The Pages of the Mind

by Jeffe Kennedy

  He groaned as I licked at him, pressing my head to him with his hand. Loving the sound, and that I could evoke it from him, I bit, taking the satin skin and the bulge of muscle between my teeth. Growling louder, he returned the favor, sinking his white teeth into the juncture at my neck and shoulder. I cried out, releasing him and arching against the exquisite sensation. Taking advantage of the opportunity, his hands roved over me, ripping away the last of my tattered gown. The pantalets went with a snap that snagged my attention. Automatically, I moved to cover myself, but Nakoa brushed my hands away with gentle urging.

  “Let me see you,” he murmured. “I need to see.” See to understand.

  Sitting up and turning me on my back, he trailed light fingers over the length of my body, tracing the curves and hollows. Expression intent, he examined every inch of me, lifting my wrists and stretching my arms above my head to drape across the bed. I felt full of languid grace, the fire boiling in my veins but coaxed into channels with every brush of his hand. I lost my shyness in the utter sensuality of it, splayed naked before him in the rain-filtered light.

  “I like these.” He caressed the constellation of freckles below my collarbones, where the sun found me. “Where they are and where they are not.”

  True to that, he paid equal attention to my freckled extremities as to the pale inner curve of my elbow, the hollow under my arm, the curve of my breast, the rounded slope of my belly, and the curling hair over my mound. He stroked me without opening my thighs, savoring the texture with a smile of curiosity. Then continued on his journey, learning the round of my thighs, the narrowing of my ankles, taking a moment to study the abused soles of my feet.

  “Painful?” he asked, brushing the side of my foot, and I shook my head, mute with wonder over being touched—even worshipped—like this. Maybe I’d feel it later, but for now the only thing that mattered was this sweet, transporting seduction. With a sly smile, he replaced his fingers with his mouth, kissing the top of my foot, then the hollow by my ankle bone.

  In this way he worked his way back up my body, caressing first with light fingers, then molding with full hands and following with his mouth. Again, he did not part my thighs, though he kissed the hair on my mound, moving on to trace the line of my hip bone with his tongue. I shifted restlessly, the urge to have him touch me more intimately, to be inside me, rising with fierce-edged intensity. He prevented me, though, sitting over me so his knees pinned my thighs together, sliding slickly now.

  “Nakoa.” I breathed his name, a plea in it, writhing as much as I could and grasping at his knees. With a slow shake of his head he took my wrists and moved them back over my head, holding them there in one hand as he resumed his slow perusal of my body. Before long, every part he kissed felt as alive and sensitive as every other. The underside of my breast as much as the taut nipple above it. The pulse beat in my throat, the hollow under my arm, the inside of my wrist. He finished kissing each finger, drawing them in one by one to torment with his teeth and tongue, and I held my breath, hoping that this would complete his journey. Indeed, he returned to my mouth, lavishing me with a deep kiss that cleaved me open.

  I had no secret shadows anymore, it seemed. All of me, every quiver, breath, moan, and shaking sigh, spoke of things without words. He pulled them in, took me in.

  Then turned me over and started anew.

  He laughed, a soft chuckle at my cry of frustration, especially when I lost it in a sighing groan at the press of his mouth to the small of my back. Working his way up my spine with the same slow technique that unraveled me past imagining, he finally reached the back of my neck, moving my hair aside to kiss and nip at the tendons there.

  It drove me wild. Enough so that he laid his weight on me, pressing my palms flat to the bed as he ravished my neck and my senses. In that position his cock thrust hard against the back of my thigh, hot through his thin garment. Not above payback, I wriggled against it, hoping also to urge him on. With a sharper bite of reproof, he moved his hips away, then took himself back down my body, leaving me to curl my fingers in the sheets and moan helplessly as he found each new secret place that undid me that much more.

  The dimple of my buttocks.

  The unscathed arch of my foot.

  The thrice-damned backs of my knees.

  At some point I gave up trying to urge him on. I might as well schedule the rain. He kept at me until I melted utterly, completely pliant to the least caress. When he stretched over my back again, hands over mine, mouth on my sensitive nape, his weight somehow gloriously satisfying, it took me a moment to realize he’d shed his kylte and lay naked against me.

  I moaned and he hummed, matching my tone and following the undulation of my body. Sliding his hands beneath me, he gathered my breasts in one hand and slid the other into the desperate heat between my thighs.

  I’d been on the edge of climax for so long, had become this single throbbing organ of sexuality, that it almost didn’t matter—his touch there no more devastating than any other. But he slipped a finger inside my slick channel and pressed his hand tightly against the rest of my sex, rocking there. Then he pinched my nipple and bit the juncture of my neck and shoulder. Hard.

  I came apart in glory. Like the dragon exploding from the volcano, soaring to numinous heights, anchored by Nakoa’s body, wrapped around me in relentless warmth.

  Before I regained myself, another surge pushed me up, his hand giving me no surcease, two fingers inside me now, driving the ache to be filled as he murmured florid words in my ear that meant nothing to me, but still burned with unquenched fire. I buried my face in the sheets, gripping as if to hold myself to the earth, and this time he let me spread my legs, meeting at least that one urge. Shattering again, this time I cried out his name, begging him for more, for anything.

  Still in the throes of the climax, I felt him turn me over, but his face so close to mine took me by surprise. As did the brief glimpse of his large cock as he positioned himself between my thighs. Goddesses, would it—

  I lost the apprehension in the drowning kiss he lavished on me, desire washing away whatever I’d been thinking. Our hearts pounded together, echoed by that third great heart. Together. This was Nakoa, and I clung to him, digging my nails into his muscled shoulders, opening myself to him, welcoming the hard intrusion against my opening. He stretched me wider and I tensed, but he spread a hand against the small of my back, lifting me so the angle of my hips changed and he thrust inside me.

  All at once.

  Flashing pain. Astounding ecstasy.

  Filling me as I’d never been, skin to skin. As if I’d carried a hollow space that could be completed only in this way. A wracking shudder took me, my breath rattling in panting mews. No, the island rocked, the bed swaying as if we lay in one of the Hákyrling ’s rope hammocks.

  Nakoa levered himself up, seeming not to notice, face set in lines of ferocious determination. He withdrew slightly, then pumped in again, sending ripples of fire through me, forcing a cry of strangled pleasure from my mouth.

  A cry echoed by the nearby trumpet of the dragon.

  Slowly, picking up pace, Nakoa thrust in and out, bracing himself on one arm and holding my hips with the other. Each stroke inside me sent ripples from my center outward. Circles of brightening light that radiated to my toes, fingertips, even the tips of my hair. I held on to his shoulders, receiving him over and over. If the volcano erupted, if the island broke apart beneath us, none of it mattered.

  Only this.

  His body tightened, face going blood dark. He threw back his head and roared to the sky as he erupted inside me, the near violent thrusts of his body lifting me from the bed. I cried out with him, not with a climax, though it seemed I’d never quite stopped, but with the excruciatingly intense sense of connection. For a moment I saw myself through his eyes, damp and flushed, my eyes unnaturally bright, like amber jewels. And I saw the sky, the sea, the scatter of emerald islands amid the sapphire waters.

  Blood surged through my he
art, air pumping into my lungs with each massive stroke of my wings.

  I flew. I flew so high the blue sky darkened to black and Danu’s stars glittered in unforgiving icy points. Moranu’s moon and Glorianna’s sun danced a waltz around our world of ocean and island. I flew under. I had no air to breathe.

  Then I plummeted back to earth.

  22

  I gasped for air.

  With a murmur of apology, the hot weight crushing me moved. Nakoa turned onto his side, keeping an arm around me, pulling me close as he leaned his forehead against mine and withdrew from my body. Bereft of his intrusion, my woman’s passage closed with an aching sting. I hissed at it and Nakoa drew the sound from my mouth with a soft, searching kiss.

  “Sorry?” he asked.

  “No sorry,” I managed. I sounded ragged, so I smiled and kissed him, edging closer, pleased when he draped a heavy thigh over my hip. We lay there, breaths evening out, hearts slowing but still thumping in synced rhythm. The island did not rock or sway, but we were sticky, the bedsheets damp and tangled. Unabated, the rain poured outside the windows, the room fading to gray with no lamps or torches lit.

  Now what?

  “Did it . . . the dragon?”

  Nakoa leaned up on his elbow, propping his head on one fist. “She is pleased.” He brushed a finger over my heart, following the curve of my left breast. “Do you not feel her?”

  I did. Or I felt something. Nothing that made sense to my mind. The repletion of my body, however, communicated a deep sense of balance and rightness. Whatever the future might bring, I would carry something of the ultimate peace of this moment with me. What lay between me and Nakoa might not be meant to last. He had duties to his throne and people, me to my queen and people. I would never be the woman to throw away my responsibilities for pleasure, no matter how keen, regardless of how this man dressed it up as a fateful star-crossed connection.

  His life and throne were secured. Whatever brought me to this moment, naked, sweat soaked, body throbbing from a literally earthshaking sexual encounter, I was glad of it. No wonder Jepp thrived on sex so, if it was all like this.

  Though I doubted it was. This had been extraordinary. Even if it couldn’t possibly last. I couldn’t stay here, trapped on these islands, so far from everyone and everything I’d ever known, turning my back on the promises I’d made and meant with all my being. And, obviously, Nakoa could never leave. The day would come when I’d have to go and we’d part, probably with acrimony. Hopefully without violence. He wouldn’t forgive or understand, knowing him, but I’d have this memory to sustain me regardless.

  Nakoa touched my bottom lip, tugging it down. “Why do you have sorrow?”

  “I’m not. I’m happy.” My stomach growled and I clapped a hand to it, grateful for an excuse to turn away from his too discerning gaze. “And hungry. And sticky. Safe to call servants—food, a bath?”

  He cocked his head, as if listening for something. “Yes, mlai, but I shall do so.”

  “Fine by me.” I waited for him to get up, then straightened the sheets so I could crawl under one. He did not bother to dress again, striding naked to the doors. I’d seen drawings of nude men, artistic sketches that lovingly detailed the masculine lines of a muscled back and flexing buttocks. Seeing it in the flesh . . . well, naturally, it stirred me in a different way. But I’d also not expected a man to be beautiful. Sinuous and simmering with vitality.

  I’d noticed before that Nakoa’s tattoos extended over his back as well, but had not had occasion to observe that they tapered into a scaled tail that wrapped around his hip and ended in a bladed point over the crest of his right buttock. Dragon king.

  He spoke to someone through the opening of the doors, waited a moment, then took something and shut the doors again. When he turned to me, I caught my breath at the sight of him. I’d seen his chest plenty of times, but not the way his abdominal muscles narrowed, like an arrow pointing to his cock, hanging heavy from a nest of lightning-streaked black hair. Difficult to believe that had been inside me, though the growing ache there gave testament to it.

  Yet still, I dampened for him, my body apparently lacking all mindfulness.

  His eyes glittered black with intent as he crossed to me, a fresh garland in his hands, to replace the one whose tattered remnants scattered over the bed. “Mlai,” he said, holding it out, the barest hint of a question in it. Holding the sheet over my naked breasts, I sat up and let him drape it over my head, moved by the ritual. He held my gaze, male satisfaction in his eyes, but also a level of affection I hadn’t expected. My heart throbbed as raw and tender as the place between my legs, as if he’d had me there also.

  Which, I supposed, in a way he had, penetrating to the core of me. Ripping me asunder.

  He handed me something, which I took automatically, then studied with some bemusement. The dragon torque. Fashioned of precious metals—gold, copper, and silver—forming exquisitely detailed overlapping scales. The dragon’s eyes inset rubies that matched my own, that is, Salena’s ruby. Nakoa watched me, waiting, and I looked for the hinge. Finding the catch, I opened it, and Nakoa, with a twitch of a smile, bowed his head. I still had to kneel up and hold the spring open with both hands, so the sheet fell away. Fitting it around his thick neck, I triggered the catch so it would lock into place.

  Before I could withdraw, however, Nakoa wrapped his hands around my wrists, holding me there, the question in his eyes.

  “Mlai,” I whispered, as if saying it without force wouldn’t bind me to him too strongly. As if I hadn’t already lost that particular battle. He read something of that in my face, a line forming between his brows, but he nodded and let me go.

  Then ducked his head to drop kisses on the upper curve of each breast. Taking hold of my hips, he lifted me and bent lower, placing a lingering, reverent kiss over my womb. Instead of the panicked rage, this time a deep sense of peace filled me, like an underground river filling in the cracks of my ragged soul.

  I threaded my fingers through his hair, taking a moment to assess. I’d become a character in a story: bedded by a king, somehow connected to a dragon, buffeted by magic or fate—the same thing?—whatever had impossibly brought me here.

  Or I was an imposter, dragged into a tale meant for a princess or sorceress. You are no queen. Even Kral knew that much. Perhaps I’d wake up in my chamber at Ordnung, a book creasing lines into my cheek. I’d write down as much of the dream as I could recall, and the parts I couldn’t, I’d embellish. Though my imagination could hardly create a wilder tale than this.

  Still holding me, Nakoa glanced up, surveying my expression. No doubt wary of an emotional fit as I’d had the last time he’d done that. But that particular earthquake had come and gone. If he hoped to get a child on me, he’d be disappointed. I would not be, as I knew better. Low expectations made an excellent defense against disappointment.

  Someone tapped on the door and Nakoa let me dive under the covers, drawing the gauzy curtains around the bed for added privacy. This time he donned his kylte before letting in a stream of servants who carried a large copper-colored tub, buckets of water, and trays of food. I’d more than half expected Inoa, with or without her ladies, but they were likely off entertaining Chief Tane and his cronies. That’s what I’d be doing, were I in her position.

  Did they know we’d consummated the marriage? Hopefully there would be no display of the sheets, as some of the Twelve did, retaining that barbaric custom of old. Ours were satisfactorily bloody and would have to be changed. I fingered one of the smears, contemplating cleaning it myself.

  Nakoa banished all the servants and they slipped out as silently as they’d arrived, giving me a glimpse of his warriors standing guard in the hall, faces carefully averted. He locked it behind them, then came to get me.

  “I think I can walk,” I said, wrapping the top sheet around me. I slid off the bed, pausing a moment to test my feet—stiff, but barely at all sore—and Nakoa’s gaze went to the bloodied sheets as well. He sto
pped me with a hand on my arm. “Are you well?”

  “Yes.” Chagrined by this level of exposure, I ducked my face. Of course he lifted my chin with a finger, studying me with a dubious expression.

  “I hurt you.”

  “Nakoa.” I laid a hand on his chest, the glittering scales so satin smooth, despite the trick to the eye. As marmoreal as any of the sculptures decorating the palace and harbor, but living flesh. “You gave me pleasure, too. Though I don’t understand how you knew how to do it so well.”

  One side of his mouth tipped up. “There are ways of knowing without doing, yes?”

  “The story of my life,” I commented in Common Tongue, needing that phrase to satisfy the wryness of my feelings. He couldn’t have understood, but he seemed amused and took my hand, lacing his fingers with mine before walking with me to the bath. At some point I would become accustomed to the difference in our sizes, but for the moment my hand felt dwarfed in his. Surprising, really, that we’d fit as well as we had, sexually. But then, he’d been careful of me.

  Had been from the beginning. Something to remember.

  I had to climb over the tub rim, it stood so high, Nakoa keeping my hand to balance me. Despite the earlier cleansing, myriad cuts and burns on my feet briefly stung. With determined swiftness, I submerged myself, using the cover of water and Nakoa’s convenient inattention to scrub the blood and other fluids from my now quite sore nether parts. He turned back with a carafe of his favored liquor and a pair of beautiful glasses, handing them both to me to hold as he poured.

  The bowls of the goblets were wide, fitting into my cupped palms, crystal clear. On them, dragons formed of metallic-gold glass climbed up one side, tails wound around the stems, bat wings wrapped around the bowls and chins propped on the rim, inset ruby eyes glinting. Amazingly clever.