Sybil struggled inwardly, but it was a losing battle. She didn’t want him to go. She was too selfish to do the right thing and send him away. All that kept drumming in her mind as she luxuriated in the feel of his mouth on hers was that she only had a little time to be with him and she couldn’t bear to give it up. “You’ll be careful when you come?” she asked breathlessly when he broke the kiss.

    “I’m a cautious ril, nodia. I’m always careful,” he murmured carelessly.

    “I mean it, Anka!” she said as he nibbled a trail kisses along her face and down her neck.

    “I am deadly serious also,” he murmured, plucking at the nipple he found with his lips.

    “That feels good.”

    He smiled against her breast. “Does it?”

    “Mmmm.”

    He moved to the twin peak. “And this?”

    “Mmmhmm.”

    He sucked it briefly and lifted his head. “Where else do you like kisses?”

    Sybil opened her eyes with an effort and lifted a hand to touch his mouth. “I like this mouth. I like your kisses. You can kiss me anywhere you want to.”

    His eyes gleamed. Rolling off of her, he pulled his boots off and then his suit. A wicked grin curled his lips when he climbed onto the bunk again and grasped her ankle. Sybil eyed him with misgiving. Jerking her foot off the bed, he caught her big toe between his teeth and raked them along the tender pad.

    Sybil jerked all over and let out a shriek of laughter before she could stop herself. She clamped a hand over her mouth, trying to stifle the urge to laugh hysterically as he systematically nibbled each toe, but she was laughing so hard by the time he got to the pinky tears were streaming from her eyes. “Anka! You madman! Stop it!” she hissed at him in a whisper.

    “You said anywhere, nodia,” he reminded her, grabbing her other foot. She tried to wrest it away from him, but his grip was unbreakable. Instead of raking the toes with his teeth, however, he sucked them one by one and Sybil felt the urge to laugh die. Her belly shimmied.

    He sent her a knowing look. “Where else are you sensitive, I wonder?” he said musingly.

    Sybil swallowed convulsively.

    He tilted his head. “You won’t talk? I guess I’ll have to discover it on my own.”

    She gasped as he began nibbling kisses along her calf to her knee. “Don’t torture me,” she murmured playfully.

    He sent her a heavy lidded look. “Too late to beg for mercy now.”

    She wasn’t sure she wanted to, or could as he passed her knee and began to nibble along her inner thigh. It was torture. It made her belly clench so hard it cramped, but it also sent out electrifying currents of heat. Her back came up off the bed when he reached the apex of her thigh and sucked on the soft patch of flesh at the very top. She grabbed his head between her hands. He caught her wrists, forcing her hands down until he’d clamped them on either side of her hips. She tried to clamp her legs together but discovered he’d effectively blocked that avenue of escape with his body.

    “Anka?”

    “Shhh,” he murmured, leaning down to suck the same spot on the opposite thigh. “Relax, nodia.”

Relax? With his head between her legs?

    She would’ve jackknifed upright again when he moved to the cleft between her legs if she could have. She discovered she couldn’t. For several moments after he’d begun to drag his tongue along her cleft from her sex to her clit she couldn’t decide whether she wanted to escape or not. The moment he caught her clit between his lips and sucked at it, however, she lost any ability to think. She nearly passed out at the jolt that went through her and the wave upon wave of shocks that followed it with each tug of his mouth.

    She gasped, panted, struggling to catch her breath, but his mouth and the sensations pouring through her had her entire focus. She felt her body heating toward explosion, felt the tension she recognized begin to build and it still caught her completely off guard when she climaxed, dragging a sharp cry from her. He continued to tease the exquisitely sensitive nub until she thought she would black out and finally lifted his head.

    She groaned piteously when he lowered his head to kiss her lower belly and began a tortuous assault upward, writhing beneath his touch as if he was branding her with fire. It was tortuous, and yet she couldn’t bring herself to beg him to stop, as certain as she was that she couldn’t bear it if he touched her breasts.

    She knew that was his goal.

    He caught her arms again when she folded them over breasts, suckling her breasts one that the time with a leisurely relish that forced the breath from her lungs.

    “Anka!” she gasped finally. “I can’t stand anymore! Please!”

    He released the nipple he’d been torturing, studied her face a long moment and surged upward, wedging the head of his cock in her opening. She was far more interested in ending the torment than anything else at that point, but the muscles of her sex had been clenching with such hard spasms they seemed to have permanently clenched together. Penetration was torture in itself, for both of them. He was shaking all over by the time he’d managed to enter her completely.

    She came almost as soon as he began to move, groaning, shuddering. He slowed, waited until she’d stopped convulsing and began to move faster, changing the rhythm and the depth until she began to climb again. Dread filled her along with anticipation, but no amount of reluctance was enough to stop the climb toward another peak. She was pretty sure she blacked out momentarily when it hit her.

    She was also pretty sure she bit him trying to contain the screams of ecstasy clawing their way up her throat.

    She collapsed gratefully, struggling for breath, holding on to consciousness by a threat when he drove into her the final time and shuddered with his own release. He rested a moment, panting for breath and shifted off of her.

    She shivered with the loss of his heat, almost too weak to breathe. Pushing one arm beneath her, he dragged her limp form against his own. “Three,” he whispered with satisfaction against her ear, nipping the lobe lightly. “Shall I try for four next time, nodia?”

    “Oh god!”

* * * *

    Sybil didn’t even try to dissuade him from staying the following night. She’d spent another miserable day at the job she was beginning to hate, looking forward to Anka’s nightly visit with a mixture of hope, dread, and uneasiness. He surprised her again. He curled up with her in her bed, caressed her, talked to her for several hours, and then simply fell asleep.

    She didn’t ask him about how the peace talks were coming, not because she had any idea, because she wasn’t actually privy to such information, but because she was afraid he’d either tell her it was progressing well and he’d be leaving soon or that it wasn’t progressing well at all. She didn’t want to know when he would go, didn’t want to think about the heartbreak in store for her when he did. She also didn’t want to consider the possibility that the treaty would fall through and one side or the other would declare war.

    Either way, she was going to be heartbroken. She struggled against accepting that fact for a while and finally realized it was useless to try to lie to herself. She loved him.

    She just didn’t know if the man she thought she had fallen in love with actually existed.

Chapter Ten

    “They’d kick some ass at poker,” Powell muttered under his breath.

    Sybil dragged her gaze from the vid displaying a live feed of the peace talks and glanced at him. She’d been wondering about that herself. She didn’t know if it was because Meachum had planted it in her mind or if she’d actually picked up on something herself, but she’d begun to worry about their apparent ability to simply shut down emotion. Either they were completely unconcerned about the outcome of the peace talks, though, or they were damned good at suppressing and hiding their emotions.