It didn't work.

His eyes snapped open just as Ashaya leaned closer and ran a single wondering finger down his aching cock. He came.

Ashaya had never considered pleasure before meeting Dorian. Even then, she'd considered it as something predictable in a general sense. When he touched her, she felt pleasure. That was the equation. Contact = pleasure. She'd never once thought that watching him lose control would birth a pleasure so deep and rich, it would eclipse everything that had come before.

His eyes opened after several long seconds. "That wasn't exactly what I had in mind."

She was startled to see a hint of embarrassment in the vibrant blue. "Dorian," she said, not bothering to hide the depth of want clawing at her, "that was the most erotic experience of my entire life."

Sensual charm curved his lips, wicked and teasing. "Give me a few minutes and I'll give you something to compare it to. You're so damn pretty, Shaya."

"A few minutes?" Feeling suddenly shy, she crossed her arms over her chest. The smile on his face widened, becoming touched with the feral wildness of the cat. It made thinking difficult. "I believed males needed a longer recovery time to mate."

"Not this kitty cat." Rising to his feet, he said, "Get ready to play."

She found her body straining after him as he disappeared down the corridor she assumed led to the bathroom. When he returned, he was completely naked. She heard a sound of incredible yearning fill the air, and was shocked to find it had come from her. Dorian's body went utterly motionless. A second later, he moved with such speed that she gasped to find him in front of her, pulling her arms apart.

"Let me see," he said, exerting gentle pressure.

She didn't fight him. "There's a hunger," she whispered, scared at the depth of that need, at what it demanded from her. "It's almost painful."

He didn't tell her to stop analyzing their interaction, didn't accuse her of not acting like a normal woman, both fears she'd harbored. Instead, he smiled and said, "Show me where."

When he let go of her arms, she spread the palm of her right hand over her navel, partly touching skin, partly the material of her cargos.

"There?" Brushing aside her hand, he replaced it with his own. She looked down, mesmerized at the erotic contrast. His hand was thickly masculine in comparison to her own, the hairs on the backs of his arms shimmering with light, his fingers marked with faded scars. He was beautiful to her. But when he looked at her, she saw a startling truth - she was beautiful to him, too.

"Yes," she whispered, and it was a permission not an answer.

He took her at her word, this man with a wounded soul and the heart of a leopard, a man so complex that she knew he'd be a puzzle she could explore the rest of her life, if she only had the chance. She sucked in a breath as he changed the direction of his hand, arrowing his fingers down under her waistband and inside her panties in a firm move.

Sensation exploded behind her eyelids. She felt her knees collapse, her body begin to quake with pleasure so extreme, it caused blackness to slide over her eyes. She should've been terrified. Except it felt too good to fight. So she surrendered.

There was no time for worry. Or fear. Only pleasure.

When the darkness receded, she found herself lying on the bed, still half-dressed... and being watched by human eyes that held a very feline satisfaction. "I said slow."

He smiled. "Oops."

Charm.

This leopard lying next to her had a whole arsenal of it. According to what she'd been taught during her passage through the Silence Protocol, charm had both negative and positive aspects. Some used it as a weapon, others as a tool. But, she realized as she lay there limp from pleasure, all that changed if trust was involved. Then, it became a caress, a stroke, a kiss. "When we first met, I would've never predicted you could be this way."

He circled her belly button with a finger. "When we first met, I was a mean bastard."

"I don't think that's changed."

He paused his playful touching. "Oh?"

"I've just earned a free pass through the meanness."

That made him relax, a husky chuckle her answer as he shifted position to brace himself over her. His kiss was deceptively lazy this time, a slow tasting that made her sigh. When he kissed his way down her neck and to the valley between her breasts, she thrust her hands into his hair and held on.

The scrape of his shadowed jaw was rough against the tender skin of her breast. She sucked in a breath. He murmured an apology, licking his tongue over the sensual hurt until she could barely bear it. There was so much more to this sexual dance than she'd ever imagined. So much more to the man she'd called the sniper.

"Thinking again?" he murmured, pressing his lips to her navel.

She looked down to meet his heavy-lidded gaze. "About you." In her hands, his hair was soft, sleek. "I know my Silence was broken, but I was brought up in an environment where control was everything. I thought it would be harder to give in this much." To trust this much - until both body and mind were so in sync, she couldn't imagine being any other way.

"Come on then, sugar. Give in to me some more." His lashes swept over her skin as he laid his forehead against her and pressed another kiss to her navel. When he rose, it was to his knees. Unsnapping the tab, he gripped the zipper of her cargos. "Down." He suited word to action.

It felt as if he was touching each newly exposed inch of flesh, his eyes were so intent. She discovered that she was holding her breath, released it in a slow exhalation as he got the pants off and threw them over the side of the bed, leaving her dressed in one last piece of clothing. Her panties were plain black, certainly nothing like the delicate, lacy garments she'd seen displayed in the windows of human and changeling boutiques.

But Dorian didn't seem to mind. "You're damp." He ran a finger over that dampness, making her bite back a cry. Then he did it again. And again. It sent twisting tendrils of sensation straight through her. But... it wasn't enough.

"I feel... alone." She needed something, something important. It felt as if she should be able to see it on the psychic plane, but the ephemeral something kept slipping out of her grasp. "Dorian?" It was almost a sob.

"I've got you." One smooth movement and the panties were gone. "Christ, you're beautiful." A harsh male exclamation and then he was spreading her thighs, whispering for her to wrap them around him. She did, able to feel him nudging at her, hot, hard, rawly male.

She cried out into his kiss as he began to enter her, stretching muscles that had never known such use. There was no pain, only the most exquisite kind of ache, as if her body had been made for this man, for this moment. The emptiness faded from inside her, overwhelmed by the amount of sheer sensation her mind was attempting to process. A part of her, a tiny hidden part, knew that something remained missing, but then Dorian bit her lightly on the shoulder and the thought fragmented.

"Biting is okay?" she gasped, adjusting to the blazing heat of him inside her.

He kissed his way up her neck, over her cheek, back to her lips. "Hell, yeah." One male hand slid under her to cup her bottom, angling her for a deeper penetration.

Arching upward, she dared to use her teeth on the powerful cords of his neck. He hissed out a breath, squeezing her bottom. "More."

No longer capable of rational thought, she dug her nails into his back and scratched hard. It made him growl and tug her head back for a firestorm of a kiss.

"Open."

She bit his lower lip instead.

Snarling, he held her in place as he tangled his tongue with hers. She wrapped her body around him, giving back as good as she got.

Then Dorian began to move.

Slow.

"Faster," she said, tearing her lips away from the seduction of his mouth.

Male heat in those bright blue eyes. "No." He drew out inch by torturous inch... then pushed back in the same way. It was like the first time all over again, her muscles stretching, her body quivering with a thousand tiny quakes.

"Dorian."

Teeth nipping over her lips, releasing. "You wanted slow."

Her hands slipped over his sweat-slick body as she tried to urge him to increase the pace. It was impossible. He was pure lithe muscle to her soft female form. "Now I want fast."

"No." Another smile, another slow withdrawal and reentry. "I want to play."

Chapter 37

Play.

Yes, she thought through the erotic haze of sexual need, a cat would want to play. "What game?"

"I'll go faster if you can talk me into it."

She wasn't even sure she could put together a coherent sentence at this stage. In desperation, she squeezed her internal muscles. It made him shudder and drop his head. "Do that again." A demand that held hints of the predator he was, the dominant sentinel used to command.

"Go faster first." Ashaya scratched him again, having realized his skin could take it, and not only that, that he liked it.

A low growl that shouldn't have been able to come from a human throat. He tore her hands off his body, pinning them on either side of her head. "Messing with a leopard, sugar? Not smart."

She tightened her muscles again, and saw his face suffuse with pleasure. It made her stomach clench, along with other, lower things. Her curiosity, always her biggest asset in the lab, was now fixed on Dorian. She wanted to explore his body in every way she could. Then she wanted to do it again in a thousand different positions. She wanted to make this cat purr.

"I can read your thoughts," he said, eyes gleaming.

"Can you?" She moaned as he continued those oh-so-slow movements of his.

He bit her shoulder again, harder this time. She felt her body coat his with another layer of hot dampness even as lights started sparking behind her eyes. "Let go," he said in a voice touched with a rough tenderness that undid her. "I'll hold you safe."

Yes, he would, she thought. So she rode the wave of pleasure, let him ride her through it, and when the next wave crested, she buried her face in his neck, licking at the salt of his skin.