Our bodies pressed flush against one another, and soon Mordon alternated kisses between my lips and down my chin. When I tilted my head back, he left a trail of light kisses down my throat before reclaiming my mouth again. His hands left my face, slid down my sides, and rested on the small of my back. I closed my eyes and leaned back, enjoying his lips and tongue. I gasped when he used his teeth, a startling burst of heat which made me sink my nails into his skin and growl.
“I'm going to continue until you say no,” Mordon whispered, his voice breathy.
I met eyes dark and desirous, and nodded. I tipped my head to the side and he kissed where my jaw met my neck. Soon I sighed into the kisses, and his hand slid up my back, finding the open spot in my dress over my shoulder blades. Heat flared from the contact. I nipped his lips. He traced circles over my bare back and shoulders, kissing me harder.
“Tease,” I accused.
“I could do this all night.”
“I want more.” The admission made me blush down to my throat.
Mordon chuckled, his warm and throaty laugh vibrating through his chest and adding a new sensation across my skin. “I want you to always want more.”
One hand drifted to my clavicle, a touch lower than his kisses had gone, and I arched into his finger with a shudder. His neck bent and he kissed my jawline, slipping his other hand from my shoulders down to mid-spine. My nails again dug into his shoulders.
The hand on my clavicle moved downward. My breath caught as he passed over the curve of my breast and came to a rest just underneath. I gasped with combined relief and thrill and frustration, and I kissed him roughly. Then he backed down lower, to my belly. There it stayed while he kissed away my irritation. I relaxed into our new position, grudgingly satisfied.
Bending down, he kissed my collar bone and at the same time reached for the hem of my dress about my knees. The tips of his nails swept up my thigh quickly, making me gasp, then he skimmed over my belly and cupped a breast.
I must have made a noise, because he backed down, holding me just underneath, careful not to press on the injured rib. We kissed longer, rougher, harder. My fingers entangled in his red hair and scraped across his scalp. I rocked my body against his, trying to encourage him to touch me again. One by one, trick after trick came to mind and were employed, to positive growls and increasingly harder kisses on my lips and neck, but nothing would make him move. Irritated at last beyond patience, I grabbed his hand and placed it over my breast again, reveling in the feel of it until he nudged upwards. I stopped him.
“Let me,” Mordon said, breathing hard. I released him.
His hand rocked gently, circling my breast. I pressed into the sensation, aching for more. His fingers were gentle, sure, and knowing. They didn't grope, just luxuriated across my undershirt. I heaved with shaking breaths in between our kisses, and managed to say, “Please.”
He fisted a handful of hair and slid his hand upwards. I groaned with the loss, then realized he was skimming a strap of my slip off my shoulder, and the groan transformed into anticipation. He kept his hand pressed firm to my flesh as he descended again, skin to skin, to hold my breast, nipple hard, in his bare palm. I gasped for breath, not able to fill my lungs with the pain in my ribs, a pain which I deliberately ignored but that he noticed.
“Don't go,” I said.
“I won't.”
His thumb rubbed across the top, his fingers rolled slow circles around the side. His kisses changed, becoming slow and deep and loving. The kisses across my skin became gossamer and soft, and his hands gradually stopped moving. Then, when my heart had calmed to a steady thrum, he pulled both hands to cup my face, and he kissed me chastely.
Our lips parted. He rested his head on my forehead again and his hands clasped mine. We breathed like that for a while. It was clear he was done, but I didn't know if I wanted it to stop yet. One side of my body felt warm and enlivened, the other felt ignored.
At last, I managed to say, “I never told you no.”
“I know.” He kissed my forehead and squeezed my hands. “But I did.”
I nodded, content to leave things as they were, yet wondering what could have happened. I watched him with a different sort of appreciation from before, with an attentiveness that snared all of my senses and turned them acute. It hadn't been much, that touch, but it had changed everything.
Mordon took a step away. I tightened my grip.
“Stay with me.”
Mordon chuckled. “Your father would have my hide.”
“He'd have your hide for what you just did.” The smile left my face. “Stay, please?”
Mordon hesitated.
I shifted and stared at our joined hands. “I don't want to feel used.”
Mordon wrapped me up in his arms. He kissed the top of my head. “I don't want that, either. Come, lay down with me.”
My last thoughts were of the way he fussed over putting pillows around me, so caring and particular, and how warm his body was curled around my back. How perfect it was, and how much trouble I'd be in when Father inevitably found out about tonight.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“You're getting too bold, Kragdomen,” were the first words I heard the next morning. I stirred but couldn't awaken, stuck half-way between dreams and reality, the heavy drag of a potion resting my body by force. The best I could do was stay conscience and snore. I rolled, viewing the room through thick lashes, wishing I'd made up a different sort of potion.
Mordon stirred the brew with a long spoon and fingers flashing with rings. “Maybe so, but I would rather comfort my mate than obey you.”
From the looks of things, Mordon was getting the hang of the magic cupboard and making the colony's brew, heating it up in a pot over a flame contained within a dish beneath. Father leaned against the counter, arms crossed, ankles crossed, watching him.
Father grunted. “I can squash you, whelp.”
“Undoubtedly. You will be able to for quite a long time, too,” Mordon said. “But I'm not so sure you would have the same results against your daughter, and it's her who you'll have to answer to in the end.”
“She's too young for you.”
“I've had that thought as well, but in a few years, the age difference won't matter. It isn't that big of a gap.”
“Then you should wait those years out.”
The stirring of the spoon left off with a tap. “How much human does she have in her blood?”
“Why?”
“Her mother isn't fully fey, but she ages at their rate. You aren't full drake, either. The two of you will have similar life spans. But what of Fera? She possesses traits of both races, but to look at her, you see a human. How long is she going to live?”
Father took a while before answering. “I don't know. Leazar seems to be following Maggie's lifespan, but Fera…”
I heard the shivering of wind through tree leaves, then that went still and quiet.
“It is painful to think of outliving her,” Mordon said.
“Imagine what it is to be in my place. No parent should survive their children.”
“And that is why I won't wait for those few years to pass. They may be too great a portion of what I have with her.”
The counter creaked as Father slumped against it. “I see my daughter picked a man who thinks into the future.”
“Would you expect differently from her?”
Father grunted again. “Actually, yes.”
“Fera mentioned once that she hadn't made the wisest choices of males in her past.”
“Did she? She's learned, then.”
“They were that good?” Mordon tapped the spoon against the counter. “I assume that any actual mistreatment would have bad outcomes for the males involved, but what was it which made her past choices poor?”
“Nothing easy to pinpoint. It was subtle. And she knew we didn't approve, so she hid it. When she hides something, it's more the lack of it that you notice.” Father took down a cup for himself. “
I think she looked for security in all the wrong places.”
“Maybe uprooting her from her childhood home had an influence?”
Father considered it. “Maybe. She had a hard time making friends again after that. And she didn't leave anything to chance.”
“She takes chances all around me. Has ever since I've known her.”
“Which has been how long?”
“It was between four and five weeks when we answered her summons.”
“You've known her for a month and claimed her as a mate? You are an idiot.”
“I don't think so. She's relentless, resourceful, a chronic liar, a random prankster, an extraordinarily fast learner, she snores and kicks the covers off, and I can't understand how her mind skips from topic to topic, sometimes mid-conversation. Everyone who knows her is fiercely devoted to her well-being, even those who do not usually bestow their favors. I think she's a solid investment of my energy and time.” Mordon sipped his brew. “In a way, her age and inexperience is a boon. The colony can imprint on her, and she'll adapt to their ways. Her youthful behavior has several of the elders trying to adopt her. Already. I can't believe how she can blend into the colony, into Merlyn's, and then into the Wildwoods as seamlessly as she does. Is it her mixed blood, or is it just her?”
“Leazar is similar. Perhaps it's the blood.”
“Yes, he's the peacekeeper. I've seen him, never met him. He seems less stable, if that's the right word. More subject to his whims.”
“That sounds accurate.” Father poured himself more of the brew. “Good recipe your family has.” He shuffled to his feet. “The two of them were almost twins. Behaved identically. But once she had the curse, she changed. It was as though we'd been given a different child in the middle of the night. Where she was once loud and rambunctious, she became quiet and nervous. She used to be the first to stick her hands in something, then she was the one who hung back and stayed in the middle of the pack. She watched everything so carefully. She became an observer and a reluctant participant. We used to uselessly warn her about acting before thinking, then she started to over think even simple things. Used to try new things all the time, then she became so restrained that she measured out how much water and sugar went into her oatmeal. If someone put the wrong amount in, she wouldn't eat until it was balanced out.”
“That must have been difficult to endure.”
“It was the better part of two years before we accepted that she hadn't been switched out for another child or bespelled.”
They didn't say anything for a minute, and nothing filled the void in the conversation.
Father continued, “It is difficult for us to have fought for so long to bring our little girl back, and then you turn up and she's better.”
“I don't know how much of it is my influence. She's back with her old coven and reunited with her magic and the world she adored. But don't think she's the same as you remember. Too much has happened. She's such an odd combination of bitter and innocent.”
“Not half so innocent as she should be.”
“She's more so than she pretends.”
“Is that so? How do you know?”
“I don't. Call it intuition.”
Father's voice was strained. “Then you and her…”
“The details are between her and me. But I told you, she's worth an investment of my time and energy. I'm not so wet behind the ears that I can't appreciate a long chase.”
“You mean you're conditioning her.”
“I want her to communicate with me, openly and without fear. To give her a safe environment. If you want to call it conditioning, then so be it.”
“How do I know you aren't teaching her to obey you?”
“Because I need a second opinion and a fresh view on a stale problem. I need her to trust me with her 'hare-brained schemes', as she calls them.”
“She didn't trust any of us with her last one.”
“I don't think that's the case. We left her behind, if you remember, and the Wildwoods distorts time. It saw her and us as two different units and used those units as it wished. She was on her own to act. By not trusting in her abilities, we inadvertently created a situation detrimental to all of us.”
Father grunted.
Mordon said, “I could train her to blindly follow my orders, it's true. I know the way to do it, to make a person believe in my leadership and hop to do my bidding. A bit of that came out after the battle. But that's not what I want from her, and I think she would form her own opinions and do as she wished, anyway, the way she does around you.”
Father bristled. “What are you accusing me of?”
“Nothing more than being a parent.”
“You don't approve of my methods.”
Mordon shrugged. “It isn't for me to say, but I would raise my children differently than you raised yours. That is all.”
“You're asking for a squashing.”
“It wouldn't make a difference in my behavior, but the exertion sounds appealing.”
Father laughed. “Put that brew away, Meadows. I'll send for Maggie to watch Fera while we visit the training clearing. Maybe you'll learn a few tricks from this old dog.”
“I would be honored,” Mordon said. He put down a cup near me, drew the blanket up to my chin, and left the hut.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Beneath my feet, the trail felt unusually hard and unforgiving. I leaned against the door to my hut, taking a shallow gasp. My ribs had been bound and were healing, the pain had subsided to a hazy, distant awareness thanks to the potions I'd been cooking with Mother's help. There was no reason I should stay any longer in seclusion, except to avoid Rossalinda's family. From what I overheard, my own parents didn't know what to do about the situation. No one seemed to know.
I looked around at the humid steam of sunlight striking wet ground, and tucked a newly-formed curl behind my ear. Mordon's hair was curling this morning, too, I'd noticed. All the humidity in the forest, it was a new experience for me.
There had been talk of a private funeral service to be held tonight under the triangle of the moon, Jupiter, and Venus. Feys didn't seem to hold public funerals, they were private affairs, but my parents were talking about what gift they could give in my name, what gift would be considered appropriate. They'd been stuck.
After a little bit of scrounging around in the low-lying foliage of the nearby trees, I found a sturdy branch to use as a walking stick. Thorn-lined rose bushes snagged my clothes while I made my way down the path. A flurry of wings exploded near me, I jumped, a pheasant calling as it burst into the open. It flew off, all brown and red feathers gliding through the trees, clucking as it went. I laughed and shook my head. Too skittish after all my excitement. Aunt Linnia would explain the fey traditions and help me decide what best to do. If the Wildwoods allowed me to get there soon.
Though I fervently wished to encounter no one on my trek to Auntie's house, the Wildwoods obeyed someone else's wishes.
The thin, short man who headed for me with single-minded determination was obviously one of Rossalinda's family members. He had brown hair and a terrible look on his face. That was all I had time to think before he stopped in front of me and spat on the ground in front of me.
“Is there something you want to say to me?” I asked.
“A hundred, but I won't speak them because of your father. I owe him much.”
“He is a good man. And the village won't be the same without Rossalinda. I am sorry for her death.” Was this the right thing to say? I didn't know, but it was the truth.
The young man sucked in a breath.
We stood there, facing each other in silence, then he said, “Your words can't bring her back.”
“They cannot. I truly am sorry.”
“Sorry does nothing for us. Do you expect me to accept your apology and absolve you of your part in this?”
“I did not kill her. There is nothing for you to absolve me of.”
He closed a fist. �
��You deny your part, then?”
I considered what I would say. “Rossalinda was noble and wise. I am certain that she did what she knew would save more lives than just mine. Would you ruin her good deeds by acting counter to her wishes and counter to the cause she died for?”
Swift Magic (The Swift Codex Book 2) Page 18
