Page 23 of Soul of Fire

He slowed, his kisses growing languid as he captured my lips. We rocked together like two ships tossed by a gentle sea, our joining somehow both desperate and tender. Question and reassurance. Blazing fire and smoldering coals.

And as pleasure found me, I decided that I would be quite happy to die like this, held by my mate as he showed me without words exactly how he felt about me.

Chapter seven

Eisa

Iwoketothedim morning light of the sun muffled by both coastal fog and the heavy curtains of the bedroom.

All was still and silent, and I blinked slowly awake as the feeling of something warm stroked up my bare sternum.

“It’s still early.” Arik’s voice was rough with sleep, but his eyes when I found them were clear and contemplative. He gently traced the scar left behind by Sigrid’s necklace with his index finger. “Go back to sleep.”

My frown was interrupted by a yawn, and he chuckled as he pressed his bearded face to his favorite spot beneath my ear.

“You’re up. I can be up too.”

“Stubborn as always.” He pressed a trail of bristly kisses down my neck. But when his eyes met mine again, they were serious. “Thank you. For last night.”

I wound my arms around his neck, still heavy with exhaustion, and pulled his lips to mine. A shiver skated down my spine as his free hand trailed down my bare side and rested on my outer thigh.You don’t have to thank me for anything.

He pressed another kiss to my lips, I assumed as a continuation of his passion from the night before. At the very least, I expected that he wanted to talk about it.

To my consternation, the kiss ended chastely. He sat up and began fumbling around in the semi-dark.

“What are you—“

“I need to see my mother.” He finally found his trousers and pulled them on.

Not what a mate wants to hear,Idunn yawned as I sat up and clutched the sheet.

“Your mother?”

Arik turned abruptly, cupped the back of my neck, and pulled me in for another kiss. “Do you want to come with me?”

I blinked. This frenetic energy was unlike him, and I wondered if perhaps he wasn’t quite as reassured by our lovemaking last night as I had hoped. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.” He turned from me again, his muscles rippling as he pulled on a tunic and gathered his discarded leather armor from the floor. “She’ll expect a visit, and she might know something about this Althing my father has planned.”

I sighed as I wrested myself from the warm comfort of the bed and hunted for my own clothes. I shifted the tattered remnants of the ruffled nightgown, which Arik had destroyed after he lost patience trying to remove it in one piece late in the night, with my foot.

Arik was clearlynotfine. His side of our mental bridge was closed off to me, as if he had put an additional wall up in his mind since arriving in the castle. But I didn’t want to push if he wasn’t ready to talk about it, especially after what I learned last night.

So we’d go see his mother.

“This is not how I pictured meeting the queen,” I grumbled as I pulled on fur lined leggings and a plain tunic, aware that I was exceedingly underdressed.

He moved to my side and pressed a kiss beneath my ear as I struggled to comb through my disheveled hair. It had come loose from its braid after the passion of our activities and seemed hopelessly tangled. Arik deftly plucked the comb from my hand. “Leave it. You look radiant.”

I whirled on him and attempted to snatch the comb back. “I am not meeting a queen, let aloneyour mother,“ I emphasized these words with a wag of my finger, “with my hair resembling,” I gestured wildly, “whateverthisis!”

His lips twitched in their almost smile. “Which worries you more? The queen or the mother?”

“Both.” I grabbed again for the comb, and he caught my wrist, his eyes flashing silver.

Turn around then, Kjære.His voice in my head had that purring quality that had made my skin prickle. I narrowed my eyes at him, but obeyed, and he chuckled as he ran his fingers over my scalp in a firm caress that forced me to stifle a moan of pleasure.

I could remember both my mother and Sigrid fussing over my hair during my childhood—Sigrid far into my adulthood—but it had been a long time since someone had so patiently and reverently combed my hair.