Radiance (Wraith Kings Book 1) (16 page)

“A dead eel?”  His hands tracked their own paths over her body, learning each curve beneath the thin nightrail.

“No,” she said.  “More like a raven.  Dark and elegant.”

“A clever scavenger.”

Ildiko gave him a mock scowl.  “A beautiful bird.”  She thumped him on the arm.  “Stop fishing for compliments, you vain creature.”

Brishen rolled, taking Ildiko with him until she lay fully under him.  Her thighs opened, and he sank against her.  They both gasped and stilled, all traces of humor gone.  If she had no awareness of his body’s reaction to her before this—and Ildiko, by her own admission, was neither that innocent nor that foolish—she couldn’t mistake it now.

Forearms braced on either side of her head, he kept most of his weight off her, careful not to crush her into the bed.  Ildiko’s eyes were wide, her breathing thin and quick, an accompaniment to his own labored breaths.

He played with the curling strands of her hair that caught on his fingers like spiderweb.  “I am no poet possessing honeyed words,” he said.  “But you have always known me to be forthright with you.”  Gods, his muscles shook as if from cold in his effort to stay still and not thrust hard against her.  “I want you, Ildiko.  Want to sink so deep into you that neither of us will know where one ends and the other begins.”  Only the darker blue rim of her irises still shone around her pupils.  His voice had gone guttural, and he worked to soften it.  “I’ve never forced a woman, Kai or human, and I never will.  If you refuse me, this will stop, with no ill will between us.”

Please
, he prayed—and he didn’t know if he prayed to Kai gods or to the statue-still woman pressed against him—
don’t refuse me
.

Ildiko’s black-eyed stare sharpened, and she peered into his gaze as if searching for something.  Whatever she found transformed her expression.  Her lids lowered, sinking to half-mast.  Her breathing deepened, and her lips parted, revealing the edges of her upper front teeth.  Hardly daring to hope and half dizzy with want, Brishen watched, fascinated, as the tip of her tongue darted out to swipe across her lower lip.

The silence yawned between them as she continued to stare at him.  “What is it, Ildiko?”  he asked.  “What do you see?”

His question acted as a catalyst, breaking a spell that held him beguiled and her enthralled.  She opened beneath him; not just her body.  All of her.  He sensed it in every part of him.

She twined her arms around his neck and tilted her head until her lips brushed the corner of his mouth.  “My beautiful husband.” she said.  “I see radiance.”

He groaned low in his throat as her mouth captured his.  Ildiko buried her hands in his hair, pressing him closer to slide her tongue across the sensitive skin under his top lip and then his lower one.  Brishen returned the caress, plying playful swipes at the edges of her lips and along the corners until she rocked in his arms, hips bumping against his in clumsy rhythm while he learned her taste and she learned his.

Ildiko didn’t kiss as a Kai woman did.  Her kisses were forceful—a sucking, nipping dance along his lips with her tongue seeking entrance past the barrier of his teeth clamped tight against intrusion.  It was as if she’d forgotten the sharpness of his fangs or simply no longer cared.

Brishen pulled away despite Ildiko’s protesting gasps.  He pressed a finger to her lips, the tip of one black claw barely brushing the end of her nose.  The air felt thin in his lungs.  “I’ve seen humans kiss.  You mate with your mouths.”  Just the words sent a spear of heat straight to his groin.  He was so hard, he ached.  “I can’t do that, sweet wife.  I’ll slice you bloody.”

Oh did he regret such an obstacle.  For once, and probably the only time in his life, he wished for more human attributes.  Horse teeth didn’t seem so bad or so ridiculous at the moment.  He’d take Ildiko’s mouth the way he would take her body—deep and slow with hours spent dedicated on nothing more than savoring the taste and feel of her.

Undaunted by his warning, she tugged him back to her.  “Maybe you can’t,” she said.  “But I’m not limited by a mouthful of sword blades.”  Her pupils glittered in the shadow he cast across her face and body.  “Part your lips.”  Spellbound, he did as she ordered.  Ildiko rested her mouth lightly on his.  Her lips tickled his when she spoke.  “Slide your tongue out—just a little.”

She’d be the death of him before they ever consummated this marriage.  Brishen’s body screamed to be done with it and slide inside her.  His mind begged patience, delighted by this journey she took him on as the day waxed bright beyond the closed shutters.

Ildiko’s lips closed around the tip of Brishen’s tongue and sucked.  He jerked in her arms, shivering at the new and pleasurable touch.  Her tongue brushed his, a seductive caress  that coaxed him to offer her more.  He did and was rewarded by a longer suckling.  Brishen moaned into her mouth, giving her more until his tongue twined with hers in the mating dance he’d so envied and coveted earlier.

She echoed his moan.  Her arms, linked loosely behind his neck, fell away so that her hands could busy themselves with stroking him from shoulder to waist, pushing him to rise up so they could travel the hard planes of his abdomen.

Her fingers traced the ridges of his ribs, wandering higher and closer until her thumbs glided across his nipples.  Brishen ended their kiss with a one-word prayer, back arching like a drawn bow as a lightning bolt of sensation shot across his chest to encircle his back and rake down his spine.

Ildiko’s calves crossed over the back of his thighs and locked him in place.  One hand splayed across his back, pressing him down so that she bore more of his weight.  Her lips followed where her hands had played, teasing a trail from the hollow of his throat to the line of one collarbone and down the planes of his chest.

Brishen’s claws gouged furrows into the pillows on either side of her head as she alternated between worrying his nipple with her tongue and blowing gently across the sensitive tip.  His hips ignored the dictates of his mind to stay still.  He thrust against her, enamored with the sleek feel of her thighs cradling him and the hot wetness that dampened both her nightrail and his linen breeches.  Human women were obviously much like Kai women in that regard.  Ildiko wanted him as much as he wanted her, and somewhere in his fogged brain, Brishen recognized that it was she who savored him at the moment and not the other way around as he originally planned.

He pulled himself out of reach, ignored her protests and captured her wrists in one hand.  Her odd eyes were glassy, the blue of her irises completely surrendered to her pupils.  A darker flush painted her pale skin.  Brishen caught sight of the ragged amaranthine stain on the underside of her jaw from her earlier foray to the dye house.  He bent and traced its outline, first with the tip of his nose and then his lips.  Ildiko moaned softly in his ear.

Her eyebrows rose when he scooted them both down toward the foot of the bed and stretched her arms above her head, her wrists still manacled in his light grip.  “You’ll be my undoing before I can take another breath, and I want this day to last far beyond a breath,” he said.

She frowned and wiggled teasingly beneath him.  “But I’ve only had a taste.”

“That’s more than I’ve had,” he countered.  “Have you enjoyed me so far?”  He preened at her enthusiastic nod.  “Then be fair, wife, and let me enjoy you.”

Ildiko unfurled along his length, a silk ribbon tipped from a spool to ripple and stroke him from chest to knees.  “Oh, well then,” she breathed.  “I don’t wish to be unjust.”

She stopped him before he could return the touches that so inflamed him.  Her hand stroked his hair.  “Close your eyes,” she said.

Brishen frowned.  If Ildiko worried he’d find her the hag he first met in Pricid’s royal gardens, she had nothing to fear.  His vision of her was irrevocably changed.  “Why?” he asked, wary of her reasons.

“Because I’d have you see me with your touch.”  Her mouth curved into a smile.  “It’s how I see you in this blind darkness, Brishen, and it is a wondrous thing.”

He’d been the recipient of heady praise from mistresses as in lust with his title as they were with his body.  No such honeyed words ever came close to these and their power over him.

She kept her arms above her head, even after he released her wrists.  Brishen closed his eyes and let his other senses overtake his willing blindness.  He took his time, exploring every hollow, swell and nook of Ildiko’s neck and shoulders.  She smelled of flowers and the scented oils imported by the caravan peoples who traded such indulgences for spells and charms from Kai shaman.  She tasted...human.

He could think of no comparison.  Soft skin with a hint of spice and a sweetness he’d tasted nowhere else in either food or on the supple, muscular limbs of the Kai women he’d bedded before his marriage.  Her differences intrigued him, seduced him.

He didn’t remember removing her nightrail or his breeches, but they somehow ended up in a discarded heap on the floor by the side of the bed.  Free of any barrier between them, Brishen indulged himself by easing more of his weight onto her.

“Ooh,” Ildiko said on a sigh, her heavy-lidded eyes almost closed.  “You feel good.”  She drew swirls on his back.  “We should have done this much sooner.”

Brishen’s chortle vibrated between them.  His forthright wife.  “I couldn’t agree more,” he whispered in her ear.

He set her to squirming in his arms, her soft moans a sensual cadence in his ear, while he kissed and licked a path from her shoulders to her belly, stopping for long moments to repay her torture of him by flicking his tongue back and forth across the tips of her breasts.  That she didn’t pull away from fear of his teeth spoke of her faith in him and the sure knowledge he would never hurt her.

A subtle quiver of tension passed through her body under his hands as he kissed a path downward toward the juncture of her thighs.  Brishen opened his eyes.  His heightened senses warned him that delicate vibration had been one of unease instead of eagerness.

Ildiko gazed at him steadily, her features somber.  She lowered her arms to card her fingers through his hair.  She didn’t try and wiggle out of his reach.  This wasn’t a matter of trust so much as experience, or its lack.  Brishen knew that while his wife wasn’t completely ignorant of bed play, her introduction to its many intimacies by her previous lover had been limited.  Her statement that three romps in the bedroom or the hayloft had not made the effort of a fourth worth the trouble revealed a great deal.

He’d have to tamp down on his eagerness to explore every part of her in a single day.  The knowledge that he had a lifetime to draw out the anticipation of familiarizing himself with his wife’s lovely body evaporated any of his initial disappointment.

Brishen bent and traced the circumference of her navel before kissing a return path up her belly, to the valley between her breasts and finally to her chin.  Ildiko gave him an abashed look.  “I haven’t tried that yet,” she said.

He framed her face in his hands.  “So I gathered.”  He smoothed away the lines between her eyebrows with his lips.  It’s not a failing, Ildiko.”

“I know, but—”  She broke off to return the kiss he pressed to her mouth.

“Consider it your gift to me,” he said, noting her confusion.  “I have the opportunity to be your teacher and show you the pleasure of that particular act, one of the finest between a man and a woman.”

She relaxed under him once more.  Her knees clamped against his sides.  He exhaled a surprised grunt that changed to a groan when her hips lifted to rub against the erection that was robbing the blood from every other part of his body.  Her hands glided down his back to cup his buttocks and keep him in place.

Her heavy-lidded expression returned, one Brishen quickly recognized as her passion for him and one he found more seductive by the moment.  “What will I teach you?” she asked, hips thrusting, pressing, tempting him toward madness.

“Patience,” he said in guttural tones that made a mockery of the word.  His arm slid under her buttocks, lifted until her hips tilted toward him.  “Endurance.”  His limbs shook with the strain of holding back.  Ildiko’s hands moved to his arms, clutched his biceps.  The mollusk-pink of her skin deepened, blending with the amaranthine stain.  His cock nudged the entrance to her body, slick and hot.  “Ecstasy,” he whispered and slid deep.

They gasped in unison, and Ildiko arched in his embrace, her short nails digging into his arms.  Drowning in the pleasure of being inside his wife, feeling slippery muscles gripping him, drawing him ever deeper, Brishen fought to breathe, to pause.  Patience.  Endurance.  And oh gods, the ecstasy.

He settled them both and waited, even as the waiting killed him.  “Ildiko?”

Ildiko gave him a quick smile.  Her hands abandoned his arms for his lower back.  She kissed him, tongue flicking over his lower lip.  Brishen pulsed inside her, and her smile widened.  “I’m fine, my lovely prince,” she said and kissed him a second time.  “Don’t stop.”  Her clasp on his back tightened, and a soft moan threaded her voice.  “It feels too good to stop.”

Grateful and relieved, Brishen needed no further reassurance.  She was fire in his arms, hot and sweet.  Her moans and softly worded encouragements, the feel of her surrounding him as he thrust inside her—slow and deep, shallow and fast—destroyed any lingering coherent thought he possessed.

Every near withdrawal had her clawing at his back; every hard pump of his hips made her croon her pleasure in his ear.  Brishen angled his hips, a minute change in his position.  Ildiko’s eyes grew wide, and she emitted a strangled sound.