A little unexpected, actually. He’d thought when thaw finally set in Simon would have a hard time dealing with the emotions he’d locked away for so long, allowing them to build toward explosion. He just hadn’t expected an explosion of that magnitude.
“What news of home?” Simon asked presently, sounding perfectly calm.
Audric exchanged a glance with Jorell.
“What sort of news do you mean?” Jorell asked.
“The state of the realm,” Simon retorted dryly.
“Brooding violence,” Audric said. “After the attempted revolt several years ago failed, Jaelen lost what little sense he had. He has cowed them with an iron fist, he believes. When the truth is he has taught them that nothing they can do can appease him--the poor die in droves because the merchant class is now as poor as they were. And the wealthy and powerful are no better off now than the poorest merchants. He bleeds them dry. All of the nobles he had imprisoned when he imprisoned us have been executed. Those he did not manage to lay hands upon have been living in exile since, but I have heard that Ravenwing, Montdragon, Goldsinger, and the Duke of Sardovf have all fallen to assassins.”
Simon’s jaw tightened. His most vocal supporters--and incidentally the most powerful. “What of their sons?”
“The young duke, Nimets, is loyal and eager, but he has not been tested in battle. Goldsinger’s son died with him. Ravenwing’s and Montdragon’s heirs are both as cagey as their fathers and can be completely depended upon.”
“We will need mercenaries,” Simon said thoughtfully, turning from his contemplation of the distant horizon to something that had caught his attention on the beach.
A flash of red assured Audric of what, or rather whom, had caught his eye.
“Send all the coin we can spare and tell them to make ready--quietly. We will not have half the army we had before. If we can not take him by surprise, we will lose the only asset we have.” He turned to look at Audric. “Tell them I am coming.”
He left them then, striding down the beach toward Raina, who stood at the water’s edge with her jeans rolled up to her knees, her long, auburn hair fluttering in the breeze and flashing brightly as the late afternoon’s sun caught in it.
Audric felt his excitement wane more than a little as he watched Simon slip up behind her and wrap his arms around her, dropping his chin to rest on the top of her head. The sound of her voice reached him--not the words, for those were snatched away by the sea breeze--only the sound, and then Simon’s laugh at something she had said.
Envy filled him, but pity, too. He was going to miss her. He could not imagine how much Simon would.
Almost as if Jorell had heard his thoughts, he murmured, “I would not be in his shoes.”
“He will triumph,” Elden said cheerfully. “He has not counted the army we will have when we reach Schalome’s borders with the army his men will raise.”
Jorell looked at him. “I have no doubt of that. I was only thinking that it will bring him no happiness--wealth, power, the adulation of the people--but he will still be alone.”
Rama joined them. “The council will not allow that to stand for long. Simon should have had a son near manhood by now. They will expect him to chose a woman quickly and breed one upon her.”
“He would have had a son near manhood by now if he had not died with Evangeline,” Audric said grimly.
“Gods be damned!” Jorell swore irritably. “They are not going to fuck, now, on the beach and it yet full light!”
“I believe they are,” Audric said tightly. “Send Haig down the beach southward. You remain here--and make certain you keep close watch for any vessel of any size. Elden, Rama, and I will guard the rear.”
* * * *
“Simon!” Raina said with a mixture of amusement and embarrassment. “Someone will see us--at least five I know!”
“I will cover you with my body, wench. Believe me they will see nothing but the flash of my white ass bobbing on the beach … and they will have no interest in that.”
Raina laughed huskily as he nuzzled his way down her throat and covered one breast with his mouth. The heat and moisture sent a river of warmth through her even through her shirt.
“I wish you would not wear this thing you have here. It makes it harder for me to get to my breasts.”
“My breasts, you mean.”
“That is what I said,” he murmured, laughter threading his voice.
“Five seconds more--that’s all it takes for you to whip it up.”
“Yes, but I am not a patient man--and the pants are enough for me to have to deal with in getting to my pussy.”
“Your pussy?”
He grunted in satisfaction as he managed to open the jeans and slipped his hand inside to cup her. “At least you did not argue with me on that.”
“Simon,” she protested weakly as he began dragging her jeans down, “I’ll have sand in the crack of my ass!”
He chuckled. “The things you do for your prince! You do not expect me to plant my royal ass in the sand, surely? Because it is royal, which means it is a superior ass. I am risking a great deal on your behalf only to expose it to the sun and wind.”
“A royal pain in the ass, is what you are!” she said dryly. Apparently, he’d liked the fact that she’d accused him of behaving as if he was lord and master, she thought with a mixture of amusement and irritation. He missed no opportunity of bringing it into the conversation.
Despite the self-depreciating way he always joked about it, though, and the wise-cracks she usually came back with, she was almost certain he was royalty even though she had tried to dismiss that idea as absurd at first. Because the fact was, she’d noticed the moment she set eyes on Simon that he had aura of mystery and power about him unlike anything inside her experience. He had ‘great man/leader’ written all over him. She was just surprised it had taken her so long to figure that out.
“We have not tried that,” he said musingly, tugging at her jeans until he had them past her knees and then running a hand over one cheek of her ass.
“And we’re not going to try that either!” Raina retorted. “You’re hung like a horse. No way am I letting that thing near my ass!”
“It was no more than a passing thought,” he said, sounding vaguely disappointed.
“Right.”
He wedged his hips between her thighs once she’d dragged her feet from her panties and jeans, supporting himself on one elbow as he reached between them to unfasten his own pants. “I can not help that I am obsessed with claiming every inch of you,” he murmured huskily, watching her face through slumberous eyes as he entered her.
Raina gasped, closing her eyes in delight as she felt his flesh melding with hers, felt her body yielding to the force of his. The familiar excitement filled her as he did, as he stroked her channel with his hard length, giving rise to heated desire and quickly after that to shaking anticipation. She hadn’t expected to come with so little foreplay, exposed as they were, but there was something so wildly exciting about making love to him in the open that she felt herself nearing her peak within a few minutes.
She moaned low in her throat as she felt the first tremors of release, trying to muffle the sound against Simon’s chest. He shuddered, at the sound, or the suction of her mouth as she bit down on his flesh lightly as her climax broke over her. Uttering a choked sound he came as her body milked his of his seed and leaned weakly against her.
“Woman, you are shameless,” he murmured huskily when he’d caught his breath. “Do not spare my blushes. Have your way with me where ever you like.”
Raina laughed. “You are such an ass! Blame it on me, why don’t you?”
“I had thought I just did.”
He bent down and kissed her before she could think of a retort. When he lifted his head, he glanced around them for the first time. “Ah … Rainie, my precious, we have a dilemma.”
“We do?”
“I have just thought that it will not be nearly as easy putting your pants
back on as it was removing them.”
Raina gave him an irritated look and studied it over. “Lay on your side behind me and I’ll put them on sitting down,” she said finally.
“Good plan.”
He got up and casually shoved his genitals back into his pants, zipping them before he bent to retrieve her jeans, shook the sand from them, and handed them to her.
“Where are my panties?”
He looked around. “Alas, the sea has claimed them,” he announced cheerfully, settling behind her.
She glared at him irritably but finally struggled into the jeans and fastened them.
He helped her to her feet, dropping an arm around her shoulders and herding her back toward the mansion.
“I hesitate to point this out, sweeting, but you are walking strangely.”
“Because I have sand in everything!” she said shortly, plucking at her jeans in discomfort.
“However did you manage that?” he asked in a shaking voice.
She elbowed him in the ribs.
Laughing, he scooped her into his arms. “This, at least, will reduce the discomfort until I can bathe you.”
“You can bathe me?” she echoed.
“Thank you, sweeting. I always enjoy that. I will tell Tedra to hold dinner. It may take me a while, but I am dedicated. I will make certain that there is not so much a single, tiny grain of sand to cause you any more discomfort, my precious.”
* * * *
It wasn’t until Raina had finished serving and finally settled in the kitchen to eat her own meal that it dawned on her that she’d noticed a tension among the men in the dining room that she hadn’t noticed in a long time. After considering it for a few moments, she revised the thought. She had never noticed them behaving anything like they were tonight.
There’d been a tremendous amount of tension when she’d first arrived. She hadn’t known them then so she hadn’t realized that it was tension. She’d just thought they were all a bunch of up tight, cold, snobs. The tension had shifted to a different sort of uneasy restraint during the time when she and Simon had been battling it out, but it wasn’t until they’d managed to get on a fairly even keel that she’d realized that that uneasiness was because they were expecting Simon to explode and concerned about fallout and which direction the shrapnel was going to fly.
When she’d made the pact with Simon, though, and it had relieved him of so much stress, the men had relaxed, as well.
They were like weather balloons, a very good gauge of conditions around the hurricane--which was Simon.
And now they were sending out signals that were a warning of storm weather. She just wasn’t exactly certain of what sort of storm was coming their way.
* * * *
Raina wasn’t certain what had woken her at first. Disoriented, she lay staring at the ceiling for several moments before she heard the sound she knew had awakened her.
Simon was moaning in his sleep.
Shifting onto her side, she studied him in the dim light filtering through the bedroom window and realized he was having one of his nightmares. He’d already begun to thrash, straining to move, his face contorting with the emotions attached to his nightmare.
Empathy squeezed tightly around her heart. He hadn’t had a nightmare in a month, at least. She hated to wake him. He had to be exhausted--probably not as exhausted as she was, she wryly amended, but he’d fucked her six ways from Sunday before he’d finally given in to exhaustion--something he hadn’t done in weeks.
Ordinarily, he was satisfied with once a night--He wanted sex every night, but he settled for once--and once in the morning if she spent the night with him, which she did fairly often--and once in the afternoon unless he was occupied with something else, which he usually was.
The marathon fucking was something they only did on fairly rare occasions. Sometimes he’d let a couple of weeks go by, sometimes no more than a week, and then he’d drag her in to his room before it was even good dark and make love to her with an almost frantic sort of desperation until they were both so exhausted they fell asleep.
Tonight he’d been more insatiable than usual, and that was one of the reasons she was reluctant to wake him. She knew if she did she was in for it.
The nightmare was escalating, though, not dissipating as she’d hoped. He’d begun to mutter unintelligibly--it was his language. She didn’t know what he was saying, but she’d heard them speak to each other in their native tongue enough times to recognize it.
She’d already shifted closer to him to try to soothe him when he said something perfectly audible.
“Rainie … Rainie!”
Her throat closed. There was so much distress in his voice she forgot about her reluctance to wake him. She settled her hand lightly on his chest, stroking him soothingly. “It’s alright, baby.”
He sucked in a choked breath and went completely rigid for several moments and then slowly began to relax. His arm came around her shoulders and pulled her closer. When she settled her cheek against his chest, listening to his frantic heartbeat, feeling faint tremors still running through his body, he stroked her back. “What is it, sweeting?” he asked, his voice sounding raw--not rough with sleep, hoarse with remembered fear or pain or both.
She shook her head. “I just wanted to snuggle. Sorry I woke you.”
She heard him swallow. He sucked in several deep, pained breaths and seemed to relax.
She’d just decided he was drifting back to sleep when he rolled to face her, dragging her tightly against his length and squeezing her so hard her breath left her in a little grunt. He didn’t seem to notice. He continued to hold her so tightly she’d begun to feel miserably uncomfortable long before he finally drifted off again and his tight hold relaxed.
She woke to the feel of a hot mouth tugging at her nipple and sending delicious currents through her. A faint smile curled her lips. “I’d know that mouth anywhere,” she murmured huskily without opening her eyes.
“Do you?” he murmured lazily.
“Mmmhmm. It’s attached to the most beautiful man in the world.”
He nipped at her nipple with the edge of his teeth just hard enough to send a tidal wave of sensation through her. “I never like to argue with my lady,” he said teasingly, “but it is, in point of fact, attached to the most beautiful woman in this world.”
“Uh oh! He’s gone blind! Granny always said if you did it too much you’d go blind!”
He lifted his head from her breast. She opened her eyes to look at him as he stroked his hand caressingly along her cheek. “There is nothing wrong with my eyes,” he said solemnly.
Raina reddened, partly with pleasure and partly with discomfort, searching for something to say.
He smiled after a moment. “I can not believe I have rendered you speechless, wench. No!” he added quickly when her lips parted, dipping his head to claim her mouth. “I can not allow you to snatch my victory from my grasp.”
He seemed in no great rush, building the heat between them languidly. She stared down at him through half closed eyes, stroking his long silky hair as he wove a meandering path of kisses along her belly. “I suppose you’d freak if I got pregnant?”
He tensed momentarily. “Happily that is not possible,” he said easily after a moment.
She couldn’t see his face for the wall of black hair hanging across his lean cheek, but it didn’t escape her that he hadn’t sounded too receptive of the idea. She drew a pained breath. “I don’t suppose that would fit into our little pact anyway,” she said as lightly as she could.
He lifted his head to study her for a long moment.
She smiled at him lazily. “I think you missed a spot.”
His dark brows rose. Amusement gleamed in his eyes. “Where?”
She chuckled. “I’m going to let you find it.”
“Unfair. Now I am convinced it was the tastiest spot and I must start all over again to make certain I have not missed it.”
Raina stretched languidl
y. “Sorry,” she murmured, “but I wouldn’t think of telling you how to do your job.”
His eyes narrowed. “Here?” he asked, digging the tip of a finger into one of her ribs.
She gasped and chortled with laughter, slapping at his hand. He grinned at her and found another ticklish spot, making it abundantly clear he’d mapped each and every one. He chuckled when she shrieked with laughter. “Simon stop!” she gasped when she could catch her breath.
“Woman, I am trying to find the spot I missed! What about this one?”
She was breathless with laughter, her stomach aching, and tears streaming down her cheeks by the time he settled face to face with her, scooping his arms beneath her shoulders. She wiped her eyes, trying to give him a censorious look as he grinned down at her.
“I have not found it. I will have to look again.”
Her smile slowly died as she stared up at his laughing face. Her heart seemed to turn over in her chest. As handsome as she had thought he was from the first, he was even more handsome when he smiled and laughed. It filled her with a deeply satisfying warmth to know she’d brought laughter into his eyes. She lifted a hand to trace a laugh line in his cheek.
He regarded her questioningly, his own smile dying. “What is it, sweeting?”
She swallowed with an effort and averted her gaze, stroking her hands down his shoulders.
“I did not hurt you?”
She shook her head. “I was just thinking.”
“This is a bad sign,” he said, striving for a light note. “Dare I ask?”
She stroked her hands from his back to his sides. “That I owe you,” she said, digging her fingers into the spot she knew was ticklish on him.
He let out a choked grunt and burst out laughing, scrambling away from her. She followed him, straddling his waist and working her way up his ribs to his armpits.
“Stop that, demon spawn!” he growled, his voice shaking with the effort to suppress his laughter. Grabbing her wrists, he shoved her arms behind her back and dragged her down until she was plastered against him.
“Now that I have you at my mercy,” she murmured against his chest, “I believe I’ll have my way with you.”
Dragon Lord Page 18
