Kisri: ... and the Beast, Book 2 (7 page)

Finally, Kisri frowned. “Why would he be angry at you? You’re the one who will suffer if you return to your home without me. I can be mated again, unless I hold you in my heart. Or would I be the first of many, now that you have leisure to take mates?”

The thought ripped at his heart. “No,” he told her hoarsely. “No other mates.”

“Just you, on your estate.” A brittle edge filled her voice. Danger filled her eyes. “You intended to leave without telling me. To leave me bound to you until I realized what had happened.”

His own pain lent his voice a defensive tone. “Because you deserve better than an accidental mating with the first man to touch you.”

“You’re right,” she replied sharply. “I deserve a choice, and a man strong enough to face me. I was ready to—” The words cut off as she dug her teeth into her lip and looked away. “Well, it hardly matters. You’ve clearly decided what’s best for me.”

“Yes, I suppose I have.” More than anything, he was
tired
. “Better that you’ve discovered my cowardice now, Kisri. Run while you still can.”

She moved—fast—but not to run away. Instead she shoved the table aside, mindless of the plates that clattered to the floor or the wine that pooled on the carpet. She lunged at him and curled her hands around the back of his chair, as if she could trap him with her small body straddling his legs. “What are you so afraid of?”

Only the truth, if anything, could defuse her righteous anger. “I’m afraid of having you hate me.”

“Are you sure?” she whispered, her arms trembling on either side of his body. “Dismissing me, lying to me, abandoning me…
Those
are the things that would make me hate you.”

Against his will, he lifted his hands to her face. “At least then you’ll be rid of me. But I could not stand waking up every morning with the knowledge that I’d bound you to me, and that you despised me for trapping you.”

Kisri bared her teeth at him in an angry snarl. “Are you listening to what you’re saying? Or do lions truly think we’re helpless before you? Yes, you can mate us without our knowledge or will, but you
can’t keep us
. If I despised you, I wouldn’t be trapped. I’d be free to offer myself to another.”

“Would you have that freedom,” he asked, “if you weren’t the High Lord’s cousin?”

At least she paused to consider it, which was something, considering her arms still trembled under the force of her furious grip on the back of his chair. She worried at her lower lip as she studied his face, then shook her head once. “No. I imagine not.”

“Take your freedom now,” he urged quietly. She had to. A few more small steps, and she would be as irrevocably bound to him as he was to her. “Kisri.”

Instead she frowned at him. “You’ll never be free of me. Are you so afraid of having me hate you that you’d rather watch another man mate me, even if you’ll feel the loss in your soul forever?”

Ennon looked away. “You forget your cousin has a say in the matter, as well.”

This time she took his face between her hands and forced him to meet her gaze. “And on what grounds do you imagine he’ll object? Because he wishes to override my happiness for a more advantageous union? The only lions with more wealth and power than you are related to me.”

No, Mal would likely object because he knew him better than Kisri did, and had judged him unsuitable. “Wealth and power aren’t the sum total of the things that make a marriage happy.”

Her fingernails bit into his scalp. “For such a celebrated warrior, you
are
a coward. How many excuses will you find before you confess that you simply do not wish to take me as your mate?”

It was too much. His fingers bit into her hips, but he couldn’t force himself to release her. “You’ve been spoiled, Kisri. You’ve gotten everything you ever wanted, including me, with no thought of consequence or denial.”

“I’ve been spoiled,” she agreed softly. “I got a taste of what it is like, to live without the protection of the royal family. To have men desperate to conquer me, to mate me and hope they can break my spirit before I fight free of the bond. You are the only one who had nothing to gain and everything to lose, and I’m sorry.” Her hands fell to the back of the chair again, struggling to push away, to break his grip on her hips. “I’m sorry.”

He held tight. “If it were up to you, what would we do?”

Her face was closed off to him, eyes hard and unyielding. “If it were up to me, I would be mated to a man who wanted me. Who would fight to have me, not shame me into leaving by reminding me that he is a slave to my selfish, royal whims.”

The words found their mark, and a fresh well of pain surged through him. He dropped his hands. “I think I prefer your cousin’s blows. They’re cleaner.”

Kisri surged out of his lap and strode to the opposite side of the tent, skittish energy rolling in a wave after her. “What do you expect me to say? I forced you into an intimacy that will shadow the rest of your life.
You’re
the one who is trapped. Perhaps I do not wish to wake up every day next to a man who hates me. Who is only with me because I was stupid enough to voice a desire that my royal cousin might enforce with his wrath.”

Ennon rose. “Your cousin has the power to make life difficult for you. He could disown you, Kisri.”

Oddly, the words made her laugh. “And you could cross the room and snap my neck with your bare hands. How do you think I became spoiled, Ennon? Malrion defied family and tradition to let me live free of royal expectations. To be a girl who climbed trees and fought with swords and had the childhood no one allowed him. He won’t disown me.”

It gave him hope. “Even if you marry a thoroughly unsuitable cad?”

“I imagine that would depend on if the unsuitable cad planned to make me miserable. He’d be a fool to marry me if he intended to continue being a cad.” Kisri didn’t smile. “Do you?”

“Plan to marry you, or plan to keep being a cad?”

She didn’t answer. Instead she looked away, her shoulders slumped, her entire posture full of defeated misery. “I could love you so easily, Ennon, but in this I have no desire to be spoiled. If you have a care for me at all, do me the favor of following your heart. Rejection will sting far less in the long run than having you choose me out of duty or fear instead of desire and affection.”

Somehow, his foolish, clumsy words had confused her. “My duty and my fear would drive me to leave you be, Kisri. To let you live a life free of me.”

A shiver made her entire body tremble. “And your heart?”

He could not lie. “My heart? My heart is yours,” he confessed hoarsely.

“Follow your heart, and you can claim mine.”

Could it be so simple after all? No more complicated than making the choice to try? Ennon took a step closer. “Marry me, Kisri.”

She tilted her head and considered him, the first hint of a smile playing around the edges of her full lips. “You’re a cad and I’m a spoiled brat. Are you brave enough to see if we can simply be a lion and lioness in love?”

“If you’re certain it’s what you want.” That was the one thing on which he could not bend, the one thing that would break him. “I cannot be a mistake you wish you had not made.”

Kisri rocked onto her toes to frame his face. “I can’t predict the future. Not for either of us. But you are not a mistake to me. Not today. My mistake was almost letting you drive me away.”

And his mistake had been to try. “Do you think Mal left us hoping that I would leave, or that I would stay?”

“High Lord Malrion does not hope for people to leave.” Her hands slid to the back of his head and dropped to his shoulders. She hopped up easily, her legs around his hips. “My cousin wraps his royal hand around the backs of their necks and drags them wherever he thinks they should be.”

And, this time, Ennon had no choice but to agree. “His methods may leave something to be desired, but this time…”

“Disband the army,” she whispered against his jaw. “Do your duty as the First Warlord, and if you still want me when it’s over…” She pressed her next kiss to his ear. “Mal will be pleased to be able to celebrate victory with a royal wedding, and doubly pleased if it isn’t his.”

“A worthy list of tasks to be completed.” He licked her earlobe. “What of right now? This moment?”

She moaned softly and rocked against him, her legs tightening. “I believe you owe it to me to make love to me again, now that I know I need not hold myself back. If I had not been so frightened of losing you, I might have noticed the mating bond.”

“Here? In the High Lord’s dining tent?”

“Can you clear a way through the guards for us?”

He bit her ear with a growl and lifted her higher. “Hold on.”

They drew more than their share of astonished looks and snickers from the guards and soldiers milling about the camp, but no one dared stop them until they reached her tent, when a stone-faced elder warrior stared them down.

He didn’t move. Not until Kisri leaned over his shoulder and gave him a winsome smile. “Did my cousin bar the First Warlord from my tent?”

The guard cleared his throat. When the tips of his ears turned pink, Ennon laughed. “Stand down, man. I haven’t dragged her here against her will.”

“You can report to the High Lord if you wish,” Kisri offered. “However, since he left me in Ennon’s care in the first place, it’s entirely unnecessary.”

The man’s blush deepened, and he stammered out an apology and stepped away. Inside, Ennon surveyed the tent. Though it contained the same spare furnishings as his own, rich fabrics and cushions had been strewn about.

Ennon dropped Kisri onto the cot. “Your cousin is quite serious about your guard detail, it seems.”

“Are you surprised?” She scrambled to her knees and reached for the fastenings on his vest, fingers nimble and determined. “The first guard he assigned to me was you.”

He drove his fingers into her hair. “And, in a way, the last.”

“No.” When his vest hung open, she jerked at his tunic until she could reach underneath. “The final assignment is mine.”

“Is it, now?”

“Mmm. I choose the man who will guard me for the rest of my days.” Her fingernails dragged over his chest. “Teach me what it means to be mated. Surely there’s more to it than a bond I can’t feel.”

“There is…if you accept my claim.” He dropped to his knees beside the cot. “Do you, my love?”

The gentle endearment seemed to thrill her. She wet her lips and nodded, deadly serious instead of playful. “With everything in me.”

He ran one hand up her leg to her thigh. “Feel it when I’m inside you, and you’ll see. You’ll feel when the magic makes itself known.”

She pounced on him, riding his body as he let her knock him backwards onto the plush carpeting. She straddled his legs and reached for his pants. “Then I want you inside me.”

Ennon gripped her wrists. “In good time. Like after I’ve made you scream my name.”

She laughed. “In the middle of my cousin’s camp? A better goal would be to make me moan it into a pillow.”

He flashed her what he hoped was a wicked smile. “My evening won’t be complete until I’ve embarrassed
all
of your guards.”

“And what do you intend to do?” She lifted her hips, inched forward and settled herself firmly on his lap. “Wouldn’t this be so much more pleasant without our clothes?”

Even the banter was fun, joyous, because she was his. Ennon lifted her onto the cot once more and unfastened her pants. “You should most certainly be naked.”

She obliged him by loosening the ties on her tunic and slipping it over her head. Underneath, her skin was pale and bare, gilded in light that came from expensive lamps instead of sooty fires. “You’re incredibly bossy.”

“If you tell me you don’t like it, you’ll be lying.” His mouth went dry at the sight of all that bared skin, and he hurried to pull off her pants.

“It has its occasional charms.” The first time she’d stood nude before him, self-consciousness and uncertainty had twisted her features. Now she was bold, shameless as she reached for him and began to tug at his tunic.

He let her pull it over his head, then urged her legs apart, his ardor making his hands shake. “Lie back.”

“Bossy,” she whispered again, but she obeyed, relaxing back against the cot with her body stretched out before him.

In time, he would tease her slowly, take her inch by inch with his tongue and with his body. For now, he parted her with his thumbs and stroked through her slick wetness. “Beautiful.”

“Impatient,” she retorted hoarsely, her fingers groping for his hair. “Ennon, I want you.”

“Shh.” He touched his tongue to her clit, circled it gently.

She muffled her helpless moan against the back of her wrist as her hips rocked up toward him, and he watched her as he eased lower and thrust his tongue inside her.

Another moan—more frantic, this time, though still muffled—and then her hand fell away from her lips. “I want your cock inside me. I want you to put me on my knees and bend me over this cot and show me how a lion claims his mate.”

“You want it more than my tongue?” he whispered, knowing she would hear.

Her fingers tightened painfully in his hair. “Yes.”

Ennon urged her over to her stomach, kissed the small of her back. “I love you.”

Unsteady breaths fell from her lips in rasping pants. “I love you too. I want you.”

He fumbled his pants open, but instead of driving into her, he went slowly, thrusting into her bit by bit.

Her back bowed. Her dark hair flew wild around her body as she fisted the covers and pushed into his slow advance. “I—I don’t know how to submit. Help me.”

He trailed his tongue up her spine, between her shoulder blades, and whispered against her skin. “You know how. Accept me, darling. Let me in.”

A fine trembling shook her body. “I’ve been protecting myself too long. Even from you.”

Ennon didn’t stop until he was buried to the hilt inside her, and he unleashed a tiny bit of magic as he leaned over her. “Let me in.”

This time she arched, pressing her back to his chest with a soft whimper. Skittish, as she’d been in the woods the first night, so eager to test herself against him.

And eager to be won. She gave in to him with a sigh, her steely defenses crumbling as she opened her heart to him with the boldness and bravery that defined her.