Magnus’s eyes softened toward her and then, like water, seemed to run through the cracks of her soul until he’d infiltrated every tight space of her heart, the ones she kept bound up in secrecy, even from herself. She frowned at him and resisted the urge to crawl away. What right did he have to look at her like that? To lay her bare as though everything she’d just said wasn’t true? As though he’d be here to put the pieces back together once he’d blown apart the fortress she’d built around the last remaining pieces of her soul.
“You were mine, kandiri. From the moment I saw you, you were mine.”
Nadine didn’t move, only watched as he drew in a breath and scrubbed a palm over his face. He looked out over the mushroom forest and went on. “I remember the day you met us at the gates of Lapour. I’d never seen anything like you. I knew many Ebronian women. But none like you. There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t think of you.” He shot her a half smile that didn’t quite touch his eyes. “That was before the towel.”
Nadine blinked, but she still didn’t speak or move. She wouldn’t, not until he’d said everything.
“But I wasn’t.”—he hesitated—“It wasn’t my turn to claim a bride yet. And even if it had been, I probably wouldn’t have, because there was too much unanswered in my life just then.” His throat bobbed up and down. “But there was no hesitation in my heart when I asked for you, woman. There will never be.”
Nadine took in his words. He had thought of her? Yearned for her from afar even before the Eye? Fear and longing lit up her soul like a thunderstorm. Great and terrible at once.
No. It didn’t make sense. No one had ever wanted her. Not her sister. Not her family. Not any man, except in the ways any man would want a woman. This barbarian was no different.
He wasn’t a liar; he believed the words coming out of his own mouth, but that didn’t make them true. Men said all kinds of things, believed all sorts of things in the face of unbridled lust. She’d been taunting him for weeks. And, as she’d just learned, he was only freshly initiated himself. Why shouldn’t he think himself in love with the woman he’d been moved to claim to see his goals met? The woman who was constantly either at his throat or at his balls with a sharpened blade or a wanton hand?
There was one way to fix this. One way to make it clear to both of them that this thing between them was nothing more than frustrated, physical longing. Nadine locked eyes with him as a cat might fix its gaze upon an unsuspecting bird.
Before Magnus could do anything, she was on him. He was sitting up and already naked. If the barbarian meant to resist her, this would be all too easy. He didn’t resist, however, only met her gaze with a look of surprise as she mounted his lap and thrust her fingers into his hair. She shoved his face backward until his mouth tilted up toward hers, his throat exposed.
Not enough.
She released him even as his heavy hands fell around her hips. Nadine ripped up her tunic and cast it to the ground beside them, exposing her bare flesh to him. He wasted no time in taking the bait, and Nadine smiled despite the sickness stirring in her own gut at what she was doing.
When she was a child, her parents had once taken her to the sea. She and Lavinia had worked for what seemed like hours on a sand castle under the spring-day sun. It was as beautiful a piece as two children could have made. When the tide began to rise, Nadine stood without warning and brought her foot crashing down on the near-finished castle. Lavinia was shocked, yet Nadine had been the one to weep.
That same misery was resounding in her heart now. The sense that she was destroying something even before it had the chance to stand, all for the fear that when the waves came, it would be carried out to sea, and the pain of watching from the shore would be too much to bear. The barbarian’s eyes followed her bare breasts. She held his face in her hands to keep him focused on his lust. The heat of tears stung her cheeks, but she wouldn’t let them fall. Time for that later.
Her mother’s voice from that day, all those years ago, echoed back to her. ‘Shame on you, Nadine.’
Nadine jerked Magnus’s face up toward hers and girded herself for what she must do. This barbarian had thought to claim her? To conquer her? Well, there would be a conquering today. She brought her lips down to his for a hostile, crushing kiss.
Magnus pulled out of her path. Nadine hesitated, her eyes were already squeezed shut. They popped open as Magnus took her wrists with those calloused hands of his. With stunning gentleness, he pulled her hands from his face and held them away from their melded bodies.
What was this? Was he rejecting her? The thought took her breath away, and before she could even think how to respond to the idea, Magnus pressed his thumbs into her palms and gave them the lightest of strokes.
On his lap, she was sitting higher than him, and he turned his head to look up at her in that studying fashion. This time he wasn’t trying to pierce her, only appreciate. Like one might admire a work of art. He brought his face back toward hers, so close their noses brushed and the stubble of his beard rasped against her chin. She could smell him—the thought crossed her mind even as she realized he was smelling her, drinking her in like a wine.
Nadine’s stomach quickened and her blood heated. She tried to pull her arms back into herself, but he tightened his grip just enough to keep her still. Ever gentle. Her heart began to beat heavily. It hammered in her chest and almost hurt in its intensity. The urge to escape warred with the instinct to be still. To follow his lead. Had she ever wanted to follow?
“Where are you taking me, barbarian?” she breathed.
His lips parted and answered against her mouth. “We’re already here.”
They had never kissed before. Not really. Not like this. Because this, what was happening between them, was something completely different. His lips parted against hers with a languid stroke. There was no intent except to draw her close in a way their words and mutual pain had not been able to. This last bit of distance between them dissolved in the caress as Magnus tasted her and answered her reluctant shiver with a rumble so low she felt, rather than heard it. His lashes brushed against her cheek as he deepened the kiss and explored her in a way that spoke to what he truly wanted.
This was more than a parody of melded flesh for quick pleasure. In Nadine’s experience, men spoke boldly before bedding. She had never asked for the prettiness of a promise before giving her favors, despised the thought of being deceived over so base a thing. But Magnus? The way his tongue moved against hers. He’d made promises in both word and caress. And it wasn’t for a bit of sport between her legs.
Magnus’s hands released her wrists, and he drew the edges of his fingertips along her arms. She moaned into his mouth. Their breath was coming faster now. He worked his way up her shoulders to stroke her collarbones first, then the hollow of her throat, making her ache for his touch on her breasts. He encircled the small of her back with one arm and tucked her hips firmly into his hard stomach. His other hand glided down her chest.
Nadine’s eyes rolled back as heady desire overwhelmed her. Her own hands went to his skin and scanned the marks of his idadi like she could commit them all to memory but only had moments to do so. Magnus’s fingers worked their way down but stopped shy of where she needed them. She groaned, whimpered at the denial, and looked down at what he was doing. She took in a sharp breath of air. His index finger was tracing the outline of her tanshi mark. He stroked at it like a desert child brushing the petals of spring’s first rose. Their eyes met.