Shaking back her cloak of hair, she picked up the carafe and a goblet, holding them at nipple level and subtly thrusting out her breasts. “Wine?” she inquired in a throaty voice.
He yanked his gaze up to hers, his face flushed. “Ah, what did you say?”
Putty in her hands. She smiled sensually. “I asked if you’d like wine also.”
“Oh.” He stared uncomprehending at the items in her hands, obviously distracted by everything else she had on display. So much edge on this man. It might take weeks, even months to bleed off all that sexuality he’d bottled up. The thought made her purr. “I better not,” he finally said, a vagueness to it that hinted he’d forgotten what he was talking about.
I better not might as well be Astar’s personal motto. One she intended to change before she was done with him. Or he was done with her, which was more likely at this point, sadly enough, with the Dinas of the world on the hunt for tender crown prince prey.
Still, he was hers for the moment and she planned to savor him while she could, rather than worrying about some terrible future when she’d be forced to turn him over to one of those Dinas. Pouring two goblets of wine, she brought them back to the bed, handing them to him to hold while she walked around to the other side, all strategically planned so she could crawl across the bed toward him.
Well rewarded by his rapt expression, she curled up against some pillows, took one goblet from him, and sipped from it. Waited.
It took a moment, but a wry expression replaced the dazed look on Astar’s face. He drained the wine in one gulp, set it aside, and raked his hands through his hair. “I know what you’re doing.”
She raised a brow. “I would hope so. We’ve only just started being lovers, but you seem like a fast learner.”
Breathing a laugh, he shook his head, ponderous bear in the motion. “It’s not fair to use how incredibly beautiful you are to distract me from important matters.”
On the contrary, Zeph rather thought that distracting Astar from worrying and overthinking might be her primary calling. She would do very well in that role—but she didn’t say so. Besides, it made her unreasonably happy that he called her beautiful, the gríobhth inside preening its glossy feathers. “So,” she prompted. “What did you want to discuss? Or perhaps we can skip the guilt after all and go right back to using this precious time wisely.”
“I notice you didn’t heal the marks I put on you when you shifted.”
Not entirely distracted after all. Something to keep in mind for the future. “I did not,” she agreed, pulling her hair aside to expose the bite mark on her neck, tracing a nail over it to feel the shiver. “I like knowing you feel as possessive of me as I do of you. Careful, controlled Astar: a ravening beast under that handsome exterior.”
He spread his hands, looking at them. “I’ve spent my life trying to control that beast. I don’t understand why it’s escaping me now.”
She polished off her own wine, tossed the goblet to land with a soft thunk on the rug, then crawled to sit sideways on Astar’s lap. “The more we tighten our grip on something, the more likely it is to slip through our fingers. How much time do you spend in bear form?”
“More this week than for months before this,” he admitted.
Winding her arms around his neck, idly toying with the soft hairs at his nape, she settled her naked hip against his crotch, delighted to find him as hard as ever, and sweetly pleased when he set a big hand on her thigh. “Try as you might to be all mossback,” she said, “you are a shapeshifter. Our First Forms inform who we are, and the grizzly bear is as much a part of you as your kind heart and dutiful nature.”
Giving her a bemused look, he smoothed his hand along her thigh, following it with his gaze and seeming entranced by the dimpling of her flesh. “I was under the impression that you didn’t have a high regard for my adherence to honor and duty.”
“I don’t understand it,” she replied, “but I do admire that in you.”
He glanced up, clearly startled, searching her face. “Are you just saying that?”
“To get into your pants?” she replied teasingly, wriggling suggestively so his hands tightened on her. “I seem to have done that without flattery.”
“Good point,” he answered with some chagrin.
“I wouldn’t lie about that, though,” she continued, honestly enough, as this seemed the time for it. “I think you let your rules choke and cage you, but I also know they’re qualities that will make you a good king.”
He smiled uncertainly. “I hope so.”
“But,” she added, tapping him over his heart, “the bear has qualities that will make you a good king, too. Use that in yourself. Don’t try to strangle the life from it.”
He picked up her hand and turned it over to kiss her palm, giving her a lovely shiver. “When did my free-spirited Zephyr become so wise?”
“Lots of time flying and mulling the mysteries of the universe,” she replied loftily. “Spend more time in animal form and you will learn new ways of seeing things, too.”
Grimacing, he toyed with her fingers. “Ursula thinks it’s better if the people aren’t reminded that I’m a shapeshifter.”
“I know. But she is also not a shapeshifter. She can’t understand how she’s stifling you.”
“Is that what you think, that I’m stifled?”
“So much edge,” she replied, placing kisses along the underside of his jaw, to make him shiver in need and to make her point. “With me, you don’t have to be in control. Let your bear loose. Set free all those other animals within you, too.”
“I really don’t think I’ll ever have more than First Form.”
“And I really think you will. We’ll see who turns out to be correct.” She tugged her hand free to lightly scratch his nipple with a nail she made longer and sharper. He hissed, stiffening, jaw tightening as he fought for that control he loved so well. “I’ll tell you a secret,” she continued, turning to straddle his lap, pressing her open sex against the hard and needy ridge of him, titillating them both by brushing her taut nipples against his bare chest. “When I seduced you in that stairwell, I wanted you to lose control. I’ll do it again, because I love it when you snap and stop thinking.”
He put his hands on her hips, under the fall of her hair, smoothing over the curves to cup her bottom. “You are a dangerous woman, Zephyr. Maybe more than I can handle.”
Shimmying her bottom against his big, rough hands, she smiled. “Seems like you’re handling me perfectly. No complaints here.”
Laughing a little, his gaze settled on her mouth, then drifted over her face, his eyes melting summer-sky blue, filled with longing and an emotion she didn’t care to name. “What next?” he asked with a teasing, heated grin. “I believe you indicated an involved plan to strip me naked and have your way with me until I can only think of you.”
“It’s not all that involved,” she replied, giving him a lingering kiss that grew quickly hot and hungry, both of them panting when they eased apart.
“It doesn’t need to be,” he admitted. “Zephyr, you should know—you’re all I ever think about anyway.”
She smiled, well pleased to hear that. “Then we only have the stripping and having left.” Reaching between them, she found the laces of his pants.
“That might not be easy,” he said. “I think I made a mess of knotting them.”
She could just picture him, distraught over her faint, aghast at his loss of control, frantically fastening his laces, knotting them to last forever. “I don’t know,” she purred, growing a single sharp claw and slicing it clean through the knots, then placing it delicately on his lower lip. She’d like to pierce that full lip with the point of her claw, draw a single bead of blood, but that might be too much for her relatively innocent prince yet. He watched her with glassy-eyed need, chest rising and falling as if he’d been running. “Take those off,” she suggested, showing him the claw, “unless you don’t care if I shred them.”
“I
don’t care,” he said, voice hoarse, then caught her wrist before she could move. Shapeshifter speed. Already he was loosing the stranglehold on his deeper nature. “But pants shredded by lion claws might lead to questions.”
She shrugged off those silly mossback mores, but helped him shimmy out of his boots and pants. When she had him deliciously naked, she positioned herself at his feet and began kissing her way up his gorgeously muscled legs. He reached for her, urging her up toward him, but she shook him off. “No hands,” she told him. “That’s the rule for now.”
“But I want to—”
“You have and you will.” She nipped the inside of his thigh. “But it’s my turn to have you.” Easing her way upward, she admired his tempting cock, long and thick, perfectly formed. It twitched as she pressed a kiss to his flat stomach, only a breath away. She glanced up to make sure he was watching, which he was, his face a rictus of agony and delight. Oh yes, this teasing would be most satisfying. “By the time I’m done with you, you’ll understand why passing out from sex is a good thing.” Drawing her hair to the side so he could see, and licking her lips for his benefit, she lowered her head and set to proving her point.
A demanding knock on their locked chamber doors had her groaning in sleepy protest and pulling the covers over her head. Astar, curled around her, brushed a soothing hand down her side. “Go back to sleep,” he murmured. “I’ll get it.”
“Ignore it,” she grumbled, groping to stop him, but he’d already slid out of bed and was pulling on those powder-blue velvet pants—she should have shredded them—and which looked considerably rumpled. Without laces, they barely clung to his lean hips, sagging just enough to give a glimpse of the upper curves of his perfect ass, and he had to hold them up with one hand, scraping back his tangled golden hair so it hung over his broad shoulders. Livid scratches showed all down his back from her nails where she’d left her marks on him.
Mmm. Mine.
“It might be my things finally,” he told her, unbolting the door and allowing a short parade of servants carrying his trunks into the dim room. Fortunately for her fraying patience, he refused their offer to unpack for him, accepted a set of scrolls with a grimace, and sent them on their way. He started reading one scroll, forgetting about his pants, which slipped enough to reveal his hip bones and the golden curls at his groin.
Mmm. “Come back to bed,” she told him.
He gave her a rueful glance, shaking his head. “I have to attend more meetings, I’m afraid. My clothes are the good news—the carriages finally caught up with us in the middle of the night, so at least the servants waited until dawn to bring the trunks up—but the restored ferry service at Gieneke means a great deal more bad news arrived also.”
Tossing the scroll aside with the others, he searched for clothes out of one trunk and carried them into the bathing room, emerging fully dressed soon after. “Coming to breakfast?” he asked, kneeling on the bed with one knee and kissing her softly.
“I’ll catch up with you. I might take an actual bath,” she replied. She frankly wasn’t in any hurry to be surrounded by people again, though she was ravenously hungry.
“Good idea.” He smiled, brushing a strand of hair from her face. “You can sleep longer, relax here. I can have food sent up.”
It sounded good. Too good. “How are you not exhausted?” she complained. Neither of them had slept much. He’d insisted on learning how to employ the same tricks on her that she’d used on him—after he woke up from a dead faint—and they’d mainly taken brief cat naps before devouring each other anew. He was an apt, and voracious, student of the sensual delights, and she felt pleasantly battered.
“Duty calls,” he replied, smiling widely when she made a rude noise. “And it seems having a beautiful woman ravish me all night is greatly restorative in other ways.”
“Flatterer.”
“Shall I have food sent up?”
“No.” Tempting as it was, she felt an unaccustomed twinge of something like guilt at the prospect of lolling the morning away while he worked. Also, Dina might be there. “I’ll be down soon.”
“You know, it truly would be all right if you wanted to go fly or ramble,” he suggested. “I know you can be discreet, and it’s beautiful countryside.”
That was tempting also—though she wondered if he was trying to keep her away from Dina. On second thought, staying away from Dina probably wasn’t a terrible idea. She’d have to release her Astar to a Dina, if not the Dina, someday. She had no business feeling so possessive of him. Mine, the gríobhth snarled.
“Maybe I will go flying,” she said, trying to convince her seething gríobhth with the treat.
“Zephyr,” Astar said, then hesitated, looking troubled. Uh-oh. Was this it, the end already? She’d gotten more than the one night he’d promised, but she’d truly hoped for more.
“What?” she asked, sounding brittle to her own ears.
“Would you heal the bite mark I left on your neck, along with at least the visible bruises?” he asked tentatively. “I know you don’t mind them, but I worry about the impression it will make on the others.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask if he was ashamed—but then realized that he probably was. Astar wasn’t a brutal man in any way, and it would be hard on him for anyone to think so. “All right,” she agreed. When he smiled in relief, she added, “But only the visible ones. Just as you’ll have to wear the scratches I put on you under your shirt.”
He cupped the back of her neck and kissed her thoroughly. “I’m kind of glad I can’t heal like you can. Every time I move, the sting will make me think of you and how you marked me as yours. I’ll spend the day longing for the moment we’re together again.”
Perhaps it didn’t reflect well on her, but that admission made her happy, soothing her savage thoughts about Dina. Then it occurred to her that Astar looked far too smug at her easy capitulation. “Are you managing me?” she asked, realizing that she’d heard Ursula accuse Harlan of that more than once.
Astar had the grace to look vaguely sheepish, despite the enduring smug. “How am I doing?”
“Hmm. Not badly,” she admitted, well aware her gríobhth nature wasn’t being reasonable—and oddly warmed that Astar clearly knew this. Still… “Astar—I do understand that you’re not really mine.”
He sobered, searching her face. “In a way, I am, and forever will be. You will always be my first, no matter what happens after this.”
That didn’t help. Maybe that odd pricking feeling—the one that insisted it would be somehow wrong to play and relax while he faced a long day—was some stupid sense of responsibility. Or worse, duty. Ugh, foul word. “Should I let you go?” she asked, and knew by the look on his face that he understood she didn’t mean to breakfast, though he had to go do that, too. “After all, you have fulfilled the vow you made under duress.”
An uncertain and sad expression crossed his face. “Are you done with me already?”
“No.” As she said it, she knew the brutal truth of that. She wasn’t even close to done with him. And—far more startling—she couldn’t envision the day she would be. Unsettled by the realization, she pushed up and embraced him, holding on tightly. “I’m not even close to done,” she said, and her voice came out a little choked. What would she do when she had to be done, to let him go to someone else?
“Shh.” He stroked her back. “Are you crying?”
She sniffled. “Maybe.”
“Why?” He pulled back, thumbs brushing the tears from her cheeks. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Yet,” she corrected.
“Yet,” he echoed bleakly.
How had they ended up in such a dismal conversation? Her fault—and how strange was that? “But not today,” she offered, and he smiled in relief.
“Not today and not tonight,” he agreed, kissing her lingeringly. “Have your bath. Go flying. You’ll feel better for it.”
“All right.” That probably would help to settle
her. So interesting that he knew that. “If you like, tonight I’ll dance with you,” she offered.
He smiled in real delight. “I would love that.”
See? She knew how to settle him, too.
~ 22 ~
“Good morning, Your Highness.” Berendina, who’d been lurking just inside the doorway of the breakfast hall, practically pounced on him as he walked in.
“Good morning, Princess,” he said, taking her proffered hand and kissing the air over it. He immediately missed Zephyr, but at least he had habits of politeness to fall back on. “You look lovely this morning.”
“Thank you. You don’t look like you slept at all. Was the news from Castle Ordnung dire enough to keep you awake all night?”
News from Ordnung? How did she—oh. He’d forgotten Zephyr’s excuse for stealing him away, and what her “message” had actually consisted of. Feeling the blush heat his face—and the sting of scratches from her claws on his back—he did his best to dissemble. “The ferries are indeed operating at the confluence again, and there’s all sort of news, dire and otherwise.” He brandished the scrolls he carried, suddenly aware that he’d never finished reading the missive from Ursula, because he’d gotten distracted talking to Zephyr.
Berendina gave him a knowing look, not fooled in the least. “Your friend last night—the attractive brunette—I don’t think I caught her name.”
Attractive brunette. A deliberately milquetoast description for Zephyr’s vivid beauty. “Zephyr,” he said, well aware that he had given the name when he introduced them.
The Golden Gryphon and the Bear Prince: An Epic Fantasy Romance (Heirs of Magic Book 1) Page 21