Cursed by Ice (31 page)

“Mordu,” he groaned just as her kiss was dropping on the tip of his erection.

She liked it when he invoked the god of love and passion. Of hope and dreams. Every other moment of the day his attention and devotion was to Weysa. But here, with her, it was always Mordu. Surely … surely that meant something, she thought as she touched her tongue to him. Surely it meant that he felt something for her. Something he gave to no one else.

He tasted salty on her tongue, musky with sleep and the remnants of their lovemaking the night before. She licked him, down the entire length of him, all the way to the thatch of curls springing up around the base of his hard staff. She licked him all the way back up again, as if she were painting him with her tongue. It was such an erotic idea that she shivered a little. Then he shivered too.

“Gods, woman, you’re enough to make a grown man weep for joy.”

She smiled at that and decided to reward him by employing the use of her hand. She scraped her nails along the underside of the soft sac beneath his cock and felt him tense. But she knew she had not hurt him in the least, had not come even close to it, and she was pleased she had come so far in her knowledge of her lover’s body. In her knowledge of what pleased him. She pleased him, she had come to learn. There was little she could do that was wrong in his eyes, especially when they were in bed together.

She wrapped her hand around the thickness of him, as always quite amazed by the sheer girth of him. Then she placed that girth within her mouth and against her tongue.

He groaned soulfully, his hips lifting once again, pushing himself farther in, past her lips, as his hands came to frame her face. She drew him in deep, then sucked on him as she drew him back out again, eliciting a moan from him. She repeated this, frequently, and got more of the same as her reward. It was nothing bad and everything good. Between his shallowly thrusting hips and her eagerly working mouth, she had him invoking Mordu’s name with greater and greater intensity.

“Oh, sweet Sarielle, you’re going to be the death of me,” he said through clenched teeth.

She hoped so. She worked for it. Worked to taste that sweetly salty fluid she could coax from his body. She touched him along the insides of his thighs, molded the malleable sac, combed through the coarse hair. She touched him every way she could think of as she drew on him with lips, mouth, and tongue.

“Stop, stop, stop,” he hissed. “Fira, as good as this is, I want to make love to you too,” he said.

She pulled away just long enough to say “No.”

Then she doubled her efforts, employed everything she had ever learned about how to make him feel good. She remembered the first time he had coaxed her to do this, explaining to her that it was an ultimate pleasure, just as his mouth on her was an ultimate pleasure. She had been addicted ever since.

But Garreth was not a man to be gainsaid. He grabbed for her, his hands on her hip and thigh jerking her around and across him until she was kneeling on either side of his shoulders, all the while her mouth never leaving him. He spread her thighs wide until she was brought down against his mouth and his tongue was darting out and touching her on her sensitive little nub. His hands curved up her thighs and over her backside, pulling her down tighter. Now he was sucking against her and she was the one moaning, in spite of still having her mouth around him. As his tongue darted and danced, she began to squirm and pull harder on him. Pleasure spiraled through her, in lapping tides that matched the lapping of his tongue.

She couldn’t focus on two things at once, she found herself thinking frantically. His mouth was so much magic that she wanted to simply lie back and get lost in the feelings. But then he would win and he would make her stop. She refused to. She wanted to give him this. More than anything. So she redoubled her efforts, wrapping her hand around him and pumping him in time with the sucking of her mouth. His fingers began to dig into her backside and he ground out fierce sounds of pleasure against her.

“Fira!
Fira!
” he cried against her just as his hips lunged upward and he exploded against her tongue. She tasted the heat and seed of him against her tongue, and she swallowed it down with joy and pleasure. She had done it. Made him unravel before he’d had the chance to do the same to her.

But before she had an instant to enjoy her victory, he was throwing her over in the bed so she was flat on her back and resettling himself between her legs. He thrust two fingers inside her and latched his mouth onto her. She cried out from the overpowering sensation of it, finally able to relax back and let herself tumble into it. She burrowed her hands into his hair, gripping and holding him to herself, not that he needed the encouragement. For all she was expecting it, her first orgasm blindsided her, making her weak and free flying. She had only ever known such exhilaration when riding on Koro’s neck, and now here, in this bed, with Garreth.

He did not stop. Not even after a second orgasm ripped through her. It was only after the third, when she was begging him, that he finally let her go. Then he flipped her over once more, jerked her up onto her knees, and set the fronts of his thighs against the backs of hers. With a lunging thrust, he put himself deep inside her, proving himself to be just as hard as he had been before she had brought him to pleasure.

Then he pounded himself into her, forcing her to press the heels of her palms into the mattress to keep herself from sliding away from him. He pummeled her hips with his until she was spinning and reeling with pleasure the way Koro reeled and turned in the sky. She came so hard she saw bright lights behind her tightly squeezed eyelids. And then she heard him coming as well, the sound of it so guttural and harsh that it almost sounded like pain.

When he was done, he braced himself against her body, gasping for his every breath, his big body shuddering in fine tremors. She was no different, her whole body shaking from her pleasure.

She felt him fall away from her, rolling onto his back beside her, still dragging for breath. He turned his head and looked at her, a sloppy grin on his mouth.

“It’s a good thing I’m immortal,” he said. “It’s going to take some time before I ever get tired of that.”

The words had made her soar. It had been the closest she had ever come to getting him to say he wanted to be with her for longer than just a winter. Oh, she knew it might be a foolish sort of hope to have, but she had not been able to help herself.

“Sarielle! Did you see the new dolls Garreth bought us from the bazaar?” Jona asked, showing her the doll she had gotten. Isaelle showed her hers too.

Sarielle smiled at the girls, but a wave of inexplicable tears came over her. She hastily blinked them away, but they did not go unnoticed by her keen sisters.

“Sarielle, why are you crying?” Isaelle asked. She was the quieter, more introspective of the twins, while Jona was the social butterfly, animated and a little wild.

“Oh, it is nothing, my little love,” she said with a smile that did not reach her eyes. If she thought she was fooling the girls, she was sorely misguided.

“Why should you be sad? We are not slaves anymore. Garreth treats us very kindly. He loves you a great deal,” Isaelle said.

That got Sarielle’s immediate attention. “Why would you say that?” she asked her.

“Oh, we can see it.”

“Yes, we can see it,” Jona said. “Will you marry him? I should like him for a brother.”

“Yes, I should like him too,” Isaelle said.

“Oh, I don’t think that will happen, my little loves,” she said, new tears burning into her eyes.

“Why not?” they asked in unison.

“It is very complicated,” she said, wiping her eyes.

“You love him, don’t you?” Jona asked.

“Yes. You do,” Isaelle answered for her. “And if you
love each other, now that you are no longer a slave, you get married.”

It was as simple as that to the girls. Sarielle did not know how to explain it to them. She barely knew how to explain it to herself.

Just then the door to the nursery opened and a serving girl entered the room. She shyly approached Sarielle with a note in her hands.

“I … I found this on the table in the hall. I thought it might be yours,” she said, holding the note out to her.

Sarielle thanked her and took the note. The girl beat a very hasty retreat. Sarielle read the note.

Sarielle blushed. She wondered if the girl had read the note.
Of course she has. Don’t be silly. How else would she have known it was meant for you?
But why would Garreth leave such a private note where anyone could find it? How was it the message had not made it directly into her hands?

It didn’t matter. He wanted her to come to him right away and she would obey him.

“I have to go, my little loves,” she said hastily. She gave each a quick kiss and then retreated from the room. She hurried through the hallways, her heart beating hard within her chest. It should not mean so much to her that he wanted her like this, but it did. It meant the world to her that he felt so strongly for her. It was not a declaration of love, it was not a promise that they would be together always, but it was the next best thing.

She entered her rooms and quickly looked in the mirror, tidying a few strands of her hair. She reached for the perfume Davine had talked her into buying—a light, warm scent—and quickly applied it to her skin
at her wrists, her neck, and the spot between her breasts that Davine had told her was a must. She straightened her skirts, then laughed at herself. Surely Garreth would not care if her skirts were straight. He usually did not allow them to be on her body for very long once he saw her in private anyway.

She opened the door they shared between their rooms and entered his bedroom, closing the door behind her. As she came farther into the room, she was surprised when she did not see him standing there or sitting waiting for her by the fire, but she did see a body tangled up in the sheets in the bed. At first she was amused that he was already naked and waiting for her.

Until she realized that the person in the bed had deep violet skin and was very much a woman.

Sarielle felt her entire world spin away from her as she realized the reason why the note had not been sent directly into her hands. Because it had not been meant for her.

Davine. It was Davine who was sleeping in Garreth’s bed, looking for all the world as though she had been vigorously tumbled within it. Sarielle should know, for she had often looked exactly like that once Garreth had been through with her.

Sarielle reached out to steady herself with the nearest piece of furniture she could grab. It was a chair sitting in front of the fire. Her brain burned with a flash of memory of Garreth sitting naked within the chair, Sarielle straddling his lap as she rode him to orgasm. He had gripped her body then as if he had never wanted to let her go. He had gasped for breath against her neck, his face buried in her hair. Their skin had been damp with the sweat of their exertions.

But now the chair was empty and Garreth’s bed was filled with the body of another woman. The note had been sent to Davine.

I want you. I need you. Come to me now
.

He had written those words to Davine and Davine had left the note behind by accident. Now she lay sleeping in his bed after … after …

Tears were not coming. She needed them to come, to blur her vision so she could not see what she was seeing. She heard Davine too. The deep, lusty breaths of a woman well into sleep. Driven there no doubt by exhaustion.

Numbly, Sarielle turned back toward the door she had come through. She walked toward it with deadened, jarring steps, her hands reaching for one piece of furniture and then another, the only way she could keep herself from falling to the floor in a crumbling heap of bones. She made it to the door somehow and fell against it, her hand gripping the doorknob for all she was worth.

Suddenly Koro’s thoughts flooded into her mind, swamping her with his concern and sharp worry over her distress.

I am fine. Please … please do not worry
.

She was begging him. Praying he would believe her.

But he did not.

Sarielle could not bear it. She opened the door and lurched through it. Slamming it shut behind her, she stumbled for the basin beside her dressing table and vomited. She sobbed then, tears finally coming. She crumpled to the floor and began to cry.

But no sooner had her first tears fallen than the door between her room and Garreth’s was opening and Davine, wrapped in a sheet from the bed, was coming toward her. Sarielle wanted to scream at the sight, backing away to try to escape her.

“Sarielle! Oh, Sarielle, I’m so sorry! Please! Please forgive me! I-I had no choice! If I didn’t … I would find myself out on the street with nothing! I-I didn’t want to! You are my friend and … I tried to warn you this might
happen. That this is the way men are. Please …” Tears were in her eyes as she dropped to her knees before Sarielle. “Please forgive me. I never meant to hurt you.”

Sarielle couldn’t manage the jumble that was her emotions. And all the while Koro was in her head, demanding she tell him what was wrong.

Frustrated, he told her he was coming for her.

“Please don’t,” she whispered aloud. Whether she was speaking to Koro or Davine, she didn’t know.

“I … I’ll go,” Davine said softly, her gaze turned away. “I’ll go and I won’t come back.”

“No,” Sarielle said numbly. “You can’t. You have nowhere to go. I-I’ll go. I’ll take the twins and … Yes. I’ll go.”

“Where will you go?” Davine asked quietly.

“Anywhere. Anywhere but here.”

“But will you be safe?”

“I have Koro to protect us. Please … if you ever cared for me … help me to go.”

“I do care for you. And I’ll help you. Just let me get dressed.”

The reminder made fresh tears burn into Sarielle’s eyes. She wiped them away fiercely. She nodded to Davine. “Where is he?” she asked, her voice, her entire body, trembling.