Siena splashed water over her face and neck, hoping the brisk cold of it would cool her speculative thoughts. She stood up and moved slowly back to the near room. To her relief, he had gone into the back bedroom. It wasn't much of a distance, but it helped. She immediately busied herself with preparing another pot of stew, using the last of her herb supply, wiping the tangy scent of them off her hands by absently brushing them over the skirt of her dress. Her thoughts wandered into the bedroom, wondering what he was doing. She reached to sense his movements in any way she could.
It was a mistake.
She sensed him all too well. She could see him vividly in her mind, seated on the bed, hands draped loosely between his knees and his head bent as he struggled with himself. She felt, in that reaching moment, everything that he felt. He, too, was hoping that putting a room between them would lessen the sharpening pain of the inexplicable attraction he found himself feeling toward her. He was humming with taut nerves and the screaming desire to fling himself into the next strong wind. He had to escape, had to fly, but he could not do so and expect to survive. Not just because of his wounds, she felt him admit to himself, but because when he thought about never seeing her again, about putting any great distance between them, it began to suffocate him.
Siena braced both hands on the countertop, her head bowing as she tried to take in a breath, as she tried to remind herself that he was the one struggling with borderline claustrophobia, not her. She also tried to tell herself that his impassioned feelings were not the reason why her heart began to pound. That the sparkling sensation that tightened her chest had nothing to do with what it meant to her to finally be wanted for herself. Not for being royalty, an heir, or a sister, but the woman as a whole. Wanted as all of these things, as well as for the huntress, the vindicator, the Queen, and the servant to the needs of her deprived body. To the warrior in the next room, she was golden and soft, shaped perfectly for his hands and his body, exuding the perfect scent to call him to her. She had hot blood, noble thoughts, and a wit like a treasure box that when sprung open he could not help but feel rich and prosperous in its presence.
Even as he thought all of this, she was aware of the height of arousal in his scent as it grew with every thought directed toward her. She felt the pounding of his heart straight through to her temples, and she gasped out a soft, astounded laugh when she felt the startling heat that pulsed hard and low in a body that seemed to be permanently solidified with need for her. Siena sucked in a deep breath, trying to sever her connection with him, but she was far too fascinated by the purity of it to truly want to let it go. She had never empathized with a being so perfectly, had never felt within her own body everything that another being felt. She shook, uncontrollably, as she ran a hand across and then down her belly, as if she would suddenly find her sex changed, allowing her to touch the masculine thrust of uncomfortably straining heat low in the vee of her hips. Tears sprang into her eyes, her pain and her struggle as unbearable as his.
Oh, but she could feel his honor. His determination never to give in to his impulses no matter how much it killed him. This was what stabbed through and through her. The realization that though she was a remarkable temptation, though she was forbidden to him by all the natural and written laws of his people, though he could condemn himself to punishments beyond her comprehension, it was none of this that stayed him.
There was only a single thing that would anchor him into his honor, and that was the understanding that he could never again do anything to hurt her. That he would rather see himself dead than see her cry or be afraid of him or anything else like that negative pain ever again.
In all her lifetime growing up as royalty, she had been valiantly protected from any number of things, but never once had she been cherished in such a manner. How could it be that so staunch an enemy could display so tender a sense of honor to someone who represented everything he had despised for three centuries?
The Queen absently hooked the stew pot onto the fireplace arm and swung it over the flames. She barely hesitated before moving closer to the bedroom entrance. She listened to the fast, hard fall of her own breathing, watched with clenched fists for a moment as it moved in and out of her chest, as she told herself to turn around and head in the other direction.
Distance. She needed to put distance between them.
But instead she took it away. She did not understand what propelled her into the room, but she went under its power until she was finally able to stop herself just as he looked up at her. She watched with a fascination she couldn't comprehend as his lax hands curled into tense fists. Her breath quickened even further when she realized it meant his control was being sorely tested just by her presence in the room. Why did that give her such a thrill? The rush of heat and excitement made her tremble with anticipation. There was power here, she realized, one she had toyed with all her life once she had discovered the flirtatiousness of her body as she had become a woman. She had learned how to use it to calm and soothe, to charm and win, to beckon and deny. It was always a rush, but here lay a path so dangerous that her entire life could explode from it. To move straight along this path lay certain disaster, certain pleasure, certain wickedness of power over the most potent man she had ever known. She stepped a single step closer and he surged to his feet and faced her, his face a storm of emotion in the flickering firelight between them.
"Siena," he warned, her name breaking over his tense vocal cords.
"Elijah."
It was the first time she had ever said his name, and it had an astounding impact on both sides. For her, it made her laugh with unexpected delight. It made no sense logically, but there it was all the same. For Elijah, the simple word beat at every last defense he had tried to erect to protect himself from her lure. His name on her lips, passed through the rich tone of her seductive voice, stabbed through his libido like a hot knife plunged into butter. He turned his head away from her, swearing under his breath as he forced himself to stand in place and not move toward her.
Siena made it a useless effort. With a speculative gleam in her golden eyes, she began to walk toward him. His head snapped back up, his fierce eyes trained completely on her, the moment she took her first step. He could hear the brush of the soles of her bare feet as she moved, stirring sand and dust against polished stone, the arch of her foot and flex of her legs so tight that her heels never quite touched the floor. Her hands were linked behind her, allowing the flirtatious little skirt of her dress to twitch and swing with the natural slink of her body.
Elijah was forced to remember how that perfect, sensual body had felt against his. Every velvet slide, every eager twist, every wave of sweet, heated musk that had risen from her skin. He was compelled to remember it even more vividly as she came up so close to him he could feel her body heat.
"Siena," he said hoarsely. "Don't. Don't touch me, or I swear…I can't…I will have to…" She looked up into his eyes, looking so speculative as she did that he imagined he could read her boldly sexual thoughts. His speech abandoned him as he looked down into those eloquent eyes of gold. Though she said nothing for a long minute, she spoke molten volumes with those hungry eyes. He watched the sweep of her delicate lashes go lower and lower as she so obviously took his measure, and so clearly did so as a woman interested in taking the measure of a man. But, as requested, she did not touch him. Her hands remained linked behind herself and she stood just close enough to not make contact with his skin.
"Will you answer a question?" she asked softly, her eyes drifting over his face, his chest, and down his clenching abdomen.
"Siena-"
"Yes or no," she interrupted firmly. When he resisted further, she lifted a hand to him, her palm hovering over his right pectoral muscle. The threat was terrible and clear. "Yes or no?"
"Yes," he relented quickly, breaking immediately under a form of threatened torture he had never once anticipated in his career as a warrior.
She lowered her hand back to her side and smiled. She enjoyed every battle she won, Elijah realized, no matter what it might cost her in the process. She was, in essence, exactly like him.
"Tell me what it feels like to have sex."
Elijah stepped back under the impact of the question, but she followed relentlessly until his broad back was touching immoveable stone that would not give him another inch of escape.
"Why would you ask me such a thing?" he demanded, trying for all he was worth not to give in to the thousands of impulses rushing through him like so many pinpricks.
"Because you know," she said simply.
"Siena, you have to leave. You don't want to know this and you don't want to be this close to me. You know that."
"Perhaps. But it has occurred to me that since you are not of my species, perhaps certain rules do not apply."
"A risk I cannot see you wanting to take. Siena, this is not you…"
"And how is it you presume to know who I am?" she said with sudden sharpness. "No one knows me. No one knows this part of me and no one ever will! Do you have any idea how much that infuriates me? I am half cat, warrior, and every natural instinct in me that belongs to the cat is one of sensual ease and bitterly acute need. Sometimes I want to scream with the intensity of the pain denying myself such pleasures causes me!" Siena sucked in shallow breaths, and her voice and eyes roared with the passion of her emotions. "It's like an animal in heat who is locked in a cage. No free dom, no release. Nothing eases it. So I ask you this question with the hope that somehow your answer with help bring some of that ease. Do you hate me so much that you will deny me even this? Even after I saved your life?"
"I do not hate you, Siena! Of all of your people, it is you who have given me the least reason to hate, no matter how hard I tried to do so! I am trying to protect-"
"I do not need your protection! I need your response." She leaned even closer to him, her face a breath away from his as her gaze bored into him, her cinnamon-sweet breath cascading over him with heat and breathless need. She shuddered and radiated with need. Deep in her eyes, he saw her pain, saw 150 years' worth of denial and sacrifice.