by Vela Roth
Her face burned hotter, but as always with Lio, she found herself saying the things that were so hard to put into words. “I like the thought that I’m carrying part of you inside me, mysterious as it is.”
He brought her hand slowly to his mouth. His lips closed around her fingers, then he slid them slowly back out, sucking gently. His nostrils flared, and his eyes slid shut. “Your maidenhead bled.”
She swallowed, watching his face in the moonlight, and her imagination progressed from having him for the first time to having him again. There was a name for a woman like her.
A name that didn’t exist in Lio’s vocabulary.
She touched his cheek. “There are still hours before dawn.”
His expression gentled. “That was difficult for you. Tomorrow night will be better.”
“Tomorrow night is a long time from now.”
“Do you feel any soreness? My bodily fluids should diminish your residual discomfort, but tonight was…demanding.”
She moved gingerly. “Surely it’s like when you bite me, and the pain goes away quickly.”
“It can be.”
He waited, holding her hand on which he had tasted a smear of blood, and she realized what he was saying.
“Shall I do that for you, Cassia?”
She tucked her thighs together, even as she said, “Yes.”
“Then I shall give you a kiss,” he whispered. As he moved his graceful frame down her body, the blanket caught about his waist and slid away.
Now he positioned his head and shoulders between her legs, where his lower body had been. She caught fistfuls of the blankets in her hands, tilting her head back, and stared up at the skylight. She could feel the moonlight and the night air and his breath upon her loins. That feeling of being exposed, weak, on the verge of humiliation overtook her again.
But Lio was taking hold of her hips, cradling them in his careful hands. “Goddess bless. You did bleed.”
She felt the flick of his tongue in the dampness there, then a long, steady stroke. Pain she had not expected flared to life, and she fisted her hands tighter, trying not to flinch. His tongue laved her again, probing the wound. The pain eased, and she let out a grateful sigh of relief. His mouth pressed closer, and his tongue stroked deeper. The discomfort faded, giving way to the feel of his kiss.
He bathed her with his tongue, as thorough and eager as he was at her neck. She shivered, her skin breaking out in goosebumps. His mouth was on her womanhood. He was feasting on her there.
His mouth parted from her, and an instant later she felt his tongue on the inside of her thigh. Rose petals peeled away from her skin and gave way to his mouth. He kissed and licked his way up to the crease of her leg, drawing his tongue through the groove.
“I missed some,” he informed her, before his mouth returned to her center.
She gasped when his tongue dipped lower, licking the skin between her krana and the opening of her buttocks. Her skin burned. She felt pleasure even there. He must have known, in the way he always knew. His tongue grazed her there again. Playfully. The muscles between her buttocks tightened.
But then he drew his tongue up. Higher. Yes, he was going to. He would lick her there.
He did not lick her. He took her most sensitive place in his mouth and began to suck.
She bit down on her lip to keep from crying out. She had thought herself at his mercy…but this… He clutched the most vulnerable part of her in his mouth, amid those fangs, and he drank her pleasure as if it were blood. Her body bowed of its own accord, tilting her hips, offering her pleasure up to him. They were so far beyond forbidden territory there was no such thing anymore.
Gripping the blankets, bracing herself, she lifted herself to look. His dark head nestled in the vee of her legs, moving gently with the motions of his mouth. Her knees spread, her feet pressing against his lower body, toes curling. It was a dark and beautiful vision, and she could not look away.
She watched her own body undulate, watched his hands clench and unclench on her hips. Her lower belly clutched tight, and she could no longer see, only feel, as her head fell back, and her body writhed on the blankets again. He did not stop. He kept sucking, drinking, and her body kept answering, every stroke a new kind of ecstatic pain.
At last he gave her mercy and lifted his head with a gasp. She did not see him move, but suddenly he was there above her, his face close to hers. His mouth gleamed wet in the moonlight.
“Again.” His hard flesh nudged where his mouth had been.
“Yes.”
He filled her in one rough, silken thrust. No pain now. Only her body stretching to welcome him, to hold him.
“Yes,” she cried.
She felt the imperceptible return of his mind to the door of hers. He made no demand. He waited for her with hopeful eagerness. She stretched the new sense she hadn’t known she possessed and invited him in. With a gasp, he plunged into her thoughts again, stirring the currents of intimacy between them once more.
His body rose and fell upon her, in motion from head to toe, every motion concentrated on that locus of their joining. He spoke to her now in nothing but deep, rough groans as muscles bunched in his hips, driving him into her. He was gorgeous. And he was inside of her.
As his rhabdos pulsed and emptied inside her once more, she watched his face and beheld the pleasure he took. In her. His thoughts called out like a shout. To her.
She was the one still holding him when the night beyond the skylight changed in a way she had learned to interpret all too well.
He moaned and lifted his head. “Accursed sun. It always rises eventually.”
“The wonderful thing is, it always sets again afterward.” Her voice had become that rough, husky one she didn’t recognize—no, the one she was coming to know.
His gaze darted across as much of her as was visible amid their tangled blankets and intertwined bodies. His expressive face said more than words. He looked at her as if she were a night falling at dawn, or a moon rising in the sun’s stead.
“You enjoyed it, then,” she said.
“Cassia, I—” He broke off, as if searching for words.
Had her question surprised him? Didn’t it make sense for a woman to ask her lover if she had pleased him?
“I fear this time, I cannot be free with words,” he said. “For I know none fine enough for you.”
With that, he pulled her close again and tucked her head under his chin. She shut her eyes, resting her face on his chest. She must face the day, but after it, there would be tonight. And then, the night after that…
Cassia lay there and thought about what to say. She opened her mouth once, shut it. Opened it again a moment later, only to press her lips closed again.
Finally, she opened her mouth and kissed his chest. Why was that easier than speaking?
“I’m so glad it was you,” she whispered against his skin. “You are so good to me.”
16
Days Until
SPRING EQUINOX
A Stranger to Trust
Cassia woke to the indistinct gloom of her bedchamber, unsure how many hours she had slept and how many remained before the day would release her, and the night would be here again. Night and Lio.
She stretched beneath her blankets. Even the aches felt good. She had not felt so rested, so relaxed since she’d come to Solorum…nor since long before that. She didn’t care what time it was. Even if the king summoned her to demand why she had not attended dawn rites like a pious little bastard, she would appear before him without remorse and lie to his face. She would think about last night and feel brave enough to get through the audience.
Eagerness was what got her out of bed, and cassia soap was what she took in hand at her basin. When she had sneaked back into her empty rooms early that morning, she hadn’t needed to worry about cleaning up the evidence of their tryst before her handmaiden’s return. Before she and Lio had parted, he had worked a cleaning spell, which had felt lovely and left both o
f them tidy and fragrant. There was still a trace of his mysterious scent on her skin, and she added cassia soap to it, not to wash away what they had done, but to remind herself.
She did not lament the necessity of secrecy. This secret was a delight to keep. When she was with Lio, she felt they were in another world, far removed from everything else in her life. She wanted it always to remain so.
Always? That meant, she must remind herself, for the length of the Summit.
A spurt of anger drowned out the pragmatic voice in her head. As she often had lately, she found she preferred the anger. She let it drive away all thought for the future. Best to focus on what lay directly ahead. Wasn’t that always what she did?
No, it was not. What she had always focused on was surviving one more dawn. That paled in comparison to what she now resolved to do: live for today.
She walked out into the hearth room in her unremarkable brown dress, prepared to face her handmaiden and questions. Are you ill, Lady? Why else would you sleep so late, Lady? Should I call the king’s healer, Lady? No, no, and certainly not.
But Perita was not at her post by the hearth. Cassia told Knight to stay on the rug by the fire and headed for the dressing room.
Perita stood at the window with her back to the door, hunched over a basin on the dressing table. The girl could hide her face, but not the sound of her vomiting.
With a sinking feeling, Cassia considered the likely reason for a young woman in her handmaiden’s situation to be ill like this in the middle of the day. The slant of the sunlight suggested it was no longer morning, but every woman was different. The recent turbulence in Perita’s relationship with the guard began to make sense.
How to broach the subject? Perhaps Cassia should simply begin by asking if the girl was all right. A meaningless question, but a show of concern. “Perita—”
At the sound of her name, she jumped. But by the time she turned to face Cassia, her mouth was clean and her face composed. “Good morning—nay, afternoon, Lady.”
Perita busied herself with the window latch. Damp, cool air crept into the room, relieving the odor of sickness.
Cassia tried her question. “Are you all right?”
“Of course, Lady. I’ll go get you something to eat.” Perita devoted great effort to refolding a cloth.
Cassia stalled, trying to think of some way to approach the issue. When an eighth son had gotten Lady Hadrian’s youngest handmaiden with child, one conversation with Her Ladyship had been sufficient to get the man to the altar. For any woman in Perita’s predicament, her lady’s advocacy was the best hope she had.
Ha. Poor girl, to be cursed with such an impotent advocate as a bastard daughter. Cassia was utterly dependent on the king’s whims. Thus so was Perita.
Impotent? Cassia’s anger protested. Was she impotent, who had spoken before the Summit and smuggled medicine to the temple in the company of a Hesperine?
And taken that Hesperine as her lover.
“Perita, do you love him?”
The girl went still. She ducked her head, as if studying the towel. “I’m sure you needn’t concern yourself with such things, Lady.”
“Are you with child?”
Perita’s face disappeared into the cloth. A moment later she said clearly, “Of course not, Lady.”
“You’ve helped me, Perita. A great deal. I wish to help you in return.”
“I’m glad you find my service satisfactory.”
Cassia stood and waited. Perita dropped the towel into a basket of soiled linens.
“Confide in someone you trust,” Cassia urged her. “He can be made to treat you honorably.”
Perita gazed out the window as if something of great significance lay there for which she was responsible. Cassia gave her another moment. But Perita said nothing.
Cassia retreated to the hearth room, closing the door behind her. She went to stand at the other window and looked out on the same trees that had just now held Perita’s undivided attention. Cassia’s knuckles turned white gripping the windowsill.
A damp, snuffling nose pressed under one of her wrists. After a moment of that, Cassia had to detach one hand from the windowsill and transfer it to Knight’s ears. She pulled his head against her, giving him a good rub, and soon the sound of his tail thumping the floor broke the silence of the room.
“Why is it so hard, Knight?”
Thump. Thump.
“How fortunate you are that your loyalties are so straightforward. That trust is so easy and complete. If everyone were like you and me, things would be much easier, wouldn’t they?”
Thump.
“My handmaidens are never with me long enough for us to matter to one another.”
Snuffle.
“But then, I never try.”
Cassia frowned down at her hands. They wanted to take hold of the old shutters that fortified her window here in the king’s palace and break them off their hinges.
“It’s so hard. I am a stranger to this idea of trust.”
She wrapped her free arm about herself, thinking of how she welcomed Lio’s arms around her. How she had lain down beneath him without hesitation.
“No,” she amended. “I once was. But even now, no one has any reason to trust me.” She heard the shutters in the other room close with a bang. “Everything here seems built to thwart us.”
Across the Pavilion
You are so good to me.
Lio couldn’t stop thinking about what Cassia had said. He straightened in his chair, casting another glance around the Summit table. How much longer before negotiations commenced? Waiting gave Lio’s mind too much freedom to drift. To roam everywhere on Cassia’s body where he had been last night.
What a night.
Lio rubbed a hand over his mouth. Sunbind him, his fangs weren’t behaving. He kept his mouth shut, a challenge in itself with his canines in this state. He had to stop thinking about how many times she had climaxed. He definitely mustn’t think about what he had to look forward to again later tonight.
Lio studied the banners that hung around the Summit pavilion and made himself review which coat of arms belonged to which free lord. His thoughts refused to focus. It seemed last night had expended all his capacity for self-discipline, considerable though it was. Now he was hopeless.
He knew his veil shielded him, and he had time to collect himself behind the broader veil that Uncle Argyros maintained over the embassy to allow for private conference. But Lio still felt as if he waved a great banner over his own head announcing to all his fellow Hesperines just where he had been last night and what he had been doing.
Javed leaned closer. “Don’t pretend your fangs aren’t bothering you.”
Lio choked on a protest.
His Grace-cousin frowned. “I can see you trying to swallow your own teeth to keep them from scaring the humans. Will you not reconsider the thirst suppressant I offered you?”
Thirst. Well, at least Javed hadn’t said hunger. Lio’s secret was safe. For the moment. “Are we really going to continue this conversation in front of the entire Summit?”
“Grace-Father’s veil isn’t enough to make you feel at ease having such a discussion with your physician?”
“Sometimes you are too comfortable with bodily matters, Javed.”
“Lio, now is not the time to be stubborn.”
“I can see Kadi’s influence on you.” Lio smiled. With his lips closed. “I assure you a thirst suppressant is not the sort of assistance I need.”
“This is the very same treatment I give Graces to soothe the Craving when they must spend time apart. Mak and Lyros could vouch for how effective it is. They devastated my supply during their Ritual separation.”
“Only until they couldn’t stand the side effects anymore. Don’t remind me about those eight nights.”
If it were not the Queens themselves who decreed two Hesperines must spend eight nights apart to demonstrate they were truly Graced, Lio would question the wisdom of the custom
. The Craving was hard proof. He hadn’t been sure Mak and Lyros would live to see their avowal, at least not with their sanity intact.
Javed waved a hand. “The side effects aren’t nearly as bad as everyone says.”
“I did my service in the Healing Sanctuary,” Lio reminded him. He didn’t have to go on. Nothing Javed said could convince him the suppression of one’s thirst and hunger, not to mention the resulting…depletion…weren’t horrible side effects.
“It would offer you some relief,” Javed said in his most patient, tactful tone.
“I’d rather be miserable.”
“Some comprehensive relief,” Javed added.
“No.”
The healer sighed. “In that case, the only comfort I can offer you is a reminder. It will not always be like this. The Goddess knows and loves your Grace, although you have yet to.”
Lio found he didn’t wish to contemplate that time-honored Hesperine adage. He didn’t want to think about the Grace in his future or, in fact, anything to do with the future at all. The pleasure of the moment was too sweet.
Lio had already wasted so much time and effort carefully constructing a plan for eternity, which had all come to naught. It was a fine, rare feeling to want nothing more than the present.
He was his father’s son, after all. Apollon knew how to enjoy the moment and live fully, and he did everything with his whole heart. It was high time Lio followed his example.
He need not think of anyone except she who claimed his devotion in this season. Indeed, nothing short of his total attention was worthy of Cassia. But if he dwelt on precisely what attentions he would show her tonight, he wouldn’t get through the negotiations.
Lio watched figures approach from the palace, hoping for distraction. Another free lord arrived with a following of lesser nobles who had finagled their way behind the mage ward as his retinue. Among the sycophants was Lord Adrogan. One of the men who thought he could finagle Cassia into a temple wedding.
Lio lounged back in his chair and rubbed a hand over his mouth again. He wasn’t prone to such savage feelings, but gloating had never felt so good.
