Hunger Untamed (Feral Warriors #5)(49)

"Ariana." Kougar's hands left her thighs, one cradling her cheek.

Her brain felt as if it were being wrenched open with a crowbar. Thoughts began to spill across her inner eye, glimpses of people she'd never known and things she'd never seen. Memories that weren't hers.

"The knowledge is coming back."

Her first awakening hadn't been painful, she remembered that, now.

Clearly, Morwun and the temple weren't through making her pay.

Chapter Thirteen

Kougar stripped off his pants, pushing them down over a hard, painful erection, and scooped up Ariana. His body burned with the need to claim her, but it was his heart's need to protect her that drove his actions.

"What are you doing?" She still held her head with one hand, though the pain blasting him through the mating bond had died considerably.

Stepping into the shallow pool, he lowered himself, cross-legged, in the middle, cradling Ariana on his lap. He groaned at the feel of her bare hip crushing his swollen c**k against his body. "You said you had to be within the pillars. Maybe the memories will come less violently in the water."

She tipped her head against his shoulder, her soft hair brushing his chin. "I hope you're right."

He did, too. Tenderness welled as he held her against his heart. Inside, his cat paced and snarled at the feel of her pain. The cat didn't like it any more than he did. Exactly when he'd stopped wanting to see her suffer for what she'd done to him, he wasn't entirely sure, but he had. That piece of him that had always been hers bled to see her hurting.

His fingers slid into her hair, while his other hand stroked her hip, sliding back and forth with fingers that shook with a need to lift her, to fill her. Lily of the valley and warm, soft woman filled his senses, and he wondered at his insanity in taking off his clothes. Wet pants might have helped control the heat raging in his body. Bare flesh to bare flesh just fanned the inferno.

He slid his hand from her hip up to her breast, her beautiful skin healed now from the lightning strikes.

Ariana curved her arm around his neck. As he cupped her breast, she arched into his touch, telling him plainly that it pleased her. He kneaded the soft flesh, then stroked it, his finger and thumb twirling the hard bud of her nipple, pinching and tugging on it lightly.

Her sigh of pleasure changed abruptly to a gasp of pain, her body going rigid, her face tightening in a mask of agony.

Goddess, he hated this. He went back to stroking her hip, wanting to cause her no additional discomfort of any kind.

"Kougar," she said when the worst was clearly past.

He cupped her neck, meeting that brilliant gaze. "Tell me how to help you."

"Pleasure me. Strengthen me. If nothing else, take my mind off it."

Pleasure her. Goddess, it was all he could do just to hold her without taking what he needed. He wasn't sure he had that kind of self-control. Not with her. Anything more, and he'd find himself sinking deep into her body and joining her on that ride to ecstasy.

But he didn't want that, not at all. The more time he spent with her, the closer they got, the better he remembered why he had fallen in love with her in the first place. And the more danger he was in of doing it all over again.

A mistake he refused to make a second time.

Even if he got out of this alive, he knew better than to think a place existed for them in one another's worlds. Ariana would always be queen to her people, their needs coming first. And he refused to be second. Nor could he honestly put her first in his own life. His loyalty was to the Feral Warriors, first and always, and to stopping the Mage who tried to free the Daemons.

Even after a thousand years, he remembered too well what a soul-transforming experience making love to her had been . . . every single time. He feared that if he made the mistake of joining with her in that way, he'd never be able to walk away from her. And they'd only end up hurting one another all over again.

He wouldn't make love to her.

How in the hell was he going to give her the pleasure she needed when he was already struggling, already clinging to every ounce of control?

Goddess, help him.

He slid his hand into the water, between her legs, the springy hair of her thatch brushing his palm as he cupped her. His c**k twitched and throbbed, begging for attention.

Think of something else. Anything else.

Tighe's baby in danger of being born without a father. Hawke lost to the world. Humans in Feral House. The burn in his heart that was almost sure to kill him.

But it was the burn in another part of his anatomy that stole all his attention. The need to be one with the woman in his arms.

As he slid two fingers deep inside her warmth, she arched into his hand with a moan of need, ratcheting his own to the level of torture. Stripping away his control. He needed to touch her, to taste her with a desperation that had his body quaking. He lifted her, dipping his head to take one sweet breast into his mouth. As he suckled her, he shoved his fingers in and out of her, meeting the hard thrust of her hips, stirring the water in the small pool until it lapped frantically, spilling over the edges onto the stone floor.

Ariana cried out, arching and stiffening in such a way that he thought she was in pain but for the intense, rhythmic clenching of her inner muscles around his fingers. When her eyes opened, he realized she'd gotten another memory download right in the middle of her climax.

Gasping, she straightened on his lap, and he cupped her jaw.