The Rebel King

tomorrow.

He dropped Rhia off in the courtyard near the kitchen door, then returned the scooter to the garage. When he came back to the house he found her standing in the hallway, looking uncharacteristically uncertain. She watched him as he came to her, and her eyes followed his as he cupped her cheek in his hand and tenderly asked. 'So…is it still yes?'

She smiled then, her lashes dropping across her eyes with what might have been relief, and huskily replied as she swayed into him. 'Against every ounce of good sense and judgment…it's still yes. I guess I'm my mother's daughter after all.'

A fierce little jet of protective anger spurted through him and hardened his voice. 'You may well be, but I'm bloody well sure I'm not like your father.'

Her lips parted with an almost inaudible gasp, and he caught whatever response she might have made with his own mouth. He kissed her without restraint, knowing there was no reason now to hold anything back, and found that he was hungrier for her than he'd thought, hungrier than he'd thought he could be. His need for her was a fist in his belly, a burning weight in his loins, and something else the exact location and nature of which were far less easy to define. He knew he'd never felt its like before with any woman. It emptied his head of all coherent thought and filled him instead with feelings too vast and complex to articulate, so that when he lifted his mouth from hers at last he could only gasp and hold her close to him, like a dazed shipwreck survivor finding a raft to cling to.

So it was left to her to mumble, her words a moist warmth on his throat, 'My place or yours?'

Cobbling his scrambled wits together, he gave a shaken laugh. 'Well, since technically yours belongs to Phillipe's maman, I think I'd prefer mine, if that's all right with you.'

She tipped her head back, searching for his mouth, and managed to get as far as. 'Fine with-' before he gave her what they both wanted.

He never did know quite how they got from there to his bedroom, or how long the journey took. It might have been seconds or uncounted hours. He remembered shutting the door at last, closing them into the quiet embracing darkness of his bedroom, and after that his only reality was the woman in his arms, the taste of her mouth, the shape of her breasts pillowed against his chest, the firm round weight of her buttocks in his hands…her hands pushing under his shirt, their warm thrusts impatient on his skin…yet no more impatient than he was for her touch.

He'd never felt such a hunger, such impatience before. Lovemaking, liaisons, sex…had always been simple for him. A lighthearted-sometimes intense-experience, no more complicated than the enjoyment of a good meal or a fine wine, indulged in whenever he'd felt the need of relief from the pressures and demands of school, work, the cause. One or two had been…memorable; none had ever consumed him. None had ever obliterated thought, overridden judgment. None had made him consider, even for a moment, shirking his duty to his country or abandoning the task he'd set for himself of releasing Silvershire from the burden of medieval monarchy and guiding her kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century.

But he wasn't thinking of any of that now. What was he thinking? He wasn't thinking. He only wanted…felt…needed.

With greedy hands he pulled her against him, and was shocked to discover that at some point he-or she-had divested her of her clothes-most of them, all but the thin scrap of nylon that still stood as a barrier to her most vulnerable and guarded places. Her nakedness in his arms was both a delight and a torment, his need to bury himself in her like a vast and terrible thirst.

And yet, though his skin felt feverish and his clothing an intolerable abrasion, though pulses hammered in every part of his body, he felt himself holding back. Why?

It stunned him to realize that it was she who was the brakes on his runaway passion-her need, her desire, her vulnerability. He understood that he wanted the same things for her that he wanted-needed-for himself, and he wanted to be the one to give them to her. Wanted to watch her face light with joy and her eyes grow hazy with sated passion, her lips curve with a smile of feminine mystery.

This, too, was something new-not that he cared for his partner's pleasure; he'd always made that a priority, and available evidence suggested he'd done it rather well. But this was different-he wasn't sure how. exactly, only that it was.

So he slowed himself down, even though there was urgency in his every heartbeat, and touched her with tenderness, even though his own skin felt on fire. He whispered to her passion words he didn't recognize and wouldn't remember, even though his own need was a screaming pressure behind his eyes. He held her gently from him while her clever hands stripped him naked and then traced patterns across his skin that left him all but blind and quivering like an infant.

It was then that he laid them both down. He ran his hands over her powder-soft skin, dipped them under the lacy edges of the last nylon barrier and pushed it away, and her gasp when his exploring fingers found her warm, protected places made him swell with a fierce masculine triumph, and at the same time, something like…awe.

He regretted, then, that he hadn't turned on the lights so he could see her, too. Regretted, but only a little. His senses were already on overload with the taste, the smell, the feel of her; adding sight to the feast would have been gluttony.

Besides, he already knew she was beautiful-though at the moment, strangely, that didn't seem important to him at all.

Sound, too, was muted, limited to breath sounds and sighs, and those passion-whispers that aren't really words. Both of them were lost in the wonder of discovery like small children on Christmas morning.

The rhythmic push of her body against his hand…the sweet, soft powder-scent of her breast, the bud-like tip blossoming in the warmth of his mouth…her quick lifting breaths, the momentary stopping of them when his fingers found her hidden depths…it all seemed new to him somehow. Her body in his arms, sleek and lithe as an otter's, her hands weaving pleasure-spells over his skin, her lips murmuring love words she probably didn't realize she was saying…it all seemed like a miracle to him. and at the same time as natural as the sounds of the river miming along its bed.

It felt natural, too, when passion had obliterated thought, when murmurs had become whimpers of desperate demand, that he should bring her to him, drape her over him so that her long, supple body covered his from chest to toes. Natural that her legs should move apart and her knees come up to straddle him, and her hair slip forward and fall around his face and hers like a curtain…natural as the rain falling.

He felt her body shaking as she lifted her head to look down at him in the darkness. 'You really did mean it, didn't you?' She leaned down to him again, but it was her forehead that touched his lips and it was then he realized with a surge of dazed delight that she was laughing. Laughing in the broken, breathless way of someone overwhelmed. 'About me being on top…'

'Always…' His tongue could barely form words. They were whispers, mere puffs of air. 'You have the power… but I think…if you don't plan to let me inside you now…you should just kill me at once…put me out of my misery.'

He heard her breath catch…felt her body shift…her hand gently encircle him…the first exquisite giving of her tenderest places. He gasped when he felt resistance. 'Rhia-luv- are you-' But she silenced him with a quick, breathless kiss, and slowly, slowly her warm body accepted…adjusted…enfolded…welcomed him.

She drew a shuddering breath and whispered. 'Are you still in misery?'

His hands held her hips as he set himself more deeply inside her, and his silent laughter jolted him…and her. 'Misery? No…but did you kill me after all? Because I think…this must be Paradise.'

Her shaken laughter joined his and then was extinguished in their merging mouths…in hungry, questing, greedy, heedless kisses. His arms encircled her. brought her down to him. held her as close to him as he dared-and then, almost before he knew what she was doing, she was leaning back, bringing him with her so that they were both sitting upright, still holding each other, still together, still entwined. She wrapped her legs around him and he felt himself nested deep inside her, as deep as he could possibly go. And he felt her mouth blossom into a smile.

'Now…neither one of us is on top,' she murmured, teasing his moistened lips with the words. 'That's the best way, isn't it?'

'The best way possible.' he agreed, and bringing one hand up to cradle her head, brought her mouth deeply to his again.

She began to move then, a smooth undulation of spine and muscles, a sensuous rocking that stroked every part