“I will do better, great lord,” she said, that stubborn chin rising up again.
“I know you will,” he assured her, touching a gentle fingertip under her chin. “And if you have any questions or need any help, I could guide you to someone of the court who can help train you in its etiquettes. She can help empower you with the servants. After all, you must remember you are now the right hand to the most powerful woman of all Allay, and, as her right hand, you must act just as powerfully.”
“I can do just fine on my own,” she said stubbornly. “I merely forgot …” She paused for a few beats and he waited patiently. His patience of late had been surprising even to himself. “But perhaps … if you point someone out …”
He took her by her elbow and guided her back down the passages and to the entrance of the court hall, where nobles still milled about in heavy numbers.
“Let’s see,” he mused as he made a big show of thinking about things. “There is Paxor Brigitte. She is a bit rigid at times as far as protocol and proper behavior are concerned, but you will find no better walking rule book.” He continued to scan about. “And then there’s Mistress Holbiert. She is wed to one of our paxors and has been a friend to many of the greater ladies of the court, although she has been known to be quite crushing to anyone she feels has crossed her. A great friend to have, but beware if you make an enemy of her.”
“Perhaps it is best she remain on the periphery altogether,” Suna said dismissively.
“Perhaps you are right. Well, my only other choice would be the Lady Eirie. She is young and wise. The wealthy widow of a man long respected in court circles. She has been at court since a very young age and knows all of its ins and outs quite well. She understands all the finest points of etiquette and has an impeccable reputation for it; however, I think you would find her to be more flexible and understanding of your mistress’s inexperience and youthful needs.”
Balkin had given her a choice, and she could easily choose in a less favorable direction, but he didn’t think she would. Still it was important that she feel in charge of the decision. It would help her to form a quicker bond of trust with her selection if she felt she had had full power when making it.
“I think perhaps the Lady Eirie is the best choice,” she said.
Balkin didn’t even feel relief. He had been that confident.
“Are you certain? There is something to be said for older wisdom.”
“My lady is not known for her rigidity and cold adherence to the rules. I think someone of youth who knows the rules but is more easily able to flex is the better choice.”
“Perhaps you are correct,” he said with a noncommittal shrug. “Come with me and I will introduce you to her. Then you ought to hurry back to your mistress in case she comes out of her conference and needs you.”
It was as though all the last chains holding Rush had finally slipped away. Earlier he had been hasty and still unsure of the wisdom of his actions, but after trying so hard to create even the smallest amount of heat and being so thoroughly thwarted by the water he stood in, he was utterly convinced that he would not hurt her. Knowing that was like swallowing a strange and powerful aphrodisiac, like empowering himself on a visceral level.
Ambrea moaned softly against his lips as he kissed her until they were both breathless and their mouths tender from his constant devouring hunger for her. He couldn’t explain why she was so damn enticing, so incredibly delightful to him. But then again, why wouldn’t she be? He had never met anyone like her. She was such a compilation of bravery and strength, yet full of gentility and fairness. He was very aware of the power she was now wielding, of what it could do to her, of what he had seen power do to others in many other countries of the Three Worlds. But he didn’t question her. He felt a faith in her that he had not felt in anyone else in his life. Not even Bronse, a leader he trusted with his life and followed faithfully. Even after all his years under Bronse’s guidance and all the scrapes they had been through together, he still couldn’t bring himself to trust the commander with the secret he held on to so vehemently.
But Rush trusted Ambrea, now more than ever, he realized as he pulled her body tightly to his, gripping her slender thighs and dragging them up around his waist. She eagerly clung to him, her mouth just as impassioned against his as his was against hers.
Rush let his eyes close as his entire spirit breathed an emotional sigh of relief. It seemed as though he had craved her from the moment of his birth. Even his mother had not wanted to accept him in his entirety. From the moment he had first accidentally burned her, she had not been comfortable touching him. She had tried to cover it up, had made every effort to make up for it in other ways, but he had easily sensed his mother’s fear of him.
Rush had known in that moment that not just anyone would have done for him. Ambrea was not a convenient body, close at hand when he realized it was safe for him to touch a woman. He didn’t want anyone else. No one else would feel so precious and good, no one else could make him so hard with lust and need because no one else would have earned the trust necessary for him to feel free to indulge in those feelings.
He pulled away from her mouth and dragged his lips down her throat, his tongue tasting her creamy skin, his hands exploring the stretching length of her back. What he wouldn’t give right then to have her sprawled out before him in a bed, those long, pale limbs reaching for him, spreading to welcome him.
“Ah, it’s never enough, is it?” he breathed against the crest of her collarbone. “We’re never content to have what we have. We’re always seeking more.”
“What more are you looking for?” she asked him, her voice light with the speed of her breathing. “Tell me what I can give to you, Rush.”
“You’ve given me more than enough already,” he told her hotly, his hands gripping her hard where he held her. “I only want you. More of you. Everything about you. All I crave now are the things about you that stand out of my momentary reach. But I will have them all, Blue Eyes. I will find a way to have them all.”
“And you are welcome to them,” she promised him as she pressed her lips against the corner of his eye. “What we don’t have now we will find a way to have later. Your limitations are only what your own mind holds up in your way. I firmly believe that.”
“And you are making a believing scholar out of me, Ambrea.” He drew back to meet her eyes with his, unaware of the emotion that his amber gaze betrayed along with the fiery heat of need. “You’ve done nothing but teach me new things and reteach me what I thought I knew. Ah, how fitting it is,” he exhaled, “that we both learn this together.”
She nodded. “I always thought I would be afraid of this. I always thought I would be awkward and inept because”—she swallowed but did not look away from his intense regard—“I’m so old and so ridiculously inexperienced.”
He laughed at that, pushing back the wet fall of her cinnamon dark hair.
“And what does that make me, eh?”
That made her giggle, and he was happy that his own lack of experience could put her at ease. For himself, he wasn’t going to let it stand in his way. This wasn’t going to be about an expertise he could not magically acquire in the next few minutes. It was just about her and the incredible gift she was giving him, the incredible craving for her he could not deny.
Rush ran his hands down her back, curving them around the fullness of her backside and gripping her there for a moment before pulling her up higher against himself. Her weight was nothing to his strength, yet it felt so good as she rewrapped her legs around his ribs. Her hands dove into his hair, clasping him around his head as he nosed against her breast. As wet as she was, he could smell the sweetness of her, the aroma that was so unique to her and so arousing to his senses. He opened his mouth against her and drew her distended nipple between his lips. It seemed so strange that this place on her body would be any more or less arousing than any of the others, but it was very much the case. Her nipple was a fair and pretty pink,
the tip of it thrusting hard against his laving tongue. And when he sucked on her strongly, she let out a cry that made him ache with wildly increasing need. She clutched him to her and even forced him to relinquish one breast in order to attend to the other, which he gladly did. By the time he was sated enough with this particular discovery, he could feel her tempting pussy rubbing hot and wet against his chest. She was squirming against him, stimulating herself. The way she was moaning and panting was driving him insane. He dropped an arm down, prying it under her leg and forcing her to relinquish the vise grip of her thighs around his ribs. She was all long limbs as he lowered her back onto the tub ledge and the floor that ran up to its edge. Her hands grasped for his shoulders until he drew fully out of her reach and she was forced to settle for locking her fingers around his hair or dragging them up and down the length of his arms. She reacted to the cold tile floor at her back, her body arching and creating a beautiful plateau of curves and feminine flesh, unlike anything he had ever seen before.
Rush took a long moment to simply absorb everything. As hasty as the rest of him was clamoring to be, he wouldn’t rush this. He wouldn’t cheat himself of a single thing, and he most certainly wouldn’t cheat her.
It would be a much harder ideal than he realized as her hands strove to stroke over him anywhere she could reach. He closed his eyes for a moment, simply feeling the caress of her hands over all the tautly distended muscles of his arms, shoulders, chest, and belly. He had settled his stance against the side of the tub, directly between her smooth thighs. He seized her around her hips and dragged her right to the lip of the tub and right into secure contact with him, his hot and hard sex to her hot and soft one. The connection made her breath hitch in her throat, made her hands dig into his forearms where they were settled at that moment.
Rush smiled, not realizing just how supremely wicked the expression was. He let himself lay nestled in the channel of her sex’s outer lips, but only for a moment. He immediately had to give in to the urge to rub himself against her, over and over again, wetting himself in the precious fluid of her aroused body. His intention at first had been perhaps to touch her with his hands, explore her slowly like that, familiarize himself with her wet and sensitive tissues, but that plan quickly went out the window and this particular contact grabbed deeply at him, held him prisoner and a slave to the open heat of her body.
It most certainly didn’t help when she reached down and feathered curious fingers over his painfully tight erection. He gripped hold of her thigh when she maneuvered her hand fully around him and, without much seeming patience herself, guided him straight to the cusp of her body’s entrance.
“Ah damn,” he breathed as they both worked with sudden haste to readjust and better align their bodies. “I suppose there’s time later for the little things.”
“Yes. Later,” she agreed urgently.
He chuckled at that, but was hardly even giving any attention to his humor. What held his entire focus was the way she felt as he pressed for entrance into her body. She was tight and resistant, yet the wet of her was everything welcoming that it could be. It took only a moment’s persistence for him to start intruding into all that fierce heat and snugness.
And just like that, in a blinding flash, the urge to thrust was gripping at him violently. He couldn’t control it, it came on him so suddenly and in such a driving, instinctual way. In all his years of knowing just how to pace himself, of knowing when to toss out ordnance so he had just enough time to get free of a blast radius, or to wait until just the right moment so his team was protected as best they could be …
But all that skill and patience abandoned him. As the burn of need settled around his brain, he tried to remind himself that she was no doubt going to be scared, or perhaps it might even hurt her if he didn’t keep command of himself. Yet none of that held him back from thrusting hard into her, trying to arrow into her tempting but tight little channel. Before he knew it, he was halfway into her, listening to her gasp and pant for breath, feeling her legs gripping him like a vise as she held him tensely. He wasn’t sure if she was waiting for him to continue or waiting for the moment she would kick him away, and he was willing to bet she wasn’t sure either. He was aware that it shouldn’t be a question, that he shouldn’t have come this far without making sure she was as relaxed and as ready as she needed to be. However, even if he wanted to, he couldn’t go back and fix what may or may not even be a problem. That wasn’t what he wanted. What he wanted was to take away her residual fear and insecurities the same way he wanted to take away his own. The same way he had always pushed through them. Straight ahead. Firmly forward.
When he thrust deeper into her, she gasped and cried out all at once. Her nails suddenly gripped his flesh, a reflection of the pain she was feeling. It was enough to give him a moment’s pause, to remind him to have better care with her, to slow down his selfish pace.
“Easy,” he said softly to her, bending over her to look down into her eyes as they grew wet with the light touch of tears. “Am I hurting you, Blue Eyes?”
“No,” she exhaled quickly. “It’s just … it feels … I never thought I would ever get to feel like this.”
“This is barely the start of it,” he said. When she lifted a brow, he had to chuckle sheepishly. “Or so I’m told.”
That made her smile up at him, and Rush felt his chest tighten and felt his entire body wormed through with a feverish heat. Though her reactions had been enough to give him pause, he had needed to fight for every second of that pause. Whether they were ready for it or not, their bodies most certainly felt otherwise. And the liquidity of her grasp around his throbbing cock made him feel very certain that he could speak for her as well as for himself. He reached to brush his hand over her face, his fingertips burrowing into her wet hair, his opposite hand pinning her at the hip as he shifted and thrust fully forward once more. Now he was firmly and fully seated inside her, somehow her smaller body accepting his bigger one with hardly a complaint. It seemed impossible for something as soft and elegant as she was to be so easily able to accept something as hard and uncouth as he was, but there it was, the perfect meshing of two bodies, and an uprising wall of need and heat in its wake demanding even more. He scooped her up at the shoulders, sitting her into his embrace, hugging her tightly to his chest as he took a moment to burrow his face against her neck and ear. She was panting in quick, heated breaths that just about drove him out of his mind, her hands flitting like a confused flit-flyer around his shoulders, his chest, and through his hair.
Rush felt a heart-stinging emotion that was too intense to comprehend, to mentally dissect. For a moment he couldn’t even breathe as it washed over him. All he could do was hold on to her, take deep breaths full of her, feel each of her laboring breaths shuddering through her and squeezing around him. His throat went so tight that it almost strangled him, and his feelings were so overwhelming just then that he knew he couldn’t speak even if his life had depended on it. Even if she looked into his eyes, as she was doing just then, and saw all of his soul laid bare and exposed, he could do nothing to shade himself, protect himself from revealing too much to her, revealing more than even he had realized.
So instead of acknowledging his vulnerability, he simply held her close and pulled slightly free of her so he could thrust deeply in return. Ambrea clenched around him, from the inside of her body to the clutching of her arms and legs, her breath a sensual-sounding hitch close to his ear. When she shivered in his hands, her lips brushing against his whiskered cheek, he held her closer and repeated the movement, only this time drawing it out longer, more slowly, a deeper, more intense return. And somehow this time it felt even more intimate than it had the first time. She may as well have just crawled beneath his skin and wrapped herself around his heart, because the feeling was the same.
Easy, Rush, he told himself. Don’t let the newness of it all carry you away.
But as much as he would like to blame it on that, Rush knew it went much fur
ther than that. He also knew it was a damned inconvenient muck of emotions that he couldn’t afford to get wrapped up in. Still, when he closed his eyes and felt her heat burning him, he couldn’t make himself close off any part from her in that moment.
Ambrea was making every effort not to cry. Her entire body was on fire, though there were no visible flames. Her skin practically vibrated with sensation. And that was speaking nothing of the overwhelming feel of him as he invaded her innermost core, writhed around inside her, pulled her closer and closer and clearly had no desire to let her go. She had never felt so thoroughly connected to another human being. She had never been touched so well and so deeply. That he aroused her was the purest of understatements in that moment, and as she watched the passion and indefinable emotion flowering in his rich red-brown eyes, she could only be overwhelmed by her own feelings. He would never understand what this felt like for her. He would never comprehend how deeply even the simplest of his touches affected her, never mind a touch as intimate as this one. But she suspected that the surest way to make him leave her, to make him want to put distance between them and to guard himself, would be to show him the intensity of the emotions she was feeling.
So she fought it back, closed her eyes so she could protect them both from her rampant, girlish feelings, and instead focused on the pure carnality of the moment. Her breasts weighed heavily with her arousal, their tips thrusting into sensitive, hard points that screamed sensation back at her every time she brushed up against him. Her hands moved over him again and again, shaping around the contours of his well-developed muscle and the way it all came strapped together beneath his skin and making up this powerful body that now moved against her … moved deeply inside of her. She held back the sudden urge to scream out by biting into his shoulder. It was a strong bite, though not enough to break his skin. It was just strong enough to help her keep her sanity.
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