“So, if there’s no difference between us, why didn’t you marry him when you were meant to, when he turned twenty years old instead of four years later?”
“Because I love you,” she said. “Because I tried not to love you, but I couldn’t. Even though loving you is likely the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, I cannot seem to stop.”
He bent down to rest his forehead against hers. He sighed a ragged sigh. And then he sat up and stripped off his shirt. He climbed into the bed next to her and pulled her into his arms.
She melted into him, thinking that they’d been sleeping next to each other for so many nights and on any one of those nights, they could have been doing this, and she felt a pang at the loss of all those nights.
He reached down and slid his hand under her nightdress. He traced his fingertips over her thighs and her hips and her belly and then back to cover one of her breasts again. “As Iwas saying, when I was lying awake in Arzakh, I used to think about how often it was I had seen you entirely bare, how often I’d had you nude in my arms, without a stitch on.”
She sighed. “It wasn’t that often, not for either of us. We were always desperately worried of being caught or we were in the cavern and it was often cold there, even with the fire you would make.”
“Yes,” he said. “I would remember you, then, in just parts. I’d think of the way I’d loosen your corset and ease it down and there your bare bosom would be, all round and pert and rosy tipped. I would think of how soft and sweet it was to squeeze one of them.” He squeezed her breast. “I would think of the way your stiff little nipples tasted when I suckled them.”
She groaned.
He moved his hand to her other breast and ran his thumb over her nipple. “I’d think of your skirts bunched up, your legs bare for me, the juncture between your thighs on display, the way it felt to touch you there when we started, to find you dry and tucked away, and then to go back and find you wet and swollen and engorged. I loved the power to affect you in that way.”
She squirmed.
“How will I find you now if I touch you there?”
She gasped. “More. Suckle me first please, as you spoke of?”
He laughed a fond chuckle. “Then take this nightdress off and be bare for me?”
She smiled up at him, shy. “Are we really going to do this? Is this the time?”
“The time was a long time ago, I think,” he murmured. “We are simply catching up.”
She sat up and pulled the nightdress over her head and tossed it, and he made an approving sort of noise low in this throat, and then he was on top of her, kissing her, gathering up her breasts with both of his hands, gently kneading them in ways that stretched her stiff nipples in pleasant ways.
He put his mouth to her, and she bowed up, arching her back, trying to get herself into his mouth better.
Pleasure gusted into her, like winds on the cliffs, like a coming storm over the mountains.
He left his fingers to tease her nipples, wet from his mouth, and he slid his way down her body to put his lips and tongue to her between her thighs.
It was like a gathering thunderstorm, lightning dancing through the sky, little tremors working their way through her as she prepared to rise to her pinnacle.
“So slick here, are you not?” He licked her.
“Yes, I get that way with you,” she gasped.
“Just from looking at my scarred back,” he teased.
She crested. “Yes,” she breathed.
He fastened his lips around her clitoris and sucked it.
She sobbed. She had forgotten what it felt like when he did that. “Oh, Dathor, that’s too good, that’s far too good,” she moaned. It had been a long time since she’d pleasured herself. Her climax was coming for her like the rush of encroaching dark clouds, like the gales of the wind, like the rumble of thunder.
He was relentless, sucking in just the same rhythm, not varying, staying right where he was.
And she climbed and climbed and burst like a sunbeam breaking through gray clouds, burning away the rain.
In the wake of it, he kissed her mouth, and she tasted herself on him, and that made her feel a forbidden sort of joy as their tongues tangled. “I missed you,” she moaned. “I missed everything about you.”
He groaned. “I missed you, too.”
