“I love this body of yours, Challen,” she felt compelled to admit. “I love its strength, its gentleness. It amazes me that you’ve never hurt me with it, even unintentionally. I know you could… you know you could. But you’re very careful when you’re with a woman, aren’t you? The only time you’re not exactly gentle is when you make love, and then it’s deliberate. It scares me sometimes, how-ungentle-you can be. But it excites the hell out of me, too. And I think you know that. I think that’s why you do it…”

That was all the warning he got before she bent and raked her teeth slowly down the length of him, just as he had done to her breasts on several occasions. But it wasn’t an exact imitation, since she couldn’t have covered as much ground if she’d taken him into her mouth to scrape him as he’d done to her breasts. And she stopped short at biting the tip a bit harder as he had done to her nipples-not that she could have with the way he reared up, nearly unseating her.

“Easy, babe,” she chuckled. “You ought to know by now that I’m not done yet.”

And still giving him back some of his own, she followed the path her teeth had taken, but this time with her tongue. His moan was more a shout. His body went from stiff to trembling to stiff again. But his reactions, those same reactions she had demanded he give her, were having an unwanted side effect-on her. Driving him wild was driving her wild, and she had less endurance than he did. In fact, she couldn’t stand another minute of it.

She rose to her knees, faced him, and reached the unpleasant realization that she didn’t want to impale herself on his ready flesh, she wanted to be impaled. She could command him to make love to her, but she was afraid that wouldn’t do it either. She wanted his arms around her because he wanted them around her, not because she ordered them there. The plain truth was, she had become addicted to his special brand of domination. The helplessness it engendered was what took her outside herself and joined her to him, making her feel totally possessed… making her feel-loved.

That was what she wanted, but she’d backed herself into a corner where she wasn’t going to get it, unless…

“I-I think I’ve played enough, Challen. I thank you for obliging me, but I now give you back your challenge win, my challenge loss. You can-”

She didn’t get to finish, he came up onto his knees so fast and immediately dragged her against him, locking her in the vise of his arms.

“Have you forgiven me, woman?” he demanded.

“Yes,” she gasped, gasping because he was already thrusting into her.

“Place your hands behind your head.”

She didn’t even hesitate.

“You will now drop back,” he told her.

Would she? His thighs were spread wide to support her buttocks, hers clasping his hips. He was deep inside her, and the exquisite sensation of that almost made her miss the feel of his hands gripping her waist. If she dropped back, she wouldn’t drop far.

She dropped, and instantly realized why he’d wanted her to. The vulnerable position thrust her breasts up at him, and he swiftly bent to capture one. He didn’t bite, but he sucked so hard she thought he meant to swallow her. She cried out. He surged into her, and she exploded, dissolved, exploded, ah, Stars, the incredible beauty of it, the incredible ecstasy.

It left her so dazed, she wasn’t even aware of being gently laid down on the bed a while later, or of giving him the good-night kiss that had become a ritual between them. And only he noted that she first curled her limbs against him before she gave herself up to sleep.

A pleasure, to wake feeling so marvelously refreshed-or so Tedra thought until the happenings of yesterday crashed into her consciousness. She flushed with the vivid memories and felt a distinct uneasiness that would have had her squirming, except she didn’t want to wake Challen, whose arm lay heavily across her upper chest.

Where in Stars’ universe had she got the guts to do what she did to the mighty barbarian last night? Was she nuts? A glutton for punishment? And where in the farden hell had the idea come from that she liked being dominated by a man so insufferably arrogant and inflexible in his ways that he was on the close side of being an absolute tyrant? And she had thought to give him a little tit for tat, when he was an expert at it?

She had his word there would be no reprisals, but in point of fact, she’d forced him to give it. She wouldn’t honor a swearing given under duress, so why should he?

She made a sound in her throat, and Challen’s arm moved, his hand coming up to turn her face toward him. “Do you not feel well, chemar?”

“I… did I wake you?”

“No,” he said simply, leaving her all kinds of things to wonder about-like had he been watching her all this time?

She stared into his dark-as-midnight eyes, hoping they would tell her something, but they were back to being inscrutable. Not for the first time, she wished she had his warrior’s calm, his ability to appear unruffled even if he was hopping-around mad on the inside.

“Have you stuck around for-for a particular reason?” she ventured.

“No.”

There was no help for it with such enlightening answers. “Are you mad at me, Challen?”

It was funny from that angle, seeing one of his golden brows arch. “Should I be?”

She felt like telling him what a great communicator he was, but pushed down the urge, wondering where this suicidal tendency kept coming from. From one of her donators, no doubt, those two unknowns who had supplied the genes for her tube. One of them must have been unbalanced-probably the male.

“If you aren’t mad, warrior, I’m not going to bring up a subject that might change that. But if you are mad, I’d like to discuss it.”

“A sound strategy,” he replied, laughing.

“Well?”

“I will leave it for you to decide, whether I should be mad or not.”

“Do I look stupid?”

“You look, as always, very desirable.”

She frowned for about two seconds, then broke into a brilliant smile. “You really aren’t mad, are you? I’m glad, since I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the-ah- uniqueness of the experience. And if you didn’t mind it all that much, maybe we can play switching places again sometime.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Oh?” She grinned as she watched him sit up on his side of the bed with a degree of stiffness. “Need I remind you that there wouldn’t be any play to it if I decided to challenge you again-and won?”

“You are welcome to try,” he came back with supreme confidence.

“Well, thank you-I think. And as long as you’re being so generous, how about throwing in a handicap? Considering your size and gender, I’d say that’s only fair.”

He turned toward her, interested if nothing else. “What is a handicap?”

“An edge. A head start, so to speak. Or to put it another way, it’d be the same as if you had one hand tied behind your back to make the odds more even.”

He thought about that for a moment. “Very well, what then is the handicap you request?”

“The element of surprise would do nicely. That would let me attack without giving you prior warning. Would you agree to that?”

“You have already given me prior warning in the asking. How then do you perceive an element of surprise?”

“I didn’t mean I was thinking of challenging you this minute, babe. And you can’t be on guard every moment of every day, now can you?”

The warrior frowned, wanting to know, “You would attack while I slept?”

“No, I’d draw the line at that.”

She had the feeling he was actually considering it when he didn’t answer right off. She hadn’t expected that. She’d really been no more than teasing him. But, of course, if he wanted to be foolish enough to even up the odds between them, she wasn’t about to stop him from doing so. She was feeling quite pleased with her barbarian just now, but that could change so easily, and having him handicapped would definitely be a blessing if her feelings did change.