More. She raked her nails down his back. Touch me everywhere, let me know how it feels, let me have this, I want, I need—
Alaric broke the kiss, dragging his lips from her mouth to the slope of her neck. Talasyn’s eyes fluttered open—when had she closed them?—and her spine arched as he sucked and nipped at the column of her throat, his hips rolling against hers. He was so long and broad. He covered her utterly, and maybe she could belong to this, if nothing else. His teeth scraped at a particularly sensitive spot on her neck and she shivered, her fingers tracing the shell of his ear. Her frenzied gaze slid to the Dominion insignia woven into the silk canopy—the coiled dragon rearing up, claws out, wings outstretched, ruby eyes gleaming, surrounded by a field of stars and moons.
The sight jolted her back to reality. Made her aware of the world again.
She couldn’t do this.
They couldn’t do this.
It would only end in ruin.
“Wait,” she gasped out.
He immediately stopped what he was doing, raising his head to peer down at her, cradling the side of her face in one large palm, the pad of his thumb rubbing along her cheekbone as he waited, as she’d asked him to. His eyes were liquid silver in the muddle of moonbeams and stardust, seeing her for what she was, seeing her as what he’d turned her into, this disheveled, undone mess of a girl.
She meant to tell him that they had to stop. Truly, she meant to. But she couldn’t bring herself to say the words. She felt feverish and unsatisfied, the heat at the apex of her thighs pulsing with an unbearable ache, an emptiness. Her hand rose up to clutch at his shirtfront.
“Alaric,” she whispered.
He went tense at the sound of his name. His eyes darkened.
And then, with a growl, he fell upon her.
Or maybe she pulled him in. She had no idea who’d moved first. She knew only that the winter of her soul burst into springtime flowers the moment that he captured her lips in another shattering kiss. A kiss that seemed to beg the same things that her entire being was crying out for.
Don’t think.
Just feel this.
There’s only us.
Leaving her panting for breath, just as he was, he switched to her neck again, nibbling and sucking almost hard enough to bruise, inhaling the amber-and-rose perfume called dragon’s blood that had been dabbed on her pulse point. He mumbled “Tala” into her skin over and over, the vibrations rippling through her in tremors like tiny earthquakes, and a bittersweet tear dripped from the corner of her eye because talliyezarin was a weed on the Great Steppe but tala was the Nenavarene word for star, and there was no way that he could have known that, but she could pretend. She wrapped one leg around his lean hip and his kisses to her throat turned feverish and he rucked her gossamer skirt up her thighs and suddenly—
Suddenly his hand was between her legs, touching her through her underthings.
“Gods above.” Alaric pressed a fierce, smoldering kiss to her lips. “You’re soaked, beautiful girl,” he groaned into her mouth. “My wet little wife.”
Talasyn wasn’t embarrassed by the dampness that she knew he could feel, although she probably should have been. What she was embarrassed by was the flush of pleasure that warmed her all over at his endearment. She sank her teeth into his plush bottom lip, taking advantage of his surprise to flip him over. He let out a soft grunt as his head hit the pillow, gazing up at her with silver-rimmed pupils blown wide.
“If you ever”—she straddled him fully, biting back a whimper of shuddery delight as she ground down on his hardness—“call me that again—”
“Isn’t it the truth?” His hands wrapped around her waist, holding her in place as he thrust. Just once, but it was enough for a hoarse shout to roll off her tongue at the abrupt, unexpected friction against her core that had her eyes fluttering shut. And then he was rolling her over, she was spread flat on the bed once more, held down by him, by his mouth on hers and his knee between her thighs. “Aren’t you beautiful?” he broke the kiss long enough to ask, before swallowing her protest with his lips. “Aren’t you so small in my arms?” As if to emphasize his point, he ran a hand down her body until the mound of his palm was past her navel, showing her how he could span her midsection like this, the tips of his fingers grazing the undersides of her breasts. “Aren’t you wet?” he asked huskily, that same hand sliding lower still, back to where she needed to be touched so badly that it was painful. “Aren’t you my wife?” he rasped in her ear.
“Bastard.” She contemplated kneeing him in the groin, but somehow her legs spread wider, granting his wandering touches more access. Her right hand slipped under his shirt, tracing the chiseled musculature of his abdomen. “You only think I’m beautiful when I’m all done up. You said so yourself.”
Alaric winced against her skin. She felt his shoulders tense, then fall with something like surrender. “I lied,” he said, and it was another wall—so laboriously constructed—being demolished. He sprinkled kisses on her brow, her cheeks, and the tip of her nose. Feather-light kisses, filled with a tender reverence that made her soul sing. “You’re always beautiful. Even when you want to string my guts up like paper lanterns.”
He kissed her on the mouth again and she let him, and she kissed him back, her free hand tangling in his hair as her hips canted toward his wrist, searching for more friction. “Move your fingers,” she grumped, digging her nails into his scalp.
He nuzzled at the tip of her nose. “I knew that you would be bossy.” He sighed in contentment, and in the dark it felt as though he was smiling against her lips, but before she could be certain, he complied with her curt instructions and slowly glided his fingertips over the increasingly dampening silk that covered her.
Talasyn would have wept with relief that the pressure building up within her was finally being taken care of, if she hadn’t moaned first. Encouraged by the sound, Alaric strewed hot kisses along the line of her jaw, matching the rhythm of his mouth with that of his fingers rubbing silk into wet skin. Her body strained into his as she instinctively hungered for more closeness, her head thrown back, her throat exposed to his greedy mouth.
The evidence of his desire rocked against her hip. And there was quite a lot of evidence from the feel of it, hot and heavy in his trousers. Wicked curiosity blazed through her and she reached down, working him loose, wrapping her fist around him.