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“But it does. You don’t have to lie to me. You asked for honesty, yes? Then give me the same.” He brushed her lips with a kiss, sweet, almost… affectionate?
She fought back a sudden burst of emotion. Who was she kidding? She wasn’t holding herself aloof at all, but tumbling headlong down a pitched slope, where a swamp no doubt lay at the bottom, ready to drag her under into mindless and delighted servitude. “Regardless,” she told him coolly, as if she weren’t lying naked and nearly panting in his arms, “there’s plenty more if needed.”
“I’d be remiss if I didn’t use more pleasurable methods to ease my eventual ‘entry,’ as you so charmingly call it.” His mouth tilted in a half smile at her puzzlement. “Allow me to tend you, Lady Veronica.”
Kissing his way down her fluttering belly, he eased her thighs apart and settled between them. Apparently he did mean what she’d guessed. “Is this all right?” he asked.
“It’s not necessary.”
“I beg to differ.” He turned his head and kissed the inside of her thigh, a soft caress.
“It won’t plant your seed in me,” she clarified. And it might just be too much for her. Already he had her in the metaphorical palm of his hand. She trembled, wanting this—afraid to take it.
He smiled, slow and dangerous, turning to trail kisses down her other quivering thigh and shattering her senses as he did. “The wandering path might not be the quickest route, but it provides many delights along the way.” He looked up her body, wizard’s eyes black as a starless night, the firelight silvering his pale hair, the single black lock like a bolt of night. “May I?”
With a groan of defeat, she let her head fall back, giving in to him and her own craving. “Fine. Just do it already.”
He chuckled, clearly amused by her, and nuzzled her mound. “Glossy curls, even here,” he noted. “And you are as lovely here as everywhere. Fragrant, and so warm. My rose.” He placed a lingering kiss on her pearl of pleasure, and her back bowed at the lightning spearing her.
“Gabriel!” she gasped—but only had a moment of chagrin to regret the lapse, because he began exploring her with his tongue. Digging her nails into the coverlet, which they hadn’t bothered to pull down, she realized, Nic stared at the high wooden canopy of her bed. So many times she’d lain here since the House Refoel wizard unlocked her fertility under the Convocation proctor’s eagle eye, plotting her future, determining how to take firm grasp of her own destiny and never be a wizard’s witless puppet.
Now, as Gabriel wreaked his wicked destruction on her senses, her carefully constructed strategy flew apart. She had no thoughts to cling to, instead writhing and mewling. She gave up on clinging to the unrewarding coverlet and drove her fingers into that extraordinary silver hair, like metal made silk, winding it around her hands, she urged him closer, sighing, then screaming as he found the exact rhythm to shatter her.
And shatter her again.
At last, thoroughly wilted as any hothouse rose plucked and left too long, she let her hands fall limply to her sides, gasping for breath, trying to remember what she’d been so determined to resist. Gabriel kissed his way up her body, pausing to savor the sensitive skin along her hip bone, to trace his tongue in the divot of her belly button, to place reverent kisses on her breasts. “My rose,” he sighed. “You are more than I could have imagined. If I could, I’d woo you like this until you trusted me enough to take me inside you out of true desire.”
She cracked her eyes open, studying him, seeing that he meant it. “You’re a strange man, Lord Phel.” That was right: keep a formal distance and remind him of it.
“Am I?” He considered that, tracing his fingertip lightly along the line of her jaw. “I suppose that could be true. Not surprising all in all.”
Bemused that he’d admitted to it—and wondering what thought had sobered him—she gave him a long look. “You’ve won this right. Plant your seed and take your chance. You don’t need me to trust you.”
“No.” He swept the caress over her lower lip, looking wistful. “But I can wish for it.”
“Take your clothes off,” she urged him, feeling oddly gentle. He’d pleasured her when he hadn’t needed to, been kind to her. Maybe it hadn’t all been manipulation. She could return the favor of—how had he put it?—being human to him.
Never mind that wizards and familiars had nothing of humanity about them. He’d learn that lesson eventually, no doubt in the hardest of ways.
With a sigh, he levered himself up, toeing off his boots and beginning to strip away his layers of dark riding clothes. She turned on her side, leaning up on one elbow to observe with interest. None of the other three had done more than open the placket of their trousers. Gabriel watched her watching with an odd smile, parting the ties of his shirt to reveal a broad-shouldered chest silvered with snowy hair that served to highlight the rippling definition of his muscles. The muscles of a laborer and the eyes of a wizard.
The silver arrowed down as if engraved that way, a glittering trail that disappeared beneath the black leather pants that clung to his narrow hips. He undid the fastenings, and hesitated with his thumbs in the waist. “I am not so comfortable in my skin as you are,” he observed wryly, bending to shuck his pants.
“You’ve clearly had lovers,” she noted, rather touched by his shyness. Or was it another gambit to soften her? “Surely you’ve been naked in front of women before.”
“Yes.” He joined her on the bed before she got a good look at the rest of him. “But I’m chagrined to note that your good opinion seems to matter.”
Oh, Gabriel.Nic closed her eyes in pain at his honesty. Had no one warned him not to give her kind those sorts of emotional advantages? Wizards were taught to rule their familiars for good reasons. “Shh. No more talking.”
She turned, pulling him atop her, shivering at the skin-to-skin contact. His long legs twined with hers, and he propped himself on his elbows, looking down at her. Brushed a wayward curl from her cheek. “Are you sure?” he asked.
Nic managed not to roll her eyes. Opening her legs, she lifted her hips. “I’ve always been sure.” At least since she received that first stomach-dropping scorecard, annihilating her ambitions to be the reigning wizard of House Elal and relegating her to life as a familiar. She wasn’t lying, and the truth of her statement reassured him. The method might be unpleasant, but the trials would get Nic where she wanted, where sheneededto be. No matter the outcome, she’d make sure of that.
He kissed her lingeringly, then slid a hand between them to position himself. Their breath blended in a long sigh as he slid into her, the shivering delight unlike anything she’d felt before. Arching against him, Nic clung to his shoulders, savoring the glide of his skin against hers, the sweet fullness of him filling her. His magic, dark and rippling deep, spiraled into her, and she drank it in, then offered her own fire back. The joining felt like it calmed something in her, the puzzle piece fitting into place to at last reveal the full image.
“Gabriel,” she sighed, and he pressed his lips into the hollow of her neck, shuddering. He moved in her, finding a pace that pleased them both, gradually accelerating, sending them spiraling higher. Their magic intertwined, bright and dark, new shoots of spring vines curling around each other, blending and mingling to make something new and larger, more wonderful.
Nic had never felt so laid open, so completely revealed—and so completed. His body moved under her hands like the sea, rolling and wild, his magic uncoiling and filling her every pore, slaking a thirst she hadn’t known she suffered from.
