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Phury exhaled on a growl. Okay, that was not what he expected her say. And duty was one thing, but man, she didn’t have the look of a female worried about living up to tradition. She wanted sex. Maybe even needed it. Just like he did.

And she wanted it with him.

In slow motion, Phury pivoted toward her, his body suddenly very coordinated, the fuzz from all the red smoke and booze totally blown away.

He was going to take her. Here. Now.

He headed down the shallow steps, ready to claim what was his.

Cormia rose up from her chair, in the midst of the blinding light of the Primale’s eyes. He was a massive shadow as he came at her, his long strides eating up two of the shallow steps at a time. He stopped when he was but a foot away from her, smelling of that delicious smoky scent and also of dark spices.

“You watch because it makes you think of me,” he said in a deep, rough voice.

"Yes . . .”

He reached out and touched her face. “And what do you think about?”

She pulled up her courage and threw out words that made no sense. “I think about how I . . . have certain feelings for you.”

His erotic laugh was a dark thrill. "Feelings . . . And where exactly do you feel me, I wonder?” His fingertips drifted from her face to her neck to her collarbone. “Here?”

She swallowed, but before she could answer, his touch drifted over her shoulder and down her arm. "Here, maybe?” He gave her wrist a squeeze, right at her veins, and then his hand slipped onto her waist and curved around, easing onto the small of her back, pressing in. “Tell me, is it right here?”

Suddenly, he gripped her hips with both hands, leaned toward her ear, and whispered, “Or is it perhaps lower?”

Something swelled in her heart, something warm as the light in his eyes.

“Yes,” she said, barely breathing. “But also here. Most of all . . . here.” She put his hand to her chest, right over her heart.

He stilled, and she felt the change in him, the hot current in his blood cooling, the flames extinguished.

Ah, yes, she thought. In revealing herself, she had exposed his truth.

Although it had been obvious all along, hadn’t it.

The Primale stepped back and drew a hand through his outrageously beautiful hair. “Cormia . . .”

Drawing up her dignity, she squared her shoulders. “Tell me, whatever shall you do with the Chosen? Or is it me in specific whom you do not wish to mate?”

He stepped around her and paced in front of the screen. The frozen image from the movie, of Johnny and Baby lying so closely together, played over his body, and she wished she knew how to turn the movie off. The sight of Baby’s leg up on Johnny’s hip, his hand gripping her thigh as he ground himself against her, was not what she needed to be seeing at the moment.

“I don’t want to be with anyone,” the Primale said.

"Liar.” As he turned to face her in surprise, she found that the consequences of candor didn’t matter to her anymore. “You knew all along you didn’t want to lay with any of us, didn’t you. You knew it and yet you went along with the ceremony before the Scribe Virgin, even though you were in love with Bella and couldn’t bear being with anyone else. You lifted the hopes of forty females of worth on a lie—”

“I met with the Directrix. Yesterday.”

Cormia’s legs went weak, but she kept her voice strong. “Did you. And what have the two of you decided.”

“I’m . . . going to let you go. From the position of First Mate.”

Cormia fisted her robing so tightly, there was a soft tearing sound. “Going to or have done so.”

“Have done so.”

She swallowed hard and let herself sink back into the chair.

“Cormia, please know that it’s not you.” He came over and knelt down in front of her. “You’re beautiful—”

“No, it is me,” she said. “It’s not that you can’t mate with any other female, you don’t want me.”

“I just want you to be free of all this—”

“Don’t lie,” she snapped, throwing off all pretense of civility. “I told you all along that I would take you within me. I have neither said nor done aught to discourage you. So if you are setting me aside, it is because you don