And he was there. Lifting her into his arms, laying her across his desk. His lips played with her ni**les, first one, then the other. Hunger enfolded them, surrounded them, sank into their pores as they fought to devour each other.
Her lips were at his shoulder, his on her breast. His hands stroked her thighs, moved between. Calloused fingers rasped through the silken folds as her head tipped back, a strangled cry leaving her lips at the pleasure washing over her.
“I need to taste you.” Heated, rough, his lips moved down her stomach. “All that sweet cream I can smell. So hot and sweet, Anya.”
His lips caressed, licked, kissed to her thighs. Pushing her legs farther apart, he moved to the aching flesh there, his tongue swiping through the wet center as she cried out his name.
She arched, begged. Her legs fell over his shoulders as his hands gripped her rear, held her to him, and he ate her with a pleasure she couldn’t contain. Heated, hungry lips, his tongue an instrument of pleasure and lust. He licked and stroked. Electric pleasure whipped through her, left her writhing beneath each caress.
Her fingers tightened in his hair as his tongue circled her clit, his lips surrounded it, and the suckling, heated pressure began to draw ecstasy to its pinnacle.
The explosion that rocked her had her screaming his name. She ground her sex tighter against his hungry lips, fought for more and then arched into the sensations as they consumed her.
Damp with perspiration, she was waiting for him when his head lifted, his hands dragging her legs around his hips as he lifted her to him.
Thick and hard, his erection was pressing inside her as he collapsed in the chair behind him, drawing her legs around his back as he began to work inside her.
Anya gripped his shoulders, stared into her lover’s eyes and saw all the desperate pleasure, the aching need and loneliness she felt inside herself.
“Too slow,” she moaned. “Harder, Del-Rey. Take me hard and fast.”
His hands clenched on her rear, fingertips delving into the narrow cleft there.
Anya clenched her muscles around the flared head as it lodged inside her. A hard, heated spurt of pr**cum had her whispering his name again. Another had her trying to force him inside her.
“Now,” she panted. “Hard, Del-Rey. Take me hard. Give me everything.”
His black eyes, hints of blue, were fierce with the insatiable need that poured between them.
“Fuck me, wild man.”
He growled, hips flexing, his c**k driving deeper, and he didn’t stop. Thrust after thrust until he was filling her, and he didn’t stop.
Holding on to him, Anya moved with him, her arms wrapping around his neck as her lips took his kiss, smothering both their cries as she moved against him. Taking him, loving him. Her sex sucked his erection inside her as she sucked his tongue into her mouth.
The deep, penetrating thrusts raked and caressed exposed nerve endings. She could feel the pleasure building, ratcheting up with each thrust, until she was mindless with the need blazing through her like wildfire.
She needed.
She braced her feet on the chair behind him as she lifted and fell with him, his hands on her ass, his fingertips clenching on her rear, pressing into sensitive nerve endings there. His lips took hers, caressed hers. They were buffeted by a storm of sensation that caught them off guard, left them fighting for release, bucking and thrusting until Anya tipped her head back and cried out in a perfect, burning orgasm that sent her flying.
Mindless. Bodiless. She was pure sensation, pure pleasure burning in his arms as he thrust into her full-length and that deep, burning swelling filled her until she was shooting into the stars and exploding into a white-hot center of pleasure.
She was aware of him following her. The way he growled her name, jerked her to him and bit into her shoulder again. To hold her in place, she thought hazily. That bite held her body in place where he wanted her, in perfect alignment with his, his seed spurting inside her, filling her so deep, with such hard, burning spurts that she knew she would never be the same.
She collapsed against his chest when his teeth finally released her. His tongue licked over the wound, each caress sending a racing shiver through her as she shuddered in his arms, his c**k still locked inside her.
“I need to hold you,” he whispered, his lips caressing her neck. “Just like this, Anya. Just in my arms.”
Her head rested on his shoulder, turned away from him as she fought back her tears. Just like this, just in his arms, and separate everywhere else.
It was like being torn in two. Always on the outside staring into what had been or what could have been and knowing he wanted nothing more than this.
Del-Rey watched an hour later as Anya moved from the private bathroom attached to the office—dressed, she was beautiful but her expression was somber.
That was what was missing, he thought, her smile.
“I’ll see you tonight?” she asked, fiddling nervously with the hem of her sweater as she pulled it over the low-rise waist of her jeans.
“Tonight,” he promised.
“Maybe we could shower together?” There was something lost in her voice, something that cut him to the bone.
“Are you okay?” He moved from the desk to cup her cheek in the palm of his hand. “Do you hate me, Anya?”
Her lips trembled. “I love you, Del-Rey,” she whispered, staring up at him with those sad blue eyes. “I’ll always love you.”
He dropped his hand as she moved quickly away from him then and escaped as he stood in shock and surprise. He had known she loved him; he could feel it in every touch. He had known it since she was sixteen, had burned for it when she was twenty. But he hadn’t expected her to admit to it.
Following her to the door, he opened it and watched her leave. From the shadows across the wide cavern that led into Communications, he glimpsed someone else.
Ashley.
She stood, eyes narrowed on him, a knife sheathed on her thigh, the olive gray uniform he had rarely seen her in giving her a harder, merciless look as she turned her head and stared back at him with a cold, level gaze before moving to follow her coya.
He didn’t like seeing Ashley in drab olive green. The next time he saw her, he’d have to ask about that. He much preferred the flirty Ashley in color and tripping around with her pretense of ditzy fun.
This Ashley, he sighed heavily, like Anya, reminded him of everything he could feel he was losing.
CHAPTER 22
Anya had hoped to delay a confrontation for herself or between the now opposing factions of Coyote soldiers. She felt as though she and Del-Rey were in the middle of a very silent war. Hers against his. She could feel everyone’s determination, like her own, to leave the alpha out of it. It wasn’t his fight. It was hers.