Disappointment plucked at her, hurt trying to wedge its way in. He'd claimed the mating bond didn't matter, that what happened with it, happened. Clearly that wasn't true.

It occurred to her that he must fear making love to her fully would only open the bond further. That twinge of hurt disappeared, washed away in a rush of warmth as she realized what his hesitation really meant.

He feared he couldn't make love to her without his heart opening to her more.

He moved on her like a cat on prey, sliding his broad hands beneath her hips and lifting her to his mouth. Thoughts scattered, wild sensations shooting through her body as his tongue stroked her upper thighs, then moved directly between her legs to that throbbing, sensitive flesh.

As he stroked her and played with her body, she cried out, flinging her head back. She'd forgotten what a talented tongue this cat had. He stroked her nether lips inside and out, one after the other with long, languorous strokes, flicking the nub of her clitoris at the end of each one, just enough to elicit a gasp from her. Then his tongue moved, circling her clit, teasing without touching, yet driving her up all the same.

A flick of his tongue directly on the spot had her crying out, but then he returned to circling.

"Kougar . . ." Goddess she wanted him inside her, deep, driving. One. But it was too dangerous.

He did enter her, though not in the way she craved. His tongue slid down into her opening, deep inside, delving and fluttering and licking until she was a writhing mass of need.

Then his mouth closed over her as he tugged on her, flicking her with his tongue until she was writhing beneath him, rising, cresting. . .

She came in a screaming rush of fire and pleasure. And still it wasn't enough.

"More."

His finger dove inside her, and a second, thrusting in and out in a fast, hard rhythm. A sudden pain tore through her skull, a burst of agony that radiated outward like flares of light, leaving her gasping for breath and all but blind.

"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 cock 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 cock 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.

"How much have you learned?"

"I'm not sure." Her voice was tight, breathless. "It's a jumble of pictures and thoughts, literally thousands of memories in no particular order." She shook her head, then winced at the movement. "I don't know how I could have missed so much that had been a part of me."

She sat up, sliding her arms around his neck, holding him. And he held her tight against him in return as the tension caused by the pain slowly eased out of her. He felt a small sweet kiss on his shoulder blade a moment before she lifted her head and pressed her lips against his neck in a kiss of erotic sweetness. His hands tightened around her as she kissed him again and again, her mouth trailing down his neck, across his shoulder, down his arm to the edge of his Feral armband, then slowly back up again.

With each touch of her lips, she dissolved a little more of his control until his hands were gripping her too tightly, moving over her back and hip. Shaking from the force of his need to take over and push himself deep inside her heat.

Even as he struggled to maintain control, she slid her hand between them, down over his hard, throbbing erection. The brush of her fingers across the slit in its head nearly made him come. Goddess, how much more of this could he take?

Turning her hand, she trailed her fingers down the length of him and back up again. With a groan, he arched into her touch, shaking with a need as rare as it was terrible. He refused to take her, yet never had he wanted . . . needed . . . anything more. Her fingers closed tight around his length, sliding up and down with firmer and firmer strokes, splashing the water between them.

His control shredded. He cupped the back of her head and slammed his mouth against hers, plunging his tongue between her lips, drawing a groan of need and carnal pleasure from her throat. While he plundered her mouth, she released him to slide lower, her fingers slipping between his loosely parted legs to trail across the sensitive skin behind his balls. As her knuckles brushed his tight, hard sac, fire speared into his cock, hardening him nearly beyond bearing. Turning her hand, she gripped his balls, and he knew there was nothing he'd ever enjoyed more in this world than the exquisite pleasure of Ariana's hands on his body.

She returned to his cock, stroking him with gentle roughness until he felt his eyes roll back in his head. With shallow, ragged breaths, the pulse careening in his veins, he kissed her, hotly, deeply, as her hand drove him up. And up.

Kougar's control snapped as suddenly and completely as an overstretched rubber band. All the reasons for not joining with her that had been rioting in his mind fled. All thoughts disappeared but one. Without gentleness, without finesse, he pulled back from her, grabbed her around the waist, and lifted her.

"I need you, Ariana. Now."

Without objection, she swung one leg wide to straddle his hips. Gripping his shoulders, she spread her thighs to take him into her wet and ready body.

With a single, desperate thrust, Kougar drove into her, into heaven. The feel of her tight and hot around him sent him careening over the edge. Tilting back his head, he gave a feral roar of pleasure, of rightness, while inside something shifted, clicking into place.

Gripping her silken hips, he drove into her over and over, harder and harder, coming fast, with a guttural cry.

Not enough. Not nearly enough. Need burned inside him, crazed and out of control. A need that hadn't abated in a thousand years.

He lifted her off him. "I need you again."

"Yes, Kougar. Yes."

Flipping her onto her hands and knees in the water, he gripped her hips, slid his cock between her thighs, and took her from behind, his own hips slamming against her sweet ass as he drove deeper and deeper.

Ariana cried out with her release, her inner muscles contracting, milking him to a second roaring climax. And still it wasn't enough.

Lifting her, he carried her out of the water, laid her on the floor beside the pool, and fell on her, shoving deep inside her as she wrapped her legs around his waist and her hands tight around his neck as if she never meant to let him go. As if this joining was forever.

As he drove deep inside her, the haze of insanity lifted, and he slowed his thrusts, disturbed by the harsh way in which he'd been taking her.

"Did I hurt you?" His voice, rough as sandpaper, hardly sounded like his own.

"No." She lifted her gaze to his, bright eyes shining with the brilliance of blue diamonds, heat in their depths. And something more. Something warm and tender that clutched at his heart, making it ache and swell, nearly obliterating the burn of the poison. "Never."

He kissed her as he drove into her with long, sensual strokes, unwilling to be parted from her in any way but feeling a sudden driving need to give instead of take. Inside, his cat gave a roar of deep satisfaction.

She came with a cry, her inner muscles clutching him tight, and he followed her in an explosion of raw heat and tenderness.

Slowly, his pounding heart calmed, his breathing returning to normal. As he lay atop her soft curves, his hips nestled within the cradle of hers, his body buried deep within hers, he felt right for the first time in centuries. Whole, despite the acid shredding his heart. As if this was all he'd needed. She was all he'd needed. If he could have frozen time and remained one with this woman for all eternity, he'd have done so.

The sharpness of the longing rocked him, propelling him up and off her, shattering the perfection of the moment. He turned and strode away, needing distance, struggling for perspective.

He could blame his colossal loss of control on his fucked-up emotions, but that was only a small part of the truth. He'd never had much control when it came to Ariana. From the moment he'd met her, she'd turned his world on end, and it had never righted.

In the aching, throbbing depths of his heart he knew the truth he'd been trying to ignore. Whether she was dead or alive, whether he kept his distance from her or made love to her until they were both breathless from exhaustion, he would never be able to go back to being the man he'd been before he'd known her. All he could do was hope that they survived the next days, and that when this was over, and they'd gone their separate ways, this ungodly need for her would dim to the point he could think of something, anything, else.

Chapter Fourteen

Ariana sat on the cool lip of the pool deep beneath the Temple of the Queens and watched Kougar as he paced away from her, pulling on what was left of his pants, his powerful body gleaming, his back rigid with a tension that wouldn't normally be there after the powerful release they'd just shared. In that release, the mating bond had opened almost completely. It still looked like hell, tarnished and shadowed, but no longer was it a shrunken, mangled mess.