at last brought his mouth to her core. Her flesh was steaming, the soft black curls and delicate folds drenched with honeyed moisture. He waited for her eyes to flutter open. Her head lifted slightly, then fell back as if the effort was too much.
“Dilys,” she moaned, “please. No more.” Her voice was hoarse from her cries, and the low, husky rasp tightened everything inside him.
