Ask For It by Gail Faulkner Read Free Book Online

Tor leaned over, shielding her as debris showered down on them.
     
    Nose to nose, his eyes finally focused on the tilted windows to her soul. His body seated deep in hers, he could feel every pant she took as she watched him. Tor realized the openness, the trust they had shared with no restraint was fading from her face.
     
    “No,” he whispered. “You will not leave me now.”
     
    Claws retracted as he pulled back to sit on his heels, drawing her up with him. Unwilling to separate their bodies, he was ready to fight for her mind. She was his. His woman. She stripped away everything about him, right down to the basic male. He could not live with the possibility of her crawling back into her distant persona.
     
    “I can’t stay here,” she whispered. “My soul is naked. I’m afraid.”
     
    His eyes narrowed. “Of what? I will not let you go, little flower. I need this woman, not the distant ice princess,” he responded in a quiet growl.
     
    Sahara drew in a shaky breath as she gazed up at his fierce eyes. “Will I be safe with you? I have to know. I wasn’t last time and I can’t live through it again. Not after this, not now.”
     
    Tor’s muzzle drew up over incisors for a second. Anger at time lost would do them no good. “Do not mistake the history we share for what the future will be. I had no idea what you really are. You blinded me and I didn’t connect the fragments of information. It never occurred to me that your kind exists outside of legend, much less in my arms.”
     
    Sahara’s eyes fell away from his gaze. He was holding her naked, impaled on his cock and she still found a way to hide from him. They were way past that point and she was going to get over the habit right now.
     
    He cupped her neck, his thumb turning her face back to his. “No more hiding. We are a male and his mate. You know this. If I were not your mate, you would have conceived with Signet. But you couldn’t, could you? You have to go through heat before you can conceive,” Tor stated harshly.
     
    “I realize this. What happens now?”
     
    Tor clamped down on the roar of frustration her evasive answer drew from him and focused on the last half of her statement. Suspicion and surprise overtook the frustration.
     
    “You don’t know the mating habits of your species?” he asked incredulously.
     
    “What am I?” she questioned cautiously, avoiding his question.
     
    “Are you testing me?” Tor wanted to know. He was not going to be patient forever with her practiced double talk.
     
    “Yes and no.” Sahara tried to shrug. “It’s a subject I’ve been trained from birth to never discuss.”
     
    “It’s okay, baby. This is your home planet. We have a great many legends about you, but I wasn’t aware they are based in truth until about an hour ago.” He was concerned as he thought about the danger his woman had lived with all her life. “That’s why you helped us escape the moon. You needed to escape too.”
     
    “I’ve spent my life hiding, running, mostly alone. There are way too many things I don’t know about my kind. Like the loss of control that happened when you touched me. And now, why has it stopped? I don’t hear anyone outside the door.”
     
    Tor ran the back of his knuckle across her cheek, removing a smudge of dirt. “What happened was,” he had to pause as he translated an old legend into relevant information in his head, “your kind’s response to her chosen mate. It will happen to some degree every time we get together.”
     
    “You think people will attack us all the time?” Sahara gasped. “I thought it would pass.”
     
    “Males within range of your scent will always feel the urge to fuck. They’d like to fuck you, but they will settle for someone else when I make it sufficiently clear that even touching you will result in death at my hands. At least that is how Leonor males react. I suspect our pheromone, that’s so toxic to you, was originally developed in