“It’s certainly a unique opportunity to indulge in the many pleasures offered by the Flower Court,” Kara said, inclining his head toward me.
“Yes,” Con said. “So stay and enjoy yourself.”
“Are you going somewhere?” Kara asked, and Sondra snickered.
Con glared at her, but set a hand at the small of my back, as he had during the dance. “You are off duty, but I have one more to perform. Shall we, Your Highness?”
I answered in the same lofty tone. “Indeed, Conrí.”
* * *
It took a bit more than that to extract ourselves from all the well-wishers and climb the stairs, pausing once more to wave good night. Ibolya moved to attend me, Nahua and Orvyki starting up the stairs also, but I waved them all away.
“I won’t need you until morning,” I told Ibolya. “Have you seen Tertulyn?”
She shook her head. “No, Your Highness. Shall I find her for You?”
“No. You all enjoy the parties tonight. You did well today. Especially you, Ibolya. You have My gratitude.”
Beaming with surprised pleasure, she curtsied. Con and I walked on, guards saluting as we passed, guests who were going from one party to another pausing to offer congratulations. I allowed it now, though I kept the exchanges brief, if only in deference to Con’s palpably simmering impatience. As we climbed to my rooms, the halls grew quieter—and the tension between us thicker.
“Your people seemed amused at the prospect of you bedding Me,” I said into the dense silence between us.
He coughed, a bit of a choking sound in it, then glanced at me, absently rubbing at the gold paint on his shirt with his free hand. “Are you—” It came out gravelly, and he cleared his throat. “Are you asking for my sexual history?”
“Why, is it a long and fascinating one?” I’d meant to be flirtatious and coy, but it was the wrong thing to say.
His eyes went flat, and he stared down the hall like a man going to an execution rather than his marriage bed. “No.”
Ah. As I’d begun to suspect. “Well, we hardly need to get into involved acrobatics or the more exotic sensual arts,” I said. “It’s a simple act, with a few basic steps, after all is said and done. We can dispense with the marital obligation quite quickly.”
“And you’ll show me these steps?”
“Well, I have lived in the Flower Court all My life. I’d say that, while I’m not personally experienced with a man, I know a fair amount about a woman’s body and I understand the overall mechanics well enough.”
He flicked a glance at me, made a sound under his breath.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“You can be so … cold,” he said. “Does nothing matter to you?”
A surprisingly painful sting from an unexpected quarter, so I fell back on my usual lines. “One thing,” I replied. “Ca—”
“—lanthe,” he finished with me, sounding grim.
I’d misstepped again. I should start thinking of Con as like one of his vurgsten charges—liable to explode with the least spark. Though I knew myself to be cold, so it shouldn’t bother me that he knew it, too. I’d spent years developing that protective ice, and I didn’t know how to melt it now. But I did know how to pretend.
We turned into the long hall leading to my rooms, the guards flanking the doors at attention. I moved in closer to Con, letting him feel the outer curve of my breast against his arm, where the cloak didn’t cover it. “Truth be told,” I purred, my words only for him, “I was rather enticed by your promise to eat Me alive.” Truth there. And the heat would perhaps overcome all the rest of this awkwardness of bedding a stranger.
He tensed, that muscle ticking in his jaw. “Yes?”
“Oh yes.” I smiled at the guards as they opened the double doors. “Good night, gentlemen,” I said. “Make sure My husband and I aren’t disturbed tonight.”
“Yes, Your Highness.” They bowed and closed the doors behind us.
My ladies had come back in my absence, Ejarat bless them in their earnestness. They’d decorated my chambers, too, with garlands of orchids tied with black satin ribbon, and they’d lit candles shielded by hurricane lamps, scattering them about the room. Sweet of them, to think of romance for me.
Though foolish, as they all knew full well how little this forced marriage had to do with any of the gentler emotions. Surprised to find myself terribly nervous, I turned to face Con, who stood just inside the doors, looking as if he didn’t know what to do with his hands.
Ejarat take me, neither did I.
30
The candlelight gleamed on Lia’s full breasts and taut nipples. I’d been hard so long that I ached, the tight pants that charming little Ibolya had talked me into wearing—no, sweetly threatened me into by evoking my promise to her mistress—so constricting they’d been torture.
Lia sauntered up to me, hips swaying under the revealing golden mesh. Her skin beneath my hands had been so hot that I’d been hard-pressed not to reach for more. Now that we were alone …
Sawehl take me—facing a charging army required less courage.
What an idiot I was, admitting to my lack of experience. What a naive fool she must take me for.
But I caught a glimmer of uncertainty in Lia’s clear eyes, a hint of vulnerability I hadn’t expected. It helped that she let me see it. Perhaps not so cold after all.
She smiled, coming close enough that her intoxicating scent obliterated my senses. She smelled of flowers, of course. A river of them. And something else beneath, something essentially green, like the fresh scent of a broken leaf in springtime. Moving slowly, she laid her hands on my chest, her touch warm through the silk, her nails a light scratch. Watching my face, she slid one hand down, closing it over my rigid cock. I jerked at the touch, nearly spilling after the long teasing. I grabbed her by the wrists, pulling her hands away.
“No?” she asked.
I didn’t know what to say. Mostly I wanted to kiss her, to seize her and see the tantalizing bits she’d teased me with all evening.
“It might help to take the edge off,” she suggested, not unkindly.
I knew what she meant. I might’ve declined the services any number of women and men had offered during our campaign, but they’d been explicit in what I missed by returning to my solitary tent. My cock leapt of its own accord, giving its own answer, but I didn’t know if a true gentleman would accept such an offer from his queen.
“I want to touch you,” I grated out. Honest, though maybe desperate sounding. Not that I’d fool her anyway. I’d gone beyond desperate with the long-ignored needs. Somehow Lia—cold, calculating, imperious, and infuriating Lia—had lit the fuse to the explosives I’d carried dormant inside me.
“Then touch me, Con.” She slipped her wrists out of my hands and held her arms up in a graceful movement, like a dancer. Then paused. “Or does the body paint bother you?”
“The crown bothers me,” I admitted.
She laughed, putting her hands to it. “I wear it so much I forget about it.” Plucking deftly at pins that had held it in place, she lifted the crown off her head and set it aside, shaking out her hair. “Your turn.”