by Elsa Jade
Part of her—the tough part that she’d showed the world, meaning Earth, when her career and marriage faltered—wanted to scoff at the notion. Love wasn’t a force like gravity or electromagnetism. And yet… She remembered when every new book she read felt like an opening door, and every dorm-room argument seemed fresh and brilliant and life-altering.
Maybe she didn’t need a new dream; she just had to remember the excited girl she’d been.
She gazed at him. “You were trapped the same way I was.”
He kneaded the base of her skull idly, as if he was taking comfort in the touch. “I didn’t ‘wake up’ until I found myself in that little garden, looking at the black hole with you beside me.”
“You were pretty out of it.” She tilted her head into his caress. “I thought you were a poet.”
He chuckled. “Warlords of my time were expected to recite tales of our own mighty exploits. I suppose I was overcome by the beauty of the singularity and the flowers.” His smile dropped away. “And you, my lady.”
Her pulse thudded hard at the way his voice lowered. “I’m not a lady yet,” she reminded him. “Not until the wedding is over.”
“They are bound in their hearts,” he said. “And you’ve been mine twice already.”
Oh no, she didn’t need that reminder. A tingle spread from his touch at her nape down her spine to pool softly in her core. “That was before I knew you were…” She gestured at the bribes arrayed around them. “A god.”
His dark eyes were somber. “You’ve found out terrible things about me. But none of it changes who I am.”
Desperation—and desire—made her heart beat faster. “I don’t really know you still. God, warlord, poet, alien, in the body of a felon. Which one is it?”
“Does it matter, compared to this?”
His position on the step above her gave him the high ground, but he descended slowly enough that she had plenty of time to evade him. If she’d chosen.
But she thought maybe she’d chosen from the moment she’d opened the door of her suite and saw him standing there.
Leaning her head back into the cradle of his big hand, she let his mouth land lightly on hers.
The rasping release of his breath over her lips hinted at his precarious grasp on his control even as his hand held her steady and his tongue traced a slow, sensuous path around hers. She wrapped her arm behind his neck—just in case his control broke. Or worse yet, he regained it. Because she was definitely making this choice.
His hair, still damp from the rain, was like cool waves under her restless fingers. But the storm inside her was heating up. With a huff of impatience, she shoved away the coat she’d taken from the shuttle so she could press herself into his wide chest with only her thin night robe between them.
He groaned hoarsely and pulled her up against him, knocking loose the silky headscarf she’d wrapped around her hair before going to bed in her lonely suite on that far-away space station. She didn’t even care that his hungry groping would make her hair wild; it was already too wet from the rain anyway.
And she was wetter and more wild.
The kiss went on and on, their hands roaming desperately, until they were sprawled on the steps in awkward abandon. He bumped his elbow and winced. She cracked her knee trying to wrap one leg around his hips.
With a guttural oath, he lifted her—oh, it was so wrong that she’d never get tired of that effortless strength and the way he handled her as if she was precious—and turned toward the throne. With a reckless sweep of his forearm, he knocked away the centuries of tokens and draped her across the wide seat with its splayed arms.
One of the data cubes rolled down the steps, and when it landed at the bottom, it started to play a song, something rhythmic and tribal, a reminder that before Thorkons got all noble and proper, they’d been a galaxy of fierce warriors. And she had one of them at her fingertips…
She kicked off the oversized boots she’d taken from the shuttle, and they hit the floor with echoed thumps. “Enough room for two,” she purred, holding her hand out to him.
Staring down at her with a hot, hungry gaze, he reached over his head and yanked his tunic over his head. Behind him, rain started to fall again, sifting through the cracks in the arched ceiling in silvery veils. But the dais was protected. And she was protected as he closed the short step of distance between them and knelt beside the throne, reaching out to tangle his fingers through hers.
Water droplets in his black hair and scattered across his bare shoulder glimmered in the multicolored lantern light like opals. “I don’t want it to be only the burn of the ghost-mead that brings us together,” he murmured.
“It’s not,” she assured him. It wasn’t mead, but need, and if there were ghosts of their pasts lurking… Well, let them burn too.
She drew him inexorably toward her, and he surrendered, pulling himself up to prop his hip on the edge of the seat beside her. He leaned down for another endless kiss, and she murmured in pleasure as she lounged back, caught between the wide arms of the throne and his brawny embrace.
The kisses made her feel like a goddess, worshipped and adored…
Then his lips dropped lower and everything turned to carnal ecstasy.
Her night robe had been shielded from the rain, but as he unfastened the front seal, laying her bare, the damp heat of his mouth teasing across her skin made her wet inside. She moaned and arched up, as if she needed to reach the veils of rain to calm the fire in her veins. But Tynan was there first, stoking the flames higher.
“I love the sounds you make,” he murmured against her throat where her pulse pounded. “Sweet as a prayer.”
“You heathen,” she whispered. “But I’ll give you my blessing anyway. Kiss me. Touch me. Make me come…”
He licked a tight circle around her breast and drew the peaked nipple between his teeth. She gasped and clutched at his shoulders. When she closed her eyes to concentrate on the sensations rippling through her, the pretty opalescent lights of the lanterns turned to lush, dark pulses of rushing blood and desire hidden behind her trembling lashes.
But he wouldn’t let it stay hidden. His long fingers delved between her legs, finding the slick pool of need and spreading the welcoming wetness over her cleft. She moaned and twisted on his sensually torturing hand while he switched his attention to her other breast, licking and sucking until her nipple was an ignition button to her whole body throbbing with demand.
She was so close…and he went lower yet.
His tongue against her clit drove the throbbing into a tympani drumbeat, and she cried out at the intensity of the sensation. She braced her heels against the hard edge of the throne to drive her hips up into his mouth. He hummed low in his throat, and the vibrations tingled through her until she was almost sobbing.
When he finally stood to shed his trousers, she dragged her lashes apart to stare at him greedily. He was so big, everywhere, and he was hers in this moment. The lanterns highlighted the sheen of his skin, but their gleam was swallowed by the hungry blackness of his eyes.
For a heartbeat, her breath stoppered in her throat. A warning from deep in her bones told her he was a danger to her. And not because he was an alien god given the flesh of a madman. No, the peril went deeper than skin, deeper than bone. It went to her core.
It went to her heart…
But then he was nudging up between her knees, his lean hips widening the spread of her legs, and she brought him closer with her ankles locked behind his thighs. Because she wanted more than she feared. It had been so long since she felt this way, that reaching for what she wanted, with excitement and a glad heart, would be its own reward.
He would be her reward.
Chapter 11
The ruins around him meant nothing, not when his hands, his gaze, his mouth were full of Lishelle. Tynan lifted her and spun around to settle his backside on the seat, letting her straddle his lap.
The last time he’d ruled from this throne…
&nbs
p; Didn’t matter, because she clamped her knees around his hips and impaled herself.
He threw his head back, clonking his head against the carved stone and metal, as her wet heat engulfed his swollen flesh. His hips strained upward, lifting her and driving deeper into the plush inner curves of her thighs. He groaned at the sleek, powerful pleasure of her muscles clenching around him in a rhythmic caress that matched their shared gasps, their echoing heartbeats.
By all the gods of Thorkon—of which he was just one—she was splendid. Her dusky-dark skin glistened in the captured solar power of the lanterns, the different colors flirting on the taut angles of her cheekbones, tracing the gentle mound of her belly and the hollow of her navel, lost in the shadows under the swells of her breasts. She leaned back, trusting his hands at the small of her back, her head tilted to one side and her eyes half closed in bliss. Her hair, which had been hidden earlier in the scarf, exploded around her face in tight coils, holding their own joyful energy. She rode him gently at first, then urgently, and the beat of their hearts and their bodies kept pace.
Let the rest of the ruins fall around him, he had eyes and hands and lips for nothing but her.
When she lunged forward to clamp her fingers on his shoulders, digging through muscle toward bone, he gazed up at her wide, dark eyes staring down at him as if she would swallow his soul like her slick channel took the entirety of his straining erection, all the way down to his groin so she was grinding against him. He thrust up into her with all his might, finding the balance of friction and pressure that made her keen with pleasure. Her whole body began to tremble with the oncoming rush of her orgasm, and he held her up with his hands full of her heaving breasts, the thickened nipples jutting between his knuckles. He squeezed—with his fingers, with his thighs pushing higher—until she screamed out hoarsely and shuddered, her inner muscles spasming.
Her breaths still seething, he laid her down on the throne and took her with the ferocity of a warlord, the might of a god, the passion of a man who had found—
The paroxysm of his release erased all conscious thought and froze him like a ruin caught in time in the paradise of her body.
For that suspended moment, he saw stars.
And then he was collapsing down on her soft form, one knee wedged into the arm of the throne, the other half braced against the carved base. His muscles trembled at the strain, but he decided he’d never move…
“Urf,” she squeaked.
With grand reluctance, he levered himself off her. He patted one hand blindly around the dais behind him, found by touch the embroidered shawl, and pulled it around them both as they slumped across the throne.
After a long, slow exhale, she turned her head where she’d made a pillow of his shoulder. “Is this why your throne is so big?”
“It is this big because I was a mighty warlord.” He snuggled her closer, burying his nose in the puff of her curls. “I never knew it was big enough for two.”
“Aww, should I feel special that I broke it in with you?”
An edge to her question sent up a warning flare in his mind, but his vigilance was blunted by repletion. “It’s the only thing that isn’t broken.”
She was silent for a moment, then petted her hand down his bare chest. “It must be hard to see your home wrecked and forgotten.”
“This was always a rough land, one of the reasons I chose it for my stronghold. But I’m surprised in all the centuries that have passed, no one else wanted it.”
“I know the dukes before Raz weren’t always as fiscally responsible as one might hope for ones overlords. He’s pledged to do more to develop opportunities for his people.”
Tynan grimaced. “I suppose I am one of those dependents now. Assuming I can convince him I’m not Blackworm.”
As soon as he said the name, he regretted bringing up that ugly past. Except it wasn’t really the past, was it? Not when he’d inherited the face and the enemies of a criminal.
Lishelle’s idle caresses didn’t change, but he thought he sensed a stiffening in her spine, as if she were bracing herself.
“There must be something here in the castle that only the warlord—only you would know.” She rolled her head to look up at him, the springiness of her hair tickling the underside of his jaw. “Do you have a secret treasure or something?”
He quirked his lips. “Ah, now I know why you have lured me here.”
Her petting turned into a light pinch at his ribs. “Abducted,” she reminded him. “You stole me. Not the other way around.”
She had taken something from him, though—
But she was still talking. “It doesn’t have to be worth anything in today’s galactic credits, but if you can show Raz that you are Tynan, I know he’d keep the bounty hunter away from you.”
“Is that a note of worry in your voice?” he teased.
Her dark eyes narrowed, unamused. “Blackworm escaped from prison. And he owes mercenaries money. That’s not going to be easy to get out from under by yourself.”
He shrugged one shoulder, not the one serving as her pillow. “I was by myself before.”
“And how’d that work out for you?”
He’d been lonely, full of himself, and he’d been killed.
He thought for a moment. “These trinkets and offerings—charming though they are—aren’t going to prove anything.”
She huffed out a breath that whispered across his throat. “Are you sure you don’t have any godly powers besides blessings?”
He kissed her temple. “My loving was not enough for you?”
A grumble under her breath vibrated against him. “You want to try that on Raz and Nor?”
He gulped back a laugh. “I share blessings with all beloveds, but…I concede the point. We’ll explore tomorrow in the light and see what remains.” He traced his fingertips down her spine to the dip of her waist and rested his palm on the full curve of her hips. He didn’t want to let her go, ever, but reluctantly, he said, “We’d probably be more comfortable”—he wouldn’t mention more secure—“back in the shuttle.”
With another grumble-breath, she pushed herself up onto one elbow, looking around. “It’s cold and dark and wet out there. We have food and drink here, so let’s just stay. Although I wouldn’t mind a more defensible bedroom.”
She was splendid and sensible.
They pulled on their various clothing pieces and gathered some comforts from the offerings—that had been left to the God of Beloveds, she explained, so it was all right that he was using them—before he led her to a smaller room behind the dais.
The spy room was hidden behind a false door that took both their muscle to force open after centuries of disuse. As the portal cracked open, a whiff of ancient air swirled out, still faintly scented of the sweet oils and incensed smoke that had once perfumed his hall. Or maybe that was his imagination. The longing that swept through him was more bitter than sweet, and suddenly he felt the weight of those centuries.
While he fastened a few of the solar lanterns to the frame of the doorway, Lishelle poked around the room, mostly empty except for the benches along the spying wall and the sidetable stock with decanters, some long evaporated, some still sealed. He’d never cared much for spying so he’d kept the room for, ah, entertaining.
Now, with the memories of those hundred angry maidens and the smell of sex clinging to him, he just wanted to rest.
He triggered one of the devices he’d brought from the wealth of gifts on the dais, and a lightweight temporary sleeping pad unfolded and began to rapidly inflate.
Lishelle arched one eyebrow. “We coulda had sex on a bed?”
“Somebody was obviously hoping the God of Beloveds would grant him luck with his lady.” He flashed her a grin. “But wasn’t being on the throne more subversive?”
She lifted her chin to an imperious angle. “I didn’t know we were being subversive. I thought we were just going for extra bruises.”
Instantly contrite, he gathered her into hi
s arms. “Show me where you hurt. One of the offerings left behind is a bottle of massage oil.”
Which was how they ended up christening the unused mattress before they fell into an exhausted tangle under the embroidered shawl. They snuggled together, tentatively fitting curve to hollow like pieces of an unfamiliar puzzle.
“Is it strange being home?” She was resting on his other shoulder this time, and he thought it felt even more right. “I’ve only been gone from my home for three years, and I think it would be very odd to return now.” She glanced up at him. “To be gone for a few thousand years…”
He held her a little tighter, partly so that she wasn’t looking at him so closely and partly to take comfort in her proximity. “It’s harder with every passing day,” he admitted. “At first I didn’t really remember, and with each day that I do remember…” He nestled his face in the thicket of her hair, wilder now than when she’d first unveiled it, as if he could hide from what he needed to say. “Everything I remember makes me think the goddesses were right to stop me.”
She stiffened, pulling a little away from him. “To slay you?” Her tone was incredulous. “Okay, you were a manwhore, and you broke some hearts—about a hundred of them, from what I hear—but ripping out your heart seems a little extreme.”
He closed his eyes, wondering which lurid version of his legend she’d read. Maybe all of them; Lady Lishelle excelled at her studies. “Murder might’ve been extreme,” he conceded. “But my days were…less nuanced than these times.”
She gusted a sigh across his chest. “We always think the past was simpler.” She traced some idle looping shapes over his belly. “When I was a kid, my home was…chaotic, so everyone thought it would be simpler if I went and lived with my aunties. And it was simpler. I told myself I’d never get caught up in that sort of chaos again. If I studied hard and excelled, I’d break free of the path everyone believed I was doomed to follow.” She flattened her palm on his chest, above his heart, her fingers pressing in as if she was holding herself fast. “But in the end it wasn’t as simple as that. I did everything I thought I was supposed to—better than—but when it all went bad, I realized I’d ended up right where I was most afraid: with nothing and no one. And then Blackworm took me, it seemed like the rotten cherry on the shit sundae.”
