Suddenly, he gripped her hips with both hands, leaned toward her ear, and whispered, “Or is it perhaps lower?”

Something swelled in her heart, something warm as the light in his eyes.

“Yes,” she said, barely breathing. “But also here. Most of all… here.” She put his hand to her chest, right over her heart.

He stilled, and she felt the change in him, the hot current in his blood cooling, the flames extinguished.

Ah, yes, she thought. In revealing herself, she had exposed his truth.

Although it had been obvious all along, hadn’t it.

The Primale stepped back and drew a hand through his outrageously beautiful hair. “Cormia…”

Drawing up her dignity, she squared her shoulders. “Tell me, whatever shall you do with the Chosen? Or is it me in specific whom you do not wish to mate?”

He stepped around her and paced in front of the screen. The frozen image from the movie, of Johnny and Baby lying so closely together, played over his body, and she wished she knew how to turn the movie off. The sight of Baby’s leg up on Johnny’s hip, his hand gripping her thigh as he ground himself against her, was not what she needed to be seeing at the moment.

“I don’t want to be with anyone,” the Primale said.

"Liar.” As he turned to face her in surprise, she found that the consequences of candor didn’t matter to her anymore. “You knew all along you didn’t want to lay with any of us, didn’t you. You knew it and yet you went along with the ceremony before the Scribe Virgin, even though you were in love with Bella and couldn’t bear being with anyone else. You lifted the hopes of forty females of worth on a lie-”

“I met with the Directrix. Yesterday.”

Cormia’s legs went weak, but she kept her voice strong. “Did you. And what have the two of you decided.”

“I’m… going to let you go. From the position of First Mate.”

Cormia fisted her robing so tightly, there was a soft tearing sound. “Going to or have done so.”

“Have done so.”

She swallowed hard and let herself sink back into the chair.

“Cormia, please know that it’s not you.” He came over and knelt down in front of her. “You’re beautiful-”

“No, it is me,” she said. “It’s not that you can’t mate with any other female, you don’t want me.”

“I just want you to be free of all this-”

“Don’t lie,” she snapped, throwing off all pretense of civility. “I told you all along that I would take you within me. I have neither said nor done aught to discourage you. So if you are setting me aside, it is because you don’t want me-”

The Primale grabbed her hand and put it palm-first between his legs. As she gasped at the contact, his hips surged and pushed something long and hard into her palm. “The wanting is not the problem.”

Cormia’s lips parted. “Your grace…”

Their eyes met and clung. When his mouth opened slightly, as if he couldn’t breathe, she gained the courage to gently wrap her hand around his rigid sex.

His massive body trembled and he let go of her wrist. “It’s not about the mating,” he said hoarsely. “You were forced into this.”

True. In the beginning, she had been. But now… her feelings for him were not forced in the slightest.

She looked into his eyes and felt a curious relief. If she wasn’t his First Mate, none of this counted, really, did it. Moments like this, with them together-they were just two private bodies, not vessels of immense significance. It was just him and her. A male and a female.

But what about the others, she had to ask herself. What about all her sisters? He was going to be with them; she could see it in his eyes. There was resolve in that yellow stare of his.

And yet, as the Primale’s breath left him on a shudder, she pushed all that out of her mind. She would never truly have him as her own… but she had him alone right now.

“I’m not being forced anymore,” she whispered, leaning into his chest. Tilting her chin up, she offered what he wanted. “I want this.”

He stared down at her for a moment, and then the words he spoke in a guttural voice made no sense: “I’m not good enough for you.”

“Untrue. You are the strength of the race. You are our virtue and power.”

He shook his head. “If you believe that, I’m not at all who you think I am.”

“Yes, you are.”

“I’m not-”

She silenced him with her mouth, then pulled back. “You can’t change what I think of you.”

He reached up and brushed her lower lip with his thumb. “If you truly knew me, everything you believe would change.”

“Your heart would be the same. And that is what I love.”

As his eyes flared at the word, she kissed him again to get him to stop thinking, and evidently it worked. He groaned and took the lead, taking those soft, soft lips of his and stroking her mouth until she couldn’t breathe and didn’t care. When his tongue licked at her, she sucked it in on instinct, and felt his body jerk and surge against her.

The kissing went on and on. There seemed to be no end to the ways of it or the different sensations of rasp and drag and thrust and suck, and it wasn’t just her mouth that was a part of it…Her whole body felt what they were doing, and clearly going by its heat and urgency, so did his.

And she wanted him even more involved. Moving her arm up and back, she rubbed at his sex.

He pulled away sharply. “You might want to be careful with that.”

“With this?” As she stroked him through his trousers, he threw his head back and hissed-so she did it some more. She kept at him until he was biting into his lower lip with long fangs and the muscles running up the sides of his throat were straining.

“Why must I be careful, your grace?”

His head righted and he brought his mouth to her ear. “You’re going to make me come.”

Cormia felt something warm pool between her thighs. “Was that what you did when we were in your bed? That first day?”

“Yes…” He drew the word out, the s drifting.

With a curious, single-minded drive, she found that she wanted him to do that again. Needed him to.

She angled her chin so that she was right at his ear. “Do it for me. Do it now.”

The Primale growled deep in his chest, the sound vibrating up between their bodies. Funny, if she’d heard the sound from anyone else she would have been terrified. Coming from him, in this situation, she was thrilled: His leashed power was in the palm of her hand. Literally. And she had the control.

For once in her forsaken life, she was in control.

As he pushed his hips into her palm, he said, “I don’t think we should-”

She cranked her hand down on him hard, and he moaned in pleasure. “Don’t you take this from me,” she demanded. “Don’t you dare take this from me.”

Following an impulse that came from the Virgin Scribe only knew where, she bit down on his earlobe. The response was immediate. He barked out a curse and leaped up, pinning her to the chair, all but mounting her with lust.

Not about to shrink back, she held her hand right to his sex and worked at him, playing counterbalance to the thrusting of his lower body. He seemed to relish the friction, so she kept at it even as he took her chin and forced her head toward his.

“Let me see your eyes,” he bit out. “I want to be looking in your eyes when I-”

He released a wild groan as their stares met, and his body went tense all over. His hips jerked once… twice… three times, each spasm punctuated by a moan.

As his body expressed its pleasure, the Primale’s rapt face and straining arms were the most beautiful things she’d ever seen. When he finally settled, he swallowed hard and didn’t move away from her. Through the fine wool twill of his slacks, she felt a wetness on her hand.

“I like it when you do that,” she said.

He let out a brief laugh. “I like it when you do that to me.”