Siena’s legs had linked around his waist, and Elijah could feel the ready moisture and urgent heat of her body pressed low to his belly. He caught the heady, precious scent of her as he pulled her up even farther, his mouth trailing kisses and licks of his tongue down her breastbone to her quivering stomach. He was overwhelmed with pounding desires. His head was full of his need and hers. It was almost as though he could hear her begging for a certain touch from him, more pressure from his sucking mouth, the urge to feel him intimately between her grasping thighs.
It was too much to be borne, and Elijah was urgently in need of responding to it all. He swung her full around and surged through the water to put her on her back at the edge of the pool. She gasped at the coldness of the stone, then at the fire in the touch of his hands as he stroked them up the insides of her thighs, over her hips, waist, and breasts, and then just as boldly reversed his path.
Siena felt him grip her hip, sliding her toward him over the slick floor. Her heart beat violently with a combination of arousal and natural fear. She had never known such intimacies as she was experiencing in that moment. Indeed, she had spent a lifetime avoiding anything that would even remotely bring her thoughts to such a point, never mind her body. She had never expected to know this. She had never suspected it could be like this. His touch was wicked, purposeful, stroking over her flat stomach, her hips, through the soft, golden curls that had never, ever known the touch of a man.
He bent over her, a hand pressed to the stone to bear his weight slightly as his divine mouth drifted over her belly, licking a soft trail that echoed the one he’d left with his hand. Siena felt the silky invasion of skilled fingers, stroking, parting wet, feminine flesh that barely understood why it craved such a touch so very much. She heard him exhale harshly against her skin as he sought gently for…what, she could not guess in that numbing moment. Strangely, she imagined she knew his thoughts in that instant. He was astounded by her heat, wild about how easily his touch slid over her pliant, welcoming flesh. Siena released a throaty cry as his contact evoked yet another sensation unlike anything she had ever known before. It was strange and strong, deep and light, all these sensations at once. But above all else, it was pure pleasure.
For that single, astounding moment of nothing but completely overwhelming awareness, Siena understood that she wanted this powerful man with every fiber of her being. She wanted to feel the rock-hard press of his muscled body over hers, wanted to sculpt with her hands the stony sinew he had built on centuries of battlefields. Every instinct in her screamed for her to grasp for his hips, to guide him up to where she burned so badly for him. Her thighs ached to cradle him; her empty body ached for it even more. Though her body was far ahead of her, her mind at last comprehended what was happening. She was moments away from a mating that promised to be beyond anything she had ever imagined, and she knew she had never wanted anything more in all of her life.
That was the very same realization that, only a moment later, made her cry out with a sound of pure, unadulterated fear. Panic suddenly overwhelmed her, breaking through the haze she had been entangled in since Elijah had first seized her. The terror was virginal and primal, triggering every defensive instinct within her. Before Siena could comprehend it for herself, she was suddenly shape-shifting into the catamount. She screamed out with her misery and her pain, starting out with the sound of a tormented woman, ending with the wail of a frightened cougar.
The warrior Demon suddenly found himself touching smooth fur and leaning into the center of wicked, flailing claws. Elijah leapt away from the sudden feel of feline sinew, his shock erupting in a vocalized announcement just as loud as hers as he suddenly realized what had happened. He fell back into the frigid water as he lost his balance, but reemerged quickly, shaking water back from his hair with a single, sharp motion of his head and hands.
The gold cat scrabbled to gain its feet, claws skittering madly over the smooth stone surface as it bolted into a dark corner of the cavern, leaving white scrape marks in her wake. Elijah could see her cowering, hunched over, clearly terrified out of her senses. The magnificent creature shook with such violence of fear that he could not even distinguish the blur of her whiskers.
He braced his hands on the stone floor, bowing his head as he drew in deep breaths to try and cleanse himself of the sexual high he had been running on so blindly, a high that even his rude dunking into frigid water had not swayed. He was trying to force himself to make sense of her and of himself. After a painful moment in the chill water, he hauled himself out of the shallow pool, gaining his feet slowly as he kept his eyes on the great feline whose fur was spiked out in all directions from ruff to tail tip. He could see now that her whiskers were full forward, ears laid back as flat as she could get them, her enormous eyes wide and alert, oval pupils expanded in the darkness of her corner.
Elijah ran a thoughtful hand over his slicked-back hair, going over everything he knew about her and her kind as well as what it was he thought must have frightened her. He wasn’t at all sure about the latter, guessing only that she had come to her senses where he had not. But the former told him she was likely to be more animal than woman at this moment, and he had best choose the right course of action, or there would be quite a brutal hell to pay for it.
There was nothing more deadly than a cornered cat, and he would be the first to admit that he did not have it in him to survive an attack in his present state. If the beast even so much as pinned him in a fit of rage, it would go right for the gaping wound in his chest, happily finishing the job of ripping his heart out.
Elijah slowly dropped to one knee, everything forgotten except the desire to rectify the situation of the moment. He began by looking down at her paws and not directly into her large eyes. The crouch was giving her an open invitation to attack him, but he hoped his next actions would belay that recourse.
The warrior blinked very slowly and lowered his head in a motion of broadcast submission. He realized in that painful instant that his pride meant very little in the face of seeing a creature so brave suddenly scared out of its courage, its grace, and its beautiful spirit. He would not have seen her thus for all the victories in the world, and he felt it keenly. It was an empathy he had not realized himself capable of until that very instant.
Elijah was not looking directly at her, so he had to use his other senses to their utmost in order to understand her reactions. He could scent her high level of fear, feel on his skin the wary, adrenalized prickles of it. He could hear her move ever so slightly and it made his heart skip a beat in anticipation. Her claws scraped over stone as she settled low onto her belly, the first movement in the dance that would follow.
The catamount spent a minute in the position, pretending to be relaxed when instead she was quite alert. The next step in the ritual was when she rose onto all fours and walked slowly away. The more she pretended he was unimportant, the bolder she became. It was a dangerous dance, for all the posturing involved. The most deadly moment would be when she was in striking distance. She would make the choice to bat his head from his shoulders with the swipe of one powerful paw or choose a different form of aggression to put him in his place. By the time she got that close to him, Elijah was beaded with perspiration and fighting a serious bout of fatigue. The ritual had taken a great deal out of a man too soon from his sickbed. But he still did not budge, wanting with every fiber of his being to make up for whatever part of this was caused by his unthinking behavior.
The mountain lioness was so close now he could feel the warmth of her breath and see the gleam of her collar out of the corner of one eye. She extended one paw in a long, tentative reach. Her claws were sheathed, which was an awfully calming piece of information. Still, he could not move. She had not judged him completely.
She sprang so suddenly that Elijah tensed involuntarily. It took every ounce of control he had not to protect himself, instead rolling with her as her powerful jaws clamped onto his neck. His chest heaved with his heightened breath, but he let her continue. All she needed to do was tighten her grip a fraction of an inch and
