Jeweled (15 page)

She met her eyes, blinked, and looked away. Staring into her own eyes was uncomfortable.

He gripped her shoulders. “No,
look
, Evangeline. See what I see.”

Her face flushing, she raised her gaze to her eyes again. They were gray, the color of metal. That’s what she noticed first. But if she went deeper, which felt a little like diving into her own soul, she saw . . . vulnerability. Honesty.
Emotion
. Joshui, so much of it. Her eyes seemed to swim with it. She saw strength, too.

Anatol dropped his mouth near her ear. “Your eyes have always been this way, even when you were at your worst. There was always beauty in you, complexity, empathy, caring, and I always saw that beauty. Always. No matter what you did or what you said to me, it was there.”

Her lips parted as she stared into her own reflection in a way she’d never done before. Anatol was helping her see herself in a way she never had.

His hands rested on her hips as he took a slow sweep of her body. “You are, of course, also beautiful in the more traditional sense.”

“Touch me,” she murmured, meeting his gaze in the reflection.

His eyes went dark with lust. He brought his hands up her abdomen, thick fingers splaying over her delicate, pale skin, bringing them up to cup her breasts. Her breath caught as he rolled her hard nipples back and forth between his fingers until they were bright red against the milk white globes of her breasts. He pinched them a little as he rolled them, making her breath hiss between her teeth and pleasure course through her body, drawing moisture between her thighs.

He drew her back a step and sat down on the edge of the bed with her in his lap, still well within viewing distance of the mirror. His hands slid slowly up her outer thighs.

Her reflection in the mirror almost didn’t seem like her own. Her eyes were larger and darker than she ever remembered seeing them, her face more gaunt. But it wasn’t the weight loss that made the woman in the mirror seem like a stranger, it was the look of amazing passion on her face. Had she ever before looked this way when with a man? Lips parted, eyes heavy-lidded, yearning for more of the touch that he was doling out in little drips and drabs? No, of course not. That only came with Anatol. Only him.

“Part your thighs,” he whispered.

At his instruction, she spread her legs. Her sex pouted in the mirror’s reflection—pink, slick, swollen with arousal and begging to be touched. Anatol licked his finger and brought his hand down slowly between her thighs. Finding her clit nestled in her soft curls, he found the blooming little bud and stroked it. Pleasure blossomed through her body, making her nipples go harder. She sank her teeth into her lower lip, watching him pet her into incoherency. He knew exactly how to touch her, not too hard and not too fast.

He caressed her clit until it was huge, once in a while dipping down to find lubrication to make the pad of his finger slick over it easily. Her head fell back and she moaned as he skated her up to the edge of a climax and held there, suspended in pleasure and with the promise of even more pleasure dangling just out of reach.

“Watch, Evangeline,” he murmured.

Wickedly, before she came, he slid a finger deep inside her cunt, then added another, stretching her inner muscles until she moaned. Rapt, eyes wide and lips parted, she watched his big hand between her slim, very feminine thighs. He thrust in and out exactly the way she wanted his cock. The fact he was denying her what she truly wanted made this even more agonizingly erotic.

His other hand came up to cup her breast, thumb moving over the nipple, keeping time with the thrusts of his broad fingers into her sex. Her body tensed and her gaze went to Anatol’s eyes in the mirror’s reflection. He was watching her face, looking like a wolf ready to devour a savory snack. He ground his hand against her clit as he fucked her with his fingers, the movement causing a friction that immediately put her on the edge of an explosive orgasm.

“Come for me,” he murmured.

Her back arched and she came. His name spilled from her lips as he rode her through it, the muscles of her sex milking his fingers. Pleasure slammed over her again and again, stealing her thoughts and her breath along with it.

He rolled her to the bed, roughly pushing her thighs apart with one hand as he desperately worked the button and zipper of his pants with the other. She yanked at his shirt, pulling it off so she could enjoy his beautiful chest. Finally his pants were off and his gorgeous cock was free. She reached out and took the long, wide length in her hand, stroking it from base to tip. His head fell back on a groan.

He yanked her so her ass was just on the edge of the bed and roughly spread her legs. Standing on the floor, he guided the head of his cock to the entrance of her slick sex and pushed the crown inside.

She gasped at the sensation, her mouth open and her eyes wide in the reflection of the mirror. His buttocks flexed and he leveraged his body against her, driving his cock into her another inch, and then another, until he was seated to the base deep within her.

They stayed that way for a moment. The mirror’s reflection showed her thighs spread as wide as they would go, his cock thrust into her body deeply. He had his arms around her, muscles flexing in his minute movements, his sun-kissed skin looking so dark against her thin, pale body. Anatol was breathing hard into the curve of her neck and trembling just a little.

“Anatol,” she pleaded. Her body shook and she closed her eyes. The sight of them so entwined was going to make her come again without him even making one movement.

He pulled out of her body and pushed back in so slowly she could feel every single ridge, valley, and vein of his shaft.

Evangeline bucked against him, gasping. His cock was wide and long, filling up every part of her. Over and over, slowly and methodically, he pulled out and thrust back in. She watched every movement in the mirror, every flex of his beautiful ass and thighs, until she was incoherent with lust.

He took her slow for a while, and then began to gather pace and force. The bed was high, just the perfect level for him to stand at the side, pull her rear flush up to the edge and fuck her hard and fast. He slammed in and out of her, thumb finding and stroking her extra-sensitive clit. Another orgasm caught hold almost immediately and she stuffed her fist in her mouth to keep from crying out. Pleasure poured through her, stealing everything but her moans, which she couldn’t stifle.

His cock jumped deep within her, he groaned her name, and he slumped over her. “Evangeline,” he kept saying over and over.

Her body trembled and shivered from the force of her climaxes. He was still buried deep inside her. She wrapped her legs around his waist and kissed his temple, not wanting him to leave her.

His hands fisted in her hair. “I love you,” he whispered.

Her body tensed and her breath arrested in her throat. Those were words she couldn’t return. She cared deeply for Anatol, but was it love she felt? She had no idea. What did love feel like?

“It’s all right,” he breathed against the curve of her shoulder. “For now, this is enough.”

Her body melted against his. He found her mouth as his hands began to once again restlessly explore her. Soon everything that didn’t concern the slide of his body against hers was forgotten.

A week passed and hunger gnawed at them. Anatol went out every day trying to find work and came up empty. Evangeline also went out, though now she kept her head down and her eyes carefully away from other people’s, mostly because she felt she couldn’t risk another encounter with someone who might wish to harm her and force her into using her magick again.

Her magick burned inside her now like a foreign thing, eating at her. She sensed all emotion around her, as well as felt her own. It made her sick to her stomach to be near crowds, but try as she might to find some barriers to protect herself, it was like forming walls from water.

Here and there, they picked up odd jobs. It was the only thing that sustained them. Anatol loaded shelves at nearby stores sometimes for a few crowns. Evangeline picked up a little work at a local bakery that garnered them some of the leftover stock as her payment.

Then one day Anatol landed a more permanent job—down at the docks of the Tibrian Port. It offered him steady pay, if not much. It was enough to pay the rent on the room and to buy food, at least.

He came into the room one afternoon, after a morning of work, and threw a heap of tangled material on the end of the bed where Evangeline sat, looking out the window.

“I thought you could do something with it, maybe make some clothes.” He gestured at the pile of fabric. “I know you only sew a little, but Martha, the daughter of the hotel’s owner, said she could give you some instruction. I thought it would be a good thing to occupy your time.”

He was apologizing for dumping work in her lap, but she would be happy to have something to do. She picked up a coarse length of blue material. “This is a good thing, Anatol.” She smiled. “Thank you.”

Over the next week, with Martha’s help and with quite a few errors that she learned from, she transformed the heap of scrap into a new wardrobe for them. Apparently she had some aptitude for something other than magick.
Amazing
. She made two new shirts for Anatol and a pair of pants.

She even made a new dress for herself. The style wasn’t anything like what she was used to, and the material chafed her skin instead of kissed it, as she was accustomed, but
she’d
created it and somehow that made it the most valuable piece of clothing she’d ever owned.

She turned in front of the mirror, admiring the way she’d bunched the material just under her breasts to push them to overflowing a little at the bodice. The sleeves were flared and the waist hugged her waist perfectly. Turning to view the side, she frowned, thinking about different ways she could improve the design the next time.

A warm sensation filled her chest, an emotion she recognized as contentment. It made a smile play around her mouth. There was an advantage to feeling emotion. Happiness and contentment were nice. Lust was pretty good, too. Anatol made her feel that on a nightly basis.

Overall, things were looking up for them. She gazed at herself in the mirror. Funny she should think that. Her cheeks were hollow, dark smudges marred the skin under her eyes and her hair seemed thinner than it had when she’d lived at Belai. And yet . . . she could say she wasn’t unhappy. At least, not all of the time.

“That looks incredible on you,” Anatol said from the doorway.

She turned, smiling. “Thank you. I just finished it this morning.”

He walked toward her. Sunlight streaming in from the window seemed to catch on him. He was dressed in a pair of worn trousers that fit him just right and a heavy, dark brown sweater and work boots. His job loading boats down at the docks left enough for sewing supplies and even the occasional extra hot water.

Evangeline never would’ve imagined she’d be so happy to have so little.

“The dress does look incredible,” Anatol murmured as he approached her, pulling her up against him. He fitted his mouth to hers—a place she liked it often these days—and whispered, “But you’d look even better if you were out of it.”

She smiled against his mouth. “You have to go to work.”

He kissed her lower lip slowly, dragging it gently between his teeth, making her knees go weak. “I still have some time before I leave.”

He drew her back toward the bed and pushed her gently down onto it, coming after her to pin her wrists to the mattress. He stared into her eyes in that way that made her heart beat faster and moisture pool between her thighs. That intense look said,
you’re mine
.
Nothing in the world will keep me from having you.
It spoke to the part of her that wanted to be claimed by him, even as the idea of it scared her nearly witless.

They’d made love daily since the first time they’d come together. It didn’t matter the time of day or how tired he was—he wanted her. Sometimes he woke her in the middle of the night, slid between her thighs, and brought her to a sweet, shattering release while she was still drowsy from sleep. Sometimes it was the afternoon, up against a wall, or while he pinned her facedown on the bed. It was like he had to touch her to survive, as though he lived to give her pleasure. These days she knew his body as well as her own, where best to touch him and how.

She’d been forced to find birth control after their first encounter. Luckily, it wasn’t difficult. Palace life had taught her how to prevent pregnancy with a certain combination of herbs, a concoction she’d been taking since she’d first lost her virginity.

He reached down and slowly undid the buttons on the bodice of her dress one by one, revealing more and more of her skin as he went. Her breath came faster as he reached her waist, and his gaze ate up the sight of her breasts only barely covered by the material of the dress, her nipples hard as diamonds under the thin fabric. He pushed one half of the bodice away, the scrape of the material erotic against her nipple and the cool air of the room making it tighten even further. Then he pushed the other half away and lowered his hot mouth to her breast, letting his tongue explore every hill and valley of her nipple while she watched. He covered her other breast with his hand and toyed with her nipple, pinching and rolling it until she tossed her head and moaned.