“Lesson number one. Close your eyes while kissing,” she said.
“And lesson number two?” he asked, very serious.
“Ghost says you don’t have to hold still when you kiss. You can move your lips back and forth, softly, almost like you are nodding your head. I’ll show you.”
“Yes. P-please show me.”
She leaned forward and took his face in her hands to steady herself. Then, with her eyes open so she could gauge how her lesson was being received, she brushed her lips over his—back and forth, back and forth—painting his unpursed mouth with her own. Realizing that he wasn’t puckering like she did, she relaxed her mouth to instruct him, but his hands were suddenly in her hair, holding her in place. He copied her small strokes—back and forth, back and forth—but he kept his lips soft, smoothing out the tight rosebud Ghost had taught her to make. He nipped at her top lip, pulling it gently between his own, before moving to her lower lip and repeating the caress.
Her eyes fluttered closed, and she forgot what lesson number three was, until he pulled away ever so slightly to allow her breath.
“I must be a very good teacher,” she murmured.
His breath fluttered across her lips as though he exhaled on a smile, but his hands tightened in her hair when she tried to pull back to see if he laughed at her.
“You are. Very good. But I owe you at least a dozen more,” he murmured, not stumbling over a solitary word.
She wrapped her arms around his neck—she’d just remembered lesson number three—and slanted her mouth over his, feeling like a seasoned courtesan with so many kisses already under her belt. Somehow he knew to wrap his arms around her as well. Then he was kissing her with a confidence not present for their previous kisses, meeting her seeking lips with welcome abandon.
She felt the heat of his tongue slide against the entrance to her mouth and remembered lesson number four. She’d thought lesson number four would be something she wouldn’t enjoy, yet she found herself opening to him like a flower to the sun.
He tasted her with a tentative tongue, as though walking in the dark, brushing the walls of her mouth with a careful touch, allowing her to lead him in his blind explorations. He discovered without invading, coaxed without controlling, and she answered with a whimper and a whisper, his name a prayer in her head.
He kissed her until her mouth was sore and her lips swollen, until his breath filled her lungs and his large hands, molding and remolding her back, were the only thing that kept her from melting like hot wax against his chest. Then his mouth trailed across her cheek and settled in the curve of her neck. For a moment he kissed her neck the way he’d kissed her lips, insistent yet reverent, and then he raised his head, saying her name like he needed her to beg him to cease. She never would.
“Alba,” he whispered, fire in the word, and she tried to open her heavy lids—once, twice—before gazing at him in a love-drunk haze.
“More,” she pled, catching his mouth with hers all over again. He capitulated for several seconds, his tongue dancing with hers in a desperate embrace, before he rose to his feet—back bowed so he could keep kissing her—and severed the connection with a frustrated groan. The sound was more animal than man, a rumble that resonated in his chest. He retreated several steps, turning away from her, his long braid trailing down his broad back. She watched as his inhalations slowed and became undetectable to her eyes. He turned and walked back to her, not meeting her gaze. Then he reached down and clasped her around the waist, setting her on her feet before turning away once more.
“We need to get back,” he said, firm. No stuttering. No room for argument. But Alba still tried.
“I’m not sure that was a dozen more. I think it may have been four or five very long kisses . . . so we might have to have more lessons before you . . . go,” she babbled, breathless.
“I do not need lessons, Alba.”
She was silent for several long seconds.
“I know,” she murmured. “You are a very good kisser. How silly of me to think you didn’t know how. I have been waiting for you. I thought . . . maybe . . . you had been waiting for me.”
He spun on her, his face filled with such frustration that she stumbled back. Bayr had never looked at her thus, not even when she had scared him to death, when she had covered his eyes and made him run blind, when he had to trail her around the market, holding baskets filled with fripperies and lace, hour after hour. Not when she’d demanded he swing her over his head again and again so she could see how it felt to fly.
He was instantly in front of her, panting through the lips she had just kissed. A man his size should not be able to move so fast. But no one moved as fast as Bayr. No one was as strong. Or brave. Or true. There was no one like him. And he was hers. In her heart, he had belonged to her, and she had known one day, when she was grown, she would be able to claim him. The way Dolphys had claimed him.
She reached up and touched his face.
“I have been waiting so long, Bayr. Don’t you understand? I love you. I know you don’t see me as I see you. You don’t see us as I see us. I was a child that you cared for. I was your charge. Your responsibility. Your princess.”
“My Alba,” he groaned.
“Yes. But you were everything to me. Always. I’ve had my heart set on you all my life. Ask Dagmar. He tried to convince me otherwise. But I wouldn’t listen. He said it could never happen, that I must leave Saylok and marry a king of another land. He thinks the men of Saylok are cursed—including my father—and that I must leave to help her. Like you have. I would gladly leave this place. But not without you.”
His eyes shone, and his hands shook, and for a moment she thought he would kiss her again.
“Your father w-will never allow it,” he whispered. “If he knew I had laid a hand on you, if he knew I had kissed you . . .” His eyes darkened, and his throat worked like he couldn’t believe he’d done such a thing. “If he knew, he would cut off my braid and have my eyes b-burned from my head. Master Ivo saw this. He saw us. He warned me to wait . . . but I couldn’t stay away. Not forever.”
“You promised me you would come back.”
“I shouldn’t have.”
“You are the strongest man in all of Saylok. If anyone can stand up to my father, it is you.”
“I am one man. I cannot d-defeat the world by myself. Even for you.”
“Then promise me this—”
“No more kisses,” he interrupted.
She tried to smile but could not. Nor would she make such a vow. “My mother was sixteen when she married Banruud. Ghost was fourteen when she first . . . knew . . . a man. You know I am of age, Bayr. Of the few women Saylok has, all have long been married at my age.”
“The king will want to w-wait until he makes the most advantageous match.”
“My mother was the daughter of the king. She married a chieftain. You are suitable in every way.”
“Not to Banruud,” he retorted. He was so adamant in his arguments, and with every word her agony grew.
“But . . . would you want me?”
“My life is not about w-what I w-want, Alba. It never has been.”
“But . . . if nothing stood in our way . . . would you want me?” she asked softly, her hands pressed to her chest to shore up her heart. “Would you run away with me?”