“I won’t.”

“You always say that.”

“I always start out meaning it.”

But she tried. Taking a few stabilizing breaths of her own, she squared her shoulders and pushed her ass back at him, doing her best to pretend she was an inanimate object while he set her on fire one stroke at a time. She forgot all about the mountains and the road and Scott and Nicci and the mimuts on the fire and just fell deeper and deeper into that moment.

Concentrate. His breath tickling the fine hairs on the nape of her neck. The scour of his rough hands chafing steadily at her hips. The slow, insistent press of his flat stomach against her upturned buttocks. The cold rock under her hands and feet. She held onto these things as long as she could, because when they fell out of focus, it was over. Without these little discomforts, she was nothing but how he filled her, how he moved in her, how he made her part of him.

She could feel herself shivering with strain already, and much as she tried not to, the effort of holding so still and being so good was making her tighten up. Everywhere.

“Woman,” he warned her hoarsely.

“Don’t distract me, lizardman, I’m right on the edge.”

He burst out laughing against her back, which did such unexpected things that she broke and began bucking wildly on his impaling shaft. This was usually his cue to hold still and let her finish or hurry up and finish himself so they could both wind down together. Tonight, in his playful, unpredictable mood, the sex became war.

Meoraq’s fondness for rough play was no secret. It was one of those things—like sex standing up—that just felt more natural to him, but it wasn’t without its risks. Never let him fight when you can’t see him; that was Secret Rule Number Two, and Amber wasn’t so far gone that she didn’t remember why the rules were so important.

But it felt so good…and she was so close…and he was always careful with her, always. He’d never really hurt her.

Amber grappled with it as he encouraged her with hisses and nips, but in the end, it wasn’t a decision as much as surrender. She hissed back at him, scratching and slapping at his thighs in a sure signal that no in this case definitely meant go faster.

“Ha!” He seized her and the sex became fucking, driving her up onto her toes, crushing her against the wall, knocking her full-on into the orgasm she’d been a hair away from reaching anyway.

Amber rode it out, pushing at the wall, at him. He pinned her arms, battled her carefully to the floor (but not as carefully as he had the last time; she knocked her knee a pretty good one), and straddled her again, resuming his steady, forceful thrusts as she writhed and yowled like a common alley cat. Sometimes a little extra noise was enough to give him what he wanted without giving too much up herself.

Sometimes.

“Fight,” he panted and, perhaps sensing her misgivings, gave her a playful head-butt between her shoulderblades. “Like you fought the first time. So I feel it when you surrender.”

Climbing fast to her second climax was the very worst time to expect a girl to show some self-restraint. Amber managed a token hesitation and then gave up and fought. Bucking and thrashing, she broke free, forcing him to grapple her back into his embrace and under his control. She could hear him laughing as he struggled to hold her, but it was a struggle and she was proud of that. She knew she shouldn’t be. Secret Rule Number Two…

The change was subtle, at first. His laughter faded gradually to hisses. His grip tightened. His love-bites at her neck and shoulder began to sting. Just when he broke his hard yet steady rhythm, she wasn’t sure, but even through her body’s frenetic sensory overload, she could tell that what had once been purely pleasure was now shot through with silvery threads of pain.

Her first instinct was the very worst response: She stopped play-fighting and tried to really stop him, then to get away from him. Whatever thin restraint he’d held onto all this time snapped at once. His roar blasted hot on her back as he shoved her down and pinned her under his weight. She knew it when he came by the hard, coughing sound he made, but something was wrong. This was where he usually stopped moving (in spite of the fact that she sometimes actually begged him not to), but tonight he kept at her. Like the bawdy punchline to a bad joke—harder, faster, deeper—and Amber couldn’t do anything about it because she was cumming again. She managed only half his name before his powerful jaws clamped down on the back of her neck, actually shaking her like a dog with a doll to shut her up. He hissed into her hair like an animal and this was wrong, this was really, dangerously wrong.

Amber tensed, alarm putting real strength into her body, but that was the wrong way to win and she knew it. Every nerve was hot and alive, every sensation heightened. She used it as best she could—a moment’s clarity, there at the razor’s edge of yet another climax—and then she heaved herself, not backwards, but flat to the floor.

She lay limp and still, giving him nothing to fight against as she took deep breaths and tried to bring her racing heart under some kind of control. He’d never hurt her, no he never would, but he wasn’t always him, was he?

Meoraq stopped, but he did not immediately back off. If anything, he leaned on her a little harder. She felt, with the perfect awareness of her tingling skin, the minute flexing of his fingers. He uttered a hard, snuffling grunt, but only one. She felt him rear back, shake himself. A second pause, longer than the first, and then he finally spoke: “Are you awake?”

His voice wasn’t quite his own either. Breathless, which was to be expected, but also…thick. As if speech were something new to him and not particularly pleasant.

Amber waited, listening. ‘Breathe,’ she thought at him. ‘Six breaths, Meoraq. Count them off.’

He did breathe, but only once. She felt it, hot on her back; he was hissing through his teeth in that silent, pissed-off way he had. Suddenly he let go of her aching wrists and put his hand between her shoulderblades, leaning over to pry unexpectedly at her eyelid. She flinched back, blinking, and he hiss/grunted. “You are awake,” he said accusingly. “Why didn’t you answer me?”

“I need to stop.”

“Stop? Are you hurt?” he asked. It should have sounded concerned, but it didn’t and he might have realized it because his next attempt was better. “Are you all right?”

“Please.”

“Damn it, woman, I just…” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The hand resting on her back drummed once, then patted her. He was still hard; the sensation as he withdrew was enough to give her one final shivery, painful bloom, and then he was out. “A short rest,” he warned her. “I’m not finished.”

She rolled onto her side and put her hand behind her neck, feeling at the place where he’d bit her. Her fingers came away lightly smeared with blood. She glanced at him, watched him gaze at that blood with a shocking lack of expression, and said, carefully, “You were a little rough with me.”

He grunted and stood up. “Your flesh tears too easily.”

“I know you didn’t mean to hurt me.”

“If you know, why are you talking about it?” he snapped. His hand drifted down, paused, and rubbed in a brittle fashion at his stomach, which was clearly not what he wanted to rub. His cock still jutted, wet and urgent. This was the worst she’d ever seen him, the worst she’d ever let him get, but he was talking.

“I need a little time, okay?” Amber wiped her neck again—it had already stopped bleeding, but she made sure he saw the marks of his teeth there—and curled up a little, making herself look small. Helpless. Fragile. “Okay?”

Meoraq paced around the cave, watching her. He checked on dinner, picked up their discarded clothes, drank some of the lukewarm tea from the pot on the hearth, and finally went over to sit on the edge of their bed. “How much time do you need?”