Hers to Claim by Patricia A. Knight Page A

for the entire rite. Do you understand me?”
    “Yes.” He might as well have bound her arms over her head. Well, you always wanted to know what went on in those barbaric sex rites . Now you’re going to find out. She didn’t think it possible for her heart to beat any faster. It did.
    Hel’s face was a study in solemn intensity as he knelt beside her. He started with a feather soft stroke that began at her forehead and wandered down over her eyes and lips, then to her collarbone and shoulders and then around each small breast, avoiding the hard nipple that sat atop each like a plump raisin. His lips mouthed silent words while his fingers soothed the gooseflesh on her stomach and traced circles on her protruding hipbones. He left trails of ghostly figures on the insides of her thighs, especially the tender crease where thigh met abdomen. Hel repeated these patterns all over her body until her sensitive skin shuddered under the slightest of contacts, until she was hypersensitive, almost rising into each feathering touch. Her eyes fluttered closed and her breath came easily, her senses hypnotized by the feel of him.
    “Don’t move,” he warned.
    “I won’t,” she murmured, lost in the gossamer sensation of his stroke.
    Pain from a hard, twisting pinch to her right nipple sent another kind of sensation lancing through her. “Oh!” Her eyes flew open.
    “Don’t move.”
    Her breath came in pants, but the pain dispersed and she had managed not to move her arms.
    Again he stroked her with gentle, titillating slides, this time moving over her pubic mound and down between her legs in the lightest of touches. Again her breathing slowed to deep, relaxed inhales. The most delicate of strokes feathered on either side of her labia, in the tender crease of her buttocks and then straight up her swollen center, slipping easily in her moisture.
    “Don’t move.”
    Her eyes flew open and this time the streaking pain when he pinched her right nipple caught her less by surprise.
    Once more he returned to light brushes over her labia and clit, over her pubic mound and the tender inner crease of her thighs. He placed delicate circles behind her knees. The strangest thing was happening. Adonia felt as if every hair on her body was a nerve alive to the slightest motion. She could feel her inner lips swell and slick. Her inner core felt heavy and her lower groin ached. The nipple that Hel had abused throbbed with life and registered the merest shift of breeze across it. She waited with tense anticipation for his fingertips to trace over her clit, and it was all she could do not to arch into his touch for an increase in pressure when the stroke came. She must have moved in that exact fashion, for his hand suddenly pushed her hip back to the fur.
    “None of that.” His gentle finger slipped between her swollen folds and into the entrance to her body. His broad thumb moved up to her clit and rested beside it then circled ever so gently. She closed her eyes and bit her lip to stop a moan. Goddess! It felt beyond good. His harsh, guttural whisper sounded in her ear. “This may be on your body but it belongs to me . It is for me to decide what is done for you and when. Adonia, look at me. Tell me you want this. Tell me you agree to this.”
    She turned her head and stared into gray eyes that branded her, possessed her and demanded her obedience. There were no half-measures with this man. In that moment, she made a decision she suspected would change her life. Her voice came out in a whisper. “I want this. I agree to this.”
    “Good. From this moment forward, this flesh,” he circled her clit gently, “and this flesh,” the finger inside her stroked the front of her walls, “are to be touched only by me or at my direction. Understood?”
    She nodded slowly. Considering her complete dearth of sexual stirrings the past two years, she didn’t think that would be a problem at all. “I understand.”
    He grunted and withdrew his hand