by Milla Vane
“So I will,” vowed Maddek, filled with fiery purpose.
Kelir grinned. “And so the heart of our Dragon burns again.”
Did it? “I know not if that is true,” he told them, chest suddenly tight. If he burned, it was only with hope. And if Yvenne would not have him after this, even that hope might be destroyed in an instant. “For she is my heart. And when I left her, she was doused in her tears.”
Sympathy smoothed the lines of Banek’s face. “Then you must also do as silver-fingered Rani did after she pulled her dragon from the belly of the Scourge, and reignite that spark in her. But do not forget how that story goes, Ran Maddek, for at first Rani was so eager for her dragon’s return, she blew too hard and the gale of her breath extinguished the faint ember that remained of its heart. Then from her own heart, Rani had to cut a new spark—and it was with endless patience and gentle breath that she rekindled her dragon’s from spark to burning flame.”
And so Maddek would, too.
CHAPTER 30
YVENNE
Maddek had torn out her brother’s tongue.
Feeling as empty as that bloodied mouth, Yvenne carried Bazir’s head out to the private deck. Drahm lay far behind them, a shining jewel nestled upon the shore. The previous day, she’d ridden into that city filled with such happiness and anticipation. Little of both remained.
She had never lied to Maddek. But she had lied to herself.
She would be content? She would not be. Instead she was greedy. Only a sevennight past, in the bed at the inn, she would have rejoiced if Maddek had looked at her with such sympathy and warmth, and with the clear belief that she had not conspired to kill her own mother.
But now it was not enough. And she had thought that desperately clinging to the pleasure he promised would overcome the pain of everything else. Yet that had not been enough, either.
She knew he would have kept his promises to fuck her hard and deep and to make her come. Yet when even her breaching had only brought pain and a quick end, something had shattered within her. As if every dream and every hope she’d been hoarding close to her heart from the day she’d chosen Maddek to be her husband had broken apart—and she had broken with it.
What was in her now? Nothing, it seemed. She felt as lonely as she had within her tower. But no more imaginings of other lives and dreams were left. There was only the life she lived.
No hope. Only purpose.
She would lie beneath Maddek when he returned.
She would take her pleasure if she could.
She would build an alliance as tasked.
She would withstand the suffering to come.
It was fortunate Vela had given her blessing, or Yvenne would have not known if she had the strength to do it all.
On a shuddering sigh, she dropped Bazir’s head. It splashed into the water and bobbed to the surface, where it spun and rolled through the swirling eddies of the ship’s wake. Then with a flash of iridescent scales and thick slithering body, the head was gone.
“A sea bask,” Maddek said quietly from behind her.
So he had returned already. But not with cock risen. When she faced him, he wore white silk around his hips and nothing else. No armor, no blood, no claws. His hair was wet and not yet braided. Nothing of his warrior’s garb did he wear. Why did he seem no less dangerous, no less strong, no less impervious to any harm?
Even when covered, she felt like an open wound.
Without a word, she strode past him into the chamber. He’d brought food and drink. Two heaping platters sat upon the table. Never had she been less hungry. Behind the bath screen, she poured water into a bowl and washed her brother’s blood from her fingers, then Maddek’s seed from between her thighs. Bloodied marks he’d left on her, and those she scrubbed away, too.
Would he be gone when she finished? She dared not hope.
Yvenne was done with hope.
From beyond the screen came a heavy sigh, followed by Maddek’s roughened voice. “Your father ripped my heart asunder when he murdered my parents.”
She stopped, chest aching. Would he now explain why he viewed her with such suspicion? He did not need to.
Tightly she replied, “This I know.”
“I thought I would be prepared for their deaths,” he continued hoarsely. “Nothing was left unsaid between us. And a warrior knows Rani may come for those we love at any moment. Yet I was not prepared. So my rage and grief ruled everything that I saw. It ruled my view when I looked at you. Perhaps it will taint that view for some time. But I will strive to see you more clearly, Yvenne.”
Now he held out a hand to her? When she had resigned herself to nothing? When she had given up all hope?
How could she bear taking the hand he extended if it only meant broken hope and disappointment again?
How could she not take it? Was it not the reason she’d chosen him? That hand had come late, perhaps—but it had come.
“What I do see is how much you loved Queen Vyssen. I cannot guess what befell her. I only know that you loved her as I loved my own mother. And so your heart must have also been torn asunder when you lost her.”
So her heart had been. And it had shattered again, this very dawn. Could she survive if it shattered once more?
Closing her eyes, she prayed to Vela. Yet that goddess had already given her the answer.
You are stronger than you know.
With a shuddering breath, she moved from behind the screen. Though she said nothing, sheer relief eased the tension upon Maddek’s face, in the rigid set of his shoulders.
Gaze entreating, he said to her, “Vela has told me that unless I have the heart of a king, I will not truly be able to protect you. And so your lessons I could use.”
Vela had said such to him? Yvenne knew not what to make of that, but she would ponder it later. Now she steadily regarded him. “What lesson do you need?”
“A warrior wastes no time on wishes and regrets but makes use of what he has. But I hope to be a king, not a warrior. What does a king do?”
“Almost the same,” she told him quietly. “A king may wish and regret, for he has the power to enact change. But he also makes use of what he has to enact those changes. And he sees more uses in what he has than a warrior does. An axe that might cleave skulls is also a tool to fell trees and build homes for his people.”
“Or he sees not just a vessel, but a queen.”
Heart aching, she nodded.
“And if he wishes that he had not hurt her with his assumptions?”
She shrugged as if his question were nothing to her, as if it did not send her aching heart tripping and tumbling. “He still must make use of what he has. What is done cannot be undone. But perhaps he can take what is broken and remake something new of it.”
His dark gaze searched her face. “Then let me see what I have to make use of.”
That was Yvenne. So that he could remake what was broken between them. If she allowed it.
If she wished for it, too.
With trembling fingers, she untied the laces of her robe. Though she wanted to hide her blushing face, instead she proudly lifted her chin as the covering dropped to the floor, standing before him bare as she never had been before.
Now his cock rose. Yet it was as if he were unaware of his own arousal, his gaze smoldering, scorching her skin as it slowly drifted from her hair down to her toes.
“What do you think is my view when I look at you?”
She could well imagine. “My tits are too small to succor a child.”
Slowly he nodded. “Perhaps they are. So I should suckle upon them regularly to prepare your nipples for our children’s hungry mouths. What more?”
Her eyes narrowed. “My hips are too narrow to birth a giant Parsathean baby.”
“It is not your hips that are too narrow,” he said, stepping cl
oser, “but your tight sheath. I will have to accustom it to a stretching with my giant Parsathean sword.”
She refused to laugh at that. Her lips pressed into a firm line and drew his gaze to her mouth. Perhaps thinking of the lying tongue that lay behind it. “I am small and crippled, and my muscles are weak.”
“That is all true,” he said softly, and his big hands cupped her face. “Yet I believe that you are much stronger than I ever knew.”
Her heart filled with sudden, terrible hope. No response did she make.
His voice deepened. “I would ask more of you than a lesson, Yvenne.”
Her brow arched in silent query.
“You must tell me if anything I do causes you pain, for I will not be able to know by your breaths. And if you cannot speak to tell me, then pull at my beard, or stab me with your dagger, or boil the meat from my cock with poison.”
“I will,” she assured him.
A smile quirked his mouth. Then he lowered his head and softly kissed her.
No sound could she make. No breath could she take. Raider that he was, Maddek had stolen both.
Gently he tasted the corner of her mouth, then the center, then the opposite corner, his lips moving tenderly against hers. Again and again he did this, and so sweet it was. As if with this kiss, he was seeking out all the delicate, shattered pieces within her and smoothing their painful edges.
She knew not how to respond except to cling to his arms, and then she began to tremble when he licked the seam of her lips. His hand cupped her nape and he tipped her head back, slowly coaxing her mouth open, sliding his tongue along the sensitive inner flesh of her bottom lip.
Shivering with sensation, she opened for him, and received the luscious thrust of his tongue—oh, why had he not kissed her before? Why had she not kissed him? Fiercely now she reached up, tangling her fingers in his thick hair and hauling herself closer. So heady was this sensation, not at all like everything that had come before. Not just receiving pleasure but taking it, glorying in the sweetness and the heat. Wanting so much more. So many times he’d sucked her skin and licked her cunt, so many times he’d growled that hungry growl, starting softly and becoming more ravenous with every taste, yet never had it been so all-consuming.
“Maddek,” she gasped when he broke the kiss.
He braced his forearm beneath her bare bottom and hefted her up against his chest, until their mouths were on level. His face was a harsh mask of need as he said, “Now we will ride into battle together. Not as enemies, but allies.”
On the bed. As answer, greedily she kissed him again. He carried her behind that screen, as he had before, but this was nothing like before. With no rush, Maddek set her upon the dais to stand in front of him, then cupped her breasts and sucked at their taut peaks until Yvenne thought she might scream of pleasure and frustration. Her nipples throbbed, red as rubies when he abandoned them to trail ravenous kisses downward, tongue slicking into her navel before he glanced up, his eyes hot.
“Lie upon the bed, Yvenne, with thighs widespread.”
So he would assume the role of commander in this battle. Yet it was an order she could not easily follow, lying upon the bed but not yet exposing herself to him. Discarding the silk around his hips, Maddek climbed up onto the platform, head and shoulders bent beneath the low ceiling, his gaze hungry upon her. Slipping his fingers under her knees, he gently spread her open.
Quivering with anticipation, she eyed the thick length that hung heavily between his muscular thighs. “I do not want to be the horse.”
That stopped him. “The horse?”
“As we ride into battle, we become one with our mounts—and it is as if we fly.” She recited the words that had branded themselves on her heart beneath a moonlit sky, the very first night she had begun living. “But I do not want to be the mount.”
So beautiful Maddek was when he grinned. Settling his shoulders between her splayed thighs, he told her, “You need only be a warrior-queen.”
Then she would. “And what will you be?”
“Yours,” he said in a raw voice, and bent his head to feast.
And this, too, he had done before. So many times. Yet all was different as he devoured her slowly. For this was the first time that wonder blossomed within her, the exhilarating thought that he might be entangled, too. Maddek had returned to her. Not just to fuck but to see her anew. To see her as more than vessel, as more than queen, but as a woman who might be trusted with a small piece of his heart.
That wondrous thought was within her as she came against his tongue, her body quaking and her chest swollen with sheer emotion. Maddek moved over her shuddering form, pushing her right leg higher, spreading her open wider. He kissed her, his mouth still glistening with her arousal, and still it seemed nothing like honey, but her blood was—pulsing slow and thick and sweet beneath her skin.
Into her eyes he looked, holding her gaze as pressure built at the entrance of her cunt, then abruptly gave way into a sharp, stretching burn. Yvenne gasped softly, clutching at his shoulders. There was no pain this time. Yet it was not entirely pleasure, either, for there was so much of him. More than he’d given her before.
Endlessly his thick cock wedged deeper, until she could take nothing more. His hips settled fully in the cradle of her widespread thighs. He kissed her again, a caress of lips softer than his voice, which was a strained rasp against her mouth.
“So hot and wet your cunt is.” Barely he moved within her, drawing another gasp as the pressure within her sheath deepened. With a groan, he stilled again. “Such a fierce grip. Only by Hanan’s mercy I do not spend again.”
“Wait for me,” she panted.
“Always I will. We are as one now, Yvenne.” A callused palm swept down her right thigh and urged her leg over his back. “So let us ride into battle together.”
No urgent battle it was, for he only kissed her. Sweetly, then with breathless heat, stroking between her lips with ravenous licks. Only when she began to move restlessly beneath him did Maddek begin their ride, with a long and slow rocking of his hips.
His full length he pumped into her cunt, and it was lovely to feel him within her, so lovely, but the sweetest pleasure came from his kiss, from his skin beneath her fingertips, from his groans each time he slid deep. Yet the stroking of his cock seemed to pull all those other pleasures into the slick lining of her sheath, dragging in more sensation each time. The flex of muscle beneath her searching fingers became the flex of her cuntflesh around his shaft. His heavy weight above her and his warmth and his nearness heightened the heat and pressure within. The burn of linen against her back and give of the bed, the creaking of the boat, the crash of the waves all seemed to rock with the rhythm of Maddek sliding back and forth inside her.
Then suddenly his pistoning length was not just pulling in pleasure from outside her cunt, but drawing it from her own inner walls, ecstasy doubling with each slow thrust. All she could feel was that incredible fullness, her tightening sheath, and his hot open kiss that moved from her mouth to her throat when she arched helplessly beneath him, lifting her hips and riding his cock.
She cried out his name, seeking the release hovering just beyond her reach. Frantically she clawed at his shoulders.
“Fly, my bride,” he urged, his mouth hot on her throat. “Fly with me.”
“I am. But I need—” More. Her own strangled sob as he fucked suddenly hard and deep choked her plea into silence. Almost enough, it was almost, almost, almost enough. “Please.”
His fingers wedged between them, roughly stroking her clit. “Fly, Yvenne.” Hoarsely he commanded her with a long, hard thrust. “Fly!”
And she did, soaring, clinging to Maddek as he groaned and pushed through the clenching inner muscles of her sheath. As she came down, he sat back and hauled her backside onto his lap, pumping into her harder, deeper.
“Again,” he deman
ded through gritted teeth.
She could not. But it was as if every hard thrust captured the ecstasy that her release had flung free and shoved it deep into her sheath again. His thumb stroked her clit and his cock pounded within her, a harder ride than before, her hands twisting in the linens for anchor and her breasts bouncing with every rough beat. This time the exquisite shudders started deep, where his thick shaft worked into her in that luscious, brutal rhythm, a fluttering of internal muscles before she was launched upward again. With a grunt, Maddek bent over her, still stroking deep until his breath caught hard in her ear. Then his teeth locked on her shoulder and his tortured groan followed her up, up, as his cock pulsed and spilled hot seed.
Together Yvenne crashed with him, winded as if she had been tossed from the sky. Maddek’s chest heaved, his dark skin slick with sweat, his softening cock still within her. When he moved, as if to lift his weight off her, she held him tighter.
“I like the feel of you inside me.”
A kiss he pressed to her neck. “As do I.”
He rolled her instead to their sides, with her thigh draped over his hip. She pillowed her head on his arm.
So quiet they were now. She knew not what lay behind his eyes as he looked down at her. But a better view he had.
Or so she hoped.
In bed with him at the inn, she’d discovered that trust was a difficult and exhilarating part of herself to give. An agonizing part of herself, when that trust was betrayed.
Yet he had held out his hand. She would try to meet him halfway.
“It was the stairs,” she whispered.
No response did he make but she felt his gaze sharpen on her face. She couldn’t look up, couldn’t meet his eyes. Already hers burned, her throat a painful lump, and never would she make it through this telling if she saw . . . any response. Sympathy, pity, blame. Nothing could ease this pain.