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It wouldn’t be right.
“Oh, sweetheart, I can be so fast without even trying.” I grabbed her thighs, lifted her up, and carried her over to the desk that stood beneath the window that overlooked Malyr’s garden. Candlestick. Parchment. Flowers. One swipe of my arm cleared the surface where I sat her down. “You’re no longer ovulating.”
“You must know,” she said, grabbing my hips and pulling me between her needy legs. “After all, I woke to your tongue between my legs.”
“Because you’re fucking delicious.” I quickly undid the front of my breeches, took my hard cock out, and shoved inside her on a shared groan. “Fuck, you feel so damn good. So wet. So tight.”
Teasing me to drive into her fast and hard. Nothing but a morning fuck—quick, fleeting, meaningless. I’d had hundreds of those across the castle with whatever healthy-smelling female willingly lifted her skirts.
Until Galantia.
I lowered my forehead against hers, neither thrusting nor pulling back, but rather, taking in the still sensation of being inside her. I enjoyed the closeness between us, the smell of our mingled scents, the way our breaths became one in the gap between our quivering lips.
Connection.
Intimacy.
Something I hadn’t allowed myself to enjoy in so long, my entire body soaked it up, let it seep through my flesh and bones before it settled in my core, warm and languid. That, too, wasn’t right. What could I say? I should have fucking died the night of that attack, but I didn’t. Was painfully alive, longing for all those things that made each day I waited for revenge a little more bearable.
I curled my fingers around the back of her head, angling it until her pulse lay exposed where it thudded beside a vein in her neck. My next thrust came with the descend of my mouth before I kissed a path from the base of her shoulder to her earlobe. I could give her at least that. Loved how she shuddered in my arms—andonlyinmyarms.
Right now, she was mine.
At least, that was what I told myself as I rocked in and out of her, pretending she could be, that I would deserve such a thing as a mate. Until hurried little footsteps pounded the stone nearby.
I pulled out, quickly brushed Galantia’s skirts down, and turned away.
I was still struggling my erection back behind the leathers of my breeches when Tjema merrily announced, “Darien weaved me the warmest cape! And I found good, warm gloves.”
“I told you so,” Galantia whispered as she slipped off the desk, turning toward the girl to receive the items. “Thank you. These will do nicely.”
I ran a finger over the small of Galantia’s back. “Finish dressing, then go to the stables. Malyr wants to talk to me, but I’ll meet you there.”
At her nod, I turned away and strode off, quietly slipping out of her private rooms and back into the corridor. If we left Deepmarsh within the hour, we would reach the coast before the sun—
I froze right where I stood between the doors of the lord’s and lady’s private rooms. “What a strange place to run into you.”
Cici was still closing the door to Malyr’s rooms behind her when her eyes found mine, a taunting, pouty smile shifting around on her lips. “I could say the same. Presume it is a good thing we both share a prudent mind, knowing the importance of the worddiscretion.”
That last word lingered as I watched her glide along the corridor in her green silk gown, one of her pinned-up curls suspiciously out of place where the single coil bounced between her shoulder blades. One year. One year of her pushing her tits up and fluttering her eyes at Malyr, and now she’d managed herself into his rooms?Now?
I crossed the final few steps to Malyr’s doors. I’d never bothered to knock, and I would certainly not start now. I showed myself right in, slammed the door shut behind me before I crossed his library and strode straight to where he sat at his desk.
“I met Cici in the corridor,” I said as I let myself slump into the armchair by the window, my voice biting even to my own ears. “What was she doing in here, leaving your chambers at the hour of the rooster?”
Malyr didn’t bother looking up from whatever he was writing, and merely continued to run the quill over the parchment, allowing the black ink to form fancy letters. “Playing at politics. Since when do you concern yourself with the women who enter and leave my chambers?”
I inhaled deeply, taking in the smells that clung to his riding outfit, his hair, every inch of his personal rooms. Lemongrass. Leather. Parchment. Beeswax. Ink. Rose petals. Whatever he’d done with Cici, he hadn’t fucked her—there was no trace of her scent on him. Come to think, there wasn’t even the faintest trace of any woman on him. Not Cici. Not Lorn.
Only Galantia.
I didn’t know what to make of that, so I only said, “Since you acquired a betrothed.”
I’d told myself I would protect Galantia, be it from his shadows, the worst of his moods, or whatever was going on here. Something didn’t feel right…
Scoffing, Malyr gave a slow shake of his head as he dipped the quill into the inkwell, then continued writing. “Rumor reached me that my betrothed is fucking my best friend. I doubt it would break my wife’s heart if I continued to enjoy other lovers.”
My hands curled into fists because that was precisely my fear. The night of thekjaer?Goddess help her, Galantia’s heart had stumbled over every whispered oath, every loving touch between them, every circle their feet danced into the grass. For a girl locked up, negotiated away, and ultimately abandoned, it might take as little as that kiss she wanted so badly to fall in love, to hand her heart to Malyr.
