“So…” She cleared her throat. “That is what I came here to say.”

Dearest Virgin Scribe, was this it between them?

“How long?” he asked roughly.

“I’m sorry?”

“How long do you have? Until the next … whatever it is. When was the last one?”

Two weeks … or actually thirteen days. “A month ago. Maybe longer.”

His shoulders eased up. “I meant to ask that before.”

Again he went quiet.

“Trez, I really am sorry—”

“There’s nothing to apologize for. You’re just where you’re at. I’m not offended, and I’m not going to try to change your mind about how you feel.”

“You seem offended.”

“I’m not.”

“Trez—”

“How are you doing?”

“Fine,” she snapped. And then reeled in her temper. “I’m sorry. I just … it’s like you’re freezing me out.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re not talking to me.”

“Then why are my lips moving.”

“How is this happening again,” she muttered as she mirrored his pose, crossing her arms over her own chest. “I just want things to be … normal between us.”

“They are.”

“Bullshit! You’re standing over there like a statue—that’s my job, okay? I’m the one who’s supposed to be frozen. Why can’t you be real, and tell me to screw off, or that I was a bitch, or—”

“You want me to be honest?”

“Yes! Damn it.” God, she was sounding less and less like a Chosen. Cursing, using vernacular. Then again, she was feeling less and less like a Chosen. “Hello? You going to say something?”

“You sure?”

“For the love … look, do you just want me to go—”

“No. I want you on your back, in my bed, with your legs spread and my mouth all over you.”

Selena stopped talking. Breathing. Thinking.

He cocked an eyebrow. “That honest enough for you? Or do you want me to go back to pretending I’m not thinking about sex right now. With you.”

Okay, now she was the one being quiet. And he laughed harshly.

“Not what you had in mind, huh. I don’t blame you.” He turned the knob on the door and opened things up, repeating his “after you” gesture. “If you want to keep talking now, I suggest that you let me get dressed and meet up with you on neutral territory.”

Selena looked down at his hips. She had known his body fully only once, when he had taken her virginity, and she was well aware that he was phearsom.

Was he hard now?

“Selena?” A flash of annoyance tightened his face. “Let me meet you downstairs. In the kitchen.”

Without conscious thought, she brought her aching hands to the tie on her robe.

His eyes instantly tracked the movement.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

She pulled the knot free and let the length of silk fall loose. With every breath she took, the robe parted a little further, until a path of flesh running from her throat to her sex was exposed. Trez’s stare, that dark stare, dipped low, and all at once, the scent of him surged, filling the room with an erotic spice.

Selena eased the robe from her shoulders, letting the soft fabric drift to the floor. “Close the door, would you. I’d like some privacy.”

TWENTY-ONE

Trez’s cock had its own heartbeat. And that was before Selena went full-frontal at him. After that reveal? The damn thing had its own conscious thought pattern.

Mine.

When he heard the door shut, he wasn’t sure whether some hand of his had reclosed it, or whether he’d simply willed the thing back into place.

“You sure about this?” he growled, already taking a step toward her. “Because I won’t be able to stop.”

“Yes.” Her eyes did not rise to meet his. They stayed locked at his hips. “Oh, yes. Let me see you.”

As he came to stand right in front of her, he said, “What about all those humans I was with.”

“You’re going to bring them up now?” She took the tie to his own robe with one of her hands. “Really?”

He stopped her from getting him naked. “Nothing has changed about me.”

“That’s your hang-up, not mine.”

“In my tradition—”

“Which is not mine.”

“—I am contaminated.”

“Why are you still talking.”

With that, she shook his hold free and uncovered him, loosening the tie, pulling the folds of black fabric from his body. His sex was fully erect, jutting out between them.

And that was the next thing she put her hands on.

Trez groaned and let his head fall back on his spine.

“You’re hot,” she breathed as she leaned in and kissed the skin over his heart. “And hard.”

“Selena, I’m serious.” He fumbled to stop her before she got to stroking. “I want to honor you—”

“You’re wasting time.”

With that she got on her knees and took over. As she was a tall female, her mouth was at the perfect height, and God save them both, she put it to use, extending her pink tongue to lick at the head of him. The velvet rasp left him shaking all over, and before he went the way of the robes and hit the fucking floor, he leaned forward and braced both hands on the nearest thing he could reach.

The bureau. Or it could have been the hood of a car. Santa’s sleigh. A refrigerator.

Warm and wet, she drew him in, the suction and all the slick wiping out the world, bringing him instantly to the brink.

Gritting his teeth, he groaned, “I’m going to come—oh, fuck, I’m going to—”

He had some thought that he didn’t want to disrespect her by orgasming in her—

Selena eased back, opened her mouth, and extended that magic tongue. Looking up at him, she started to pump hard at the same time she lazily licked at his tip.

Trez lasted, oh, maybe a second and a half. And as his release kicked out of him, she took it all, swallowing, sucking, easing back so he could cover her lips and her face. God help her, he kept orgasming, an endless sexual urge locking onto his body as he marked her, his scent blanketing her in an ownership that was primordial.

Defend. Protect. Love.

All of it was in this sacred space.

Mine.

When he finally stilled, she sat back on her heels and then, with a series of kill-me-slow moves, she licked around her mouth. Brought up her fingers, captured the slick trail on her chin, and sucked things clean. Looked down at her perfect breasts.

Cupping the full weights, she smiled at what had dripped down, making the swells and those tight nipples of hers glisten. “You got me messy.”

“Where did you learn how to do that?” he choked out.

At least that was what he’d meant to say. The syllables came out a jumble of incoherent sound.

“What was that?” she whispered, before lifting one of her breasts up and bending her tongue down.

She lapped at herself.

The growl that came out of Trez’s mouth was something that, if he were her, he would have been afraid of.

Selena wasn’t. She just laughed throatily. “Is there something else you wish to mark?”

Freedom.

As Selena sat on her knees in front of Trez, with his taste in her mouth and his scent all over her skin, she reveled in the sense of sexual freedom that had overtaken her. The liberation seemed entirely at odds with the death sentence that she lived under, and yet her lack of time was what spared her any awkwardness or self-conscious worry. She was flying above the constraints that had long pinned her to the ground, her training as an ehros letting her soar on the currents of sex that ran, thick as tangible ropes, between their bodies.

With no idea how long she had, and under such frustration that she had wasted so much time, she was urgent in her personal expression, embracing any desires she had and acting on them.

All of which were with Trez.

And as if he were feeling the same, he leaned down and lifted her from the floor. Her joints protested at the change of position, but the complaints were nothing except murmurs against the roughshod lust she had for him.

She needed the penetration. By his body.

Trez took her over to the bed and laid her out on her stomach, his big, warm hands stroking her from shoulder blade to back of the thigh before lifting her up onto all fours and spreading her knees. Ducking her head, she wanted to see him—and she looked past the heavy, hanging swells of her breasts, watching him come up behind her, his sex bobbing as he moved into position to—

It was not his erection that brushed against her.

As his hands went to her hips, his thumbs dug into her butt and pulled away, until her sex split wider for him. And then he went in with his mouth, his lips finding her, stroking wet on wet, sucking, eating. With total domination, his tongue licked up and down, penetrated, flicked at the top of her sex until she jerked her way into an orgasm, each kick of pleasure pushing her into his face.