“Or he sees not just a vessel, but a queen.”
Heart aching, she nodded.
“And if he wishes that he had not hurt her with his assumptions?”
She shrugged as if his question were nothing to her, as if it did not send her aching heart tripping and tumbling. “He still must make use of what he has. What is done cannot be undone. But perhaps he can take what is broken and remake something new of it.”
His dark gaze searched her face. “Then let me see what I have to make use of.”
That was Yvenne. So that he could remake what was broken between them. If she allowed it.
If she wished for it, too.
With trembling fingers, she untied the laces of her robe. Though she wanted to hide her blushing face, instead she proudly lifted her chin as the covering dropped to the floor, standing before him bare as she never had been before.
Now his cock rose. Yet it was as if he were unaware of his own arousal, his gaze smoldering, scorching her skin as it slowly drifted from her hair down to her toes.
“What do you think is my view when I look at you?”
She could well imagine. “My tits are too small to succor a child.”
Slowly he nodded. “Perhaps they are. So I should suckle upon them regularly to prepare your nipples for our children’s hungry mouths. What more?”
Her eyes narrowed. “My hips are too narrow to birth a giant Parsathean baby.”
“It is not your hips that are too narrow,” he said, stepping closer, “but your tight sheath. I will have to accustom it to a stretching with my giant Parsathean sword.”
She refused to laugh at that. Her lips pressed into a firm line and drew his gaze to her mouth. Perhaps thinking of the lying tongue that lay behind it. “I am small and crippled, and my muscles are weak.”
“That is all true,” he said softly, and his big hands cupped her face. “Yet I believe that you are much stronger than I ever knew.”
Her heart filled with sudden, terrible hope. No response did she make.
His voice deepened. “I would ask more of you than a lesson, Yvenne.”
Her brow arched in silent query.
“You must tell me if anything I do causes you pain, for I will not be able to know by your breaths. And if you cannot speak to tell me, then pull at my beard, or stab me with your dagger, or boil the meat from my cock with poison.”
“I will,” she assured him.
A smile quirked his mouth. Then he lowered his head and softly kissed her.
No sound could she make. No breath could she take. Raider that he was, Maddek had stolen both.
Gently he tasted the corner of her mouth, then the center, then the opposite corner, his lips moving tenderly against hers. Again and again he did this, and so sweet it was. As if with this kiss, he was seeking out all the delicate, shattered pieces within her and smoothing their painful edges.
She knew not how to respond except to cling to his arms, and then she began to tremble when he licked the seam of her lips. His hand cupped her nape and he tipped her head back, slowly coaxing her mouth open, sliding his tongue along the sensitive inner flesh of her bottom lip.
Shivering with sensation, she opened for him, and received the luscious thrust of his tongue—oh, why had he not kissed her before? Why had she not kissed him? Fiercely now she reached up, tangling her fingers in his thick hair and hauling herself closer. So heady was this sensation, not at all like everything that had come before. Not just receiving pleasure but taking it, glorying in the sweetness and the heat. Wanting so much more. So many times he’d sucked her skin and licked her cunt, so many times he’d growled that hungry growl, starting softly and becoming more ravenous with every taste, yet never had it been so all-consuming.
“Maddek,” she gasped when he broke the kiss.
He braced his forearm beneath her bare bottom and hefted her up against his chest, until their mouths were on level. His face was a harsh mask of need as he said, “Now we will ride into battle together. Not as enemies, but allies.”
On the bed. As answer, greedily she kissed him again. He carried her behind that screen, as he had before, but this was nothing like before. With no rush, Maddek set her upon the dais to stand in front of him, then cupped her breasts and sucked at their taut peaks until Yvenne thought she might scream of pleasure and frustration. Her nipples throbbed, red as rubies when he abandoned them to trail ravenous kisses downward, tongue slicking into her navel before he glanced up, his eyes hot.
“Lie upon the bed, Yvenne, with thighs widespread.”
So he would assume the role of commander in this battle. Yet it was an order she could not easily follow, lying upon the bed but not yet exposing herself to him. Discarding the silk around his hips, Maddek climbed up onto the platform, head and shoulders bent beneath the low ceiling, his gaze hungry upon her. Slipping his fingers under her knees, he gently spread her open.
Quivering with anticipation, she eyed the thick length that hung heavily between his muscular thighs. “I do not want to be the horse.”
That stopped him. “The horse?”
“As we ride into battle, we become one with our mounts—and it is as if we fly.” She recited the words that had branded themselves on her heart beneath a moonlit sky, the very first night she had begun living. “But I do not want to be the mount.”
So beautiful Maddek was when he grinned. Settling his shoulders between her splayed thighs, he told her, “You need only be a warrior-queen.”
Then she would. “And what will you be?”
“Yours,” he said in a raw voice, and bent his head to feast.
And this, too, he had done before. So many times. Yet all was different as he devoured her slowly. For this was the first time that wonder blossomed within her, the exhilarating thought that he might be entangled, too. Maddek had returned to her. Not just to fuck but to see her anew. To see her as more than vessel, as more than queen, but as a woman who might be trusted with a small piece of his heart.
That wondrous thought was within her as she came against his tongue, her body quaking and her chest swollen with sheer emotion. Maddek moved over her shuddering form, pushing her right leg higher, spreading her open wider. He kissed her, his mouth still glistening with her arousal, and still it seemed nothing like honey, but her blood was—pulsing slow and thick and sweet beneath her skin.
Into her eyes he looked, holding her gaze as pressure built at the entrance of her cunt, then abruptly gave way into a sharp, stretching burn. Yvenne gasped softly, clutching at his shoulders. There was no pain this time. Yet it was not entirely pleasure, either, for there was so much of him. More than he’d given her before.
Endlessly his thick cock wedged deeper, until she could take nothing more. His hips settled fully in the cradle of her widespread thighs. He kissed her again, a caress of lips softer than his voice, which was a strained rasp against her mouth.