Free Wild Hearts in Atlantis by Alyssa Day

him, sank into his strength, surrendered her willing spirit to him.
    This moment was hers, no matter what may follow it.
He
was hers, if only for a night. She smiled against his lips, and her cat purred inside her. For one moment trapped in starlight, wrapped in desire, the two sides of her dual-natured existence came together as one.
    “You are mine, then, for this night? You freely give yourself into my care?” he asked, no,
demanded
of her.
    The fierce longing in his tone carried any lingering hesitation away on its currents. She was desired, and she desired. Nothing had ever felt so right to her as this one moment, her body wrapped in the arms of a warrior.
    “I am yours,” she said, relinquishing her control and trusting him with everything she had. “I am yours.”
    Bastien did not ask again. He’d been granted permission, now it was in him to take. To
take
and to
give
and to bring an end to this pain of wanting that had swamped him since he’d first caught sight of her face, terrified but filled with grim resolve, two years past.
    He lifted her off the floor and, hands firmly grasping her rounded hips, swung around to find her bedroom. She gasped and he took her mouth again, plundering. Possessing.
    Mine.
The voice in his head demanded he claim her, mark her, brand her as his own.
    Cherish her, protect her, keep her for the long centuries of my existence.
    His body demanded something more urgent and immediate. He hardened even further against her, his cock straining against the robe she wore, as he reached her bed. He slowly released her to slide down his body and reached between them to untie the cord that kept him from feeling her shower-damp skin against his heated flesh.
    As he pushed the edges of her garment from her shoulders, the creamy skin thus revealed damn near brought him to his knees before her. He pulled in a sharp breath and then reconsidered.
    “On my knees seems a fitting tribute to your beauty, my lady Kat,” he murmured against her hair, against her throat, against the swell of her breasts as he sank to the floor in front of her.
    She bent and cupped his face between her hands, golden eyes huge in her pale face. “But—”
    “Shh,” he whispered. “Let me learn the secrets of your body. Let me touch you and taste you and know you.” He captured the tip of one breast in his mouth and licked and suckled on it, gently at first, then strongly, until she moaned and made a helpless thrusting motion with her hips.
    Then he transferred his mouth to her other breast and replaced his lips with his fingers on the first, gently squeezing and lightly pinching the nipple as he sucked on its twin, until he heard her moaning again, this time his name. She twined her fingers in his hair and pulled.
    “Please, please.”
    He looked up at her, and the soft flush of her skin combined with the heat in her eyes to undo him. He had no more thought for gentle seduction, but only for taking. For driving into her until she could never get him out.
    For claiming.
    He tested her readiness with a finger, nearly crying out at the hot wetness that welcomed him into her body. He bent his head to her nipple again and drove two fingers inside her. This time it was she who cried out, bucking against his hand.
    In one motion, he stood and lifted her, then twisted to fall back upon her bed with her on top of him. He held her head tohis and plundered her mouth once more, with his fingers still steadily thrusting inside her. Then he rolled over so that he straddled her body. “I need you now, my lady. I must offer my apologies for reverting to the haste of my youth, but I find that I need to be inside the heat of your body more than I need to find my next breath.”
    She stared up at him for a long moment, body shuddering in reaction to her desire and the motion of his fingers across the pearl at the junction of her heat. He had a moment to wonder at the secrets hidden deep in the amber of her eyes, before she slowly