Relieved he’d pleased her, he finally let go and surrendered himself to his own release. He shook all over from the ferocity of it. Never had he felt the likes of this. It just didn’t compare to what he’d known on his own.

His jaw quivering, he laid his head between her lush, pale breasts. Weak and spent, he cradled her against him.

“That was incredible,” she breathed in his ear.

He smiled. “Yes, you were.”

Sumi watched as his eyes slowly faded back to their normal color. “Did you know your eyes glow red when you’re aroused?”

He pulled back with a frown – as if her words greatly concerned him. “What?”

She nodded. “They were as red as they could be the entire time you made love to me. Is that normal?”

“I guess… you broke me.”

She made a face at him. “I broke you?”

“Maybe?”

Sumi rolled her eyes at his uncertainty. “Do all Andarion males do that?”

He snorted at her question. “I don’t know. I’ve never slept with a male.”

She playfully tugged at his hair. “You know what I mean. Don’t Andarions talk about it? Have Andarion porn videos and such?”

Tracing the line of her lips, he shook his head. “We’re not human, Sumi. Sex is a very sacred thing for us. It’s a sharing of ourselves. Whenever you engage in it, you run the risk of combining bloodlines. We don’t undertake that lightly. Our ancestry defines us. Binds us. While there are Andarions who rut like animals, they’re scorned by the rest of us. And are usually blocked from unification.”

“And yet you slept with me. Why?”

He sighed heavily. “I don’t know.”

Offended to the core of her being, she gasped. “You don’t know? What do you mean, you don’t know?”

Hauk hissed as she rose up from him and practically tore the skin off the most delicate part of his body. “Ow!”

She broke off into a language he didn’t know as she yanked her clothes back on.

He reached to her. “Sumi…”

She jerked out of his reach. “Don’t you dare take that tone to me now! How dare you!”

Rising to his feet, he pulled her to a stop. “Don’t be angry at me. Do you not understand what I just did?”

She raked him with a scathing glare. “Yeah. You just acted like a typical man!”

“No, mia. To lie with you, I’ve condemned myself to death.”

CHAPTER 17

Sumi froze in the middle of dressing to stare at him as a horrid fear went through her. “They won’t actually kill you for this. Will they?”

There was no missing the sincerity in his gaze. “While another female might not, Dariana will certainly demand my life for it when she finds out.”

She straightened to frown at him. “Then don’t tell her.”