“I could leave, yes—but I never want to. Even when I’m angry and hurt.” Mara laughed a little. “But I see what will happen now. The first time you fight with the governor, you’re going to run.”
“We’ve already fought.”
“And how far did you get?”
“Blast you.” She’d made it to her bedchamber wall, once; the next time she’d reached the side of the balloon basket. “Not very far. But I won’t run again.”
Mara only laughed harder.
Chapter Twenty-three
Though she’d planned to meet Ariq on the terrace, Zenobia didn’t hear his balloon arrive. She was bent over a page and scribbling out character notes when the bedchamber doors opened. His tall form filled the shadowed entrance.
And it was finally tonight.
She sat frozen, her pen suspended over the inkwell. This wasn’t how she’d imagined it. She would meet him on the terrace and throw herself into his arms, and he would carry her through the courtyard and into their chamber. But he was toeing off his boots instead of striding in with Zenobia cradled against his broad chest, and she couldn’t even stand, because her left foot had gone numb from sitting with her heel tucked beneath her bottom for so long.
His greeting wasn’t what she’d imagined, either.
“These are your shoes?” His voice sounded bemused. He must have noticed the wooden sandals she’d left by the door.
“Yes.” With fingers trembling slightly, she dipped the pen into the ink. “Mara and I ventured down to the vendor level to purchase dinner. Those were at another stall, and I realized they would be easier to remove whenever I entered a room than having to stop to unbuckle my boots.”
“Are they?”
“Oh, yes. They come off quite easily. Especially when I’m walking.”
His grin flashed as he stepped up out of the entryway. The glow of the table lantern reached his face, and Zenobia thought it was better that she hadn’t immediately leapt upon him. The creases from the plague mask still marked his skin, as if he’d just taken it off—and he’d been wearing it since early afternoon.
He’d had his mouth covered since early afternoon.
“Did you have an opportunity to eat? Or even drink?”
He shook his head, then stopped her when she tried to get up onto her rubbery leg. “One of the attendants is bringing a meal. Have you finished yours?”
In her bowl, thinly sliced broiled eel lay atop a heap of rice. She’d pushed it aside a while ago—not because she was full, but because she’d been distracted by work. “I can eat more.”
“Good.” He knelt on the mat, facing her across the table. Dark eyes met hers.
Zenobia’s breath caught. Oh, she’d been wrong. This wasn’t better—and it wasn’t exhaustion or hunger that had kept him from sweeping in, picking her up, and carrying her to their bed. Just one look told Zenobia he wanted her more than any food, any drink. He’d have ambushed her if that had been his plan.
So this was another tactic. After all this waiting . . . waiting just a little more.
Anticipation shivered through her, prickling every inch of her skin, leaving her breathless.
His hungry gaze lingered on her mouth before alighting on her notes. “Progress?”
“A little. You?”
“Not enough.”
A soft knock at the door prevented her reply, and she remained silent as the attendant set out the steaming dishes. When the woman left, Zenobia said, “I’m sorry.”
“I knew it wouldn’t be quick. And—” Suddenly the muscles in his jaw clenched, then he closed his eyes, shook his head. “I don’t want to fight that battle here. Not in this time with you.”
Her heart swelled and tightened all at once. “They don’t have to be separate. And we are supposed to learn about each other. Our troubles are a part of that.”
“Yes.” A deep breath filled his chest. “But I can’t enjoy a meal when I’m frustrated. I try to settle problems before I eat—and if I can’t settle them, I have to put them aside.”
“Oh.” She smiled and spooned up a bit of her rice and eel, which was vinegary and salty and tasty even when cold—and yes, so much better to eat while in a pleasant mood. “Then I have learned that about you, instead. And what else should I know?”
He couldn’t answer. His mouth was full. So he wouldn’t talk while chewing.
She was pleased to learn that, as well. “There is so much to know. And we might have even more obstacles to overcome than we realized.”
His eyes narrowed dangerously, as if he was already planning to destroy every one. “Such as?”
“So many things. I didn’t even know we could be married without an official. Yet we did—and that almost created an enormous misunderstanding between us. I’m likely to offend you without even knowing it.”
Ariq glanced at her bowl. “By eating with your left hand?”
She looked down at her fingers, her spoon clutched between them. It was awkward. But she so often worked while she ate, and couldn’t write with her left hand. “This offends you?”
“No.” A smile widened his firm mouth. “Does this offend you?”
Using his fingers, he pushed together his rice and fish and swept it through a brown sauce before carrying it to his lips. Except with soup, he rarely used utensils. She’d noticed it before. At first it had seemed odd, but now it was unremarkable.
“No. It’s something I’ve become accustomed to seeing.”
He glanced at her spoon again. “That will be for me, as well. But know that every mother in the Golden Empire would slap your hand.”
“I’ll remember that when we’re with anyone else.” Poor manners wouldn’t reflect well on either of them. “I suppose we’ll make allowances for each other’s customs.”
“Yes.”
Oh, and now she loved watching him eat. Rather than messy, his long fingers were precise, and she imagined his fingertips warm against his lips when he placed his food on his tongue. “Do you have a shrine? Should I set one up here for you?”
His dark eyebrows lifted.
“I saw one when I was at your home,” she explained. “The building at the end of the courtyard.”
“Not mine,” he answered. “My brother’s.”
“Oh.” Well, this was probably important to know. “Do you pray? What do you pray to?”
“God.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You’re a Christian?”
“No.” He laughed, and said something in Mongolian before adding, “The unknowable One, ruler of the Eternal Sky. Are you Christian?”
“Yes. Though not as devout as I should be.” Or as devout as her father had been. “Will that be an obstacle?”
“No. It is all the same.” He washed his fingers and held out his hand. “Let me see yours.”
His touch raced through her like fire. Heart pounding, she held herself utterly still. His grip was firm when he turned her palm over. She tried not to shiver when he traced a circle in the center.
“One God,” he said softly, then drew a line down each of her fingers, from fingertips to palm. “Many paths to reach Him.”
That was lovely, so lovely. But considering the subject, the thoughts that had begun springing into her head when he touched her were nothing short of blasphemous. Cheeks hot, she pulled her hand back, and for a long moment, Ariq studied her with his heavy-lidded gaze.
Then his focus fell to her mouth. “Take down your hair.”
Her breath stopped. She would do it. But first— “Take down yours.”
Without hesitation, he reached for the tie at the base of his topknot and tugged it free. Black hair fell straight along his jaw. The tips brushed the corner of his mouth.
Pulse racing, light-headed, she lifted trembling fingers and began to search for her pins. Each one she pulled out seemed like a leap toward the bed, where her hair would be her only covering.
Blanketed by nothing but her hair and Ariq.
Despite her dres
sing gown, she felt bare when her hair uncoiled and hung heavy down her back. Her skin prickled and her nipples hardened, as if she stood nude in the wind.
“Your robe,” he said, and his voice had thickened.
“Your tunic,” she whispered.
Holding her gaze, he unclipped the buckles and shrugged it back over his broad shoulders. Her fingernails bit into her palms. So much warm skin. So much powerful muscle. She wanted to touch it all, but she didn’t even know where to start. She stared at him, unmoving, her breath coming in ragged gasps.
He looked at her clenched hands, then her belt, still tied at her waist. “Come here.”
“Come here,” she echoed, and it was hardly more than a movement of her lips.
Ariq gripped the edge of the table between them. Carved biceps bulging, he lifted the heavy wood aside and crossed the empty mat to crouch before her.
Concern shadowed his features. His big hand cupped her cheek. “Are you afraid?”
“No.” Amazingly no. “I always feel safe with you.”
Yet still she trembled when his callused thumb swept over her lips.
“Nervous?”
“A little.” A lot. She hadn’t been. Only anticipating. Waiting. But now the time had come and she couldn’t stop shaking. “As if I’m already naked.”
In a fluid movement, he pushed down his trousers and rocked back to drag them all the way off. He knelt before her again, and while she was still staring and gasping, said, “Now we are equal.”
Not remotely. Somehow, she tore her gaze from his jutting arousal and met his eyes.
Though he smiled, his voice was somber. “I won’t take another step without you. When you’re ready, tell me.”
Perhaps because of his concern or because he’d bared himself so easily, her nervousness was already fading. Curiosity took its place.
She glanced down and moistened her lips. “May I touch you?”
“And if it pleases you, take notes.”
That startled a laugh from her. Maybe a sketch, one day. But not today.
Her heart thudding, she scooted closer. Lord, but he was so much taller than her, even when they were kneeling. And so very big. All over. Her gaze traced the sinewy lines of his arms, the broad planes of his chest. Golden lamplight rippled over his abdomen, and as she reached for him, the shadow of her hand melded into the shadow cast by his arousal.
She followed the darkness, flattening her palm against his hair-roughened skin beneath his navel. Ariq sucked in a harsh breath. A quiver raced through the flesh under her hand, and his fists clenched beside his thighs as her fingers trailed closer to his erect shaft.
Zenobia couldn’t stop looking at it. How could such an unremarkable shape be so fascinating? His shoulders, his arms—those were remarkable, because even an altered man didn’t pack on so much muscle without a portion of every day spent keeping himself strong so that he could fight, so that he could protect. His mouth was remarkable, because of the way he kissed her and the words he said, and his eyes, not because of their shape but because he looked at her as if she were the most desirable woman he’d ever seen. Other parts of him were appealing by fortunate arrangement, such as the symmetry of his face and the heaviness of his lids and the thickness of his hair, which was a pure pleasure to push her fingers through.
But this. It made no sense at all. “I think women must be mad. Or perhaps it is only me.”
“Why?”
The word was short and rough, as if uttered through gritted teeth. Her hesitation must be an unbearable tease, so she touched him gingerly, the pad of her middle finger at the base of his shaft.
The smooth ridges of his abdomen became chiseled stone. She glanced up, and his features were as tight as his stomach, the shadows as harsh. His pulse drummed at the base of his throat, his eyes burned, and she had to look away, because flame was already licking over her body and his would incinerate her.
“Because I’m going to take this inside me,” she said, desire rising through her like smoke, roughening her voice to a husky whisper. She slid her finger up his length as she spoke—oh, and his penis didn’t feel at all like it looked, not brash and crude, but smooth as silk, and the bulging vein astonishingly soft over all that rigid hardness. “And I want it inside me—which is utterly insane. Because it might feel pleasant, but I don’t know for certain. I can’t know until I’ve had you. Yet, just by looking, I feel as if I need you more than anything I’ve ever needed. That’s like looking at a book I’ve never seen before and thinking it will be the best I will ever read. It makes no sense. Especially since this book is so . . . very . . . long.”
He shuddered when she reached the smooth, broad tip. “I won’t hurt you,” he said gruffly. “I’ll make you ready for me.”
“You won’t need to.” Wet and aching, she was already there. “But I’ll never be more vulnerable than when I’m with you. Yet I want to be with you anyway. It must be madness.”
Or hope. Or trust. Perhaps that was the source of this fascination. She wasn’t accustomed to hoping or trusting—and having this part of him so bare and so near represented her decision to do both.
Yet that still didn’t account for how desperately she wanted his length to fill her. And he would fill her, thick and hard. Maybe more than her body could take. She couldn’t even completely encircle her fingers around the base, though she tried, squeezing softly and feeling the answering pulse through his hardened flesh.
His breath hissed from between his teeth. “It’s madness for me, too.”
It must be. And in that moment Zenobia loved him more than she ever had, as he knelt before her, his body straining to the edge of agony, yet utterly still and waiting for her.
She looked up, and saw how his gaze lost its focus when her hand stroked upward, heard the tortured groan from deep in his chest. That was how she’d felt, with her leg on his shoulder and her body devastated by his lips and tongue.
Madness for him, too. “Because you’re vulnerable?”
It was almost impossible to believe. Even with this sensitive part of him in the palm of her hand.
“Inside you—” The guttural response was broken by another groan when she stroked again. “Inside you. A man is . . . always vulnerable . . . with his weapon sheathed.”
Sheathed. She almost laughed. “You say you’re vulnerable, yet call the thing you’ll be stabbing into me a weapon?”
His grin only lasted until the next stroke. On a harsh breath, he caught her fingers in a tight grip, stopping her languorous movement up his shaft. “My will is steel, wife. My body and my heart are iron—but they are yours to break.”
Hers.
He let go. Inviting her to do anything. She only wanted to give him as much pleasure as he’d given her, to keep him this close forever.
“Stand up, then,” she whispered. “And let me taste you.”
Ariq’s eyes closed. Another shudder wracked his big body, then he smoothly rose to his feet. He stood before her, the muscles in his thighs like ropes of steel, his arousal long and thick.
Zenobia was shaking again as she moved closer, nerves and anticipation rioting like an electrical storm within her. She hadn’t planned this, hadn’t imagined it. In every scenario, it had always been Ariq who’d kissed her, who’d touched her, who’d pushed inside her. Always Ariq, giving her pleasure. This time, she would give it.
She hoped. None of the drawings she’d seen had offered explicit instructions. But he’d licked her. She could do the same.
Leaning in, she braced her hands on his solid thighs. The familiar scent of his skin was stronger here, salty and warm, as if he’d bathed in the ocean before lying in the sun. His shaft rose before her, curving up against his lower abdomen. The dense muscles under her fingers stiffened when she pressed her tongue to the base, gently licking. Barely even salty, just skin, but she wasn’t here for a meal anyway. She was here for Ariq, and the groan that ripped from him, and the thrust of his fingers into her hair before he let h
er go again.
When he’d done this, her knee had buckled and he’d held her up, yet she knew Ariq would stand no matter what she did. One day, she might discover how to make him fall. For now, it was enough that he moaned.
But she wanted to hear more.
Eagerly she licked her way up his length and resumed the stroke of her hand. She bathed the wide head with quick flicks of her tongue. His hips jerked when she licked the moist slit, jolting the tip of his shaft against her teeth, and though she winced at the scrape Ariq’s head fell back, and he cursed, and she thought he prayed though she didn’t understand a word.
God help her. She hadn’t known this could be so exciting. She’d known the fire, and the ecstatic clench of flesh, and the hollow ache that deepened with every touch, every lick. But she hadn’t known the exhilaration of watching her man come slowly undone.
Zenobia licked faster, squeezed her hand tighter, tried to find where he was most sensitive, and every time something like pain hoarsened his groans she licked there again. Oh, but she hadn’t believed that he’d be vulnerable inside her. He would be pushing in, invading. But now she understood. He might invade. But while he was there she could lay claim to him.
She claimed him now. Watching his face through her lashes, she parted her lips against the broad crown and took him in as deep as she could.
Ariq froze with his head back and his body straining. His jaw clenched, the tendons in his neck standing in sharp relief beneath his skin, and he grated out her name. The pulse in the underside of his shaft beat rapidly against her tongue.
He liked this. Oh, he liked this.
Mouth already full, she couldn’t take more of him—only wriggle her tongue, and suck on the wide crown, which made him shout and grip her hair again, so she sucked harder. His flavor was saltier now, heavier, and his groans those of a man enduring unending torment, shudders steadily wracking his rigid frame.
“Zen . . . o . . . bia.”
Her name was a ragged warning. He was nearing release, she realized. Her excitement ballooned, bigger, hotter. Her fingernails dug into his firm buttocks as she desperately took more, sucking him deeper, though her eyes leaked tears and her throat tried to revolt.
The Kraken King Part VI Page 5
