The Unicorn Hunters: A Novel(99)

“Shrew,” he said, and kissed her again. One hand went to the ties of her sleeves and undid them, and the band of her skirt, letting her clothes fall away in pieces. When she was in her chemise, he pulled back again. They were both breathing fast. “It was one of my rooms in Never-Was. And you?” he said.

She smiled slowly, wondering if he could see it in the dark. “I? In the castle of Never-Was? Certainly. There was a bed, and a korrigan wearing your face, ready to make all my dreams of love come true.”

Louis muttered something rude. He’d pulled off her fillet, and her hair was mostly loose. He pushed the mass of it aside and breathed against her sensitive throat, ran his teeth down to the juncture of her shoulder, drew hard on the skin there until she arched against him, then he said, “What were your dreams of love?”

“I dreamed—” She hesitated, but there was no room for untruths in the shadows between them. “I dreamed that one would touch me who did not revel in my conquest.”

Louis was silent. Then he said, “It is a fair dream.” But he sounded sad. His hands had loosened. She said, suddenly self-conscious, “My dress must be laid aside properly. So it doesn’t crumple.”

“There’s a coffer at the foot of the bed— No, I’ll do it. Your feet are quite bruised enough.”

She sat down on the bed. Clothes rustled somewhere in the dark, and when he came back his body was warm. He’d stripped to shirt and hose.

Louis sat down on the bed beside her and she leaned against his shoulder. His hand closed around the back of her neck, beneath her hair. It was only this close that she could feel the tension in him, running through his shoulder, up into his hand.

“Are you cold? Lie back,” he said, and followed her beneath the heaped-up blankets. She could barely see him, but she could feel that he was propped on his elbow and his free hand, hesitating, hovered, just near enough for her to feel its warmth. “Anne?”

“I’m all right.” She reached, found his dark hair, and pulled his mouth to hers, his body a satisfying weight. He kissed her, one hand tipping her jaw back, and the other unknotting the string at the neck of her chemise, loosening it until he could slip a hand inside and close it lightly around her breast. And he seemed content to stop there, kissing her slowly, rolling the nipple between his fingers, letting her restraint crumble.

“Louis,” she said, and hardly knew her own voice.

She heard his long sigh of satisfaction. “God, Anne, how many nights did I go to bed half-wild for you and hating myself for it? Will you beg me now? Or is it I who must beg?”

“Don’t be nonsensical. Who is begging? I want—” She broke off. She was pressing against him and hardly knew how to say it.

“Do you?” he asked. “Sit up, then.” He lifted her so he could pull off her chemise. His shirt disappeared, and the hose, and when he pulled her down beside him, there was only the startling heat, multiplied by a thousand, as the idle fingers on her nipples were replaced with his mouth.

He licked and sucked and breathed against her oversensitive skin, and she heard him groan between his teeth. His fingers were on her thighs and his mouth against her ear, and he said, breathlessly, “Spread your legs for me.”

It might have been easier if he’d pushed her legs apart, taken her, let her be mindless, only reacting. But she had told him that she feared conquest. This, perhaps, was his answer.

Trembling, she did part her legs for him, until she felt the air touch her there, where they had flung off the quilts, and knew she was blushing hotly in the dark. His fingers were light and reverent on her thighs, but still he did not put his hand between; he came close, running patient, grazing fingers along the juncture of her hip, teasing her. Finally, in the driving need for him to touch her, she caught the wrist of that flitting hand. “For God’s sake,” she said, could almost see him smile in the shadows, and finally, finally, he put his hand where she wished. “I won’t— You won’t hurt me.”

He laughed, and there was something painful in the sound. “I might hurt myself, sweet, with all this patience.” And a finger slipped inside her.

She went rigid around it, trembling; it was as though she could feel the touch in her womb and feathering along her lips. She realized her legs had closed around his hand and he was waiting for her again. But his thumb rested lightly against the juncture of her thighs, and he moved it and moved it again, and her thighs unlocked. “Like that,” he whispered, raw, when she spread her legs for him, and that glorious thing was building in the place where his hand met her skin. His free hand pushed her knee down when she tried to close up around the sensation. “I don’t—” she began, and then she did, her whole body going tense and shattering in a waterfall of white light, and she found she was clinging to him, her thighs wet, and then she was beneath him again, and he’d drawn her knee up, and she felt him brush against the wetness there.

There was the quick rise and fall of his chest against her tender breasts, his weight on his forearms.

“It’s all right,” she whispered, and then she had no more breath to speak for he pressed himself into her body in a single movement and there was no part of her, in that moment, that was not his.





Chapter


34


Her head cleared slowly. Her first fully formed thought was how it would have been to have endured that lightning-stroke under a dozen interested eyes, with none of Louis’s patience. It would have killed something within her. He was studying her face in the faint light. The moon had risen higher.