Fleance caught her face with one hand and turned her to look at him. *You’re still you,* he sent to her, and the mate bond hummed with concern. *As long as we have this.*
Of course. She must still be wooly-headed, to forget that. The cold retreated as he kissed her and this time, she couldn’t quite manage to pull away as she tugged at his jeans. The button was stiff and she almost growled against his lips as she tried to free it. As soon as it was loose Fleance shucked his jeans off and kicked them over the side of the bed. His hands were busy, stroking along her thighs and veering dangerously close to shorting out Sheena’s senses entirely.
She ran her fingers under the elastic of his boxers, and he groaned. He rocked on top of her, his hips bucking as he swore under his breath, but he didn’t tell her to hurry up or slow down or any of the things she could feel teetering at the edge of their connection. The hard ridge of his erection pressed against her. She could feel exactly how big he was, but her eyes still widened when she pulled his boxers off.
Whatever Fleance picked up via the mate bond made him growl and pull her close.
“Mate bond or not,” he growled. “You’re mine. I won’t let anyone take you from me.”
His breath was hot against her neck. When he kissed her, her whole body thrilled. She wanted to slow down, she wanted to speed up—she wanted everything, all at once.
“Oh…” She trailed one finger down his chest, from his collarbone to the deep v of his hip and stopped at what she hoped was an infuriatingly short distance from his cock. He moaned and sank closer against her and she relented, wrapping her fingers around his thick length. Heat pulsed between her legs.
She tipped his head back up, one finger under his chin. “Your turn.”
His eyes went black with desire. “Does this mean you’re done looking?”
Sheena bit her lip. “Yes?”
He pulled at her robe, unfastening the belt, peeling the fluffy fabric away inch by inch. “Then it’s my turn.”
This would normally be the time she got a horrible sense of self-doubt. The timing was right, and the background—she should have been writhing with embarrassment that she wouldn’t live up to whatever expectations of lissome womanliness he had in his head. But she was strangely, unbelievably confident. She didn’t even have a slight sense of foreboding, like she was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
She told herself it was because Fleance had already seen her naked, but that wasn’t it. There hadn’t been anything sexual about that.
Maybe it was something to do with the intense concentration on Fleance’s face. He made her feel so special that there was no way she could disappoint him. Or—
*Sheena.* Fleance’s voice brushed against her mind like a particularly amused breeze. *Whatever you’re thinking about, stop.*
“What?”
He touched the space between her eyebrows and she realized she was frowning. She relaxed and—oh, God, at last, something normal—blushed.
“All right,” she said, tripping over her words a bit, “I’ll stop thinking about how amazing you are, then.”
“Was that what you were thinking about, before you got distracted?”
Her blush deepened. “How do you know I was distracted?”
He didn’t reply out loud, but the mate bond hummed as though someone had plucked it.
Oh, hell. This was it. The other shoe. She’d been so busy congratulating herself for not being a total dickhead that she’d fallen right into the trap of her own brain.
She had raised herself up so he could slip the robe off her shoulders; now she sank down, as quickly as her stomach was dropping.
“I really am sorry,” she said, “And—I wasn’t joking because I’m not taking this seriously, I was—”
She hoped he could feel the truth of that, through the mate bond. Oh, bloody hell. What else could he feel through the mate bond? If he knew how much of a fuckup she really was…
“Stop,” he said again, and kissed her. That, finally, made her brain derail. However briefly, she thought, and Fleance made a noise that might have been a choked laugh. “I can see I’ll have to do a better job of keeping you occupied,” he said. His voice was a low growl, full of promise.
“What do you—”
He pinned her wrists to the mattress. Excitement spiked at the base of her spine. She’d felt a burst of his hunger before, but this…
He’d been holding back. For her, because she’d told him she wanted to move slowly. And now she realized that wasn’t what she wanted at all.
She let go. Everything she’d been holding back, all the walls she’d built around herself. If this was the only chance they had to be each other’s mates then she wanted all of him.
Fleance’s pupils enlarged, until there was only a hint of sky blue around the edges of his eyes. Their darkness pulled Sheena, black fire that threatened to consume her. That she wanted to consume her.
He pulled her up and kissed her so passionately she lost all sense of where she was. Her head was still spinning when he moved down, hungrily laying kisses down her neck and across her breasts. He bit gently down on one nipple and she gasped. It hurt, but… good.
“Is that all right?” Fleance asked her, and she sure as hell hoped he saw her nod or felt her absolute yes telepathically, because she wasn’t up to talking right now. He must have, because the next thing she felt was his voice growling *Good* into her mind and his hands on her hips.
The calluses on his fingers grazed against the soft skin on her thighs and butt as he caressed her. She moaned as he slipped one finger between her legs and found her already wet. He teased her, adding another finger as he kissed her shoulder. The slightest scrape of his teeth on her skin made her shiver.
Sheena wanted to let
