A Heart of Blood and Ashes

by Milla Vane

  “That makes no sense, either. As soon as they looked, they must have known there was nothing beneath that is different from what Parsatheans have.”

  “Then why conceal it?” His fingers slid downward and teased a circle around the tip of her right breast, where her stiffened nipple was pebbled beneath the fine silk. Her breath stopped, her widened gaze locked on his, her lips parted. “Perhaps this is a ruby.”

  A laugh shook her again, then cut off on a gasp when he swept his thumb across that aroused peak.

  “It feels as hard as a ruby,” Maddek told her gruffly. And he was steel.

  “Ardyl wears covering,” she pointed out, each word emerging on a soft panting breath. “Does she also conceal rubies?”

  “That band stops her tits from bouncing as she rides or runs.” With both hands now, Maddek cupped her small breasts through the silk. “You do not need such support, so you must be covering treasures.”

  “You all wear belts and red linens. Do you also hide treasures beneath? Treasures other than a pearl.” Her blush returned fiercely yet she did not retreat, her voice bold and her eyes sparkling with challenge. “The women have reason to cover, then, but men do not.”

  “That is not why female warriors cover. There is no need to conceal a pearl with clothing, for a woman’s body already conceals it.” In his mind swelled the memory of Yvenne, slick and hot beneath his touch, and the sweetness of her honey that he’d licked from her fingers. “I told you that foolish men could not find it.”

  He could see by the stuttering of her breath that she recalled precisely when he’d said so, yet his bride would not be thwarted. “Then what reason do warriors cover? Why do male warriors conceal their pride?”

  He concealed nothing. She had only to glance down to see the force of his need and the strength of his pride. Whereas he’d had to learn to read her very breath and the depth of her blushes.

  “Our coverings are not to hide anything. Instead they serve a useful purpose,” Maddek said before adding wryly, “As you will discover if ever you ride without them.”

  “You wear them even when you aren’t on a horse.”

  “Because we are always prepared to ride.”

  She appeared outraged by his answer—because she had no counter to it, he realized. Her face was flushed with arousal but also enjoyment, her soft tits a slight weight in his hands that rose and fell with every heaving breath.

  His bride had taken pleasure in arguing with him. As had he. Though Maddek suspected that in this sparring match, he only prevailed because he’d kept her well distracted. No doubt had this conversation taken place at a campfire instead of with his hands teasing her, she’d have easily destroyed him.

  But Maddek had not lived this long by allowing an opponent time to recover. “Then we shall see who is right,” he told her, and tugged back the left side of her robe, revealing her small breast and pointed nipple.

  For the barest moment her shyness returned—then disappeared with another outraged gasp when Maddek declared, “I am victorious.”

  “Victorious? You have just proved yourself wrong!”

  “It is hard and reddened, and gleams as a polished gem does,” he observed. “So I have found a ruby.”

  “It does not gleam!”

  Only because he’d kept his need leashed. No more.

  Gripping her narrow waist, he hefted her up until the tip of her breast was against his lips. She gave a startled cry, abruptly silenced with the back of her hand covering her open mouth. With widened eyes, she stared down at him.

  Fierce hunger raged through his blood. Her scent filled him, the sharpness of her anise soap and the smoke of the fire she’d sat beside while tending to Toric. Holding that astonished gaze, he swirled his tongue around her hardened nipple before sucking the taut peak into the heat of his mouth.

  Her fingers curled into her palm, her breath coming in smothered gasps. Each one stoked his arousal hotter. Harder he drew upon the engorged bud, watching her eyelashes flutter closed. Her head tipped back and the expression that pinched her face Maddek might have mistaken for pain if she hadn’t muffled a moan against her hand. But never would Yvenne make a sound if she was hurt. Only in pleasure.

  Soon he would hear her moans and cries and screams.

  His cock was molten stone when his mouth released her. Gravel roughened his voice. “Does it gleam now?”

  His bride seemed dazed as her eyes opened and she looked down at her nipple, reddened and glistening. No answer she gave but her ragged heaving breaths.

  “You are enflamed.” Slowly Maddek lowered her, holding her gaze as she steadied upon her feet. Voice raw with hunger, he said, “Lie upon the furs and I will tend to your cunt.”

  “It is not—I am not—” Each panting attempt at denial ended before she could finish what they both knew for a lie. Swallowing hard, she moistened her lips and tried again. “I can ease my own need.”

  “With blistered fingers?” He caught her chin between thumb and forefinger when she would have turned her blushing face away. “Allow me to tend to you, Yvenne.”

  Longing flared through her expression before her eyes closed, as if in pain. “It is not . . . necessary. But you should ease your need upon me—and fill my sheath with your seed.”

  A harsh laugh broke from him. Maddek wanted nothing more. Yet he could not.

  “You ask me to court Vela’s wrath?”

  “I do not.” Steadily her eyes met his again. “Instead I suggest the method of my foremothers, because my moon night is five days away, but I might be fertile now. If I am, a full turn will pass before I ripen again. And if ever there was a place to seek Hanan’s blessing, surely this is it.”

  In the shadow of Hanan’s cock and in the palm of his hand. She was not wrong. Yet Maddek still knew not what she meant.

  His thumb slipped over her bottom lip. Despite the steadiness of her gaze, that small caress made her soft flesh quiver. Yvenne was not as unaffected as she would have him believe. “What did your foremothers do?”

  “Nyset’s daughter, Queen Byil, wanted children but wanted no bedpartner. Many years later, Queen Virym refused to take anyone to bed but her wife. Yet both queens had sons and daughters.” Now she faltered slightly. “Because they . . . filled their sheaths with Syssian seed.”

  Wryly Maddek pointed out, “I have no Syssian seed.”

  Though he was forming some idea of how it might be done. Before a moon night, the goddess Vela only forbade the penetration of a cock into forward and backward passages. But she did not forbid the pleasure of hands and mouths.

  “It was only Syssian seed because the queens invited every Syssian male to come and spend into a vessel until it was filled to the brim. That is why the queens of my line are also called the Daughters of Syssia. Many, many men answered those calls, and all their seed was intermixed in the vessel—so they are all my forefathers. And I know not how Byil filled her sheath, but Virym’s wife used . . .” She gestured toward Hanan’s marble cock. “Though I suspect theirs was not so big.”

  “I suspect not,” he agreed with a quick and hearty grin. Not even the legendary warrior-queens of Syssia could wield a sword of that size.

  In response to his amusement, her lips curved beneath his thumb. “For each, seasons of trying passed before the seed took root. Here, it is I who will be the vessel”—her sudden, quick inhalation sounded like a breath drawn in agony before she continued—“but if Hanan blesses us, the sooner I will be with child, the sooner we can claim my throne . . . and the sooner you will kill my father and avenge your parents.”

  Her father would be dead long before any child was born. Maddek would kill Zhalen upon the Burning Plains when he came for Yvenne. And if her father cowered in fear behind Syssian walls, Maddek would ride south and kill him after Yvenne was safely among the Parsatheans.

  Yet that response stuck
in his throat, trapped by shame. Avenge your parents, she’d said, offering a reminder that Maddek shouldn’t have needed to hear. Because his parents—his queen and king—were dead. And from the moment Maddek had met Yvenne, he’d thought of little else but spilling his seed within her. Yet always those thoughts had been in pursuit of avenging their murders. On this day, however, not a thought he’d given to his parents. Instead he’d only thought of killing Zhalen so that Yvenne would be safe. Instead he’d only thought of his need and the poisonous ache in his chest and the walls she’d built between them.

  Yet Yvenne had not forgotten their purpose. Because she was a queen. And she taught him a much-needed lesson now, without any effort.

  A king’s cock should not rule his heart or his head. Just as Yvenne did not allow her cunt to rule hers.

  Maddek would have liked it if she did, for then she would be easier to lure. No lure was needed now, though. The invitation was given. She had told him to ease his need upon her.

  So Maddek would.

  “Lie upon the furs,” said he in soft command.

  Her breath trembled across his thumb, her eyes searching his before she nodded into his hand and turned toward the bed. Her easy compliance should have pleased him, not lodged like a sharp stone in his chest. It mattered not that she would lie with him now in cold royal purpose instead of the hot desire he’d wanted.

  The queen’s purpose was cold. But Yvenne was not. And he would make her burn before this night was through. He would demand her surrender.

  And when she did, he would tear apart the walls that stood between them.

  In anticipation he stroked his length, watching her ease down onto her right knee before stretching out on the furs—on her stomach, as if she expected him to rut upon her from behind again. But that was not how he would ease his need this time.

  “On your back, Yvenne.”

  The skirt of her blue robe twisted around her legs when she rolled over, cheeks flushed and her dark curls in a tangle beneath her head. Reaching down, she wrestled with the constricting silk, and then her movements froze when her curious gaze locked onto the slow pumping of his hand.

  Huskily she asked, “Should I take you into my mouth?”

  Always hungry, his bride. But if she sucked him, Maddek could not trust himself to pull away. “That is not the part of you I should fill with my seed.” Amusement curved her lips before nervousness returned upon his next command. “Part your thighs and give me a clear path to your sheath.”

  She’d looked so boldly and eagerly upon his erection, yet turned her head in pained embarrassment now. Her legs she barely spread, widening her ankles to the width of her slender hips. With clumsy hands she tugged at her breechcloth. When she tossed the intimate covering away and jerked open the sides of her skirt to fall outside her linen-wrapped legs, Maddek knew her cunt was bare, yet nothing could he see in the shadowed valley between her thighs.

  It mattered not. All that she’d exposed was the smooth swaths of skin at the tops of her thighs and a glimpse of dark curls, yet never had his cock been so hard.

  Blushing face averted, she lay quivering. Sudden tenderness infiltrated his hot arousal. Unlike the affection he’d felt toward her at the inn, however, Maddek made no attempt to shove it away. He’d been foolishly blind to her courage before. Now he could not mistake her bravery. Knowing that she would have to lay herself bare to him, still Yvenne had chosen this route. As a queen, she was all unyielding purpose. But the woman was sweetly vulnerable.

  And that vulnerability offered yet another opening in her walls for Maddek to slip through.

  Closer he came. Her breasts rose and fell in rapid rhythm, nipples stiffened beneath blue silk. Her fingers fisted in the furs beside her hips, as if she knew not what to do with her hands—or as if to hold herself in place when he crouched at her trembling feet.

  “In this way.” He pitched his voice low to soothe her nerves but could not prevent raw arousal from roughening the words. Her body shook again as he gripped her thighs just above her knees, the heat of her skin a furnace through the linen wrappings. “With room enough for me to lie between them.”

  Her eyelids squeezed tightly closed but she gave no resistance when his hands urged her slender legs farther apart, not merely wider but higher. Maddek listened to her breaths for any indication that the bending of her knee pained her. Only his bride’s shyness did he hear in those shuddering pants—and only her arousal did he see in the glistening wetness revealed before him. With his bride bared to his gaze, brutal lust surged through his turgid flesh, the urge to cover her body with his. Against the rutting length of his cock, she would be slick and hot.

  With iron restraint, Maddek only knelt between her splayed thighs. Gruffly he told her, “A mere glimpse of your honeyed cunt draws my seed.”

  Eyes flying open, she glanced down. His engorged shaft stood as erect as Hanan’s, a drop of seed decorating the broad crown.

  With his forefinger, he collected the drop. “When I spend, we will fill your sheath in this way.”

  Not at all did she breathe now, as Maddek cupped her sultry mound and slipped his finger between her silken folds. He found her entrance, the opening small and delicate, and his gaze strayed not from her flushed face and widening eyes as he pressed inward.

  So tight she was. He should have used his smallest finger for this first breaching. Though wet, her inner muscles resisted when Maddek stretched her with the thickness of his second knuckle. She gave no sound of pain but gasped and shifted away from his penetration, her thighs tensing.

  Instantly he stopped. “Do you hurt?”

  Lips pressed in a flat line, she shook her head.

  But unused to the intrusion. And discomfited, for although she was enflamed, embarrassment still gripped her body and her sheath hadn’t yet softened.

  There was sweet remedy for that. Urging her legs wider, Maddek lowered his body to the furs, wedging his hands beneath her bare bottom to fill his palms with her soft cheeks. Her color still high, Yvenne rose onto her elbows to look down at him.

  Her brow furrowed as if she tried to fathom why her thighs cradled his shoulders rather than his hips. Breathlessly she asked, “What do you do?”

  “What you told me to do.”

  With barely any effort, he lifted her closer to his mouth, his breath sifting through her moistened curls. Realization flared bright in her wide eyes.

  “I told you not to tend to my need—”

  “And to ease my own upon you.” Anticipation thickened his voice as her heady feminine scent filled his next inhalation. “That is what I intend. Unless you will deny me now?”

  If not for the fiery yearning he saw battle with her shyness and uncertainty, Maddek would have denied himself. If he’d seen fear, there could be no pleasure for either of them. Yet she wanted as he did.

  Confusion joined the war of emotions upon her face. “How can this ease yours?”

  “Because my hunger does not only reside in my cock.” Trapped between his abdomen and the furs, his shaft ached and throbbed, yet the primitive urge to rut upon her was a mere spark against the raging need to make her come against his tongue. “And ever since you let me lick the honey from your fingers, I have been starved for another taste of your sweet cunt.”

  Her soft lips parted. Her breathing deepened, desire and longing emerging as victor in the battle upon her face—though now joined by curiosity and disbelief.

  “Is it sweet?” Her hand slid over her silk-covered belly, fingertips gliding over her gleaming arousal before she brought them to her mouth.

  Savage need clenched hard upon Maddek’s body. His cock spilled precious drops of seed into the furs that he should have spilled into her sheath, yet nothing could have moved him now as he watched Yvenne lick her fingers.

  “It has not much flavor at all.” Her frown pleated her eyebrows. “And is n
othing like honey.”

  “It is to me.” Each word was an iron link in a chain drawn taut by agonizing restraint. “So let me eat my fill and ease this need.”

  Finally she nodded her consent, sucking a fingertip between her pursed lips, as if trying once more to taste the appeal.

  Unleashed, Maddek buried his face in her cunt, groaning at the first long lick he took. Sweetness was knowing that the honey coating his tongue came of her need for him—though as he swiped a broad trail up the length of her cleft, Yvenne seemed to watch him in bafflement rather than pleasure. She tensed and trembled but only slightly, as if affected more by the newness than the sensation.

  Another long, slow lick over the lips of her cunt, then another. Her tension began to ease, her gaze locked upon his mouth. Her hectic flush returned, her arousal deepening again, yet it seemed more in response to watching Maddek taste her than what he did to her flesh.

  Until he stroked his tongue over her clit.

  A shudder ripped through her body, followed by a sharply indrawn breath that was abruptly silenced by the hand she used to cover her mouth. This time the slow drag of his tongue the length of her slit drew forth a muffled moan and the restless shifting of her hips, noises and movements that became more urgent as he continued his leisurely feast, teasing her clitoris at the end of each lick before returning to her entrance for another deep taste of the sweet nectar he drew from her well.

  Soon both hands she used to muffle her cries. The brace of her elbows collapsed and she fell back onto the furs. Her ass rocked in the cradle of his hands, her hips twisting frantically.

  Tightening his grip, Maddek halted her writhing and sucked hard upon her clit. Her thighs snapped closed around his head and her back arched, her slim body racked by a violent quake.

  Even with her thighs clamped over his ears and her mouth covered by her hands, he heard what his bride screamed as she came. His name. Almost never did she say it. Only warrior.