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  All she knew was the desire for release, all she craved was more. She nearly wept when Jaran removed his finger. Before she could find her voice to protest, he spread her thighs even wider. He caught Lara's gaze and held it while he entered her again, this time with two fingers, deep and probing. He began a rhythm of slow penetration and withdrawal that had her writhing on the silken platform of his bed.

  "I enjoyed feeling you come," he told her, his golden eyes blazing with such intensity she had to look away. "Feeling you grow tighter around me, watching your cheeks flush and your eyes dilate makes it almost impossible for me to control my symbion. I like knowing I can give you pleasure."

  Lara whimpered. His thrusts filled her, each time just teasing the spot within her that demanded attention. Spread to either side of her shoulders, her wings had begun to flutter lightly against the bed. Her symbion was drawing all of the supercharged sex hormones from her body into its own and enhancing them so that when her climax occurred again, it would affect them both.

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  Icarus Unbound

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  In a few weeks when the mating cycle began, her orgasm would bring with it a flood of fertility that would virtually assure conception, but for now, during this initial phase of their union, even if Jaran ejaculated inside her, she would not become pregnant.

  Thank goodness. She still had time to figure out how to dissolve their bond. But in the mean time, she was coming ...

  coming hard.

  She tensed up as Jaran reached deep, finally touching the spot inside her that triggered an avalanche of erotic sensation. Her clit pulsed and her juices gushed around his finger, easing his way even farther toward her contracting womb.

  She could no longer fight it. A breathless moan escaped her and her body shuddered as her symbion experienced the same wave of ecstasy. While Lara sobbed with the tremors racking her body, Jaran drew one of her nipples into his mouth and began to suckle. The sudden pain of his teeth and tongue flattening the distended flesh mixed with waves of pleasure coursing through her and made her cry out. Instinct drove her to curl her arm around the back of his head and hold his hot mouth against her breast.

  Lara's brain shut down. For a blissful moment she forgot that she lay in the bed of her lifelong nemesis. She forgot all the times Jaran's taunts had made her cry. Instead she gave herself over to the sensation and let herself drift in a nearly dreamlike state.

  Without warning, Jaran broke contact, swept the sheet away from their bodies and rose up on his knees. He stared 53

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  down at her trembling body, her swollen nipples and the moisture on her thighs.

  She would have expected him to fuck her now while she lay weak from her climax and was not inclined, for the first time in decades, to fight with him. Instead, he climbed off the bed.

  Lara eyed his cock, which though straight and long was only semi-erect. A new wave of shame washed over her. For all his talk about how beautiful and alluring she was, he hadn't become completely aroused while pleasuring her.

  Clearly this entire interlude had been a deceit. He had no real interest in her, he simply wanted to manipulate her. She stared, jaw slack, anger building in her and quickly drying up the sensual river on which she'd been floating. She shifted position and drew her legs closed. "Why are you wasting your time with someone you don't even desire, Jaran?" She choked the words out as she gathered the sheet around her rapidly cooling body, desperate to hide the physical evidence of her own arousal.

  "That's not..."

  "Or is it that you're unable to reach your peak?"

  His expression hardened to granite and he turned his back on her. With his wings spread in anger, he stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

  Lara stared after him for a long time, wondering if she could bring herself to follow and apologize. The words probably would have caught in her throat and suffocated her.

  Why would he do this to her? It made no sense for him to choose a mate he had no feelings for except as a cruel joke.

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  He could dismiss her as inadequate and choose a new mate for himself, leaving her without prospects. No man would have her if the leader himself tossed her aside.

  Tears rolled down her cheeks and she cursed him, first quietly, then at the top of her voice. She had two choices now—allow Jaran to complete his humiliation of her or find a way to coax his arousal from him and consummate their union, thus eliminating one of the many reasons he could cite for her dismissal.

  She could make him want her the same way he'd tried to make her want him. Or she could disappear and spare herself any more heartache caused by Jaran. Furious, she dried her tears with a corner of the sheet and made her decision.

  Jaran tried to ignore the sounds of Lara's wrath drifting through the corridors of the upper level of the aerie. Once again, he'd made a mistake with her. He'd controlled his own arousal, keeping it at bay while he pleasured her so she wouldn't feel pressured to accommodate him. He'd hoped she would appreciate not being rushed, not feeling completely powerless. He wanted her to choose the moment of their joining, not feel it had been forced upon her.

  Instead, she'd been insulted and assumed he didn't find her arousing.

  He should have marched back into the bed chamber, mounted her and unleashed the full fury of his symbion's mating instinct. Then she'd have no doubt he wanted her.

  If he took her now, in this state, he'd hurt her. He'd ravage her with all the years of pent-up desire. By the time he was through, she'd hate him even more than she already did.

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  So, instead of claiming his mate and leaving her panting, wrung out, exhausted and begging for his mercy, he stood now in the water spa holding his fully erect cock in one hand.

  His symbion would not be pleased with this alternative, but at least he could relieve the unrelenting ache in his balls.

  An Icarian male could suppress his arousal only so long, and Jaran had reached his limit. He braced an arm on the ornately tiled wall and began to run his hand along his shaft.

  Harder and faster he pumped while images of Lara lying in his bed swirled through his mind. He still smelled her skin and tasted her sweet essence on his tongue.

  He'd have her. In time. He would claim her properly and completely and he'd do whatever he had to do to erase all the years of turmoil between them and make her love him the way he loved her.

  Until then, he'd satisfy himself, no matter how much his symbion protested.

  Jaran's climax hit hard. His balls tightened, and his shaft jerked in his hand, spurting his still infertile seed on the tile wall. Weak kneed and still frustrated, he washed the evidence of his orgasm away with a shower of clean water and prepared to return to his chamber to fall asleep next to his unwilling mate.

  He would apologize, in the morning when his head was clear and they were both well rested. And tomorrow evening, he would do his best to please her again and again and again.

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  Chapter Six

  Lara blinked, squeezed her eyes shut tight, then opened them wide again in an effort to banish the fuzzy haze from the edges of her vision.

  She'd been in her lab since well before sunrise, studying mutated plant cells and trying to determine how she could cure the seed blight which had destroyed an entire kelp bed in the northern shoals. At the moment, every slide she examined looked exactly the same. Her eyes were too tired to distinguish the healthy plant samples from the diseased ones.

  She needed a break, but only work had been able to take her mind off her disastrous encounter with Jaran. She'd left the royal aerie before he returned to his bed and had flown back to her bungalow at th
e research station by moonlight.

  Somehow her own narrow bed had seemed empty and cold after spending even an hour in Jaran's, but she had no desire to get used to sleeping with his large, muscular body next to hers. She let out a sigh and pushed away from her work station, figuring a walk on the beach would clear her head.

  She slipped off her lab coat and let herself out of the clean room in which she worked. The bustle of the busy research station filled her ears, and she began to feel better and a little less alone.

  Spending the day with her colleagues might give her some perspective on this unexpected complication in her life. Or it might only serve to frustrate her further. The latter seemed to be the case, she discovered as she strolled down the main 57

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  corridor of the building, heading toward the atrium which lead out to the island's crescent-shaped beach.

  Her human co-workers smiled and nodded greetings as usual, but the Icarians, every last one, refused to meet her gaze. As was custom, they all dropped to one knee as she approached, some mid-stride or mid-conversation. While many of them muttered the traditional greeting of "my lady", none of them said anything else to her. By the time she arrived at the beach, her embarrassment had reached staggering proportions.

  Her few precious moments of solitude were interrupted by the arrival of Kiala. The Icarian woman glided in from the north, exhibiting her usual perfect grace as she landed. The artistry of her movements dimmed for Lara when her friend dropped immediately to one knee.

  "My lady, if I may walk with you?"

  Lara made a sound somewhere between a sigh of annoyance and a growl. "Kiala, I'm the same person I was twenty-four hours ago. Why are you treating me as if I'm Namara's ghost?"

  Kiala folded her wings and crossed her arms over her chest. "How do you expect me to act? I was raised on Icarian social protocols. Every single one of us who has one Icarian parent was taught to put Icarian laws and traditions first and foremost."

  Lara held up her hands in surrender. "I know. I was too.

  My parents were just as dedicated to preserving Icarian culture as anyone else, but we're friends and when you call me 'my lady' I feel like there's a bridge between us that I 58

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  can't cross. At least when we're alone, can you treat me normally?"

  After a tense moment, Kiala's expression softened. "I'm sorry. I was ... a little shocked yesterday and I wasn't sure how to act."

  "Welcome to my world. I'm completely ... ah!" Lara tossed her hands in the air and riffled her wings. "Kee, I don't know what to do."

  Kiala approached Lara cautiously and squeezed her shoulder. "Did you spend the night with Jaran?"

  Lara shuddered at the memory of how she'd spent the night. "Yes, but, well, no..."

  Kiala's blinked. "Did you mate with him? I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked that."

  Lara wanted to spill all the intimate details of her encounter with Jaran. She and Kiala had never kept secrets from each other, but somehow it seemed wrong to tell anyone about the sexual exploits of the Icarian leader. What had happened between her and Jaran would have to remain private.

  "Kee, things are strange between us. Clearly we don't belong together, and I don't know what to do."

  "Do you really want to dissolve the union?"

  Lara swept her gaze over the cloudless sky, wishing the answer would fall from the heavens. "I don't know. If I do, I can't choose another mate. Jaran would never choose one for me—or what if he did and that was worse? If he dismisses me, no one else will want me."

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  "You could find a human mate." Kiala's suggestion was a low whisper, yet it cut to the heart of Lara's dilemma like a knife.

  "I could. Since I'm fully human, my DNA isn't important to the tribe. I can just give up everything about the way I was raised and live my life as a human ... who happens to have wings." Her sudden bout of sarcasm upset Kiala who backed up a step.

  "I didn't mean it as an insult, Lara, just a possibility."

  "It's not one I want to consider. I'm Icarian in my bones and in my soul if not my blood. I want to live as an Icarian."

  "Then why have you been living at the research station for ten years? Why do you avoid trips to the royal aerie and why are you so upset about being chosen as co-leader?"

  Lara bowed her head. "I don't know."

  "Are you in love with someone else? If you are, tell Jaran and he'll release you to the other man. He's already taking a chance by choosing you. If you have a good reasons to—"

  "What does that mean, he's 'taking a chance'?"

  Kiala looked up and down the beach before answering as if to determine whether or not they were completely alone.

  "There's already talk of an administrative challenge to his rule because of his choice."

  "That's ridiculous. Why?"

  "Jaran obviously chose you because of his personal feelings, no matter what they are, good or bad. He's one of the last full-blooded Icarians, and it was expected that he would mate with a hybrid so his offspring would be three quarters Icarian."

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  "And the administrative committee would challenge his rule over that?"

  "They could. If, at the next mating cycle, we can begin to pair up Icarian offspring properly, we can actually begin to rebuild our genetic integrity. The idea of your parents'

  breeding program was never to combine human and Icarian DNA permanently, only to give our DNA a boost."

  "You don't have to tell me that, Kiala. And it wasn't my parents' breeding program, it was Dr. Danson's." Raymond Danson had left Icarus twenty-five years ago, but his legacy lived on in the burgeoning Icarian population. He'd been a visionary, dedicated to saving the winged race, and Lara could not believe that one ill-fated mate-pairing would jeopardize his work. How could one full-blooded Icarian child make that much difference?

  "Either way, Lara, there has been talk. If the administrators decide to remove Jaran from his position, you could still end up paired with someone else."

  Lara couldn't decide if that was good news or not. Despite her opinion of Jaran, he was a competent leader. His full Icarian heritage notwithstanding, he was the right choice.

  Jidar had seen that in him, and it made no sense for the administrative committee to remove him, no matter who he chose as a mate. She shook her head, wishing she could clear the fog from her brain. "Kee, what would you do? Would you stay with someone you didn't ... love?" The word left a strange taste in her mouth. Every time she thought of Jaran, her heart flipped, and after the things he'd done to her last 61

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  night, other parts of her body reacted as well, but that certainly wasn't love.

  Kiala straightened her wings. "I would do whatever was best for Icarus." She'd been staring out over the ocean and now she turned to face Lara. Pointing to a dark speck appearing in the northeastern sky, she said, "Whatever decision you make, you should make it fast, because Jaran is on his way here."

  One of the two females standing on the crescent-shaped beach dropped to one knee the moment Jaran's feet touched the sand. Though they were still several meters away, he knew that one could not be Lara.

  He covered the distance between them with long, purposeful strides, kicking up plumes of the pale green sand as he walked. He recognized Kiala and he bade her rise as soon as he approached.

  Lara apparently remembered Icarian protocol too late and folded her supple, clothed body into the submissive posture just as Kiala rose. Waves of resentment seemed to pour off his mate as she struggled to hold herself perfectly still.

  "You may go, Kiala. I'm sure your new mate misses you,"

  Jaran said, managing to keep his irritation with Lara out of his v
oice.

  With a questioning glance at Lara, Kiala stepped away from the royal couple and leapt into the air.

  Jaran waited until the Icarian woman disappeared into the clear, aqua blue sky before turning to his mate. "You may rise."

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  She obeyed, her stiff movements telegraphing her anger.

  "My liege."

  "I was disappointed not to find you in bed this morning."

  "I didn't think you would miss me, at least until this evening."

  "I figured you would want to catch up on your work. I've been told by many how dedicated you are. Normally, I would not have interrupted your day, but considering our misunderstanding last night, I wanted to make sure you were not under any false impressions."

  Lara squinted at him. The mid-morning sun made her eyes glitter. "What impressions, my liege?"

  Jaran stepped closer. "The impression that I was ...

  unaffected by our interactions last night."

  She lifted her chin. "I won't question you again, my liege."

  "No, you won't need to. I intend to show you, right now in fact, exactly how affected I am by your presence."

  Her eyes widened, and she glanced up the beach. All the way here, Jaran had planned exactly what he would do with his new mate once he got her alone. The erotic thoughts had threatened to send his symbion into a mating frenzy, but he'd managed somehow to maintain control.

  Now, standing before her, he relinquished that control. His body hardened, his breath quickened and his erection grew.

  "Even wearing clothes you excite me," he whispered, leaning close to take in her intoxicating scent. "I've decided we will go now to your bungalow so I can demonstrate how much."

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