Pleasure (28 page)

“Yes, I do!” she cried, her fingers clutching tightly into his hair and dragging him down against her mouth. Guin reached up and pried her off him, shoving her away.

“To play stud for a year? No thanks, babe. I'd rather stick hot needles in my eyes.”

She gaped at him in utter disbelief.

“You find me that repulsive?” she asked, the genuine shocked hurt in her voice so powerful it made him groan.

“No! That's the point! Argh!” he gusted in frustration. “Look, you are never going to understand, so stop trying. Go home and don't come back to me.”

“No. I won't go without you.”

“You don't need me! Why are you doing this? Why are you fighting so hard, Malaya? You make friends with every breath you take, you can train the best in guards. There is nothing about me you can't easily replace!”

“I can't replace
you
! I need
you
! I need my Guin. My Guin.
My Guin!
” She threw herself back against him, grabbing hold of him with all of her strength and this time refusing to be denied the kiss she wanted. Her heart was
pounding in her desperation, every fiber of her being screaming at her that she could not fail in this. She couldn't leave without him by her side. She couldn't live without him by her side. Next to her. Inside her. Yes, deep inside where she could hold him forever. She could keep her best friend and her keen lover forever. She had to. She felt as if she would die if she didn't. Why else would she chase him all over creation so relentlessly? She couldn't breathe without him. He'd been hers for so long…no one else would ever do.

And as she took the taste of him onto her tongue, tears burned hot in her eyes. She knew then that if he refused her he would break her heart. Not just a little, but a great ripping and shredding of it as he walked away from her. Even the thought of it hurt so much she sobbed past the tightening of her throat. Guin drew back in surprise at the sound, and she desperately tried to stop him from leaving her mouth.

“Malaya, why are you doing this?” he asked in a fierce whisper as he clasped her tightly between his hands.

“Because I love you,” she whispered, all of her heart and soul pouring into the understanding.

Guin knew at once what she was saying. He understood instantly what was different this time from all the other times she had said it to him. He knew because he felt his entire emaciated spirit flush hot with exhilaration unlike anything he'd ever felt before.

And as much as he wanted to revel in that joy, he knew he couldn't.

“No, my honey, no,” he said achingly, giving her a shake. “You can't. Not me. You need to save your heart for someone worthy of it—”

“You are worthy of it! I just don't know how I could ever be worthy of yours! How could I when I've been so blind? But I see it now.” She held his face in her hands and looked deep into his gaze. “I see why I've been causing you so much pain. I see back for years and am stunned to realize
you've been in love with me all along. Through everything. The war, the men, the Senate…
everything
. How could you bear it all? Why didn't you ever tell me? Why didn't you ever take me?”

“For the same reason I can't take you now, damn it! I'm no good for you, Malaya! You're meant for someone better. Better blood, better past, better manners…just better! Not some killer with blood and roughness on his hands. Gods, you deserve…”

“You! I deserve you! I want you. I want the man who believes in me so much he would change his entire life for me. A man who wants so badly to be better than he is that he strives for honor with everything he has day after day! I want you, who can be my best friend, who can keep me safe, who tells me the truth no matter what. I want you, who knows when to set me in my place and who wouldn't accept less than everything from me or for himself. You've wanted to love me for ages, and you've wanted me to love you, too. You say you're not good enough, but you want it. And still you push it away because all you ever want is for me to be happy and you think you can't do that, but you can! You can. You do! I'm so sorry I took so much for granted and I thought I could have you and everything you had to offer without ever investing my heart. I was so selfish and you were right to leave. But now I see. I feel. I won't go back without you. I can't. You'd break my heart.

“You can't expect me to walk away and agree to never seeing you again. Never hearing your rough voice and the poetic punctuation you manage to put into a good ‘fuck me'?” Here her voice dropped to something seductively needy. “To never feel your arms around me like this again? To never taste your mouth? No. This time,
you
ask too much of
me
.” She was pulling him to her mouth once again, kissing him so deeply and so slowly that she made him groan against her slowly sweeping tongue. “My body has cried out for you every single minute of every day since you left me. It won
ders where those hands are and why your beastly cock isn't deep, deep inside where I need you. I crave you, Guin. Oh, how I crave you,” she whispered against his mouth. “Stay or go as you will, I'll follow you either way. Nothing else will matter to me until I can convince you to love me freely like I want to love you.”

“Gods, Laya,” he rasped, emotion galloping through him, “you tempt me with my ultimate desire. So powerful a desire that I never let myself wish for it.” He held her tightly, squeezing the breath from her as he lifted her onto her toes and breathed deeply against her jasmine-scented skin. “But you're too perfect for me. You're too good for me. I've no faith, no path. I have nothing to offer you.”

“Offer me you, Guin. It's the one thing you've withheld all of this time. Give me you. Give me all of you.”

“But the Senate,” he breathed roughly. “That law…”

“Say you love me, Guin, and I will proudly show them my choice and dare them to say you are not a worthy man. I resent you saying it and I will not tolerate it in them either. It's all lies and foolishness. You have given everything and more to this monarchy. You helped to mold and make it right beside us. You will be mine, Guin, if you just say you love me and you will have me.”

Again, temptation in its finest glory. Here she was, offering him the world. Her world. Her hand, her side, and all rights to her. She was offering…

“Are you saying you'll marry me, Malaya? That you'd want to bear my children and set them on the throne as your heirs? But you can't—”

“Yes, I can. And you will father strong, beautiful children. I want your strong, beautiful babies, Guin. Tell me you love me.”

He stared at her dumbly for a long minute, and then he grabbed hold of her and crushed her to his body. The sound escaping him crossed between pain and endless hunger.

“Even if every man and woman in this city told me you
weren't good enough for me, Guin, I would know they were wrong. But they won't. They won't unless you show them that it's what you feel. Don't let them tell you who you are or what you can or cannot be. You have proven yourself a hero of epic proportions to those who know you and love you. To me. To me, the only one who should matter in this issue, Guin. Look at me. Look into me with that uncanny truth you have and tell me you cannot see the pride and the devotion I have here in my heart for you.”

He did exactly that and all he could find was the one clear and shining truth stamped all over her.

I love you
.

“Oh gods,” he rasped, emotion choking him as he drew back from her, stumbling back awkwardly while he tried to shed her touch from himself. He was dizzy with need and bald yearning for what she was offering him. But he had to think…He had to see this clearly or…

Forever. She wanted forever.
Him.
It was him she was pushing after, him she was clinging to once again, and it was him she claimed she wanted above all others. Not as a friend, a brother, a confidant and protector, but all of that and more. She wanted to make him her…

Her king. Her mate. Her husband. She wanted to give him all rights to her and her body, mind, and soul. She was begging him for the one thing he'd been drowning in the ability to create for her since almost the minute he'd laid eyes on her. His love. His love for her. She wanted him to set the emotion free and give it freedom at long, long last. To let it spread its wings and soar.

And she was willing to stand him beside her and show him proudly as her love. To hold him before the Senate and deem him a worthy man, worthy of their respect and deference.

“You said…you wouldn't want to be seen in public with me. And Tristan, too. What's changed from then to now for you? And what will your brother think of—”

“I never said any such thing!” she exclaimed, indignant and horrified. “I would never even think of you like that!”

“Tristan said ‘But none of this in public' when he saw you leaning with affection on me, and you replied ‘I wasn't planning on trotting him out on my arm.' You didn't want others to know I was your lover, but now you'd make me publicly your husband only days after having that attitude?”

Because he was in such an emotional turmoil, Guin's usual walls of stoicism were crumbling rapidly away, and Malaya heard the hurt he'd suffered for those words and her heart ached in reply.

“No, no, honey,” she said softly and soothingly as she reached to stroke warm hands against him. He tried to back away, but there was a wall behind him and he stopped against it long enough to let her smooth herself like butter up against his body. “Tristan and I only meant that in terms of distracting you from your job or letting others perceive you as less vigilant. Think of the context of the conversation around that. Stop hearing only what you expect to hear and remember who Tristan and I are! When have you ever known me to treat anyone as below my notice? When have I ever hidden a relationship of any kind from anyone except in the war when secret alliances were crucial? And of all people, Guin, for
you
to feel this way! Who doesn't know the esteem I give you? The trust above all others to hold my life in your hands? The claim of friendship and confidant? Everyone knows my regard for you. And they will know my love for you as well. They will know I have chosen a wonderful mate, made a love match with a strong warrior who has done nothing but protect this monarchy with his all. The only thing I have been guilty of is never viewing you equal to my woman's heart. Of never seeing a candidate for investing this wild and helpless sensation of love! But that was more about me protecting myself than anything to do with you.

“Guin, I've never been in romantic love before. Never even thought I might be. Never wanted to be. Why do you
think I couldn't recognize it in you for so long? Half of me was unfamiliar with the entire concept, the other half just closing its eyes and not wanting to see anything that might mean risking…Guin, I've suffered pain and loss all of my life. Constantly losing those I love in such violent ways. I could only let myself continue to love through the years if I kept at least one part of me secured away from the cruelness of fate. Even now, if you could feel the terror inside me, the racing of my heart and the instincts crying out to protect myself. But it's too late. Those cries are being drowned out by all the rest of me, every fiber of me, grasping for you. I've opened myself to this so suddenly and it's so overwhelming and powerful. Please…when I think of you trapping this feeling inside for so long…Please, Guin…”

She was so sweetly begging him, her face turned up to his and her whiskey eyes full of yearning and need. He caught her head between his hands, searching her for a flaw he could expose or exploit. But all he could see were the soft, gorgeous contours of a face tattooed on his heart and the soul behind her eyes that could feed him forever.

“I've loved you since the moment I saw you,” he said at last, the words rushed and full of roiling emotions. “Sitting there in powder blue and waiting for your killer so you could turn the table and slaughter his heart instead. Since then I've seen no other face but yours, smelled no other perfume, touched no other skin. None of it could compare, every woman paling in my eyes. How unfair for them to be held up against what I have always deemed as perfection. But no other would do for me but you, and you were forever out of my reach, my class, and my rights. I've felt this way for fifty years, Malaya, never giving it an ounce of freedom or breath to breathe and then you touched me…you danced against me and touched me and the need all came crashing in on me. You have no idea the relief I felt that morning when you were finally mine to take. And I thought it would satisfy my soul to have at least that much of you, but I knew—even as I ran through
the city thinking Acadian was within reach of you, I knew it was nothing if I couldn't have the right to love you.

“Then that damned law, Malaya. To think I was holding myself in check so you could have what you deserved and then you were throwing it all away with that fucking law!” He couldn't help giving her a fierce shake. “You were such a little idiot! I couldn't watch it. I couldn't bear it anymore. And I couldn't only have your body, Laya. As beautiful and as succulent as it is to me, it wasn't enough. You broke my heart with that fucking law and I couldn't take it.”