"But I want you, Rain. I want this." She reached for him again, but he caught her hand in an iron grip.

"Ellysetta ..." His voice was a rough scrape of sound, ragged with need. "I want you too, shei’tani. And I need to mate with you now. Teska, let me spin the weave." He groaned as the tairen surged against its bonds, reaching for her, roaring against its confinement.

A shocking wave of hunger crashed over Ellysetta-fiery, voracious, overwhelming. She shuddered in its grip, feeling the hunger invade every cell, twisting want to clawing need. It rose up, fierce and demanding. She needed him. Now, inside her. Completing her in truth the way he'd completed her so often now in Spirit.

"No weave," she commanded, her voice low, bordering on a growl. “Just you and me, as we were meant to be”

Dear gods. Every muscle in his body clenched in agony. "There's nothing I want more, shei’tani. I crave it so fiercely, it would frighten you to know." He dragged in a deep breath. The gods could not have devised a more insidious torment than this: Ellysetta, wholly untouched by any sensory enhancement, not just urging him to take what every instinct of his Fey and tairen souls was screaming for him to claim, but commanding him to. "Teska. I swore an oath to your father. I cannot break it.”

Now he could scarcely believe he'd been so stupid as to make such a vow. No mortal had a right to govern what was shared between a shei’tan and his mate. When Sol Baristani had pressed Rain for his oath that there would be no mating before marriage, Rain should have refused. But he'd wanted the guarantee of time alone with Ellysetta each day, to court her slowly and win her trust so the bond between them could form.

"I didn't swear that oath," she protested. "When you wager with tairen ..." She squirmed against him, her hips wriggling until his heart nearly exploded in his chest.

She was going to kill him. Without a blade, without a spell, she was going to be the ruin of him. Within, the tairen roared and lunged against its bonds, raging, furious, driven mad by the need to claim its mate.

"I swore it," he rasped. "I've already bent my oath as far as I can. This would break it.”

Her eyes flashed. For a moment he feared she would demand what he had no more strength to resist, but instead she said, "Then spin your weave, shei'tan. Now”

Spirit rushed from his hands in twin rivers of magic so dense and shining, the whole world took on a glowing lavender tinge until the weave settled to illusory perfection. He spared only the smallest fraction of his concentration to spin his leather breeches back into place in the desperate hope of keeping his honor intact. His hands and mouth he gave free rein, falling upon Ellysetta's sweet body with ravening hunger just as the Spirit Rain caught the Spirit Ellysetta in a fierce, hungry embrace.

She reached for him with greedy hands and growled in frustration when they found the warm barrier of his leathers rather than the heated naked flesh she wanted. Her fingers dug into the waistband and tugged. "Take these back off," she insisted, then cried out as his mouth closed around the sensitive peak of one breast, setting her blood on fire.

Hands, mouth, teeth, tongue, both real and magic, worked their way down her body, finding every sensitive spot, tormenting every nerve ending until every fiber of her body came alive with hot, electric sensation. The muscles in her thighs began to tremble, then to quake as in both body and mind her passion exploded in a breathtaking rush. But even before the first shudders ceased, he began working his magic again, driving her to a second, more powerful climax, then a third.

"Rain, dear gods, you're going to kill me." Tremor after tremor shook her, the pleasure intense and ceaseless. She could no longer tell what was real and what was illusion. Her hands gripped his shoulders, nails digging into his skin. "Come to me.”

"Not yet." His face was fierce, his eyes blazing like the sun, as he began driving her with relentless determination towards yet another orgasm.

She didn't want this again. She wanted him, not making her fly apart, but flying apart with her. Conscious thought shredded, and wild, insistent instinct rose in its place. She reached for the rigid bulge of his sex, cupping him through the heated leather. Using the technique he'd shown her, she shared the essence of herself with him. Energy leapt from her body to his in a streaming rush: hot, electric, exquisite. He gasped, nearly losing control of his weave as the dazzling force poured into him.

"Now," she insisted.

Flames scorched him. She wasn't begging any longer. She was commanding-and not only by sharing her essence. With the same instinctive, unintentional yet astonishingly powerful weave of Spirit he'd seen her use before, she was pushing him, urging him to fulfill her. Compelling him.

He could not deny her. In truth, he didn't want to even if he could.

In his weave, Rain's body sank deep into hers, and she cried out at the glorious fullness of it, the feeling of wholeness and completion. Their Spirit bodies began a fierce rhythm, limbs twining, hips rising and falling in unison.

Rain's throat strained as the need grew and skin stretched taut over bunching muscle. Every soft cry wrenched from her lips was a flame cast upon tinder. He poured himself into his weave, poured his magic across her senses.

Without warning, the wild force of her own untamed magic erupted around them both. Spirit threads dense with power exploded from her, writhing, twining, merging with his weave, driving him with the same relentless mastery as his Spirit drove her. Spirit Ellysetta locked her legs about his hips and rolled on top of him. His breath caught as he looked up at her: wild, glorious, fiercely female, her eyes blazing, her hair a nimbus of living flame around her. An ancient warrior goddess from the time before memory.