"Harder," I said instead.
He gave me a wolfish grin, and again I got that glimpse of something in him that would have made me hesitate to be alone with him. But I was no longer certain if that was truly Mistral's nature, or whether centuries of denial had made him wild with need.
He set his teeth into my side and bit down hard, hard enough that I writhed under him. He moved just a little farther down my side, to my waist, and this time when I felt him begin to let go, I said, "Harder."
He bit me deeper this time, bit me until I felt his teeth almost meet in my skin. I cried out and said, "Enough, enough."
He lifted his face as if to stop completely. I smiled at him. "I didn't say stop, I just meant that was hard enough."
He moved to the other side of my body and bit me again without urging, hard enough that I had to tell him, almost immediately, not to go farther. He looked up at me, and whatever he saw on my face satisfied him, because he bit next to my belly button, setting his teeth so hard and fast that I had to tell him to stop.
He'd left a press of red teeth marks on my stomach. There were red marks here and there on my body, but nothing as perfect as that. A perfect set of his teeth marks in the white flesh of my body. Looking at it made me shiver.
"You like it," he whispered.
"Yes," I said.
The wind held an edge of dampness as it trailed across my skin. He licked low on my stomach, and the wind seemed to blow across that wet line, almost as if the wind had a mouth, too, and could blow where it wished.
Mistral pressed his mouth where he had licked, and bit me. Hard and sharp, enough to make me startle, and raise my upper body off the ground. "Enough," I said, and my voice was almost a yell.
The wind began to pick up, blowing more dead leaves across my body. Streaming my hair across my face, so that for a moment I couldn't see what Mistral was doing. The wind was damp, as if it rode an edge of rain. But it never rained in the dead gardens.
I felt his mouth laid on the mound between my legs, resting on the tight, curling hair. I couldn't see, but I knew what he was doing. He bit me, and I yelled, "Enough."
I used one hand to push my hair out of the way, so I could look down my body and see him. He gave one quick flick of his tongue between my legs. That one small touch sped my pulse and opened my mouth in a silent O.
"You know what I want to do," he said. He spoke with his hands around my thighs, fingers digging in just a little, his face just above my groin, so close that his breath touched me there.
I nodded, because I didn't trust my voice. On the one hand, I didn't want him to hurt me; on the other, I did want him to come just to that edge of truly hurting me. I liked that edge. I liked it a lot.
I finally found my voice, and it almost didn't sound like me, so breathy, so eager. "Go slow, and when I say enough, you stop."
He gave that smile again that filled his cloud-dazed eyes with a fierce light, and I realized it wasn't my imagination. Lightning played through the heavy grey clouds of his eyes. It had gone away, but now it was back, and it filled them with a flashing white, white light, so that his eyes looked blind for a second. The wind slowed, and the air felt heavy, thick, and I felt an edge of electricity in the air.
He spread me wide, using his fingers, so strong, so thick. He licked the length of me, back and forth until I writhed under his mouth and hands. Only then did he press his mouth over me. Only then did he let me feel the edge of his teeth around the most intimate parts of my body.
He bit down slowly, so slowly, so carefully.
I breathed out, "Harder."
He obeyed.
He took as much of my flesh down there into his mouth as he could fit, and bit me. Bit me so hard that it raised my upper body completely off the ground, and I screamed for him. But I didn't scream stop, or enough. I just screamed, full-throated, spine bowing, staring down at him with wide eyes and opened mouth. I orgasmed for him, from the feel of his teeth in my most intimate flesh. I orgasmed for him, and even through the pleasure of it I changed my scream to "Stop, stop, oh, God, stop!" Even through that most overwhelming of pleasures, I could feel his teeth going just a little too far. When something hurts in the middle of orgasm, you need to stop - things usually only hurt when the afterglow begins to fade.
Again I screamed, "Stop," and he stopped.
I fell back onto the ground, eyes unable to focus, fighting to breathe, unable to move. But even while my body lay helpless with the afterglow, I began to ache. I ached where his teeth had touched me there, and I knew that it was just going to hurt more later. I'd let my desire - and Mistral's - send us too far over that fine edge.
His voice came. "I did not bleed you, and I did not bite you as hard there as I did on your breast."
I nodded, because I couldn't speak yet. The air was so dense with the coming storm that it made it harder to breathe, almost in the way the queen could make the air too thick to breathe.
"Are you hurt?" he asked.
I found my voice. "A little." The ache was becoming sharper. I had only a limited time before it was simply going to hurt. I wanted him to finish before the pleasure truly did become pain.
He crawled over my body on all fours, so that he wasn't actually touching me, but he could see my face. "Are you all right, Princess?"
I nodded. "Help me turn over."
"Why?"
"Because if we finish this with you on top, it's going to hurt too much."
"I was too rough," he said, and he sounded so sad. Lightning flashed first in one eye then the other, as if it traveled from one side of his mind to the other. The light blue lightning bolt on his cheek paled in the brightness of it.