“No,” Lyssa said softly. “The bed is a big one, more than large enough for both of us.”
He took a step toward her. “If we sleep in that big bed together, we will end up fucking again. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow night, but I will not share a bed with you and pretend not to want you.” Was he trying to scare her? If so, he failed miserably.
“I would like that.” Lyssa felt herself blush. Though she fought for tight control, she didn’t succeed. Not entirely. Was it proper behavior for a wife to be so bold? She couldn’t be sure, but it didn’t feel wrong to be honest and open with Blade. “We can...” Oh, now that she knew it was a bad word, she could not say it! “We can do what husbands and wives do, as we are, in fact, husband and wife.”
Blade didn’t have a particularly expressive face, and still he looked surprised by her words. Had he expected her to be shy or coy? Did he think she would hide under the covers and send him away to sleep on a cold, hard floor?
“This marriage is a temporary one. You’ve made that clear,” he said. “If we share a bed you could find yourself with child,” he added, and it sounded like a threat.
Was she ready for that? A baby? His baby? “Maybe I will and maybe I won’t. That question is a part of life and it is certainly a part of any marriage, is it not?”
Besides, while she wasn’t ready to say so aloud, joining with her husband had not been entirely unpleasant. In a bed, with a bit of light to see by, it might be downright enjoyable. Shouldn’t she have a proper marital bedding? Something more appropriate than a quick tryst in a dark alleyway.
“I sleep naked,” Blade said, and again his words sounded very much like a threat.
“Lovely.” She took a deep breath, grabbed the hem of her nightgown and swiftly pulled it over her head. She dropped it to the floor. “Then so shall I.” She sat on the side of the bed for a moment, then slipped her legs beneath the coverlet. It was perfectly naturally for her to be a little shy. No man had ever seen her naked!
For a few long moments Blade just looked at her. He looked and he looked. Finally he began to remove his own clothes. He did not rush, so she returned the favor and looked at him. Her first thought was that he was rather hairy, and big, and hard. Well, not too hairy, but there was hair on his chest, and lower, and she really did like that little dusting on his forearms. A scar marred the perfection of his chest, but her eyes did not linger there. There was so much beauty to look at, so much to study.
She was smooth—for the most part—and small and soft, so she found his physical makeup... fascinating. Utterly fascinating. She should be afraid to share a bed with a man so much larger and stronger than she. But she wasn’t. She wasn’t afraid at all.
She was glad of the rain. The sound was soothing, and it insulated them from the rest of the world somehow.
“I should turn around and walk away,” he said beneath his breath, almost as if he were talking to himself.
She met his gaze, squinted a bit as he sometimes did and tilted her head to one side. “Why?”
***
Blade had wanted nothing more than revenge for so long that to want anything else seemed very wrong.
He wanted her. Maybe he’d wanted her from the moment he’d seen her walking blindly away from the palace with her father, afraid of the coming marriage that was not to be.
When he’d still been able to feel her, to smell her on his skin, he’d planned to show her what pleasure a man and wife could share. Only later, with some distance, had he begun to have doubts about the wisdom of that plan. When he was gone another man could teach her. Another man could share her bed. There was no reason for him to encourage the kind of closeness lying with her would create. And yet here he stood, unable to walk away.
She pointed. “How do you walk around all day with that... that...”
“Cock,” he provided in a harsh tone.
Her eyes rose up to meet his. “That is another vulgar word, isn’t it?”
“I suppose.”
“Well, whatever it should be called, however do you manage?”
He could almost smile. Almost. Here was a truly innocent woman without guile, without any sense of artificial propriety. He liked that about her. She was real, a part of the world he had rarely seen and never belonged to. “It isn’t always so.”
“The only times I have seen or felt it, it has been.”
“You make it... like this.”
“How?”
With a word, a sigh, a tilt of her head. With curious green eyes and soft skin and that elegant neck. With breasts and hips, soft lips...
“You talk too much.” He took a step toward the bed. He should walk away. He should make certain she did not affect him any more than she already had. Eventually he would walk away, but not tonight.
“So I have been told,” his bride replied, heaving a sigh that told him she’d evidently been told more than once... or twice... or hell, thirty times or more.
Blade pulled the coverlet back, exposing Lyssa’s body for his eyes. Two candles lit the room with soft but sufficient light. He could see her well, and he took a moment to study. To stare. Pale and slight and seemingly fragile, she possessed a strength that was hers alone.
Another woman might shy away, reach for the covers or divert her gaze. She might use her hands to cover her breasts or the curls between her legs. Not Lyssa. Not his wife.
She deserved better than a man who planned to use her and then leave. Because whether he died in the palace, accomplishing his goal, or made a miraculous escape, he would leave her.
“It’s all right,” she said gently, as if she saw his struggle and was attempting to soothe his fears. Then she reached for him with a hand softer than any he had ever known, with a new and exciting and innocent passion. No matter what tomorrow might bring, tonight he was hers.
***
Blade joined her on the bed, and she rolled into him. She wanted the sensation of skin to skin, and she wanted more kisses like the one they’d shared earlier that evening. She could get lost in him so very easily.
Only last night she’d married this man just to satisfy a witch’s requirement, to erase the dreams of being alone, with the thought of dismissing him when the right man came along. But what if he was the right man? What if he was the man she was destined to share her life with? It was a silly notion, given that she knew so little about him, but when he was lying beside her it seemed more than possible. It seemed quite likely. The same twists of luck that had doomed her other weddings had brought him to her in an unusual way.
Somehow, some way, she had not been the same since the moment he’d pushed inside her. He had awakened something within her body; something bright and wonderful and... needy. She had never expected to need her husband, to crave him in the pit of her stomach and even the pit of her soul.
He laid his lips on her throat and kissed her there. Lyssa closed her eyes and savored the sensations. She felt that kiss everywhere, as if he wasn’t just pressed against her body but was already in it. She had never known her neck could be so sensitive, that any touch anywhere could feel so good. And then his mouth moved lower and he took a nipple into his mouth, sucking gently, rousing new and powerful sensations she had never even dreamed of. She laid her hands on his shoulders. He was so warm and hard, so different from her... no, different from everyone. Fate had led her to him, had guided her into this marriage as surely as it had led her away from the others.
While he sucked and licked, he reached between her thighs. Spread them. Stroked them. Touched her where he had last night, only this was different. Gentler and yet more powerful. She gasped and lurched, and her hips began to move in time with the motion of his fingers.
Eyes closed, she forgot where she was as she simply felt. The pleasure built slowly, and all too soon she knew that what she needed, what she had to have, was Blade inside her again. Though she could barely speak, she managed to whisper, “Now. Please.”
Blade did not torture her; he did not make her
wait. Taking his mouth from her breast—oh, she hated to see it go—he rolled on top of her and guided himself inside. It was a relief and a sharp pleasure. And it was so right.
He thrust hard, bracing himself above her. She adjusted her legs to allow him deeper access, wrapping her thighs around him, moving against and with him. As they moved, the sensations and the need grew. This was bright and wonderful. She needed him. Not just anyone. Him. Blade. No other man could ever make her feel this way. She was certain of it.
Each stroke was a pleasure that took her breath away; each thrust took him deeper, touched her where no other man ever had, or ever would. Nothing could feel better than this; it was impossible that her body could bear it. But it did feel better, again and again, until there was nothing else but him.
And then the pleasure peaked. It washed over her, unexpected and powerful. She cried out, clasped her body to his as a sharp release made her body quake. Blade experienced the same kind of release. She felt it, deep inside, physically and more. Deeper. His movement slowed, he dropped down atop her body.
Lyssa turned her head and found his lips with hers. The touch was soft, gentle and wonderful. In the distance, thunder rumbled. And then she said, “I would make a terrible nun.”
He laughed. Easily, spontaneously. The sound came from deep within him. But too soon the laughter died abruptly and he rolled away from her. Away and out of the bed. She could see what he meant when he said his cock was “not always so.” Now it dangled, wet and soft and very different from before. Perhaps she had been protected from the truth about relations between a man and a woman, but it didn’t exactly take a genius to figure out how this worked.
“I will sleep in the main room,” he said sharply.
“Why?” Had she done something wrong? Said something inappropriate? “The bed is very large, and I promise not to make demands of you in the night, if that is what you are afraid of.”
He looked at her, stared at her with those magnificent eyes of his, and said, “I am not afraid.”
And she knew—the same way she knew someone had been watching her from Level Two, the same way she knew Sinmora’s child would be a boy, the same way she knew Blade was the right man for her—that he was lying.
***
He had not laughed in four years. He should not laugh now.
Blade sat on a blanket before a low fire, unable to sleep, unable to still the turmoil inside him. Lyssa was a means to an end. Nothing more. And while she was here and willing, he might as well lie with her. What man would not, when she looked at him that way? But he could not allow her to touch him inside. There was no room in his life for laughter, for gentleness or affection.
Volker had destroyed him. When the bastard had killed Runa, when he’d taken away the last of Blade’s family, Volker had murdered the man Blade had once been. His sword might not have done the job, but Volker had killed him.
It was the guilt, more than anything else, that ate at Blade, that gnawed when he least expected it. First his mother, brutally attacked by demonic soldiers and left with child, then Runa, taken from a neighbor’s home and murdered when she’d dared to scream. He had not been there to save either one of them. He should have been, he should have been there.
The embers in the hearth before him glowed, and a new flame danced. Blade stared, he did his best to forget what had just happened and focus on the past. He would have fought the soldiers who’d raped his mother if he had not been at sea. He would have killed Volker, if the ship he’d been sailing upon had docked one day earlier and he’d been at home when Runa had been taken. One day.
That had been Hagan’s final voyage before retiring to Arthes and passing himself off as a respectable man instead of a pirate. It had been Blade’s final voyage, too. As they had sailed toward the village his mind had been on leaving the sea and marrying a pretty girl and making a home. A home for him and for Runa. He’d had no idea what awaited him...
Blade didn’t need or want that guilt to be taken away. He had no wish to be mended, and that was what it felt like when he was with Lyssa. His insides had been ripped apart, and she touched him there. She offered him more than he’d ever wanted or expected from her, and as she did, he was mended.
No more sleeping in that bed with her. No more kisses, no more laughter.
He did eventually fall asleep. And he dreamed. He didn’t always dream, but when he did, he dreamed of death and blood, of Runa’s disappointment that he had been too slow to save her. He should have been at home when the men came, but he had not been. He should have run faster, fought harder, and sometimes in his dreams he was fast enough. Good enough. Sleeping in front of the fire, closer to finishing his quest than he had ever been, he dreamed of water and kisses.
In his dreams Lyssa was there, and he laughed again.
Chapter Nine
“I don’t understand why we have to go to the shop today,” Lyssa said, trying not to sound as if she were pouting, even though she was. “A day or two to get our new home in order, to celebrate our marriage...”
“Our home is in fine order, and ours is not a real marriage, so there is nothing to celebrate,” Blade said, his voice as sharp as his name. He held her hand lightly, but she knew it was not because he wanted to touch her but because he wanted her to hurry along. She tried to keep her quick steps to the higher, dryer parts of the path, avoiding the puddles left by last night’s rain.
He had not looked at her, not really, all morning. Even though the beard was gone and his hair had been neatly pulled back, and the clothing he wore was respectable—though she could not say whether or not the black trousers and plain white shirt had been stolen, as the sentinel’s uniform had been—he looked as rough and primitive as he had the night they’d met.
And he was walking too fast! She practically had to run to keep up with him, and running while avoiding the puddles was difficult. She was huffing and puffing, almost entirely out of breath, before she decided she’d had enough. She planted her feet on a small, almost-dry rise and came to a complete stop. The move surprised Blade. Their hands separated, and he took another step before turning around to look at her in an accusing and angry way. One would not know, from the way he stared at her, that last night they had shared incredible pleasure and he had laughed in their bed.
Lyssa crossed her arms and glared at him. “Why are you so anxious to get into the palace?”
“That’s not your concern. Now come along.”
Come along? Perhaps if she’d married at seventeen and had known no better, she would have allowed her husband to order her to come along. But she had not, and she would not. “No.”
He took a short step toward her.
“And if you think you can walk into Papa’s shop with me draped over your shoulder—kicking and screaming, by the way—and get him to trust you enough to work in his store and make a delivery to the palace, then you’re in for a rude awakening. If you want my father to be happy, then you must make me happy.”
Blade knew she was right. He didn’t like it, but she could tell that he knew. For the first time in a long while, Lyssa felt entirely in control. She liked the feeling very much.
“What do you want?” he snapped.
“I want you to tell me why you need to get into the palace.”
For a moment he hesitated. He pursed his lips, and his eyes went colder than ever before. He closed the distance between them, leaned down slightly, and lowered his voice. “The man who murdered my sister is in that palace. I intend to kill him.”
In an instant she realized why Blade had left her bed last night, and her heart broke for him. His heart had been broken when he’d lost his sister, and he had given up everything to find justice for her. He did not want to find pleasure with a wife, and to laugh in bed, to share that kind of intimacy while his sister’s murderer slept so close... “I’m sorry.”
He did not want or accept her apology. “You didn’t kill her. You have nothing to apologize for.”
“Wh
o did, then?”
“I won’t tell you that,” he said, and he meant it. She saw the determination in his eyes. “You’ll know when it’s done.”
“It’s not Emperor Jahn, is it?” She liked the emperor and his family, and she didn’t think Blade would kill anyone other than a very bad man, but she had to ask.
“No.”
That was a relief! “Does this man who killed your sister deserve to die?” Not a question she would have ever expected to ask of anyone, but it seemed... appropriate.
“Yes.”
“Is there no other way?”
“No.”
Blade did not elaborate, and she knew better than to ask him to. “And you will find a way to see it done whether I help you or not?”
“Yes.”
If she didn’t help him, he not only wouldn’t make it into the palace, he certainly wouldn’t make it out alive. Not if he was intent on murdering a palace resident. Worst of all, she suspected that he didn’t care if he survived or not.
She walked to him, hooked her arm through his and looked up. “I will help you.”
He started to shake his head. “I don’t want your help. I simply want access.”
“I will help you,” she said again. “It’s what a proper wife would do.” She did not tell him that she intended to make sure he got out of the palace alive and that he stayed with her, becoming the husband neither of them had ever imagined he might be. That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. Not here and now. Not yet.
They walked toward the shop more slowly, leaving the quiet street where they had stopped for a brief conversation and joining others on the main street. Women heading to market, sentinels hurrying toward the palace for the morning changing of the guard, children scurrying to make it to school on time. Lyssa smiled and waved at those she knew. Very few of them would have heard yet that she’d married, but soon everyone would know.
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