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.