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“I should time your busy brain,” she replied, “from the moment I can get you to stop thinking until you start up again.” She wriggled beneath him, digging her heels into his ass to keep him swallowed in her. “It could be an interesting challenge, to attempt to beat my personal bests.”
Charmed and amused by her despite himself, he allowed a grudging smile. “I don’t think I’m quite that bad.”
“You aren’t always,” she conceded. “You weren’t the night of our Betrothal Trial, canny as you were about seducing me.”
He lowered his head to kiss her, thinking to make it a kind of apology but unable to resist tasting her, sweeping his tongue inside her delicious mouth, feeding on her lush lips like the sweetest of fruits. She sighed, her languid body melting further, her fingertips lightly and lazily caressing his spine. That night had been a more innocent time, at least for him, when he’d believed her willing to wed him and only needing some gentling to grow used to him. Regrets, indeed.
“That night was also salient,” he murmured against her lips, enjoying the brush of them as he spoke, “in that we actually made it to the bed. Something we should consider for the future.”
“The future,” she echoed in a dreamy voice. “That sounds promising. Though the floor serves well enough, here or the arcanium. I’ll put acquiring a mattress for the arcanium bed on my list. Don’t tense up.”
He closed his eyes against the images that wanted to roar up. Nic, chained to that bed with silver glinting against her dusky skin, spreadeagled and helpless to stop him. He started to withdraw from her even as his cock immediately hardened at the thought, but Nic held him tight.
“And don’t run from this,” she said in a harder voice, winding her fingers in his hair.
He opened his eyes to meet the green glitter of hers. “Nic…”
“You could have me on the arcanium bed without a mattress,” she noted in a helpful tone, not fooling him for a moment, “but those silver coils will abrade my skin. If you choose to draw blood from me, there are—”
“Stop,” he barked out, far more harshly than he intended. “Let me go.”
“You don’t want to go,” she murmured, moving her hips to stroke her slick inner muscles around his phallus.
He groaned, meeting her movements despite himself. “I want to be gentle with you. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Then be gentle.” She smiled, feathering her fingertips over the shells of his ears, making him shiver. “All ways can be ours. Have me any way you want me. It’s good and right. All of it.”
He doubted that, but he was too far gone to deny himself. Or her. Or whatever she was up to with these seductive games. Determined to last longer this time—and able to, with the savage passion slaked for the moment—he made love to her, showering her face, throat, and breasts with kisses. Nuzzling and licking those bruises as if he could erase them from her otherwise flawless skin. Finding the depth and rhythm that best pleased her, he brought her to climax twice more before releasing himself into her.
This time, it felt like a benediction, and like an offering. A small repayment for his many crimes against her.
She sighed and stretched, at last unwinding her legs. “A personal best,” she decided. “Except you’re already thinking again.”
He rolled onto his back beside her, gazing up at the tongue-in-groove pattern of their bedroom ceiling. “I was only thinking that we need to have a healer see to your throat, and the hunter’s bite on your arm, too.”
“True. Also your injuries, though you’re healing well. The nice thing about magical healing is making it all go away immediately. Let’s do that today.” When he cleared his throat, she turned her head and narrowed her gaze. “You said you have a healer here in Meresin.”
“We do,” he replied defensively. “Of the regular variety. Not a wizard.”
She groaned, beating her head lightly on the floor. “Silly me. What was I thinking?”
She’d been thinking that she still lived in the Convocation, where people had easy access to magical healing. “Will you go?” he asked.
“Go where?”
“Home, to House Elal, as your father bids.”
She rolled her head to look at him, losing the dreamy softness. “Thisis my home.”
“But if you wish, I—”
“Gabriel.” She levered up onto one elbow, the robe she still wore sliding off one smooth shoulder, golden and delicately muscled. “More precisely,youare my home now. I’m bonded to you. Even if you sent me away, I would find my way back to you. I thought you were clear on this.”
“But your father—”
“Papa doesn’t know we completed the bonding ritual. He’s simply probing, guessing, testing for your response. That letter was addressed to you, wizard to wizard. Lord Elal wants to determine whether Lord Phel has taken his familiar in hand.”
He winced at her phrasing, certain that she employed those terms with deliberate ruthlessness. Probably she thought she could inure him to what she believed were the immutable realities of the Convocation. Something he intended to fight, even if he had to go down doing it.
