Mistral smiled up at me, a fierce baring of teeth. His eyes boiled black with storm clouds so that he looked blind. He was suddenly on his feet, my hand still gripped in his. He jerked me against his body so hard it jarred my arm and drove a small moan of pain from me.

A sound came from his throat and deep in his chest, a sound that started as almost a purring, but ended in the low bass growl of distant thunder.

He ran his fingers through my hair, pulling a fistful sudden and tight in his hand. It was a small sharp pain but it was just this side of being too tight, too much.

He stared down at me, his face filled with a raw, naked lust, something separate and primeval like darkness and light. That divine spark that thrust into the first dark and brought life. That power was in Mistral’s hands, in the press of his body hard and eager even through the prison of his leather.

He felt so big, so thick, against the front of my body. The press of him, the strength of his hands made me shudder against him. He tightened his grip on my hair, forcing me to fight my body’s reaction, or cause myself real pain. My body wanted to buck and fight against his grip, but he’d given me a choice. Control myself or hurt myself. He knew the game, did Mistral.

The feeling of being trapped, of being helpless against his strength, his lust, and what my body needed was almost overwhelming. My eyes shuttered closed at the effort of not struggling in his harsh grasp.

He whispered against my face, and I could not focus enough to see him. “Do you want to ride the storm?” His breath was hot against my skin.

His voice promised no gentleness, no compromise. I knew the kind of sex he was offering, and the thought of it tightened things low in my body, drew another small sound from my throat. “Yes,” I whispered, “yes.”

The roll of thunder echoed down the hallway, shuddering between the stone walls. The sound seemed to vibrate out of his body and into mine as if my body were a tuning fork struck against the rim of some great metal cup. His voice growled against my skin, with the taste of thunder in it. “Good,” he said and forced me to my knees.

MISTRAL HELD ME ON MY KNEES, MY HEAD IMMOBILE IN HIS GRIP, as his other hand undid the front of his pants. Just watching him do it made my body react so strongly that I might have fallen to all fours if he hadn’t held me up. Most of my lovers wouldn’t let me go down on them because that wouldn’t get me pregnant. Oral sex wouldn’t make one of them king to my queen, and they would not waste seed on any other part of my body. I’d offered it as a part of foreplay, but most had refused even that for fear that I would bring them, and a chance would be wasted. I was left begging for the touch of them in my mouth.

Mistral was not worried about being king or making me pregnant. In this moment, he simply wanted me with no plan, no agenda, only his own long-denied need. That he would think first of pleasure and second of politics made me love him, just a little.

My skin began to glow softly. That faint dance of magic underneath my skin traveled up his hand and into his body. A faint white radiance started underneath his skin, like light reflected around a corner. Not the full-out shine of my skin, but something fainter, less sure of itself. I wondered if his glow had always been so hesitant. His body spilled out of his pants. He forced my mouth down on the long, thick shaft and I sucked long and hard on him. It threw his head back, bowed his body, and light burst from his skin. Cool white fire, blazing inside him, so that for a moment my eyes were dazzled.

If I had not held him in my mouth, felt his hand like a comforting pain in my hair, I would have believed that he had become light and power and magic, and had no true substance at all. But he shoved that wide and very solid piece of himself so far down my throat that breathing became an issue. I liked my men large, but I liked breathing more. I began to fight against his hold, my body starting to struggle to breathe.

I pushed at his body, and his hand relaxed, drawing my mouth down his thickness until I could draw breath, around the tip of him. I expected him to draw the rest of the way out of my mouth, but he didn’t. He kept the tip of himself just inside me. When I’d drawn enough air, I ran my tongue delicately underneath the rim of his foreskin where it stretched tight across the hardness of him. It made him shudder from the hand in my hair, to the flesh in my mouth, to his hips under the press of my hands.

His body emerged from the radiance in edges, an outline of solid lines melting out of the brightness. His hair had burst its leather ribbon, and fell around him like a fall of white light. It was as if the rest of his body thrummed with light and power, except the part I held in my mouth. Maybe I couldn’t have held him inside me if it all glowed like something carved of power.

He shoved himself deeper into my mouth, but I was afraid that he would shove too far as he had before. I distracted him with just an edge of teeth. It made him hesitate, and let me pull myself to the end of him again. I edged my tongue gently but firmly farther underneath the skin than I had before, so that I could lick inside that taut skin and the top of the shaft at the same time. It made him shudder and writhe above me. He looked down at me and his eyes were wide and wild with the sensation of it.

Wind began to play down the hallway, and his white, shining hair flared in that wind, a nimbus to frame his body. The wind grew until it streamed down the hallway in both directions, and I realized it was Mistral.

My hands slid to his pants, and I pulled carefully on the leather fastenings, until I could touch the soft skin of his testicles. They were loose enough that I could tease the skin between them, and roll them in my hands like delicate balls of tender flesh.

I forgot my earlier fear, and drove myself down the shaft of him, struggling to hold the width of him in my mouth. He’d gotten harder, which was more difficult to swallow, but it was worth the effort. Worth it to rest my mouth against those tender bits of skin and flesh, until I could lay the circle of my lips against the solid vibrating warmth of his body. Touching even that much of myself to the shining center of him left my lips tingling, and as I drew myself back down the length of him, it was as if that shivering power followed me. As if the touch of my lips had somehow allowed it to flow down this last length of his body.

I gave a final flick of my tongue, and when I drew him out of my mouth, he did not fight me. He gazed down at me with those wild eyes, and light flashed through them. It took me a second to realize I was seeing lightning. Lightning flashed through Mistral’s eyes. Then came the first distant breath of ozone, like a storm that hadn’t quite reached us yet, but the scent of it rode the wind and promised great and terrible things.

He made a sound low in his throat, and thunder growled down the hallway in answer.

My skin shone as if the moon had climbed inside me and was trying to melt out through my skin. We painted shadows along the walls. He dragged me to my feet by hair that had bled to red light, and I knew that my eyes were a blaze of green and gold like Christmas lights caught behind snow.

He turned me sharply in against the wall so that only my hands against the stones kept me from hitting face-first.

He kept his hand in my hair, but the other hand slid under my skirt until his fingers found the edge of my panties. He balled his hand into the satin, and I had a breath to brace before he ripped them from my body. The violence of it staggered me, and only his hand in my hair kept me against the wall. I realized that I was using my hurt arm, and it didn’t hurt anymore. My hands pressed into the cool stone of the wall, as Mistral pulled my hips against his body.