Mine.
“Runechaser,” I whispered.
The breath caught in my throat as he spun me from the wall and carried me to the shattered transom like I was an armful of books. With a hand under my head, he laid me down among the wreckage in the open moonslight of the bay. Cold winds swept up from below, and the water lapped against the shattered hull. One wrong move and we’d tumble over the side, and I realized that it was the rush. The danger, the thrill.
He knelt over me now, his hair falling across his shoulders and hiding his face, and he spread me onto the fractured floorboards over papers and maps. There was a half bottle of wine at his knees, and he snatched it, grabbed the cork in his teeth, and spat it out over the bay. He held it out to me, but I shook my head, wanting to watch him drink.
He raised it to his lips, and I followed the ripples of his throat as it went down. He dropped the bottle through the hole in the stern, and I heard it splash into the waters below. He leaned down and kissed me again. I savoured the wine secondhand, the sugar of the cherry and the tannins on his tongue.
Oh, the feast. I could drink him dry.
He leaned back again, and I bit my lip as he lifted my hips, unwinding the tattered sash with the gold and green threads. I relished his touch as he moved me, unwound me, slid it from my body to fold it carefully on the boards. He spread his fingers on my collar, and I arched my back, pushing into his hand and offering more. Slowly, he drew lines between my breasts, down my tunic, past the drawstrings of my breeches. Like the wings of butterflies, the sensations fluttered up my throat and behind my ears. He whispered an incant, and, with a ripple of pattern, my tunic was gone.
“The wonder of rune,” he said, and he slid his hands lower to grip my thighs. I thrilled at the tingle and rush as the spell raced down my legs. In a heartbeat, my breeches and boots turned to char. I lay beneath him, open and free.
I was comfortable with my body. It was power for me, even with runescars covering every inch of skin. I grinned wryly when he sat back for a moment, eyes filled with wonder as if seeing a woman for the very first time.
He’d been a priest, so maybe it was.
He reached a hand down to my breast, touched me gently as though I might break. The scars gleamed with magik under his fingers, lighting up his face like the glow of a hundred tiny, flickering embers. But I clapped my own hand over his, pressed him over my heart, and I thrilled at the little hum in his throat. I squeezed and kneaded with his fingers until his breathing quickened, and eagerly, he brought his second hand to the task.
“My turn,” I said, and I reached up to grab his bloody tunic in my fist and grinned.
It, too, flashed and sizzled, then was gone in a rush, but I gasped at the sight of his chest. It was raked with red, and I remembered that only hours ago, he’d been whipped, though the wounds had closed and pulsed faintly with the glow of my healing magik.
“The cat…”
“Not the cat,” he said quietly. “ARhi’Ahr athyl.Much worse.”
“We don’t—”
He touched a finger to my lips and shook his head.
“Ni allath.Pain and pleasure. Edges of the same blade.”
And he brought my hand up to his chest, hissing slightly at the touch as he pressed my palm over his heart. There were just so many scars, some fresh, most not so, and I explored the history of his body with my fingertips. He purred with pleasure now, hummed with pain as I ran my hands across his broad chest, his ribs, the ripples of his hard belly. I followed the ridges over his hip bone with my thumbs, traced the lines as they narrowed. I reached the edge of his breeches and paused, meeting his eyes before I went further. He blinked like a lazy cat, so I tugged at the drawstrings, and the linen fell away.
I bit my lip, impressed.
“Good?” I asked.
He grinned.
I touched him now, and he closed his eyes as I let my hands find their way. I rubbed my thumbs along the corded veins, ran my palms along his length. He released a sharp breath as theAro’elscar hummed across his crown.
Forge, I could’ve taken him, all of him, right then and there, devoured him with my lips and teeth and tongue, but I didn’t know the last time he’d been touched like this. These were my waters, and I couldn’t rush him. He had to chart his own course. So, I lay back, brushing my fingers along his thighs as I went.
“Good?” I asked again.
“Sil, mira,”he said.
I smiled and arched my back once more, offering him everything. He lowered himself down, his hair spilling across his forehead as he started with kisses. But soon, the kisses caught fire, and he began to consume my chin and my throat and myshoulders and my breasts like I was the feast now, and he the starving man. My hands slipped through his hair, down his back. He was so beautiful, a blade of steel, an ocean lord, and I wanted to feel all of him on me. I wanted his weight to crush me into the boards. I wanted to own him in my belly, on my skin, with my rune, and I hooked a leg around him, drawing him in to my warmth.
He slipped a hand under my head while the other slid down my side, caressing my hip and lifting my thigh. I closed my eyes, enjoying the sensations as he took his time exploring my body. I grinned to myself as I felt him press in, then away, tentative at first but growing stronger. Parting the deep like a curtain as he pushed himself in. My thighs rejoiced to take him, yearned when he pulled away. He was finding a rhythm, ebbing and flowing like an ocean tide, like the pitch and yaw of a gathering storm. He moved slowly, and I moved with him, rocking my hips to meet him, but he teased me with his body, and I ached at his restraint. I’d been patient. I’d been good. But I wanted him rough and wanted him now.
I was a wretched, wretched woman.
“Now,” I panted. “Now.”
