Cursed by Ice (14 page)

“Perhaps. Let us see how things unfold.”

“Good. Now I have my curse to contend with. Then, I am weary and would seek my bed.”

“Of course. Good night, brother.”

“Good night.”

Garreth left and headed for the orchard.

After his curse was done for the night, after he had warmed himself significantly, he headed for his bedroom. The path took him through the body of the keep. It seemed the previous ruler liked to survey the majority of his holding on the trip from the main rooms to his private ones. The hallway from one end of the keep to the other was laden with windows that looked out onto the entirety of the city on one side. He paused there, looking down on the sprawling vista. In daylight he would be able to see all the way to the city walls and the main
gate. He would be able to see the destruction his siege had wrought. All the fires were long extinguished and overall the damage was not too overwhelming. The city would recover. Eventually.

Just as Sarielle would recover. She would recover and find a whole world of possibilities open to her. He hoped she agreed to become the bennesah. It would give her comfort and power and purpose for the rest of her life. It would ensure a contented life for her sisters.

He walked on, dismissing the city on his left and heading toward …

Toward …

“Damn you, you cursed fool. Walk away,” he hissed to himself, clenching his fists.

He did not. He walked right up to and through his chamber doors. He entered the bedroom and stood in the doorway, just looking at her for a moment. She was asleep on her stomach with her fiery red hair tumbling across the pillow. She was the prettiest shade of lavender he’d ever seen, her skin soft and shadowed and a beautiful pastel. Her violet lips were parted in sleep, her coppery lashes standing out against her skin.

She was still in her ornamental robe, the shapeless thing normally doing nothing to display her figure. But in her sleep it had twisted around her body and was pulled tight to her every lush curve. She was not skinny or frail. Not even slender like Dethan’s wife was. She had sumptuous hips, a softly rounded belly, and—he knew from personal experience—the most perfect, bountiful breasts the world had ever seen.

He began to take off his outer clothing—the vest and tunic that were torn and bloody from his encounter with the manticore’s tail. Once he was bare chested, he inspected the wound. It was already healing. The tail had just missed his heart—a good thing. Immortal or no, he would have gone down if it had pierced his heart,
and he would have stayed down until his body healed itself. As it was, it was still a bad wound. Had he been mortal …

But he wasn’t mortal, he reminded himself. And that was the key to his present dilemma.

He took off his breeches, which had also absorbed a lot of his blood, then moved to the nightstand, where there was a pitcher of water and a basin. He poured water into the bowl, and using a nearby cloth, he washed the blood from his body and cleaned the wound. Once he was satisfied, he dropped the cloth into the basin and turned toward the wardrobe to get another pair of breeches.

He found himself looking dead into Sarielle’s fair blue eyes. She sat up slowly, her eyes never leaving his. They stayed there like that for a whole minute, simply staring at each other. Then she broke away from his eyes and let her gaze fall to his wound. A small frown tugged at the corners of her mouth.

“Does it hurt?”

“No,” he lied.

She looked lower.

Her eyes widened.

He grew hard under the touch of her gaze.

“You’re so … different,” she said a bit breathlessly.

“I’ll put something on,” he said awkwardly, fumbling for the robe that was draped across the bottom of the bed on the opposite side of her. But he had to lean over her to get to it, and when he did, her hands went to the skin on his side and chest.

“No!” she said hastily. “I didn’t mean you should hide from me.”

“I’m not hiding. I wasn’t thinking. I should never have undressed with you here.”

“Stop!” She grabbed the robe from his hands before he could come away with it. “I
want
to see you.”

He went still. He looked into her eyes as he straightened up once more. “You don’t know what you want,” he said tightly. “You have a brand new world to discover. You’re testing your boundaries. I understand that. But you shouldn’t just leap into things you can’t fully see.”

“I see enough,” she said firmly. “I see you.”

“No. You don’t. You think I’m some kind of noble savior when I’m not. I don’t do things like that anymore. Now I’m just a man who creates war in the name of a vindictive goddess. There is nothing noble about that.”

“Your heart is what’s noble, Garreth,” she said softly, moving to put her legs over the edge of the bed, her hands reaching out to touch him on the bare skin of his hard belly. He drew back sharply.

“No. Not anymore. My heart is cursed now.”

“Garreth,” she said, standing up and following his retreat until his back hit the tapestry hanging on the wall. Her body moved in, her warmth pressing all along his. Her hands rested like two elegant butterflies on his chest. She was so beautiful it hurt to even look at her as she turned soft, accepting eyes up to him. “Whatever you’ve had done to you, whatever you did that may have deserved censure, it did not change the heart inside you. The heart I see. The heart of a man willing to risk everything just to save a slave girl’s life. To save the life of a creature that could have killed you.” She bent her head forward and pressed a kiss onto his chest beside the wound he bore.

Garreth closed his eyes, unable to do anything but revel in the sweet sensation of it. It was too good to pass up. Too good to put away from himself. She kissed him again and again, and of its own volition, his hand came up and his fingers threaded into her hair. Her hair was
soft like silk, slippery and sweet, the weight of it full bodied like she was.

Then her lips touched his nipple on the right side and he hissed in a soft breath. She must have liked the reaction because her little tongue darted out and licked him there as well. His hand fisted in her hair and he pulled her back, forced her to look up into his eyes.

“I will leave one day,” he warned her. “There is no future in this.”

“But that day is not here now.”

“Sarielle …”

“Fira. Call me fira again.”

“Fira,” he hissed right before he covered her mouth with his and kissed her until neither one of them could draw a full breath. His free hand went to the curve of her lower back and he pulled her up tight to his body, the satiny feel of her robe sliding across his skin. He was hard against her, silk brushing over his engorged penis until he was groaning from the pleasure of it. Of her. Of having her.

Yes. He would have her. Damn his cursed soul, he would have her. She was untried and new, and that made him burn all the hotter for her. Her hands were sliding down his chest as she kissed him with a zeal that took his breath away. Her fingertips rode the ridges of his abdomen one at a time, moving slowly, inexorably downward until by the time her fingers reached the curls at the base of his rod, the tip was weeping in expectation of her.

She wrapped her fingers around him one by one, then slowly skimmed the whole of her hand to the very tip and back again. He growled deep in his chest, his hold on her tightening.

“I long to be inside you,” he confessed hotly.

“I know that you do,” she said with a smile against
his lips. Her teeth nipped at his lower lip. “You wish to be the first, do you not?”

He groaned. “I would be lying to say otherwise. And you revel in it.”

“I do,” she agreed. “I am warm and wet again, and I find I like the sensation very much.”

“Then we shall have to encourage it most vigorously,” he said, catching her mouth in a blistering kiss. He suddenly caught her up, sweeping her legs from the floor and carrying her to his bed. He wanted to throw her down and ravage her body, but he forced himself to move a little more slowly. He laid her out against the sheets, stood back, and looked at her. Then he reached down for the ties of her robe and slowly, one by one, began to unfasten them. His breath quickened with every inch of lavender skin that was revealed, until at last the robe was in two halves from top to bottom and he could slowly sweep the two sides away from the skin they were hiding.

He began to touch every silky inch of her. Across her breasts with their dark nipples, down to her belly, and scraping his strong fingers through her fiery red curls at the apex of her thighs. He used a hand to part her thighs and then dipped his fingers into her cleft. She drew in a soft, delighted breath as he touched her, feeling firsthand that warmth and wetness she had claimed. She parted her legs farther and he was able to see her, to see the darkness of her folds and the way they gleamed from wetness.

She was touching him again as well, her fingertips skimming up and down his length again and again until he thought he would go mad from the gloriousness of it. She gasped softly when he touched her deeply, toyed at the edges of her juicy little clit. It was there like a fat, purple little berry waiting to be devoured and he couldn’t keep his appetite for it in check. He lowered his
head and brought his mouth against her, his tongue flicking out to taste her.

And she was divine. Utterly divine. The entire remainder of their ride back to the keep after she had let him touch her he had done little else but think about this, think about what she would taste like and feel like and smell like. And all of it came together like the sweetest of aphrodisiacs. He was lost. Stolen away. Gone. And now he wanted to bring her with him. She gasped in short bursts of breath as he worked his mouth over her, stroked his tongue around her, let it writhe over the entrance to her body. He came back to her clit and devoured it, sucking it and loving it until she was crying out from the pleasure of it. Her hands had crept into his hair and were now fisted within it. She held him to her, demanded he make good on the promises his tongue was making to her body. And he did make good on them. He coiled her pleasure like a snake and then released it.

She cried out sounds of ultimate pleasure as she thrust herself against his mouth. But he was not satisfied with one orgasm, no matter how powerful this one had been. No matter that it was the first one she’d ever had. He pushed her sensitized body back to the edge with insistent strokes of his tongue, and she clutched at his hair and went along for the ride. It was like riding astride a horse for the first time. Wild and new and freeing. It meant she was free. Free to do anything. No more restrictions. No more captivity.

She came again, her shouts echoing in the room, filling his ears with the lusty sound of them. Only then did he draw away from her, rise up over her, look down on her. She was passion personified, uninhibited, her head pillowed on a sea of wild red hair that looked like a fiery halo around her. She was, in a word, magnificent.
And she was his. It may only be for a small collection of moments, but she was his. And he was taking her.

He took his eager shaft in his hand, squeezing gently in an attempt to calm the fire within it. Slow, he reminded himself. New.

Vulnerable.

His hands began to shake. He licked his lips, the salty sweet taste of her still upon them. She must have seen the sudden doubt that entered his eyes because she reached out and bracketed his hips with her hands, pulling him down to her, raising her hips so she was sliding herself wetly along the length of his shaft.

It was all he needed. It was everything. It was such a glorious sensation that he wondered how he managed not to come on the spot, before he was even inside her. If she felt this good on the outside, he could only surmise she would be nirvana on the inside.

And he was determined to find out.

He notched himself into her entrance, one hand pressed into the bed by her head, the other gripping her rounded hip and helping her tilt her body to his approach.

“Mordu,” he swore heatedly, calling on the god of hope, love and passion. “You feel like everything. Like everything has just become right in my world.” He pushed further into her. Then more and more until finally … finally he was seated deep inside her body.

He wanted to come almost immediately and it took every ounce of self-control he had to avoid making a silly show of himself. He was a man with a man’s passions, not some green boy having a taste of a woman for the first time. And he would show her what it meant to be making love with a man like him. He would show her everything she deserved to see.

“Have I hurt you?” he asked first.

She laughed. “No. Should you have?”

“For some women it hurts. Perhaps that is not the case with Kithians.”

“Perhaps,” she agreed with a shrug. “And I am glad for it. I wouldn’t want pain to mar how wonderful this is.”

He smiled down at her, again the rare expression changing the whole of his face into a more carefree version of itself. There must have been a time when he had smiled all the time, she thought.

Well, she was determined to see it happen again. He looked so happy right then, and she wanted the feeling to last for him.

So she tightened her body around him, hugging him with her walls as tightly as she could manage. He hissed in a sharp breath. “By the sweet ever-loving gods,” he ground out. “How do you expect me to love you right when you do something like that?”

“Didn’t you like it?” she asked, suddenly concerned.

“Like it? I’m about to spill myself without a single stroke!”

“And that’s bad?” she asked.

“Mordu!” He thrust into her hard. “I’ll give you a detailed explanation later. For now, you’re mine! Gods … oh my gods …”

He pumped into her harder and harder, his speed doubling, his pace frantic and out of control. He knew he was leaving her behind, but there was nothing he could do to stop it.

She moaned at his urgency, felt herself going hot all over. To be wanted in such a way … to be needed so desperately, it was all she could have asked for.

He was coming before he knew it, his body jetting out a blinding release. He thrust into her in time to it, dragged himself in and out and in again as he spasmed with pleasure.